h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well duh.

Like its anything more than something for politics students to prattle on about.

Stop and think, then think more,especially about if what you are posting is merely trendy, hippy, vox pop nonsense; then post.

Hmm. Anarchy, like communism, is a fantastically fundamental idea, which would create a glorious society if it worked in practice, but it never will. Communism just isn't viable because everyone will never be able to function as a planet full of absolute equals, and anarchy will always descend into chaos.
Shame for us hippies.

Anarchy thread at F19585?thread=234422

When I say that "I'd like to see the nation state, imperialism, and all religions chucked in the dustbin, along with a lot of other unnecessary baggage" is that necessarily advocating anarchy?

its a beleif system I'd have some time for 'in an ideal world' but we aint got one of them.

However, I can envisage a future society in which military spending reduces, nation states are subsumed into large economic blocks and divided into regional administrations and there are no conflicts of religion as people learn to respect one another.

Possibly this will arise after calamatious events. Hopefully it will gradually happen under democratic and popular pressure. I really don't beleive that the majority of the worlds population are bloodthirsty, but many of them are stupid, desperate or illinformed and some will use whatever weapons they have around to further thier aims. I think that a rule of law should prohibit such violence, enforced by a legitimate police force.

What is a 'legitimate' police force?

I was watching Gladiator earlier on this morning. The power struggles and shifting of loyalties depicted in the film just go to show how nebulous a concept a 'legitimate' leadership is. And the police force/soldiers that would enforce it.

OK, lets deal with my reaction to the point raised one by one…

"When I say that "I'd like to see the nation state, imperialism, and all religions chucked in the dustbin, along with a lot of other unnecessary baggage" is that necessarily advocating anarchy?"
with a statement like that it comes accross as if you are either advocating Anarchism or Planetary Government.


"I can envisage a future society in which military spending reduces"
I certainly believe the United Kingdom spends far to much of it’s income on Defence
(UK 2.32% of GDP which is high when compared to some of our neighbours Belgium 1.5% of GDP, Denmark 1.6% of GDP, Spain 1.3% of GDP, Germany 1.5% of GDP)

"…nation states are subsumed into large economic blocks and divided into regional administrations"
depends what you man here, but I’m certainly pro-European (A273089), believing both in enlargement of the E.U. and that it should move to a more Federalist & Democratic constitution. I also hope that Economic groupings in other parts of the world follow the path taken by the E.U.

"…and there are no conflicts of religion"
sorry, but I firmly believe that 'Conflict' is in the nature of the beast

"…as people learn to respect one another."
Perhaps, I shouldn’t of broken that into two but I think the respect part is important, I believe this can only come from a fundamental change in attitudes – once we start valuing others more for what they contribute than for what they can acquire (which is one of the basic principles of Anarchism) respect will surly follow.

"Hopefully it will gradually happen under democratic and popular pressure. I really don't believe that the majority of the worlds population are bloodthirsty, but many of them are stupid, desperate or ill-informed and some will use whatever weapons they have around to further their aims. I think that a rule of law should prohibit such violence, enforced by a legitimate police force."
With the exception of “stupid” I couldn’t agree more

"What is a 'legitimate' police force?"
Interesting Question, I’ve never seen the point in getting upset at the Police, they just enforce laws – if you don’t like the laws then it is the law-makers one should get upset at.


Finally

I personally do not believe that a 100% anarchistic society is truly possible at this stage of human social development (although it is a nice dream) but remember a little bit of anarchism goes a long way

Two Bit Trigger Pumping Moron wrote:
>
>I suspect if it was that easy, it would have been done by now.
>
>I once held a Critical Nuclear Weapons Desgin Information >endoresement to my Top Secret Clearance. I've seen plans for the >things. Some of them, are not that hard to make. Some of them are >much easier to make than is described here.
>
>Yet something has kept terroists from employing them.
>
>I suspect that getting enough weapons grade material is too
>difficult or expenseive to make it practicle.
>

Eons ago when I was in College, I took a course about nuclear engineering. They had a picture of a spherical subcritical mass of plutonium in the book. The caption said the picture was taken by the light of the plutonium, no other light source was necessary because the thing was, literally, red hot.

The book also yammered on endlessly about the difficulty of machining subcritcal masses of fissile materials and how dangerous it is. The difficulty related to the high temperature that subcritical masses of fissile material reach, as in glow-in-the-dark red hot. Plus subcritical masses of fissile material have a lot of tricky phase shifts at those temperatures. As in change the temperature a few degrees and the crystal structure of the metal shifts from, say, face-centered cubic to body-centered cubic or some such. Because of that, a small change in temperature causes irritating shifts in dimensions.

Part of the danger of machining fissile material is that it is deadly poison. It doesn't take a whole lot of plutonium or uranium dust to make you extremely sick from heavy metal poisoning. Never mind, radiological poisoning.

Because of those difficulties, the professional bomb makers have moved on to other designs. Which while being more complicated, are safer for the the poor shlubs who actually have manufacture the bombs.

What is this? Slur against christianity is illegal in Britain? I didn't know that. Tell me more please...

And if it really is, that seems to me to be a breach of articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A224623).

As far as irony and sarcasm go I think they are the same thing, they are both forms of sardonic humour.

Regards to the 'Jesus is a c**t' T-shirt, this was produced by the band 'Cradle of Filth' and on their record labels website (Roadrunner Records) it says this:

"As many of you maybe aware Cradle Of Filth fan Adam Shepherd was ordered to do 80 hours' community service and to pay £40 costs after wearing one of the band's most infamous T-shirts.

The 18-year-old was charged in Weymouth under a law prohibiting the display of religiously insulting or abusive signs. He was wearing a shirt with a nun masturbating on the front and 'Jesus Is A C**t' on the back."

So it can be illegal not because of the swear words but because of it's religious contexts and (never knew where parliment got with this) Religious hatred laws parliment were discussing would almost certainly have issues with it.

1. Why should terrorists bother to build an atom bomb when they can probably buy one off the shelf?

2. Assuming the dreadful London scenario proceeded as outlined in the main article - how would the PM respond? Presumably he'd out-nuke them whoever 'them' are.

3. Is there really an axis of evil or is it more a case of a bow and arrow mentality interfacing with modern weapons technology?

4. Is the Peter Sellers classic anti-war film Dr. Strangelove a good insight into mindset in the Pentagon?

5. Are wars and threats of wars essential to technological and scientific developement?

An excellent article by the way.