The Energon Pub

A hospital cannot refuse care. That is one reason why hospitals are in trouble is because of people using the ER's as doctors offices and do not have the money to pay for it. Now they can give life saving care then transport but they cannot tell a dying person to go die somewhere else.
We are far from rich. I do not even know if we are in the middle class but we are in a part of the country that makes it easy for us to be buying our own home, have health insurance and even credit cards with tons of credit. That last one is not always a good thing when temptation hits I think the media really blows things up way worse then they actually are sometimes. There are a lot of companies that offer health insurance to their employees. My husband worked at a horrible place. It was dirty, cold in the winter and super super hot in the summer. They always have pleanty of employees though because they get their health coverage paid for by the company.

BlackMagnus wrote:

Shadowman wrote:

Wheeljack35 wrote:2012

The Mayan calendar is probably not something to set your watch by. People who believed the sun was a living God, and didn't know anything was beyond the ocean are not the best political analysts around.

I believe the Mayans weren't the only ones who thought that armageddon would be in the year 2012.

Nope, because the Mayans themselves didn't believe that. 2012 is not meant to be the end of the world in a Lavos Blows Everyone Up sense: It's just the end of this particular age, rolling over like a maxed out odometer to the first one in the cycle again. It's no more apocalyptic than the fact that the Julian calender has cycles that determine which days of the week the days of the month fall on.

Looking at the sheer cost of limited wars like Afghanistan and Iraq, I somehow doubt that anyone would be too keen to start a much larger global conflict in the near future. Limited wars over resources? Possible. Full fledged atomic hopscotch? No.

Pyrostrata wrote:Well, I currently think "World War III" is in progress right now...well, what we have will eventually devolve into it. The world today is rather small, and all countries are interconnected in one way or another, each one holds some economic interests in the other...

Well now here's an interesting thought - with the growing emphasis on a global economy, what if the next world war is fought entirely with and for information and nonexistant currency.

You think of wars being fought for resources, but our entire economy hinges on using currency to pretend we have more money than we actually do. Would it be possible that we could convince ourselves that it is a real enough resource to fight over?

Imagine a 'war' (it wouldn't be called that I'm sure) in which no troops are fielded, but rather hordes of computer scientists, communications engineers, and theoretical economists on either side go head-to-head in an attempt to willfully ruin eachother's economies without having their own destroyed.

I smell a new board game in this...

Caelus wrote:Imagine a 'war' (it wouldn't be called that I'm sure) in which no troops are fielded, but rather hordes of computer scientists, communications engineers, and theoretical economists on either side go head-to-head in an attempt to willfully ruin eachother's economies without having their own destroyed.

I have a good name for that: Cold War II.

Shadowman wrote:

Caelus wrote:Imagine a 'war' (it wouldn't be called that I'm sure) in which no troops are fielded, but rather hordes of computer scientists, communications engineers, and theoretical economists on either side go head-to-head in an attempt to willfully ruin eachother's economies without having their own destroyed.

I have a good name for that: Cold War II.

Touche.

Although the Cold War was marked by several limited conflicts that were essentially wars-by-proxy.

What I'm imagining would be something pursued entirely through global communications, perhaps resorting to viruses, hacking, and at the extreme high precision EMP or DEW attacks.

As someone said before, a war of and for information.




This would make either for a much more aggressive high stakes game of Monopoly, or a much more boring version of Risk. Not sure which.

Caelus wrote:

Shadowman wrote:

Caelus wrote:Imagine a 'war' (it wouldn't be called that I'm sure) in which no troops are fielded, but rather hordes of computer scientists, communications engineers, and theoretical economists on either side go head-to-head in an attempt to willfully ruin eachother's economies without having their own destroyed.

I have a good name for that: Cold War II.

Touche.

Although the Cold War was marked by several limited conflicts that were essentially wars-by-proxy.

What I'm imagining would be something pursued entirely through global communications, perhaps resorting to viruses, hacking, and at the extreme high precision EMP or DEW attacks.

As someone said before, a war of and for information.




This would make either for a much more aggressive high stakes game of Monopoly, or a much more boring version of Risk. Not sure which.

That's why I added the II.

It does sound like something that could happen. Telecommunications has become society's new left leg. Targeting that could bring any country to it's knees.

Also, it'd mean they could actually use Splinter Cells, like in the Tom Clancy games.

Caelus wrote:

Shadowman wrote:

Caelus wrote:Imagine a 'war' (it wouldn't be called that I'm sure) in which no troops are fielded, but rather hordes of computer scientists, communications engineers, and theoretical economists on either side go head-to-head in an attempt to willfully ruin eachother's economies without having their own destroyed.

I have a good name for that: Cold War II.

Touche.

Although the Cold War was marked by several limited conflicts that were essentially wars-by-proxy.

What I'm imagining would be something pursued entirely through global communications, perhaps resorting to viruses, hacking, and at the extreme high precision EMP or DEW attacks.

As someone said before, a war of and for information.




This would make either for a much more aggressive high stakes game of Monopoly, or a much more boring version of Risk. Not sure which.

Very plausible notion, in our small-world-made-smaller-by-technology. A shot would never ring out, but whole nations would go bankrupt in moments, which in turn would domino-effect...If the right parties could force those said dominos in a direction that would benefit them.....

...rather a ominous concept indeed!

Not to make light of a serious and somewhat gruesome topic, but I really want a Make-Your-Own-Monopoly set now to play around with the idea.

But would the "properties" be - countries, major economic regions, or important industries?

If countries, who gets to be Board Walk and Park Place?

And the Chance/Community Chest cards would be awesome.

Caelus wrote:Not to make light of a serious and somewhat gruesome topic, but I really want a Make-Your-Own-Monopoly set now to play around with the idea.

But would the "properties" be - countries, major economic regions, or important industries?

If countries, who gets to be Board Walk and Park Place?

And the Chance/Community Chest cards would be awesome.

Boardwalk and Park Place: Internet and Telephone.