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The only thing the people who are arguing between China and the US being the gorilla of the 21st century will agree on is that the EU is *not* the next big thing. It's a stagnant raft of nationalities. If you're wondering, NAFTA (US-Canada-Mexico free trade zone) already outweighs the EU (12.22 trillion versus 11.50 trillion), and Europe has been growing slower than the US for quite some time, and the EU expects that trend to continue. I certainly expect this trend to continue.
"European companies, just like (Jonathan) Swift's Gulliver, need to be released from thousands of small constraints that stop them from releasing their economic potential in order to create prosperity for Europe," says Jurgen Strube, head of the European employers federation, UNICE.
EU enthusiasts have traditionally brushed aside criticism of the bloc's dismal economic record by focusing on quality of life issues.
"The EU many not be as competitive as the United States," supporters admit, "but at least it guarantees high level of environmental protection and a certain standard of living for its workers."
Those tons of regulations add up, and they add up to the inability to catch up the the United States:
The major reason for the per capita GDP gulf between the EU and the United States is the ever-widening productivity gap between the world's two-largest economic powers. Whereas U.S. productivity growth rates have risen to above 2 percent, in Europe they hover between 0.5 percent and 1 percent, meaning the average productivity of a European worker is 12 percent below that of his or her American colleague.
The US alone will surpass the EU's combined economy fairly soon; it will pass it population-wise by midcentury, and it's pretty clear that while for a few centuries the world was ruled from Europe, it's just as clear that for the next few it's probably going to be ruled from Washington, Beijing, and New Delhi.
Sorry for practicing necromancy on a dying thread...
But perhaps you could make a mobile Mars base a different way. Specifically - with tents.
No, I have not gone mad.
What I was thinking was that if you deployed a tent (made of suitably airtight and rugged synthetic fabrics/plastics) the air pumped inside would eliminate the need for support poles and such, meaning that you could make them very light. If you had standardized doorway 'gaskets' to prevent leaks, you could park your hab for a while, and deploy a connected tent/temporary hab or two. The extra space when parked means you can cram more stuff in the actual rover itself when moving. Just toss some sandbags over the top or something (I'm picturing a cylindrical tent unit here)
You could use this idea to add some room to hab units, too, but I think it's more useful with the rovers. Consider it the Mars equivalent of those RVs with the slide-out sections when parked. Could be useful.
I'm wholly unworried about the China hype. Between the one-child policy they've had in place guaranteeding the demographic gray meltdown, and the fact that their banks are screwed in a Japan-like fashion when their economy hits a bump, and the wholly-export driven nature of their growth, which pretty much guarantees a nice nasty bump or two at some point...
China is the man burying the accelerator to the floor in his car. In theory everything is fine. In reality the road and his engine will have other plans at some point, and all that speed makes for a messy wreck on the highway.
The United States is probably in the best shape, long-run, of all the nations on earth for increasing its lead power-wise. This really isn't a rousing endorsement of the United States so much as it is a damning indictment of the truly screwed-up state the rest of the world is in or will be in soon.
The US never signed onto the Moon Treaty of 1979, and, to be honest, if we had signed that it would be a treaty that W would hopefully feed through the shredder. It has no redeeming features whatsoever; happily, though, only nations that have no chance have signed on. The spacefaring nations have always recognized it as a stupid move.
...in a campaign speech in February, Kerry said the U.S. government should not be talking about returning to the Moon or going to Mars. Rather, he said, “We need to go to the Moon right here on Earth” by creating high-paying jobs of the future and making sure that “young Americans in uniform are never held hostage” to Middle East oil. In June, in response to an inquiry by Space.Com, Kerry said, “there is little to be gained from a ‘Bush space initiative' that throws out lofty goals, but fails to support those goals with realistic funding."
In a recent email, Kerry space advisor Lori Garver, a NASA Associate Administrator during the Clinton Administration, justified Kerry’s opposition to President Bush’s Moon, Mars, and Beyond Initiative by calling Bush’s plan, “simply hot-air.” The problem with that claim is that the Bush Administration has backed up its initiative with a veto threat of a House bill that not only defunds it, but also contains popular veterans and housing funding.
Not good news. In the Senate Kerry would occasionally push to kill the space station or scale back NASA as 'deficit cutting' measures, despite the fact that doing so is like cutting food costs by skipping the occasional candy bar in the checkout lane while doing nothing about expensive restaurant visits. Apparently he's not changing his views now that he's running for President.
If a giant space coffin went wandering by without any other clue from the originating species, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-AU pole. WHo knows what weird motive they have for doing that?
That sort of thing would drive home the idea that aliens are alien and will do things for reasons that make no sense. The best thing to do is pretend not to notice it, because the course of any particular action will be wholly unknowable when dealing with something as weird as the giant space masoleum.
I just read Snow Crash myself, without having seen BWhite's review/post up above. I wholly reccomend reading this. The plot is bizzare and stupid, but somehow this doesn't matter, as the even more bizzare and fancifully weird setting and characters draw the reader's attention far more than the strange plot.
C'mon now. Any novel where one of the characters has a nuclear bomb in his motorcycle sidecar with the words POOR IMPULSE CONTROL tattooed on his forehead is begging to be read. Cobra Commander would approve.
The book gets weaker as it goes on, I think because the ultrastrange setting and characters has grown somewhat less surreal after reading long enough. But still - it's very good.
Actually, they did more than that. They discovered the hormone that causes the bonding behavior, too - the gene tells the body to create it.
The same chemical promotes fidelity in humans, as well, which makes you wonder if people will get a prescription instead of counseling in the future. Hillary will probably be buying that hormone and loading it into tranquilizer gun darts for use on Bill...
I'd do earth-based observations. However, I would attempt communications, and if possible, even attempt to arrange a deal ("you just drop your in-system shuttle over by Earth for a bit, we'll have it in orbit" - likely they have smaller 'shuttlecraft' so matching speeds is not really an issue). Why pass up the opportunity?
Other than that, I agree with Cobra Commander on 'do contingency plans for everything from "they ignore us" to "PLANET SMASHERS!"'. The only difference is that I'd have to carefully consider what happens if a beneficial exchange happens.
On a nonserious note, the smart move with potentially hostile aliens is to offer them the Persian Gulf region. If they don't accept, they're not hostile, and if they do accept, the terrorists will be bothering someone else from now on.
The polls are split. But Bush has barely begun moving on his campaign, while Kerry has been cranking along merrily all year long. If the best Kerry can do is only stay roughly even with Bush, even though the media is pounding on him and the Democratic base is as energized as it'll ever be, with Bush not even really trying yet, he's not going to win - it's as simple as that.
I generally agree with Cobra Commander on this issue (as I usually end up agreeing with him - why oh why did I root for GI Joe as a child?). I've met and talked to immigrants of both kinds (those actively trying to assimilate and those who haven't) and the gap in what they accomplish is huge. This is without government prodding, mind you, so this is probably influenced by the amount of ambition those immigrants have, as well. But when comparing the two groups, I see successful people who have started their own businesses or are definitely on their way up, contrasted with people down at the local welfare office. I think that strongly 'suggesting' English (No bilingual education, etc) is the best way to go here. Sink or swim - people pick up language fastest that way anyhow, total immersion. And you come down like a ton of hammers on cultural ideals that violently clash with your own - like sharia law and the subjugation of women. We 'oppressed' the Mormons by strictly outlawing polygamy, we can sit on someone else's views of women and marriage we find objectionable as well.
See my first post in this thread.
But if we were facing what Gennaro was facing, it would come up and have politcal legs. We're not, so it doesn't.
If "we" can't even refrain from interfering in their domestic matters, how can "we" stop them from feeling justified in interfering with ours?
Well, that seems simple enough. We can't. However, we can stop them from interfering. That's merely a question of power and will, no philosophizing needed.
It probably has traction because Bush can point to Kerry himself as a classic example.
In other words, Bush isn't making a serious argument of any kind, merely whittling a stick he can beat Kerry around the head with for a while.
Two reasons:
One, immigrants to the US are overwhelmingly from other areas in the Americas or from Europe, China, India, and Japan. Our immigrant sources are much different than Europe's.
Two, people who commit those kinds of crimes in the US tend to meet a violent end, either on the streets, from the courts, or in prison.
In reality, this "demographic terrorism" is a far more pressing problem for Europe than for the US. If you are having immigrant troubles in Europe, try changing things at home.
Continuing from my previous 2005 predictions...
Terrorists will not launch a successful attack in 2005. If they haven't launched one by the elections, their ability to do anything in the United States has been degraded to pointless levels, because they would have missed their best moment. If they do launch one before the elections, they're unlikely to attempt another attack for at least a year or two - they take their time between attacks. Either way, 2005 is safe.
Iraq will be moderately democratic and relatively stable during 2005. Strangely, the media will never see it coming.
No matter who wins, vague (and not-so-vague) rumors of screwing with the electronic voting machines will dog their steps through their presidency. Which is why I thought they were a bad move.
Alienation of the US from France and Germany will continue, even assuming Kerry wins, because it's being principally driven by the citizenry as a whole in the US.
The Kyoto treaty will continue to be a dead letter in Congress.
A new pope will have to be selected. The new pope will be from Africa or the Americas.
The Palestinian intifada will be completely done with sometime next year, and that particular sparkplug for conflict will be quiet... for a year or two, anyways.
North Korea will do something provocative and insane. If Bush is President, he will pat them on the head and more or less ignore whatever they do as a desperate cry for attention. I have no idea what Kerry would do.
I fearlessly predict that Kerry's supporters will annoy the undecideds into Bush's hands with their insanely hyperbolic rhetoric about Bush. Nothing says "Vote Bush" like someone freely and without opposition talking about the 'American Gestapo' on a message board for the whole world to see.
Bush will win the election and people will bitch, complain, and make dire predictions, but nothing terribly interesting will happen domestically one way or the other. The economy will stagger drunkenly forward throughout 2005 in an unimpressive but satisfactory manner, and Iran will be bombed and/or invaded.
Counterprediction: If Kerry wins, the media will have orgasms of joy for about a week, then savage him mercilessly for four years, and the Republicans in Congress will make sure nothing terribly interesting will happen domestically one way or the other. People will bitch, complain, and make dire predictions about a Kerry administration, too - they'll just be different than the ones who would complain if Bush won. The economy will stagger drunkenly forward, and Iran will be bombed and/or invaded.
Everybody above Kerry in the chain of command has slammed him, most of those below him support him.
The real reason that this ad has come out is probably because Kerry used the pictures of his fellow officers in his own campaigning. The people who are in that ad are in a photo of fellow swiftboat captains Kerry used earlier this year; they resented the implication of supporting him. The boats operated in groups, too, so they actually did watch him in combat.
Anyways, the retraction has been retracted - or more accurately the guy is claiming he never retracted the statement in the first place. Interestingly, the reporter who broke the story is the author of a Kerry biographer and is also writing his campaign book.... interesting, no?
This campaign is plumbing new depths in political ugliness. Someone is lying on this one.
Not Bush's fault, no, but Cobra's right, the sheer incompetence displayed by the bureacracies is staggering.
Someone needs to fill in the same-sex couples on something the heterosexuals have known for centuries: Marriage involves three rings. The engagement ring, the wedding ring, and suffering.
But yeah, life is once again funnier than anything comics could dream up.
Congress has written legislation defining private manned space travel and basically clearing the way for private manned spaceflight. The legislation firms up the licensing process for the vehicles and gives them their own official status seperate from other means of transportation. They also make reduce liability - basically people going into space will do so at their own risk.
Of course, the bill still needs to be passed in its final form, but that should be a formality given that the Senate has matched the House's version of the bill.
Or the stuff could be grown as diet food. Imagine. Diet steak, no calories, no cholesterol! Served well-done because, well, would you eat a steak with a warm green center?
The problem with assuming that Mars will break away from Earth is that such an assumption basically is arguing that the government will be stupid enough to repeat the sort of boneheaded moves that England did even with US history as a guide. While government officials can do mind bogglingly dumb things, they would get talked out of such a masitake by their handlers/allies/donors before it resulted in a Mars Independence movement.
The only way I can see Mars becoming independent is if some sort of massive political upheaval happens in the host nation and whatever local government exists on Mars breaks off like an iceberg in the tumult. I realistically don't see Mars colonists making the first move.
I can see Mars being an idiosyncratic place politically, with views very different from the Homeworld due to its being a frontier far away, but I don't see it being the hotbed of seperatists.
Some interesting problems for a US Mars territory/state:
US territories have nonvoting representatives, and states of course have Senators and Representatives. What sort of meddling with the Constitution would be required to fix some of the problems a Martian state/territory would have getting people to Washington? By the time they finally arrive from Mars, they need to start campaigning again. Will Martian delegates telecommute? Similar problems exist for the Electoral College.
Assuming the draft is ever reinstated, what happens to drafted Martians?
When that two-week communications blackout rolls around, what happens? Does the governor of Mars have temporary Presidential powers over the stranded federal bureacracies?
Probably the best way to avoid all of that is simply to avoid making Mars colonies in the image of a future state and instead try to copy a British Commonwealth type approach, with the President of the US filling in as supreme executive but a fully independent Mars government.
This brings up an interesting point... any colonies are likely to be underground for a while, probably up until terraforming starts (minus a few surface domes). How deep underwater can an underground city be, assuming that the airlocks can hold out water?
Be funny to have underwater cities on Mars, but it might happen, if the 'old town' can take the pressure and some valuable resource is located in the area.