Oolite Bulletins

Good news? Well the climate change deal seems to be happening, and I guess that's good news. First time ever humanity has come together to stop its own extinction. Maybe there is hope for us yet.

Smivs wrote:

Good news? Well the climate change deal seems to be happening, and I guess that's good news. First time ever humanity has come together to stop its own extinction. Maybe there is hope for us yet.

Not really. And you've just demonstrated one of the biggest problems in discussions of politics and public policy in the world today: modern people's incredibly short and selective memories.

We've previously dealt with the global scale problems of DDT, which caused the extinctions of many vertebrate species, CFCs which caused a hole in the ozone layer that would have made the whole continent of Australia uninhabitable if left unchecked, and the formerly ubiquitous lead which caused several generations of humans to grow up with mild mental retardation. In each of those three disasters we had to deal with tenacious lobbying from vested interests who claimed an economic depression would inevitably result if we did not continue with business as usual. In all cases there was not even a mild recession, let alone the economic disasters predicted.

A quick digression to complain about our good allies the Americans' recalcitrance about CFCs; they were perfectly happy to let all of Australia die if it meant saving $50 next time they bought a new fridge. (And isn't recalcitrance a great word? So much more polite than c***ishness.) But when an ozone hole opened in the Northern hemisphere one year, they suddenly went from being knuckle-dragging heel-draggers to world "leaders".

I'll note also the extraordinary tenacity of the lead industry in Australia, where leaded petrol persisted many years after it was phased out everywhere else. Apparently our cars' engines were just going to explode without warning at some random time if we put unleaded petrol into them. When people pointed that European cars weren't exploding, we were told that our cars' engines were "different" in some vague, unspecified way.

Global warming should have been fixed back then, at the same time as those other global-scale problems, but unfortunately with the election of Bill Clinton the USA retreated into isolationism, and refused to co-operate, and all momentum was lost.

Also in the 1980s, they exterminated one species to extinction on purpose: smallpox.

That's another area where momentum was lost. Measles was fought to the brink of extinction, then the powers that be said, "Near enough is good enough." It did what diseases do: returned with a vengeance. TB was also well on the way to be eradicated, although not nearly as close as measles, and is now back.

At least, that's the way I remember the late twentieth century. Any youngsters with book-lernin from wikipedia "remember" it differently?

You really are a miserable git, aren't you?

Smivs wrote:

You really are a miserable git, aren't you?

You should see all the stuff I've typed in and then changed my mind and not posted last night and tonight.
Catch youse tomorrow.

<chuckles>
G'night mate

Another thing I saw recently that really impressed me was the Blue Origin rocket launch and landing.

Rockets that return to the ground and land vertically; "The way God and Robert Heinlein intended," as I read the concept described many moons ago. (<-- that's a clumsy sentence.)

If you haven't seen it already have a look on Youtube...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... lue+origin

I don't know dude. You start a tread on give me some good news then whack people when the news isn't good enough.
The possibility presents itself that you might just have a glass half empty personality.

ClymAngus wrote:

I don't know dude. You start a thread on give me some good news then whack people when the news isn't good enough.
The possibility presents itself that you might just have a glass half empty personality.

Who did I whack, how?

By saying fusion would never be a viable energy source? It won't. I'm still interested in reading about recent progress, and I hope you are too.

By reminding Smivs that the climate agreement is far from being the first time the world has tackled a global-scale problem, and that we actually have a good track record in that, despite all the obstructionist arseholes?

No, if I seemed ungrateful to anyone who replied here, then I've expressed myself poorly. And I'm sorry to anyone who feels I was unappreciative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0V4TZAyd8I

We both know it could always "be a littler better" but you know finding good news stories is tricky at the best of times.

Anyway, your getting happiness feeds from a bunch of Winjin Pomms? This is a darkly ironic thing.

Hello people

I thought you might be interested in this (it seems on-topic!): https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews. I find that it cheers me up!

Bookmarked. That's a good news site.

And another good (but quite old) news I came across: Indonesia’s new male birth control pill is ‘99 percent effective’

Possible side effects: Gained weight. (Uh, okay.) Increased libido (I can live with that.)

Just 30 days after they stop taking the pill, test subjects’ sperm returns to normal.

Great!

[...] researchers haven’t seen anything that remotely rivals the zits, nausea, sporadic bleeding and other effects many women endure on hormone-based birth control pills.

If all of this holds true, it looks like we men are in charge of this in the future.

ocz wrote:

If all of this holds true, it looks like we men are in charge of this in the future.

Well, that has its bad side! Still,

ocz wrote:

[...] researchers haven’t seen anything that remotely rivals the zits, nausea, sporadic bleeding and other effects many women endure on hormone-based birth control pills

- that's got to be good.

Fritz wrote:

Not bad. A local German newspaper wrote that osmosis is the reason why you can't open an aircraft door in flight...

Yes, Most major cities are trying to make public transport cleaner, quicker and cheaper than taking your car.
Yes, Heaps of cities are opening cycle/walking paths.
Yes, More children are being educated about the world than ever before.

Nope. You can't open an aircraft door in flight because it has safties designed into it. They have to be specified to have open doors. They are pressure sensitive. You would have to take one of the escape windows out. And even then the amount of air in an airliner would never be enough to create a hollywood suction. Never mind the time it would take the pressure and temparture difference for osmosis to have an effect.
Take a window out and the pilot is taking a nose dive to a safer hight while getting the police in whatever country they are landing, to come arrest or shoot your arse.

Funny enough but yes osmosis could be a problem. Apart from the fact that most flights are at a high enough altitude to cause fainting at the decompression. Hollywood pictations of flights are BS.
Dry air, body full of water. Air will suck out water by osmosis. Though would take a very long flight at low enough altitude, to not suffocate from the osmosis effect to get you. High enough, the cold will get you long before dehydration by osmosis.
Why do you think your finger tips go crinckly when emersed in water too long. Yes, osmosis at work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis

I remember the days when you could smoke on flights. The air was filtered far cleaner than it is now. Dehydration was a problem on long flights. Because, the cleaned air was very dry. Ideal for osmosis.

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:32 pm

Someone crashed their car in my street this afternoon. Managed to put it backwards over a bus shelter somehow. Now the people waiting for the bus will have to stand in the summer sun.

I had completely forgotten that that ever happened. One day last year, I was down the street and I glanced at the bus shelter and thought, "That's not the old bus shelter that used to be there years ago, I wonder when they changed it?"

And now I know the exact date, and why. And now I've read it, to trigger my memory, I clearly recall that happening. Reading and writing was a great invention; people should do more of it.