To infinity, and beyond...

Onhell said:
I'll give it a shot next summer during my hopeful tour of Europe.
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And if you really want to be enthralled by it, in some parts of Scandinavia - where it remains light all day and all night - they play Cricket until the wee small hours.
 
I'm not so sure it is the Scandinavians rather than a load of UK ex-pats/workers taking advantage of the long days.
 
Raven said:
Earth is something like 12 billion people, so our planet can theoretically support more of humanity, but only in an idealistic situation, where resources are shared equally among everyone (e.g. there is enough food in production for everyone to eat comfortably with some left over, yet people still starve).
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It's not a matter of sharing, but of distributing. Few people want to keep food for themselves if they have enough while others starve. The problem is, they have no way of giving it to them. Most famines are in remote areas with little or no infrastructure, sometimes cut off by or as war zones or whatever. Afghanistan had a mass famine right when "Enduring Freedom" started, not because it doesn't have any productive fields or because the Taleban, evil as they are, rejected food shipments, but because the entire country has only two major roads, connecting only the major cities in the north and south, leaving the biggest part of the country uncovered, and thus, mostly inapproachable. In Kenya, there was a mass famine in the north a couple of years back, while the south had bursting granaries. The reason: The south, with cities like Nairobi and Mombasa, has a highly advanced infrastructure, with railroads and highways, but the north has only a few roads running through it.
So, there are two possible solutions to the famine problem: Either we support the crisis areas by trying to increase their agricultural value (since most famines are caused by droughts, which are reocurring climatical things, that is pretty pointless), or we simply build a few railroads through the country (convenient, little environmental damage if done right, fresh food everywhere).
 
That sounds so simple, yet if it really were that simple why don't countries like Kenya or Afghanistan do just that? Build railways? Is it because it's too expensive? Or are they allocating their money inefficiently?
 
Maybe because of budget routing to restoring only most of the proximal areas? But as far as I'm concerned, people on all corners of a country should always have access to fresh food and needs, it's a right.
In Afghanistan I'm betting that the budget isn't that high and can only be allocated as much as its limit, like rebuilding Kabul's damage and similar stuff. Foreign aid won't be enough, it should be the government's responsibility to care for the people in all ways possible to better lives.
 
Natalie said:
That sounds so simple, yet if it really were that simple why don't countries like Kenya or Afghanistan do just that? Build railways? Is it because it's too expensive? Or are they allocating their money inefficiently?
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In Afghanistan, it hasn't been done because it lacked the cash during the time it could have been done (and there was no need for it back then... no famines until the 2000s), and afterwards, the political situation didn't allow it. In short: There was war in the entire country between 1979 and now.
Between 1996 and 2001, the Taleban had the necessary political stability for such a project, but they were geopolitical pariahs. In poor countries like Afghanistan, you lack both the money and the expertise for this kind of thing. That means you need to get engineers, architects and whatnot from abroad; your own country can only provide the construction workforce itself. Even the two major roads I had previously mentioned were not built by Afghani investors; the northern one was built by Soviets, the southern one by Westerners/Americans (which helped tearing the country in two, incidentally).
In Kenya, my assumption is that so far, has been lacking the expertise, the cash and the credibility for foreign investors (African governments have bad publicity due to corruption). I think I read somewhere that recently, a German investor has actually begun funding a railway from southern Sudan to the Kenyan coast, though.
 
I don't want to talk about a "suspected" colonisation of Mars...

We all know that the Man always want more & more...

But I am sure of one things : there are other "lifes" on others planets. We're not alone. It's nos possible. These "lifes" are just different from us. The theory is simple : if we were able to appear on this Earth, so different "lifes" were able to appear on others planets ! Each lifes had to adapt to her life conditions.

But it would be also amazing to see people like us living on another planet. It won't scare me, no ! It just would please me, at least.
 
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