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Probably nonsense? "Washington State Commits To Running Entirely On Clean Energy By 2045"

I'm guessing: Maybe no one in the WA state government has an understanding of energy technology.

Other issues that show a lack of understanding:

1) In many places, Seattle doesn't have modern internet connections, as the parent comment indicates. One story: Seattle's low-income residents are 5-7 times more likely to be without internet (March 5, 2019)

2) Washington State hasn't fixed the problems with traffic in Seattle. Fixing traffic congestion 'impossible,' says Washington transportation chief. (July 26, 2018)

3) The Washington State laws are, in many cases, very poorly written. Three terrible initiatives in Washington State this year, plus a good one. (Oct. 18, 2018)

Probably nonsense? "Washington State Commits To Running Entirely On Clean Energy By 2045"

I'm guessing: Maybe no one in the WA state government has an understanding of energy technology.

Other issues that show a lack of understanding:

1) In many places, Seattle doesn't have modern internet connections, as the parent comment indicates. One story: Seattle's low-income residents are 5-7 times more likely to be without internet (March 5, 2019)

2) Washington State hasn't fixed the problems with traffic in Seattle. Fixing traffic congestion 'impossible,' says Washington transportation chief. (July 26, 2018)

3) The Washington State laws are, in many cases, very poorly written. Three terrible initiatives in Washington State this year, plus a good one. (Oct. 18, 2018)

https://education.seattlepi.co...

"As of 2010, the United States had 304,022,000 hectares (751,255,000 acres) of forested lands, a number that represents one-third of the country. Of this area, 25 percent is old growth forest, 67 percent is secondary forest, and 8 percent is tree farms or plantations."

"It is estimated that prior to European settlement, the United States. was 46 percent forested. European settlers quickly harvested much of the available timber for housing, industry, the creation of railroads and to clear land for farming. By 1907, the U.S. forest cover was reduced to 33 percent.

"In the United States, deforestation has been more than offset by reforestation between 1990 and 2010. The nation added 7,687,000 hectares (18,995,000 acres) of forested land during that period. The trend in reforesting areas has been driven by organizations such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Arbor Day Foundation. Reforestation efforts were critical to maintain forest cover starting at the beginning of the 20th century, and they are the reason that there is a net positive trend in forest growth today.

$500 million is about 500 houses here.

We are talking Seattle, Washington, right?
If so, you are clearly wrong.
Accordign to trulia ( https://www.trulia.com/real_es... ) There is only one district of Seattle proper where the median housing price is over 1M. Most of the south the the city seems to have a median around 400K.

Now, they are talking about low-income housing, so certainly houses in the lower end of the curve. Also, they are talking about the Seattle region, not Seattle proper, which is likely to be cheaper. But even at 400K, you are talking about 1250 houses.

According to seattle pi, Seattle see about 19000 application for low income housing(
https://www.seattlepi.com/seat... ), so we are talking about dealing with 7% of the problem.

I am no Microsoft chill, but this isn't negligible. That's not going to solve the whole problem, but that will make a difference.

I have seen many, many examples of insufficient management at Amazon.

It is VERY important to recognize ALL of the abusiveness of Amazon. Only a small part of that is mentioned here, in this re-post of a former comment, with added information:

My opinion: Jeff Bezos is not a sufficiently capable manager. Evidence: Look at any Amazon web page. As you are researching some product that is interesting, you are often distracted by other products. One fix: Put any distractions at the bottom of the page. There are many other shortcomings of the Amazon web site besides those mentioned in this Slashdot story.

A few of the stories about Amazon being abusive:

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace. (New York Times, Aug. 15, 2015)

Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon warehouse jobs push workers to physical limit (Seattle Times, April 3, 2012)

Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Salon.com, Feb. 23, 2014)

Amazon paid no US income taxes for 2017 (SeattlePI, Feb. 27, 2018)

Undercover author finds Amazon warehouse workers in UK 'peed in bottles' over fears of being punished for taking a break (Business Insider, April 16, 2018)

The undercover author who discovered Amazon warehouse workers were peeing in bottles tells us the culture was like a 'prison' (Business Insider, April 18, 2018)

Amazon Gets Tax Breaks While Its Employees Rely on Food Stamps, New Data Shows (The Intercept, April 19, 2018)

Quote: "Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table."

Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (bloomberg.com, Feb 19, 2013)

Quote from the Wikipedia page for Jeff Bezos. (Nov. 29, 2018):

"Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times has described the public persona and personality of Bezos as that of 'a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan'. During the 1990s, Bezos earned a reputation for relentlessly pushing Amazon forward, often at the expense of public charity and social welfare."

In my opinion, Bezos is not "brilliant". No one who is habitually abusive can be called brilliant; his abusiveness damages the quality of his own life.

Would you fly into space if the company has a manager who shows serious limits? Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns Blue Origin.. Blue Origin does NOT now have the capability of orbiting the earth. Would you fly into space with a company owned by someone who makes huge mistakes and doesn't detect them?

"if they were smarter they'd make them add-on bundle products, ..."

Exactly! I'm seeing many, many examples of Amazon managers not being smart.

It is VERY important to recognize ALL of the abusiveness of Amazon. Only a small part of that is mentioned here, in this re-post of a former comment, with added information:

My opinion: Jeff Bezos is not a sufficiently capable manager. Evidence: Look at any Amazon web page. As you are researching some product that is interesting, you are often distracted by other products. One fix: Put any distractions at the bottom of the page. There are many other shortcomings of the Amazon web site.

A few of the stories about Amazon being abusive:

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace. (New York Times, Aug. 15, 2015)

Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon warehouse jobs push workers to physical limit (Seattle Times, April 3, 2012)

Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Salon.com, Feb. 23, 2014)

Amazon paid no US income taxes for 2017 (SeattlePI, Feb. 27, 2018)

Undercover author finds Amazon warehouse workers in UK 'peed in bottles' over fears of being punished for taking a break (Business Insider, April 16, 2018)

The undercover author who discovered Amazon warehouse workers were peeing in bottles tells us the culture was like a 'prison' (Business Insider, April 18, 2018)

Amazon Gets Tax Breaks While Its Employees Rely on Food Stamps, New Data Shows (The Intercept, April 19, 2018)

Quote: "Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table."

Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (bloomberg.com, Feb 19, 2013)

Quote from the Wikipedia page for Jeff Bezos. (Nov. 29, 2018):

"Journalist Nellie Bowles of The New York Times has described the public persona and personality of Bezos as that of 'a brilliant but mysterious and coldblooded corporate titan'. During the 1990s, Bezos earned a reputation for relentlessly pushing Amazon forward, often at the expense of public charity and social welfare."

In my opinion, Bezos is not "briliant". No one who is habitually abusive can be called brilliant; his abusiveness damages the quality of his own life.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns Blue Origin.. Blue Origin does NOT now have the capability of orbiting the earth. Would you fly into space with a company owned by someone who makes huge mistakes and doesn't detect them?

My opinion: Jeff Bezos is not a sufficiently capable manager. Evidence: Look at any Amazon web page. As you are researching some product that is interesting, you are often distracted by other products. One fix: Put any distractions at the bottom of the page.

There are many other shortcomings of the Amazon web site.

Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (New York Times, Aug. 15, 2015)

Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon warehouse jobs push workers to physical limit (Seattle Times, April 3, 2012)

Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Salon.com, Feb. 23, 2014)

Amazon paid no US income taxes for 2017 (SeattlePI, Feb. 27, 2018)

Undercover author finds Amazon warehouse workers in UK 'peed in bottles' over fears of being punished for taking a break (Business Insider, April 16, 2018)

The undercover author who discovered Amazon warehouse workers were peeing in bottles tells us the culture was like a 'prison' (Business Insider, April 18, 2018)

Amazon Gets Tax Breaks While Its Employees Rely on Food Stamps, New Data Shows (The Intercept, April 19, 2018)

Quote: "Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table."

Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (bloomberg.com, Feb 19, 2013)

Would you fly into space with a company managed by someone who makes those mistakes and doesn't detect them? Note that Blue Origins does not have the capability of orbiting the earth.

Site is paywalled. Also, according to title, is based on anonymous source. This site says Amazon's financials indicate only 55MM was paid for all taxes in the US for 2017 (the title says no income tax, but mentions this fact in the article.) Feel free to dig into their 10-K if you want, it's linked from teh article

The 9th Circuit, which bothers to abide by things like the 4th Amendment and implied privacy rights, which other "American" courts find antiquated and quaint? That rules against police when they abuse their power?

After all, the only amendment that really matters is the 2nd, right? I love the Nutty Ninth, one of the last bastions of freedom and Constitutionality in the US. May they never change...

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

https://www.kmm.com/articles-3...

https://www.seattlepi.com/loca...

Is Jeff Bezos careful to be logical? It seems to me the answer is no, if you judge by how Amazon is managed. More evidence, added to the evidence in the parent comment:

A Slashdot comment: "you still can't sort prime-only items by price correctly (it includes the lowest priced non-prime seller)..."

And: "... Amazon literally still builds their rich pages using their normal grid layout, and in the most impossible to navigate way possible.

Amazon: Amazon warehouse jobs push workers to physical limit (Seattle Times, April 3, 2012)

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (Bloomberg, Feb. 19, 2013)

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Salon.com, Feb. 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (New York Times, Aug. 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon paid no US income taxes for 2017 (SeattlePI, Feb. 27, 2018)

Amazon: Undercover author finds Amazon warehouse workers in UK 'peed in bottles' over fears of being punished for taking a break (Business Insider, April 16, 2018)

Amazon: The undercover author who discovered Amazon warehouse workers were peeing in bottles tells us the culture was like a 'prison' (Business Insider, April 18, 2018)

Amazon: Amazon Gets Tax Breaks While Its Employees Rely on Food Stamps, New Data Shows (The Intercept, April 19, 2018) Quote: "Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table."

Safe space flight depends on careful thinking. Everyone involved with flight into space must be logical. Maybe Jeff Bezos just needed to find a place to put his money; maybe he doesn't influence Bllue Origins much. But even if that is true, he has influence, and that is scary. My opinion.

Rust doesn't sleep.

I clicked the link in TFS but after the page loaded it had a lot of blank space and just didn't look right. So I glanced at the URL, saw "www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/amp/..." and realized I'd been had.

C'mon Slashdot, why can't you filter links to catch AMP URLs, then find and offer us a direct, un-"enhanced" link to the article?

Here it is:
http://www.seattlepi.com/seatt...

but you just can't sue a state for not wanting to spend money

You can if your kid's school district doesn't get enough money. Even if you can't demonstrate any damages to your kid.

Not related, that's an obligation of a different sort. Arising from clauses found in the state constitutions regarding public education.

You can also sue if the state screws up and releases an inmate early, causing you subsequent harm.

Not related either, that's not the same as an early release that's deliberate, that's an error.

It's the difference between negligence and policy. And it's quite possible sovereign immunity will lead to a dismissal anyway.

There is a difference between a lawsuit and prevailing in one.

but you just can't sue a state for not wanting to spend money

You can if your kid's school district doesn't get enough money. Even if you can't demonstrate any damages to your kid.

You can also sue if the state screws up and releases an inmate early, causing you subsequent harm.

Bees are just as good as dogs at sniffing things, including drugs and explosives.

You train the hive ONCE, and they train each other after that.

Unlike dogs, they have much longer working rules. They don't need as much rest or reward.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/...

http://mentalfloss.com/article...

China isn't doing it because they're environmentally conscious, they're doing it because that's where the MONEY is.

Seriously, why on Earth would you even think that? Reports have been coming from China for many, many years about their pollution problem, and even in recent days there have been articles of the heavy air pollution alerts for multiple days in a row. It's a problem that they have been working hard to fix. Here's a quote from the first article:

On Sunday, 25 cities in China issued "red alerts" for smog, which triggers orders to close factories, schools and construction sites.

So I really do wonder why you thought that China wasn't environmentally conscious. Were you basing this on something, or was it just blind assumption?

The jump wasn't from the 12th floor, which is why he survived. He only fell about 20 feet. http://www.seattlepi.com/local...

Remember that time the military was going to build a nuclear-powered cruise missile that would leave a cloud of fallout behind it, drop nuclear warheads and crash into something when it was done?

Autonomous weapons would not make mistakes. They would do their jobs -- too well.

I guess its been a huge problem for a while: http://www.seattlepi.com/local...

Samples collected from gutters around my office (Kanda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) already light up the Geiger counter, and the soles of shoes right after make nice images when placed on photographic film.

Ah yes, Nuclear myth #3: All radiation is caused by nuclear power and nuclear bombs.

Fact: Nearly everything in the world is naturally radioactive. You're horrified that that stuff around your office lights up Geiger counters, because you never pointed a Geiger counter at that stuff before the accident. Thus you are incorrectly attributing natural radiation to the accident. Your largest annual radiation dose actually comes from your own body. Potassium has a relatively common naturally occurring isotope (K40) which is radioactive, and your body needs potassium to survive (it's essential to how your nerves function). Your second largest dose comes from cosmic rays. Most of these are filtered out by the atmosphere, so in a twist of irony many of those who fled Japan by plane after the accident unwittingly exposed themselves to more radiation during their flight (planes fly above most of the atmosphere) than if they'd just stayed put in Japan.

This myth is so prevalent and pernicious that we screen our nuclear plant workers with detectors which would be screaming if placed at the exit of a drugstore or supermarket. K40 is common enough that most of the false alarms from the "dirty bomb" detectors at our borders are caused by shipments of food which are high in potassium - bananas, avocados, cocoa, etc.

Perhaps most damning with respect to TFA, burning coal releases radiation. Coal contains trace amounts of uranium. The uranium in coal actually contains more energy than the coal itself, but because people who believe this myth are staunchly opposed to nuclear power, they end up breathing in those minute traces of uranium released by burning coal instead. (Burning coal is also the current major contributor to mercury in our oceans which makes fish like tuna dangerous to consume. Historically the biggest contributor was mining, but that's been regulated enough that the primary mercury source is now coal pollution.)

I'd guess what you're trying to get at is that drivers are always obligated to yield to pedestrians, even if they cross the street illegally. That's a little different than claiming pedestrians have "right of way once they are on the road," which is technically incorrect.

Here's a discussion about this topic which answers the question about pedestrians vs vehicles, at least in Seattle.

forced voting by mail? is that even legal?

i thought you were lying and trolling

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seat...

nope, it's true

that's obviously moronic and should be overturned

someone has to mount a legal challenge

Rmoney

hilarious

in most states a 12% fraudulent swing would give the Republicans a win. That is horrible. That is why paper voting is so bad.

hard core democrat here. you're pretty fucking stupid. you understand why voting by mail is so horrible, but you think that's a ding against paper voting. it's a ding against anything needlessly complex, like electronic or even mechanical

you want the voting system to be as little untrustworthy black box as possible. you understansd that with mail. good. but why the fuck you think that means paper sucks and that you can't fuck with electronic even easier than mail is beyond comprehension

Not exactly the actual story... here's the real deal:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/stev...

SKF declined to market the drug in the U.S..

Grunenthal signed a distribution agreement with the William S. Merrell Company.

Merrell started human trials in the U.S. in Feb 1959, and expanded it to include pregnant women in May 1959.

Merrell submitted an NDA (New Drug Application) in Sep 1960 under the drug name Kevadon.

Merell began the "Kevadon Hospital Program" and ramped up distribution.

Mostly Dr. Kelsey demanded testing on pregnant animals; while that was happening, news broke on the effects in July 1961.

The NDA was withdrawn on March 8, 1962.

All in all, 2.5M doses were distributed to 20,000 patients in the U.S.. The FDA did not have the teeth to prevent this, and Dr. Kelsey merely prevented approval, not distribution.

There were actually a lot of victims of the drug in the U.S., and the FDA didn't (couldn't) prevent it.

Its a shame to see what has become of the Soviet Buran program. And this guy wants to investigate that country whose retired shuttle program assets have become prized museum attractions? Sure thing, pal.

Reminds me of this e-mail from Bill Gates http://blog.seattlepi.com/micr...

(talking about the "add/remove programs" screen) "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up."

At least we still have a filesystem

The looney left thinks that planning ahead is racism. People who plan ahead typically do better in life, but the idea is to claim that anybody who "does better" is in that position due to societal structures that benefit them.

The Seattle Public Schools issued a statement that talked about racism and one of the elements was "future time orientation", another way of saying "planning ahead".

http://www.seattlepi.com/local...

According to the district's official Web site, "having a future time orientation" (academese for having long-term goals) is among the "aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype and label people of color."

The school district took the site down a few days later after widespread criticism, but you can see it here:

https://www.fourmilab.ch/fourm...

Cultural Racism:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Ironically the anybody who would come up with this stuff, particularly planning ahead and individualism, is acting in a racist manner. It's pathetic.

Ironically, with Android, Google made the same compromise that Microsoft made with Windows, that is make the core OS, but outsource hardware to a million different OEMs, in order to get your software running on a greater ecosystem of machines, unlike the Apple model of controlling both the hardware, and the software, as is the case with Macs and iPhone.

Except, now Google has run into the same issues Microsoft ran into with Windows, namely now they have to either a) support a million different hardware configurations, or b) drop support for "legacy" hardware with every new version of their OS.

Except of course there's a third party involved, the telecomm companies that are responsible for providing OTA updates at their whim, whereas Microsoft never had that problem. If anything, they dictated the upgrade schedule for OEMs, leading to the infamous $2,100 email machine.

So Android is a real conundrum, on the hand, it's open source, but on the other, very few phones actually get the latest release installed, and that's if the telecomms don't cripple the software by installing crapware on it. And there's just enough closed-source binary blobs on the phones that you can't really install your own version either.

My advice, get a nexus, or don't get an android phone.

Well, taxis have their own horror stories, including at least one serial killer.

Sexual assault is only a click away (googled "taxi driver assault" and skipped the advertisement)

Grabbing the breasts is only ONE of the things this taxi driver did...

kidnap and rape

But I understand your rebuttal of somebody saying they've never heard of a ride gone bad with Uber. Personally, I think the important part would be rate at which things go wrong(and horribly wrong).

Because goodness knows, nobody's been assaulted by a licensed taxi driver.

Respectfully, you don't know what you're talking about. Read this.

> and the officer was doing his job.

Dude flipped a coin to determine whether or not to write a ticket. He wasn't just doing his job, he was power-tripping. Same as this jerk, the only difference was the cop had way more power.

This made me curious, so I found a citation.

They're blaming emissions standards that cost fuel. Personally, I have a hard time with systems that burn more fuel for 'less emissions'. There should be ways to do both, but from doing my research as I was considering a diesel vehicle, there's a LOT of angst over this right now because they killed a lot of diesel's mileage advantage with the new emissions standards. There's even forum posts out there on how to re-tune engines 'the old way' to get the mileage back.

Do you have any proof of this? I actually run Windows 8.1 Update 2 (x64) with Windows Update set to only notify me of updates. No updates from Microsoft have been installed without me explicitly installing them.

Well, only that I had updates turned completely off, and on several occasions my wife told me the computer was sluggish and acting weird. I shut it down, and lo, an update. The only update I ever purposely allowed was to 8.1.

I'm not the only one, and this link was regarding Windows 7:

http://superuser.com/questions...

It certainly isn't a new phenomenon, here's one from 2007

http://blog.seattlepi.com/micr...

Hey - maybe we're all just kooks? http://answers.microsoft.com/e...

Install an update when you have them turned off? No Problem Microsoft turns them back on.I've had this happen several times. Apparently Microsoft doesn't do this - it's always the customers fault:

http://social.technet.microsof...

Windows 7 users have noted:

http://www.sevenforums.com/win...

Windows 7 users have been having a big problem with some sotfware I regularly ue. They have an update that breaks the software, and they roll it back, and turn the auto update feature off, but next black tuesday, it reinstalls the offending update.

Presumably, most growers would not be in Seattle, but in the more rural areas surrounding it. Same as any crop. Unless it's more difficult to transport than any other crop ever, the distance is no issue.

There are 50 growers in the state, and many more have applied (including a bunch in Seattle)

It LITERALLY just became legal, so everyone's still ramping up. (I'm not even going to bother responding to the Huffington comment)

I can't speak for the laws, but the claim that no one's buying, and thus has only 1 shop, is demonstrably false. While it's true there's only 1 shop, it just opened on July 8. 3 days later, they were completely sold out

They issued the first 25 licenses this week, and most just haven't opened yet. You just have to give it some time.

Googling on your drone suggestion: http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/fe...
"Zondlo recently developed a methane sensor mounted on a remote-controlled aircraft built at the University of Texas at Dallas. In October, the aircraft was used to quantify emission rates from well pads and a compressor station in the Barnett Shale region. Zondlo has been partnering with other groups that fly drones over fracking areas to detect leaks.
Robert B. Jackson, an ecologist and energy expert at Duke University, also has been testing drones to detect fugitive methane emissions. The main drawback, he says, is the payload. "Carrying a big camera or methane sensor, a drone might be able to stay in the air for 30 minutes," says Jackson. "It's difficult to screen a shale play with that kind of time."
Engineers are trying to develop lighter sensors that will allow drones to stay in the air longer. "I'm very bullish long-term on using drones to measure leaks," Jackson said. "Are we there yet right now? No."
In the Pinedale Anticline natural gas field in Wyoming, Shane Murphy and Robert Field of the University of Wyoming recently outfitted a Mercedes Sprinter van with a mass spectrometer and other high-powered scientific instruments to measure volatile organic compounds and methane. When combined with meteorological instrumentation and sophisticated software, these technologies can detect methane plumes and quantify emission rates from specific sources -- all from inside the van. The equipment records readings every half-second, which allows it to be used on the move. "This approach can cover a lot of ground," Field said."

And also:
http://www.reuters.com/article...
"No pilot was required when the Aeryon Scout took off into the leaden skies of Alaska to inspect a stretch of oil pipeline. The miniature aircraft was guided by an engineer on the ground, armed only with a tablet computer. The 20-minute test flight, conducted by BP Plc last fall, was a glimpse of a future where oil and gas companies in the Arctic can rely on unmanned aircraft to detect pipeline faults, at a fraction of the cost of piloted helicopter flights."

Also (see page 3):
http://www.seattlepi.com/local...
"Though the project has a modest half-million-dollar budget, the goal is to develop and field test a portable low-cost instrument that can measure gas odor in parts-per-billion quantities and "replace the human nose for leak detection," according to the study prospectus.
When the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration launched the project with industry financial support in 2010, it said it would be completed in September of this year. Recent changes in the federal agency's research program could delay projects currently underway, according to a transcript of an Aug. 2 meeting between federal research officials and technical advisors.
The federal government is also working on pipeline surveillance devices, which would search for leaks, including another cooperative research project launched by the federal government to mount a gas detection device on a pilot-less flying drone.
Until these devices are proven, however, experts say the industry will heavily rely on the gas customer's nose, which is not all that reassuring."

At CMU 25 years ago, I was part of a small group led by Red Whitaker where we discussed making robots that rove through gas pipelines to inspect them from the inside. So, that's another option, too, although putting anything inside a pipeline has its own risks.

Of course, if electricity gets cheaper (like from hot or cold fusion or cheaper solar panels), natural gas demand may fall quickly. But whether that leads to less leaks in the s

Solar is one of most subsidized industries.

Yeah, a citation's definitely gonna be needed for that one.

Agricultural subsidies are around $20 billion every year. Fortune 500 companies totalled $63 billion in subsidies (top 100 here, no solar to be found) of which a single company (Boeing) totalled $13 billion ($8.7B in a single deal), while the automobile industry (including Ford and GM, but also Fiat, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen) got over $12 billion. AT&T and Verizon together collected $26 billion in tax breaks between 2008-2010, while Exxon Mobil got another $4B. Fossil fuel industries have received over $500 billion dollars in tax breaks and direct incentives, 70% of all energy subsidies over the last 60 years, while wind and solar got just 9%.

So tell me again how Solyndra's $0.5B in loan guarantees are so "titanic".

These two crappy articles say you're right. I'm not convinced they knew what they were doing.

"It was intense going through it," said the 18-year-old high school student who played the waterboarding victim. He asked not to be named.

Given that he'd supposedly just been subjected to drowning torture, that he described it as 'intense' seems rather... odd. The people Hitchens went to, actually knew what they were doing.

Would they volunteer, say, for a blowtorch on the balls?

Well put. Idiotic students trivialising the matter just makes it seem they're pushing for a broader understanding of 'torture', rather than convincing anyone that waterboarding is torture.

These changes seem reasonable to me. They are getting a warrant with judicial oversight. That is the way the system is supposed to work.

No, this is how it's supposed to work:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Mind you, per the Constitution nothing can supersede this rule, outside a legally ratified Constitutional Amendment.

If they have probable cause, then there is no reason that I can see for the warrant to specifically tie the search to a geographical location, or to require separate warrants for each machine.

Really? What part of "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" is unclear?

Car analogy: Should a search warrant for a vehicle specify that it can only be searched at the suspect's home, but not at his place of work? Should separate warrants be required for the glove compartment and trunk?

Separate warrants are required for locked compartments.

So yes to the second question.

Kids these days. I think you meant:

Something like that already exists

Fine, as long as we don't make it a *general* policy to adopt Steve Ballmer's jargon.

What about a company like "Curves" whose market is women? It's not bias driven (I assume), but it does limit the "class" of people they serve.

And there have been lawsuits against them for exactly that reason.
http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/article/So-far-women-only-gyms-are-allowed-by-the-courts-1133532.php
We still have women-only bathrooms. We still have some women-only sports teams.

Say you have a company that markets itself as a christian tour group that visits holy sites important to that faith. Can they refuse a group of staunch atheists out of fear that they might ruin the expensive trip for the other customers?

No. Because that "fear" is unsubstantiated with that group of atheists. The same as if they refused a group of blacks "out of fear that they might ruin the expensive trip for the other customers".

More sensible gun laws are the real difference.

Oh really? Then why were there decreases in crime in the states that resisted your "sensible gun laws"?

As another poster mentioned above, it wasn't just the correlation, but the way the decrease in crime occurred at varying rates as different states adopted the lead regulations on different schedules. In each case, the lead regulations and crime decreases tracked. Forget about the national rates, look at each state independently.

See, correlation doesn't prove causation, but when it's repeated across a large sample, it becomes a very strong hint for where to look.

Regarding the statistics regarding the "sensible gun laws", the study that's always pointed to is the one by John Lott, whose data has been called into question. He equates "crime" with "murder" and the drop in murder rates may have more to do with the improvements and greater availability of trauma medicine than any magical effect of guns.

And if guns are the answer, then why did the assault-weapon ban lower the crime rates? If guns reduce crime, wouldn't more powerful guns reduce crime even more?

Gun activists...judge them on who they choose to represent them:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seat...

than the crap being spewed over the air during the game...

http://blog.seattlepi.com/mari...

This has been used on slow news days for years. 2012, 2011, and 2006, for example.

I dislike Microsoft and Windows with a passion, but at least they don't arbitrarily decide that your PC is too old to run their latest operating system. It may not run it fast, but generally it will run it.

So you would rather have the opposite where MS arbitrarily tells you can run an OS even though it really can run the most basic version of that OS.

At the request of Intel who would have had millions of video chipsets that they could not sell, at the last minute, MS included hardware for Vista that could not run Aero (the video chips lacked a low level instruction required by Aero).

He closed the Vancouver Marine Traffic Control Center while planning on increasing oil tanker traffic by at least an order of magnitude. He also closed Vancouver's Kitsilano coast guard station as it only did almost 300 (271 in 2011) rescues a year serving perhaps the busiest recreational harbour in Canada as the one at Sea Island was only 45 minutes away under ideal conditions. Should be easy to hold on for an hour when your boat flounders.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Federal+government+closes+Vancouver+Kitsilano+coast+guard+station/7987072/story.html
Our neighbours view on our oil spill readiness, http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/12/03/canada-unprepared-for-oil-spill-in-strait-of-juan-de-fuca/

That's fine as far as it goes, but it seems like there has been a lot of volcanic activity over the last couple of years, and little of that can be explained by changes in the thickness of ice. In some cases it involves volcanos that have been quiet for decades or longer. There has been eruptions or activity on Mount Etna in Italy, Mount Sinabung in Sumatra, Sakurajima in Japan, Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, Popocatepetl in Mexico, Puyehue in Chile, Fuego in Guatemala, Tungurahua in Ecuador, Shiveluch in Russia, Cleveland Volcano in Alaska, Mayon in the Philippines, and plenty more.

Volcanoes that erupted in April 2013

Didn't I see the first picture here in Lord of the Rings?

In the U.S., politicians post speeches full of lies online, and nobody cares. I'm not sure if this is because everybody believes the lies, or because nobody believes the politicians.

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Rumsfeld-denies-making-claims-Iraq-had-WMDs-1202942.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0m6Rxm9vU

i believe that has already happened without the drones.

i stole that link from a comment somewhere above.