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Washington Times (reprint): U.S. secrets aboard latest Chinese sub
http://www.taiwandc.org/washt9908.htm

Popular Mechanics: How China Steals U.S. Military Secrets
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/3319656

San Francisco Chronicle: China's war on the U.S. economy
http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-01-15/opinion/17828392_1_security-review-commission-china-s-internet-currency-manipulation

Wired: Good Old Fashioned Espionage
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/07/good-old-fashioned-industrial-espionage/

I stand corrected: Aluminum, plastic, glass, and paper are all less energy intensive to recycle than produce from scratch. Here's a cite:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/recycling/4291566?page=1

What's sad is that the newer incandescents may only use 25% of the energy but the laws are based on the technology- not on the energy consumption and they ignore the mercury poisoning aspects.

Lie repeated often are still lies. The law in this case is based upon watts per lumen. If there were incandescents that used 25% of the energy, they would be legal. Also the mercury released to the environment from an incandescent is worse than the exposure from a CFL.

You may now go back to being a crybaby.

Popular Mechanics runs through the numbers for you. BTW, this was the first result on google for "mg mercury in a cfl". There's another article here that was the first result for "mercury cfl coal". It's not like this information is hard to find.

You mean like this?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/extreme-machines/4337190

Well its simulating neurons... I suppose that's close enough.

Even with the most conservative estimates for mercury output and the proportion of power generated by coal and the most unforgiving ones for CFL mercury content and power savings, the power saved by CFLs results in less mercury being released into the environment than they could themselves release.

http://www.energy.gs/2007/05/cfl-mercury-myths.html
http://www.energyrace.com/commentary/more_on_mercury_coal_and_cfls_updated/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/reviews/news/4217864

Hydrogen is safe to use, despite today's addition to the anecdotal evidence. It's at least as safe as gasoline.

Hydrogen costs about $8/kg to make now, and there's links to things saying it's going to $3/kg, or effectively about the same $/mile as gasoline.

I don't think the algae idea is going to get us there. The algae-based oil has byproducts that have to be disposed of, requires a large investment in land, has inputs and growing conditions that have to be controlled (your operation can be gutted by immoderate weather), and its refining systems are complex chemical processes with their own cost issues. Hydrogen needs water and electricity, its byproduct is oxygen, and its production system needs only a compressor.

If you're going to use chemical fuels in your propulsion systems, just from what I've listed here, hydrogen is going to win the economic battle eventually.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/extreme-machines/4337190

The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel

Less than what the US could save by making sure their tires are properly inflated (1.25 billion). let alone what we could save by cleaning out our trunks, removing our winter bags of sand, or other weight just sitting around in the car. Both are much easier than getting people to lose weight, but I doubt if they are getting done. Good luck on getting people to stop being obese to save an non-detectable part of their gas bill. For that matter, it would probably be easier just to appeal to get them to keep from diving as much (which if they walk or bike would also cut into the obese issue).

1. Hydrogen has lower energy by volume even at quite high pressures - you suffer the same problem as with batteries, the containment system weighs more than the fuel.

Yes, that doesn't work well. Which is why research is being done on better binding agents:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227145.600-chicken-feathers-could-make-cheap-hydrogen-store.html

2. The most common method of obtaining hydrogen today is by cracking natural gas

Which is expensive. Which is why research is important to make that much cheaper:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/2936846

Don't forget that if you make hydrogen generation cheap enough you can have many local plants instead of shipping fuel all over or running more electric lines to hand increased load.

NG is more power dense volume wise, and only slightly less by weight. LNG doesn't require quite the pressure vessel, so probably weighs a vehicle down less as well.

But if you can find a way to get hydrogen out of water that's far more plentiful and easier to create locally.

3. To my knowledge we still don't have a hydrogen tight valve.

Which is why binding solutions are important, so the hydrogen "wants" to stay.

Yes I agree these solutions are still a ways off, but again think of what we might be able to do if the same amount of money was funneled into hydrogen research as we push into battery research today. Not that battery research is not important too, but if you can get hydrogen to work right as a transportation fuel it has a ton of benefits. To me it makes a lot more sense to examine what benefits you can derive from a system when you overcome the limitations, rather than focusing on what limitations a system has today.

Battery systems I think have had a ton of research put into them already, so we can only see marginal gains going forward. Hydrogen still has a lot of research headroom for interesting developments.

Popular Mechanics had a decent article on this last year:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/airships/4242974

I hope the Cardington team gets funding and critical mass, because airships are quite usable for various tasks, and moving one around is a lot cheaper than moving a plane merely because that the lift is provided already. Airships have a lot of practical uses:

1: Transportation of goods across the Atlantic or Pacific. It won't be as fast as a jet, but if done right, will be a lot faster than a freight ship. To boot, the destination does not have to be a port, it can be a city well inland, provided there is right of way through the airspace. It wouldn't be hard to find corridors for airships to travel safely on, although storms may be a risk.

2: Travel to areas after a disaster, even with no airport.

3: Passenger travel. This would be a method of getting people across the US in a decent amount of time, faster than Amtrak. Of course, it isn't as fast as a jet, but would take far less fuel. Of course, the engineering problem would be speed because it needs to be somewhat competitive with regular commercial airline travel to get people using it. Plus, people are used to getting from one end of the US in a day, rather than having to spend a night on a vehicle. Maybe for regional transportation this would be useful, such as getting people from LA to SF and back.

4: Cruises. It would be a gamble, but if someone put the mega (or more accurately giga) bucks into making a gigantic airship that rivaled luxury cruise liners, it might be something people would use for vacations. Perhaps slow trips to another country there and back.

The $50,000 question is getting people to buy into airship technology. It may not be as cool as a Harrier or other VTOL aircraft, but a well-designed airship can do a lot of basic tasks cheaper in the long run than a plane.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/climate-change/4338343

Related to this is a comment that one correspondent would not let critics' papers be discussed in an upcoming report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), stating that "[we] will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" The RealClimate web site notes that the effort described in this e-mail to exclude specific papers from the IPCC report was unsuccessful or never implemented, but this is beside the point. If scientists attempted to exclude critics' peer-reviewed papers from IPCC reports, this was unethical in my view.

The story references a military story, where they talk about developed technologies that deform the wings into limp hanging detritus. That should diffray the issue of wind once attached to a line.

MIT students have actually been developing robot planes like this for years. They can prop-hang and take off vertically. They can hook vertically onto walls. They can fly quickly around indoors. Wind, then, is just one more problem to tackle.

Mine also displays 24p with no problems - however, the refresh rate is 600hz., not 24hz. It divides evenly - displaying each frame 25 times. Someone with a 120hz display can also display 24p correctly, displaying each frame 5 times (or they can choose to use the motion interpolation feature). However, anyone with a 60hz refresh rate is screwed - 24p requires a pulldown interlacing, because it's either that, or display one frame 2x, the next 3x, the next 2x, the next 3x - and that looks awful so nobody does it.

So unless your tv is 120, 240, 480, or 600 hz, you cannot display non-interlaced 24p.

Additionally, the picture - in ALL cases, has artifacts. It's always stored with lossy compression - and you get a lot more loss when there's more motion - look at the motion block encoding algorithms.

Third, if you're getting your signal through satellite or cable, it's going to look crappier than an OTA signal, because the already-compressed stream has been recompressed to conserve bandwidth - so a free 1080i signal can look better than the 1080p that you pay for.

So, it is indeed a bogus PR attempt to shift blame from Toyota to drivers.

Some examples of blind tests, purporting there is no difference. None.

That's been done with the Windbelt. (Wikipedia, Pop. Mech.)

Plenty of innovative technologies exist. What we need are innovative regulatory and marketing schemes. Only things are stopping wind power: Nobody wants a generator in their backyard, and the existing power generation industry owns all our politicians. Fix those things. The tech has been here.

it certainly does not fly
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/improvement/energy-efficient/4350335

No, seriously. They have a product that the cop wears to record their actions, it features a secure chain of evidence:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4271213
http://www.taser.com/products/law/Pages/TASERAXON.aspx

That doesn't stop Officer Smash from breaking the camera, but he would have to explain why the camera broke just before the unarmed suspect was shot multiple times.

the people that will need the drug have little or no ability to pay for it. It takes A LOT of money to get a drug approved, if the market for the drug itself is not there then the work just does not get done

This is also an issue for people who can pay for a drug, even United States citizens who have health insurance. There have been recent news articles highlighting the fact that the United States is facing a shortage of various anti-venoms because corporations are either stopping production or never bothered to develop a manufacturing process because there is no significant profit potential.

It might be worthwhile to give drug companies a tax break for donating information that leads to effective cures for less profitable conditions

This is an excellent idea but I would even go so far as to suggest taking out the "leads to effective cures" requirement as it can take a long time to reap the benefits and corporations would be more likely to utilize the offer if it provided an immediate tax benefit.

The recent move by GlaxoSmithKline that we all read about is a good example of a case where a corporation should be given a tax break.

However, tax breaks are far from enough. The only reason GSK was even researching a malaria vaccine was because of the huge profit potential from millions of infections globally. There are numerous ailments that will never receive corporate financing because there is no profit motive. Note the scorpion anti-venom case in the previously mentioned article where all the anti-venom is produced non-profit by a university professor and no corporation is willing to step up to create and sell a product.

Ultimately there are a vast number of medical and non-medical ventures that should be funded by the public because they do not present any significant profit potential to entice corporations but society would gain both tangible and intangible benefits.

Sadly the direction the United States appears to be headed is to a purist position of worship and submission to the almighty corporation, gross margins and a "greed is good" mentality. This can be seen in reading some of the articles on the anti-venom issue that suggest a solution is tort reform and easing of FDA regulations. Of course these arguments are a misnomer as these proponents admit themselves that the issue is a lack of profit potential and the suggested tort reform and easing of regulations are likely a one time benefit on the Internal Rate of Return calculation used to determine if a project is financially viable. The end result would still be no cures or research for low or no profit situations with the addition of federal protection for corporations against law suits from the public and elimination of regulations that are in place to help prevent the conditions that result in law suits in the first place.

Every strategist remembers Aug. 20, 1998, when the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group, stationed in the Arabian Sea, launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan, hoping to take out Osama Bin Laden. With a top speed of 550 mph, the Tomahawks made the 1100-mile trip in 2 hours. By then, Bin Laden was gone -- missed by less than an hour, according to Richard A. Clarke, former head of U.S. counterterrorism.

Putting aside this strawman example, the idea of push-button assassination is terrifying. "Comrade, you will sell me your oil. Remember what happened to your predecessor?"

You must be kidding me. Robert Mullins article is not worthy of publication, just because it is has a catchy byline regarding smelly duck eggs. The content is vague and overstated in many places. The content nothing more than bits of fluff without any kind of supporting detail. It has nothing it in that is new or inspiring and is so dry and boring, I simply began to fall asleep halfway through it. Robert Mullins should be slapped with a wet noodle for writing such drivel.

The only saving grace to the whole thing, was in the comments submitted by readers. Inside this is a gem of links supplied by one such anonymous reader. If you want the tip of the iceberg on hundreds of Chinese Government espionage cases, then follow these links.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203952.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/25/60minutes/main6242498.shtml
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/3319656
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KG31Ad01.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/europe/01spy.html?src=sch&pagewanted=all
http://www.intelligencesearch.com/ia068.html

However to dig deeper. The Chinese are not the only ones targeting Government and other high tech companies in the US. There are many others, but China is going much further than just the US. It would seem that the Chinese officials, are casting a huge net to capture just about anything they can get and only later throwing away what they don't need. No wonder China is advancing so fast in all the major technologies, including space, military and civilian.

"From Rice Paddies to Rocket Ships". In only a few short years has China advanced or simply stolen it's future? Followed by actual case studies and methods, would have made an article worth reading and a far better byline. I can't believe I wasted 10 minutes of my time reading that piece of crap. Thank the gods for an enlightened and intelligent reader that offered a few links and with just that small effort did far more than Robert Mullins did in a whole page.

Biochemist Zheng Cui’s had grants and funding while researching cancer, but after he found a very promising approach to fight cancer -- it worked so well that he planed to move to human trials -- all the money dried up.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/4273366

Popular Mechanics is not the best source for a comprehensive report on new cancer research, but as best as I can figure out that interview he seems to be describing something that's been used for 50 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematopoietic_stem_cell_transplantation

I know about this because I had a friend with leukemia who was looking for a donor with a match. I wanted to join the donor registry myself (not for my friend, which was very unlikely, but because it was possible that somebody somewhere in the world was a match for me) but I was too old.

It would take someone who knows more about cancer immunotherapy than me to explain all the ways treatments like this have been tried before and usually failed, sometimes succeeded.

But the idea of paying $100,000 for an experimental cancer treatment unapproved by the FDA and tested only in mice is enough to raise my eyebrows. The first human study after an animal study is a Phase I study, which is done not to cure but to establish a safe (and unsafe) dose. I can't imagine how he got it through the Wake Forest ethics committee.

None dare call it a conspiracy!

You just did. But this is /..

Biochemist Zheng Cui’s had grants and funding while researching cancer, but after he found a very promising approach to fight cancer -- it worked so well that he planed to move to human trials -- all the money dried up. Here is what he said:

There is some private funding and the university put some funding into it. And also, at early stages when we studied the mechanisms of these mice, we had one Mitchell Cancer Institute grant, several small grants from Cancer Research Institute. But they all stopped funding me. It was kind of a strange situation. I thought it was our common goal to come up with a new weapon to fight cancer, but the moment I announced I had a new weapon to test in real human cancer situations, everybody shied away.

Very interesting interview that can be read here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/4273366

None dare call it a conspiracy!

Did you mean this picture?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/wh/wildcatters-5-1209.jpg

Reminds me of a joke I once heard: if you put a mechanical engineer and a mathematician on one wall in a room and put a beautiful woman on the other wall and tell the men they can walk have the distance to the woman, then half the remaining distance, then have that remaining distance and so on. The mathematician will walk away because he knows that you will never actually arrive (there's a calculus formula name in here somewhere which approaches zero but never actually is zero). The engineer will start walking because he knows you can get close enough for all practical purposes.

Wasn't the lack of multitasking a feature that made the iPad and iPhone so great?

Not particularly..

Actually, Apple did spin lack of multitasking as sort of a 'feature' back in the Iphone 3G launch. See this blog of the Iphone 3G launch. Scroll down to 11:00 AM:

Scott [Forrestal of iPhone software development] says the wrong solution is background processes. It kills battery life and performance in other applications. Microsoft uses a task manager with a horrifying interface in Windows Mobile. "This is nuts."

I remember finding this spin particularly silly....but purchased one regardless....Stupid Jobs and his Jedi mind trick :-)

According to an article in Popular Mechanics from the June 2008 issue:

With the space race in full flower, though, the real worry was national sovereignty. Both the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to reach the moon first but, in fact, each was more worried about what would happen if they arrived second. Fears that the competition might trigger World War III led to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which was eventually ratified by 62 countries. According to article II of the treaty, "Outer Space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."

Ideally, title would be recognized by an international agreement that all nations would endorse. The 1979 Moon Treaty was a flop, but there's no reason the space powers couldn't agree on a new treaty that recognizes property rights and encourages investment. After all, the international climate has warmed to property rights and capitalism over the past 30 years.

http://www.ap.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.c-span.org/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Need I go on?

This article is from 2006. I promise you that things have not changed for the better but perhaps it will help you understand some of what's going on. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/3319656.html?page=1

Bah. Wake me up when they have a maneuverable superluminal cruise missile.

Do 100MW shipborne lasers count?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4321422.html?nav=RSS20

Only if they can shoot around corners.

Bah. Wake me up when they have a maneuverable superluminal cruise missile.

Do 100MW shipborne lasers count?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4321422.html?nav=RSS20

NASCAR has a treadmill that will do 180MPH.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/motorsports/4249316.html

As of last September, SpaceX had about 700 employees (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4328638.html). They've done in just a few years and few hundred million dollars, what takes NASA a decade or more, billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of employees.

How's that for reduced bureacracy?

Necron69

Of course, they did have the benefit of the NASA's prior experience, for both what to do and what not to do. After all, much of what NASA does and produces is in the public domain and what little else, barring ITAR restrictions on some schematics, doesn't have the same security implications as the DoD, CIA, and NSA to complicate an FOIA. Don't get me wrong SpaceX has done a remarkable job developing their own launch vehicles quickly and efficiently, but it is easier if you aren't the first and can learn from those who came before.

As of last September, SpaceX had about 700 employees (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4328638.html). They've done in just a few years and few hundred million dollars, what takes NASA a decade or more, billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of employees.

How's that for reduced bureacracy?

Necron69

> With the engine past the redline there is very little vacuum to operate the power brakes. Without power assist the brakes may not be able to overcome the engine

apparently not true

Pumping stuff into the ground that isn't normally there tends to give me the willies anymore. "Stick it where the sun don't shine!" isn't such a great solution, IMO.

Exactly what could go wrong? I suppose the pressure cave could rupture and you get an air volcano, so don't build on top of it. Pockets of gas under pressure are nothing new in the earths crust.

Besides which, why not just build Vanadium batteries or invest in carbon nanotube ultra-capacitors (which could have direct benefit to mobile energy storage)?

What is the duty cycle on Vanadium batteries, carbon nanotubes and ultra-capacitors? The battery in CAEF is just a big cave with little to wear out..

Pumping stuff into the ground that isn't normally there tends to give me the willies anymore. "Stick it where the sun don't shine!" isn't such a great solution, IMO.

Besides which, why not just build Vanadium batteries or invest in carbon nanotube ultra-capacitors (which could have direct benefit to mobile energy storage)?

Hey, this administration dismantled LORAN-C, the backup system in case of GPS satellite spoofing or jamming.....

President Obama is influential, but he isn't capable of time travel. President Bush scheduled the dismantling, President Obama continued that recommendation. Both the Coast Guard and the DHS said they didn't need LORAN-C, so why maintain it? It smells like pork.

This dismantling was already scheduled by the previous administration, according to the FA.

The Department of Homeland Security last year started a painful upgrade to LORAN-C, adding modern electronics and solid-state transmitters, despite the fact that in 2008 President George W. Bush signed a law that scheduled the system's dissolution.

http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/Loran/default.htm

The DHS and Coast Guard both said they didn't need LORAN-C. From http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/Loran/default.htm :

The Homeland Security Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2010 allowed for termination of the LORAN-C signal on January 4, 2010, after certification from the Commandant of the Coast Guard that it was not needed for maritime navigation and from the Secretary of DHS that it is not needed as a backup for GPS.

Like many onboard automobile sensors, they are also completely isolated from the vehicle ground. To reduce the potential for interference or mistakes, they operate at different voltages. The first sensor, known as ACCEL POS #1, has a nominal voltage range from 0.5 volts to 1.1 volts at idle and 2.5 volts to 4.5 volts at wide-open-throttle (WOT). The second sensor, ACCEL POS #2, delivers from 1.2 volts to 2.0 volts at idle and 3.4 volts to 5.0 volts at WOT. Why such a wide range of permissible voltages? The engine computer (ECM) recalibrates the sensor regularly, every time you start the car and the ECM goes through its power-on self-test.

Both accelerator-pedal-position Hall-effect sensors have to agree fairly closely, or the ECM will go into its limp-home mode, which turns on the Check Engine light and sets a trouble code.

There's more. If Toyota's engine-management scheme is anything like that of most other car companies, firmware inside the ECM also monitors the airflow into the engine, the throttle blade position and engine rpm, and calculates backwards to what the throttle pedal position should be. Any discrepancy, and a trouble code is set, the Check Engine light on the dash goes on, and you're dialing the service manager to make an appointment.

Bottom line: The system is not only redundant, it's double-redundant. The signal lines from the pedal to the ECM are isolated. The voltages used in the system are DC voltages—any RF voltages introduced into the system, by, say, that microwave oven you have in the passenger seat, would be AC voltages, which the ECM's conditioned inputs would simply ignore. Neither your cellphone nor Johnny's PlayStation have the power to induce much confusion into the system.

These throttle-by-wire systems are very difficult to confuse—they're designed to be robust, and any conceivable failure is engineered to command not an open throttle but an error message.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4347704.html

I'm surprised the Navy hasn't picked up on this more.

They have. And even with fuel cells. And helicopters, too.

Republicans run for office on the basis that Government is a big, evil thing that will only do you harm. Democrats run for office on the basis that Government is a representative of the people. Once elected, they keep their promises.

All the complains about cutting some of these NASA programs seem very short sighted. It wasn't all that long ago that all sorts of NASA scientists were up in arms over the Bush Administration's "return to the moon" boondoggle, which was causing all sorts of "real science" projects to be disappeared. And that's just one of the complaints.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4245928.html

Also, right now anyway, Obama's budget is calling for an additional $1 billion for NASA... but a different set of priorities.

I'm all for manned space flight when it's a reasonable thing to do. But there's no valid scientific reason to go back to the moon right now, and commercial reasons can care for themselves. If we want to go to Mars, it's far lower cost and more reasonable in many different ways to follow the "Mars Direct" plan from Robert Zubrin and David Baker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct).

Don't get me wrong, I want to see space science, and all other kinds, flourish in the USA. But given the limited budget, spend it where it'll do some good -- where the best science can be done. Not where some idiot Connecticut Cowboy wanted it, as yet another adventure. Of course, if NASA has the budget wasted on that guy's adventure in Iraq, we'd have Starbucks on the moon pretty soon now. If I had my 'druthers, we'd cut the military budget in half (at least) and end the US's "Empire via Military Base" strategy, part of why we're spending more than 10x on the military than any other country, and triple the money spent on science.

...will be broadcasting today's Manchester United vs. Arsenal match in 3D, which I believe will be the first live 3D sports broadcast in Europe (though it's only being piped in to nine pubs in the UK).

ESPN will launch a 3D network in June, though content will be limited.

But that is exactly my point. Here you have government contractors who haven't been responsible. And they have little motivation to be responsible. I understand that.

To quote the article you linked to: "Feynman's own investigation reveals a disconnect between NASA's engineers and executives that was far more striking than he expected."

That is of course the problem, and it has been an issue at NASA since before the Challenger disaster. The President at the time even ordered NASA to clean up their bureaucratic mess, so that such idiocy did not happen again. (It is known, for example, that NASA administrators knew about the O-ring weakness for 9 years prior and had done nothing.)

But look at what purely private industry has done in just a couple of years: Spaceship 1 into space twice in less than two weeks, Spaceship 2 now built and under test; SpaceX well on their way. Even NASA has never been able to accomplish so much in so little time. No huge bureaucracy to deal with, just the problems at hand.

Only about 20 or so years of NASA's history has had a "... tradition of manned space excellence with a better than average track record..." Over the last couple of decades it has been more-or-less consistently falling on its face in its manned program. And bureaucracy is definitely the biggest factor to blame. Mis-management, shoddiness, and irresponsibility have come to dominate.

Just look at their plans for Ares! Nobody has ever built a manned orbital rocket based mainly on a solid-fuel engine! And the reasons are simple and clear-cut: solid-fuel rocket engines are notoriously hard (damned near impossible) to regulate. They can't be cut off in mid-burn if something happens, and they vibrate (change thrust) relatively unpredictably. It's about as asinine of an idea as I have ever heard out of NASA.

No, thanks. Whether it ever comes about or not, I back Edwin Aldrin's advice to the Augustine Commission when it comes to future exploration. If NASA doesn't straighten up, like yesterday, they are done for as far as manned exploration is concerned. They no longer have the will or the talent.

Don't try to play that game. Absence of evidence is not evidence. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary - every single indicted terrorist plotter in the US has been a total incompetent. The JFK bombers, the Sears Tower Plot, etc, etc. If they are so willing to trot out these incompetents and actually take them to trial, you can be pretty sure they would at least charge ONE competent terrorist. But so far, nada.

Those were setups of essentially homeless people by the FBI/CIA. Read about it. Nothing like trumping up some false flag 'attacks' to keep the population thinking something is being done and instilling more fear.

Like what happened during 9/11? Or the underpants bomber? Or the shoe bomber? Perhaps the bali bombers? Only the 9/11 hijackers fit the mold of the experienced terrorists. The others are fairly low grade terrorists with nearly no experience, just given a bomb and told to set it off.

You are proving my point. 9/11 was it. Underpants and shoes didn't work - they weren't good enough. Bali bombers were in their home court they had experience with local society.

I didnt realise you work for the CIA or the DHS to know about every foiled attack or plot to say that attacks have been near-zero. Just because you dont see the attacks being foiled, doesnt mean they arent happening.

Don't try to play that game. Absence of evidence is not evidence. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary - every single indicted terrorist plotter in the US has been a total incompetent. The JFK bombers, the Sears Tower Plot, etc, etc. If they are so willing to trot out these incompetents and actually take them to trial, you can be pretty sure they would at least charge ONE competent terrorist. But so far, nada.

Israel succeeds more often, as they are attacked far, far more often than the US.

TADA! Glad you see my point. Now I just don't understand why you thought you had to argue with me in the first place.

five and a half years later we're still reeling from that inaction.

Really? We've had, what, like one terrorist attack - the fort hood guy - since then that killed anyone. Ok, I guess the DC sniper counts too.

If anything, we are reeling from too much action - the tens of billions of dollars of wasted productivity every year just because of the pointless hassle at the airports. How many people have died indirectly because of that? What life-saving drugs have been slowed coming to market by 6 months or a year? What charitable contributions to food banks and medical procedures have dried up because the money went to dealing with the inefficiencies created by the TSA?

I'm confident in saying we've killed more people indirectly with our counter-terrorism programs than we have saved. After all, the TSA makes a press release every time they bust a guy with a lot of drugs or water bottle and a taped-up battery pack, but they have never once issued a press release stating that they've stopped an actual terrorist attack on a plane. And when they are actually tested - they miss the bomb 90% of of the time. And just look at the idiots they actually convict of plotting terrorist attacks - like the guys who thought they could blow up JFK by igniting a gas pipeline. The guys they "catch" are so hopeless they were no threat to begin with.

You would do well to do some research.

1) mercury (and other heavy metal) content

Negligible, and can be recycled. Tungsten is also a heavy metal, FYI. Incandescent bulbs contain far more tungsten than the mercury content in CFL's, and normal bulbs aren't recycled.

Also, according to Popular Mechanics

Approximately 0.0234 mg of mercury—plus carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—releases into the air per 1 kwh of electricity that a coal-fired power plant generates. Over the 7500-hour average range of one CFL, then, a plant will emit 13.16 mg of mercury to sustain a 75-watt incandescent bulb but only 3.51 mg of mercury to sustain a 20-watt CFL (the lightning equivalent of a 75-watt traditional bulb). Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.

2) not made in US (shipping offsets power savings)

One CFL bulb lasts about 8 times as long as a normal bulb. Let's assume that you're using crappy ones which only last 4 times as long - even with the shorter lifespan, you can ship a CFL bulb 4 times the distance of an incandescent bulb without generating any extra waste.

To add to that, there is at least one CFL manufacturer that has plans to start manufacturing inside the US. Unless you're of the opinion that US industry is completely incompetent, there should be plenty more following suit.

3) pollution much higher in manufacturing over incandescent.

Source?

We would save a lot more of the environment by streamlining power generation and transport in the US and Europe than changing every light bulb to LED or CFL.

Doubtful. Once again, some stats would be nice.

The biggest problem with our power system is the fact that many of our methods of generating power are so terrible for the environment.

Then start lobbying for more nuclear power.

Even assuming 100% clean sources, it makes no sense to use more electricity than we need to, so CFL's (and eventually LED's) are still the superior choice. Not to mention the fact that using low-power lighting makes home-solar more feasible by reducing the amount of current that you need to produce.

If you have a different opinion than me, I love an honest debate. Being a dick, on the other hand, is not necessary. And, it erodes your point.

Fair enough, but if you expect a serious discussion you need to be able to offer more than personal opinions and unsupported declarations. In my experience, the anti-CFL crowd is mostly composed of ideologues who are incapable of doing basic research and are unwilling to abandon their preconceptions regardless of the facts. That's not really an excuse for me "being a dick" to you, but it does tend to make me weary of people who voice such opinions. I'm willing to listen to you, as long as you're willing to try and present some evidence to support your claims. Otherwise, we're both be wasting our time.

Not sure whether it's your math or their's, but Popular Mechanics' numbers have a huge price difference driving even a Prius vs a Volt or Tesla Roadster. When you're outside the range of the Volt's battery, things look similar to driving a Prius. Inside the 30-mile range, the Volt is less than half the cost of the Prius.

On the other hand, the Tesla Roadster (the high end sporty car from Tesla) will do a 200 mile trip for less than half the cost of a Prius OR a Volt. Just $4.40 to go 200 miles in a ridiculously fast car. The Model S should have even better numbers.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4215681.html

Ah, but a big difference between carrying another plane slung below or on the back (Example from the 30s), and having a separate aircraft push one into the air using a kind of towbar: Cover image