Qualifying and quantifying impactors (was Shooting down meteoroids)

On May 27, 2008, at 3:02 PM, Don DAnthony wrote:

> Communism was atheist and managed to kill hundreds of millions of
> innocent people.
>

True, but because they were totalitarian, not because they were
atheist. There's no particular correlation there; most dictators in
history were in religious societies (and used religion to help
maintain their power). But today, most of the large-scale violence in
the world is caused by religious extremists or by religous-backed U.S.
Republican leaders.
> Religous nuts? LOL, humanity hasn't managed to stop using violence
> and in fact with every leap of technology merely increases the scale
> of the carnage.
>

I don't think your assertions are supported by the facts. War has
been pretty much a constant of human civilization since pre-historic
times, up through WWII -- and since then, we've shown increasing
restraint. Is it because we're afraid of the atomic bomb? Is it
because we're an increasingly interconnected global economy? Is it
because modern travel and communications make it harder to divide
ourselves into "us" and "them"? Is it because the tide of technology
has created such a positive-sum game that it makes more sense to ride
it together than to fight each other? I don't know, but whatever the
reason (most likely some combination of these), the last half-century
has been, globally, the most peaceful in history.

This is not to say that there haven't been atrocities. But there have
been atrocities for as long as there have been people (and no doubt
longer than that). On the whole, though, things are better than
they've ever been. A lot of serious, intelligent thinkers at the end
of WWII were quite sure, based on history up to that point, that the
nuclear holocaust would be coming within a decade or two. That didn't
happen, and it's looking increasingly unlikely to ever happen. Times
have changed.

> Religion had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with WWI WWII and all the
> other assorted death fiascos of recent history.
>
Not with WWI and WWII, but they have much to do with the current spate
of violence -- namely Muslim extremists in the Middle East, and
fundamentalist Christian-backed war mongers here in the US.

Best,
- Joe