reply to post by boncho
Exactly and as consumers we need to pressurise for alternatives. we don't need to be voices looking for reasons to keep oil. Yes we may need
some but we don't need to be this dependent on it, or it's price. Any progress is a great thing. If you are right, we will use some oil still. If
we are right, that amount will fall and faster than you want members to believe.
"It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative
scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the
preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible. When
this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their
prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them."
- Arthur C. Clarke, 1963
The psychology of this is important. In sport it is about positivity. Pessimism is always the mental state of the loser. The positive thought that
we can achieve the seemingly impossible is the stuff of greatness. Do you think Roger Bannister believed he couldn't run a mile in less than 4
minutes? No he dreamed the "impossible" dream. He achieved the seemingly impossible. WE WILL SUCCEED.
We are the optimists. We are the ones who believe that we should strive for and WILL achieve more than what to the weaker minded seems possible. We
have the mindset of the winner, the mindset of the achiever.
Also, as people of knowledge, we have a responsibility to society.
"Communities tend to be guided less than individuals by conscience and a sense of responsibility. How much misery does this fact cause mankind!
It is the source of wars and every kind of oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs and bitterness." - Albert Einstein, 1934
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is
impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Just as 640k isn't really enough for anyone (Bill Gates in the 80's), and the global market for computers is definitely greater than 5 (Thomas Watson
of IBM in the 50's) -- so is it that predicting the future of technology is hard as heck.
So hard, in fact, that the world's foremost experts fail routinely at prediction.
Clarke's third law is probably the most well known, but his first and second I find to be the most useful for anyone who is creative and wants
to invent and affect the future in profound ways. To create what seemed to be impossible is truly the essence of an innovative, valuable
act.
SOURCE:
garry.posterous.com...
"New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled,
the humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in
them?' " - H. G. Wells
Why are you not taking part Boncho?
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IF I DON@T
GET A STAR FOR THAT THEN I QUIT. 
