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Time Running Out for Russia Mine Survivors (AP)Time Running Out for Russia Mine
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 When I was researching the article One Billion Americans?, I got thinking about the implications of the wildly conservative Census Bureau projections of US population, and the embarrassing drastic upward revisions that have been made to them, for global population projections. What made the US projections so wrong (US population peaking at 295 million was predicted as recently as fifteen years ago) was the compound error of underestimating the extent of immigration and overestimating the rate at which immigrants adjust their family size to the average of their new country, or the global average. It's an understandable error -- there's lots of evidence that population growth rates in the developing world are falling quickly. But that's not because third world countries are evolving to two-child-or-less families as infant mortality drops. Rather, it's because those countries are simply unable to sustain more children, so parents are reluctantly, temporarily reducing family size as a result. Give them the option to emigrate to a developed country, and cultural preference, religious dictates, and improved health care will jump their family size (and life expectancy) back up again. And as inevitable ecological and humanitarian catastrophes arise in the 21st century in dozens of third world countries, compounded by the scourges of new diseases, horrendous shortages of clean water, and desertification and crop flooding due to global warming, the pressure to increase immigration quotas by orders of magnitude will be fierce. Back in 1990 when the pundits were predicting US population would peak at 295 million (it passed that level last year and is now expected to peak at between 550 million and 1.2 billion, if it peaks at all), they were saying global population would peak at around 9-11 billion in 2100. But for that to happen with a US population of, say, 900 million instead of 300 million, would mean average third world family size would be much smaller than average US family size. The UN projections, for example, assume annual average growth rate for Africa, Asia and Latin America of 0.5% in the latter half of this century, compared to a current growth rate in those areas (even including China with its already-low birth rate) of 2.1%, and compared to a current US growth rate of 0.9%, which is trending back up to a projected 1.3% rate for most of the current century, thanks to immigration. So the 9-11 billion global peak population just doesn't add up. While it doesn't make sense to get Malthusian and project population will grow indefinitely at current rates (1.3%, i.e. a doubling every 50 years to 24 billion by 2100), it's equally illogical and irresponsible to suggest that the whole world will start immediately radically reducing its fertility rate to achieve in just two generations the low fertility rate that Europe took one hundred generations to reach. If you assume that the levels of immigration now projected by the US Census Bureau will prevail throughout the developed world, that first- and second-generation citizens of developed countries will continue to have considerably larger-than-replacement level families in their new adopted countries, that the prevailing pro-fertility population dogmas of organized world religions will not suddenly be changed, that population pressure in the third world will be eased somewhat by immigration and that modest drops in family size in those countries will be largely offset by longer life expectancy, as has been observably the case in almost every third world country except China, then instead of the 9-11 billion peak the UN is currently talking about, you end up with population soaring past 14 billion in 2100, with no end in sight (left chart above). The curved red line shows the carrying capacity of Earth, assuming a modest annual increase in productivity from the current 30 billion acres (productive-capacity adjusted), assuming average footprint per capita continues to increase by a modest 1% per year, and assuming no land on the planet is reserved for wilderness or natural space for the rest of Earth's creatures. It shows in 2000 that the world could sustain 5 billion humans at the then-prevailing level of consumption. That's a billion humans less than actually inhabited the planet then, possible only by depriving much of the world of a subsistence level of resources, and by taking more from the Earth (in non-renewable resources) than we replaced, essentially stealing the excess from future generations. At the expected global level of per-capita consumption in 2100 (still well below today's North American consumption levels), carrying capacity drops to 2 billion humans. That number is substantiated by a recent C ornell study that says the choice in 2100 is between 2 billion people living a comfortable but not lavish life (achieved by a drastic population reduction) or 12 billion "struggling in misery". And if you want to allow 50% of the planet's surface for other life forms, you need to achieve double that reduction (green line), to one billion people, the level both Jim Merkel and Bill McKibben think we should strive for. That's only achievable, short of coercion, by an average one child family worldwide for the next century. The right chart shows that the increasing average footprint, driven both by North American excess and the surging resource use of China's billion plus people, will drive the aggregate human footprint up even more sharply than aggregate population, from 37 billion acres today (20% more than Earth's carrying capacity) to 210 billion acres in 2100 (six times Earth's carrying capacity). Now remember, these assumptions are much closer to the wildly optimistic assumptions of population levelling that the UN and other global agencies optimistically hope for, than to the Malthusian no-change projections that would see nearly double these numbers. Nevertheless, train wreck ahead. We simply have no choice. We must immediately and aggressively reduce our family sizes worldwide, and we must immediately and aggressively reduce per-capita resource consumption, waste and footprint. That means we must confront religions that don't actively encourage birth control and small families, and show those religions to be socially irresponsible. That means, too, we need to introduce ecological taxation measures to make excessive resource consumption and waste prohibitively expensive, and reward those who tread lightly on the Earth. |
msnbc.msn.com/id/5909167
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For this alone, I must get a PS3 when it comes out.
Vis ion Gran Turismo Media Index for PlayStation 3 at GameSpot
In other news, I'm working on several Core Data-based programs in my spare time and it's a dream. You can make a basic data-storage application with absolutely no coding what-so-ever, and the coding you do do, should you need to, is trivial. I love this stuff.
Notae is not dead, it just got siblings, that's all. I'll be done someday.
Imagine having to take a stance like that. It is sad that some people in a sense almost have to ask permission to blog or worse yet have them try to stifle a current one. Check out the stance that Niall Kennedy takes. [www.niallkennedy.com]
Link (via MetaFilter)Mules, lowered by rope down the narrow shaft into the mine, were used in the early mining operations. Once down in the mines, they stayed there until they died.
Workers decended in a two-level elevator in which six men pressed face-to-face during the long ride down.
Getting equipment down into the massive cavern provided many problems. Pickup trucks, jeeps and large trucks had to be cut up or disassembled and lowered down the shaft piece by piece, to be reassembled in shop areas below. Large dump truck tires too big for the shaft had to be compressed and bound before they would fit down the opening.
In a 1925 Detroit News article, miner Joel Payton told about his salt mine job. "The only dirty part of this job is going down to work," Mr. Payton explained.
Om Malik is pretty hard on Real about their price reductions.
He sees it as a last ditch effort.
I see it as natural market pressures on Apple. Their model is wrong.
I actually like Napster's model the best. Real's Rhapsody doesn't work if you're off-line. And what's wrong with Roxio dumping their tools?
Maybe digital music downloading DOES have a future?
Engadget
points to a New
York Times article about Real's half-off sale. Given that record
executives would pimp their mama out for dollars, it is clear that
Real is eating all the costs. Wonder what it will do to Real's
bottomline next quarter. The 49 cent songs and $5 albums are ITunes
compatible. Real has jumped onto the blogging bandwagon and launched
Freedom To Choose
blog. "We know that at 99 cents a download even Apple isn't making
much profit, RealNetworksmust be losing more than just a pretty penny
on each sale. Pai
dContent estimates, "RealNetworks will be losing about 40 cents on
every song it sells. The company plans to tell investors its music
fire-sale could directly add about a penny a share in losses to its
third quarter financial results, equivalent to about $1.8 million. (PaidContent
has a dedicated page for Real.) "Apple fans, now's your chance to
put them out business!" writes Engadget. Gizmodo says this "could be the start of the first
legal music downloading price war. Apple probably won't flinch (yet),
but hopefully this is a sign of lower prices all around in the near
future." I think this is the last ditch gamble for Real. If this
fails, well it needs to go figure out a new digital music strategy.
Also expect this to soon enter the halls of corporate cock-ups, aka
101 Dumbest Moments in Business, Business 2.0's annual list, right
next to the Roxio-turnin
g-to-Napster disaster.
[Gigaom]
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We were the Eight-Bar Band: there was me and my bugle; and Timson, whose piano had no top and got rained on from time to time; and Steve, the front-man and singer. And then there was blissed-out, autistic Hambone, our "percussionist" who whacked things together, more-or-less on the beat. Sometimes, it seemed like he was playing another song, but then he'd come back to the rhythm and bam, you'd realise that he'd been subtly keeping time all along, in the mess of clangs and crashes he'd been generating.LinkI think he may be a genius.
Why the Eight-Bar Band? Thank the military. Against all odds, they managed to build automated bombers that still fly, roaring overhead every minute or so, bomb-bay doors open, dry firing on our little band of survivors. The War had been over for ten years, but still, they flew.
So. The Eight-Bar Band. Everything had a rest every eight bars, punctuated by the white-noise roar of the most expensive rhythm section ever imagined by the military-industrial complex.
We were playing through "Basin Street Blues," arranged for bugle, half-piano, tin cans, vocals, and bombers. Steve, the front-man, was always after me to sing backup on this, crooning a call-and-response. I blew a bugle because I didn't like singing. Bugle's almost like singing, anyway, and I did the backup vocals through it, so when Steve sang, "Come along wi-ith me," I blew, "Wah wah wah wah-wah wah," which sounded dynamite. Steve hated it. Like most front-men, he had an ego that could swallow the battered planet, and didn't want any lip from the troops. That was us. The troops. Wah-wah.
Link (Thanks, Julia!)Hidden below the town, situated on 9 levels, reaching 327 m deep Wieliczka underground is nearly 300 km of galleries and 3000 chambers. 3,5 km route 64-135 m below ground level is available for tourists. Magnificent chapels, captivating underground lakes, original tools and equipment, traces of mining works give the comprehension about people's fight against the elements, their work, passion and beliefs. Wieliczka miners left lots of salt carvings and murals. After the sightseeing, tourists can rest in the chamber complex 125 m underground where they can find souvenir shops, restaurant and a post office.
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