Your future that could have been of the day

Via Paleo-Future, comes this look at how the people of one hundred years ago saw today.

Some of those buildings must be nearly 20 stories tall! But honestly, well thought out public transportation, investment in trains, interesting architecture, and crazy flying apparati? What, did these early 20th Century people think we'd be smart? Joke's on them. Mostly because they're all dead. We don't have moon bases either.

What will the people of 2110 think of our musings on the future? Well, if we have anything to say about it, they won't ever exist. Global economic meltdown, the environment, a loose nuke or two, or some affront to the vengeful Christian God will prevent those uppity future types from ever lording our dim postcard view of the future over us.

The future

Tom the Dancing Bug

DIY

So you're concerned about America's energy future. You don't want to continue burning fossil fuels or homeless people's bodies or what ever you're using and you want to go green. But windmills? The sun? This all seems so utterly gay. Isn't there a way you could harness the power of the sun in a way that didn't involve technology you have on your crappy calculator?

Wouldn't it be better if you could create your own sun and subjugate it to your own will so you could.... watch Tivo'd episodes of Law and Order? Isn't that what a God does? Wasn't creating a fusion mini sun what Doc Ock was trying to do in Spider-Man 2? I think we all remember how well that worked out for him. Shouldn't we be able to do this?

Now, thanks to one man's efforts, we may. Home fusion.

Suppes never slows down, moving from one problem to the next with an irrepressible smile. The workshop is a few hundred square feet sub-let from a roboticist friend in a warehouse one floor above a hassidic clothing factory near Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. "I'm starting from nothing, I mean nothing," says Suppes, "There's no reason I should be doing this. It's ridiculous on all levels." What he's doing is building a Bussard Polywell fusion reactor.

That's from the beginning of a fascinating Gizmodo article on one Mark Suppes and his fusion efforts. Worth your time. The BBC also did a piece on him.

I tell you this because he may solve the world's energy needs, he may fail, and he might succeed but create a new sun somewhere in the vicinity of New York City. Which might be bad. Irregardless, we as a country need more of this behavior. Less people arguing whether or not evolution exists, questioning the scientific consensus on global warming, or even just questioning basic science itself, and more people saying "Fuck it, I'm building a sun in the den. Honey, hold my calls."

Let's get going on the future, people.

Your future crisis

With the United States about to pass some week kneed financial reform full of loopholes, the rest of the world has come together at the G-20 Summit to tell the world they are prepared to do little else, that everyone agrees that it's time to focus on imaginary problems, and that they are fully committed to not making the financial system less dangerous in any way. Bully for them. 10% unemployment in the US and larger unemployment figures in Europe is just something people should learn to get used to.

But as we see what the world's elites has learned from this crisis (nothing) and their plans going forward (do nothing), one wonders what our financial betters have learned. Other than they can do whatever they want with no consequences, that after they set everyone's money on fire they still have immense credibility and influence with lawmakers, and that no matter what they do and how reckless it is governments will line up to bail out their failures. But we knew that already. They knew that already. I'm talking about what they've learned from this recent crisis to help them make more money creating the next crisis. And just what will that next crisis be?

Simon Johnson thinks he's figured it out: Debt-to-GDP ratios in the developed world. He cites a quote from a high up Goldman Sachs muckity muck. How will they leverage Debt-to-GDP in the emerging world? Through lending to emerging markets and leveraging the fact that debt-to-GDP in the developing world is about half what it is in the developed world. Johnson goes to the trouble of listing why this new plan is dangerous, the problems in their thinking, and the way it will inevitably fail, this time taking down emerging countries with it, but he ties it around the question: What is Goldman Sachs thinking?

I think I have it figured out:


I think that's pretty much the extent of their thinking, even down to the pirate costumes. Maybe there's a variation on this where Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein imagines himself as a cartoon cow with wobbly legs, playing a ukulele in a grass skirt, but I think I pegged it pretty close.

TB Science Corner

via the Big Picture blog's Saturn: That Ringed Bitch series.

Because I'm tired of cataloging the ways in which our society moves backwards.

Third time’s a charm, Congress passes science act
Ho ho, finally Democrats figured out a way so that Congress could vote on a bill that creates growth, creates jobs, and provides much needed funding to science and technology, but also not prove they're all sex obsessed fiends who love government employees looking at porn. Because when it comes down to voting for scientific advancement in this country or voting against scientific advancement because some cheap procedural trick made you susceptible to "pro-porn" attack ads, our elected betters will always choose to hamper our future. At least they found a way around it... this time.

BP OK's test of Costner's oil-cleaning device
Yes, the celebrities will finally be allowed to save us. Costner's machine, which separates 97% of oil from water and can do 210,000 gallons of water a day, will be allowed to be tested in the Gulf. I think this marks the first cleanup attempt that will not involve spraying the most harmful chemicals, or improperly setting up booms, or pumping mud, trash, and golf balls into the sea in order to slow the oil. If you're counting at home, that makes it one outside idea that's being listened to. And why not, it looks like BP has a handle on this whole thing.

Hubble Watches as Star Slowly Devours Planet
And you thought the Hubble was just for science. No, it's for perversely watching the death of planets many, many light years away. In this case a sun slowly devouring a planet over 10 million years. Of course we won't get 10 million years of "Ahh, ahhh, we put our tip in the sun again", it'll just a few seconds of "Hey.... did the sun just get fifty billion times larger and start expanding this way at a rapid rate? No, I'm not fucking around." and then we'll be immediately incinerated. That is if our society can last for another couple billion years. It's not looking good. One century at a time, civilization, one century at a time.

What is the Air Force doing with space?
Without even reading the article, I'm going to guess... militarize it. Yup, *pumps fist* I was right. But the Bad Astronomy blog looks into the Air Force and the mysterious Mach 6 hitting X-51A and the even more mysterious X-37 B "Flying Twinkie". At least one of the sectors of government is committed to making the ship technology of Battlestar Galactica a reality.

Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 km
Good news if you're a photon and you need to get information to another photon 16km away. You can now teleport it instead of calling or e-mailing it. I going to take a wild stab at this and say we're literally a few weeks away from Verizon and Comcast handing out Quantum Entangled Particle cards for our cell phones and internet connections so we can text and download porn instantaneously.The future is here, people.

Video of the day

Mother. Fucking. Hoverboards.



Do you even need an explanation?

It is a copy of the hoverboard from the movie Back to the Future II. Integrated into the board and the plinth is an electromagnetic system which levitates the board. A laser system stabilises the object in the air.

In the making of this work, this artist was thinking about different ways of presenting sculpture.

In fact it's a reflexion on the multiple possibilities of how to give a sculpture full spatial autonomy.

more infos : nilsguadagnin.com - whiteoffice.org

Your daily dose of brightness and sunshine

With the 'top kill' efforts seeming to show some progress, people are starting to be optimistic about finally stopping all that oil from gushing into the Gulf. But make no mistake, the 'top kill' procedure is a measure of last resort, before they basically have to throw their hands up and say "any crackpots have some off the wall ideas out there"? And then we start talking about detonating nukes underwater. Seriously.

But if this doesn't work? Well... all the clamoring for President Obama to send in the military, take over, and so on isn't going to help. David Roberts of Grist explains.

The BP Gulf oil disaster is reaching an interesting phase. People's gut instinct, their first reaction, is to find someone to blame. They blame BP for negligence; the Obama administration for its tepid response; the Bush administration for lax regulatory enforcement. People have been casting about for some way to compartmentalize this thing, some way to cast it as an anomaly, an "accident," the kind of screwup that can be meliorated or avoided in the future.

We are, however, drifting toward a whole different kind of place. [Today] BP is attempting the "top kill" maneuver -- pumping mud into the well. If it doesn't work, well ... then what? Junk shot? Top hat? Loony stuff like nukes? Relief wells will take months to drill and no one's sure if they'll work to relieve pressure. It's entirely possible, even likely, that we're going to be stuck helplessly watching as this well spews oil into the Gulf for years. Even if the flow were stopped tomorrow, the damage to marshes, coral, and marine life is done. The Gulf of Mexico will become an ecological and economic dead zone. There's no real way to undo it, no matter who's in charge.

I'm curious to see how the public's mood shifts once it becomes clear that we are powerless in the face of this thing. What if there's just nothing we can do?

We'll know if there's nothing we can do by tomorrow. Feel better yet?

He goes on to make points about how we do this kind of irreversible damage to the Earth every day in the search and excavation of energy and wonders that if having that sort of catastrophe shoved in our face like this will make us reconsider how we go about things. Easy answer: we're Americans, it won't.

But there we are. The damage has been done already and all the yelling about Superman, big business, or the Government to come in and do something is moot. The 'top kill' move is pretty much it before we have to resign ourselves to a minimum of months of this well throwing oil into the ocean. So then what? Do we just keep bitching, like we always do, and keep trying to retroactively blame someone and take measures to close the barn door after the horses got out... and spilled oil everywhere? Or do me actually try to move forward as a society and actually, for once, try to make a commitment to transforming our energy needs into methods that don't contain a potential "colossal environmental disaster" scenario? I think you know what I think we'll do. But, I do like to be surprised.

Terrorists will no longer be able to hide in Azeroth

We all love DARPA, the Defense science madhouse that has given us the internet, GPS, carnivorous flesh eating robots, and robot cars that can drive themselves through the desert and will rule any Mad Max post-apocalyptic type situation. Soon they'll probably have a self driving car that eats human flesh. They do wonderful work.

But, one might ask, is the intelligence community's equivalent? I know the government is coming up with better ways for robots to dominate and subjugate me, but how are they coming up with better ways to spy on me and, ostensibly, foreign enemies, but mostly me? Ask no further, IARPA has been created.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, said that IARPA's task was to be "an intellectual ferment or primordial stew out of which great things will come." He wants Porter's researchers to "generate revolutionary capabilities that will surprise our adversaries and help us avoid being surprised."
...
One program, Reynard, for example, has signed contracts with five research teams, mostly from major universities, to develop systems to observe "avatars" — animated computer images — that take part in popular "virtual world" games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft.
...
Another IARPA project, named ICARUS, will attempt to model the way human brains make sense of a bewildering mass of data. The ALADDIN project is meant to pick out key items in the tsunami of video images that spy agencies collect. A program called TRUST will try to help intelligence officers determine who can be trusted and who can't.

There's also ACRONYM, a top secret program to help wean the government off it's addiction to creating arcane word grouping to create a third rate acronym that explains what the project does.

But that's it? A program to analyze whether terrorists are chaining enchantments for peak mana burn in their spell casting and better lie detectors? No mind reading robots? How about a way for Dick Cheney to completely subvert the legal process in order to listen in on people's phone calls? Creating a super-soldier that not only knows Farsi, but isn't gay so the army doesn't have to discharge them? A Aston-Martin with missiles behind the headlights for spies to drive? C'mon, give us something cool to work with, here. DARPA is going to have engineered giant bugs and fusion power suits so humans can fight the giant bugs any week now.

It's OK, you're a new organization and you're just feeling things out. But pick it up, if you aren't coming up with things that bewilder and terrify the populace and have a practical home or consumer electronics application, we'll be very disappointed. Robots that feast on humans and you counter with World of Warcraft? For shame.

Video of the day

Benoit Masse's Are You Ready For the 21st Century? a history lesson/future prediction about where we're headed. The 21st Century might be a little too much for America. Some of us want to get there while some of us want to drag us back to the 19th Century. Let's just split the difference and say we're emotionally ready for the 20th Century. Maybe.

Life In Our New Socialist Hell

I suppose I should have been worried when the screaming ghost of Karl Marx screamed across the sky, laughing and on fire. This was just before the health care vote, I noted, should we be worried about what comes after? As we now know the answer was yes.

Soon after the last vote was cast the earth cracked open, flames shot out from below, and all manner of imps and demons began to crawl out of hell to torment and bedevil humanity. We had not heeded the warnings of the GOP, we foolishly wished for better health care, and in getting that better health care we ripped a hole in reality and freed the devil from his underground prison. Now winged serpents patrol the skies, there's an increase in the amount of pale horsemen sightings, gags of imps are ripping into and devouring any human they see, large groups of hell hounds control most major cities, and we all saw what happened to Indianapolis. The screams... I'd say "My God" but it's clear God has abandoned us, no longer choosing to bless our country, it is clear He has moved on to bless another country that has not fallen victim to the ills of socialist health care. He will tell them of His investing secrets and free market ideals and they will prosper.

On the other hand, dependents can now stay on their parents plans until they're 26 and the drug price donut hole for seniors was closed, so that's nice. Well, it would be if there were any seniors still alive. As predicted, the death panels came for the elders at midnight. Oh these were not jackbooted police forces taking everyone over 70 to judges at a tribunal. No, the elderly simply simultaneously dropped dead as the clock changed over from 11:59. In a press statement later released through the now state run news, Emperor Obama noted that nanobots had taken care of our elderly problem and showed a chart listing the savings that were achieved from such a cost effective measure. The death panels were nanobots, Sarah Palin didn't see that coming.

On the bright side, with every old person dead and demons eating those who venture out into the streets of major cities, jobs are plentiful and mandatory. So now I must go before the work whistle blows and afternoon exercises start under the large picture of a smiling Obama that has been placed on the largest wall of the boot factory the government jobs service placed me at. We have to fill an order of 500,000 boots for trade with Venezuela.

As a man shrieks at me over a loudspeaker to make boots faster lest my family be killed for my insufficient commitment to the cause, large wyverns and demons lay waste to our infrastructure, and Father Obama names himself Life Ruler of the Sovereign Socialist States of Obamerica, I ask you: was health care really worth it? It completely ruined this country, just like the Republicans said. OK, they didn't say anything about the shrieking monster that spits acid and tries to mate with all vehicles, but I think they strongly implied that's what would crawl out of hell if we ignored their warnings and broke the seventh seal by refusing to allow insurance companies to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.

I just thank God the public option was removed from the bill. Who knows what we might have unleashed had that passed.

Important news of vast scientific importance

Sean and I both know that this is the web's foremost repository for scientific achievement. Were there to be a cure for cancer or cheap and abundant jetpacks released, America would come running here for the info.

So that it why we feel it is our God given duty to inform you of the greatest scientific achievement made by man or ape; the heralding sign that the future is finally here; the proof that maybe Robert Zemeckis actually has a working time machine and used it to research his movies: MOTHERFUCKING HOVERBOARDS!


I know you're thinking to yourself "This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I masturbated to envisioned the events of Back to the Future II happening" with a little "Isn't that just a small personal hovercraft and not a true levitating skateboard?" To that I again say: shut up, MOTHERFUCKING HOVERBOARDS!

Sorry that your precious repulsor lift technology wasn't invented and miniaturized into skateboard form quick enough for you your majesty. Looks like you'll just have to make due with a goddamn personal conveyance that glide on air. And might I add that unlike BTTF2 hoverboards, these hoverboards look like they might be able to go on water. They don't need POWAH! Plus do you think you could ever pull off a serious businessman look on a PitBull hoverboard or a pink Mattel hoverboard like you can on the Hammacher Schlemmer hoverboard? No, you'd look like an ass. A ridiculous ass.

So get over yourself, hoverboards are here. And for the price of $17,000 -- cheap if you ask me -- you can own an honest to God part of the goddamn future.

Fuck you, consumers!

With the country solely focused on bullshit political theatre and ginning up it's Finland hate as a test run for hopefully a nationalist anti-Canada fervor on Sunday, some would say now is the best time to drop a disappointing bombshell about the upcoming massively disappointing financial legislation. So, take it away Barry!

The Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system.

In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are opening the door to compromise with lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy, according to congressional and some administration sources.

President Obama's economic team is now open to housing the consumer regulator inside another agency, such as the Treasury Department, though they still prefer a stand-alone agency.
...
The administration may also have to compromise on Obama's recent proposal for a rule to limit risky activities at banks by prohibiting them from engaging in many kinds of speculative investments.

What better way to have a agency that protects consumers than by housing it inside government organizations that unwaveringly cater to the interests of the financial sector and have made it a point of pride to ignore consumer interests? But, the Obama Administration still really, really wants a CFPA, they just aren't willing to spend one drop of sweat fighting for it and jettison it the first second some "lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy" (read: wholly owned subsidiaries of the financial industry) speaks up. If I recall correctly, that's the same strategy they had for the public option, which they totally still support. How'd that work out?

What's that you have to say about the CFPA, smart lady Elizabeth Warren?

"The CFPA is the heart of what makes regulatory reform work... We just can't pass a regulatory reform bill that acquiesces to the industry on every front... It's not ok to weaken the agency so much that, while everyone can vote yes and pretend to support consumers' right to a fair deal, nothing really changes."

Sorry, wasn't paying attention. Could you repeat that? Ahh, it probably wasn't important anyway.

Nice to see that they're also willing to compromise on Obama's plan to limit banks from acting as gambling casino type establishments. What did that plan last, a week?

I just think it's good to see that despite pulling down the world economy on top of itself in a orgy of bad decisions, then having to be kept from total eradication through government intervention with trillions of taxpayer dollars, and entirely jettisoning their credibility as experts or as people who aren't retarded, that the financial sector and banks can still lead our government around by the nose and get what it wants from our elected betters.

I'm sure listening to the idiots that caused this mess by weakening and cheapening every attempt made to regulate and improve the status quo while deciding to pussy out on actually protecting the people that just were simultaneously economically ruined by the financial sector and then had to bail them out is a smart way forward. I'm sure that nothing bad will ever come of it.

Years from now we'll look back, bedecked in our tattered rags, pausing for a moment in repose while blood is cleaned from the abandoned spillway where we've all gathered to watch the bloodsport that entertains us in the post-apocalyptic nightmare of a future we inhabit, and we'll say "Boy, I'm glad we listened to the people that shitted the economy." And then the alarms will sound and we'll all have to run, because the underground hobos will have risen from the sewers to make an attack on our grain silo. Thanks, Democrats!

Video of the day

Peter Sinclair tries to explain to you just how electric cars work, why they work, why they're cleaner, and how they improve the electrical grid.

Plus: lamentations on the loss of flying cars, creepy puppets, and because you demanded it: Finnish subtitles.

The future of reading

When the iPad was revealed there was a lot of snickering. Tampon jokes were made and the web cried out in furious anger: "This is it?". It just looked like a big iPhone, but without calling capability. "Ha ha, Steve Jobs," the internet said, "We've got you this time." And thus began a mass posting of iPad picture into cat photos with the words "FAIL" written at the bottom.

But perhaps the full range of capabilities was not made clear to us. Or perhaps it was and we were just too busy with the tampon jokes? Isn't that always the way? In this presentation from Wired magazine, they show us what exactly magazine publishing on the iPad could mean... if you're a good magazine that's willing to put in the time and effort into making sure the icy collapse of the publishing industry doesn't drag you down with it.



Intriguing. Maybe that's worth... $500-$800 dollars? Perhaps I may need to divert some cash from the TB Weapons Stockpiling and Impregnable Fort Construction Fund.

FUCK and YES

I don't want to alarm you, but the following news might just blow out the back of your minds with sheer awesomeness. Blade Runner is about to become reality. No, flying cars are not on the horizon. Replicants~! And then soon attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. DARPA is starting up the Nexus-6 project.

The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

They'll also come with genetically encoded loyalty, are traceable, and genetically designed kill switches should they go all "Roy Batty". Sure, this sounds vaguely impossible and kind of nefarious/dangerous should it ever occur. On the other hand: Blade Runner was awesome.

Soon we will have our genetic military underclass, then they will grow too smart and too strong too fast, they will attempt to overthrow us, they will have to be made illegal and be "retired", we'll need specialized police will be needed to do the job, and there will be all sorts of confusing moral quandaries about what it means to be human. Sure, "routine retirement of a replicant" may sound all right, but it doesn't make you feel any better about shooting a skin job in the back.

So thank you DARPA for attempting to bring beloved sci-fi classics to horrifying life. You churn out a hoverboard or a lightsaber for me and we'll just forget about the chilling ethical quandaries of spending millions to weaponize Philip K. Dick novels and Ridley Scott movies. I just hope no one has shown them Alien.

Staggering achievements in the massive technological advancement of the human race

Ladies and gentlemen, we sit on the precipice of a new world, a new future. The old way of doing things is dead and buried and we will now have to come to grips with The New Way and Our New Life. You can take your rocket boots and your HDTV's and your medical achievements and all your other shallow means of measuring societal advancement and I'll use mine: we're getting new ketchup packets!!!!!


That's right, no longer will we have to tear small corners off ketchup packets with our hands, or more likely our mouths, in order to gain the sweet tomatoey sustenance inside that we need to slather onto our fries of freedom, our burgers, and the collection of raccoon assholes, horse lips, and excess beaver tails that make up our hot dogs. You can dip or squeeze these new kind, people. DIP OR SQUEEZE!! This might even herald the end of the pump ketchup and paper cup station. Must I explain what this means to this country, nay the world, or are your minds already blown out the back of your asses?

Well then you better sit down Sally, because the world's bold leap into the 23rd century isn't done yet. Might you be interested in... unbreakable pint glasses?


No longer will a dropped beer necessarily going to result in the loss of the entire contents of the glass. No longer will you be forced to profusely apologize to the poor barmaid who has to clean up after your staggeringly intoxicated ass as you vainly try to apologize to her and lament the fact that if it weren't for this incident, you totally would have had a shot with her. On the negative side: pint glasses as weapons are out. But isn't this the more Utopian ideal of a less violent, or at least more creatively violent, society that we all aspire to? I think it is.

Take heed, dear readers: the future is here. You can dip french fries into your ketchup packets while dropping as many pints of beer as you like. I just hope you're ready for our new way of life.

Chart of the day

From the New York Times. Now I'm sure the wags will all come out and decry the hypocrisy in barring gays from marrying while allowing first cousins to get hitched, but I think they're missing the point: If you live in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont or Jersey you can get gay married to that cousin you're so attracted to. That's progress.

Now if only this country could get some traction on polygamist gay cousin marriages we wouldn't even need rocket boots to claim we were living out humanity's dreams of a highly advanced future.

Just a reminder...

So help you God if you say "Two thousand and ten". I now return to your day of clutching your head and regretting everything about last night.

P.S. It's 2010... WHERE THE FUCK IS MY FLYING CAR?!? WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY HOVERBOOTS?!?

Important climate question

Hey, I'm so science weather expert, but I was wondering something. Is it a good thing or a bad thing when the temperature goals that scientists are trying to achieve with the recent round of climate talks in Copenhagen are still filled with scenarios like this:

2C – The temperature limit the scientists want

The heatwaves seen in Europe during 2003, which killed tens of thousands of people, will come back every year with a 2C global average temperature rise. Southern England will regularly see temperatures around 40C in summer. The Amazon turns into desert and grasslands, while increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere make the world's oceans too acidic for remaining coral reefs and thousands of other marine lifeforms. More than 60 million people, mainly in Africa, would be exposed to higher rates of malaria. Agricultural yields around the world will drop and half a billion people will be at greater risk of starvation. The West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the Greenland ice sheet melts and the world's sea level begins to rise by seven metres over the next few hundred years. Glaciers all over the world will recede, reducing the fresh water supply for major cities including Los Angeles. Coastal flooding affects more than 10 million extra people. A third of the world's species will become extinct as the 2C rise changes their habitats too quickly for them to adapt.

Might I remind you that it's this 2C temperature rise that our own government and most every other government on earth is dramatically failing to meet or even take any kind of real action on. No, it's more and more likely that we'll see 3C or even 4C temperature rises over the next few decades. What do those scenarios look like?

4C - Possible with an extremely weak deal

You mistakenly leave your hermetically sealed climate bunker with your family in some fit of malnutrition induced insanity. The sun instantaneously cooks the brain of your wife inside her skull, lobotomizing her. As you look up to the sky and plead for mercy from a God that either never existed or has long since stopped caring about humanity, your eyeballs char and explode as your children are swept away by the unruly tide that laps at the edge of your oceanfront property in Green Bay, Wisconsin. As you hear their cries and erratically attempt to grope for their flailing limbs, you start to think that maybe you shouldn't have placed so much faith in the scientific integrity of oil companies.

Man, you don't even want to see the 5C scenarios. Suffice to say "Mesquite smoked humans" become the only remaining race and the scuba industry is the world's most dominant economic force.

But I hope you're prepared for that eventuality, because even phrases like "half a billion people will be at greater risk of starvation", predictions of persistent coastal flooding, dramatically increased malaria rates, and the extinction of 1/3 of all species can't even persuade leaders to act. So start using BBQ sauce as a sunscreen, invest heavily in scuba manufacturing and you'll be sitting pretty for the future. It's really the only option.

America reflects on the last decade

As we look back on the last decade and see all that has happened, America is of one mind: let's all agree to pretend we've all just woke up from a ten year coma and don't understand why Bubba got replaced by a black guy. Either that or we're just going to have to start drinking heavily until the special happy Kentucky juice washes the pain from our minds and transfers it to our livers. In fact, if someone doesn't openly weep at the mention of the last decade they are to be deemed Not Trustworthy and A Suspicious Person. Let this poll explain.

Time magazine called the past decade (2000-2009) the "Decade from Hell." Respondents in the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll don't go that far, but it's clear that many didn't think it was a good decade.

According to the poll, a combined 58% said the decade was either "awful" or "not so good," 29% said it was fair, and just 12% said it was either "good" or "great."
...
What's more, the poll shows that 48% believe the U.S. gained ground over the past decade on science and technology, and 40% say it gained ground on race relations.

But 37% said it lost ground on the environment, 46% said it lost ground on health and well being, 50% said it lost ground on peace and national security, 54% said lost ground on the nation's sense of unity, 55% said it lost ground in treating others with respect, 66% said it lost ground on moral values, and a whopping 74% said it lost ground on economic prosperity.

Yes, as long as we're counting science as a form of technology and not knowledge. Because if we're talking about the ability to find porn, stalk ex-classmates, embarrass oneself on the web, and find porn, then science has brought us much this decade. If we're talking about acceptance of scientific thought like, say, evolution or climate change... it's best not to mention the last 10 years. Still, on pretty much every other issue people look at the "progress", shudders to themselves, and then produces a flask from an inside jacket pocket, unscrews it slowly, and mournfully takes a sip. Who exactly are the 26% that doesn't think we lost ground economically? Have they already blocked out this decade? Perhaps we need to learn from their example.

Unfortunately the last decade was so bad it will reach it's icy black hand out from beyond the grave to strangle the early years of the new decade. But at least this will be good for 2020 polls, as there's no way anyone can possibly view the next 10 years as a regression unless a meteor hits and the humans that survive have to duke it out with rats and lizards for global evolutionary supremacy. Plus the last few years of misery combined with the aught year prefixes will make us some of the crotchetiest old men this world has ever seen. We'll be able to bring a grandchild to his knees with tales of the global financial apocalypse, Bush, and life without hover sexbots. So we'll have that to look forward to, if we survive. Which is nice.