Ragnark, 24 March 2014 I first saw the dire predictions on Facebook from friend, scientist and philosopher George

e Shiber, then on the wonk blog Policy Mic. NASA was quick to distance itself with the following disclaimer: NASA officials released this statement on the study today (March 20): "A soon-to-be published research paper, 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota's Jorge Rivas, was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity. As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions." Likely for a self-serving reason: it's hard to ask for congressional approval of your budget if governance of the human species is toast in two decades! I'm not so sure they should run from this conclusion so quickly. A really good motivator for space exploration and establishing colonies on Mars is in "not wanting to die out," or spark the next world war on lack of resources. Sputnik was a good motivating factor: the space race was out of the fear that the Russians had the capability of launching a thermonuclear weapon at us if they could launch a satellite. We now of course, have other related concerns. On May 31st of last year, I blogged that some models have stated a second Earth will soon be needed at our current consumption rate. 2012 was a year for debunking doomsday prophecies clearly off the mark. I assume for dominionists that salivate for Armageddon, this is "manna from Heaven." To get some reasonable response from our legislators, we're going to have to elect more with a science background (INSIST they debate it publicly and on the record) and not taking 50+ votes to repeal a law upheld by the Supreme Court or limit the number of National Parks. Considering the previous sentence, perhaps psychological testing should be mandated as an office requisite. After Ragnarok, I guess it all won't matter. Consume:
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1. Eat or drink something: to eat or drink something, especially in large amounts 2. Use something up: to use something in such a way that it cannot be reused or recovered afterward 3. Engross somebody: to fill somebody's mind or attention fully Synonyms: eat drink devour put away munch chomp guzzle feed on ingest Our entire global economy is based upon consumption, and that is spurred by angst, strife and fear of "the other"; e.g. "The Southern Strategy" is dog whistle politics writ large for the lessons of ethnic supremacy handed down for generations on bent knees, enforced by night riders, Jim Crow and de jure legislation to keep a psychopathic established "order": a boot on the necks of everyone but the dominant, foreshadowing the classic line uttered to Winston in 1984 during his torture by OBrien and the Party. Shirtless Putin is protecting "Russian speakers" as he reassembles the old empire not under communism, but oligarchy. At home, the freak out on Cosmos is somewhat about its advocacy of science literacy and non-acknowledgement of fringe pseudoscience; I suspect some angst for an aging, dwindling few is more about the ethnicity of the host himself. Our policies are Orwellian doublespeak: there is no evidence of voter fraud but one party is determined to fight this chimera with laws barring/inhibiting those that weren't going to vote for them anyway; "there is no war on women" - just a war on their independence and reproductive rights mascaraing as "religious freedom," ultrasound probes, $0.70 for every $1.00 made by men equitable in someone's sociopathic Calculus; "there is no class warfare" yet promised pensions to workers are being cut as bonuses paid to the same hedge fund managers that bankrupted the economy "because of their contracts (?)"; public education is under assault at all levels, favoring pick-and-choose charter schools using public funds for private corporate profits. "They're coming to take our guns" when in reality they're taking far more than the second amendment: the only Citizens United live in exclusive barricaded neighborhoods with their own security forces and food supplies, and pay for "elected" officials with dark money. (Elysium was either entertainment, or a documentary of near-future events.) We're essentially being pulverized, sculpted into a national version of West Virginia or North Carolina - too afraid to comment or complain of safety, fair pay or work conditions, stomaching baths in arsenic water, lest the only industries they or we've known goes away (NAFTA/CAFTA/TPP = SHAFTA). The technology has emboldened a gilded class across continents such that they no longer feel
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tethered to the countries of their origins their planet, or reality, for that matter. In a canopy economy, they bask above us in sunlight and rain; blithely razing the forests beneath themselves, not thinking it will eventually make their wealth utterly meaningless. Clear evidence it was the tech, not their own self-deluded individual reliance, pluck or "abilities." They've demonstrated via lack of foresight and inane behavior WMD in Iraq, two wars fought simultaneously on the same blank check, two tax cuts that were supposed to (always supposed, but never does) trickle down; unregulated markets leading to the global meltdown in 2008, dark money in 2012 and Roves on-screen meltdown when all efforts failed to curtail a diversifying electorate they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer. However, our politicians are bought by them; pseudoscience used as a tool of manipulation by them to justify their perch atop an all-seeing-eye of Horus pyramid: they are the gods we are all to worship (in their opinion), and the best way to worship them is to "free the market" of regulation, obligation, taxes or collective responsibility. "The Hunger Games" and other Dystopian science fiction novels like Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" (even Star Trek faux history had us go through the clandestine Eugenics Wars and WW-III before warp drive and first contact), made these predictions before the NASA sponsored modeling. Thankfully, no dystopian prophecy has come true. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Pearl Harbor ushered us into the first two world wars to end all wars. Yet, we seem eager to tempt fate; jump over the cliff in fictional lemming fashion, finding out Anne Marie Thrse was correct to assert in "Postcards from over the Edge: It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop!" In this Newtonian observation, we are not guaranteed to "bounce back" and discover super-luminous travel methods to other worlds. Those that survive might instead, recede back into the caves, superstition and savagery. "Horus" atop his perch would soon follow, his wealth burnt to ashes by his own Joker; his innate "abilities" amounting to dried dung and dust. It seems as a species, we're determined to do things "the hard way," and not learn George Santayana's maxim: "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it," either modeled or fictional. This is a self-induced doomsday and mass extinction we could all avoid. We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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