Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

[Laserman532]

OH FUCK!!! NOW someone mentions GMO's - Don't buy it, don't support it, only buy organic foods...hells bells people, GMO's are designed to kill you slowly...it is NOT the gift to the world, it is the destroyer. Send the message loud and clear. If you buy ANY GMO's you support eugenics. This is another prime example of sharks with lasers on their heads...it is unnecessary and does nothing but drive corporate profits at our health's expense..or keep eating the shit and die, we really don't need ignorant people on earth anyway. FUCK...Monday morning and Im already PISSED again about what these bastards are doing to us....this is the other reason I say...PUSH the fucking button already!

can't wait to hear the supporters of this wide spread eugenics program...."well it makes crops more pest resistant" BULLSHIT its poison and you and you Love it because your pineal gland is all fucked up and you think it is good for you...silly humans! "but organic grown food is expensive" BULLSHIt -Just die already and quit whining.

[The_Doctor]

Maybe, just maybe, our nuclear pollution is key to us evolving into something new. Fukushima and Chernobyl and whatever disaster is next may not be a disaster. It may be key to evolving quickly enough to survive whatever changes are coming.

Meh, maybe just spouting crap now

Not crap.. though there could be a problem with the scale. 'Random' mutation of a genome by radioactive bombardment in cells might cause new forms to arise, but as primal a pattern as that puts it right out of all 'local' scales. It's about as close to 'true random' as we can imagine, almost ideal. The fact that most atoms in our bodies came out of stars means that scale of influence is already catered for.

To adapt to more local events, we need a more local influence to change. I doubt the genome is going to be the source or focus of it either. I read that wheat has a huge genome, and that many more complex organisms have a much smaller genome, so complexity of genome doesn't seem to correlate well with complexity of life. This incidentally illustrates what I meant by convergent evolution and its renewal, it means that other things must happen to account for the passing of a life form to its progeny, not just its seed. All fairly obvious probably, especially to people who have children! Epigenetics is a new name for a branch of science trying to deal with this...

EDIT:
To add my thoughts on GMO, as Pat mentioned it... I think the motives may be as bad as he suggests, they often are. Technically it may have been more benign, done for the same reasons that people have bred hybrid crops, grafted shoots and mixed seeds, cross-pollinated, etc... But we know that plenty of dodgy stuff happened there, like Monsanto breeding crops that failed to produce seeds, thus forcing farmers in many places to buy seed and have no chance to cross-breed their own crops for their own benefit! GMO gives more power. I don't doubt that while it MAY do a lot of good, it will be used to do a lot of harm, and this action will likely be systematic and deliberate.

[Stiffler]

How so? Or which bits?

I believe it was Tech Junkie that touched on the idea of responsible breading, and specifically is what reminded me of the movie, but if you think of that movie as a cautionary tale I think it fits right into this thread.

[The_Doctor]

Thanks. I haven't seen it but I did go Googling a bit when it was mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. Not enough to make that connection, methinks.. I decided not to breed. But I also decided I wasn't ever going to be a very responsible person. I am no fan of Peter Pan, but I doubt I will ever 'grow up'.

[Stiffler]

OH FUCK!!! NOW someone mentions GMO's - Don't buy it, don't support it, only buy organic foods...hells bells people, GMO's are designed to kill you slowly...it is NOT the gift to the world, it is the destroyer. Send the message loud and clear. If you buy ANY GMO's you support eugenics. This is another prime example of sharks with lasers on their heads...it is unnecessary and does nothing but drive corporate profits at our health's expense..or keep eating the shit and die, we really don't need ignorant people on earth anyway. FUCK...Monday morning and Im already PISSED again about what these bastards are doing to us....this is the other reason I say...PUSH the fucking button already!

can't wait to hear the supporters of this wide spread eugenics program...."well it makes crops more pest resistant" BULLSHIT its poison and you and you Love it because your pineal gland is all fucked up and you think it is good for you...silly humans! "but organic grown food is expensive" BULLSHIt -Just die already and quit whining.

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays!

[Stiffler]

Thanks. I haven't seen it but I did go Googling a bit when it was mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. Not enough to make that connection, methinks.. I decided not to breed. But I also decided I wasn't ever going to be a very responsible person. I am no fan of Peter Pan, but I doubt I will ever 'grow up'.

It's a fucking hilarious movie, but scary at the same time. Basically it illustrates what happens when stupid people breed, and smart people decide not to. I highly recommend it.

[The_Doctor]

Maybe, just maybe, our nuclear pollution is key to us evolving into something new. Fukushima and Chernobyl and whatever disaster is next may not be a disaster. It may be key to evolving quickly enough to survive whatever changes are coming.

Meh, maybe just spouting crap now

Keith, bear in mind my earlier post answering this, but you do have a point beyond what I said there... While the influence we'll need must be more local than the influence of wide-based pattern like that of simple particle interactions, there's no doubt that the agitation they cause could speed up the result. Probably best limited too, we know that banging a bit of damp earth can help settle it into a position we just put it in, but if we hit it too much the thixotropic result is a landslip...

EDIT: Stiffler, a good point... We obviously can't solve population AND survival just by choosing not to breed. I'm not sure what the way round this is. Many people who despise intellect refuse to listen to it so it's not like we can shout it into their kids either. I never did solve that problem. I just do what I do and let people do with it what they willl once I'm done with it. I don't do that much either.

Re Mondays, I was crossing the river on the Clifton Suspension Bridge early this morning, humming a certain Boomtown Rats song....

[Galvonaut]

It's a fucking hilarious movie, but scary at the same time. Basically it illustrates what happens when stupid people breed, and smart people decide not to. I highly recommend it.

Seconded. It's highly entertaining and possibly prophetic too.

[dsli_jon]

...NO The *only* possibility for humans to survive... is by living in cities...

..Never-said there should be *no* cities.. just not cripplingly-overcrowded ones.. Spread everyone / everything out a little more.. there's *plenty* of room.. TEACH / empower people to be self-sufficient / symbiotic with their own little chunk of land / resources around them, vs being mind-*ed, parasitic robots paralyzed on the marionette-strings of the Gov fear-machine.. Oh, and the answer to 'transpo / interconnection would cost too-much' is invention. (..another way we've benefited from studying / copping-ideas from all the other species of life - How many of "our inventions" would we have / be-as efficient, if it were not for ie: birds, squid, geckos, butterflies, ferns, burred seed-pods, bacterium, etc etc etc, ad infinitum.. And even one-year less of Mil-spending in this country - NOT saying 'have zero defenses' - just, stop for one year - could 'fund' so much progress.. it's obscene what gets spent on war / war-prep.. And for what, 'anti-terrorism'? Pfff... nope, just another 'marionette-string'...

..No, the 'only possibility for humans to survive' is to Unite. Of course, there is no way that is going to happen with 'the Machine' (uncurably-corrupt Big Gov, Big Biz, Big Religion all in-bed together) in existence, and Yes, all must be 'wiped-clean' to realize the progress we all inherently-want, but.. my personal-views of 'how' this should happen are way-too radical for this discussion (..and I don't have the time to expound..) so, I'll leave it at that the 'only way for humans to survive' is to Unite.

I'm sorry, but this is really a dumb idea.

Sorry, but Native Americans would beg to differ. They were doing quite-well before they were (almost) all murdered in the name of "progress". +_+ They were a fantastic culture-example of self-sufficiency / balanced-community / family-centric .edu. And, they knew how to solve 'problems' like the swamp-land vs the farm-land.. You'd simply give the swamp to the catfisherman and gator-hunter and the field to the wheat / corn-master.. done. They also had a well-balanced sense of how to handle 'justice', within-community; no 'Big Gov' needed to intercede..

..re: .edu, imo, Parents should be (baseline) schooling their own children (..and should be well-educated enough TO do that..) and then, send them on for 'vocational-schooling' for training in disciplines that cannot be 'diy' (Biologist, etc..) Sure, 'classes' have value, if for no other reason than the social-development, but the tepid "education" in this country, for example, is *way* out of whack, (30:1 ratio is fail..) and the majority of parents relegate their kids 'supplemental' education to someone-else: the nanny, the television, the internet, or worse (vid games, sheesh.. ) ....anyhoo, gotta bug..

..and, PS.. yes, Monsanto is Satan the Devil..
j

[colouredmirrorball]

That might not be true. Reality may be more confounding than we can imagine. First, take the simple two-slit experiment. Photons have no brains, they cannot 'know' where to land to arrange interference fringes when both slits are open, yet they do, based on existence beyond their own nature and extent, and they even seem to do it with no respect for 'light speed' too. 'Knowing' might be a more fundamental thing of the pattern of existence than our brains know. I doubt we have any monopoly on it, for sure.

But that's just a physical effect. It can be explained with waves, no intelligence needed.
Even if a photon does have intelligence, how do you explain that? Where is its intelligence stored? Can such a small particle even store enough intelligence to make a decision?
Why does a star, which has a massive amount of photons, not show any sign of intelligence, while a human brain does?

Earth is a very self-regulating system and has been for a long time. Just supporting life is a very long-odds game, continuing to do it for aeons is downright ridiculous if there is no self-regulation going on in an attempt to sustain it. We don't have to believe in the Gaia hypothesis to see this, it's enough to look at the odds, and a few ways it actually happens.

Earth does have some nice self-regulating mechanisms, but in my world view, they can be explained without the need for intelligence. Maybe it's a coincidence that the Earth has these kind of mechanisms, and it is the very reason life could form on this planet, and not on the planets who are in a habitable zone around a star near us. After all, life is self-regulating as well.

One interesting one currently is the jet stream. VERY recently, apparently, a climatologist have published a view (recent BBC article reports this) that the jet stream meanders more because it's weaker, more easily pushed around by obstacles like high pressure regions. I think he's actually got it wrong. While his notion looks convincing at face value, try this: The jet stream is known to train slower air around it, hence all the storms we have in the UK this winter. (And fast airstream,s are used in inductry to train airflows where fans are not helpful, this is old news). Now, if the jetstream meanders more, it cannot be weaker, it must be STRONGER, how else can it train extra air the way it has this winter?! I think it is stronger because the warming climate is more dynamic, not just 'hotter'. So assuming my notion is right, and the climatologist is wrong (which I will assume, at least for now), it may follow that the Earth is trying to dissipate extra energy from global warming by using a greater area to spread the energy in the jet stream to prevent an even more violent and localised event. Judging by the fact that the result includes more snow all over the US and Europe, and more water on land even where it cannot freeze, it suggests the Earth may be well aware of its state, and its risks, and is rapidly raising its albedo in an effort to cool itself down.

This is a very interesting theory. I'm not versed enough in meteorology to say anything about it. It would be beautiful if your theory is correct.
Still, I don't see the need for intelligence here. After all, many physical processes happen in such a way that they slow down in one way or another. For example, if you release a magnet in a conducting tube, the generated magnetic currents are in such a way that they counteract the movement. It would be weird if it was reversed, as you can't create energy. This is the big rule of the universe.

As this is happening during a curious moment of solar (in)activity in which the sunspot cycle is not behaving as expected, it may be that the sun has a role in this, and that we cannot separate weather on Earth from the conditions of the entire solar system, to some extent. The last time the sun went this silent, it caused the Maunder Minimum, a 'little ice age' that lasted from 1300 to mid 1800's. It seems to me that the sun and the Earth may be working together to preserve life in the solar system.

Everything is connected, so while this seems like an unacceptably 'mystical' reach for most people, it beats the alternative of assuming that it's all 'random'. Anyway, 'Random' is just a word for 'pattern we do not understand'. Anyone who studies 'random' knows this, and knows that using natural processes is usually the best way to get it precisely because those processes depend on a greater existence than can be created in any computer. That thought alone should tell us how careful we must be with models and assumptions. Even 'random selection' is a poor model of life. it only talks about how things get eliminated, not about how they arise in the first place!

Hm, I do believe the universe is fundamentally random. This is because at the lowest level, all processes work with probabilities. You can't predict if a particle is going to tunnel through a barrier. You can only give a probability. Due to Heisenberg's principle, you can't say much about the location of a particle and the momentum at the same time. There is going to be an uncertainty. Is the particle at location x, or at x + ħ/2Δp? This little difference might be enough for an interaction with another particle to occur or not. If that's not true random, I don't know what is.

What about Horse Tail? Equisetum has a lineage going back maybe in excess of 300 Million years! It happens to produce spores too.

The number I gave was just an average. Some species exist for a very long time. Some are extinct after a measly million years.

Yeah, it's utter nonsense. And they expect us to believe that they are doing it to feed the starving. We bin the excess on a daily basis, and seem to be consuming more and more.
In Europe now, it is illegal to sell non-certified seed. We, like many other countries hold seed swaps, just to keep the rare and tasty fruit and veg alive for posterity and security. GM is wrong on so many levels. Seed should not be propriety, it should not be illegal to sew the second or third, ad infinitum generation seed.

I used to be a beekeeper and know that the more GM seed that is sold, the more problems beekeepers (and bees and other insects) will have. Seed with higher resistance will mean yet bigger fields, creating a monoculture that is harmful to many species, including us.

I hope we're not going to end up like in America

I think there are plenty of people who DO give back to the planet. I am not being too productive at the moment, but have planted vast numbers of trees, coppiced woodland to help at risk species, taught conservation skills and helped set up this little project in my home town.

(...)

Hah! I knew you had something to do with plants!

OH FUCK!!! NOW someone mentions GMO's - Don't buy it, don't support it, only buy organic foods...hells bells people, GMO's are designed to kill you slowly...it is NOT the gift to the world, it is the destroyer. Send the message loud and clear. If you buy ANY GMO's you support eugenics. This is another prime example of sharks with lasers on their heads...it is unnecessary and does nothing but drive corporate profits at our health's expense..or keep eating the shit and die, we really don't need ignorant people on earth anyway. FUCK...Monday morning and Im already PISSED again about what these bastards are doing to us....this is the other reason I say...PUSH the fucking button already!

I don't think all GMO's are equally bad. There's nothing wrong to modify plants so they bring up more. It's basically what farmers are doing for thousands of years. But indeed, the way in which it's done... It's just another way for corporations to celebrate their greed. Which is really a shame. Basically, what the doctor said.

..Never-said there should be *no* cities.. just not cripplingly-overcrowded ones.. Spread everyone / everything out a little more.. there's *plenty* of room.. TEACH / empower people to be self-sufficient / symbiotic with their own little chunk of land / resources around them, vs being mind-*ed, parasitic robots paralyzed on the marionette-strings of the Gov fear-machine.. Oh, and the answer to 'transpo / interconnection would cost too-much' is invention. (..another way we've benefited from studying / copping-ideas from all the other species of life - How many of "our inventions" would we have / be-as efficient, if it were not for ie: birds, squid, geckos, butterflies, ferns, burred seed-pods, bacterium, etc etc etc, ad infinitum.. And even one-year less of Mil-spending in this country - NOT saying 'have zero defenses' - just, stop for one year - could 'fund' so much progress.. it's obscene what gets spent on war / war-prep.. And for what, 'anti-terrorism'? Pfff... nope, just another 'marionette-string'...

Cutting the US military budget and use it for the benefit of humanity, now that's an idea I like! I never got why the US had to have the best army at all costs. OK, during the Cold War, that's understandable. But after that? They are cutting funds on health and education, and make no efforts to conserve the environment.
Bah. Not my problem.

..No, the 'only possibility for humans to survive' is to Unite. Of course, there is no way that is going to happen with 'the Machine' (uncurably-corrupt Big Gov, Big Biz, Big Religion all in-bed together) in existence, and Yes, all must be 'wiped-clean' to realize the progress we all inherently-want, but.. my personal-views of 'how' this should happen are way-too radical for this discussion (..and I don't have the time to expound..) so, I'll leave it at that the 'only way for humans to survive' is to Unite.

That's what I think as well. I just don't think that is possible if everybody is spread out.

Sorry, but Native Americans would beg to differ. They were doing quite-well before they were (almost) all murdered in the name of "progress". +_+ They were a fantastic culture-example of self-sufficiency / balanced-community / family-centric .edu. And, they knew how to solve 'problems' like the swamp-land vs the farm-land.. You'd simply give the swamp to the catfisherman and gator-hunter and the field to the wheat / corn-master.. done. They also had a well-balanced sense of how to handle 'justice', within-community; no 'Big Gov' needed to intercede..

I give you that. There is one big difference though: there are many more people in the US now. It's just not possible anymore.
By the way, did you know that there were elephants and lions in America as well, before the native americans invaded the continent? If a primitive culture like the indians could have such an impact on the ecosystem, just imagine what a multiple of those people with today's technology would do to the land.

..and, PS.. yes, Monsanto is Satan the Devil..
j

Quoted for truth
Just be careful to not focus on Monsanto too much, there are plenty corporations with the same moral standards.