Destruction is literally nipping at my heels.

[Doctor Rock]

Good moaning! 

[Doctor Rock]

Warning: vague philosophical rant about politics.

Do you feel like we've all gotten so cynical about politics, we're in a race to see who can find the best way to say the sky is falling?

You've got the folks who say the sky is falling hard-core apocalypse style, with evil conspiracies that will end life as we know it within five years unless they're stopped RIGHT AWAY. Then you've got the folks who present themselves as the voice of reason because of their more reasoned opinion that the sky is falling gradually, because of all of our middling little failings, and will come crashing down within a generation while the complacent sit idly by and watch.

I think the net effect of the former is hysteria and insane, short-sighted decision making. And the net effect of the latter is apathy and a lack of faith that any progress or change can ever be made. And the combined effect of the two is to make people unwilling to commit any energy at all to the day-to-day grind of incrementally improving our collective situation.

Maybe having a kid has just made me focus more on the long term, but it seems like we could all do to embrace a timeline that goes a little further than our own laps.

And what about those that do everything they can, within reason, that "contribute to the day-to-day grind of incrementally improving our collective situation", but still think the sky is falling, eh? 
 
To tell you the truth, you briefly described two of the many reasons why I'm not optimistic: the end-of-the-word hysterics of the conspiracy buffs and the extreme fringe of the ecological movement, and the apathy and cynicism of so many.  There's not much space for reasoned discourse these days... At least, there isn't much of it on the net.   But I don't consider my pessimism, which I think is the result of a realistic assessment of the situation, to be an excuse to sit on my ass.  You gotta do what you think is right, even if you think it will only help a tiny little bit.  At least I won't contribute to the problem, or I'll contribute as little as I possibly can. 

That way, I can feel all morally superior and shit! 

[Tripp]

I'm with you..

[Jeff]

I'm not saying the world we live in isn't full of shitty problems. I'm just saying, as Dan did, that you have to do your little bit. On a long enough timeline, there's always hope. And short as our lives will be, the timeline is loooooooong.

[Doctor Rock]

I'm not saying the world we live in isn't full of shitty problems. I'm just saying, as Dan did, that you have to do your little bit. On a long enough timeline, there's always hope. And short as our lives will be, the timeline is loooooooong.

Jeff, on sufficiently long timelines, none of our problems matter. 

But as far as the next 90 years are concerned, this graph pretty much summarises my worries:

[Doctor Rock]

Let's hope that world population will stabilise below 10 billion and then slowly decrease.  And lets hope that we can find ways of giving half decent living standards to everyone soon without depleting our resources even more. 

Since the end of the second world war, we got used to the idea of progress, that coming generations will be more prosperous, more educated and generally better-off than the generations that preceded them.  I really, really wish this to be true for my daughter's generation!

If we don't attain some kind of gradual equilibrium by ourselves, a sudden return to equilibrium will be forced upon us.   

[Doctor Rock]

And just so I don't appear to be mister sky-is-falling: we have gone from the possibility of a massive and sudden hecatomb caused by a nuclear conflict...  To a possible gradual hecatomb caused by sustainability problems.  So things are actually looking up! 

It's always possible that a new cold war could happen sometime in the future, but that seems unlikely at this point. 

[Tripp]

I hope gorillas  learn to speak and then heckle us back into accord with nature.

[Tripp]

First Scientifically Confirmed Poisonous Bird

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj6O8WJ3qtE[/youtube]

[bebopbalogna]

First Scientifically Confirmed Poisonous Bird

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj6O8WJ3qtE[/youtube]

 

[Doctor Rock]

Why the Freud, Pat? 

[bebopbalogna]

he's pink.   it's for chad.

[Doctor Rock]

he's pink.   it's for chad.

I do not understand. 

[bebopbalogna]

it's much simpler than that.  pink freud.  that's all.

[Jesse]

The bird thing is cool... but I'm not sure I understand. Is the bird poisonous (so it won't be eaten) or venomous (uses its poison to attack prey)? The whole description sounds like the former, except in the scientist's description of how he discovered it (from a scratch).