Weird thought: Should the Church of Chaos be founded in real life?

[Broodingman87]

I've been away, nearly a year now, I've been watching the world. Call me crazy or a little too pessimistic, but I'm starting to see the work of the dark gods (Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch) in the real world. Let's recap 2014 shall we:

January was marked the coldest winter on record. Where I live in tropical Florida, during a hail storm, my car was frozen shut for three days! Which has never happened be before.

Two Malaysian planes just disappeared in the Pacific Ocean, One was shot down by the Russians in Ukraine. This is 2014, I can have my license plate read by a satellite in space yet, some how a plane with hundreds of people can vanish as if David Copperfield did it. #HowDoYouLoseAPlane

Nigeria, hundreds of school girls just get kidnapped. Wait, isn't Nigeria supposed to be the most stable country in Africa?

ISIS!? What Al-Quida wasn't crazy enough?

Ebola is back!? Who made Ebola, some mad scientist?

Russian money deflates, Well, that proves why you shouldn't link a currency to a commodity.

To find the work of Khorne in the real world, all you have to do is look at Africa and the Middle-east.

Slaanesh = the sex trade in Asia and Europe, the drug cartels in South America.

Nurgle = Every third world country on the planet, the fact that there are still third world countries in 2014 really infuriates me.

Tzeentch is probably going to be the hardest to accept. America and Europe are changing technologies so fast that whole industries are disappearing faster than people can get retrained for a new career.

Am I alone in saying that this stuff has to stop? Does anyone else think there should be some sort of organization or cult with the mission of stopping these demons?

[KhornishGameHen]

The Chaos Gods have always been at work here on Earth, we humans just seem to forget that things always seem worse in our time than the past. :-p

History has been fraught with horror, suffering and pain, but there is great good on Earth as well. The Black Death, the slaughtering of untold numbers during the World Wars, slavery, things like these have happened and will continue to happen.

We can't get caught up in our time, merely try to do the best we can to help those we can reach.

Just go out and try to be as decent a human being as you can.

[Morgrim]

Am I alone in saying that this stuff has to stop? Does anyone else think there should be some sort of organization or cult with the mission of stopping these demons?
It wouldn't be the Church of Chaos in that case, and frankly given some of the issues are caused by christianity and islam (ie the religions that the Ecclesiarchy is based on) I'm fairly sure that any religion made to fix things is likely to make things worse.

[Mr Mystery]

Just on the off chance they are out there - absolutely not!

Have you seen what we do in the name of supposedly buddy buddy loveydovey Gods?

[Broodingman87]

It wouldn't be the Church of Chaos in that case, and frankly given some of the issues are caused by christianity and islam (ie the religions that the Ecclesiarchy is based on) I'm fairly sure that any religion made to fix things is likely to make things worse.

Well, If we promote the opposite deity then wouldn't that cause them to balance out, (ie promoting infrastructure, education and technical development in the Nurgle stricken regions while promoting stagnancy in the Tzeentch stricken regions), would that not help?

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Have you seen what we do in the name of supposedly buddy buddy loveydovey Gods?

I know, it's tragic, and probably why do many people (including me) don't see Allah/Jehovah.

[ElectricPaladin]

It wouldn't be the Church of Chaos in that case, and frankly given some of the issues are caused by christianity and islam (ie the religions that the Ecclesiarchy is based on) I'm fairly sure that any religion made to fix things is likely to make things worse.

I don't know. Unitarian Universalists are pretty awesome. If there's anyone I'd trust with unlimited power to govern the world and kill at will, if necessary, and with a heavy heart, it'd be Fred Wooden, the Unitarian Universalist minister at the church I grew up near (in? I don't know. I'm Jewish, but my family hung out with the Unitarians after our synagogue - long story - kicked us out).

[DarkLink]

Also worth noting that, recession of the last 5-6 years aside, by almost every possible objective gobal measure the world is a better place overall. Less violence, disease, higher standards of living, etc.

[Broodingman87]

Also worth noting that, recession of the last 5-6 years aside, by almost every possible objective gobal measure the world is a better place overall. Less violence, disease, higher standards of living, etc.

By what measure? In order to say something is better you have to relate it to something, are you saying 2014 is better than 2013? 2004? 1804? 4?

[Morgrim]

Generally those statistics are measured in 10 yr blocks, to smooth out temporary bumps caused by stuff like wars, recessions or huge natural disasters. So 2010 would be measurably better (according to the metric they use) than 2000, which would be better than 1990, and so on until they run out of data points.

[CoffeeGrunt]

A lot harder to track a plane in thousands of square miles of open water with no reliable satellite reception than cities with established communications infrastructure.

The latter doesn't stop people disappearing from the face of the Earth either. If a plane drops somewhere into the Indian Ocean, there's a lot of sea to search for a few-miles-wide patch of temporary debris. Not to mention anything dropping into the Pacific would get lost in the Garbage Patches before too long.

[Broodingman87]

A lot harder to track a plane in thousands of square miles of open water with no reliable satellite reception than cities with established communications infrastructure.

The latter doesn't stop people disappearing from the face of the Earth either. If a plane drops somewhere into the Indian Ocean, there's a lot of sea to search for a few-miles-wide patch of temporary debris. Not to mention anything dropping into the Pacific would get lost in the Garbage Patches before too long.

No, my TV decodes a satellite signal from outer space! Do you mean to tell me that planes can not have live stream of their gps? And Google Earth can get your coordinates down to a city block.

[DarkLink]

By what measure? In order to say something is better you have to relate it to something, are you saying 2014 is better than 2013? 2004? 1804? 4?

As an example, violent crime in the USA has looked like this over the last twenty years:

12120

Similar trends apply all sorts of other things as well. There are some economic hiccups from the recession, but otherwise there probably isn't a better time in history to be alive.

[Broodingman87]

As an example, violent crime in the USA has looked like this over the last twenty years:

12120

Similar trends apply all sorts of other things as well. There are some economic hiccups from the recession, but otherwise there probably isn't a better time in history to be alive.

I see, I guess there is no point in looking toward the future, it's going the be better whether we do anything or not. (trollface)

[CoffeeGrunt]

No, my TV decodes a satellite signal from outer space! Do you mean to tell me that planes can not have live stream of their gps? And Google Earth can get your coordinates down to a city block.

Because your phone is bathed in a zone of deliberately positioned geosynchronous satellites and mobile reception masts. Vast swathes of the sea are not covered by geosync satellites, or receive intermittent connections due to the limited angles required to acquire a satellite signal, never mind three of them to properly triangulate an actual position. We have this problem all the time on our seismic vessels, the intermittent communications are a constant pain.

Your TV does it because your dish never moves and nor does the satellite. Rotate your dish 20 degrees to its left and tell me how many channels you get...there you go, that's how small the tolerances are when neither object is mobile.

Planes almost definitely already have GPS receivers for their own positioning, and probably have it for transmission, but it's so intermittent the system likely isn't relied upon. After all, the newest attempts to create a sea-wide internet network have moved to acoustic buoys as relays, because it's more reliable than the satellite networks.

[Morgrim]

There's also the speed planes move at. GPS satellites are the only mainstream tech that already requires compensating for both special relativity (the speed of the orbiting satellites) and general relativity (the earth's gravitational well), and that is with a comparatively stationary ground target. Planes fly fast enough and high enough that those same compensations would need to be applied to them too, in real time, with unpredictable weather conditions. The calculations would be a nightmare. Which is probably why they prefer to use good old fashioned radar for anything with precision and their hourly 'I am here!' pings are still mostly 'I am in this rough area, please keep an eye out for me on radar!'

[eldargal]

Nerds...:p

[CoffeeGrunt]

Nerds...:p

Indubitably. It also amuses when people say, "why can my iPhone do X, but Y expensive piece of hardware can't!" Mainly because it holds an ignorance of just how much infrastructure is required to give that iPhone the data it needs to function, (infrastructure that is mainly focused around First World Nations' major cities, and almost-entirely focused on land.) Not to mention it never travelling faster than your family car does, nor that it's used for any serious number crunching beyond Google Maps.

GPS struggles to keep up-to-speed with the Subaru Impreza's the Essex police force use as interceptors. Nevermind a jet clocking up to eight times that speed. The GPS needs to acquire three satellites to accurately triangulate each time it wants a position, so say that happens once a second, you're still covering about 10 miles in that one second. If the update rate is closer to five seconds, as is common on civilian models travelling at 70MPH, then that's fifty miles...

[DarkLink]

It's in like one episode of the West Wing. One of the characters gets in a friendly debate over government waste with a naval officer newly assigned to White House staff. The officer replies by digging out an ashtray from his new desk. He points out the ashtray costs something crazy like 500 dollars each. Then he smashes the tray on the floor. Instead of shattering, it cleanly breaks into three pieces. He points out that normal glass would shatter, and it's hard to pilot a ship or submarine if you've got glass in your eyes because your ship was hit. They can't just use normal glass, so anything made from glass must instead be made from a special, expensive substitute. She concedes.