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In fact there may be so little there, that there isn't an underground water supply to sustain a human civilization. There are reasons people tend to live next to rivers, and oceans. They need something to pee into.

I was talking to folks from England while I was on vacation in Wyoming and they said that there were no places in all of England that came close to the open spaces they could find in the US. I'm afraid we're on our way to losing that escape we have from crowds and boundaries as the population grows.

Days of major terrorist attacks in New York: 1, ever.

Number of major earthquakes on the West Coast: about 5 or 6 in the past century, spread out from California to Alaska.

Percentage of years in which Buffalo, New York has freeze-your-ass-off winters: 100.

I don't know where you were, but I think you're vastly overstating the durability of previous-generation automobiles and appliances.

Cars today are far more reliable than cars were 40 or 50 years ago. You can take pretty much any car today, and expect to get 100,000 miles out of it, properly maintained. This is not just Japanese cars, most domestic cars will last this long too. A whole lot of cars didn't used to have odometers that even went beyond 100k; it was just assumed that it would be scrapped by that point. Plus, they're more efficient, safer, and cost less in real-dollar terms. Not to mention a lower defect rate and less production waste. In short, you get a lot more for your dollar when you purchase a 2006 automobile than its 1956 equivalent.

Maintainance statistics on refrigerators I don't have as readily, but I'm willing to bet that you're viewing the past with some rose-colored glasses there, too. Most major appliances today will easily last ten years, in fact I'll bet that more of them are thrown away because they're no longer stylish, than because they actually break.

There are certain legitimate criticisms of the way a lot of mechancial devices are currently designed (sealed units, difficult to repair), however the upshot of this is that they're both more reliable, require less maintainance (when's the last time you had to have the coolant in your fridge topped off?), and far less expensive than they were in the past.

The reason you don't see very many older cars on American roads is not because they all die, but because we as a whole, don't like to drive them. Rather than driving them until they're actually at the end of their mechanical life, they either get sold to other countries (Mexico imports tons of used cars from the U.S.), or are cut up for parts or scrap rather than being reparied after some non-fatal damage. I suspect that in any major U.S. junkyard, you could very quickly put together enough parts to have a working automobile; it's simply not worth the labor for a skilled mechanic to do so. In other countries, or in the U.S. in the past under different economic conditions, this wouldn't be allowed to happen.

There are lots of things I'm nostalgic about the past for, but I have no illusions about the strides we've made in product engineering over the interim. That we've taken those engineering gains and used them to create a disposable culture is a social, not technological, problem.

You make the presumptions that A) what the US is producing is also what it is consuming, and B) globalization is a benefit to all. Neither are knowns.

the US gov't is far from welcoming the tired, poor and huddled masses anymore.

And we never did.

The whole "give us your tired, your sick" crap was just that, crap. The U.S. has never been particularly interested in taking refugees; exceptions to this are just that -- exceptions -- and not the rule.

I don't know what drives this constant temptation to embellish the past, but it wasn't this wonderful place of sunshine and light. Most of the people who were allowed to immigrate into the United States throughout its history weren't allowed in out of some sort of self-righteous pity, but because they were needed in order to meet the demand for labor. Lots of sick people got sent right back on the boats they came over on, and even if you were young and healthy, you still had to have someone willing to vouch for you here in the States before you were allowed in.

We need to stop deluding ourselves about our past immigration policies. While they may have ended up being more liberal than the rest of the Western world's at the time, that was only because Europe had more people than it knew what to do with, and the U.S. was starved for labor and people to tame the new lands it was in the midst of acquiring. As a nation we needed more people, and as a result we became more welcoming; the latter was a response to the former, not the other way around.

The needs of the United States have always been the driving force in our immigration policy historically; if it worked out well for the immigrants then all the better for them. It's mostly after the fact that people have congratulated themselves for being so high-minded.

Now it's disappointing to me as an American that our immigration process wasn't easier for your wife, who I am assuming is probably educated and employable -- in short, exactly the type of people we need to be encouraging to come here. However, I don't think that as a nation we should be guilt-tripping ourselves into rolling out a red carpet to everyone who needs a place to live, particularly to those without skills, for whom there is little demand today and less so in the future; we have never engaged in this historically, and there's no reason to start now.

Wow; it was fascinating to watch that post go from +5 funny to -1 Flamebait after you posted your heart-rending plea.

Thing is, Funny is both a) subjective and b) unrelated to "tasteful" (well, inversely related if anything). I don't mind being modded down - that's what the system's for - but your statement that "it isn't funny" means that you didn't find it funny. Clearly at least 3 other people did at the time, which is what humour is about - timing. The following Troll/Flamebait mods only appeared after you sulked and wept your heart out.

I can appreciate it wasn't funny to you - yes, it was tasteless - but I knew people who were badly affected by the London bombings and who that very night were making jokes about it. Partly it was a coping mechanism, but partly it was just that some people like edgy humour and prefer to distance themselves from tragedy with levity. In some ways it's a way of confronting tragedy head-on. Iodine for the wound, as it were. I've no doubt you would have found those jokes as funny as they and I did. You might have felt slightly uneasy about it, but it was that ability to laugh, to shrug it off, at least to be pragmatic, that stopped everyone from going bug-fuck paranoid and bitter at the time, and which allowed London to get on with its life instead of doing exactly what the terrorists wanted - freaking out.

Sorry if I offended you. However, your knee-jerk reply suggests that you aren't well equipped to deal with the stings and blows that everyone experiences in life. Still, it is interesting how quickly the mod-tide turned...

An insignificant amount. Now airconditioning in every american home consumes _a lot_ of power.

Yes, and my ancestors started coming over here in the 1870s. They worked hard and were discriminated against.

And here in California, there is fruit rotting in the fields [cfbf.com] because border tightening has cut the supply of farm workers.

So you out of work IT folks, get out there and pick lettuce, corn, tomatoes and pears!