[TheForge] Slack tank...POL OT

[Andrew Vida]

peter fels & phoebe palmer wrote:


> Long odds...fusion has been 20 years away as long as i can 
> remember...and that's with major funding.

	That is not the same approach as LENR.

>>> Does bring up unfortunate memories of " Clean, safe too cheap to
>>> meter"
>> There would be no more meters. Each home would have its own.  SMall
>>  communities might agree to purchase a larger unit for service.
> I'd be delighted...seems very improbable.

	So did flight in 1902, and going to the moon, and portable telephones
with greater computing power than a 370 mainframe.  Just consider the
practically endless litany of things that seemed improbable and even
impossible... until someone did them.

	If the Storms are in fact detecting statistically significant 
difference in the tritium populations, reactions must be happening. 
This is what they claim and Mrs. Storm's specialty at Los Alamos was 
tritium detection.  Unless they are lying, LENR is fact.  The remaining 
question as I said is whether it can be rendered practical as an energy 
source.  I suspect it can be.  These sorts of obstacles has a long 
history of falling to engineering ingenuity.

> The morality is much more ill defined in most cases.

Bayer knowingly sold HIV contaminated vaccines.  Quite a few people died
from it.  I'd call that morally unambiguous in the extreme.

	We now have at least one company (Monsanto??) attempting to secure IP 
and other property rights to YOUR DNA.  And mine.  And Bruce's, though 
for the life of me I can't figure out why they want his.

> I think the majority are as amoral as is economically practicable.

	That is not necessarily a bad thing.  It can become that.
>> That may avail them nothing.  People would be behind such
>> technology 101%  I suspect the tide would be so great that the only
>> way to stop it would be through government initiated violence,
>> which is not out of the question, but perhaps not very likely.
>> They, too, have their limits - particularly if "kill them all" is
>> not on the menu.
> I sure would like that, but think it's another pipe dream, most
> likely.

	We don't yet know.  You may be right, but just imagine if you're not. :)

>> Agreed, but there are paradigm shifts that simply cannot be put off
>>  forever.  As was once observed, there is nothing so powerful as an
>> idea whose time has come. :)
> An admirable ideal Andy.

	Hey, no matter how bad things get one needs to have something positive 
to hold on to. Otherwise, why go on another day?


>> Obnoxious?  Not to my knowledge.  Quite the gentlemanly sort as I
>> have gathered.
> I'd read that he was a pretentious, self important, intolerant
> stuffed shirt who was hell on his underlings. That doesn't matter in
> the long run of course.

	News to me, but for all I know may be true.  Never met the man.

> Some of the regulations are justifiable.

I have no problem with placing certain regulations on CORPORATIONS.  I 
object to regulating individual free choice where action brings no harm 
to others.  Harm yourself all you want if that floats your boat, just 
leave non-consenting third parties in peace.


> I grew up in LA and remember riding to school with my eyes and lungs
>  burning. my asthma appearing, tears streaming down our kiddie faces
> and air the color of a paper grocery sack with 100' visibility.

	I remember taking a week in Yosemite.  The minute we dropped down the 
Canyon into LA my eyes started burning.  My friend Gary lived in San 
Bernardino when he was little.  The air was WAY worse than LA.  He said 
they could not run further than about 1/4 of a block and they would be 
spitting up a lung.  I remember what that valley was like in 76. 
Couldn't see shit and it stank and burned your eyes and nose at times.

> I remember going to the 22 st landing in San Pedro and seeing nothing
> at all alive in or above the water, save the big rats.

I remember being stoned as hell in San Pedro and hanging with the surfer
creatures on the beach at night.  That was a night to remember. :)

> Does the above qualify as the social costs you recently dismissed?

	No.  Those are the costs to individuals and it serves us best to
remember it and dispense with all this "social" bullshit.  Keep it real
and don't attribute material reality to insubstantial abstractions.
That keeps it grounded in what is real and who really gets hurt.
"Society" is nothing but an abstract concept.  Society has no rights, no
interests, no possessions, no feelings because, like "government" it has
no material reality.  People are real - flesh, blood, mind.  That is
what is hurt.  I so despise this foolish abuse of language - it causes 
SO many problems.

>> Still leaves the problem of centralized sourcing of energy, which 
>> should come to an end as soon as technically practical to do so. 
>> Imagine the millions of miles of transmission facilities coming
>> down forever.  Sounds good to me.
> Sounds good, alternative energy efforts lean that direction, but it 
> ain't gonna be soon.

	YOu may be right,  but we don't really know that.  Sometimes shit 
happens suddenly and the next thing you know the world is on its ear.  I 
so would love to see it happen in this case.  True energy independence 
would alter the world the most since perhaps the invention of the 
wheel... or even sex. :)