Fuck the poor and starving, we need our energy

Which is another reason we need to reform the primary system and stop Iowa from being first with New Hampshire all the time.

I think that certain areas would stop. If you had some sort of virulent epidemic/pandemic which claimed those kinds of percentages, you'd see a shift in application. In such a case, you'd see the best remaining minds, who may have previously been engaged in something like entertainment/media technologies for instance, abruptly finding ways to apply their technological savvy to tackling the problem of slowing or halting the spread of the sickness (perhaps that's what you meant by "change"). From then on out, TVs wouldn't be getting bigger or thinner, but you'd likely see advancements in medtech.

I would suppose that, if you charted technological progress as a ratio between hours applied to technological development and population, there might actually be an increase.

Then again, it might also swing the other way. If the epidemic tore through the urban centers disproportionately, it could end up slowing significantly....you know, with one guy holed-up in a tacky second floor apartment with his chemistry set, his statues, and that chick from "Get Christy Love".

Odds are, at that point, we'd be fuxxored.

Interesting article!

Of course, this could potentially solve many of the world's problems...

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

But I think I'd rather starve.

Oh, that's not new, they've been warning us of the coming eating-bugs-ages every 5 years or so since the 70's.

Did everyone have indoor plumbing?

No. Rich people could afford it and you had communal bathhouses. Even then it wasn't the type of indoor plumbing that dumb-dumb Jenee was thinking of.

Don't sit here and try to argue that indoor plumbing was widespread throughout Rome. It wasn't.

Rome didn't have central air. They had hypocaust systems. A method of heating air and transporting it to a room(s) or heating water for the bathhouses. It provided no cooling and was expensive to use because it required constant fuel. After Rome fell it fell out of disuse and it wasn't until the 19th century that central heating came back to Europe.

Rome never had the steam engine in the way you're thinking of. What they used was a fire to heat water and displace it from one place to another inside of a closed device. The weight of the water caused ropes to be pulled and doors opened. No steam. You're thinking of the aeolipile, a very primitive steam engine, which boiled water and the steam came through the pipes to turn it in a circle. Very weak and inefficient and not capable of opening any doors or anything else for that matter. The Romans had they tried to figure it out totally to use it might have created a real steam engine. Imagine the world then.

And vending machine? A simple mechanical device. Put the coin in and the weight of the coin press the lever opening the water value and when the coin falls off the lever snaps back and shuts the value. Could use anything besides coin as long as it had weight to it which is probably why it didn't see widespread use. You'd have to guard it to make sure people were dropping coin in and not useless metal junk.

That's exactly what I mean.

The rate of technology will slow because of the deaths and what's left is going to change to other areas needed for survival.

"Even then it wasn't the type of indoor plumbing that dumb-dumb Jenee was thinking of."

Fuck off, Kirk Jr. I was speaking of the level of technology. Even if I had made a statement about how widespread the technology was or wasn't, the technology was still there and lost.

Good to see someone picking up Kirk's slack in his absence.

Whatever you say mini-Garamet.

No, we didn't have to re-learn "indoor plumbing". I'll let Zombie's excellent points about what is and what isn't "indoor plumbing", but the fact is that what the Romans had was NEVER lost.

For one, the Roman Empire's fall... when was it? 476 AD when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus? Or 1453 when the Byzantine Empire (which was STILL the Roman Empire whether anyone likes it or not) was finally overrun by the Ottoman Turks?

Either way, if you count the fall of the West in 476, well everything the West had was preserved and continued by the East. If you count the fall of the East in 1453, well the European renaissance was in full swing by then.

It's a largely debunked myth that the fall of the Roman Empire led to some kind of technological or cultural "dark ages". That's all a bunch of literaty hoo-hah. The fact is, mainland Europe never really lost Rome's advances, and they actually made many advances of their own.

Are you going to honestly stand there and tell me that had the Roman Empire not fallen, we would still be at the same technological level as we are now? That the Dark Ages would not have impaired the advancement of scientific research?

Copernicus disagrees!

Define "the Dark Ages".

That's exactly what he's telling you. Sorta.

Thing is that no one can predict what would had happened had the Roman Empire not split up into two parts and then the Western part disappeared and many centuries later the Eastern part was conquered.

What happens if the whole thing just fell apart? Or the Empire survived to modern times? (that was a Sliders episode IIRC)

We don't have Professor Farnsworth What-If? machine to tell us.

But he is right that the majority of technological skill did not disappear as the Roman Empire fell apart.

According to Wiki roughly the 6th to 13th centuries

The Dark Ages were not the apocalypse.

It wasn't like nuclear winter, plague, and mutant zombies all wrapped into one time period.

They still had tech, they still created technology.

As I said in the post you quoted, Copernicus disagrees.

People can 'what if' till they're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact science and technology was diminished due to the rise of the Catholic Church - and the Catholic Church gained power through the power vacuum left by the fall of the Roman Empire.

Fine. It wasn't an "apocalypse", so, in the context of this discussion, not a true reset.

Still, technology was impaired due to fall of the empire.

Except the Roman Empire never fell. Only a part of it did.

And of course you have the Holy Roman Empire from the 900's to the early years of the 1800's. (it was said it was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire)

Or any kind of reset.

9999 out of 10000 scientists and historians disagree.

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

Fluffy gets confused.

So has Fluffy found anyone here who's pro-ethanol yet?

Should I confuse him further by mentioning switchgrass?

Bell bottoms, and white guy afros.

FTFY

Please get your head out of your ass.

The fact is that it is the local governments, corrupt and thuggish, that prevent people from growing food in country.

One only has to look at Zimbabwe. That wasn't caused by a western government.

Rhodesia was.

The starvation and food problems were not caused by any Western government no matter how much you want to be true.

Why are we obligated to give a fuck about the third world?

Other than this mamby-pamby altruism shit, which is like throwing a lead life preserver to a 600 pound spastic who's only going to pull the "good Samaritan" in to drown, too.

Here's my take: Sorry that breeding like fucking roaches didn't work out for you. See ya.