How do you feel about the species being doomed? — Bitter Crank
Do you think that our species will be extinguished in the next 500 years? — Bitter Crank
For thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. T. S. Elliot The Hollow Men
Not with a bang but a whimper
One thing that nobody seems to comment on - well nobody outside 'alternative' circles, like Naomi Klein, and others of that ilk - is that capitalist economics, and the banking industry, seem to assume that 'growth lines always go upward'. — Wayfarer
i cash in the equity in the property I have in the city and downsize drastically to a more self-suficient lifestyle, although I don't think it's going to be an easy thing to do. — Wayfarer
When asked if he would write these (last) lines again, Eliot responded with a 'no':
One reason is that while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant to it, it would today come to everyone's mind. Another is that he is not sure the world will end with either. People whose houses were bombed have told him they don't remember hearing anything.
BUT, we're already using more resources than Planet Earth can produce — Wayfarer
We can’t use desert sand because it’s too round, polished by the wind, and doesn’t stick together. You need rough edges, so desert sand is worthless
Good sand is getting so rare there’s an enormous amount of illegal mining in over 70 countries. In India the Sand Mafia is one of the most powerful, will kill for sand. It’s easy to steal sand and sell there.
Australia is selling sand to nations that don’t have any more (like the United Arab Emirates, who used all of their ocean sand to make artificial islands)
Sand is a big business, sales are $70 Billion a year
As an alternative to the back-to-the-land-movement, I'm planning to join the Death With Dignity, Right Now! Movement. If I'm still alive when the crunch comes, I'll deploy the double barreled shotgun and dispatch myself. — Bitter Crank
This is the way the world ends: — Bitter Crank
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. — T S Eliot
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. — T S Eliot
There was a Foreign Correspondent feature on illegal sand mining around Mumbai, for this very reason. People are routinely murdered over it. And that's sand.I read in the paper the other day that we have passed peak sand. — Bitter Crank
Anyone else worry that we may get another Solar Storm like the Carrington Event of 1859? — anonymous66
I'm just back from the funeral of an old friend though, so may be more melancholy than usual, and I'm just re-reading Eliot because the late friend was an enthusiast and so was the celebrant at his funeral. Still I'm heartened to read a line I don't remember noticing before, 'Old men ought to be explorers' Eliot writes, and:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T S Eliot — mcdoodle
I have the impression that sci-fi predictions or depictions of the future have almost always overshot the mark in a lot of ways (flying cars, usually with no discernible means of flight or propulsion, are a staple of sci-fi depictions of "the future"). The TV show Lost in Space took place in 1997, for example.Some could argue that we aren't advancing at such a pace as we were in the 19th and 20th Centuries (as the years 2001 and 2010 weren't like the one's portrayed in the famous sci-fi books). — ssu
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