This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future.

[T'Girl]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Your first person perspective is the problem.

It's my knowledge of the facts, not my "perspective."

billions of people have no safe [snip] access to food and water

Increases in agricultural productivity and international trade has caused inflation-adjusted prices of food commodities to decline by 75% in cost, since 1950.

Between 1960 and 2003, the average daily food intake per person increased by 24% overall, and 38% in the undeveloped world.

Malnutrition in developing nations has declined from 37% in 1970, to 17% in 2003.

This game isn't fair

Through most of history, the Human life spans averaged under 30 years, by 2003 it was 66 years.

Before industrialization 20% children died before reaching their first birthday, in 2003 the worldwide rate was below 6%.

Between 1970 and 2003 worldwide illiteracy rates dropped from 36 to 18 percent. 47 nations have literacy rates of 99%, 105 nations above 90%

Child labor has decreased from 25% in 1960 to 10% in 2003.

Smallpox is basically gone.

These are what makes my Earth a wonderful place, these are fantastic things.

Nokia ain't in it

Basically it is, or part of it. Cell phones make it unnecassary to run phone lines into every house and business, just construct a series of towers and a undeveloped region has communications. This increases development and improves the quality of life of people in the region, and at lower cost.

 

[Ian Keldon]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

There's a tendency to romanticize the past and assume that everything was nobler and purer back then, but I suspect that's mostly just nostalgia. Yesterday, as today, show biz was always driven by both commerical and creative impulses, often at the same time!

Gene Roddenberry was a Ferengi in a human's body...the long list of his shennanigans financially in relation to Trek bears testiment to that fact.

 

[Ian Keldon]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

It's not just me. By all accounts, Shatner and Nimoy both considered the IDIC bit a shameless sales pitch and objected to doing what amounted to a commercial in the middle of the episode . . . .

And yet, IDIC and Star Trek survived . . . and "Is There in Truth No Beauty" is still one of the better third-season eps.

So, yes, this is nothing new, and a touch of "product" placement" hardly proves that a new movie (or an old episode) is without merit or irredeemably tainted.

Greg, you have to remember that you are debating with an individual who thinks that slavery, forced suicide, etc are all perfectly OK when "alien" cultures commit them, and that if Earth humans were to say "That's not right" they are practicing cultural imperialism against those societies. He also once referred to the Hippocratic Oath as "lovely nonsense that no one takes seriously any more".

So I have to question the perspective he brings to what is and what is not "commercialism" in Trek...

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Your first person perspective is the problem.

It's my knowledge of the facts, not my "perspective."

I am talking about your libertarianism which lead not coincidentally to your first person "my world is great" statement and your ignorance of massive hunger or food speculation. Ideologies are always able to ignore facts that contradict themselves.
Nice stats by the way but without a source pretty worthless. You might wanna report medians instead of averages as the former contain more distributive information. Or you might wanna clearly state that you do not care about distributive issues.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Nice stats by the way but without a source pretty worthless.

They are nice stats, and readily availible from multiple sites on the internet. Try google if conformation is what you're after.

www.google.com

"my world is great"

My today Earth is a pretty wonderful place, actually. Reading is fundamental.

Or you might wanna clearly state that ...

My statements were clear, the world is in a constant state of improvement. Things are better now then fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, and a thousand years ago. It serves no purpose to insist otherwise, there is less war (not none), less famine (not none), more health, more food, more education, more clean water, more sanitation, more communication, more prosperity, more freedom, around the world (first, second, and third world) than there was even a few decades ago.

No things aren't perfect, but they are better across the board.

Now sure horatio83, you could likely come up with isolated examples of localized problems, they do exist, but those isolated examples are getting fewer every year. And their occurances are becoming wider spread apart in years.





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[Ian Keldon]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Things are better now then fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, and a thousand years ago. It serves no purpose to insist otherwise, there is less war (not none), less famine (not none), more health, more food, more education, more clean water, more sanitation, more communication, more prosperity, more freedom, around the world (first, second, and third world) than there was even a few decades ago.

No things aren't perfect, but they are better across the board.

Now sure horatio83, you could likely come up with isolated examples of localized problems, they do exist, but those isolated examples are getting fewer every year. And their occurances are becoming wider spread apart in years.

Gonna have to call BS on this one. Aspects of our technologies have improved, and social progress in some areas has as well, but there are some serious problem areas such as wealth distribution and generalized prosperity vs resource concentration. Our technologies have made stuff cheaper, but destroyed millions of jobs, particularly in the first world, and other technologies ( aspects of the Internet, and GMO foods, for example) are particularly problematic.

Not all "progress" is good.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Nice stats by the way but without a source pretty worthless.

They are nice stats, and readily availible from multiple sites on the internet. Try google if conformation is what you're after.

www.google.com

In other words, you pulled them our of your ass.

Ignoring your lack of providing sources I totally agree that here has been tremendous material progress during the last two centuries. Capitalism is the most productive economic system in human history. I'd have to look up the numbers but real annual per capita GDP growth should be somewhere between 0.01 and 0.02 which implies that it more than doubles during one's lifetime.
But there are costs which GDP doesn't cover, namely externalities like climate change and resource rents. You can view natural resources as wealth so if we dig it out of the Earth we are not actually becoming richer, we are just discovering the treasure chest in the attic. About the former, according to the Stern report conservative estimates imply a loss of about 1% of annual GDP whereas beyond the 5 degree mark it will be about 5-10%, i.e. we will actually become poorer.

There are different forms of capitalism. What libertarians like yourself favour, unfettered capitalism, is simply anarchy in economic matters and like all form of lawlessness it leads to crime, suffering, inequality and also undermines our very freedom and democracy itself.
Food speculation is neither localized or in decline, it is global and rising and causes tens of millions to hunger.

I totally agree that there has been progress. Gee, I am a progressive so of course I believe that things can get better. But this techno-progress notion is naive, it takes effort and decent social design to improve ourselves and chances are high that we will be far worse off at the end of this century than at its beginning.
You can e.g. not solve climate change and overpopulation simultaneously as there is a trade-off. Land can be used for habitation and food but it can also be used to build forest that absorb CO2. If the whole world industrialized population growth would stagnate yet 7 billion meateaters would lead to more CO2 emissions and there are not enough natural resources to sustain 7 billion electrical gadget owners.
So even if we had an ideal world government like in Star Trek these two problems could not easily be solved at the same time ... and to emphasize it once again, these are global and increasing, not local and diminishing problems.

 

[BillJ]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

In other words, you pulled them our of your ass.

No one is stopping you from discrediting her numbers.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

When you throw around precise numbers and dates it is your job to name the source, not that of the reader. Unsubstantiated claims are just that, unsubstantiated.
Read the rest of my post with links to the UK Treasury and the World Bank, then you might understand how this source thingy is meant to be done properly.

 

[BillJ]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

When you throw around precise numbers and dates it is your job to name the source, not that of the reader. Unsubstantiated claims are just that, unsubstantiated.

This is a message board, not an academic deconstruction of Earth's problems.

It's people sitting around bullshitting and having fun. If you're taking as anything more than that, you may want to throttle back. Go out and bask in some sunshine.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

First you complain that I do not use my time to debunk some numbers, then you claim that I am too academic and this is just a board for bullshitting. Make up your mind.

 

[BillJ]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

First you complain that I do not use my time to debunk some numbers, then you claim that I am too academic and this is just a board for bullshitting. Make up your mind.

No. If it's that important to you to prove someone wrong then do it. But if that's the attitude you carry around then you might want to go outside and get some fresh air.

I never complained...

No one is stopping you from discrediting her numbers.

I honestly don't care if you discredit her numbers or not.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

The burden of proof is upon the guy who names numbers and dates, not upon the reader. That's not an attitude, that's just the way it is.

 

[Greg Cox]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

That's not quite what people are talking about I think. Everything is done from mixed motives, making a big deal out of that is pretty adolescent. .

I don't know. That observation may seem obvious (and "adolescent") to you, but it's one that tends to get lost in the hyperbole and heat of internet debates, where motives (and creators) are either utterly corrupt or pure and unsullied by base commercial concerns. "It's all about the money now! It was NEVER like that before!"

In real life, it's never that simple. And I figure it never hurts to add a reality check now and then.

Sorry if it seemed I was trying to argue your point about mixed motives in general. I was just trying to say that some of us had a somewhat different, if related, point in mind.

Just to belabor the point, and demonstrate what I'm talking about, I cite the "TV producers' opinions" thread going on in the TrekLit forum today--in which the mere suggestion that maybe, just maybe, the former producers of the TV shows weren't necessarily keeping up with the Trek novels these days was immediately interpreted (by some) to mean that they never really cared about Star Trek and the shows were produced on a "soulless assembly line" or some such.

Once again, notice the lack of any sort of sane middle ground. Either you've made a lifelong commitment to Trek in all its forms, which includes reading the latest DS9 novel--or you're a "soulless" hack who never cared about Trek at all . . . .

 

[T'Girl]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

In other words, you pulled them our of your ass.

No one is stopping you from discrediting her numbers.

When you throw around precise numbers and dates it is your job to name the source, not that of the reader.

No seriously horatio83, if you have factual stats that counterdict mine trot them out, if I'm off by more than a percentage point or two point it out.

That's if I'm off.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Your sources must be pretty bad if you are too embarrassed to name them.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

embarrassed

Wow, you mean you couldn't find ANY different numbers?

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

I spent my time to support my last relevant post here with decent sources. My job is not to do the same stuff for your post which obviously consisted of stuff you randomly googled and thus do not even remember.
Anyway, I am done "arguing" with unethical right-wingers who disavow respectively are fine with global warming and food derivative caused hunger.

 

[Dukhat]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Anyway, I am done "arguing" with unethical right-wingers who disavow respectively are fine with global warming and food derivative caused hunger.

Good; we were all wondering when you'd be done.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Looks like another guy who has problem with sources joins the party.
By the way, didn't your doc tell you that the little voices in your head constitute I and not we?