From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 3:07 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction >1. Humans activites are changing the Earth - this is a fact. No contest here. But whether that change is "good" or "bad" is a matter of human interpretation. I balk at the attitude that human beings are bad for the environment. We are a product of that environment, and whatever we do, no matter how "artificial" or "unnatural" we may think or say it is, is still a product of nature. >2. Yes, many of these activities are humanity's method of natural competition - simple, justified requirements for our survival as a species. Example - modification of land and deference to domesticated stocks for argicultural purposes. < >3. Many other human activities are concious decisions or allowances on the part of society, driven by economic concerns instead of natural selection. Example - our failure to seriously develop renewable and/or cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels.< Actually, we have numerous alternative sources of fuel and power already developed or in the works. Fusion reactors, fuel cells, solar panels, MHD trubines, alcohol engines — we could run the planet on hydrogen. We also have established petroleum interests with tremendous economic inertia propelling them into the next century. These behemoths depend on the tenuous flow of a non-renewable resource, however, and the introduction of the above technologies would ruin them and much of the global economy if introduced too quickly and without adequate preparation. Few environmentalists take these factors into consideration while lobbying for regulative legislation, and they destroy a lot of peoples' lives and livelihoods in the process. This is something I cannot condone, even though I agree there is a need to develop conservationist attitudes among the public and industries. I therefore turn to commerce as an equitable solution. Hand certain areas of conservation over to commercial interests and they will protect their charge in order to realize a continuous profit. (The ultimate goal of a corporation, like a living being, is to ensure its continued survival. I've never heard of organisms that glut until they die.) Develop incentives for companies to not only act responsibly, but to promote environmental responsibility among their employess and the communities and markets in which they operate. >4. Most of these economically driven activites are irresposible in that they continue even though we now fully understand that the Earth is a closed system. There are only so many non-renewable resources to go around, and our renewable ones are poorly managed, if managed at all.< Not so. It is irresponsible politics that drives these actions. In the U.S., major violations of environmental laws are almost unheard of, but in the Third World they are commonplace. The developing nations do not wish to be marginalized, so they rush frantically to industrialize and achieve parity with their former colonial masters. They do this, as we did, by consuming resources and spitting out saleable goods and a domestic infrastructure. However, unlike industrial America, the Third World has the added complication of dealing with more advanced nations who constantly manipulate and exploit it, causing the process of industrialization and attendant environmental destruction to continue unabated. Taking the responsibility of conservation out of the hands of governments and giving it to private enterprises is a more efficient and equitable way than binding developing nations to treaties they cannot possibly honor without sacrificing their economic futures. >5. This is fact, not liberal PC retoric. The Earth's ecology, and its ability to sustain humanity, will not survive in the long term if we do not grow up and stop shitting in our own house. We should not be speculating about humans in a million years - we should be focused on the next five hundred!< Check that. Humanity may not survive. No one knows because the data we have mostly dates back to the middle of this century, before which not many people were concerned with the environment. We have no idea if the more dramatic changes in the environment are the result of human action or natural processes we've not yet had time to observe through their full cycles. It's probably both, but we cannot go blaming everything of humankind and jumping to the conclusion that we are going to self-destruct from our own intractable behavior. Change is necessary, yes, but not dehumanizing change for the sake of plants and animals that won't ever get off the planet without us (which, IMHO, is the next step in evolution after sentience). >Forgive the simplistic indulgence, but I can offer an analogy that my students really seem to understand (I teach biology in my day job ; ). Imagine the family game Jenga (tm). The whole stack of blocks represents the Earth with a healty biosphere. The top layer of blocks represents humanity in that we depend on current ecological structure to support us. The blocks pulled out as the game progresses represent things like extictions, non-renewable resources, altered ecological cycles, etc. When enough blocks are removed the tower of bricks topples and the *game is over*. If humanity continues to carelessly remove blocks the Earth's ecology *will* crash. A new one will certainly take its place...eventually, but I guarrantee humanity will no longer be a part of it.< To continue this analogy, blocks in Jenga can also be replaced to other locations in the stack. This is essentially what humanity does. We reorganize ecologies to better suite our needs. (Nature does this too, but without selfish motivation and over longer periods of time.) That does not mean our tampering will inevitable and in short order bring the stack down. It simply means the stack will be changed when we're done with it. And by judiciously placing blocks, we can keep the stack together when it might otherwise have toppled. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 1:19 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering >Bad analogy. There's no fire, and you're assuming that a caretaker should put his own needs ahead of what he's taking care of. I agree with that statement as it applies to humans on Earth, but strongly disagree that you could call anyone that does that a caretaker. Humans try to shape the enviornment around them to their own benefit, there's nothing wrong with that, but it makes us very much NOT caretakers of our planet.< Entropy is the ultimate fire. Everything dies, including planets and stars. When we finally leave this one, we'll only be able to take so much with us. And when the caretaker can fulfill his own needs as well as those of his wards, he's doing a better job than one who sacrifices everything for the benefit of the same. Altruism is nice in theory, but in practice it only benefits the receiver. >Humans are also a threat to life on Poseidon. The abos want everything to be the same and only see natural processes at work in changing the population. Humans are doing there what we did on Earth, taking what we want and getting rid of what we don't like. While that, if done carefully (VERY carefully) can make a place very nice for people to live in, it's a bit like going to a neighbor's house, throwing out half of his furniture, buying some new stuff, moving everything around, and having the kitchen redone, then settling down in his bed. He'll probably be pretty upset about the whole thing, even if you end up with a house that's better for you to live in than it was when you moved there.< Problem with this analogy is that the neighbor had the opportunity to prevent the intrusion and didn't. It's very easy to complain after the fact that said person renovated your house . . . while you sat back and watched him do it. If the abos are serious about preventing the "evil monkeys" from messing up their pad, they'd have used that nano of theirs to liquify every human on the planet. Maybe they will, eventually. But now that we know Poseidon's there, we'll just keep coming back, so . . . >Now that's just not true. It is in the best interest of the industry as a whole for the population to be prudently managed and culled with minimal impact so as to allow for long-term harvesting, but it is in the interest of the individual to get everything he can as fast as he can and let other people worry about conservation. It's the prisoner's dilemma - if you try to pace yourself to not damage the ecosystem and your neighbor goes full guns, he gets rich, then the fish disappear, and you're screwed. If you both cooperate, everyone wins, and if you both go for the gusto, then you both loose, but not nearly as much as you would have if you had been prudent and he had taken everything he could.< You're speaking from the perspective of a 20th century human. Even now attitudes toward conservation and long-term planning are starting to change. People are coming to the realization that we just don't have the resources to waste anymore. I'd think that, after two centuries and an apocalyptic famine, most human beings would think twice before pulling the same stunts. You don't get the kind of mandate necessary to form a Global Ecology Organization from a population that is largely ambivalent toward responsible exploitation of the environment. It seems to me that the Incorporates and poachers are the only entities "going for the gusto" . . . and getting slapped down whenever they're caught. (And by the way, no modern rancher would overextend his operations in order to realize greater profit for the simple reason that haphazardly increasing herd sizes leads to overgrazing, or the aquatic equivalent, which can kill huge numbers of livestock more effectively than any poacher. People in Third World countries don't realize this because they're ill informed; which is why, for instance, we have such extreme desertification in the Sahel. Well, that and the depletion of aquifers, which is a side effect of colonial governments forcing _pastoral_ peoples — who have been herding for thousands of years to no ill effect — to farm arid land with irrigation provided by deep wells.) >Thus it's the best strategy for a person to catch all he can and to hell with the ecosystem - and that's probably what would happen, it's a big planet, GEO can't be everywhere at once and if corps got into it, the whole planet could be depopulated of sunbursts in a few years.< Hence the implementation of ranching. Let the ranchers patrol their herds, freeing up GEO personnel for other operations. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Leif Magnar Kjønnøy [leifmk@pvv.ntnu.no] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 4:49 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Auberon wrote: ACCESS DENIED Blank space This space for rent This is my territorial bubble, violate it at your own peril Okay, that should be enough. > BIOHZD@aol.com wrote: >> The points made are relevant, but remember that the original statement >> dealt with the destruction of ecosystems due to fierce interspecies >> competion. This specifically does *not* lead to the destruction of >> entire ecosystems, though it may lead to extinctions and eventual >> changes in the structure and relationships within said ecosystem. Well, if the destruction of an entire ecosystem is taken to mean total extinction of every lifeform on the planet and a subsequent dead world, then obviously it hasn't happened yet on Earth. Or at least it hasn't happened since our earliest ancestors arose (there may have been several "false starts" way back when in the days of the Ursuppe), or we wouldn't be here to talk about it. On the other hand, we do not have much of a sample space of "planets known to have harbored life"; perhaps it is quite common for life to arise and then burn itself out before it gets around to doing much in the way of evolving intelligence and building cities and starships. Or perhaps not. A sample space of one doesn't make for terribly reliable statistics (it's easy to figure out means and medians etc., but the variance can be all over the place). > On Earth. But if things are so much more extreme on Poseidon, Couldn't > the results be more extreme as well, if only by virtue of the fact that > a species could go extinct so much faster. > > > If indeed we are the "cartakers species" on Earth we *suck* at our job. We aren't; we simply haven't been around long enough, nor (Däniken etc. notwithstanding) is there really any good evidence of extraterrestrial meddling in our past. One of the main things that you Biohazard guys got *right* in Blue Planet, IMHO, was the sense of time scale where aliens were concerned -- most other SF games that include aliens (however deep within the background) have "ancient" civilizations that are a few piddling thousands of years old, multiple independent species coincidentally reaching about the same level of development (give or take a few centuries) about the same time, etc. In Blue Planet, however, the timescales are appropriately cosmic -- hundreds of millions of years, or at least that's the impression I get. > Which is what lead to the speculation on what exactly happened. I > believe, other than that one, the current postulations are: > > 1) Extinct caretaker species Well, there sure aren't any species around on Earth today that also existed way-back-when, so if there was a caretaker species at some early time it's gone now. > 2) Experiment in unmonitored evolution Or just the natural state of things. Ordinary, natural evolution doesn't have meddling aliens, plans, or caretaker species. > 3) We've been VERY naughty, and are going to have our collective noses > rubbed in **** Personal theory: Alien Space Bats (i.e. Progenitors, Creators, whatever you want to call them) come along at the dawn of time, surveying the cosmos. Here and there they find interesting goings-on: Planets where chemical stuff is happening to bring about life of some type or another. They also find a bunch of empty places that will never amount to anything more than geology. Being lifeforms themselves and therefore biased in favor of life, they decide to take some of the more promising biochemistries and give them a few more legs to stand on. I will not take seriously the notion that Earthlife and Poseidonlife both just "happen to be" based on DNA; whether DNA originates from Earth or Poseidon or somewhere else is a moot point, but it was obviously transplanted to at least one of the two known lifebearing planets, and it obviously happened *long* ago. Perhaps, in their alien minds, they had some sort of ethic against directly interfering with the original ecology of a world that had already given birth to its own native lifeforms, but perhaps they thought they *had* the right to micromanage an offspring world that they had "founded" themselves, so perhaps Earth is the original home of DNA and Poseidon is its offspring. Or perhaps they just did things differently on different worlds for the sheer hell of it, and DNA actually originated somewhere else. It seems, though, that evolution on Earth hasn't been overtly managed according to any sort of plan; the evolutionary history of Poseidon may be altogether different, but I suspect that the big picture in that case is not yet pieced together by human biologists. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Leif Magnar Kjønnøy [leifmk@pvv.ntnu.no] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 5:26 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Robert P. Stefko wrote: > >1. Humans activites are changing the Earth - this is a fact. > > No contest here. But whether that change is "good" or "bad" is a matter of > human interpretation. I balk at the attitude that human beings are bad for > the environment. We are a product of that environment, and whatever we do, > no matter how "artificial" or "unnatural" we may think or say it is, is > still a product of nature. On the gripping tentacle, we're going to have to live with the consequences of our actions. Whipping people up into a moral outrage over damage to the environment is IMHO incorrect and unneccesary; forget about "bad for the enviornment", try instead to think "bad for *us*, in the long run". What we need is to think a bit more than one or two fiscal years (or one or two election terms) ahead. Enlightened self-interest is something that people might be able to get their heads around. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Corax@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 5:28 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering Unfortunatly, Your right. Enlightened Self Intrest (a form of Altruism) seems to get squashed by human Intelligence <> *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 5:45 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering >Well, there sure aren't any species around on Earth today that also existed way-back-when, so if there was a caretaker species at some early time it's gone now.< Roaches. Alligators and crocodiles. Tortoises. They've been around for tens or even hundreds of millions of years. I'm not suggesting they are our elusive caretakers, but I thought I should point out that there are indeed incredibly ancient species still extent on the planet. >Alien Space Bats (i.e. Progenitors, Creators, whatever you want to call them) come along at the dawn of time, surveying the cosmos. Here and there they find interesting goings-on: Planets where chemical stuff is happening to bring about life of some type or another. They also find a bunch of empty places that will never amount to anything more than geology. Being lifeforms themselves and therefore biased in favor of life, they decide to take some of the more promising biochemistries and give them a few more legs to stand on. I will not take seriously the notion that Earthlife and Poseidonlife both just "happen to be" based on DNA; whether DNA originates from Earth or Poseidon or somewhere else is a moot point, but it was obviously transplanted to at least one of the two known lifebearing planets, and it obviously happened *long* ago.< The chemical components of DNA are fairly common organic molecules. DNA itself is a remarkably compact information storage medium, far better than anything we can manage with magnetic or optical systems today. It might simply be that it is the most efficient means of storing the information necessary to build an organism. >Perhaps, in their alien minds, they had some sort of ethic against directly interfering with the original ecology of a world that had already given birth to its own native lifeforms, but perhaps they thought they *had* the right to micromanage an offspring world that they had "founded" themselves, so perhaps Earth is the original home of DNA and Poseidon is its offspring. Or perhaps they just did things differently on different worlds for the sheer hell of it, and DNA actually originated somewhere else. It seems, though, that evolution on Earth hasn't been overtly managed according to any sort of plan; the evolutionary history of Poseidon may be altogether different, but I suspect that the big picture in that case is not yet pieced together by human biologists.< Or three: DNA originated on both worlds, the Creators worked with what they found, and for some reason placed a caretaker species on Poseidon and either neglected to place one on Earth or destroyed it afterward or allowed it to be destroyed. Heck, maybe because the distribution of water and land is different on Earth, this planet has two caretaker species. Cetaceans in the water and . . . elephants (just pulling this one out of my hat) on land. Both are fairly smart, both ranged over much larger territories in the recent past (10,000 years), and both have been hunted to near-extinction by humans. Neither would be recognizable as a caretaker species to us, since they're motivations would be so alien. (The only way we communicate with the cetaceans is by changing their brains to think like humans, which essentially turns them into "people with fins".) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 5:53 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction >Enlightened self-interest is something that people might be able to get their heads around.< Hence my argument for the commercialization of conservation. The governments of the world have demonstrated their inability to do more than bury industries with misled environmental legislation. Give the industries incentive (a big change from coercion, but more equitable for all parties involved) to responsibly manage the resources on which they depend, and you'll see not only improvements in the environment, but the mass marketing of environmentally friendly products and ideas as well. Libertarian politicking? Of course. But the alternatives mostly involve governments prying further into paychecks and property rights, not to mention technological progress. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Robert P. Stefko [rpsst16@pop.pitt.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 5:59 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering >Unfortunatly, Your right. Enlightened Self Intrest (a form of Altruism) seems to get squashed by human Intelligence.< Um, altruism is the unselfish concern for the welfare of others. No form of self-interest can be altruistic. The closest you can come is equitable cooperation. (Which is much more common and infinitely better, IMO.) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Rusty.Neal@bull.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:17 AM To: blue_planet@TanSoft.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Reefsong Go out and find Reefsong by Carol Severance! With just a few changes in setting it could have been a Blue Planet novel. It is a great read. I'm constantly looking for books set on waterworlds, with stories close to that in Blue Planet. This is the best I have found so far. Ms. Severance is apparantly heavily into the island people of the Pacific, and her writing shows it. Lots of great native feel... Guys, if you are still looking for someone to write you a novel set on Poseidon, contact this writer!! And remember I'm the one who pointed you in the right direction! Rusty Neal *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: pete rogers [peterogers@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:37 AM To: blue_planet@TanSoft.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering - Avians Greetings one and all. I'm Pete Rogers - short time lurker, long time active poster on the Deadlands : Weird West listserv. I work in Birmingham UK as a software designer. Now that i'm done with the intro - i'll get to the point :) i'm not going to join the man: good or bad debate ? my opinion on that one isn't based on fact, only gut feeling so i feel myself massively underqualified to comment - much less rationally debate. i'm more of a concept kind of guy - i can't neccesarily back up things with science (which could be a problem in this forum :)) - i'm much better with techno babble. However, i will attempt to throw in a few concepts & enjoy kicking them around with you guys. i said i was going to get to the point didn't i ? sorry... the possibility of uplifting avians was raised - specifically Ravens and Parrots. Know down to purely physical dimensions this has been met with some understandable scepticism. However, using uplift techniques the unique abilities of birds could be well utilised - namely flight. given some degree of enhanced intellignence they would seem to make ideal spies, or even assasination weapons. small, fast and hard to target due to background clutter (ie other birds) a lone avian assassin trained to attack a target on sight would make a pretty damned hard to stop attacker. and providing this limited uplift technique was not overly expensive, the option may be cheaper than a high tech robotic. There are also countless other jobs a moderatley uplifted avian could perform - from routine observation (against poachers ? - armed with a cam that might slow down sunburst poaching) to litter collection. you're not likely to see an Avian schoolteacher or professor of history - but they wouldn't be beyond menial tasks. you could also expand this out beyond avians to just about any species with a particular useful asset ie strngth, co-ordination etc. and this in itself may lead to interesting social debate/trauma. resentment is created in society today by "immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs" (its in quotes so that means i don't agree ! :)) - how would they feel if that was a bird !? i know this idea doesn't lend itself to the more interesting nature of the whole uplift science and the concept of playing an uplifted cetacean (i don't particularly want to play a Raven assassin bird - well not for too long anyway :)) - but i thought i'd toss it in as an intro post. cheers pete rogers ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Jason Hockley [jh596@soton.ac.uk] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:54 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering On Sun, 31 Jan 1999 19:40:16 -0500 Chris Sakal wrote: > Now that's just not true. It is in the best interest of the industry as > a whole for the population to be prudently managed and culled with minimal > impact so as to allow for long-term harvesting, but it is in the interest > of the individual to get everything he can as fast as he can and let other > people worry about conservation. It's the prisoner's dilemma - if you try > to pace yourself to not damage the ecosystem and your neighbor goes full > guns, he gets rich, then the fish disappear, and you're screwed. If you > both cooperate, everyone wins, and if you both go for the gusto, then you > both loose, but not nearly as much as you would have if you had been > prudent and he had taken everything he could. Thus it's the best strategy > for a person to catch all he can and to hell with the ecosystem - and > that's probably what would happen, it's a big planet, GEO can't be > everywhere at once and if corps got into it, the whole planet could be > depopulated of sunbursts in a few years. I'm too tired right now to enter into this argument, but I would like to point out one thing. That's a pretty good summary of Prisoner's Dilemma, but it is NOT the best solution to grab everything you can. That's half the point of the Dilemma in the first place. In actual fact the best strategy known to date in repeated use is to cooperate on the first try, then on each following step copy whatever the opponent did on the last step. If it is just a single occasion there are also proofs for it, but they are a little too long for me to go into here. Jason Hockley Maths Student ---------------------- Jason Hockley jh596@soton.ac.uk *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Jason Hockley [jh596@soton.ac.uk] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 11:37 AM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Are we bothering with Access Denied markers anymore? As a side note on all these comparisons between the ecosystems of Earth and Poseidon; in most experiments you set up two versions. One that you operate/interfere/test etc. but also usually a control subject too. The control is left to its own devices and you come back at periodic intervals to see how things are developing on each. Which are we? ---------------------- Jason Hockley jh596@soton.ac.uk *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: dpink@chill.org Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 2:27 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction Enlightened self-interest is >something that people might be able to get their heads around. And so it should be. I don't recycle my tin cans so the deer can keep on reproducing, I do it so I can keep on reproducing, and my offspring, etc. The idea of planet as supreme Gaia-esque being, deserving of our ultimate sacrifice of self removal, is absurd. The focus on Posiedon shouldn't be too heavy into removal of humans, because a planet is just a planet. It should be on capacity to coexist. Yes, we must support the environment to support ourselves, but think about that statement: to support _ourselves_. Narcissists that we are, humanity will continue to be concerned primarily with itself - so the conflict might be humanity versus abos, or sunbursts, or what have you, but certainly not humanity versus the planet. Though tell that to the natives... *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Gordon Crookston [gordoncr@sympatico.ca] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 7:23 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Questions... Firstly... The creators came from Poseidon to Earth, or vice versa. So where did they go from here (or come from TO here). Is there another wormhole floating around in the Sol/Serpentis systems (actually there should be another in each, unless either system is the HOME system of the creators, which is unlikely). And since the creators don't seem to interested in closing these gates, the if we followed the wormhole "trail" would we find more and more ancient planets, filled with civilizations started eons ago by the creators? When we finally find that one system with only one wormhole, what happens?... BTW you guys should take a trip up to wonderful Canada, where we use the equally wonderful metric system... Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius, and boils at 100. Pretty easy. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Adam Lewis [adamswork@yahoo.com] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 8:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Questions... ---Gordon Crookston wrote: > > Firstly... The creators came from Poseidon to Earth, or vice versa. Well...I don't feel the BP book tried to imply that the creators are "The Creators". Meaning they may have "created" Poseidon but not necessarily Earth or any other "enviroment". Maybe Poseidon IS their home planet and they left the aboriginies (sp?) behind to care for the planet while they are on vacation...water the plants and feed the animals type stuff. Of course in your campaign you can certainly make these creators the creators of earth. It's an idea with a lot of possiblities. > BTW you guys should take a trip up to wonderful Canada, where we use the > equally wonderful metric system... Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius, and > boils at 100. Pretty easy. We have our own form of the metric system here in the US: 10**12 Microphones = 1 Megaphone 10**6 bicycles = 2 megacycles 500 millinaries = 1 seminary 2000 mockingbirds = two kilomockingbirds 10 cards = 1 decacards 1/2 lavatory = 1 demijohn 10**-6 fish = 1 microfiche 453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake 1 unit of suspense in a mystery novel = 1 whod unit 10**12 pins = 1 terrapin 10**-12 Boulevard = 1 Pico Boulevard (L.A.) 10**21 picolos = 1 gigolo 10 rations = 1 decoration 100 rations = 1 C-ration 10 millipedes = 1 centipede 3 1/3 tridents = 1 decadent 5 holocausts = 1 Pentacost 10 monologues = 5 dialogues = 1 decalogue 2 monograms = 1 diagram 8 nickles = 2 paradigms 2 snake eyes = 1 paradise 2 wharves = 1 paradox == AdamL ===== Water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees. There are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling because there are 180 degrees between north and south. ________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: dpink@chill.org Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 8:33 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Questions... > >BTW you guys should take a trip up to wonderful Canada, where we use the >equally wonderful metric system... Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius, and >boils at 100. Pretty easy. > > Ha! Long live the metric system! And as my final bit of needling (all Canadians lay off, now), does anyone else find it ironic that the Americans, who fought a war to be independent, still use the English imperial system? A question: how can I get Archipelago? There's been a distributing kafuffle going on up here - no one wants to carry the smaller companies' stuff since they have to buy so many, etc (you Biohazard fellows might know this), so how can I order a copy? Can I order just a single copy to be sent up north using my credit card or a cheque or what? *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 8:40 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering ACCESS DENIED Spoilers... There is one other way to look at it: What if the Abos are merely paving the way for some other species to achieve sentience? What must the caretakers be caring for? Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph in the Philippines >The Aborigines are wonderfully eco-friendly in an ultra-PC, Gaia-cult kind >of way, but all their work is for nought, simply because they have no desire >to expand beyond their homeworld. When Serpentis finally dies, Poseidon and >everything on it will be gone. Simple. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 8:40 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering ACCESS DENIED Spoilers... There is one other way to look at it: What if the Abos are merely paving the way for some other species to achieve sentience? What must the caretakers be caring for? Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph in the Philippines >The Aborigines are wonderfully eco-friendly in an ultra-PC, Gaia-cult kind >of way, but all their work is for nought, simply because they have no desire >to expand beyond their homeworld. When Serpentis finally dies, Poseidon and >everything on it will be gone. Simple. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 8:45 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - some suggestions Yeah, agreed. For simplicity, those systems are hard to beat. Although John Nephew wrote Over the Edge, not John Tynes. And I'm not sure about Everway, either. Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph in the Philippines >that's another thing, the UA system is a -snap- at combat. So it just seemed >better overall for the environment. > >the only thing simpler would be Everway or Over the Edge (both written by >the guy who did Unknown Armies, btw) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:10 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Questions... Gordon Crookston wrote: > > Firstly... The creators came from Poseidon to Earth, or vice versa. So > where did they go from here (or come from TO here). Is there another > wormhole floating around in the Sol/Serpentis systems (actually there > should be another in each, unless either system is the HOME system of the > creators, which is unlikely). And since the creators don't seem to > interested in closing these gates, the if we followed the wormhole "trail" > would we find more and more ancient planets, filled with civilizations > started eons ago by the creators? When we finally find that one system > with only one wormhole, what happens?... Actually, the indications given ever-so-subtly by the Biohazard Guys inicate that Poseidon and Earth represent the final two links in a kind of chain -- Wormhole will apparently be a boxed set where either a new wormhole is found and we can make one more jump up the chain, or the Creators pop into one of the systems through a previously unknown wormhole and all of a sudden Humanity gets to do some fast answering. Makes you wonder, who's going to speak for us if (when) the GEO is dissolved? -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:11 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Are we bothering with Access Denied markers anymore? Jason Hockley wrote: > > As a side note on all these comparisons between the > ecosystems of Earth and Poseidon; in most experiments you > set up two versions. One that you operate/interfere/test > etc. but also usually a control subject too. The control is > left to its own devices and you come back at periodic > intervals to see how things are developing on each. > > Which are we? I've kind of got two active theories about that now -- one is that Earth is the control. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:21 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction "Robert P. Stefko" wrote: > > >Enlightened self-interest is something that people might be able to get > their heads around.< > > Hence my argument for the commercialization of conservation. The governments > of the world have demonstrated their inability to do more than bury > industries with misled environmental legislation. Give the industries Misled because of the policalization of the whole thing. If a couple of senators sat down with some really intelligent business analysts and ecologists, they could probably come up with legislation that would actually do the job, and even do it without putting too much pressure on business, really. Instead, we (the Americans) have Republicans, who want to cut down all the trees and strip mine everything with the sleightest potential, 'cause it'll boost the economy, and show a profit for a few quarters. In the other corner are the more left-wing Democrats, the Greens, and a few Real Wierdies who want to stop using any oil, never cut down another tree, and recall all the fishing fleets forever, or even institute breeding laws. The real answer is in the middle. Having lived in Southeast Alaska for a number of years, there's always a boom and bust cycle. The Republicans always control the government around here (though we usually have a moderate Democrat for a governor), so the Fish & Game people have their budgets approved by uneducated lunatics. The fisheries boom for a couple of years, and then all the fishermen starve for a while, and Alaska, B.C., and some Asian Pacific Rim countries all point their fingers at each other about who overfished. Repeat. > incentive (a big change from coercion, but more equitable for all parties > involved) to responsibly manage the resources on which they depend, and > you'll see not only improvements in the environment, but the mass marketing > of environmentally friendly products and ideas as well. Libertarian But raping is rediculously profitable. There simply aren't enough incentives. And "The People" are simply incapable of thinking more than two, or at most four, months ahead. > politicking? Of course. But the alternatives mostly involve governments > prying further into paychecks and property rights, not to mention > technological progress. Admittedly, progress generally occurs better in an atmosphere of trade, but the most impressive periods of techological progress in human history all revolve around the major wars. Should we be in ground-action shooting wars all the time, too? I know that's an overstatement, but I'm just pointing out that there are ALWAYS balancing factors. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:34 PM To: blue_planet@TanSoft.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction Amen. Seems to me that the former viewpoint is represented in the game by those highly opinionated bomb-throwing individuals we call ecoterrorists, while the GEO represents the latter, more balanced view. Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph in the Philippines >On the gripping tentacle, we're going to have to live with the >consequences of our actions. Whipping people up into a moral outrage over >damage to the environment is IMHO incorrect and unneccesary; forget about >"bad for the enviornment", try instead to think "bad for *us*, in the long >run". What we need is to think a bit more than one or two fiscal years >(or one or two election terms) ahead. Enlightened self-interest is >something that people might be able to get their heads around. > > >*************************************************************************** >To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line >'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:37 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction Actually, the idea of _marketing_ conservation instead of enforcing it, is similar to a concept Bruce Sterling wrote a little while back. Find a way to promote eco-friendly lifestyles as a _luxury_, and everybody will want to buy into it. I think Sterling has this on a web page somewhere, but I don't know where... Kai Poh, Malaysian Lagomorph in the Philippines >Hence my argument for the commercialization of conservation. The governments >of the world have demonstrated their inability to do more than bury >industries with misled environmental legislation. Give the industries >incentive (a big change from coercion, but more equitable for all parties >involved) to responsibly manage the resources on which they depend, and >you'll see not only improvements in the environment, but the mass marketing >of environmentally friendly products and ideas as well. Libertarian >politicking? Of course. But the alternatives mostly involve governments >prying further into paychecks and property rights, not to mention >technological progress. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Kintaro Oe [kabael@bu.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:00 PM To: blue_planet@lists.MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - websites I'm planning on putting up a page for my BP game soon, and I was trying to find other pages to link to and such. I could only find 2, the HIST page and the Biohazard page. Are there any others out there? I'm surprised that a company with such an on-line presence would have so few pages spawned by it's games. kabael - Amida Guddha, Boddhisattva of the Creeping Sad notes- In this world we're all bamboo's children we walk on the roof of hell, in the end. gazing at flowers. -Basho -Issa Mcguffin Group - http://members.xoom.com/McGuffins/index.html I love messages! ICQ #24193592 kabael@bu.edu *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:29 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering "Robert P. Stefko" wrote: > > >Well, there sure aren't any species around on Earth today that also > existed way-back-when, so if there was a caretaker species at some early > time it's gone now.< > > Roaches. Alligators and crocodiles. Tortoises. They've been around for tens > or even hundreds of millions of years. I'm not suggesting they are our > elusive caretakers, but I thought I should point out that there are indeed > incredibly ancient species still extent on the planet. But that does prove that something could certainly have lasted at least long enough to ensure that humans were sentient and self-aware. The most recent estimate of that happening is almost 5,000 years ago (there's an argument involving the use of "I" in stories...) I've got a theory that Creators are in the business of creating intelligent life; maybe they're lonely. If that's the case, these new species will feel a lot better if they can believe they did it all themselves. Thus, caretaker species would self-destruct when the (or a) target species reaches sentience. > The chemical components of DNA are fairly common organic molecules. DNA > itself is a remarkably compact information storage medium, far better than > anything we can manage with magnetic or optical systems today. It might > simply be that it is the most efficient means of storing the information > necessary to build an organism. a) They're fairly common _on Earth_. We don't have any other data. There's also the possibility that they're so common because life here was deliberately engineered to use and produce them. There are a whole mess of other amino acids, any of which could probably have been used in some fashion. But the same four are used, in the same format, on two different worlds, with two different kinds of stars, light years apart. What's the only common factor in these two cases? Visitation by the Creators. > recent past (10,000 years), and both have been hunted to near-extinction by > humans. Neither would be recognizable as a caretaker species to us, since > they're motivations would be so alien. (The only way we communicate with the > cetaceans is by changing their brains to think like humans, which > essentially turns them into "people with fins".) Or only certain subspecies of recognizable species, or they self-destructed after we became sentient, but life on Poseidon hasn't reached that stage. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 9:57 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction "Robert P. Stefko" wrote: > > >1. Humans activites are changing the Earth - this is a fact. > > No contest here. But whether that change is "good" or "bad" is a matter of > human interpretation. I balk at the attitude that human beings are bad for > the environment. We are a product of that environment, and whatever we do, Human beings aren't bad for the environment, but that doesn't mean that, by definition, everything we do is good for it. Stupid, shortsighted, or just plain mean actions can still be bad for our prospects of continued existance. > no matter how "artificial" or "unnatural" we may think or say it is, is > still a product of nature. That's like saying that since nuclear fission is a natural event, A-bombs are good for the environment. > Actually, we have numerous alternative sources of fuel and power already > developed or in the works. Fusion reactors, fuel cells, solar panels, MHD > trubines, alcohol engines — we could run the planet on hydrogen. We also Agreed > have established petroleum interests with tremendous economic inertia > propelling them into the next century. These behemoths depend on the tenuous > flow of a non-renewable resource, however, and the introduction of the above Also agreed. > technologies would ruin them and much of the global economy if introduced > too quickly and without adequate preparation. Few environmentalists take Not at all true. Less than ten years after they were introduced, you had to look hard to find a car without a catalytic converter. Now you can't find a gas station that sells "regular" gas (well, I can't), and older cars can't be driven most places 'cause they don't meet emissions standards. We've been able to build methanol engines for at least four years (I'm positive it's more, but I'm sticking to what I can prove), electric engines, same. Where are they? They've not been released because oil companies have money. Pure and simple. If environmental lobbies had more money to throw around in barely (or un-) concealed bribes, we'd be driving cars powered by corn, and you'd have to look hard for unleaded gas. > these factors into consideration while lobbying for regulative legislation, > and they destroy a lot of peoples' lives and livelihoods in the process. The people aren't always uncooperative. Would shortsighted companies have spent the money necessary to build car plants in Mexico, if the UAW hadn't repeatedly raised the stakes? > This is something I cannot condone, even though I agree there is a need to > develop conservationist attitudes among the public and industries. I > therefore turn to commerce as an equitable solution. Hand certain areas of > conservation over to commercial interests and they will protect their charge > in order to realize a continuous profit. (The ultimate goal of a But continuous profits aren't a concern. Look at modern American businesses. They worry only about how much profit they can earn this quarter. Maybe next. Put another way, would Dilbert be so popular if it wasn't true? (The same could be said for Daria, Beavis and Butthead, The Simpsons, etc...) > corporation, like a living being, is to ensure its continued survival. I've > never heard of organisms that glut until they die.) Develop incentives for But companies do. What happened to Apple? That's a company that was always focused 5-10 years ahead, and how are they doing? > companies to not only act responsibly, but to promote environmental > responsibility among their employess and the communities and markets in > which they operate. Environmentalism costs. Where's the profit in it? > Not so. It is irresponsible politics that drives these actions. In the U.S., > major violations of environmental laws are almost unheard of, but in the > Third World they are commonplace. The developing nations do not wish to be > marginalized, so they rush frantically to industrialize and achieve parity > with their former colonial masters. They do this, as we did, by consuming > resources and spitting out saleable goods and a domestic infrastructure. > However, unlike industrial America, the Third World has the added > complication of dealing with more advanced nations who constantly manipulate > and exploit it, causing the process of industrialization and attendant But why do they exploit it? PROFIT! Corporations don't commit major environmental transgressions in the U.S., because the fines cut into the profit margins. Do it in Indonesia! Bribe a couple of people, and disappear when the effects start to show! Cut down every tree in the Amazon basin, to farm the land for one year, and then watch the now-useless topsoil wash away! Which reminds me... How long does it take to get topsoil? I remember that there was an approximate figure from rock to usable topsoil, but I don't remember it. > environmental destruction to continue unabated. Taking the responsibility of > conservation out of the hands of governments and giving it to private > enterprises is a more efficient and equitable way than binding developing > nations to treaties they cannot possibly honor without sacrificing their > economic futures. They don't sacrifice their economic futures, they just don't get there as quick. > Check that. Humanity may not survive. No one knows because the data we have > mostly dates back to the middle of this century, before which not many > people were concerned with the environment. We have no idea if the more > dramatic changes in the environment are the result of human action or > natural processes we've not yet had time to observe through their full > cycles. It's probably both, but we cannot go blaming everything of humankind > and jumping to the conclusion that we are going to self-destruct from our > own intractable behavior. Change is necessary, yes, but not dehumanizing > change for the sake of plants and animals that won't ever get off the planet > without us (which, IMHO, is the next step in evolution after sentience). Yes, but between assuming it's all our fault, and not worrying about a damn bit of it, I'll take the fault. At least that way, we'll fix what we can, and maybe survive as a species long enough to get off this planet. Wasn't that the premise of the Lost in Space movie? Earth was a complete hole, and government knew it, despite a lot of handwaving going on in the public eye? > To continue this analogy, blocks in Jenga can also be replaced to other > locations in the stack. This is essentially what humanity does. We > reorganize ecologies to better suite our needs. (Nature does this too, but Following the analogy, we just kind of duct tape jury-rigged blocks on the outside, temporarily preventing overbalance. As long as the towing isn't actively falling, we congratulate ourselves on our standard of living, and go on about trying to make more profit. > without selfish motivation and over longer periods of time.) That does not > mean our tampering will inevitable and in short order bring the stack down. > It simply means the stack will be changed when we're done with it. And by > judiciously placing blocks, we can keep the stack together when it might > otherwise have toppled. But, again, short sighted, stupid action will bring it down. Same for ignoring that there's a tower there at all, which is what we're doing now. If we consider the (metaphorical) tower before we act, you're right, we can just change it and continue on about reproducing, and hopefully evolving. Ecology is the engineering skills necessary to consider and understand the tower. What we have now is businesses, politicians, and wackos making the rules. To chage metaphors, that's like allowing a guy who once fixed a lawnmower by kicking it doing the maintenance on the 747 you're about to fly in. We're on the plane, and the wings are coming off. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:02 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Gene tampering "Robert P. Stefko" wrote: > > Hence the implementation of ranching. Let the ranchers patrol their herds, > freeing up GEO personnel for other operations. The ranchers are likely to be one family, maybe two. Coupla rifles. I'd bet the profit would be fantiastic if you let those suckers raise 'em, and then send in a small strike force with explosives and automatic rifles. By the time anyone realizes anything's up, it's over, and you've got the sunbursts. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [fskln1@uaf.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:21 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Humans and Ecological Destruction Tun Kai Poh wrote: > > Actually, the idea of _marketing_ conservation instead of enforcing it, > is similar to a concept Bruce Sterling wrote a little while back. Find a > way to promote eco-friendly lifestyles as a _luxury_, and everybody will > want to buy into it. But there's also got to be a profit angle in it for the people marketing. Actually, this kind of thing happens a lot. You can pay twice as much for an "eco-friendly" version of anything. The question is, of course, whether it really is. -- +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= "I never get involved in my own life. It's too much trouble" - Michael Garibaldi (Babylon 5) *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Re: Humans and Ecological Destruction Leif, You write: What we need is to think a bit more than one or two fiscal years (or one or two election terms) ahead. Enlightened self-interest is something that people might be able to get their heads around. >>>>A - friggin - men! ; ) Thanks, Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - religion Hey Mercutio, You ask about religion in BP. Oddly enough there were some recent list discussions on just this topic. I suggest checking out the list archives on our website (www.biohazardgames.com). Additionally, the first BP supplement, _Archipelago_, has several sections that detail some of the theological goings-on on the waterworld. Thanks for the interest, Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - release schedule Hey Kintaro, You ask about a release schedule: I'll let Adam's respose stand (thanks Adam!), and add only that Access Denied (the game moderator resource booklet and screen pack for BP) should be going to press in the next two weeks. We are very close to finishing it and are excited to get it out. I know some of you have seen some of the maps. Well, this weekend I saw some more of the finished artwork and well...in my totally unbiased opinion - IT ROCKS! Stay tuned, Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Re: Humans and Ecological Destruction Hey Adam: You write: I tend to believe in humans. >>>>And well we should as we are some. The trick though is to believe in responsible humans ; ). Sure we screw things up, but we have proven to adapt all through out (one word or two?) history. >>>>This is arguable - we are in fact only one of what may have been dozens of species of humans. We just happened to be the one that has survived to the present. Evolutionary adaptaion is not a right - it is pure luck-of-the-draw. I read one persons philosophy that the only reason man survived was because he could run and look behing him at the same time. >>>>I've not heard this one. However, as an historical analogy this is a catchy way to advocate learning from our past mistakes. We are in fact the only animal that can "look behind" into our history and make choices for the future based on that past. >>>>[reference to technological advancement snipped] I think (I hope) this will continue in our future. >>>>Based on what we know about the mechanism of natural selection it is my opinion that humans have taken a timeout in the game of evolution. We are no longer subject to the same strict rules that cull the weaker, slower, smaller, etc. from the proverbial herd. We have insolated ourselves with social and technological buffers that limit natural selection to the extremes of old age, accidents and serious disease. Predation and resource competition aside, any number of more subtle factors - premature births, accidents, genetic conditions - that would have eliminted individuals from the human genepool even a hundred years ago are now retained by social conventions and medical treatment. >>>>As a consequence of such conventions and abilites, I suggest humans are now subject to a lest rigid form of natural selection unique in evolutionary history. For the first time a species has the ability to deliberatly effect its evolutionary future, albeit to an arguable degree. This is a terrible excuse for our actions of today, but I'm trying to be realistic. Our hope (actually our grandkids hopes) lie in the hands of the next generation. Of course some of you will say my attitude is the source of the problem, always putting the responsibility on the next generation. And you're right...but we all know a few dozen people right? And how many of those people, that each of us know, give a damn or even have a clue of the problem? Certainly none of my friends. >>>>Sadly you are right, but this is no excuse. You can make a difference, if only in your own sphere of influence. Recycle, use low-flow water facets, buy bulk, wrapped in non-plastic packaging, carpool, etc. All cliche's, I know but if nothing else, it is an example to the children. How else *will* the next generation ever change their attitudes so that they will be able manage the planet's recources responsibly. the children that are in biology class right now. That is, if there are enough teachers like Jeff... >>>>Dawww shucks ; P. Of course my students are likely to offer other opinions ; ). BTW - Consider this a public appology. I actually pulled the BP scenario _Deep Sh*t_ out of retirement on the off chance that you and Eva would be at Eclipse this weekend. I guess I should have said something : (. My bad... Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Re: Space Bats Leif, You write: Personal theory: Alien Space Bats [ka-snip] >>>>We *really* need to get that security system installed ; ). Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Society and Ecology Hey Robert, I wrote: 1. Humans activites are changing the Earth - this is a fact. You wrote: No contest here. But whether that change is "good" or "bad" is a matter of human interpretation. I balk at the attitude that human beings are bad for the environment. We are a product of that environment, and whatever we do, no matter how "artificial" or "unnatural" we may think or say it is, is still a product of nature. >>>>I agree with you 100% - note that I did not advocate "good" or "bad" in my statement and that as per my followup comment (inserted below) I supported your contention that some human activity is simply how we compete as a natural part of the Earth's ecosystem. 2. Yes, many of these activities are humanity's method of natural competition - simple, justified requirements for our survival as a species. Actually, we have numerous alternative sources of fuel and power already developed or in the works. [snip] >>>>Technically this is true, practically this is currently only wishful thinking. We *could*, with a global change in attitude, take advantage of these technologies, demand their development, and advocate restrictions on their wasteful and polluting alternatives - but we have not. As a result widespread and practical applications of such technologies are still decades in the future. >>>>Simple example: As a result of the 1970s oil crisis, car companies made great strides in improving fuel efficiency. This was a result of public interest/demand. >>>>Gas prices are now lower than they have been (relatively) in decades and there are passenger vehicles on the road with ten friggin' cylinders. >>>>Obviously, consumers determine the actions of commercial interests by spending their money. Unfortuantely, as Adam pointed out before, the average person does consider how the way they spend their actions effect the global ecology. We also have established petroleum interests with tremendous economic inertia propelling them into the next century. These behemoths depend on the tenuous flow of a non-renewable resource, however, and the introduction of the above technologies would ruin them and much of the global economy if introduced too quickly and without adequate preparation. >>>>IMO this is a old and tired argument - one I have heard since I was a child. If this is true, then *when can* we introduce these the new technologies? We certainly can not wait until the world oil reserves are gone before making a serious effort to develop alternatives. >>>>Here is a *scary* story: A population ecologist in the '70s (I forget his name, but could probably track it down if really motivated) used a common population size estimation technique called "Catch Per Unit Effort" to estimate the number of undiscovered oil reserves, remaining on Earth. The technique uses the number of repeated capture events (net passes for little fishies, years of exploration for oil) plotted as X, against the number caught, plotted as Y. If you can picture the resulting graph, you can see that the X intercept gives you the number of capture attempts at which you would theortically catch all the animals in the target population. Well, this ecologist's clever application of the technique gave an X intercept (the year the last major oil reserve would be discovered) of something between 2011 and 2020. This estimate *frightened* me more than any reactionary doomsaying I have ever heard... Few environmentalists take these factors into consideration while lobbying for regulative legislation and they destroy a lot of peoples' lives and livelihoods in the process. >>>>I do not agree with this statment, but even if I did, I suggest that a few thousand oil dependent jobs now are a small price to pay to prevent the economic firestorm that will follow the tapping of the last fossil fuel reserves. >>>>A neccessary clarification - The word enviromentalist has been abused to the point that it is now often synonymous with the word extremist. The word preservationist means a person who supports leaving natural resources in their prestine and unexploited state. A conservationist supports responsible use of natural reasources with an emphasis on renewable resources. I consider myself a practical, moderate and staunch conservationist. I agree there is a need to develop conservationist attitudes among the public and industries. I therefore turn to commerce as an equitable solution. Hand certain areas of conservation over to commercial interests and they will protect their charge in order to realize a continuous profit. >>>>As I advocated in a previous post (using commercial fishing as an example) this is just *not* a realistic possibility. The ultimate goal of a corporation, like a living being, is to ensure its continued survival. >>>>I think this is an inappropriate analogy. Technically the "ultimate goal" of an organism is to pass on its genes. Additionally, the purpose of a corporation is to make money (Biohazard excepted ; ) for its shareholders. This often can include selling off all or part of the company. I've never heard of organisms that glut until they die. >>>>Fungi and molds come immediately to mind. Some domestic dogs will eat themselves to death if they have access to enough food, and in a more figurative way, lots of people eat themselves into early graves via the effects of obesity...???? Develop incentives for companies to not only act responsibly, but to promote environmental responsibility among their employess and the communities and markets in which they operate. >>>>Wonderful sentiment, and I agree whole heartedly. Now, lets' try to sell that line to Exxon, Ford or even the US Congress. I wrote: There are only so many non-renewable resources to go around, and our renewable ones are poorly managed, if managed at all. Robert wrote: Not so. It is irresponsible politics that drives these actions. In the U.S., major violations of environmental laws are almost unheard of, >>>>This is simply not true. They may not be in the headlines but that is becasue people are more interested in the President's sex life than in the future of their planet's ecology. Before I was a science teacher I was a wildlife biologist, and I worked for a number of state and federal agencies on all sorts of conservation projects. Trust me, natural resource managment on the whole sucks (and that is in a country with one of the best relative conservation track records). >>>>As far as "major violations of environmental laws" being "unheard of", this too is just *not* true. My girlfriend is an environmental engineer for the US government, and she can tell horror stories for hours. Hell, there are companies on US soil that pay daily fines for illegal waste water discharge because it is cheaper than processing their outflow. The developing nations do not wish to be marginalized, so they rush frantically to industrialize and achieve parity with their former colonial masters. They do this, as we did, by consuming resources [snip] >>>>A very true and real problem. I agree, but we must clean up out own house first. I wrote: 5. This is fact, not liberal PC retoric. The Earth's ecology, and its ability to sustain humanity, will not survive in the long term if we do not grow up and stop shitting in our own house. We should not be speculating about humans in a million years - we should be focused on the next five hundred! Robert wrote: Check that. Humanity may not survive. No one knows because the data we have mostly dates back to the middle of this century, before which not many people were concerned with the environment. We have no idea if the more dramatic changes in the environment are the result of human action or natural processes [snip] >>>>This is simply *not* true. Issues like global warming aside, what about dioxins in your drinking water. *That* is not a part of the natural world and is certainly a measureable effect of human activity. we cannot go blaming everything of humankind and jumping to the conclusion that we are going to self-destruct from our own intractable behavior. >>>>My point is that we *will* unless we change the way we think, live and do business. Change is necessary, yes, but not dehumanizing change for the sake of plants and animals that won't ever get off the planet without us >>>Ah...the goal should not be to keep Earth livable only until we can leave it behind. There is a good chance that we never will, so we would be best served by establishing sustainable management at home before looking to the stars. I wrote: Imagine the family game Jenga (tm). The whole stack of blocks represents the Earth with a healty biosphere. The top layer of blocks represents humanity in that we depend on current ecological structure to support us. [snip] Robert wrote: To continue this analogy, blocks in Jenga can also be replaced to other locations in the stack. This is essentially what humanity does. [snip] >>>>We do not even know exactly how certain ecological cycles work, and we have only poor models at best for any realistic interations in multi species/resource situations. When we pull out one of the Earths Jenga blocks we can not just simply put is somewhere else and expect the tower to be as stable as it was. We are currently unable to understand let alone replace missing blocks. The best we can sometimes manage is a token filler with something like Play Dough (tm) (to continue my childish analogy). The result is a squishy, unstable stopgap that invariably fails or requires constant maintenance. >>>>Until society exercises global restraint and cooperation in the exploitation of global resources, the Earth'e ecology will eventually be unable to support the human species. Period! Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Commercialization of Natural Resources Hello Robert, You write: but if the GEO would just commercialize organisms like the sunbursts, allowing them to be farmed and harvested in an orderly fashion by licensed ranchers, you wouldn't see nearly the level of poaching that occurs in BP. [snip] Domestication and commercialization are perhaps the best forms of conservation, since they serve both the exploited species and their human wards. >>>>This is not an new idea, and there are advocates for this sort of resource management in almost every special interest group. Unfortunatly, theoretical economic models and logical planning seldom survive contact with the real world. In practical application, economics and human nature do not lend themselves to this sort of self management on anything but a small, communal scale. There are countless examples of commercial interests having completely tapped once abundant resources for economic gain. Consider a timely example, and one relevant to Blue Planet - commercial fishing. Developed nations - Canada, Japan and the US - have so over harvested almost every commercially valuable fish stock in their respective waters that many populations have crashed and many species have been regionally exterpaited. The *only* thing that has prevented practical extinction of these stocks is goverenment intervention. Despite armed coast guard patrols factory ships *continue* to run borders and harvest these already overfished stocks. This sort irresponsible behavior continues even though modern aquacultural technologies can replace or substitute for almost all comercially important stocks. This is only one of a dozen such examples that come to mind, but it should suffice to make the point - if society *as a global whole* does not willingly and intelligently change its attitude toward all natural resources, the sort of commercial self-regulation you advocate is not possible on any kind of meaningful scale. Jeff Barber Earthling and ex-commercial fisherman *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:33 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Welcome Pete Hey Pete, Welcome the list...delurk at will ; ). Too bad your last name isn't Church. Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: BIOHZD@aol.com Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:32 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Re: Reefsong Hey Rusty, Reefsong was one of the inspirations for Blue Planet. I read it during the game's development and it has been recommended on the list a few times as well. It *is* a good book. Jeff Barber Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Kintaro Oe [kabael@bu.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:56 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - release schedule >I'll let Adam's respose stand (thanks Adam!), and add only that Access Denied >(the game moderator resource booklet and screen pack for BP) should be going >to press in the next two weeks. We are very close to finishing it and are >excited to get it out. I know some of you have seen some of the maps. Well, >this weekend I saw some more of the finished artwork and well...in my totally >unbiased opinion - IT ROCKS! really? when is it expected to hit stores? any teasers on what's in it? other than "Access Denied" stuff. :) how much does it cost, too? this might push back my schedule on buying other stuff I've slacked on due to being a poor student :) kabael - Amida Guddha, Boddhisattva of the Creeping Sad notes- In this world we're all bamboo's children we walk on the roof of hell, in the end. gazing at flowers. -Basho -Issa Mcguffin Group - http://members.xoom.com/McGuffins/index.html I love messages! ICQ #24193592 kabael@bu.edu *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Kintaro Oe [kabael@bu.edu] Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 10:56 PM To: blue_planet@MPGN.COM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - religion >You ask about religion in BP. Oddly enough there were some recent list >discussions on just this topic. I suggest checking out the list archives on >our website (www.biohazardgames.com). Additionally, the first BP supplement, >_Archipelago_, has several sections that detail some of the theological >goings-on on the waterworld. that's one of the things (the many things) I like about BP, the religion. I -love- the Church of the Whalesong. and I actually have a priest PC in the party, so I might be able to embroil him in the politics and subterfuge of Alderberg. kabael - Amida Guddha, Boddhisattva of the Creeping Sad notes- In this world we're all bamboo's children we walk on the roof of hell, in the end. gazing at flowers. -Basho -Issa Mcguffin Group - http://members.xoom.com/McGuffins/index.html I love messages! ICQ #24193592 kabael@bu.edu *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.