bin Laden is dead

To quote Henry Ford "all history is bunk". And that's a prime example because he actually said "history is more or less bunk".

It get's twisted for all sorts of reasons. The quote above got twisted because the former phrase is snappier. The fact that Ford tends to be viewed in the US as a great industrialist and pillar of American History while evryone conveniently forgets he was a raving anti-semite who supported the American Nazi movement during WW2 is because the latter is uncomfortable for the American coonciousness to remember.

It should be noted that, in the above two examples, there has been no concious effort to rewrite history - it just happened organically. That's how most history becomes innacurate. History isn't usually rewritten by the victor - merely miss-remembered.

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However the US now finds itself in a position where there's no visible/tangible threat to it anymore. Cold war is long over, bin Laden is gone, Saddam is gone, Gaddafi hasn't yet reached the US Enemy No. 1 status. So there's a vaccuum as far as military actions abroad are concerned. How do you get the people to rally behind something so it can be achieved? What is there to achieve?

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HoneyBee why do you think they need one ? maybe less Military action is exactly what America needs right now.

Has anyone else noticed that wars are bleeding expensive, and in the end it is the tax payer that foots the bill, eventually the tax payer finds that they dont want to fund that much military action any more and would rather the money was spent on something more tangible.

Also China who is rolling in Money, is doing it's very best to stay out of any conflicts that are not on it's own doorstep and i think that the sheer cost is one of the reasons.

I don't see any vacuum. The cold war, saddam, many other things that seem to be "perceived" as uniting everyone really don't. There are all kinds of threats in the universe. Terrorists, bad people, natural disasters on earth or from space. osama actually did kill, and kill many. he did unite everyone. Nothing really has before him in a long time. People are happy to go back to doing what they want to do. There is no need for some type of vacuum filling thing, nor is one wanted. Unless you are making twinkies.

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

HoneyBee why do you think they need one ? maybe less Military action is exactly what America needs right now.

Has anyone else noticed that wars are bleeding expensive, and in the end it is the tax payer that foots the bill, eventually the tax payer finds that they dont want to fund that much military action any more and would rather the money was spent on something more tangible.

Also China who is rolling in Money, is doing it's very best to stay out of any conflicts that are not on it's own doorstep and i think that the sheer cost is one of the reasons.

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I am not passing judgement on whether the US should engage in more military conflicts or not. I am merely contemplating what the lack of a singlemost important objective might do and will there be another objective (military or non military, external or internal) to replace it so everyone rallies behind it to achieve it, and what it could be, under the current circumstances.

The taxpayer must pay for each and everything. That's democracy.

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Originally Posted by honeybee

I am not passing judgement on whether the US should engage in more military conflicts or not. I am merely contemplating what the lack of a singlemost important objective might do and will there be another objective (military or non military, external or internal) to replace it so everyone rallies behind it to achieve it, and what it could be, under the current circumstances.

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Not EVERYONE wishes to rally, be patriotic nor even work together. There are a huge variety of people in the US. To group them like you are doing will start you down a path with no correct answer. You wanna talk about culture? In the US there are more than most places in the world. So you get more different reactions than most other places. Being attacked can, and did unite all those different cultures (did you see the sales on red, white and blue turbans?:lol:). Once the attack is over, people are more than happy to go their separate ways. Because of the different cultures, there is NO singlemost objective because everybody wants something different.

some ideas: militarize the war on drugs... militarize the borders... militarize airport security

-tg

The interesting point isn't whether the people of the US want another cause to rally behind. It's whether the government want a cause to rally the people for them.

All governments (not just the US) have a habit of exagerating the size of any problem that comes along because 1) it tends to pull the public onto their side (everybody likes a protector) and 2) If they solve the problem it makes them look good. Nobodies impressed when you solve an insignificant problem.

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wanna talk about culture? In the US there are more than most places in the world

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:eek:

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There are a huge variety of people in the US. To group them like you are doing will start you down a path with no correct answer.

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What quite funny about that in India it is even more varied !

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militarize the war on drugs

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I thought you were already doing that in Mexico and failing !!!!

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militarize the borders

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The Mexico Border right (so this is part of the same larger problem), or do you want to keep the Canadians out as well ?

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militarize airport security

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They did that in the UK, after the liquid bomb plot. Police armed with the biggest machine guns i have ever seen were walking round the airport when i was travelling a few years back, by common consent all it did was inconvenience legitimate passengers rather than catch any actual terrorists.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

The interesting point isn't whether the people of the US want another cause to rally behind. It's whether the government want a cause to rally the people for them.

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I have this (conspiracy) theory that the Bush Administration knew where Bin Laden was all this time... but they peretuated the "we're looking for him" (and the war on terrorism) myth in an effort to keep the war machine humming along.

-tg

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

What quite funny about that in India it is even more varied !

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I am not an expert on this subject, so I may be wrong. But as far as I can tell, the proportion of native Indians from the western hemisphere to the population of the US is much smaller than the proportion of native Indians from the eastern hemisphere to the population of India. And I have seen nationalities from Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, Central America, South America and Australia. And more than one country from each (except Australia:)). And I am sure there are many I missed.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

The interesting point isn't whether the people of the US want another cause to rally behind. It's whether the government want a cause to rally the people for them.

All governments (not just the US) have a habit of exagerating the size of any problem that comes along because 1) it tends to pull the public onto their side (everybody likes a protector) and 2) If they solve the problem it makes them look good. Nobodies impressed when you solve an insignificant problem.

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You forgot to mention they always try to blame the problems on to the previous governments of the opposite parties.

If the people united behind a particular objective, it actually could be achieved. Look at Japan, the way it has reacted as a country to the disasters caused by the quake, tsunami and then the radiation leaks. It's much more than their fair share of troubles, but they have self-imposed power cuts so that the available power can be distributed better, they stand in lines in front of the supermarkets to buy whatever quantity is available, unlike in India where there would probably be riots, and hotels have halved their rates in the affected regions so that the survivors and others can afford the foods. On top of that they have also submitted their bid for the Olympics.

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Here's another interesting angle. Some may find it far-fetched, but it's actually a good theory:

There was an article in the Sunday newspaper on the bin Laden assassination. The author has written quite a few interesting books on the Middle East politics and the importance of oil for all the different stakeholders. According to him, the sudden political unrest in the Middle Eastern countries which started a few months ago was the doing of the US and was done to ensure the rulers of these countries were busy saving their own seats of power, while the US planned the Laden assassination. As a result after Laden was assassinated, it's only Pakistan which's been protesting a little. There are no anti-US statements from other known anti-US countries like Syria or Libya.

While only Obama and probably God know if this theory is true, it does appear strange that all of a sudden so many countries have been seized by political unrest. The timing doesn't entirely appear to be a co-incidence. And if this theory were true, then hats off to Obama and others who thought of this. It was a brilliant strategy.

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One thing I wish to point out is that OIL is much more important to the middle east than the US. So many people get hung up on oil they often neglect important facts. Nothing is as simple as people make things out to be. The reason they do that is because it is easy to understand the "trimmed down" version. There ARE alternate sources of energy than oil. If all the oil in the world disappeared right now the middle east would be much worse off then any oil using country in the long term. The oil USING nations would spend billions to adapt to new fuel sources. The middle east would be broke. It isn't so bad to be poor. It is much worse to be rich and end up poor.

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Originally Posted by honeybee

Here's another interesting angle. Some may find it far-fetched, but it's actually a good theory:

There was an article in the Sunday newspaper on the bin Laden assassination. The author has written quite a few interesting books on the Middle East politics and the importance of oil for all the different stakeholders. According to him, the sudden political unrest in the Middle Eastern countries which started a few months ago was the doing of the US and was done to ensure the rulers of these countries were busy saving their own seats of power, while the US planned the Laden assassination. As a result after Laden was assassinated, it's only Pakistan which's been protesting a little. There are no anti-US statements from other known anti-US countries like Syria or Libya.
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Waaaaaay too complicated. No rational person would propose that a series of countries should be destabilized as cover for a minor covert action (minor in terms of scope and timeline) in a different part of the world. This is the province of all conspiracy theories. Once your plan becomes too complex, and too interdependent, then Murphy becomes your pilot. After all, if that were true, would the operation against bin Laden not have happened if the Egyptian or Tunisian uprising had failed? That would be absurd in the extreme, as the operation had value regardless of the uprisings. Therefore, since the uprisings would not have been necessary prerequisites to the bin Lade operation, they were not related in any practical way.

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Originally Posted by MarMan

There ARE alternate sources of energy than oil. If all the oil in the world disappeared right now the middle east would be much worse off then any oil using country in the long term. The oil USING nations would spend billions to adapt to new fuel sources. The middle east would be broke. It isn't so bad to be poor. It is much worse to be rich and end up poor.

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I thoroughly disagree. Of course you are being hypothetical, and oil will not 'disappear', but if it did, the US would be back in the stone age before those billions would come up with anything. The very existence of our society depends on oil. It makes everything we use and everything we do. There are NO viable alternatives currently known for most of the uses of oil. We might very well be able to come up with alternative energy sources in the short term, which would allow us to move around, but there is no alternative energy source in even theoretical form, which would replace the use of oil in the foundational industries of our country. We might have electric cars, but not electric harvesters, and without the latter we would not be able to produce sufficient food off of our croplands to feed our own population.

The use of oil for transportation is both the most visible, and least significant, contribution of oil to US society. We wouldn't be poor going to poor, we would be poor going to dead! Given enough time for a soft landing, we might be able to switch over to electric, hydrogen, natural gas, or some other thing which is currently on the dim horizon, but the Middle East will also have that time for a soft landing. Perhaps they are a one trick pony, or perhaps they can change, but one thing is true: An abrupt change would destroy us just as surely as it would destroy them.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

We might have electric cars, but not electric harvesters

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No, but easy to build.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

An abrupt change would destroy us just as surely as it would destroy them.

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Like my previous post, I disagree. I think it is much eaiser (even though it is not easy, it is a lot of work) to incorporate existing technology in current tasks then to fabricate something out of nothing.

I once watched a show on national geographic Aftermath| world without oil that showed a potential future of America if there was no more oil.
basically there was chaos for decades and then It slowly started to get better

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Originally Posted by MarMan

No, but easy to build.

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I don't think so. The problem is certainly not the motors. We have very good electric motors of all sizes. What we lack is a means to store sufficient energy to run something like a combine. Build a battery that has 1/10th the energy density of a gallon of gasoline and the gas engine will be a museum piece overnight. We could get VASTLY superior performance from electric motors than we can from a gas engine, but we can't store electricity with enough efficiency to allow us to cut the cord for transportation, except in specialized (and short range) cars largely due to the need to minimize weight to get the range up to the marginally useful level.

A large leap forward in battery technology would rock the world, yet I have never seen even a theoretical design for a battery that could work. I think we are likely to get some breakthroughs in electricity production that would revolutionize generation. Look up quantum photovolteics for an example of a technology that is both likely to arrive, and would have an enormous impact, but when you look at battery technology, there is nothing viable on the visible horizon. In fact, I haven't heard of any theoretical battery technology that would suffice in this thing, either. Without better batteries, heavy machinery, such as the combine, wouldn't really work.

The one alternative would be to come up with an alternative fuel to use for generating electricty, kind of like how a diesel-electric locomotive works. If diesel is an option, then all is well, but bio-diesel is certainly not an option on the scale that would be needed to maintain our food supply. What else is there? Perhaps there is something, such as bio-gasification, such as was used in the late stages of Nazi Germany.

But that is still only one use. Oil goes into virtually all plastics. Plastics go into virtually all products. Take away oil and we might find a replacement that could be turned into those plastics, but it is likely that the cost would be prohibitive. That would be the end of the US economy, if it happened fast.

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Like my previous post, I disagree. I think it is much eaiser (even though it is not easy, it is a lot of work) to incorporate existing technology in current tasks then to fabricate something out of nothing.

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I agree with that statement in general. The one caveate I would suggest is that you can't make a cell phone out of wood and rock, no matter how hard you try. Just knowing the design would certainly be a major advantage, but if you lack the materials to make a functional unit, then it really doesn't matter whether you have that knowledge. Remove oil, and we would lose the materials. There may be alternatives to all of them, but they may be cost-prohibitive. We can certainly live without cell phones, but can we live without all the similar devices that the same rule would apply to?

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Originally Posted by MarMan

One thing I wish to point out is that OIL is much more important to the middle east than the US. So many people get hung up on oil they often neglect important facts. Nothing is as simple as people make things out to be. The reason they do that is because it is easy to understand the "trimmed down" version. There ARE alternate sources of energy than oil. If all the oil in the world disappeared right now the middle east would be much worse off then any oil using country in the long term. The oil USING nations would spend billions to adapt to new fuel sources. The middle east would be broke. It isn't so bad to be poor. It is much worse to be rich and end up poor.

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If oil were to disappear from the face of the earth in a week, the oil producers would end up hoarding whatever stock they had (they do have stocks!) and the prices of oil would skyrocket to such proportions there would be another world war before you could think of any alternative means.

Of course the oil producers would suck away every penny in your pockets first, before declaring they had nothing more to deliver, leaving you poorer and without the means to carry out any researches.

Just see what happened to the electric vehicles launched by the GM and others a few years back.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

What we lack is a means to store sufficient energy to run something like a combine.

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I just wanted to pinpoint a source of the disagreement. You assumed I wanted to use batteries. But that is not the case. That is only one way. There are many others. Yes if you limit yourself to one method, you will not get far. Thinking inside the box will also limit you. There are also other things in your post which are not accurate, but I do not have the time right now.

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Originally Posted by honeybee

If oil were to disappear from the face of the earth in a week, the oil producers would end up hoarding whatever stock they had (they do have stocks!) and the prices of oil would skyrocket to such proportions there would be another world war before you could think of any alternative means.

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A world war? Without fuel? Must be a small world after all.

I think there probably will be a war if the oil is gone.

A war, possibly. If you want a world war then you better start training dolphins.

come on. be reasonable. everyone is going to know in advance when it's about to run out. That's when the war will be. While there is still gas for it. And I suppose you all think that the nuclear ICBMs run off oil? Half the sub fleet in the US already is nuclear powered and so are some of the boats (all the carriers)

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Originally Posted by MarMan

I just wanted to pinpoint a source of the disagreement. You assumed I wanted to use batteries. But that is not the case. That is only one way. There are many others. Yes if you limit yourself to one method, you will not get far. Thinking inside the box will also limit you. There are also other things in your post which are not accurate, but I do not have the time right now.

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Do you have time yet?

I didn't assume that you wanted to use batteries, I assumed that you wanted to use stored energy rather than having an umbilical cord. A battery is just a name for energy storage. As far as I can see, there are only three options for powering something:

1) Generate the energy in place (internal combustion, wind, solar, nuclear, etc.)

2) Generate the energy elsewhere and provide continuous delivery to the motor, which would mean a long extension cord.

3) Generate the energy elsewhere and store it in some form of battery, which could be chemical, mechanical, or any other means that will store energy that can be subsequently tapped as needed.


We are currently using #1 with internal combustion for so many things. For something like a combine, there really isn't any other viable alternative solution if you are going to power the device using technique #1. Technique #2 seems totally impractical to me for large scale food production, but that may not be true, and you may not agree. Anything else would be Technique #3, which means a battery of some sort, and that is where our technological limitations prevent us.

I like discussing things with you Shaggy, you do think well. I would like to continue this, but we are going live next week, so I do not have time yet. But while I am waiting here are some things for you to think about:

1) Redesign the combine and you have more choices.

4) Energy transmission without an extension cord, via a laser or something like that.

With a massive energy shortage there will likely be many idle humans. I can see humans taking over where machines were until technology catches up.

Mother is the necessity of invention, i.e. certain technologies will advance rapidly to the point we would be unable to accurately predict what would happen.

Number 4 sounds fun, although It would probably have to be Microwaves, since I once read in a book that someone made a theoretical design of a solar panel in space that would beam the energy down onto a "receiver".

If you are gonna power any form of long range transport with this method, surely the "Sender" would have to be in space, and how much fun would that thing be if It missed it's target and hit a life form :D

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Originally Posted by MarMan

I would like to continue this, but we are going live next week, so I do not have time yet.

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Yeah, I totally know that. I've been traveling nearly continually for the last two weeks, which was why I didn't say anything. That one post that you just replied to was made in the hour that I was home between flying in from one place and flying out to another. Still, you mentioned in a different thread about taking a 5-10 minute 'mental break', and I fully agree with that. There have even been some recent studies that have shown that such things are important to us, as you are probably aware.

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1) Redesign the combine and you have more choices.

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Are you suggesting a recombinant combine combination? Any solution would have to involve this to some extent.

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4) Energy transmission without an extension cord, via a laser or something like that.

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I was thinking about that, but I think it can't work. The idea of beaming microwave radiation from space to a ground receiver, which BlindSniper mentioned, has the advantage that it could be located wherever necessary, and the receiver could be of any size necessary to convert the microwave radiation back into electicity. However, for a moving item, I think it can't work because the energy density would be so high that you'd effectively have a death ray that would cook birds in flight. The colateral damage would probably be unacceptable. Furthermore, you'd have to convert the radiation back to electricity with a device small enough and light enough such that it would fit on the chassis without requiring a significantly larger, heavier, and more costly, design. I have no idea whether that would be possible, but I suspect that it is not.

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With a massive energy shortage there will likely be many idle humans.  I can see humans taking over where machines were until technology catches up.

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That might work if there was a massive number of humans willing to work for free, or for food. The amount of land that one person can work is fairly well known, though I forget the actual value. It's around an acre. If those people are willing to contribute their labor in return for food, then all is well. If those people want to get anything monetary over and above the food, then you will have a problem, because the return on their labor won't be sufficient to pay them anything. Each one will be doing the full processing on whatever amount of land they can, which is about an acre, and that won't be worth all that much.

I would expect that the result would be massive starvation until the population dropped to where the food supply could support the population using the technology they had at hand. Frankly, I'm well on the pessimistic side when talking about that, so you can take it however you like, but I feel that the population would end up dropping by some 60-80% if we had to go back to manual labor to generate our food. And since people do not willingly starve, that would mean some massive riots, and even more widepread starvation resulting from the disruptions caused by the riots.

In case you haven't figured it out, I feel that we are out over the abyss without a net. I feel that our society is increasingly dependent on technology, such that we can tolerate a steady advance, or a steady change in technology, but our civilization will not survive an abrupt change of any magnitude. That's pessimistic, but that's me on this topic.

There are Billions of Africans that do Nothing every day, We should put them to work :D

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Originally Posted by MarMan

Mother is the necessity of invention

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Parental problems? Or was that deliberate....?

Isn't it supposed to be : Invention is the mother of necessity. There was this kid whose name was necessity. His mother's name was invention.

necessity sounds like a girl's name. But i agree with you, and for point of accuracy, Africa barely has one billion, let alone billions. I am sure at least some of them are working, unless you consider the egyptian protestors and the libyan protestors as out of work?

as for energy transmission, the most efficient method has always been superconducting wires. as for storage of energy, a lot of promising research has went into flywheels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage

It just seems like Billions from where I live :P

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Originally Posted by zaza

Parental problems? Or was that deliberate....?

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LOL Not deliberate, an accident. But good for some funny posts.

Just some quick replies.

The space elevator design uses lasers to beam the energy to the motors that drive it. For harvesting you can have fields surrounding an energy source and beam the energy short distances.

Also you can redesign the combine (this is just a quick example, more thought could produce something viable) to a very small light weight piece that rides on a track. The track can be electromagnets, the combine (which would not be a combine at this point) would be attached to magnets, requiring very little power (compared to its replacement) and no power for locomotion.

Everyone could always grow their own garden.