[War] Timeline thinking

[pentaj2 at Scranton.edu]

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Garcia <ssiruuk25 at yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 6:21 pm
Subject: Re: [War] Timeline thinking

> Maybe the first quantum computers (in govt labs) are in use, 
> primarily for encryption/decryption stuff (I actually don't know 
> quite how close we are here, though there are people I can ask 
> [quantum information's big in my department...]).

Dan, could you check in your dept? Quantum would dramatically change 
the game in crypto.

> Medically, nothing too different, though as Mike said probably 
> some more effective treatments for some things.

Nothing of note, though.

 As to GM foods, 
> maybe some more, maybe not (depends upon Europe, mostly).  Maybe 
> cloned farm animals have started becoming big (e.g. clone your 
> prize milk producing cow so that you have 1000 of her).

Cloning, yes. I covered this in my initial message. GMO: Europe -lost-
. WTO has said fairly consistently that they're trucking a load of 
bullshit. By 2013, Europe will take GMOs and eat GMOs - whether they 
like it or not initially, but later on without even noticing.

 Hybrid 
> car use goes up, and even non-hybrids are more fuel efficient 
> (higher gas prices have made car makers put more of engine 
> efficiency gains into fuel efficiency instead of engine power).  
> The first plug-in hybrids have shown up.  Hydrogen still won't 
> work, and ethanol use is up, though it's becoming clear that 
> ethanol is not an answer (you need to eat the food you grow too), 
> just something which helps a bit.

As I put it:

Global warming got a big help by a continuing trend in the US: Hybrids 
for damn near every vehicle you can think of. Even hybrid semis. The 
one exception is emergency vehicles, where the performance difference 
still is enough to be an issue. GM and Ford, by the way, pulled a 
trick in September 2012: The first plug-in hybrids for the mass market.

Disagree on ethanol. You'd be right on -corn- based ethanol, but not 
sugar cane-based.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil

I could see this being used as a big "reconstruction generator" in 
Louisiana.

> The developing world remains developing technologically.5-10 years 
> behind the developed world for the most part, though in more 
> prosperous parts of the developing world, wireless broadband will 
> find a place (it's much cheaper than laying down wires).  Cell 
> phones continue to be big in the developing world.

This works, though I am dubious re wireless broadband.

Additional thoughts:

Games like Second Life were a fad in 2007 and 2008. However, while the 
tech worked fine...

The IRS decided that the money made there, since it can be converted 
to real money...Is taxable income. 
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070130/tc_pcworld/128270) Kinda 
kills the fad.

That said, by 2013, the US military has begun testing it for training 
and decision support uses.

---
Moving on from tech to social thoughts:

Same-sex marriage had with it a degree of overreach. The rising 
traditionalism has overturned or severely restricted gay marriage in 
Europe, and supporters lost a referendum in Massachusetts in 2008, won 
by opponents through canny scare-stories re the full faith and credit 
clause. Canada is the lone holdout, but their same-sex marriages 
aren't recognized outside of Canada.

However, civil unions are increasingly in vogue as a compromise.

Religious fundamentalists a la Pat Robertson flamed out around 2010. 
The Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church (Eastern Orthodox), and more 
conservative strains of Mainline Protestantism have benefited; Not as 
liberal as much of the Episcopal Church in America (which went through 
schism, at which point the liberal factions were dropped on their ear 
and the conservatives kept attachment to Canterbury) or the Methodists 
or like, but not as conservative as evangelical strains.

A high-profile and determined "cleaning campaign" around 2009-2010 has 
helped the Catholic Church substantially; there are still scars, but 
the Catholic Church, worldwide and particularly in America, has healed 
from the last few decades of turmoil. No changes re clerical celibacy 
or the ordination of women.

Catholic piety is in another of its occasional cycles of resurgence, 
and small statues of the Virgin Mary or the Saints are not uncommon, 
and Orthodox customs such as icons are also becoming common. 
Interestingly, this is not a one-way thing; Marian devotions such as 
the Rosary are catching on in Eastern Orthodox circles, and even in 
pockets of Lutheranism. The Orthodox practice of Hesychasm is becoming 
more common throughout Christianity, generally.

Islam, on the other hand, is going through hell. The 
ideological/political splits between fundamentalists and moderates, 
between traditionalists and modernizers, between Sunni and Shia, are 
only growing fiercer by the day. The Hajj in recent years has seen 
riots and violence between Sunni and Shia.

Judaism is undergoing a surge, as many Gen Xers and Gen Y members 
shift into increasingly observant forms, or return to practicing a 
faith they had given up.

This is not helping Buddhism, which has shed much of the Western 
converts it had gained since the 1950s; it's resulted in a clearer and 
more distinct Buddhism, but one far less in the Western mainstream.

Immigration is still a battle; Amnesty and a guest-worker program have 
turned the debate into a more normal nativist-immigrant battle in the 
US for at least another generation, but Europe is less clear about it.

As posited in the European section, there's a backlash politically. 
But socially, there is as much a melding as there is a tension. The 
rising number of Muslims means that male circumcision is increasingly 
common among native Europeans as well (not wanting to look different 
in gym class, so to speak). And both the US and Europe are now 
regularly teaching kids to speak multiple languages fluently from 
birth; indeed, in some states in the US, demonstrated conversational, 
reading, and written fluency in at least one language other than 
English (at the end of senior year) is slated to become a requirement 
for high school graduation.

No real progress on an AIDS vaccine (four just began Phase III trials 
in 2012, but those are not scheduled to wrap up until 2015 at the 
earliest), but HPV vaccine improvements (and falling costs) have 
increasingly eliminated cervical cancer in the West; along with that 
comes a happy decrease in genital warts.

Smoking is increasingly uncommon in Western Europe and North America; 
sure, you can still get your cancer sticks, but taxes are eye-
poppingly high and places you can legally smoke are few.

The other cancers have seen improvements in treatment success, and in 
diagnosis, but those are victories on the margins.

Diabetes is proving to be a major issue worldwide; the obesity 
epidemic has crested, particularly among children, but the effects are 
going to be felt for decades.

Abortion is up for grabs, even in places where it was thought settled, 
partially because of the rise of religious traditionalism; bans aren't 
really on the table (the one victory of supporters of legal abortion 
has been that even in the US, there's a terrified thought of back-
alley abortions that prevents anybody from totally banning it), but 
the conditions required for a legal abortion are increasingly strict; 
the fact that the line for viability keeps getting pushed back by 
medical science is not helping matters. On the other hand, condoms and 
contraceptives have only increased in sophistication and availability; 
there's evidence of a rising tide of abstinence in premarital sex, but 
only in surveys, and those are regarded with extreme caution.

John