Desalination is also currently energy intensive. It is suitable for living needs, like having drinkable water, but would absolutely crush any margins when it comes to growing food.
120 karma · joined November 9, 2013
Farmers have been overdrawing from rivers and groundwater for decades and the US government has been very slow to respond. Promises of 'smart meters' or 'water markets' are often delayed with time tables being pushed further and further back. Meanwhile the government also hands out large subsidies to grow a wide variety of crops, most recently the federal government has encouraged corn for biofuel, more corn is being grown for biofuel than is being used for livestock (and effects of carbon usage for biofuel is likely 0 or even negative once you take in effect it's entire life cycle). Typically ever pound of beef takes 7 pounds of corn, pork is 5 to 1, poultry is around 3 to 1. Again, we grow more corn for biofuel than we do for livestock because of government subsidies.
If anyone spends anytime at all on this issue they quickly learn that farmers are a powerful lobby, that the agricultural bill is essentially a large handout to a small, tiny, group of people. One reason this occurs is because every state gets two senators, and many middle states are essentially empty but for farmers and their communities.
Government has been mismanaging water usage for decades in the US and yet the first thing people suggest is for the government to come in and fix the problems they created, the amount of cognitive dissonance this takes is staggering.
Agricultural subsidies are common and significant, especially in rich developed nations. This is for various reasons, but it does have some significant knockdown effects such as exasperating third world poverty. There are numerous complaints brought to the UN, the WTO, by various poor nations but they are generally ignored or swept under the rug.
http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/178_45/ag-holder-confir...
A company would not be nearly so dangerous if it could not in turn influence the government to destroy you. It is much cheaper to give campaign donations to a US senator and then hand him laws to pass or ask for subsidies or for no-bid government contracts than is it to actually compete in an open market where you have to provide a better service for a better price than everyone else.
I find it amazing that people clamor for the government to protect them and yet day after day we see examples of the government crushing the helpless, confiscating their property, throwing flash bangs at their children, torturing them, or just straight up murdering them, and all without consequence, at most you get a pretty speech than it s back to business as usual handing out billions of tax payer wealth so companies can give some of drippings back to our 'elected' representatives.
And when you bring this up, what do people say? They tell you it's just bad luck, there really are some good people in government, try contacting your your congress critter, try getting into public office. The definition of insanity is to repeat the same action over and over again and expect a different result.
Generally laws are changed by disobeying them, did you miss the day in civics when they discussed rosa parks? How about Lawrence v Texas?
Where shall I gather the money to run radio ads? You actually believe planting trees is a way to address grievances?
My state and national representative will not care one iota for my opinion if it isn't attached to either A: a large check or B: a large constituency.
I wrote there are numerous examples of government abuse on all levels, how is it then not true that every government office is abusive? Yes, perhaps this particular ranger in this particular state park is clean as a whistle -- in our orchard of rotten apples there are still a few good ones if you pick through the garbage.
See FAA
Is anyone familiar with the concept of a revolving door? The FAA isn't magically immune to this process and is in fact a good case study of the phenomenon.
But continue to downvote comments not because they aren't true but because they challenge your mistakenly held beliefs.
This reads as victim blaming to me, perhaps you didn't intend it such but the rest of your comment also sounds like whitewashing to me:
"friends do time...wasn't horrible" thanks for your anecdote, most people find being stripped of their freedom and locked in a box horrible.
"no doubt the prosecutor was overzealous...but..Swartz...ham-fisted and a bit unhinged", way to make light of Swartz's mental condition and suicide.
"actually guilty...however absurd..it's law", so the law is always right no mater how absurd? How grotesque.
"six-month term would have been the best thing that could have happened to his cause", how about you volunteer to be a felon then?
He goes on to mention Mr. Brown, but he also ignores that Brown was given a gag order preventing him engaging in the sort of 'aggressive public campaign' the author encourages the next Aaron Swartz to attempt.
Civil rights throughout history are won through extensive civil disobedience, somehow the left and much of the government, and every state apologist continue to advocate that people work within a system that is grotesquely unjust and to throw away the very tools that history has shown are most effective in addresses legitimate grievances.
On January 1, 2008 more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States were in prison or jail.[0] This doesn't occur in a system of just laws which respect the natural rights of individuals, it occurs in a totalitarian police state beholden to oligarchs and politicians.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
It's not difficult to understand why there are now so few jury trials. Add in the fact that bail can be denied or expensive, that jury trials can drag on for years in appeals, that being seen as adversarial often puts you in a bad light if/when you are sentenced, or that judges can at times utterly disregard the jury, the entire 'legal' process as it is practiced today serves no one justly and is built solely to empower the government and the powerful at the expense of all others.
It would be humorous except non-government, non-corporate individuals have no way to redress grievances.
Do you even know how much time an elected official spends fund raising? Many members of congress fund raise every day, every day they are walking out of capitol hill and across the street to be glorified phone bank monkeys begging some rich guy for money.
Do you know what gerrymandering is? Have you looked, actually looked at gerrymandered districts? They're like something Escher would draw, they certainly don't reflect communities, geographical constraints, or anything besides the best statistical slicing to ensure the status quo prevails.
I'm all for Ghandi's "be the change you wish to see", but being critical to someone who points out the ills in the world is shooting the messenger.
You recall what platform Obama ran on? Hope and Change, how did that work out? The political process in America is broken and voting will not solve the problem of corruption.
Probably best to stop showing up to work at the panopticon then, you know, if you actually believe what you write. Lots of scientists fled Nazi Germany, the Manhattan project may not have happened without such people leaving.
Now lawyers argue about 'law' and due process and separation of powers yet the US government lies, spies, tortures, and murders without conscience.
It is well known that lotteries pray upon the poor and uneducated, ironic really.
Instead of monopolizing gambling, or giving sweet-heart deals to those close to the government, or trying to outlaw it completely so we can see tragedies like cops shooting people over playing fantasy sports, the state should get out of the way, maybe provide counseling and treatment, and gasp let people do what they want with their property.
It's always about power, and ensuring most people don't have any.
The OP is using the present tense(unless he edits his comments), perhaps he would like to edit what he wrote to suggest that in the past it was considered a legal action to drop a nuclear weapon on a nation the US was at war with, but if the OP continues to use the present tense I can only continue to believe he is INSANE to believe it is CURRENTLY legal to drop nuclear weapons on ally nations.
The OP never responded to what he so clearly believes are "clearly-defined lines." and he will not respond to direct challenges of 1: clapper lying under oath, 2: US engaging in torture and refusing to prosecute. We can even give a historical example, was imprisoning US citizens of Japanese decent and confiscating their property within a "well defined line" no, it was simply a government run amok with fear and hatred trying to defend itself.
Go read some more Hobbes and Locke.
You are simply a stooge, a lawyer in DC suckling at the government teat, you have the gall to defend torture as nothing but common sense. Sickening, go head and down vote me, you are worthless trash and a fascist.
Komi(compensation given to the second player) is a recent invention(1900s) and has only gone up from 4.5 to the recent 6.5 or 7.5 in some tournaments, and yet black still wins over 50% of professional games. Knowing how much komi should be is equivalent to knowing how to play the best game.
As the board fills up tactics or 'tesuji' becomes increasingly important and many times there is only one correct move, computers have become better at this but they still can struggle over common life and death problems. End game is where computers really shine and can now play better than even the best players. Overall computers have taken a recent dramatic upturn in strength thanks to Monte Carlo probabilistic reasoning and are now within a few stones of professionals.
Seemingly, Go will become as chess is within our life times probably even within the next ten years, it will be another interesting moment in the advance of 'AI', but whether it will reveal anything deeper is an open question to me.
I find Go more interesting than chess because often, especially in the beginning, the analysis is less 'hard' or involves less reading of game tree possibilities but involves more 'soft' concepts like spacing, relative territory, trading territory for influence (whether to play on the third line or the fourth line), and is something more akin to art than science if I were to grasp for a metaphor.
Computers will likely enlarge the 'end game' that is be able to play better and better than humans the last part of the game and eventually play better middle game, and eventually only the opening will be where humans have an advantage until that too is taken by computation.
(I'm about an AGA 6 dan)
hahaha, ok maybe you are just insane. How is that legal, are you invoking the Bush doctrine[0] of pre-emptive strikes, although to call that legal is a stretch. Are you suggesting that during a declaration of war it becomes legal? Currently under international law that would not be legal unless agreed upon by the security council.
The Constitution limits the scope and powers of the state and invests the remainder within the body of citizens, it is meant to limit abuse of power by the government. The US government seems little interested in such restraints these days.
Are you going to defend torture as a clear well defined line the government follows, how about one part of government lying to another under oath, is that well defined, how about legal memos that are so secret they cannot be divulged, is that well defined?
?? Is this before or after Clapper lies under oath to congress? is this before or after the Senate Torture report came out along with the revelation that the NSA tampered with evidence.
I struggle to understand how you rationally form such a conclusion. We only know this occurs because of a whistle blower who his own government now calls a fugitive. You truly believe the government constrains itself and follows the law in "well-defined lines", I really struggle with taking you seriously, the government has greatly warped common sense -- do you recall the torture memos, the strange legal reasoning that calls torture "enhanced interrogation techniques", do you believe the "disposition matrix" lives within well-defined lines? How would you even know sense so much of even the LEGAL reasoning is secret and above purview.
Outrageous dangerous claims you are making and it is disgusting.
EDIT: parent asked for a source for secret courts, the "disposition matrix" is just that, except it doesn't even involve the judicial branch only the executive and has resulted in the deaths of 3 Americans, one purposely and two 'accidentally' whether killing Americans on purpose or on accident is worse or better I'll leave as an exercise for the readers imagination.