use Perl

• The cold war ending (Score:1)

  by jplindstrom (594)

  I cannot recall a time in my lifetime when a positive outlook of the world was pervasively felt.
  
  How about the years after the cold war ended? (after the Berlin wall, but before the germans realized how expensive it would be to reunite)
  
  How about during the IT bubble, before anyone realized there was a reality distortion field cranked to up eleven? /J
  
  • Re:The cold war ending (Score:2)

    by pudge (1)

    Well, even if we accept that people generally felt good at the time, in retrospect we know that there was a lot that were missing, like increased tensions in the Balkans, the rise of Islamism that we're fighting now, etc. But I don't accept that they generally felt great, because when the Berlin Wall fell, we were still worrying about poverty, the environment, the Middle East, etc.
    
    I am reminded of a very old Kingston Trio song, Merry Minuet. "They're rioting in Africa, they're starving in Spain, there's
• premature optimisation (Score:1)

  by link (3402)

  Thats the great thing about the news,there are plenty of points of views to go around.
  
  You can look at the elections in Iraq and all that people power going on around Russia and its all good. On the other hand apparently childhood malnutrition in Iraq has doubled since the american invasion , the newly elected parliament has only met twice and the old appointed government is really still in charge.
  
  Pakistan is cooperating against muslim extremists but its not quite a democracy and its getting fighter jets
  • Re:premature optimisation (Score:2)

    by pudge (1)

    I am not saying the world is doing great. There are always huge problems, that's my real point. My personal feeling is always generally optimistic, however, because I think that despite the problems, we keep improving overall. Some may feel the opposite, I just don't believe this feeling is any more or less pervasive now than at most, if any, other times.
• "democracy and free speech are sweeping the globe" (Score:2)

  by merlyn (47)

  Ahh, I get it. There's only a limited about of democracy and free speech in the world, so we can only raise theirs by lowering ours, eh?

  Just another guy who watches the constitution erode one sentence at a time, thanks to the republicrats.

  --
  

  • Randal L. Schwartz
  • Stonehenge
  • Re:"democracy and free speech are sweeping the glo (Score:2)

    by pudge (1)

    Ahh, I get it. There's only a limited about of democracy and free speech in the world, so we can only raise theirs by lowering ours, eh?
    
    Name one way in which your rights to democracy or free speech have been eroded.
    
    Not including your criminal conviction.
    
    • Re:"democracy and free speech are sweeping the glo (Score:1)

      by phillup (4419)

      Name one way in which your rights to democracy or free speech have been eroded.
      
      I'd really like to answer that question but I can't talk about that subject [aclu.org].
      
      ;-)
      
      
      • Re:"democracy and free speech are sweeping the glo (Score:2)

        by pudge (1)

        What's the emoticon for "rolling eyes"? :p
• the REAL reason... (Score:2)

  by lachoy (1663)

  you're just happy because the Red Sox won...
• Rich v poor (Score:1)

  by jhannah (5254)

  There's a lot of subjective good/bad news out there, but riddle me this Batman:
  
  (1) How are we going to feed 10B people in the year 2050? How about \d\dB people in the year 2100? What's going to stop the population explosion? Mass famine and disease?
  
  And as an afterthought in case we figure out #1: (2) In a world of unbridled globalization and specialization how do you avoid massive rifts between rich and poor? I know humanity never has, and arguably much of the world is better wealth distributed than it us

  --
  Omaha Perl Mongers [pm.org]
  • Re:Rich v poor (Score:2)

    by pudge (1)

    The best thing we can do to feed people is to help spread democracy and capitalism. Note that there's not famine in Zimbabwe because they don't have natural resources or able bodies, but because a dictator has created a terrible political situation that has resulted in severe depression. The solution for famine there is to get rid of Mugabe, get a democracy in there, and use institutions like the World Bank to help get private enterprise going.
    
    Not that it doesn't bring its own problems, but it's the best