Revolutions are rarely justified. I'd even go so far as to say that the American Revolution didn't have sufficient impetus.
Revolutions are rarely bloodless (over 100,000 died in the Revolutionary War) and there's no guarantee that the new government is any better than the previous government - we suffered through the Articles of Confederation for a decade. A revolution is often a risky and bloody gamble. Things have to be really bad for the 'risk to reward ratio' to even out.
I'd argue that sheer technological improvement isn't the sole predictor of innovation. By changing the interface mechanism Nintendo has broadened the appeal of gaming, so much so that video game companies are realizing new markets thought to be previously unprofitable. The affect may have far reaching implications into the entire video game industry. Just because people are old - doesn't mean they're not gamers and it's backwards thinking to suppose that a gaming platform is any less so because more people enjoy it.
There needs to be an end to the elitism that the PS3 panders to. And as games and the video game culture spread throughout diverse demographics we'll see true innovation in the genre of games available and not just the next first person shooter.
Personally, I lie awake at night hoping that physics doesn't up and change itself on us. See False Vacuum Metastability Event.
Actually, there's new evidence to suggest that Earth is 'due' for more asteroids. science blog.
And while religion may cause wars and close-mindedness, it's yet to exterminate all life as we know it. What's even worse about asteroids is that even if we see it coming (and we probably won't) we can't do anything practical about it.
Are we talking Batman/Ironman or Bruce Wayne/Tony Stark?
Bruce Wayne any day of the week, but Batman? Batman's a vengeful angry vigilante who operates outside of the law to get what he wants done.
If it's between Batman and Ironman, I have to go with Ironman - he's less crazy.
Perhaps you would enjoy Richard Dawkin's 'An Atheist Call to Arms' presentation at the TED conference in Monterey California.
Dawnkin's presentation is more of an appeal to his audience than an argument for atheism, but his talk is worth watching.
Dependence of fossil fuels.
Irrespective of CO2 emissions and global warming, our dependence on fossil fuels and their increasing scarcity is likely to be the motivation for the next world war. The increasing demand for energy in China and India will likely bring to a head tensions between first and second world countries. Similarly, if an alternative fuel source is not readily available when fossil fuels are depleted then the world could suffer an economic collapse the likes of which has never been seen before.
Most of the bases on foreign soil are there with the explicit permission of foreign governments and they wouldn't be there if said government didn't want them there.
In some instances it's a security measure. More often though, there are economic and political considerations. A US military base is almost an assured economic boon to the area where it's stationed. People may hate the U.S. but they have no problem taking money from U.S. soldiers stationed overseas.
Also the U.S. allows allies to use our military installations. It's a tit-for-tat agreement whereby the U.S. is allowed a military presence within an allied nation under the assumption that that allied nation receives U.S. military support and that the U.S. will use it's logistics command to support allied operations.
They want us there, probably even more than we want to be there.
I don't believe that the collapse of the 9/11 towers warrant as much investigation as the challenger disaster. There was a very evident cause of failure and there are few within the engineering community who doubt it.
Prof. Thomas Eager of the material sciences depart of MIT reaches the same conclusion as the NIST, even going so far as to specifically dismiss the claims of the 9/11 truth movement:
"These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the 'reverse scientific method.' They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion."
This is a video of 5 story concrete building. In no way do I see how this is relevant to a 110 glass and steel building.
Find the society of structural engineer's, or of civil engineer's or even of architects who support the notion that it was a planned demolition.
The electoral college was originally intended to serve as a safety mechanism to protect against an ignorant mass of people electing a woefully unqualified president. But, in practice the electors elect their designated presidential candidate without exception - removing the only legitimate reason for having an electoral college.
What's more, the electoral college marginalizes the value of votes in states where there's the demographics are sided towards one political party or another.
If I understand Szechuan's argument correctly, then it's not a question of whether we should have an army or not, but rather 'should we have an offensive army or not'. Mind you, the Swede's do have an army -- it's just not a standing army, it's a militia. And a conscripted one at that.
I fully support the notion of a conscripted militia. There are few more powerful defenses than to have an nearly entire nation's males trained to fight war. And the affect of conscription does great things for national pride as well as endowing individuals with useful skills (navigation, self-defense, leadership).
Having said that, we're in no position to abolish the army now. It will be several decades before we could work ourselves into a position diplomatically that would allow us to remove troops and support from around the world.
I'd imagine that the people installing whatever joint replacement would notice if it was rigged to blow - these things tend to be no more than steel. What's more, replacing a structural component of a building is no small task, it would require floors to be shut down and temporary buttresses to be installed so that the replacement could occur without weakening the building. These things are noticed.
Admittedly, at some point you can devise a scenario whereby the government is implicated. But that scenario is so far from being likely that it's negligible. The far, far more likely scenario is that it occurred precisely the way we perceived.
And it's not that I trust the government, it's that I don't believe the government is competent enough to pull it off.
Okay, but prove to me that the individual in the crowd isn't acting because of social motivations. Perhaps he or she is acting because they expect to look good by being the first to applaud. The question is, in some respects, flawed.
I side with John Dewey. An individual cannot be considered irrespective of society and similarly society cannot be considered irrespective of the individual. Collective intelligences mirror the intelligence of the individuals which compose them and individuals can be persuaded and affected by the intelligence of society.
Gravity is what it is (6.673*10^-11) because that's how the math works out. If gravity were any stronger or weaker the galaxy would be a giant blackhole or would the orbits of it's solar systems and the galaxy itself would dissolve.
The only possible way for us to have the range of elements we have and all the necessary things to support life is for the fundamentals forces to be just so.
It's not that God's trying to prevent us from getting into space, it's just that he backed himself into a mathematical corner by endowing things with mass.
There's a layer of grunt work which would be unambiguously implicated in 9/11. Setting and wiring explosives isn't something just anyone can do -- it requires a fair number of people (to do it on that scale) with at least some experience of blowing up buildings and I'd imagine that those people would be acutely aware that they were setting charges in the Twin Towers.
The list of people involved would be hundreds long and the government's senior officials haven't the technical knowledge necessary to coordinate them. What's more, any significant deviation from the chain of command would be noticed.
Consider the logistics chain from procurement to placement. Think of the number of people needed for each of them to be relatively unaware of the implications of their role. There's noway that many people could have their actions coordinated without serious management. The senior officials wouldn't know who to contact to assign qualified people to fill the necessary roles; they wouldn't even know all the necessary roles that required filling.
