Over at Kurzweilai.net, in Part One of a two part article originally posted at Scientific American, +Ramez Naam runs through all the dire warnings that the doom cults have been wringing their hands over since the spectacularly failed prognosticator Thomas Malthus. Everything from runaway pollution, catastrophic global warming, the "population bomb"… he touches on all of them.

After reading part one, follow the link to the second part of the article where he explains why they never came to pass and why it reasonable to expect they never will. While he still gives too much credence to the crystal ball readings of utter catastrophy resulting from a minor uptick in CO2, he is still confident that expected growth in the economy and technology will be able to lower our emission of plant food and stay below the computer model constructed sky-will-fall limit of 450 ppm.

I just popped over to Amazon.ca and bought the Kindle version of Ramez's book, The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet… even though I might have to take exception to his titular limiting of us to "a Finite Planet" when we will be adding the inner solar system to our basket of goods within the next few decades.

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The Limits of the Earth — Part 1: Problems | KurzweilAI
(Credit: NASA) This is part one of a two-part series on the limits of human economic growth on planet Earth. Part one details some of the environmental and

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It is to be expected. The IRS exists to take by force and get bigger at any costs, so will react vindictively toward any group that threatens to curb its rapacious way and cancerous growth.

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I.R.S. Scandal Gives G.O.P. Issue to Seize On – NYTimes.com
The Internal Revenue Service’s special scrutiny went beyond keyword hunts for organizations with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names, to a more overtly ideological search.

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+Marvel Entertainment releases the first promo for Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. coming this fall. I enjoyed The Avengers but TV has been the lesser for the absence of Joss Whedon. I won't let myself hope for Firefly or Buffy good, but I will optimistically expect that the best show on the air this fall will be on +ABC Television Network.

Now watch ABC schedule it out of order on Friday nights.

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All kidding aside, his overall argument holds some water when talking about ephemeral content like advertisements that nobody will bother archiving or viewing after they've had their first couple runs on television. Likewise, it is safe to use 1080P to acquire local daytime television that is rushed to air and then immediately forgotten.

Where I do have problems with his argument as when he devolves into that whole "it is the craftsman, not the tool" nonsense. The tool places outside parameters on the quality of the work, and anyone who rationalizes their choice in tools that way is relegating themselves to second or third rate craftsman. You are not a superior craftsman with an inferior tool being compared to inferior craftsmen with superior tools… at best you are a superior craftsman with an inferior tool being compared to a superior craftsmen with superior tools.

We are not talking "hammers" here, we are talking about very sophisticated kit that, if they must be compared to construction tools, would better be compared to something like a welder. This argument is like insisting that a competent welder can do a better job welding up a racecar chassis with a little Lincoln 120 volt 10 amp portable, as an equally competent welder can do with the 230 volt 30 amp industrial welder.

As for the arguments against 4K deliverable, that can only be made by people who have never seen a 4k display or who have poor eyesight while refusing to wear glasses. The difference is stark at any reasonable viewing distance and UHD at 48fps should be the floor for any acquisition where you care about how it looks, and want it to be viewed five years from now. You can easily degrade it to 1080P 24fps, but going the other way is truly ugly, and in the near future will face an uphill battle to bypass technical requirements for deliverables.

Kind of like trying to get your SD indie feature accepted for airing on an HD channel.

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1080P is Better Than 4K (Or Why I Chose the Canon C100) with Ryan E. Walters « nofilmschool
This is a guest post by Cinematographer Ryan E. Walters. After many years of owning a wide range of camera systems, including a RED ONE and an EPIC, I decided to sell it all and rent. So for the past three years I have been exclusively renting cameras on a per project basis, that is, …

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Although there is plenty of physical action in the book, Card considered Ender's Game to be unfilmable due to the fundamentally internal nature of the story. I hold the book in high regard and so am tempering my expectations; even though I don't expect an all out vitriolic attack on the source material like Verhoeven did with Starship Troopers.

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For as long as there have been guns, there are those who imagine they can magically uninvent them through legal restrictions. The laws on access and physical appearance break down to deep infringement on the law abiding while creating a minor inconvenience for the criminally inclined.

Fortunately, the ability to print a gun on demand will bring about a statistically zero increase in crimes. Throughout the US, they have seen a strong and consistent trend down in crime rates that goes back decades… although the drop in the rate of crime hasn't been as precipitous in areas with strict gun laws as in the areas that have strengthened the right to access and carry firearms.

While the correlation of lower rates of crime to areas with easier legal access to firearms doesn't prove that a legal right to carry causes lower crime, it is empirical evidence that legal access to guns does not increase crime.

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That 3D-Printed Handgun You’ve Been Waiting For Is Here
Remember when Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson promised to unveil an entirely 3D-printed handgun made of ABS plastic with the firing pin its only metal

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Due to the anti-resource industry record and rhetoric of the NDP, who look to be winning the next provincial election, mineral exploration has been hitting a funding roadblock over the few months. This camp came up for sale a couple months back and my Dad was able to pick it up at a price that, hopefully, will allow him to turn a profit on the reselling.

We spent the day making our way out to it and inspecting everything to make sure it weathered the winter okay. It was a good thing that it was well below freezing today or we would have been wading through the half meter of snow rather than walking on the crust.

Mining Camp on the north side of Babine Lake.

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Snowing yet again as April comes to an end? Yeah, that's about right.

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Congratulations to +Richard Branson and +Virgin Galactic for taking a very important step on the path to space tourism. While it isn't a definitive step on the path to space colonization, it does move the idea of accessing space a little more into the realm of reasonable for the general public. While a $200,000 vacation is still crazy money for most people, it is far enough below the heretofore $20 million mark that people can see the path to a $20,000 weekend vacation in a LEO hotel… and that will be a huge step to space colonization.

Reshared post from +Richard Branson

What a feeling to be in Mojave with all the team to witness +Virgin Galactic go faster than the speed of sound on very first test flight http://virg.in/bsb

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