Domain: amusingplanet.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to amusingplanet.com.
Comments · 10
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Re: Grocery Store Employees
dumping agricultural waste into the sewer rather than recycling it into the soil.
I didn't see where it said what type of farming they were intending to do but there are very successful aquaponic systems that recycle nearly everything and don't even use soil. Also, you mitigate the need for pesticides, which greatly benefits the bee population, and heavy fertilizers which runoff into the watershed and enormously pollute downstream systems. I encourage you to read about how far from the Mississippi delta, fishermen have to travel to continue their operations (hint: a long damn way).
you could have avoided 65 round-trip commutes from the suburbs
So you're going to ignore the concept that this system is intended to be localized in grocery stores? Last I checked, suburbs, while vacant of most businesses, do often have nearby banks, convenience stores and grocery stores. Maybe I travel to different cities than you. Nonetheless, even if there were "65 round trip commutes", a good portion of your produce travels all the way from places like Florida, California, and even South America, which are far from large swathes of the country. These people are going to the grocery store already, so there is a net-zero impact on fuel consumption for consumers and a negative fuel impact for delivery of produce.
And, while not vertical farms, this concept is already tried and true for large parts of Europe, which gets a lot of their produce from an enormous group of greenhouses in Spain, rather than the typical farm. Locating these closer to their distribution points, makes a lot of sense if the technology allows.
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2... -
Re:Traffic?
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Re:Finally
Here you go, as linked by this guy.
Unless the test track is planning on being circular, it does not matter that the ring is incomplete. And considering this is just the first step to something that might be used for traveling long distances at high speeds, a long test track or two that simply is used to go back and forth may be better anyway.
It is probably cheaper and more useful for testing purposes to use land above ground though.
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Re:Finally
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have I got a hole in the ground for you!
Made to order for a 40 TeV collider! Halfway to 100 TeV, triple the energy of LHC! Save billions in construction!
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2... -
Re:GIF /does/ support true colors
It's worth noting that GIFs may overlay multiple image blocks with separate color pallets, resulting in true color images.
The problem here is that some browsers (chrome) insert an artificial 0.1s delay between "frames".
Also if you can do this with GIF one has to wonder if APNG has actually any viability other than as a source format.
You do understand what an alpha layer is, right? No, I don't mean cheap one-color transparency, I mean full translucency. PNG can do that trivially. GIF cannot.
Also, PNG can support full 24-bit color without resorting to hacks that depend heavily on the browser's interpretation of an already-nonstandard animation hack on top of a hack of a file format.
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GIF /does/ support true colors
It's worth noting that GIFs may overlay multiple image blocks with separate color pallets, resulting in true color images.
The problem here is that some browsers (chrome) insert an artificial 0.1s delay between "frames".
Also if you can do this with GIF one has to wonder if APNG has actually any viability other than as a source format.
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Re:Conversation about science?
Enhanced Geothermal energy has the potential to replace almost all US baseload electricity generation except hydro and serves as an excellent counterpoint to wind and PV. Total system levelized costs are overall are quite low - as low as coal, nuclear; some types of natural gas are cheaper now but not the more eco-friendly sort. It requires no fuel so fuel supply cost issues are of no concern, nor a national security or global policy risk. There is no gas pipeline that might rupture and burn down an entire neighborhood. There are no nuclear proliferation issues. It's a closed loop and does not generate CO2, nor toxic coal ash, nor spent nuclear fuel to be rid of. There is no risk that it will blow up. The energy driver is residual fission occurring in the Earth's core (80%) that is in no danger of being depleted ever. The plants themselves can be unobtrusive and small.
It has utility almost everywhere in the world, as the only question is really how deep you must drill to get to the hot rock. There is hot rock under everywhere. Some of it is impractical to reach right now though. It is of most economical use notably on the "ring of fire" - the western edge of North and South America, the Eastern edge of Asia. And Iceland of course, where they are eagerly exploiting the resource already - 87% of building heating and 26% of electrical energy from this source. Shoot in Iceland it's so cheap and plentiful they defrost streets and sidewalks with it - even a beach.
The problem is that the costs are all up front. It takes years to dig the hole, so a long lag time between starting the investment and yielding a return. You have to drill the hole, buy the generators, build the plants and so on before you get the first watt-hour. After that it's free power, essentially forever. Every 30 years you have to refurbish or replace the turbines. Once a year the gear has to be inspected. Somebody's got to man the gate to keep kids from spraypainting the condenser. That's about it.
It is the lack of a need for ongoing fuel supply that is perhaps the problem. Over the lifespan of an electrical plant the ongoing revenues from providing its fuel is a bigger motivator for the fuel supplier than the plant operator. The fuel costs more than the plant. Naturally fuel providers are going to be opposed to this radical notion of continuously generating baseload power for the whole life of the plant without paying them money. It's bad for jobs.
As for natural gas being cheaper, this is true but it may not always be true. LNG is also useful for powering internal combustion engines and may become a valuable export to improve our balance of trade or make us less dependent on other forms of portable energy import. It's a resource with global demand and that global demand introduces the risk that market rates for the fuel may go up. This portability factor makes the use of natural gas in generating electricity when you don't have to a waste of a valuable resource better used another way.
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clever slopes
You don't get the 'slippery slope' thing, do you? Or are you one of those 'slippery slopes don't exist' bozos?
Says user "0123456" who couldn't slide all the way to seven. Not even "0123456etc". From the later username it would be right and proper to dish this kind of abuse.
I was about nine years old when I saw my first picture of Beautiful Asian Rice Terraces. I went "wow, it's amazing how anyone ever thought of that". And now those clever slopes rule the world.
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Re:Optical interferometry?