You probably did end up on a list, as with most hobbies if you go beyond the most simplistic things you probably end up on a list. I'm sure I ended up on with with my automotive hobby since when you get into restoring vehicles you end up using lots of things that fall outside of what a normal person would use. For example look at the chemicals as well as equipment I have ordered over the years, because really what individual needs an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, numerous types of gasses for torches and welding, gallons of various industrial solvents, and various acids.
That dump I took yesterday was a dirty bomb going off in the toilet. I ate a bit too much spicy Mexican food and it felt like someone detonated a small tactical nuke in my colon. My kids were pretty sure that I had engaged in some form of chemical or biological warefare possibly using saran gas, mustard gas, small pox, or possibly anthrax but I told them it wasn't that bad. I just flipped on the vent fan to blow the fumes out side.
YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!
Policy wise it isn't just the California government it is also the federal government as well. Now toss in some water rights that are use them or lose them and you get the mess that they have now.
This is fairly simple and while somewhat tongue in cheek is actually fairly accurate:
1. Have a name that is recognized well enough for the office you want. Basically be mentioned by other big names in the party to the national media a few times.
2. Decide you want to run for the office by announcing or forming an exploratory committee about three years before election day (major national level elections).
3. Kiss some corporate big wig ass to see if they are willing to initially fund you. This also includes the ass holes in your own party.
4. Prove that you are the least likely to say stupid shit on the campaign trail to the base of your party compared to the other who have also made it this far.
5. Say the least amount of stupid shit as you campaign in the primaries and caucuses across the various states while pandering to your base and not coming off as a complete fucking moron or nut job to the rest of the country. Otherwise know as not getting crucified in the media.
6. Win your parties primary nomination when all delegate votes (decided by the primaries and caucuses) are tallied.
For Obama this process started once he was elected to the US Senate and was introduced by Ted Kennedy, while for Romney it took two tries after being governor. The first time he wasn't well known outside of Utah but with the exposure from the first go around he did get that and didn't have to be associated with Palin. Hilary already had the name recognition from her time as First Lady and as a senator from NY, while others in the Republican field did to one degree or another. For example Michele Bachmann had a fair amount of name recognition, but she was highly polarizing and was know to say really stupid things fairly consistently. Romney managed to get the nomination because he managed to keep his pie hole shut which was probably the best strategy in that race.
Well there have been plenty of times that I wanted to repeat various literary phrases especially when someone says that it doesn't need to be Shakespeare. Shakespeare is actually fairly low brow in a number of cases it is just the language was different than now but there are still some lines that are easily understood like this one from Antony and Cleopatra:
He ploughed her, and she cropt
Like I said this isn't high brow stuff here, it is just the common terms to him were different and Shakespeare would have no idea what you were saying if you said twerking much like most have no idea what you are saying if you said "I bite my thumb at you". Then there was the sign I put above a door to the conference room a number of us were working in for an extend period of time while on a project that wasn't going well.
I shared your beliefs while in college on the BS liberal arts requirements and yes there can be some very subjective grading in some of those classes (still disagree with my intro to ethics course grading) but just muddle through these and give the professor what they want in such cases. Now looking back part of a college education is to produce well rounded people who have a basic understanding of a broad array of topics which is why it is done and a fair amount of it does come in handy. Even looking back I probably got more out of taking the intro the ethics philosophy course than I would have gotten out of the intro to logic philosophy course since logic is something that I got plenty of in my CS major and math minor.
For example I regularly have to write papers as well as speak in my job which is related to my major. Some times it is just a simple speak at department meetings, other times it is in meetings with customers or even with people very high up in my companies management (a Fortune 50 company and I have been in a meeting with C level executives). Now add in I frequently am asked to work on proposals, white papers, design docs, and requirement specs yet most of my time is spend designing and implementing things. Even things that I thought I would never need to use like the basic understanding of the Vedic texts have come in handy in understanding other cultures when I have go on business trips. Even looking at things outside of work having a basic understanding of economics, and various social sciences has at least helped me to understand why people who have diametrically opposed political views to mine should not be just ignored.
I do agree that it would be nice if there were more stringent requirements for liberal arts majors to have more science and math courses, especially a complete year long sequence for math and a science. Personally I would like to see a full year of calculus plus another math class and a full year of physics, chemistry, or biology and another science class for liberal arts majors at a minimum but at least the school I went to at the time had a requirement of 2 math courses (choose from a list of like 4) and 3 science courses (choose from a list of like 6) required so not too bad when compared to what others have said about their schools.
Except looking at the requirements out side of my major and minor I had to have the following:
2 Literature courses (6 credits)
2 Composition classes (6 credits)
2 Speech courses (6 credits)
1 year of foreign language (6 credits)
1 or 2 history courses (I don't really remember 3 credits)
1 philosophy course (3 credits)
1 economics course (3 credits)
1 sociology course (3 credits)
1 art class (2 credits)
Now add in a few other misc Gen eds and it seems like my CS major + math minor (2 classes short of a dual major) was a fairly well rounded education. Since I ended up having to take something like 40+ credits of liberal arts classes to me it would be nice if liberal arts students had to take a comparable number of science and math courses since I believe that they had to have something like 15-18 credits of math and science at my school. To me the worst part was that they didn't have to go through a full year sequence of any subject like everyone did for speech, composition or foreign language. Personally I would love to see a requirement where it was 1 year calculus plus an additional math class (pick college statistics or college algebra) and 1 year physics, or 1 year chemistry, or 1 year biology and another science class.
This is why I carry a handgun some times, but than again it is is specifically to deal with large dangerous critters in the north woods of Minnesota. I have had a few too many close encounters with the wolves, cougars, and bears up there. Also for something the size of a black bear you are going to want something a bit more substantial than a.45ACP or 9mm, so you probably aren't going to be concealing it.
Depends on how local you are referring to. A poster further up mentioned that it probably put out about about 100kw or about the same power as a small car. While cool I would probably put it in the same category as the natural laser on Mars as just an interesting natural phenomenon that won't affect me.
Well considering that the engines that they use are not just a regular crappy diesel engine that one would find in a VW or even a semi turck but instead are those nice big high efficiency 2 stroke diesels that find uses in things like haul trucks, power generation, and, marine applications which like the rail industry care about fuel consumption since it actually isn't a small portion of their operating expense (a single engine at full load can consume hundreds of gallons of fuel an hour). So assuming a single train engine consuming 100 gallons of diesel fuel an hour at $3 a gallon (these are probably all under estimates) it would cost $300/hr in fuel for the engine. It wouldn't surprise me if the fuel cost was actually somewhere in the $500-$1000/hr range if not more. They also like to run these things 24 hours a day 7 days a week since they are a fairly large capital expense and if it isn't running it isn't making money so on the low end for a single engine they would spend about $260,000 a year on fuel for a single engine. So please tell me how fuel isn't a substantial part of the operating expense, since I bet they do care quite a bit about fuel efficiency. I would be surprised if the newest diesel engines they are putting in locomotives aren't getting around 45% efficiency since the largest low speed marine ones are over 50% now.
I have only had one vehicle with bad rings and that was only on the one cylinder that had a bad spark plug that had worn away from not being changed (previous owners never changed it). This wasn't a high end vehicle either but was an 88 Bronco II with a quarter million miles on it. Considering that most of the vehicles I have had comparable or higher miles I don't think there is a problem with rings in a properly maintained engine. Also I wouldn't worry about the length in a horizontally opposed configuration since you could just put it along the frame rails, rocker panels, or tunnel where the drive shaft/exhaust is run instead of under the traditional hood. As an added benefit this would help lower the center of gravity and improve the handling.
I am in contact with my Senator and Congresspeople regularly. Usually (especially in the case of the Democrats) in response I get a form letter telling me thanks for my interest but this is why they're going to do whatever the hell they want to do anyway.
This is still better than what I happen to get back. If I get something back it is 6 months after the vote telling me how much they appreciate my support for how they voted even though the original message was telling them I wanted them to vote the other way and provided reasons why. Most of the time I just never hear back.
I usually have better luck with my state house and senate members but even there they tend to not be very responsive until they start coming around the neighborhood looking for votes. At least there I can put them on the spot but they don't seem to listen even then.
I didn't know you knew my 2 sister-in-laws. The funniest was when they were both in town and over for dinner with the whole family and cooked up some venison chops without telling them. They wanted to know if the meat was organic, hormone free, antibiotic free, free range, etc and at first were very pleased but after eating a couple of bites and realizing that it wasn't beef asked what it was. They weren't too pleased when they found out it was venison from the deer I shot a few months previous, but liked it up until that point.
Most of the standard replacement parts aren't too expensive and there isn't anything special about repairing them. It only gets expensive if you go to the dealer or a specialty shop. For example the last time I did brakes on a BMW (my previous one) it cost only about $30 more for the parts than for my Jeep but changing pads and rotors on the BMW is much simpler and takes less time.
Solar is advancing relatively fast but it's no panacea and absent some energy storage breakthrough it's of limited use when the sun isn't shining.
What about this type of battery or possibly even these. Granted Nickel-Iron batteries aren't very energy dense but in a stationary application that isn't a big concern, and the Sodium-Sulfur batteries offer a higher energy density as well as lower self discharge rates and higher output so they would probably make a better solution. The biggest thing is it seems that both of them would stand up to a reasonable amount of abuse and should have lifetimes measured in decades which is what would be needed for gird level storage. It would seem that the technology is there for gird level storage.
Cool I never knew about these batteries. I had thought that the Nickle-Iron batteries might be possible solution to grid level storage since they are fairly robust and take abuse well but these seem like a better solution. The Sodium-Sulfur batteries seem to have eliminated most of the issues that exist with Nickle-Iron ones while retaining most of their benefits. I do wonder about the heat thing for something like a residential sized install but it would seem that a well insulated enclosure would require only minimal additional heating with the self heating from the charging and discharging.
A while back there was an article where the government claimed that their spying had prevented something like 50 terrorist attacks never specifying the time period over which those attaches were prevented. At the time I went through the mental exercise of pointing out how worthless it was with logic similar to this:
Let's give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume that those 50 attacks were in a single year.
Let's also assume that each attach would have been as successful as the attacks of 9/11 and killed about 3000 people each, even though it is likely that most body counts would be well under 100, but hey why not give the government the benefit of the doubt and show just absurd their arguments are.
So assuming 50 attacks that each would have taken 3000 lives that is 150,000 lives saved from their programs, or had they not been around invading our privacy then terrorism would rank 3rd on the lists of preventable deaths in the US, between smoking and being a fat ass. It sure seems like as a society we are willing to accept those numbers which in the case of smoking are much greater losses without invading everyone's privacy. Also if the government were really concerned with keeping us safe I am sure there would be better results in lives saved for the dollars spent than flushing it down a rat hole with their counter terrorism measures. Also what is missing from this is that if there were large scale terrorism attacks that were taking 3000 lives almost every week for a year the US would look like a fucking war zone. In reality the attacks were probably spread over the last 12-13 years and each attach would have resulted in a death toll comparable to an average summer weekend in Detroit, and we aren't doing anything about that.
Hey it does work, and the swat team member may even get medals for their botched raid when you return fire. In the end you may end up getting a nice settlement. Also in this case the home owner fired back with a 20 gauge with bird shot IIRC.
Well I tag myself as random people in others' photos in an effort to poison the well. Some of my friends have started doing this as well once they questioned why I do that.
Slashdot Mirror
What did you think the enhanced airport screenings were for?
You probably did end up on a list, as with most hobbies if you go beyond the most simplistic things you probably end up on a list. I'm sure I ended up on with with my automotive hobby since when you get into restoring vehicles you end up using lots of things that fall outside of what a normal person would use. For example look at the chemicals as well as equipment I have ordered over the years, because really what individual needs an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, numerous types of gasses for torches and welding, gallons of various industrial solvents, and various acids.
That dump I took yesterday was a dirty bomb going off in the toilet. I ate a bit too much spicy Mexican food and it felt like someone detonated a small tactical nuke in my colon. My kids were pretty sure that I had engaged in some form of chemical or biological warefare possibly using saran gas, mustard gas, small pox, or possibly anthrax but I told them it wasn't that bad. I just flipped on the vent fan to blow the fumes out side.
YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!
Policy wise it isn't just the California government it is also the federal government as well. Now toss in some water rights that are use them or lose them and you get the mess that they have now.
This is fairly simple and while somewhat tongue in cheek is actually fairly accurate:
1. Have a name that is recognized well enough for the office you want. Basically be mentioned by other big names in the party to the national media a few times.
2. Decide you want to run for the office by announcing or forming an exploratory committee about three years before election day (major national level elections).
3. Kiss some corporate big wig ass to see if they are willing to initially fund you. This also includes the ass holes in your own party.
4. Prove that you are the least likely to say stupid shit on the campaign trail to the base of your party compared to the other who have also made it this far.
5. Say the least amount of stupid shit as you campaign in the primaries and caucuses across the various states while pandering to your base and not coming off as a complete fucking moron or nut job to the rest of the country. Otherwise know as not getting crucified in the media.
6. Win your parties primary nomination when all delegate votes (decided by the primaries and caucuses) are tallied.
For Obama this process started once he was elected to the US Senate and was introduced by Ted Kennedy, while for Romney it took two tries after being governor. The first time he wasn't well known outside of Utah but with the exposure from the first go around he did get that and didn't have to be associated with Palin. Hilary already had the name recognition from her time as First Lady and as a senator from NY, while others in the Republican field did to one degree or another. For example Michele Bachmann had a fair amount of name recognition, but she was highly polarizing and was know to say really stupid things fairly consistently. Romney managed to get the nomination because he managed to keep his pie hole shut which was probably the best strategy in that race.
Parent should be modded insightful, not funny.
He ploughed her, and she cropt
Like I said this isn't high brow stuff here, it is just the common terms to him were different and Shakespeare would have no idea what you were saying if you said twerking much like most have no idea what you are saying if you said "I bite my thumb at you". Then there was the sign I put above a door to the conference room a number of us were working in for an extend period of time while on a project that wasn't going well.
I shared your beliefs while in college on the BS liberal arts requirements and yes there can be some very subjective grading in some of those classes (still disagree with my intro to ethics course grading) but just muddle through these and give the professor what they want in such cases. Now looking back part of a college education is to produce well rounded people who have a basic understanding of a broad array of topics which is why it is done and a fair amount of it does come in handy. Even looking back I probably got more out of taking the intro the ethics philosophy course than I would have gotten out of the intro to logic philosophy course since logic is something that I got plenty of in my CS major and math minor.
For example I regularly have to write papers as well as speak in my job which is related to my major. Some times it is just a simple speak at department meetings, other times it is in meetings with customers or even with people very high up in my companies management (a Fortune 50 company and I have been in a meeting with C level executives). Now add in I frequently am asked to work on proposals, white papers, design docs, and requirement specs yet most of my time is spend designing and implementing things. Even things that I thought I would never need to use like the basic understanding of the Vedic texts have come in handy in understanding other cultures when I have go on business trips. Even looking at things outside of work having a basic understanding of economics, and various social sciences has at least helped me to understand why people who have diametrically opposed political views to mine should not be just ignored.
I do agree that it would be nice if there were more stringent requirements for liberal arts majors to have more science and math courses, especially a complete year long sequence for math and a science. Personally I would like to see a full year of calculus plus another math class and a full year of physics, chemistry, or biology and another science class for liberal arts majors at a minimum but at least the school I went to at the time had a requirement of 2 math courses (choose from a list of like 4) and 3 science courses (choose from a list of like 6) required so not too bad when compared to what others have said about their schools.
Except looking at the requirements out side of my major and minor I had to have the following:
2 Literature courses (6 credits)
2 Composition classes (6 credits)
2 Speech courses (6 credits)
1 year of foreign language (6 credits)
1 or 2 history courses (I don't really remember 3 credits)
1 philosophy course (3 credits)
1 economics course (3 credits)
1 sociology course (3 credits)
1 art class (2 credits)
Now add in a few other misc Gen eds and it seems like my CS major + math minor (2 classes short of a dual major) was a fairly well rounded education. Since I ended up having to take something like 40+ credits of liberal arts classes to me it would be nice if liberal arts students had to take a comparable number of science and math courses since I believe that they had to have something like 15-18 credits of math and science at my school. To me the worst part was that they didn't have to go through a full year sequence of any subject like everyone did for speech, composition or foreign language. Personally I would love to see a requirement where it was 1 year calculus plus an additional math class (pick college statistics or college algebra) and 1 year physics, or 1 year chemistry, or 1 year biology and another science class.
or a defense against animals (bear)
This is why I carry a handgun some times, but than again it is is specifically to deal with large dangerous critters in the north woods of Minnesota. I have had a few too many close encounters with the wolves, cougars, and bears up there. Also for something the size of a black bear you are going to want something a bit more substantial than a .45ACP or 9mm, so you probably aren't going to be concealing it.
Depends on how local you are referring to. A poster further up mentioned that it probably put out about about 100kw or about the same power as a small car. While cool I would probably put it in the same category as the natural laser on Mars as just an interesting natural phenomenon that won't affect me.
Well considering that the engines that they use are not just a regular crappy diesel engine that one would find in a VW or even a semi turck but instead are those nice big high efficiency 2 stroke diesels that find uses in things like haul trucks, power generation, and, marine applications which like the rail industry care about fuel consumption since it actually isn't a small portion of their operating expense (a single engine at full load can consume hundreds of gallons of fuel an hour). So assuming a single train engine consuming 100 gallons of diesel fuel an hour at $3 a gallon (these are probably all under estimates) it would cost $300/hr in fuel for the engine. It wouldn't surprise me if the fuel cost was actually somewhere in the $500-$1000/hr range if not more. They also like to run these things 24 hours a day 7 days a week since they are a fairly large capital expense and if it isn't running it isn't making money so on the low end for a single engine they would spend about $260,000 a year on fuel for a single engine. So please tell me how fuel isn't a substantial part of the operating expense, since I bet they do care quite a bit about fuel efficiency. I would be surprised if the newest diesel engines they are putting in locomotives aren't getting around 45% efficiency since the largest low speed marine ones are over 50% now.
I have only had one vehicle with bad rings and that was only on the one cylinder that had a bad spark plug that had worn away from not being changed (previous owners never changed it). This wasn't a high end vehicle either but was an 88 Bronco II with a quarter million miles on it. Considering that most of the vehicles I have had comparable or higher miles I don't think there is a problem with rings in a properly maintained engine. Also I wouldn't worry about the length in a horizontally opposed configuration since you could just put it along the frame rails, rocker panels, or tunnel where the drive shaft/exhaust is run instead of under the traditional hood. As an added benefit this would help lower the center of gravity and improve the handling.
Nice to know I am not the only person who can't do this.
I am in contact with my Senator and Congresspeople regularly. Usually (especially in the case of the Democrats) in response I get a form letter telling me thanks for my interest but this is why they're going to do whatever the hell they want to do anyway.
This is still better than what I happen to get back. If I get something back it is 6 months after the vote telling me how much they appreciate my support for how they voted even though the original message was telling them I wanted them to vote the other way and provided reasons why. Most of the time I just never hear back.
I usually have better luck with my state house and senate members but even there they tend to not be very responsive until they start coming around the neighborhood looking for votes. At least there I can put them on the spot but they don't seem to listen even then.
If my back door is 85 feet underground and secured by a battalion of Marines I'm not going to worry about locking it.
I'm sure there is a joke about that.
I didn't know you knew my 2 sister-in-laws. The funniest was when they were both in town and over for dinner with the whole family and cooked up some venison chops without telling them. They wanted to know if the meat was organic, hormone free, antibiotic free, free range, etc and at first were very pleased but after eating a couple of bites and realizing that it wasn't beef asked what it was. They weren't too pleased when they found out it was venison from the deer I shot a few months previous, but liked it up until that point.
Most of the standard replacement parts aren't too expensive and there isn't anything special about repairing them. It only gets expensive if you go to the dealer or a specialty shop. For example the last time I did brakes on a BMW (my previous one) it cost only about $30 more for the parts than for my Jeep but changing pads and rotors on the BMW is much simpler and takes less time.
Solar is advancing relatively fast but it's no panacea and absent some energy storage breakthrough it's of limited use when the sun isn't shining.
What about this type of battery or possibly even these. Granted Nickel-Iron batteries aren't very energy dense but in a stationary application that isn't a big concern, and the Sodium-Sulfur batteries offer a higher energy density as well as lower self discharge rates and higher output so they would probably make a better solution. The biggest thing is it seems that both of them would stand up to a reasonable amount of abuse and should have lifetimes measured in decades which is what would be needed for gird level storage. It would seem that the technology is there for gird level storage.
Cool I never knew about these batteries. I had thought that the Nickle-Iron batteries might be possible solution to grid level storage since they are fairly robust and take abuse well but these seem like a better solution. The Sodium-Sulfur batteries seem to have eliminated most of the issues that exist with Nickle-Iron ones while retaining most of their benefits. I do wonder about the heat thing for something like a residential sized install but it would seem that a well insulated enclosure would require only minimal additional heating with the self heating from the charging and discharging.
A while back there was an article where the government claimed that their spying had prevented something like 50 terrorist attacks never specifying the time period over which those attaches were prevented. At the time I went through the mental exercise of pointing out how worthless it was with logic similar to this:
Let's give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume that those 50 attacks were in a single year.
Let's also assume that each attach would have been as successful as the attacks of 9/11 and killed about 3000 people each, even though it is likely that most body counts would be well under 100, but hey why not give the government the benefit of the doubt and show just absurd their arguments are.
So assuming 50 attacks that each would have taken 3000 lives that is 150,000 lives saved from their programs, or had they not been around invading our privacy then terrorism would rank 3rd on the lists of preventable deaths in the US, between smoking and being a fat ass. It sure seems like as a society we are willing to accept those numbers which in the case of smoking are much greater losses without invading everyone's privacy. Also if the government were really concerned with keeping us safe I am sure there would be better results in lives saved for the dollars spent than flushing it down a rat hole with their counter terrorism measures. Also what is missing from this is that if there were large scale terrorism attacks that were taking 3000 lives almost every week for a year the US would look like a fucking war zone. In reality the attacks were probably spread over the last 12-13 years and each attach would have resulted in a death toll comparable to an average summer weekend in Detroit, and we aren't doing anything about that.
Well it can work out well.
Hey it does work, and the swat team member may even get medals for their botched raid when you return fire. In the end you may end up getting a nice settlement. Also in this case the home owner fired back with a 20 gauge with bird shot IIRC.
For the people who don't shell out $250 for a nest thermostat.
Well I tag myself as random people in others' photos in an effort to poison the well. Some of my friends have started doing this as well once they questioned why I do that.