The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Party Room => Topic started by: Petrie on September 26, 2004, 09:54:00 PM
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It's Malte's 20th hatchday/fursday/birthday....whatever you call it. :P
I hope you got my e-mail I specially sent to you (in German). :D
Enjoy your special day!!!
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Hi Arvens!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your congratulations and your birhtday email!
And it really comes like a hatch-/birthdaypresent that you brought up the www.landbeforetime.org webpage again I have been mourning for ever since it was closed. Thank you so much! :D :D :D
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Happy birthday Malte =p you picked a nice day to hatch :D
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Thank you! A nice day to hatch? Do you associate anything with this day NewOrder? Your "hatchday" is May 19th, isn't it?
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Well yeah.. but today is my aunt's birthday as well, and my parents marriedge aniversery =P So it's a good day for me (=
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Curious minds want to know how your day went Malte. :D
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Hi!
The day was quite nice! In the afternoon I celebrated with my Mum, my sister, a grandma of mine, and an uncle. And in the evening we went to an Italian restaurant. The celebration though is not yet over. Next friday there will be a celebration with some more dear relatives of mine, and as my Dad is currently on vacation in Turkey he won't be back before October 4th, and then we're gonna celebrate a "double birthday", as he left on the day of his own birthday (September 13th) so we haven't yet celebrated his birthday either.
My mum made a "Schwarzw‰lder Kirschtorte", a gateau with cherries and chocolate which I really like.
I even got a packet from Australia, from a very good friend of mine, the first LBT fan I ever got to know. She recorded the whole BBC series "Walking with dinosaurs" and sent me the video. It's just awesome! Not only the series itself is most fascinating, but even the way the narrator of the documentation speaks. For the narrator speaks a very British English that differs from my own rather American way of speaking.
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Sweet. :) Isn't that just great that the package arrived on the day of your party? :D
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Actually it arrived a bit earlier, but I handed the packet to my Mum to keep it until then. Thus I had one more thing to look forward to :D
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I've been wanting to ask if you ever retook your driver's test? I think you took it last year but didn't pass the first time. Do you plan to do so?
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Didn't I mention? Gee, I really must've forgotten then! I had failed during the first test as you said (but it was THIS year in January), but I passed in the second attempt on February 2nd.
However, with my drivers license being probably one of the most expensive official documents in Germany's post war history (slightly exaggerated), myself getting easily nervous when I feel I'm an obstacle to others in the traffic (even if it simply can't be avoided), me being always worried to injure somebody, and me being upset about the damage car exhalations cause to the environment, I really dislike driving.
PS: I forgot to mention that there is a very good network of public transportation here where I live. This is something I might really miss in case I decide to go somewhere else some day.
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It took me a while to get over the obstacle of driving alone, but I always had to drive to my job when I was back home, so I got over it really quick. Public transportation doesn't come anywhere near my home. <_<
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I really missed public transportation during my students exchange. There was actually no spot in Red Lake Falls one could not quickly reach by foot (and the town was a lovely place for walking), but not too many people did. It was more difficult to reach the next larger towns. There was no way other than by car to get there. The distances were larger between the towns than they are over here. So much more space, but with fewer large towns that would provide a public transportation system with enough users.
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^ "enough users" is why usually many cities don't have them is because just about everyone has cars. If it's a big city, or if there's a University nearby are the places you'll find public transportation.
My hometown and my college town both have public bus systems. My college town actually has it for all the freshman and sophomores that can't bring cars onto campus. I think that's they're main form of business...not so much the city folk.
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I have a small bus system in my town... but it's allways late and it's a bit expensive, but the train systems.. are great, I can catch one to the main big cities around here just after school, but the transportation to other places inside the city have to be by foot or car
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An interesting question popped up in my geography class today: what would happen when we run out of oil?
Unfortunately, here in the U.S. we'd be kind of stuck in one place without any immediate replacement transportation system as none of the big cities are even close to each other. :o That's creepy being kind of marooned in one spot the rest of your life. I mean you could walk, but it would take much too long to simply get to a grocery store.
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I don't think it would be such a big problem... most of our buses run on electric fule engines.. hybrid cars are selling a bit more.. I guess other european countries are even better than we are, I guess the amricans have to start using renewable energies, in my opinion it's just stuberness cause everybody knows those enrgies can replace oil and other fossil fuels very well.. and they should invest in hydrogin fuel cars.. and other stuff.. but maybe their to greedy (no offense Arvens.. I'm kind just talking about Bush and all his palls) to see that.. anyway, it's up to the US to make a change, but they don't seem to bother about that.. at least untill it's too late \:
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The unfortunate truth is, that this question is not some remote Holywood scenario, but is VERY LIKELY to take place during our lifetime. Many experts believe that the output of oil will reach its climax around 2015 and that from there on it will run out.
Oil consume is soaring with more and more cars around the world (for example China begins to get motorized now) and many fat, heavy cars burning an unnecessary large amount of gas.
There are large amounts of a kind of sand mixed with oil to be found in Canada. I think that stuff is called tarsand or something like that, and the amount of oil that could be gained from it is about twice as much as there ever was to be found on the Arabian peninsula. However, no way has been found so far to separate the sand from the oil.
They are also thinking about developing Hydrogen fuels which would not only be much cheaper, but also wouldn't harm the environment and would never run out, but this so far is utopism.
The thing is that the effects of oil running out would go much further than us having to take a little walk to a grocery store Arvens. Once you walked there you'd find that there are no groceries in the store, because without fuel no trucks could bring the food to the shop! The whole economic system is today based on oil, and the limitation of our private driving is sure the least terrible effect that would be caused from oil being gone.
Are you aware that oil is essential for the production of plastic? Now count the products we use in our daily live that don't contain any plastic. Not too much, isn't it? What if the production of plastic suddenly became impossible due to lack of oil?
Apart from these economic effects, are you aware of the tremendous importance of oil in the world policy? I'm not one of those who say that oil was the one and only reason for the war on Iraq, but I do not doubt that it was one of the main points. There are people who dread the idea of the invention of a fuel that could replace oil, because the huge political power of these people is based on oil.
Why do you think the governments of our countries frequently "court" the rulers of Saudi Arabia, one of the crulest and corruptest regimes in the world?
Because our governments know who dependant we are on their oil, and so long they keep the oil flowing, who cares about young girls being publicly beheaded in Saudi Arabia's capital Riad for being raped by a man who was not her husband? Sorry for this directness, but that's unfortunately the pervert way it is!
I am not one of those people who relish in announcing doomsday. In fact I am convinced that there are ways to cope with the upcoming problem. The question is if humans will be smart and in some cases selfless enough to go these ways.
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No offense taken to anything you guys say about the US...I know we're plenty greedy.
The reason we have not invested more time into hydrogen technology as much as we should be doing is because nobody wants to pay for it. You would need hydrogen refuelling stations across that nation and that would be a big expense. Also, cars would have to be built differently...people would have to buy new cars to run on the hydrogen fuel. That's why nobody in the US is really pushing for it...they don't want to spend the money on it so long as the price of oil is at reasonable levels. Only when the oil prices hits about $5 a gallon over here (you two are probably laughing over there because that's pretty normal for European pricing) will companies start looking into it. Shame shame shame on us. :angry: We have the technology to create something much better, much cleaner, and much more sustainable, but yet we won't pay for it.
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It is not like this could be blamed on America like a few people do in order to feel like they were so much better (Germany by the way is a major exporteur of instruments of torture and is deep into weapon businesses with Saudi Arabia as well). And it is (according to polls) definitely not like Americans didn't care about nature and wouldn't even be willing to earn less money to preserve it. The problem is, the tremendous impact businesses have on policy meanwhile. I'm afraid that big business men who finance electional campaigns can take an enormous influence on political decisions such as the Kyoto protocol, that had already been signed by Bill Clinton, but was revoked by George W. Bush's government. It would be very "innocent-minded" not to think that the money of the owners of businesses, who now may continue to blow their toxics up into the air like they did before, influenced this decision.
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Well I thank you for taking some of that off of our shoulders, but we're stubborn, no two guesses about it. If it isn't economically feasable, we won't do anything about it until we're forced to. <_<
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Perhaps so. What really worries me is the increasing influence of big businesses. I'm not a communist (at the current state of mankind the ideals of communism simply can't work), but I'm very distrustful about CEOs and the influence they take on politics and even our daily lives.
During my students exchange to America the matter of taxation of the wealthy was discussed. And the statement given by our teacher (a very good pedagogue and nice man by the way), was that actually the only just system of taxation was if everone had to pay the same percentage of his income. Back then I didn't think too much about it and I didn't contradict. Today I would.
If one considers the fact that meanwhile some CEOs earn more than 400 times (!) as much as their blue-collar workers I really think that something is awfully wrong. Sure, these people do have a great responsibility and ought to get a very good pay for it. But firstly NOBODY needs to earn 400 times as much as an average worker, and secondly I find that many of the CEOs do not show the responsibility they are paid for. If well working factories are closed because in a country with less rights for the workers it would earn the business $120 million a year rather than $100 million a year this is irresponsible!
And despite of the harm it does to the countries many of such businesses receive huge funds of taxmoney which they firstly don't need while their businesses flourish, and which they secondly don't use to do something for the country (creating jobs) in return, because workers elsewhere are so much cheaper. And while rich people get ever richer and poor people ever poorer, why is it that it is mainly the rich who benefit from most of the recent taxcuts?
All this really drives me mad :angry:
It does not happen only in America. Right now "Karstadt" a large German department store business is about to downsize thousands of workers. The CEO who got the business into that situation by making wrong decisions got a severance pay of Ä 10 million (while his previous pay would do already to guarantee him a workless life in luxury)! What for did he get it?
I'm sure that if one asked the people only a tiny majority (consisting of a few CEOs) would say that he deserved the money. So why does he get it?
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Certainly not that much! :angry: Certainly not any!
Recently we've started cracking down and despising those in high positions for swindling - Enron - Martha Stewart, it's just so corrupt at the top....really....