Domain: smithsonianmag.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to smithsonianmag.com.
Comments · 239
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Re:Another one of these ?
Korea https://economictimes.indiatim... Audi http://time.com/3837814/audi-e... When was the ONR renamed NRL ? https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
At least these schemes solve solars problem of storage. (maybe no idea how these schemes will deal with being operated intermittently)
No, no they don't. All those schemes are based on nuclear but they just don't tell you that. The only way any of these technologies doesn't produce CO2 is if they use nuclear. Solar and wind are far far far to energy sparse (ie not energy dense) to provide enough heat to power these processes. If you were to try to use wind or solar you would create more CO2 moving and heating the water or air than if you just used natural gas to power the process. Not to mention the land you would have to clear for the wind and solar plants (you can't just use solar cells, you would need a solar concentrator like Ivanpah). If you used fossil fuels, that would be self defeating as you would use more fuel than you produce. These systems are about what you can do with nuclear. Without nuclear they are interesting curiosities with no use. That's why nothing has been done with them even though we've be able to do these types of chemical processes for decades in some cases.
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Another one of these ?
Korea
https://economictimes.indiatim...
Audi
http://time.com/3837814/audi-e...
When was the ONR renamed NRL ?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...At least these schemes solve solars problem of storage. (maybe no idea how these schemes will deal with being operated intermittently)
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Re:heat rises
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Trump's Real Reason? All About the Golf...Perhaps the real reason for Trump's support (half sarcastic)? From the Smithsonian article quoted by someone else:
Today we know that changing the clocks does influence our behavior. For example, later sunset times have dramatically increased participation in afterschool sports programs and attendance at professional sports events. In 1920, The Washington Post reported that golf ball sales in 1918 – the first year of daylight saving – increased by 20 percent.
And when Congress extended daylight saving from six to seven months in 1986, the golf industry estimated that extra month was worth as much as $400 million in additional equipment sales and green fees. To this day, the Nielsen ratings for even the most popular television shows decline precipitously when we spring forward, because we go outside to enjoy the sunlight. -
Re:Just pick a damned time
A more "colorful" history of DST:
At some point in elementary school, many American children learn that Daylight Saving Time was originally intended to give farmers an extra hour of light to work the fields.
That is, in fact, a lie.
Farmers actually hated the practice, because it cut an hour of daylight in the morning, leaving them with an hour less to get goods to market, according to Michael Downing, author of the book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time. In reality, the extra hour of evening daylight was good for one thing: selling products.
...Specifically we have the candy lobby, the barbecue lobby, and the golf ball lobby to thank for modern American Daylight Saving Time. But we’ll get to that in a second.
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Re:Not the first
I wouldn't be so harsh on people for using the term "GMO" incorrectly, as the term itself is unspecific, and is often broadened to include anything that has had its genes altered[1], even by nature.[2] [3]
It would be so much simpler if people just referred to the specific technologies being utilized, as they all suffer from risk/reward issues, and there aren't clear ethical borders. An incomplete list of the technologies used include:
* Nature's own technique of random mutations with a natural selection filter on top
* Artificial selection by humans, which in ~10,000 years gave us massive, delicious mutants like the modern wheat and corn crops, and docile cows, pigs and dogs
* Cloning started around the 1800s in order to perpetuate popular varieties of e.g. apples, oranges and bananas, whereby a branch of the tree is cut off and re-planted
* Forced hybridization has been around the 1900s, where two distinctly inbred parental lineages are perpetually bred to produce sterile offspring (e.g. seedless watermelons, or mules for use by the British Empire as amazing pack animals)
* Radiation-induced mutation breeding (mutagenesis) has been around since around the 1930s, which forcefully increases the mutation rate and splits chromosomes in order to allow breeding with other species -- a technique the EU even calls GMO (see [1])
-- a lot of western staple crops are based on, or hybridized from, crops produced from this technique
* Chemically-induced mutation breeding is a more modern version of mutagenesis that's doesn't cause as much DNA damage -- still a GMO in the EU though (see [1])
* Transgenic modifications, where specific genes can be takes from unrelated species, was invented in the 1970s
* Cisgenic modifications, where the specific genes are taken from a species where it would have been possible to acquire it naturally through conventional breeding,[4] have been a classification of GMOs since around the year 2000So GMO debates could be untangled massively if people just spoke about the specific technologies. For instance, I suspect based on your comment that you would be against transgenic GMOs and mutagenesis, but for cisgenic GMOs... while being on the fence about forced hybridization?
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Yeah yeah "NASA"
You can just ask these people
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... -
Re: Press F to pay respects
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Re: Daily Bullshit
So you are willing to risk an oceanic mass extinction to avoid moving to the cleanest and what's rapidly becoming the cheapest form of energy, duly noted. Evolution can't outrun anthropogenic climate change though. This isn't your cretaceous grandaddy's climate change.
We know that the optimal temperatures are just slightly above pre-industrial levels and well below where we are now, no more work needs to be done there. You can't escape the issue that CO2 is the most important and practical control, nobody credible will ever tell you anything different. Making industries switch to a power source with a competive cost is hardly "force-fucking," but wait until you see what global warming does to them...
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Re: ...for a small value of "excellent".
Crows have no interest in anything you could supply.
Table scraps? I promise you that corvids of all types are interested in those.
You don't speak crow, assuming they have language, so you can't barter.
You don't have to speak their language, you only have to communicate.
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Re:Apple and Others Respond
NSA has monitor cables that use radio reflector tech to retransmit a monitor's image to a wireless listening post.
All your hemming and hawing over "where does the power come from" ignores a century worth of powering spying devices externally using everything from EMF to acoustic harmonics (vibrate a quarts crystal you get electricity).
Furthermore: The governments of this realm are about 130 years ahead of the tech that's currently known about in public. When Tesla was researching the "first" Radio, he noted signals that had to have an intelligent origin. It was existing Radio tech being used by governments / elites in secret (to game the stock market).
Protip: Governmental = Govern Mental = Control Minds.
Tech assisted Telepathy is known about in public now, AI that can predict your decisions by FMRI exists. Extrapolate 130 years.... Checkmate, Atheists. -
Re:Carbon footprint of this?
Here are some references. You can make up your own mind I guess.
"When an ice cube melts in a glass, the overall water level does not change from when the ice is frozen to when it joins the liquid. Doesnâ(TM)t that mean that melting icebergs shouldnâ(TM)t contribute to sea-level rise? Not quite.
Although most of the contributions to sea-level rise come from water and ice moving from land into the ocean, it turns out that the melting of floating ice causes a small amount of sea-level rise, too.
Globally, it doesnâ(TM)t sound like much â" just 0.049 millimetres per year â" but if all the sea ice currently bobbing on the oceans were to melt, it could raise sea level by 4 to 6 centimetres.
Fresh water, of which icebergs are made, is less dense than salty sea water. So while the amount of sea water displaced by the iceberg is equal to its weight, the melted fresh water will take up a slightly larger volume than the displaced salt water. This results in a small increase in the water level."
https://www.newscientist.com/a...
https://physics.stackexchange....
"When you learned about Archimedes back in elementary school, your teacher probably told you that a floating object displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight. Although an ice cube pokes up out of the water, when it melts, the level of the water should stay the same. Extrapolate this concept to an iceberg floating in the oceanâ"a bigger version of the ice cube in your water glassâ"and you would think that melting icebergs shouldn't contribute to sea level rise. Well, you'd be wrong, say geoscientists at the University of Leeds.
In their study, published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers used satellite observations and a computer model to assess the impacts of melting icebergs. The total amount of floating ice that is turned into ocean water each year is equivalent to 1.5 million Titanic-sized icebergs. Due to differences in the temperature and density of the ice and water (the seawater is warmer and saltier than the icebergs that float in it), when the icebergs melt, the resulting ocean water is 2.6 percent greater in volume than the volume of water that the iceberg had displaced."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
"In a paper titled "The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level" submitted to Geophysical Journal International, Noerdlinger demonstrates that melt water from sea ice and floating ice shelves could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than the water displaced by the ice, or the equivalent of approximately 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) of sea-level rise.
The common misconception that floating ice wonâ(TM)t increase sea level when it melts occurs because the difference in density between fresh water and salt water is not taken into consideration."
http://nsidc.org/news/newsroom...
There are plenty more, but if that doesn't convince you then I imagine nothing will.
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Re:Is it a large-scale bird grinder?
Nobody says they will "never be 'bird grinders,'" according to the literature. The jury is still out:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/ -
Re:Great ...
Ten years for forgetting my pin number. I have done that.
They might just as well lock everyone up in advance, just in case.Not to fear Citizen, your annual pre-crime cranial scan recorded the data for you. We'll send your pin to you via technologically assisted telepathy.
That is, unless you're one of those deviant revolutionaries who refused to let the government unlock your mind. In that case, it's 1000 simulated years in prison for you.
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Re: As a vegetarian since 15 years...
Except as everyone here should know by now, producing food plants uses far fewer resources than producing food animals.
"Pork, chicken, dairy and eggs are equivalent within a factor of two when it came to their environmental burdens, the authors determined. But beef requires far, far more resources than any of those other protein categories. The team calculated that beef requires 28 times more land, six times more fertilizer and 11 times more water compared to those other food sources. That adds up to about five times more greenhouse gas emissions.
To further put these findings into perspective, the authors also ran the same calculations for several staple crops. All told, on a calorie-to-calorie basis, potatoes, wheat and rice require two to six time less resources to produce than pork, chicken, eggs or dairy."
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Re:We need more of this ...
Keeping in mind I was responding to grossly inaccurate specific claims in the parent post. Yes, beef is the most impactful and hugely symbolic. Yes, moving to chickens instead of beef would be a wonderful move when measured in impact to resource consumption and impact on the environment. And moving to plants would be even better. Either is a major win.
Pork, chicken, dairy and eggs are equivalent within a factor of two when it came to their environmental burdens, the authors determined. But beef requires far, far more resources than any of those other protein categories. The team calculated that beef requires 28 times more land, six times more fertilizer and 11 times more water compared to those other food sources. That adds up to about five times more greenhouse gas emissions.
To further put these findings into perspective, the authors also ran the same calculations for several staple crops. All told, on a calorie-to-calorie basis, potatoes, wheat and rice require two to six time less resources to produce than pork, chicken, eggs or dairy.
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Channels or canals?
The mention of channels on the moon reminded me of this old thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Yeah channels and canals are different. Hah.There were also bat-men on the moon, in those days. Funny that if you showed someone from the 1800's a Batman comic they'd think he's an alien.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... -
Again?
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Re:Good for you sir!
Clovis weren't the first Americans:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
EIther way, early human populations were much smaller and probably not competing for space in the same way of later populations. -
Re:This is a serious suggestion
"I'm sorry, what scare tactics did I refer to?"
I'm a little baffled by that question. I literally address this after making that statement. Go back and reread my last post if you are seriously wondering about this.
"I'm sorry, what scare tactics did I refer to? I have not referred to any well publicized and likely misleading sources used by the war on drugs - I have not referenced the usual claims of lowering IQ or as a gateway drug even though it is reported in a peer reviewed journal [nih.gov]. I specfically avoided such sources because I knew someone would attempt to discredit them."
So because you avoid those specific scare tactics you didn't use scare tactics at all? One thing does not follow the other there,
"And, please, a little more evidence than "snopes" here - one discredited mass media report is hardly adequate evidence."
That means you didn't read the link. There was something like a half dozen refuted cases in that link of the media or law enforcement claiming problems with laced weed and then later retracting their statements. Laced weed is a media manufactured problem, right up there with parents and teachers lecturing me as a child warning me of the dangers of "drug dealers handing out LSD to children" (What the hell kind of nonsense is that?). I am pointing to the complete lack of supporting data to refute the claim that laced weed is a real life danger here. If there is a real problem with this then there should be evidence of such,
"Trust me I know about people doing stupid things. I am a trauma surgeon and nearly half of my patients arrive with drug and or alcohol on their toxicology screen."
And this gets to the core of one of my main problems in this conversation. I'm getting anecdotal evidence from a person here who is regularly confabulating "drugs" and "marijuana". Marijuana is not alcohol and it is not all "drugs".
In regards to your links
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
This was nice and contributes to an informed conversation on the subject. While there is certainly still wide debate on the subject a number of other studies have found similar links to the problems detailed here. What I always wonder about the issues brought up in such studies, if marijuana is seeing such widespread use that 12% of Americans admit to having used it in the last year (from this link) why is there no health crisis in regards to the symptoms described here? People dying from liver disease and diabetes due to drinking is something that I run into in my own life and there is very clear data detailing the problem. With pot, not so much.https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
Despite the headline all this article does is bring up that weed is more potent now and that there is no reliable source for metrics on CBD content in pot (which is what most medical users really care about). None of these things make pot bad.http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/st...
This is more scare tactics. As I didn't want to meticulously read through the whole thing I did a text search for marijuana. There is no mention of the substance here. This link is completely irrelevant.https://arstechnica.com/scienc...
Irrelevant. Ecstasy is not marijuana. It isn't even put together by a chemist. This is more of what I have been talking about in terms of scare tactics. "Other drugs are laced with crazy stuff which means marijuana could be laced which means it is laced!" seems to be the thought process with this.https://www.journalacs.org/art...
This is just a craz -
Good lord, not even 12 hours old ...
Netherlands Will Welcome Its First Community of 3D-Printed Homes
Posted by msmash on Friday June 08, 2018 @10:40AM from the how-about-that dept.Dupe! Come on guys, at least try. Do you at least read the fucking front page?
Oh my god, it's a meme, we're all gonna get arrested.
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Re:We're closing a nuclear plant nearby
read this then and see if it matches your "idea" https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
Hydro is NOT considered a renewable is some states? ROFL, more fool them -
Re:Crazy Idea
I think it's much simpler than that.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
In the Calhoun experiments mice were put in an enclosed pen, provided ample resources including nesting space, with the expectation they the would breed to the limit of their space. Instead, they bred to a certain point, then collapsed:
At the peak population, most mice spent every living second in the company of hundreds of other mice. They gathered in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other. Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies. Theyâ(TM)d move half their litter away from danger and forget the rest. Sometimes theyâ(TM)d drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it.
The few secluded spaces housed a population Calhoun called, âoethe beautiful ones.â Generally guarded by one male, the femalesâ"and few malesâ"inside the space didnâ(TM)t breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. When the population started declining the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death, but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young.
Sounds pretty familiar to me. The original premise - free food and housing - sounds like an LBJ project.
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Re:Should be useful for most drivers...
Behind? As far as power goes, we've sent humans to space, and yet 100 years of internal combustion engine development hasn't been able to create instant torque response that an EV can deliver every time. Performance numbers certainly aren't lacking for the maker of "ludicrous" mode either.
Range is dictated by battery tech, and you're getting a hell of a lot more out of rechargeable batteries today than you were 20 years ago. My first cell phone had an hour of talk time. Another decade of battery development will likely create EV solutions with a 1,500-mile range, which at that point the metric is pointless, because human passengers would never want to sit in a car that long.
Battery tech has improved in regards to fixing the battery memory problem and faster recharge times but has little to do with how long your cell phone lasts. Most major battery improvements over the last 10 years are due to three factors: Shrinking electronics has allowed for larger capacity batteries, electronics have become much more energy efficient (i.e. lower power displays), and power management improvements.
As far as I can tell, the accepted wisdom is that battery capacity increases at 5% to 8% per year. In 10 years a 300 mile Tesla would be able to go about 500 miles. That being said, there is a ton of research being done on using capacitors and on developing the next battery chemistry that will supplant what we have today. So, it's quite possible that a breakthrough will happen and provide a range of 1500 miles. However, in my opinion, the current pace of battery technology does not support this with existing battery technology.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
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Roman Concrete
They would be better off studying how to reproduce Roman Concrete. There are Mediterranean docks that are over a 1,000 years old that are in better condition than when they were new.
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Re:Oh NOES!!! Trump is EVUL!!!
Trump is a money-laundering corruption machine. But policy-wise he's just the latest lap on the GOP track. At least he hasn't started any new wars (even if he's been amping up our current ones and doing it mostly in secret). In some ways his personal indecency just makes more plain the indecency that's been at the center of GOP policy since they absorbed the dixiecrats. I mean they turned oliver north into a godamn hero after all and nixon colluded with the south vietnamese to prolong the war and get elected.
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Re:I believe there have been other civilizations
The Sahara has been a desert for about 7 million years (and people have been around less than 3 million years).
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Electric aircraft are a long way off
Electrically-powered aircraft, at first small single-engine types, are not far off at all given the rates of advancement we've seen regarding electric battery storage technology combined with new materials like carbon-fiber.
"New materials like carbon fiber"? Carbon fiber has been around for decades. It's not even close to new. And as for the rate of advancement of battery tech, storage improves by a few percent per year. It's slow steady incremental progress. The volumetric energy density of Li-Ion batteries has doubled since 1995. Good but hardly mind blowing rate of improvement. Doubling every 25 years isn't exactly speedy.
We have a few prototype small electric planes. Commercial airliners are in no danger of being displaced any time soon. Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see all electric planes but it's going to be a few decades at minimum before they become commercially viable even under the most optimistic assumptions.
Not many years ago the majority of RC model airplanes of any size were powered by ICEs. Now ICE-powered models, especially aircraft and quad-rotors, are becoming the exception rather than the rule..
Irrelevant because the forces and thermodynamics involved do not scale linearly. You can't simply take an RC plane and make it 10 or 100 times bigger with everything working the same. Aircraft big enough to carry people have to be able to travel a LOT faster than your typical RC toy and wind resistance scales up exponentially. Doubling your speed requires far more than double the power. And I'm not even getting into the economics of building a real plane that costs millions versus your several hundred dollar toy.
Electrically powered cars and freight trucks are now beginning to become a reality as our ability to store electricity densely steadily improves. Aircraft cannot be far behind.
Actually electric powered aircraft are quite a bit behind because the physics involved are very different. Power to weigh matters a LOT more for aircraft than it does for automobiles. While we might one day see commercially viable electric aircraft it is going to be decades later than for cars because of the power to weight requirements.
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Re: Great news!
I stated:
(In cattle country, USA feed stores all display tetracycline and amphicillin powder in open barrels with convenient scoops the size of garden trowels stuck in them for customers to purchase bulk antibiotics priced by the pound.)
Prompting Swave An deBwoner to exclaim:
Serious question: how is this allowed? These are prescription-only pharmaceuticals right? I can't just walk into a drugstore and pick up a bottle of either of these antibiotics without a prescription.
Is there some part of the law that controls access to these that explicitly exempts feed stores?
Large-animal veterinarians routinely write multiple-refill prescriptions for bulk-purchase antibiotics for livestock farmers and ranchers. Their local feed store keeps a copy of those prescriptions on file, so their customers can buy antibiotics in bulk without being inconvenienced by the need to hand over a new prescription form each time they visit. It's a "good ol' boy" thing.
Googling the question brings me to an article that states that pet stores routinely sell prescription antibiotics without prescription:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200207183470319
I am amazed.
Pet antibiotics - and especially those for fish - are a different issue. As are pet vaccinations.
FWIW - with the exception of rabies vaccine, I administer all our dogs' vaccinations and innoculations myself, because DIY is MUCH less expensive than having a veterinarian do it
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Re: Great news!
(In cattle country, USA feed stores all display tetracycline and amphicillin powder in open barrels with convenient scoops the size of garden trowels stuck in them for customers to purchase bulk antibiotics priced by the pound.)
Serious question: how is this allowed? These are prescription-only pharmaceuticals right? I can't just walk into a drugstore and pick up a bottle of either of these antibiotics without a prescription.
Is there some part of the law that controls access to these that explicitly exempts feed stores?
Googling the question brings me to an article that states that pet stores routinely sell prescription antibiotics without prescription:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200207183470319
I am amazed.
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I've been there.
You could well believe that the place is utterly sterile; if you pick up a handful of dirt it'll have no visible or olfactory signs of life in it. To the naked senses it's just like opening the pack of desiccant silica that came with your camera. In the Atatcama trash and even toilet paper from hikers blows around for years -- archaeologists have even found pre-Columbian textiles there still intact after half a millenium. The only life visible there is within a few hundred meters of the ocean, fed by morning sea mists. The ranger stations put up mist nets there to collect precious drinking water.
But a few months after I was there, they had their first rain in over years. The friend I was visiting there told me that every square inch of the desert as far as the eye could see was carpeted in tiny flowers -- the floral scent was so intense it made her retch. If you want to see what it looks look at this Smithsonian article. Now imagine looking at a single square meter of that and finding thousands of tiny pollinating insects...
Life in the northern Atacama is adapted to periods of dry quiescence lasting for years, punctuated by brief, intense bouts of rain-triggered reproduction lasting only for days. But there's a huge difference between getting rain every five or six years and having no rain for hundreds of millions of years.
Even the driest desert on Earth is far from dry.
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Data Center
Have 37.2 TB available.
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Re:But Asparagus is still nasty!
I love asparagus.PictSweet Steamables are one of my go-to veggies for the week. It's still nice & firm after it's been microwaved. The only thing I don't like about it is the nasty side effect.
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Re:Tulips...
The evidence strongly suggests that the size and scale of the tulip bubble was vastly exaggerated https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/.
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Not unique to the UK
It's a problem in every developed part of the world, as is proper disposal of e-waste. We simply can't keep this up.
I am buying as little as possible of both. Choosing foods that have as little packaging as possible, bringing my own container to the butcher, baker, resisting upgrading or buying gadgets as much as possible and finding people who can actually use my old stuff.
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Re:Why did they do this to begin with?
"Twitter is little more than a digital version of some a-hole writing something on the wall of a public restroom."
Nonetheless historians are studying the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
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Re:I don't care
Actually the tulip mania is way over hyped. It didn't destroy the dutch economy and it didn't affect all layers of society. The bullshit you're spouting about tulip futures and options is bullshit.
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Re: No, it's all going to hell again
As usual, slashdot is the wrong place to ask this, and google is the right one. Maybe you would like this article on the subject.
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Re:Drones as weapons
it's not theoretical anymore.
In World War II, radio-controlled B-24s were sent on bombing missions over Germany. Remotely controlled aircraft carried still cameras over battlefields in Vietnam. The Israeli Army used drones for surveillance and as decoys over Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in 1982.
Hagahaha. Any other technology you are caught up on?
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Re:What will the effects be?
Tulips were perishable and this mania never really happened. https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
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Re:What will the effects be?
Tulips are perishable and this never happened https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
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Re:What makes bitcoins different than tulip bulbs?
Tulips are perishable, and the mania never happened https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
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Re:Welcome geeks to the things that matter
Wow. Very original comment from the guy who didn't buy Bitcoin when he had the chance. Also re: tulips https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
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Re: Five hours!?
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Re:So...
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Tulip Bubbles, Mermaids and Unicorns
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
The main argument against is __something that didn't happen in reality__
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Re:It's Almost Like Some Kinf of Mania
Which never happened: https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
Gonna have to do better than fictional examples.
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Re:Trump doesn't even apologize for treason!
1. Shielding a Nazi Officer Wanted for War Crimes
2. The Internment of Japanese Citizens During World War II
3. The Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii
4. The Tuskegee Experiment
5. An Apology for Slavery and the Jim Crow laws
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-times-united-states-officially-apologized-180959254/
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Re:Solution
Coal plants are being discontinued. As grids become more efficient, switching to electric cars becomes even better. As for rare earth batteries, rare earths despite their name are not that rare https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-earth-elements-not-rare-just-playing-hard-to-get-38812856/ and the technology to extract them has been getting massively better in the last few years. We've also just barely started recycling rare earth components- until recently there wasn't any economic incentive to do so. If components with them become more common, the amount of recycling will go up. As is usually the case with environmental problems, the solution will not be simply changes in personal behavior, or government regulation, or market incentives but a natural combination of all three. And, with the notable exception of the current US Presidential administration, most of the world is behind it.
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How spend $1.7 billion on education?
Of course having good parents makes a huge difference. But just talking about money - how would I spend $1.7 billion on education?
1) Buy the rights to highly-regarded educational books, and release the books freely over the internet.
2) Set up some private schools that teach as they do in Finland. This imitating Finland would include hiring outstanding teachers, and paying them well.
3) Open private schools for students who want to learn, putting them in areas with bad schools. The students in the good schools don't have to be geniuses, but they do have to work hard and behave well. Make these schools low-tuition or free, for students whose parents can't afford the cost. I hate reading articles like this one, about students who were physically attacked by other students for the "crime" of studying hard.
4) For students who are fighting peer pressure to not study and to behave badly - if they don't have an alternate good physical school to attend, then set up a free, high-quality online school for them to attend.