The WELL: inkwell.vue.99: "Turning the Millennium" Jam!

#19: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 3 Jan 01 09:23

Wed, 03 Jan 2001 09:23:00 PST

A single asteroid impact will fix all that. *8-) [Read entire topic]

#18: John Payne (satyr) Wed 3 Jan 01 08:22

Wed, 03 Jan 2001 08:22:00 PST

<11> we're going to continue to hear that "science disagrees and is > inconclusive on the matter".

Which translates (more or less) to "The preponderance of evidence is insufficient to compel us to acknowledge it in abrogation of our habitually-conceived self-interest." [Read entire topic]

#17: John Payne (satyr) Wed 3 Jan 01 07:58

Wed, 03 Jan 2001 07:58:00 PST

For a definition of "viridian" see...

<http://www.viridiandesign.org/> & <http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/viridian/> [Read entire topic]

#16: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Tue 2 Jan 01 17:48

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 17:48:00 PST

Steve, you've gone Viridian! [Read entire topic]

#15: Steven Solomon (ssol) Tue 2 Jan 01 17:04

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 17:04:00 PST

The very first time I went on the Internet, I did a search of gopher-space. I needed a keyword to search for, and there was a CD sitting by my computer. It was by the band Sea Level. I typed in Sea Level, and was surprised to get a bunch of hits from a university on the island nation of Singapore, I think.

The documents cited were all about the evidence for, and the consequences of, global warming for folks near the coasts of islands and continents. Reading thru summaries of the first few files, my skin crawled. I think this was back in 1990 or '91.

Jezuz-kerriste, there's plenty of money to be made making clean fuel and attenuating the damage that we've done.Can we get busy making money and doing good in this new century?

If that meme doesn't work out in practice, I hope it just seems to be one of those whacky 20th Century notions that gets replaced by more grounded and informed reasoning in the next. [Read entire topic]

#14: John Payne (satyr) Tue 2 Jan 01 10:17

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 10:17:00 PST

Right after posting that I remembered seeing an article about a proposed interstellar probe that would use light pressure to accelerate a gauze-like sail to a substantial fraction of the speed of light. This sail would be composed of a fault-tolerant network of identical units that together would perform energy storage, computation, imaging, and transmission, allowing it to assay the system of whatever star it was aimed at as it approached and send the data back.

> I'd like to see a resolution by the human race to deal with global > warming before it deals with us,

The first thing we need to do, aside from desisting from making the problem worse by increasing the output of greenhouse gases, is to figure out what to do about the many millions of people who are going to be displaced from their homes as ocean levels rise. (Bangladesh, in particular, comes to mind.) And reliably predicting how climates will change is essential to that planning process. [Read entire topic]

#13: John Payne (satyr) Tue 2 Jan 01 09:54

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 09:54:00 PST

> I'm wondering whether the human race is going to get serious about > space exploration.

Nearby space, a.k.a. the solar system, almost certainly, but the distances involved in going on from that to the stars will probably prove daunting. Even sending probes to the nearest star will be a multi-generational project. But the asteroid belt (almost certainly a rich source of materials) is relatviely close at hand, and between that and the abundance of energy available from the sun, taking the step out into the solar system will be relatively straightforward, almost easy.

On the other hand, large telescopes and arrays of antennas in high solar orbit will allow us to explore without actually travelling beyond the confines of our own solar system.

Of course that all could change depending on developments in physics...and even without any surprises from that direction there will probably be manned craft sent into deep space -- one-way. [Read entire topic]

#12: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 2 Jan 01 09:48

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 09:48:00 PST

I feel a profound sense of gratitude for having survived the 20th Century.

If I live to be 91, I'll make the Centenary of the Atomic Bomb in 2045. I really feel that civilization has the potential now for a whole new set of awful troubles. The 20th Century' and its wacky obsessions are going to look as weird and corny as those of the 19th. It's good to be alive! Every day is a gift! [Read entire topic]

#11: Ozone & Diesel Fuel (ssol) Tue 2 Jan 01 08:37

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 08:37:00 PST

I fear that we're starting the new millennium bound for trouble in that regard. With a simpleton in the White House, and a crew of head-in-the-sand, knee-jerk-pro-biz oil millionaires advising him, we're going to continue to hear that "science disagrees and is inconclusive on the matter". Those folks understand neither science nor the consequences of their idiotic stance on global warming.

Anyhow, at least I got to ring in the new year in the company of my best and oldest friends, great food and music, in the Catskills. We were also joined by a large family of skiers from Shangai, who got stranded by the blizzard. I think they were greatly entertained by our drum circle's great racket as the clock counted down to 00:00 1/1/01.

Oh, and I'd like materials and space scientists to perfect the Bucky-tube Space Elevator, foreseen in Clarke's 3001, and let's get on to Mars, already! My wife won't tolerate my taking such a long trip, and doesn't like to fly. I'll have to content myself with a jaunt to low earth orbit on a thread to the heavens, if I live to see the technology deployed.

While I'm wishing for outlandish things, let's bring learn to be peaceable, and may all the children of the world be more generous with their cousins. [Read entire topic]

#10: Katherine O'Brien (feste) Tue 2 Jan 01 01:20

Tue, 02 Jan 2001 01:20:00 PST

>I'd like to see a resolution by the human race to deal with global >warming before it deals with us

so would I jonl! The weather has been so awful awful here; and the predicted effects on Italia - floods in the north and a desert in the south - are due to our own stupidy in messing with the planet. Planet's revenge. [Read entire topic]