Where does this accumulated money get stored? Are billionaires stuffing benjamins in the mattress? Rich people do one of three things with money:
1) Spend it (creates jobs selling and manufacturing products) 2) Invest it (strengthens corporations and allows for the expansion and creation of business) 3) Save it (puts money in banks available to loan to other people)
Any other ideas of what rich people do with their money? Burn it and laugh maniacally? Buy hookers and blow (wait, that still creates jobs...)?
The chemical equations are nice and all for octane, hexane, and whatever other chemical reactions you can come up with. And I might believe you if you could tell me the exact chemical ratios between different hydrocarbon chains in both regular and premium gasoline. I'd bet you can't, because there is more variation in fuels between different regions (yes we have regional blends), different climates (different RVP for different temps), and the transportation process (many times premium is downgraded and sold as regular) than there is between regular and premium. In addition, refineries don't just produce "regular" and "premium", they produce many products ranging from RBOB (commonly referred to as blendgrade) to 94 octane fuels. These are all blended between fuels or downgraded to be sold at the dispenser.
From the linked API article (since you obviously didn't check the linked posts on the previous):
Gasoline with a higher heating value (energy content) provides better fuel economy. Traditionally, premium gasoline has had a slightly higher heating value than regular, and, thus, provides slightly better fuel economy, but it is difficult to detect in normal driving. There can be even larger differences in heating value between batches of gasoline from the same refinery, between summer and winter volatility classes, or between brands of gasoline from different refineries because of compositional differences. The differences are small and there is no practical way for the consumer to identify gasoline with a higher-than-average heating value.
In other words, premium MAY give you better fuel economy, but it is just as likely that the fuel just came from a different refinery, or a different seasonal blend... Neither of which you have any control over or can determine at the pump.
Refinery cracking is not a theory, nor is distillation. What is a theory is your idea that you've done some sort of controlled tests on one vehicle that proves premium has more energy content than regular. And I'm telling you that the science (chemical and experimental testing) doesn't support that.
I'd wager that a good percentage of kids look at porn on the internet too. I for one know I lied and said I was 18/21 on all those sites. Heck the only thing limiting me from watching more porn as a kid was dial-up internet back then. If streaming video existed back then, I may not have finished high school!
You get modded informative, but nowhere do you give any proof of your refinery cracking theory. I work in the oil business, and while I'm not in refining (I'm in distribution), I do know that API (American Petroleum Institute) has repeatedly said there is absolutely zero benefit in using a higher grade gas than recommended by the manufacturer. But if you don't believe API, than maybe believe the California Energy Commission http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/consumer_tips/regular_vs_premium.html, or if you don't believe in organizations (private or government) than maybe a car talk radio show? http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/premium/questions.html
But please, feel free to keep buying premium gas, it's quite profitable on our end:)
Umm, you're right about ethanol blending (which is going to become increasingly hard to avoid). Ethanol has a significantly lower energy density of gasoline. Notice that I didn't say regular or premium. Despite your claims of 5% increase in gas mileage, there is no energy density difference between 87 and 92/93 octane fuels. The only thing that octane (and the difference between regular and premium gasoline) is in the knock resistance. If your engine doesn't knock with regular fuel, you gain exactly 0 performance benefit from using premium fuel. If higher octane equated to higher energy density (which you stated in your post), then ethanol would have more energy than gasoline. However, despite ethanol having an octane rating of 116, it has less energy per gallon. If you look at wikipedia, you'll notice that regular and premium gasoline are separated on the "octane rating" page, but in the same gasoline category on the "heat of combustion" page.
Oh yes, because Youtube working properly is a high priority at corporations. At my company we are forced to use IE6 (actually I use firefox portable with IEtab) because most of the internal websites don't render or work properly on any other browser. And they hate us using youtube anyway.
Holy crap! This is the most intelligent comment on global warming I've ever read. Whether or not you agree with global climate change, or that humans are causing it, your statement hits the nail on the head. It's happening one way or another, and people will be people.
Here's your problem... Where does the 10% come from. Because you said it? Because it's a round number pulled out of your ass? Who determines what is fair? The government? Where did they get their data? Is that really the best for society if we put a cap at 10% profit? I'm not claiming I know everything, which is why I leave it up to individuals to make their own decisions. Central economic control cannot possibly have enough information to make informed decisions.
How do you define "huge profits?" Most people would claim Exxon has made huge profits, yet they don't have a monopoly. Gasoline has no patent. In fact, gasoline from Exxon is identical to gasoline from any other refiner. The fuel business is almost perfect competition, yet Exxon still manages to turn a tiny margin into "huge profits". Why are they penalized?
The answer is because politicians don't give a rats ass about society. They want votes. People hate oil companies because they don't understand why gasoline costs what it does. So any oil company profit is frowned upon as "screwing the consumer." Who is really screwing the consumer? The government takes more of every dollar of gasoline than Exxon (by about 2.5 times). And yet the government feels it neccessary to take additional money out of Exxon's profits (and indeed more on employee salaries, etc). All of these increase the cost to consumers.
For the record, I don't work for Exxon, but I do work in the energy industry (Exxon is a competitor, yet I still defend them). The government creates many more problems than it solves. I agree some environmental and safety regulations are beneficial, but taxes are just absurd.
I agree the economy is not zero sum, but the government doesn't actually produce anything. For a better example, let's take tax dollars from Exxon (everybody hates them right?) and give it to old people to pay for pills (seems reasonable to me right). So we are taking capital that could stay with Exxon and create more money, and are instead giving it to some old people to keep them alive for a few more months. This is in turn subsidizing the pharmacutical industry and the medical professions, but who is to say that generates more wealth than Exxon would have created? (ever hear of the broken window fallacy?)
Enron is a poor example because it involves fraud, which the government should be preventing. In essence if you took money from Enron (money which they didn't have) and gave it to Google, you just involved the government in the fraud and spread around more money that didn't exist. This is the same problem we had with the housing bubble. People were investing in crap, but because the crap wasn't on the books, they thought it was creating wealth. Eventually that house of cards falls.
The simplest (and I would argue best) way to run the economy is to let those who create wealth, KEEP wealth. Chances are, they will continue to create wealth. Profit and income tax are definitely contrary to that.
For the record, I do usually tip at about 20%. That being said, tipping is a load of crap. The problem is, it's not a tip, it's an expectation. I'd rather them advertise the actual cost upfront and pay their staff a reasonable wage rather than forcing the consumer to determine pay rates based on obligation. I mean really, if the service is bad, you won't get repeat customers, and if service is good, you'll have free advertising by word of mouth.
I mean, really, I don't get paid extra for being nice and attentive at my job, it's expected of me.
Why would tax dollars fund new grid infrastructure? Why wouldn't the power company (which hopefully isn't already government owned) be factoring in the cost of upgrading their network for the extra capacity into the cost of energy? The government CANNOT create a net win. It's just absurd to think how that can happen.
I'm not missing that piece... I intentionally left it out. That money comes out of the economy one way or another. Through company expenditure, the government taxing, or through inflationary spending, every dollar comes out of somebody's pocket. The government can't create value through subsidies and tax credits, they can only steal from Peter to pay Paul (not to mention some astronomical administrative costs).
Yes, that is assuming power costs don't go up, but like I said it also doesn't include the time value of money. So it will pay itself off in 30 years if the increase in energy cost matched the inflation rate, which I don't think is too unreasonable seeming how a large portion of inflation is tied to the cost of energy. Natural gas as a fuel will explode (figuratively and literally) in the next decade if there isn't a carbon tax. I would bet the price of natural gas will either match inflation or fall relative to the CPI.
Tax break costs just get passed around the population. Looking at the actual cost to produce decides the economics. Otherwise you're screwing others to make a profit yourself, which people hate about corporations, but seem to love about the government...
Ok, so 5 units at 800,000 is 4 million. If they save 100,000/9 months, that's 133,333/year. So it'll only take them 30 years to repay the cost, assuming that money has no time value of course. Sounds like a poor investment to me.
I believe John Adams would be happy. For John Adams studied politics and war so that we would have the freedom to do what we pleased as long as it didn't infringe on the rights of others. Since making fart lighting and rickroll videos doesn't hurt anybody (at least anybody who wasn't willing in the first place), I don't think he'd give two shits.
Umm, the maximum air pressure you could get (at sea level would be 14.7 psi, so you can only lift 14.7 pounds for every square inch of cylinder. The amount of weight that the space shuttle can lift to LEO is 53,600lbs, so you'd need an area of 3650 square inches to lift it. Which is less than 6' in diameter. Unfortunately, the amount of air pressure rapidly drops as you ascend, and getting a vacuum seal around that payload slug will be hard as hell. Not to mention making a 6' diameter pipe that is air-tight and structurally sound enough to reach all the way out of the atmosphere and resist imploding.
Well according to http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/~ssa/docs/Space.Shuttle/general.shtml#four the capacity of the fuel tank is 500,000 gallons, and the solid rocket boosters have about a million pounds of fuel. Assuming the fuel has a similar density to gasoline, that's another 162,000 gallons... Total of 662,000 gallons. The orbiter generally operates at about 190 miles above the surface of the earth, so it's a circle with a diameter of 8116 miles, so about 25,500 miles covered per orbit...
If you want to match current cars (around 30mpg highway), you'd need 779 orbits, which with an orbital period of 90 minutes, that's a mission of around 49 days. So yeah, I think your car gets better mileage than the shuttle...
My parents used to put a small lock on the plug, which had a hole through one of the terminals. This would prevent you from even plugging it in. I like to think I turned out pretty well.
Slashdot Mirror
Where does this accumulated money get stored? Are billionaires stuffing benjamins in the mattress? Rich people do one of three things with money:
1) Spend it (creates jobs selling and manufacturing products)
2) Invest it (strengthens corporations and allows for the expansion and creation of business)
3) Save it (puts money in banks available to loan to other people)
Any other ideas of what rich people do with their money? Burn it and laugh maniacally? Buy hookers and blow (wait, that still creates jobs...)?
So do I trust you and "others" real-life testing, or do I trust laboratory test results published by API http://www.api.org/aboutoilgas/gasoline/gasoline-octane.cfm, the FTC http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/autos/aut12.shtm, and many independent 3rd party consumer action groups?
The chemical equations are nice and all for octane, hexane, and whatever other chemical reactions you can come up with. And I might believe you if you could tell me the exact chemical ratios between different hydrocarbon chains in both regular and premium gasoline. I'd bet you can't, because there is more variation in fuels between different regions (yes we have regional blends), different climates (different RVP for different temps), and the transportation process (many times premium is downgraded and sold as regular) than there is between regular and premium. In addition, refineries don't just produce "regular" and "premium", they produce many products ranging from RBOB (commonly referred to as blendgrade) to 94 octane fuels. These are all blended between fuels or downgraded to be sold at the dispenser.
From the linked API article (since you obviously didn't check the linked posts on the previous):
Gasoline with a higher heating value (energy content) provides better fuel economy. Traditionally, premium gasoline has had a slightly higher heating value than regular, and, thus, provides slightly better fuel economy, but it is difficult to detect in normal driving. There can be even larger differences in heating value between batches of gasoline from the same refinery, between summer and winter volatility classes, or between brands of gasoline from different refineries because of compositional differences. The differences are small and there is no practical way for the consumer to identify gasoline with a higher-than-average heating value.
In other words, premium MAY give you better fuel economy, but it is just as likely that the fuel just came from a different refinery, or a different seasonal blend... Neither of which you have any control over or can determine at the pump.
Refinery cracking is not a theory, nor is distillation. What is a theory is your idea that you've done some sort of controlled tests on one vehicle that proves premium has more energy content than regular. And I'm telling you that the science (chemical and experimental testing) doesn't support that.
I'd wager that a good percentage of kids look at porn on the internet too. I for one know I lied and said I was 18/21 on all those sites. Heck the only thing limiting me from watching more porn as a kid was dial-up internet back then. If streaming video existed back then, I may not have finished high school!
That's my diet plan. And I'm 5'9" and 120 lbs. It must work! Maybe I should convince girls to join me?
You get modded informative, but nowhere do you give any proof of your refinery cracking theory. I work in the oil business, and while I'm not in refining (I'm in distribution), I do know that API (American Petroleum Institute) has repeatedly said there is absolutely zero benefit in using a higher grade gas than recommended by the manufacturer. But if you don't believe API, than maybe believe the California Energy Commission http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/consumer_tips/regular_vs_premium.html, or if you don't believe in organizations (private or government) than maybe a car talk radio show? http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/premium/questions.html
But please, feel free to keep buying premium gas, it's quite profitable on our end :)
Umm, you're right about ethanol blending (which is going to become increasingly hard to avoid). Ethanol has a significantly lower energy density of gasoline. Notice that I didn't say regular or premium. Despite your claims of 5% increase in gas mileage, there is no energy density difference between 87 and 92/93 octane fuels. The only thing that octane (and the difference between regular and premium gasoline) is in the knock resistance. If your engine doesn't knock with regular fuel, you gain exactly 0 performance benefit from using premium fuel. If higher octane equated to higher energy density (which you stated in your post), then ethanol would have more energy than gasoline. However, despite ethanol having an octane rating of 116, it has less energy per gallon. If you look at wikipedia, you'll notice that regular and premium gasoline are separated on the "octane rating" page, but in the same gasoline category on the "heat of combustion" page.
Oh yes, because Youtube working properly is a high priority at corporations. At my company we are forced to use IE6 (actually I use firefox portable with IEtab) because most of the internal websites don't render or work properly on any other browser. And they hate us using youtube anyway.
Holy crap! This is the most intelligent comment on global warming I've ever read. Whether or not you agree with global climate change, or that humans are causing it, your statement hits the nail on the head. It's happening one way or another, and people will be people.
Here's your problem... Where does the 10% come from. Because you said it? Because it's a round number pulled out of your ass? Who determines what is fair? The government? Where did they get their data? Is that really the best for society if we put a cap at 10% profit? I'm not claiming I know everything, which is why I leave it up to individuals to make their own decisions. Central economic control cannot possibly have enough information to make informed decisions.
How do you define "huge profits?" Most people would claim Exxon has made huge profits, yet they don't have a monopoly. Gasoline has no patent. In fact, gasoline from Exxon is identical to gasoline from any other refiner. The fuel business is almost perfect competition, yet Exxon still manages to turn a tiny margin into "huge profits". Why are they penalized?
The answer is because politicians don't give a rats ass about society. They want votes. People hate oil companies because they don't understand why gasoline costs what it does. So any oil company profit is frowned upon as "screwing the consumer." Who is really screwing the consumer? The government takes more of every dollar of gasoline than Exxon (by about 2.5 times). And yet the government feels it neccessary to take additional money out of Exxon's profits (and indeed more on employee salaries, etc). All of these increase the cost to consumers.
For the record, I don't work for Exxon, but I do work in the energy industry (Exxon is a competitor, yet I still defend them). The government creates many more problems than it solves. I agree some environmental and safety regulations are beneficial, but taxes are just absurd.
I agree the economy is not zero sum, but the government doesn't actually produce anything. For a better example, let's take tax dollars from Exxon (everybody hates them right?) and give it to old people to pay for pills (seems reasonable to me right). So we are taking capital that could stay with Exxon and create more money, and are instead giving it to some old people to keep them alive for a few more months. This is in turn subsidizing the pharmacutical industry and the medical professions, but who is to say that generates more wealth than Exxon would have created? (ever hear of the broken window fallacy?)
Enron is a poor example because it involves fraud, which the government should be preventing. In essence if you took money from Enron (money which they didn't have) and gave it to Google, you just involved the government in the fraud and spread around more money that didn't exist. This is the same problem we had with the housing bubble. People were investing in crap, but because the crap wasn't on the books, they thought it was creating wealth. Eventually that house of cards falls.
The simplest (and I would argue best) way to run the economy is to let those who create wealth, KEEP wealth. Chances are, they will continue to create wealth. Profit and income tax are definitely contrary to that.
For the record, I do usually tip at about 20%. That being said, tipping is a load of crap. The problem is, it's not a tip, it's an expectation. I'd rather them advertise the actual cost upfront and pay their staff a reasonable wage rather than forcing the consumer to determine pay rates based on obligation. I mean really, if the service is bad, you won't get repeat customers, and if service is good, you'll have free advertising by word of mouth.
I mean, really, I don't get paid extra for being nice and attentive at my job, it's expected of me.
A fine point. Agree 100%. Sadly, I can't mod you, so 1,000 internets to you sir...
Why would tax dollars fund new grid infrastructure? Why wouldn't the power company (which hopefully isn't already government owned) be factoring in the cost of upgrading their network for the extra capacity into the cost of energy? The government CANNOT create a net win. It's just absurd to think how that can happen.
I'm not missing that piece... I intentionally left it out. That money comes out of the economy one way or another. Through company expenditure, the government taxing, or through inflationary spending, every dollar comes out of somebody's pocket. The government can't create value through subsidies and tax credits, they can only steal from Peter to pay Paul (not to mention some astronomical administrative costs).
Yes, that is assuming power costs don't go up, but like I said it also doesn't include the time value of money. So it will pay itself off in 30 years if the increase in energy cost matched the inflation rate, which I don't think is too unreasonable seeming how a large portion of inflation is tied to the cost of energy. Natural gas as a fuel will explode (figuratively and literally) in the next decade if there isn't a carbon tax. I would bet the price of natural gas will either match inflation or fall relative to the CPI.
Tax break costs just get passed around the population. Looking at the actual cost to produce decides the economics. Otherwise you're screwing others to make a profit yourself, which people hate about corporations, but seem to love about the government...
Ok, so 5 units at 800,000 is 4 million. If they save 100,000/9 months, that's 133,333/year. So it'll only take them 30 years to repay the cost, assuming that money has no time value of course. Sounds like a poor investment to me.
The matter stays in place, but the wave energy passes on continuously. In a standing wave, the nodes are fixed. This is not the case in the ocean.
I believe John Adams would be happy. For John Adams studied politics and war so that we would have the freedom to do what we pleased as long as it didn't infringe on the rights of others. Since making fart lighting and rickroll videos doesn't hurt anybody (at least anybody who wasn't willing in the first place), I don't think he'd give two shits.
Umm, the maximum air pressure you could get (at sea level would be 14.7 psi, so you can only lift 14.7 pounds for every square inch of cylinder. The amount of weight that the space shuttle can lift to LEO is 53,600lbs, so you'd need an area of 3650 square inches to lift it. Which is less than 6' in diameter. Unfortunately, the amount of air pressure rapidly drops as you ascend, and getting a vacuum seal around that payload slug will be hard as hell. Not to mention making a 6' diameter pipe that is air-tight and structurally sound enough to reach all the way out of the atmosphere and resist imploding.
Meta-woosh?
Wooshing spree?
C-C-C-Combo Breaker!
Well according to http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/~ssa/docs/Space.Shuttle/general.shtml#four the capacity of the fuel tank is 500,000 gallons, and the solid rocket boosters have about a million pounds of fuel. Assuming the fuel has a similar density to gasoline, that's another 162,000 gallons... Total of 662,000 gallons. The orbiter generally operates at about 190 miles above the surface of the earth, so it's a circle with a diameter of 8116 miles, so about 25,500 miles covered per orbit...
If you want to match current cars (around 30mpg highway), you'd need 779 orbits, which with an orbital period of 90 minutes, that's a mission of around 49 days. So yeah, I think your car gets better mileage than the shuttle...
My parents used to put a small lock on the plug, which had a hole through one of the terminals. This would prevent you from even plugging it in. I like to think I turned out pretty well.
I buy BRAWNDO because it's like having sex with a tractor trailer in a parking lot!