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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I much prefer Archangel Michael and his cohorts from Stranger in a Strange Land. Q was too childish (and churlish) for my taste.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That's what I thought. Need to take into account pop growth as well as offsets due to alternate energy sources and technology advances to increase extraction capabilities. It's not a simple projection.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    At the rate it was being used then, so it will be a little lower given that population is increasing.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Not even the same gov't, they don't yearn for the same fundamental principles. They yearn for a nanny-state.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Since we're throwing around ST references, I see that you have 3 ways of interacting with another culture -

    Borg: Complete assimilation (this was the US model in the early 20th century).
    Tribble: Overwhelm by infiltration (this has been used during the later 20th century by Muslims in Europe, and now by central/south Am's to the US)
    Kahn: Frontal Attack.

    Once one culture encounters another, there will be interaction and interference. Just my humble opinion.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Can't we just take a blood sample? There's no reason to send any more Am's to their demise.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It wasn't wrong, per se, just ignorant of the ability for technology to innovate and extract more where former technologies couldn't.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I thoroughly and completely disagree with the Prime Directive.

    Should you refrain from building your Wal-mart across the street from Mom & Pop's General Store, simply because of the negative impact your "more civilized" culture will have on their "more primitive" culture? No, of course not.

    If you rephrase the Prime Directive to "no well-intentioned interference"... ie, you can interfere if you wish to do so to benefit yourself or your own society, but not to "help" the more primitive society.

    if the early U.S. had adopted the Prime Directive, we'd still be huddled on the Atlantic coast, and the most advanced technology might be steam power. Maybe.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Absolutely. But it's far time that we extricate ourselves from most of those locales as they no longer need our stabilizing presence (not that the current regime gives them any stability - LOL).

    We probably could have reduced our force structure in Japan in the early '70's, and Germany in the early '90's. South Korea still needs our presence, as does the ME. And if we stationed an armored brigade with a Patriot battery in Israel, that might give other Arab nations some pause.

    Ah, if only I were SecDef.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My university has an unusually high Muslim population for a US university - roughly 10%. I have exchanged value for value, and lived handsomely as a result. There are some whom I trust and many I don't. Though not my goal, I see the university system as our best chance for diplomacy.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Agreed. Moreover, the decision for any interaction with other countries or even people should be based on Star Trek's Prime Directive. Interference in the development of less civilized cultures, no matter how well intentioned, very rarely has good results. When people call me isolationist, I politely disagree and cite this part of the Prime Directive.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There is about a 200 year supply of oil for the world as of the mid 1990s when I co-chaired a Petroleum Seminar Series.
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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 10 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Peak oil theory was a joke.. a ruse based on existing knowledge and technology, perpetrated on the public by useful idiots along with and for the benefit of some that knew better. Along those same lines technology has continued to prove the Luddites and the Malthusians wrong, but some will always try to profit from the fear.
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