JayB

You live in Seattle and you want civilization to end? What are you gonna eat? rats? I have an acre of vegetables and I also have livestock; not to mention fruit trees and fishing in my backyard. I will do just fine without civilization. You, on the otherhand, will die; most definitely. I predict that roving bands of cannibalistic tweakers would quickly rise to the "top predator" level in your neck of the woods. Run when you hear the faint echoes of the techno remix of the "Deliverance" anthem whispering through the trees....

Common sense, and a B.A. in the History of Science, a B.S. in Biochem, and actually working in the field. It's a messy world and there's clearly more than just the evidence at play, especially when a new idea makes its debut, but that's how things generally work. Thankfully, most scientists ignore the onanistic wankfest and go about their business curing diseases, etc, without putting things like "virus,""DNA," or "gravity" in scare quotes. I have a copy of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" at home, but think the guy was kind of a one-note wonder. I think Larry Laudan's "Science and Relativism" is a good antidote to Feyeraband.

I just can't help but wonder if this is the first time you've pondered any of these issues. This thinking that underpins this guy's thesis isn't substantially different than Malthus's, and even Malthus was drawing on the work of his predecessors. His most famous modern disciple was Paul Ehrlich, who prophesized a similar fate for the planet in the early 1970s. This guy just sounds like a new-age Ehrlich. I've read both Malthus and Ehrlich, which - besides the "Step 1: Eliminate 9/10ths of mankind" - is probably why this sounds like a new riff on an old tune to me, and doesn't really seem worth my time to hear out in any great detail. If you are really interested in this topic, I'd start with Malthus and Ehrlich, then mix in a bit of Jared Diamond for a more sober analysis, and see if you still find Derrick convincing and/or compelling. The other point that I'll touch on is that there's a difference between open-mindedness and gullibility, and their roles in the parsing of new ideas. The reason that controversial scientific ideas eventually win broad acceptance is that the evidence which supports them is so compelling that even the most obstinate skeptics have to concede that the proposition that they've been criticizing is true. If this guy is really convinced that his proposition is true, he should be trying to articulate them in ways that insure that they'll get the most rigorous critical scrutiny from the people with the most expertise and authority on all of the areas that his hypotheses pertain to. Let me know when he articulates a testable hypothesis that generates a critical response from experts and then maybe I'll take the guy more seriously.

I don't have the time to listen to this guy ramble for a couple of hours, and don't really think it's necessary as long as I understand his vision of an ideal future - which seems be one in which, at some point, most of the population dies off or is killed off in some fashion. Not sure how you can realistically get a 90% reduction in population in any realistic scenario without one or the other happening. It doesn't really matter to me whether the motivation for this fantasy is to "save the planet," eliminate particular races, or bring about some other utopia, golden future, etc. Same misanthropic fantasy, different rationale. Hopefully this guy will do his part to bring his fantasy to fruition by castrating himself and then committing suicide.

Yeah - no kidding. They have a significant natural advantage since they produce their ehtanol from sugar cane, which is way more efficient, and it'd make way, way more sense for the US to import Brazillian ethanol at prices that are way lower than what it costs us to produce ethanol from corn, even with the massive subsidies. Now that MTBE is being phased out, and we dont have the infrastructure needed to get the ethanol to the refineries on the coasts, or to prepare the final mixtures for delivery to the stations, or the ability to make enough ethanol to replace the MBTE - it'd make a hell of a lot of sense to get rid of the tarrif wall that keeps cheap ethanol from Brazil out. Why have ethanol delivered right where it's needed by ship, at a way lower cost, when we can burn tons of fuel shipping more expensive ethanol to the coasts by truck? Quite the populist retardation on display here. Should be quite the expensive megacluster by the time we arrive at peak driving season.

There's something in the neighborhood of 2 trillion worth of ARM debt scheduled to reset before the end of '07. In most coastal markets mortgage-to-rent, mortgage-to-income, and the percentage of homes purchased by non-occupants have reached all time highs (40% of all purchases in '05). Equity extraction via HELOC and MEW and cash-out refis have reached all-time highs. The yen-based carry trade is unwinding, the value of credit-default swaps for MBS portfolios has been skyrocketing, and people are starting to get a tad worried about the fact that the valuations that underly the MBS portfolios reflect systemic appraisal fraud. What's it all mean? My prediction is that San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco, Coastal Florida, most population centers in New England, Phoenix/Tucson, Las Vegas, and a big chunk of Colorado will see rising foreclosure activity, ballooning inventories, and price stagnation through the end of '07, with real price declines occuring at various rates through '10. Seattle is tougher to call, but the population/wage picture doesn't look terribly conducive to future appreciation. The fact that I've spoken to MD's who have ruled out Seattle due to the cost of housing should give the RE cheerleaders a bit of pause IMO.

The LED thing is cool and will probably make a significant dent in power consumption. Biodiesel is a cool way for hobbyists to use grease - but that's about it. Once you start running the numbers and look at the environmental impact of increased biofuel consumption, it doesn't look nearly as appealing from an environmental, efficiency, or economic perspective. Read this paper straight through and I suspect you'll be less enthused about biofuels. http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/Materials/RealFuelCycles-Web.pdf Increasing energy efficiency and conservation of conventional fuels and quite a bit more nuclear power, along with a smattering of wind/solar/biofuels is what we'll eventually end up with, but not handing a few dozen billion to the folks producing subsidized, tarriff protected ethanol.

I'm not surprised that the conservative finds the Yellowstone Club idyllic Definitely the only place with rivers, mountains, and ski lifts in NA. Besides, if I had that kind of money I'd get a place in Whistler. Might be kind of a pain to have the WSJ delivered there though. Good article on the Brazillian resale market for recycled mercury from the US on the front page today, not to mention the hedge funds piling into credit default swaps for MBS's. If anyone reading this is the proud owner of a zero-down, no-doc, neg-Am, interest-only "mortgage product," you can take comfort in the fact that Wall Street is betting heavily against you.

Delphic as usual, comrade. While I understand your point, it might be a useful excercise for you to descend from the lexical aether and express yourself in concrete terms.

Oh, how droll. He's emerged from the paneled room and Corinthian leather seats to treat us with another stellar stereotype stripped from the Wall Street Journal oped page. Jay, do tell us the joke about Ayn Rand, the Communist, Stalin and Roosevelt again! Reading room with the WSJ on the table, underneath the brass lamp with the green shade, big leather chair with the footstool - add a troutstream in the backyard and a ski-lift a quarter mile away and I'd be in heaven. But back to reality. Given that I deliberately left the investment company gig behind four years ago, and voluntarily took a big, everlasting paycut to work in basic research labs tackling cancer and HIV, and you work as an optical engineer in for-profit tech companies - it seems kind of strange that you'd constantly be chiding me with this stuff about chasing/worshipping the dollar. Should I hang a scarlet dollar sign around my neck while I listen to these sermons?

Oh, oh please don't go! This fascinating discussion just wouldn't be the same without your priceless contributions! Maybe you're just taking a break to consult a few reference texts before returning to drop another informational firebomb on this Dresden of a thread. Oh, we can only wait and hope...what to do until JayB returns, what to do until JayB returns?! Oh, I can hardly stand it. I need a cup of Sensitivioso au lait to calm my shipwrecked nerves! Hahaha. You get that drafing certificate yet? The proceeds from that should keep you well stocked in the obscure comic books, "Mother Jones" articles, and bad punk music that constituted the foundation for your perspective on the world.

I think you could say the same thing about owning a climbing gym most of the time.

The only other point I'll make is that there was plenty of dissent and strife within the US - quite a bit of it much, much more intense than anything that we've seen since the advent of the Iraq War - and even though pretty much everyone knew what was at stake in Europe, there was hardly a mass-consensus behind going to war there. Even in England, Churchill was widely despised as an alarmist warmonger, until the facts on the ground proved him right. There's also a reason why Roosevelt had to sell assistance to England under the terms of a "lend-lease" deal, etc, etc, etc. If Roosevelt had decided to go to war as soon as the Germans invaded the Rhineland, or Sudetenland, or Poland - public opinion would have turned against him in a massive way. Pearl Harbor changed all of that, and some sort of attack by Germany or Japan was probably inevitable - but without such an attack it's hard to argue that the average American would have seen going to war in Europe or the Pacific as something that was justified, or that doing nothing would eventually bring about a much more grave and dangerous situation for them or the rest of the world. This wasn't too long after WWI, and there were quite a few people around who concluded that the conseqeuences of doing nothing couldn't be any worse than getting involved in something like that again.

My only comment on this thread is that people's perceptions of WWII seem to be overly rosy. There was plenty of dissension and strife in the months and years leading up to the war, and the war itself was pretty much a straight-up fight to the death. The pilots didn't think twice about unloading their payloads on population centers, the Marines fighting their way from island to island made sure that the Japanese soldiers weren't just "playing dead" when the fighting was through, they had no illusions about what would happen to them if they were taken alive, etc, etc, etc. The bottom line is that we won that war because we were able to destroy their armies and societies more effectively than they were able to destroy ours. The fact the free world prevailed over the totalitarian states was the best thing that ever happened to the world - IMO - but things could have just as easily gone the other way if, for example - the Germans had developed the bomb first, or the cream of the German Army had been deployed to repel the D-Day invasion, rather than fighting the Russians.

Hey NattyB - could you expand on that last bit? If I hear you right, it sounds as if you're able to sneak through the application process without ever being asked about risky activities, and you're able to get a policy without lying about them - then two years after the policy goes into effect and the "suicide exclusion" clause expires, you are covered for pretty much anything? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said - but it sounds as though it'd be pretty tough to get through the application process without anyone asking about what activities that you engage in. BTW - any idea how WW kayaking ranks in the insurance companies' hierarchy o' risk? It's always felt way more risky than climbing to me, and I'd be curious to know if the insurance companies feel the same way.

Mogul skiing is great, but having done both moguls and rails I can say that rails are way harder to learn and way more likely to mess you up than moguls - but you are definitely right that mogul skiing is the more practical/transferable of the two skillsets.

I'm not sure which is funnier - Newschoolers in moguls or Oldschoolers on rails, but it's pretty clear that the Oldschooler+rail combo is way, way more likely to result in hospitalization.

Now the triple-threat softshell pants with zippable polypro, softshell, or gaiter legs - there you'd have something. Too bad it's too late to do the "Triple-X" branding/tie-in with Vin Diesel.

I think Layton filed a patent on the khaki-or-sage nylon shorts with zip-off polypro bottoms at least 2-3 years ago. I have to say, I think that Jaee has stepped it up a notch here with the polypro+zippable OR-style gaiters. I'm really not sure how you can top that. Maybe Seattle-Sombrero style hats with flip-down glacier glasses built into them?

I think there's a hit-squad that'll hunt you down and kill you if you don't couple the polypro with the khaki-or-sage shorts with the zip-on legs. Someone needs to invert the paradigm and wear polypro longjohns coupled with the zip-on nylon legs.

I'll second Will's recs. If you want to double up on the hand-size pieces you could go with hexes and/or Tricams and still stay within the $500 budget. I've found hexes and tricams pretty useful in alpine settings. They're lightweight, and great for icy cracks or other weird placements, and I'd much rather use a hex or a tricam for a leaver/rap anchor in the event of a retreat.

A sweeping generalisation guaranteed to raise the ire of the left with little basis in fact. There's the JayB we love Hunter Gatherers Jayb; stewardship isn't as foreign a concept as you suggest. The stewardship you are talking about was pretty much involuntary. The preservation that you are talking about occured simply because they lacked the technology and the population that they would have needed to wipe out the resources that they were dependent upon - at least most of the time. Check the lit on megafaunal exctintions, Easter Island, etc for some real examples from the past - and take a look at what happens the moment that they get their hands on technology and it's their choices and behavior, rather than their impotence before nature, that dictates their relationship with the natural world. Doesn't jive too well with the utopian eco-fantasy of the golden, edenic past.

Amazing. First time in recorded history when there's been a Brazier/Brayshaw tag-team beat down. I'm sorry if this seems a bit harsh, downfall, but you can hardly expect much in the way of popular support for this kind of thinking - any more than you could expect all of the non born-again folks to respond enthusiastically to folks fantasizing about/eagerly awaiting the moment when all of the folks who have yet to sign up for the PTL Club's mailing list will be enduring incalculable grief and suffering. Just out of curiosity - how old are you and what is your educational background?

What you really have to wonder is how someone who has a loved one who is affected by these diseases isn't able to question the causes of them, techological civilization. I don't have any data on this but it seems the more technocological/advanced/whatever we get the higher the rates of these diseases we have. That's only because people are living long enough to succumb to them because of the improvements in public health and nutrition that science and technology has brought about. Give most people a choice and they'll take a swollen prostate at 75 over watching most of their family wiped out by periodic plagues, infections, starvation/malnutrition, having a significant number of their wives/sisters/mothers die during childbirth, etc.

There's a reason why the environmental movement started in the most prosperous, technologically advanced societies. The first is that miserable, starving people generally don't give a shit about the environment. The second is that without advanced science/technology no one would even have the means to understand the nature of environmental problems, much less propose solutions.