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Forum: Teams
Thread:  Join "MyOnlineTeam" Today - Chapter 37 |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 580
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Dataman
Ace Cruncher Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 4865 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I admit, on occasion i'm very happy when I reach certain milestones.. All I have to do though is remind myself of visiting my grandmother in the hospital before she died.. or of the numerous children I took care of during my residency.. I'm really in this for the long haul and the possibility of a cure. Maybe it won't be me that finds that winning "drug", but if not.. i'll hopefully help them by finding thousands that won't work too.. :) Dr. Mike.. finding the cures or solutions which is the reason that I am here. I think most all of us agree. However, if you want to entertain an interesting thought experiment, imagine we cured all human disease, eliminated all warfare (our form of self predation) and prevented all accidents. Everyone lived and reproduced to their maximum potential. However, if I remember correctly those are the three major factors in human population control. What would be the unintended consequences of doing that? If those limiting factors did not exist, would we have to invent them ... or something worse? All systems strive to acheive entropy. Can Man do it better than Nature? Heresy it may be but still thorny questions with no easy answers.  Well as you can see it’s HOT and I am stuck inside with way, way too much free time.   Cheers MOT.   [Edit 1 times, last edit by Dataman at Jul 17, 2009 6:08:38 PM] |
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RT
Master Cruncher USA - Texas - DFW Joined: Dec 22, 2004 Post Count: 2636 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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<snip snip> I think most all of us agree. However, if you want to entertain an interesting thought experiment, imagine we cured all human disease, eliminated all warfare (our form of self predation) and prevented all accidents. Everyone lived and reproduced to their maximum potential. However, if I remember correctly those are the three major factors in human population control. What would be the unintended consequences of doing that? If those limiting factors did not exist, would we have to invent them ... or something worse? All systems strive to acheive entropy. Can Man do it better than Nature? Heresy it may be but still thorny questions with no easy answers. Well as you can see it’s HOT and I am stuck inside with way, way too much free time. Cheers MOT. This reminds me of an 1976 movie. "Logan's Run". It was an interesting exploration of just that question. http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi4108518169/ At a certain age everyone has to go through a ceremony where they are renewed or some such. Of course this "renewal" is just population control. But then our hero, Logan escapes the renewal into a world outside the domed city that all this takes place in. It is cheesey and fails to deal with the central issue in any depth but still interesting. "Can Man do it better than Nature?" Sure... Just put me in charge; I know of a few people that.... but then they probably would vote for me... Never mind. (103F  here today) |
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NiceMedTexMD
Veteran Cruncher United States Joined: Aug 17, 2006 Post Count: 929 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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<snip snip> I think most all of us agree. However, if you want to entertain an interesting thought experiment, imagine we cured all human disease, eliminated all warfare (our form of self predation) and prevented all accidents. Everyone lived and reproduced to their maximum potential. However, if I remember correctly those are the three major factors in human population control. What would be the unintended consequences of doing that? If those limiting factors did not exist, would we have to invent them ... or something worse? All systems strive to acheive entropy. Can Man do it better than Nature? Heresy it may be but still thorny questions with no easy answers. Well as you can see it’s HOT and I am stuck inside with way, way too much free time. Cheers MOT. This reminds me of an 1976 movie. "Logan's Run". It was an interesting exploration of just that question. http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi4108518169/ At a certain age everyone has to go through a ceremony where they are renewed or some such. Of course this "renewal" is just population control. But then our hero, Logan escapes the renewal into a world outside the domed city that all this takes place in. It is cheesey and fails to deal with the central issue in any depth but still interesting. "Can Man do it better than Nature?" Sure... Just put me in charge; I know of a few people that.... but then they probably would vote for me... Never mind. (103F here today)68 here.. :) of course that's outside.. had to get the A/C fixed for my house.. (renting, so the owner has to bear the costs..) Beautiful day here.. and i'm inside taking care of kids.. sigh.. lol Dr. Mike  |
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Dataman
Ace Cruncher Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 4865 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I liked Logan’s Run too. Especially the little robots with human personalities. They were totally inconceivable at the time ... today not so much.
----------------------------------------Personally I like Nature’s way. Cold, cruel, random and without malice, conscience or politics. 103.5 now and will probably top out near 106. The revised 5-day forecast is for 106, 106, 106, 104 & 103. I may have to put a lawn chair in my deep freezer and recline in it.  But then I can’t as it is almost full of beans, corn, squash, cow and hog. When I was base camping for BOINC@Australia there was this guy running liquid cooling that ran his heat exchangers through a freezer. He said it worked just great. I love the Aussies ... a very resourceful lot they are. It is very frustrating not to be able to run mine. |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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What we need on this team is a real engineering geek!
---------------------------------------- They'd probably find a way to trap that heat, pump it thru some sort of exchanger and use the temperature differential to generate power. Hmm, should we all go invest in mineral oil futures? I bet the book was better than the movie with Logan's Run. Similar issue behind a story I read many years ago where the main character lives in an underground city with all the other humans. Thing is, none of the humans know anything about taking care of the city's machinery but the main character manages to find a way out just as everything breaks down (it's dark underground when the lights go out). Man's attempts to control Man pushed the Europeans to explore and "settle" North and South America and Australia. None of the folks already there faired too well though. Still, humans can surprise you when they're forced to fight for survival. Sun Tzu says the way to have an army defeat an overwhelming opponent is to have them fight on the death ground - where their only chance to survive is to defeat the enemy. If humans ended war, famine and disease, you'd see us really settle Mars. You'd see the asteroid belt mined (imagine mining a small asteriod and returning with enough gold to match a year's production on Earth or ten years worth of platinum - you'd make a forture but imagine the havoc with the commodities markets). We might even see attempts at interstellar travel with generational ships. Of course, we'd have to perfect space elevators first. It's the old one step back, two steps forward thing. |
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Dataman
Ace Cruncher Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 4865 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Still, humans can surprise you when they're forced to fight for survival. Sun Tzu says the way to have an army defeat an overwhelming opponent is to have them fight on the death ground - where their only chance to survive is to defeat the enemy. If humans ended war, famine and disease, you'd see us really settle Mars. Maybe you have hit on the answer, Keith. I am reminded of a scene from “The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy” where all of the lawyers, accountants, philosophers, telephone sanitizers and the like were put on a space ship and sent out to colonize a planet. What a perfect solution to population control. Every so often we just take certain segments of the population, make them astronauts and send them off to colonize Mars. A perfect example of Sun Tzu’s death ground. However, it would bring us back dangerously close to the 1957 question, “Who is John Galt?” (My appologies in advance to all the lawyers, accountants, philosophers & telephone sanitizers ... I was just quoting someone else ) |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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MyOnlineTeam Daily Statistics for 07/17 - All Members:
----------------------------------------Team rank movement report =========================
Points milestones report ======================== No points milestones found. Runtime milestones report ========================= No runtime milestones found. Results returned milestones report ================================== Sunny L. Kae returned their 3,800th result  New members report ================== No new members found. Retired members report ====================== No new retired members found. For the week as a team: Statistics Total Run Time Points Results Team Records: Results Returned: 12/19/2007 2,522 Points: 05/06/2009 518,871 Runtime: 01/25/2006 1:123:00:53:34 Good crunching folks!!!! |
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keithhenry
Ace Cruncher Senile old farts of the world ....uh.....uh..... nevermind Joined: Nov 18, 2004 Post Count: 18667 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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MyOnlineTeam Daily Statistics for 07/17 - Active Members
----------------------------------------Active team members report ==========================
Note: Active members are those who earned points in the prior 30 days. Top Twenty active members returning points today: 01: RT - 58,971 points 02: marysduby - 49,821 points 03: esoteric17 - 36,970 points 04: Coingames - 27,147 points 05: NiceMedTexMD - 20,733 points 06: parmesian - 19,629 points 07: Dave Bell - 16,595 points 08: brown chris - 15,911 points 09: Dresser - 12,317 points 10: keithhenry - 11,010 points 11: Blueprint - 7,703 points 12: sulcata - 6,744 points 13: Esteban69 - 5,298 points 14: Dataman - 5,259 points 15: darth_vader - 3,685 points 16: johng - 3,421 points 17: gr8buddha - 3,141 points 18: Vuj - 3,008 points 19: Airwolf_Liu - 2,402 points 20: PohSoon - 2,384 points Total points returned today: 333,395 Active members returning points today: 38 Average points per member active today: 8,773.55263 |
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RT
Master Cruncher USA - Texas - DFW Joined: Dec 22, 2004 Post Count: 2636 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Speaking of smart people, can anyone tell me how every insurance company can be cheaper than the others?
----------------------------------------When I worked in England for a bit, there was this woman that would pop into my office, ignore me and clean the hand piece of my telephone and just as quickly as she appeared, she was gone. I suppose she was a "telephone sanitizer". I did think of telling her that I did nothing with the telephone that required it to be sanitized but doubted that she would see the humor. While I admire the English sense of humor, often they did not feel the same about mine. Here is one bit that I really like (if you click here *, you will need to have your sound turned up).*From the Monty Python Movie "The Meaning of Life" -- I believe that within reason, the statistics quoted are correct. EDIT> To see the words click here ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by RT at Jul 18, 2009 2:07:05 AM] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Speaking of smart people, can anyone tell me how every insurance company can be cheaper than the others? When I worked in England for a bit, there was this woman that would pop into my office, ignore me and clean the hand piece of my telephone and just as quickly as she appeared, she was gone. I suppose she was a "telephone sanitizer". I did think of telling her that I did nothing with the telephone that required it to be sanitized but doubted that she would see the humor. While I admire the English sense of humor, often they did not feel the same about mine. Here is one bit that I really like (if you click here *, you will need to have your sound turned up).*From the Monty Python Movie "The Meaning of Life" -- I believe that within reason, the statistics quoted are correct. EDIT> To see the words click here If you wish to see it, it is here. |
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