I can only smile as I recall the heady days of the PC revolution. All the ancient Big Iron sealed away in a hermetically sealed room, and all the expensive and unapproachable priesthood that tended and worshipped the Iron, would be sent packing. The whole shebang replaced by inexpensive PC's controlled by the user, O glorious day! All the expense and complexity, gone!
Troll? Every word was true. You just don't want to hear the truth, so it's an incitement to riot.
We killed ten thousand people for a lie, and to point it out is "trolling".
A poster claims Clinton's "lie" is more serious than Bush's months of lying to establish a pretext to invade another nation. This is not a troll of course; it is neocon "truth".
Madness. My God have mercy on you all, because history surely will not.
Actually, he got in trouble for exactly nothing. All the accusations, all the cable TV screamers, all the innuendo of murder and theft...
and the special prosecutor found nothing.
In Arkansas. They could find absolutely nothing he did that would even be defined as a parking ticket offense. In ARKANSAS, where corruption is like the morning dew. Clinton had to live the life of an angel for them to find NOTHING after a hundred million dollars of nicely-padded billings.
A blow job? A set up, none of their business, and the line of questioning should never have been allowed by the judge. The lawyers who pled for the judge to permit them to persist in the line of questioning about Lewinsky should have been fined and disbarred after it became apparent they were simply trying to ruin him personally, and had no intention of persuing the line of questioning they had held the hearing for.
And Clinton didn't shut down the inquiries about his sex life the way Bush and Cheney are shutting down and out the 9-11 commission. Maybe he should have. Apparently it's okay not to participate in an investigation about why you failed to stop 3000+ people being killed, but not okay to tell people to mind their own business about your penis.
Soooooo. "Lying" is never performed by Bush, because he isn't set up on false charges of attacking women, put under oath, and then quizzed about his private sex life, while the judge allows the irrelevant line of questions to go on. Telling the *precise* truth, as the judge defines it (oral sex NE sex) doesn't cut it. Lying about your private sex life because some filthy swine hornswoggled a judge into permitting it is a FELONY.
LYING OUTRIGHT about certain knowledge of weapons trained on us and about to be used any minute, got to go to war now, NOW: just fine, because HE WASN'T UNDER OATH??!? He KILLED over ten thousand people!! KILLED THEM! INCINERATED THEM! BLEW KIDS' ARMS AND LEGS OFF! FOR A PACK OF FUCKING LIES! So he could take over Iraq's oil spigot and kill OPEC someday! He looked right into Diane Sawyer's eyes, smirked, and dared her to make something of the difference between actual knowledge of Iraq's danger and a total fucking fantasy, because he knew assholes like you would never let people call him on it in the media!
There is a big difference, you pitbull braindead Republican! It's called the difference between not telling some goons about your private sex life so they can destroy you personally, and mass FUCKING MURDER.
We don't need systems with paper audit trails. We are just adding insane cost to a very simple process. We have systems that work, called "paper". The only people who claim they don't work were the ones who wanted an election to stop *
Why, oh why, do these "designers" insist on an unauditable system, when it is trivial to add a printout? **
And why have a even have a system with a paper backup for audits when we had the paper system working in the first place? At no extra cost? ***
* Bush, Cheney and Rove. And a gullible pack of journalists.
** Because they want to cheat, and make sure they never lose control of the United States government. Yes, the neocons.
*** Lots and lots of money, money, money.
**** We aren't in Iraq to "build democracy". We won't permit free elections, because they will vote to kick our asses out. And all the rebuilding money is coming to American Bush/Cheney connected firms -- the Iraqis and Europeans are frozen out. And our porkers are failing miserably at the task. And we are in Iraq because of a colossal series of lies. We are there to control the spigot the world's largest reserve of oil, to break OPEC's back, and usher in a new age of, well, not cheap oil, because the oil lords of the US will not permit that, but at least oil cheap enough to ruin OPEC's control of pricing. Period.
***** All the squads in the world can't guard a voting process that is controlled by coders not physically present. People are tippy-toeing around saying what they are really afraid of -- that right wing military officers will make sure they deliver the vote for their favorite candidates, one way or another. It would only take one rogue to swing a close election by twigging a few thousand votes. The 2000 election showed us that political pressure enabled the military to permit votes to be cast by overseas personnel AFTER THE ELECTION WAS OVER -- votes that conceivably give Bush the presidency. If voting after an election is over won't stonker right-wing fanatics, tweaking a few votes on a elctronic system would be downright honest.
You guys do know they didn't invent this? The technique has been known for years. The car manufacturers will be using it for the first fuel cell vehicles -- gasoline to hydrogen via catalysts, then feed the H2 to the fuel cell, making electricity to run the electric motors that drive the car. Almost no moving parts.
Just saying, it's not the military that came up with it. They are jsut waking up to what it implies about the logistics of refueling vehicles -- a factor of three improvement in range means fewer refueling trucks, and longer supply lines.
Actually, yes it did. The flame burned upwards, rather than out and down, napalm-like, as gasoline does. The heat was flaring away from the passenger compartment. Most of the people died from jumping from the airship when it was still too high from the ground. Those who kept their heads waited for the ship to drift to the ground, then hopped off and ran. They survived for the most part.
And, oh yes, the bright searing flame you see in the picture? It's the paint. It was basically thermite. Powdered metal. The company wanted pretty silver shiny skin. One electrical arc, and WHOOMP - hydrogen gets the blame.
And fuel cells fueled by gasoline or diesel are in no way more dangerous than a straight IC design! As a matter of fact, since you get more MPG, you can have a smaller tank of what is essentially napalm.
Hydrogen is not "dangerous" in the sense that gasoline is. Gasoline is heavy, adhears to surfaces, ignites easily when vaporized, burns outward in a mushrooming effect, and also is every vehicle in America - and is dispensed from gas pumps like it is as safe as water!
Not oil - diesel fuel.The process has been well known for a while. Remove the oxygen and carbon with catalysts, then burn the liberated hydrogen.
Can be done with gasoline, too, of course. When car manufacturers go on about "fuel cells", they are not talking about hydrogen tanks. They want to use plain old gas out of a plain old gas station.
Makes sense to the oil companies as well.
Not quite a perfect process, emissions wise, but at least you get three times the miles per gallon, and fewer impurities are spewing into the air.
You'd hope in vain. Executives go to minimum security prison, which is code for "rich white man prison where you are actually guarded from rape".
But for the vast majority of wealthy offenders, they will never see the inside of a courthouse, much less a prison. Ken Lay's Enron stole billions from California, with the White House providing political cover ("it's all the environmentalists' fault! Black Helicopters! Conspiracy theorists! And by the way, here's Arnold!") and will never even see the NEWS about his crimes, if he chooses not to, much less do a perp walk.
Steal $20 from a cash register, go to jail and get raped. With the People cheering and demanding pay per view.
I just noodled the reason why people don't care about wealthy people getting away with major crime: they want to BE the guys getting away with the crimes. They think it's cool! Moore might actually have nailed it: the Horatio Algier syndrome (YOU can be the rich guy who gets away with it -- it's the American Dream!) So people want, in a perverse way, a stratum of people who get all the cash and can't get convicted. In America, it's barely possible to join the elite -- although stats show most such people are just born to their status.
I have perspective born of experience. I grew up in a poor neighborhood, where just walking the street could get you arrested if you didn't look right to a cop. I've had cops break into my house right in front of me.
Contrast it to my later experience in the Chicago northern suburbs, where drugs were sold openly around school. The young scions of the suburbs openly assaulted and battered people of different colors, shapes, and religions. Car theft was common. You'd see kids you know driving around and smashing people's cars with rocks.
And there was NO CRIME RATE among these kids, officially. They never "committed" crimes -- it was invisible to the local cops, unless it was committed right in front of them.
Rich and/or connected people don't commit crimes, and they certainly don't go to jail. Well, there are exceptions, but you get the drift.
"Both sides of the issue"... I know people today, most especially those who consider themseves journalists, think that presenting both "sides" of an issue results in a "balanced" article.
But it is not balanced. A real journalist doesn't mutely present both "sides". A journalist also has to judge, and present, the motivations and past behaviors of the people involved as well. All sides are NOT equal. A journalist is not a debate moderator.
Evolution theory is not the same as creationism. Creationism is not science, it is religion.
Corporate sponsored anti-environmentalist screed is NOT the same as a global scientific consensus. The motivations of each side are wildly different, and should not be given equal weight.
People who believe tax cuts are always beneficial are not as believable as pay-as-you-go fiscal conservatives: The tax cutters have twenty years of debt accumulation and other after-cut hangovers undercutting their position. Presenting them as equally believable as a pay-your-bills economist is misleading and does not serve the reader well.
Presenting pro-war neocons' arguments, long after they were proven farcical, as equivalent to those who have actual on-the-ground experience in political matters is not fair, nor is it balanced.
Life is not a football game! Everything is not an two-sided matchup of two noble teams!
Presenting the pro-Fax.com side as roughly believable as the anti-fax.com "side" is disingenous on any level. It is not journalism; at worst it is Machiavellan manipulation of perception. In this instance, it rehabilitates the fax.commers as underdog victims of liberal trial lawyering bloodsuckers in the eyes of the readership of Forbes.
A journalist has the responsiblity of weighing the credibility of the sources of arguments. And to inform the readership of the fact.
Sometimes there just isn't a balance! Sometimes one side is just wrong. And a journalist must say why.
Bush is allocating 1 billion a year for the moon and Mars. Impossible.
In return, NASA is being asked to give up the Hubble, the Shuttle, the Space Station (eventually). And funding for all other programs will be cut or eliminated as well, "for the Mars mission".
The "Mars Mission" is twenty years in the future. It will have to survive five administrations, ten Congresses, and the eventually bankrupting of the Federal kitty by the tax cuts and increased non-discretionary spending.
Point is, the "Mars mission" won't survive. I've watched the space program for thirty-five years, and things like this don't maintain momentum, especially in hard financial times.
NASA, I hear, initially was jubilant; now they realize what they are being asked to give up: everything. For a pig in a poke.
You are being just cynical enough. This is a way of disbanding the manned program while looking like heros, or "spatial pioneers", as Bush called them (I am not making that up).
Five years from now, NASA will be all but gone, with a few contractors making a bit of money researching new systems that never make it to reality.
I didn't believe it would happen so fast! Hubble already given up?
I only wonder if Bush is smart enough to have thought this up himself, or if his Grand Viziers came up with the scheme while telling George about Mars and "Spatial Pioneers"? Does the King actually believe what he is saying? Is he that dumb, or that smart?
And these comments are "flamebait" if you are a far-right whacko, kids.
This is the wrong way to go to space again. The nadir, the opposite, the way it shouldn't be.
I've been a space fanatic for 35 years. And emulating the Apollo model of spectaular and ultimately useless manned shots was proved a dead end thirty years ago. It is a dead end now.
We should go to the moon, but to establish mining and material processing plants. We should use mass drivers on the moon, rather than rockets, to move material into L2, L5, or earth orbit for contruction purposes. Using the moon for a launching platform for Mars is a terrible idea -- if you are in orbit, in zero G, you can use an ion engine to get to mars in weeks. But to launch from the moon, you have to use a high energy rocket, which actually gets you to Mars more slowly than the high-efficiency and always-on ion engine.
Build in space, not on the moon. Move lunar materials to Earth-moon space using an electric mass-driver on the surface, and make aluminum, steel, and titanium by the thousands of tons in lunar orbit or L5.
If you want to go to space as a nation, you go BIG, which means you proceed deliberately. No spectacular space shots of interest to geologists only. You build up industrial capacity in orbit and on the moon, and after that you can go anywhere at a much cheaper cost than lifting tons of miniaturized and fragile components from Earth, because you simply make what you need at the launching complex from raw materials. It's more expensive in the short term, but it the long term it pays for itself in materials and energy (powersats), AND you get the solar system as a bonus for cheap.
Additionally, if you industrialize near Earth, it means normal people could go and live off planet, because there would be enough resources to actually build habitats, regular shuttle services, make powersats for selling juice back home. Launching it all from Earth guarantees that although the "mission" of landing some miltary pilots on Mars would be accomplished, that no one else could go, and ultimately the whole program would be shut down because,and it pains me to say this, all we would have for our money would be some rocks, some video, and a small cadre of semi-military men who actually got to go to another world. It didn't work for Apollo, and it won't work here. This idea is pure Old NASA, and should be stopped immediately. Space should not be the province of ultrahealthy supermen who go up and come down. It should be about resources, economically sound exploitation, and the ability of a normal human to participate someday.
And finally, Bush's (Old NASA's) dream is a crock. The money will not be there after Supply Side 2, the Looting. The old dream will die again as the neocon party ball goes dim in the next ten years and all the bills come due.
"Right- so find a job that pays more than that. You either pick a job that you like and hope the pay is enough, or you pick a salary that you like and hope the job is ok. If everybody could pick what job they wanted AND how much they got paid for it, then we would only have a bunch of rich lazy people. Throwing a tantrum because you want to work in engineering AND get paid a lot for it won't help anything."
Corporations are expert tantrum throwers. It's why they don't pay taxes anymore.
If left unchecked, all engineering positions can be offshored and eliminated in the U.S. And they will be, if no laws are passed. Greed is infinite. And it isn't only engineering; I'm thinking a lot bigger than that. I'm not an engineer. There is no manufacturing or professional job that cannot be moved to an area of the world that works for peanuts. This inevitably leads to a collapse in the standard of living for the American people, not the companies. It is not to be allowed.
"Corporations exist for 1 and only 1 reason- to make a profit."
Where is that written down? Is it a law? Says who? Says them? Where did this tripe come from? Corporations also exist to obey laws and exercise judgement. If they don't, then they are above all law, and are extremely dangerous, for they can shut down the American economy and pollute and corrupt at will.
Corporations are LICENSED TO EXIST BY THE PEOPLE, THROUGH THEIR GOVERNMENT. If they cannot find it within themselves to behave like an entity who gives a shit about anything other than their own bank accounts, then they should be disbanded, for they give no value to the country. They are highwaymen. They have violated the contract they agreed to when their charter was given. And if they don't agree that they have a contract with the U.S. people, then we should invent one and make them sign it. After all, reneging on contracts is soup and bread to those people -- so is lying, stealing, and damn near anything else they can get away with. Morality doesn't apply to them -- it's a vacation from values, to be in a corporation. So if we "change" the rules allowing them to exist, they have no reason to bleat. They still will be rich. Just not infinitely so.
This is the Libertarian paradise. A hell for anyone not in the top tier.
"You have some pretty big misconceptions about basic economics. Unrestrained business is what has created our economy! Why else do you think the US economy is the largest in the world? We have one of the most business friendly economies in the world. Artificial market forces, like salary floors, hurt everybody. "
With all respect, you have a gigantic misconception about economics. Businesses have always been regulated. Taxes have always been levied. Whether chartered by the king, or a fisherman on sea ruled by the local council of fisherman, people always had to obey rules. Corporations should never have had the status of individuals, but they finagled one anyway in the 1880's -- with the disaster of the Depression in '29 to show for it. We reregulated the hell out of them in the '30's, and because of that we have had the most robust economy in the world.
Businesses from the time of the Egyptians to the time of Bush II had to obey rules. No theft. Pay taxes. Line up here, go there. They did well regardless.
It is not "economics" as we know it to permit amorphous immortal fictitious "individuals" carte blanche to shut down sections of the economy, refuse to pay taxes, buy a government, move "operations" to islands to avoid laws, pollute at will, and become sole proprietors of occupied countries. This is no longer business. It is a new government, a virtual one, but one with real teeth. A interwoven mesh of lawless boards of directors who move freely between government, the military, and the corporate bodies themselves. Writing their own laws, backing wars, erasing jobs, and all to line their own pockets, with a few dollars thrown to the shareholders to justify their greed.
Somehow, that argument, a hoary one indeed, breaks down somewhere. If corporations don't pay taxes, then individuals don't either -- their employers do! And those employers don't pay taxes either -- the employers' customers do!
See? Regression into nonsense. As the American voters will find later in this decade, when corporations don't pay taxes, their taxes DO go up. And up. And up.
If if corporations can't stand being taxed, and pass on all taxes to their customers rather than take a hit on profit$, then we should pass some real laws regulating their greed.
The point is that WE CAN'T live on a dollar an hour -- and Carly sure won't.
If the shareholders of her company would fire her because she won't fire her work force, than perhaps some new laws should be passed to make the greedy bastards toe the line. Corporations are LICENSED by the people to exist for their benefit. If they can't show simple patriotism and loyalty to their own country, if they can't check themselves from impoverishing their own people, then laws need to be created that will remind them that they are indeed part of a country, not a gang of looters.
Unrestrained, they will destroy our economy. That means jobs and salaries, not the stock market. The stock market is a casino, not a national policy body.
I think revoking the licenses of corporate entities is the solution to this problem, not bribing them even more than they already have been.
Corporations are licensed by government to exist for the benefit of all; if they no longer consider themselves part of the U.S.social contract, then they can be disbanded and replaced with entities who will show less greed.
This idea that the corporations are beyond all law and sanity save profit is destructive of human civilization. The FICTION that corporations are individuals is revokable. The great experiment started in the 1880's has failed, kids. The men behind these beasts have lost all sense of patriotism and common decency.
"Carly's totally right -- what makes a job yours by birthright? Compete like everyone else."
Okay, I'll bite.
Can you live on one dollar an hour? Can you? Aren't you competitive enough to cut your extravagant lifestyle so that you can make yourself into a fully participating member of the global economy?
"Neoprotectionist policies help a few people out in the short run, but hurt everyone in the long run by imposing unnecessary costs on products. "
"Unnecessary" costs. Like a living wage for an American worker? Hm.
You know, I seem to recall that America has survived for over 225 years while paying something resembling a living wage to the workers. It was working 10 years ago, and 5 years ago. What happened? Businesses "need" to cut costs that didn't hurt them only last year. What changed?
Greed.
As for "neoprotectionism" -- try moving to India to cash in on those $5/hr jobs. Guess what? You can't. "Neoprotectionism", as you call it, or "sanity", as the rest of the world calls it, is the law of the land in India and prolly everywhere else as well. Foreigners are NOT allowed to move over en masse.
"Neoprotectionism" sounds like yet another anti-intellectual coinage made up by neocons to smear sane people who are pointing out that we will turn into a nation of superwealthy CEOs and the rest a slave force of $5/hr 12-hour/day (+ "donated" time if you want to keep your job) 7-day workers hammering themselves to afford even a basic place to live and something to eat. Even as inflation caused by hyperwealthy people drives up real estate costs in any area lucky enough to employ workers, the health care system turned into yet another slash-and-grow looting party, social secutity destroyed, medicare annihilated, unions all but barred, schools "left behind".
Carly, the unreconstructed know-nothing, knows she is going to be hyper wealthy on tax cuts and wage slashing. She doesn't give a flaming damn about anyone but her circle of wealthy friends. I discount her self-serving bullshit.
It is impossible for our present society to survive the elimination of all but the lowest paid service positions. And let's not forget to read between the lines of Bush's new "immigration guidelines". The point will be to flood even the service jobs with a new wave of even lower-cost immigrants. There isn't anywhere for anyone to go, not unless they are born to the right family, have the right friends, and go to the right schools -- Carly's covered there.
This is a process that only has one ending. Wages driven to near-zero levels, gobs of cash for those who got in on the scheme early, and massive under- and un-employment for generations to come. With trillion of dollars of new federal debt causing hundreds of billions of tax dollars paid to service the debt to flow yearly into the bond holders, which coincidentally will include Carly.
It is obvious, and Americans still haven't developed the suspicious frame of mind they need to even recognize the prison being built around them, brick by brick.
Of course. A nationwide car detection system. Thus taking away the only relatively anonymous system of transportation we have.
America in fifteen years? I don't want to live there.
Give me somthing to vote for other then Sock Puppet A or Sock Puppet B and I may care more.
If you don't think that we live in a colossally different world because Bush was installed instead of Gore being elected, you really shouldn't be allowed to vote. I have doubts you are sentient. Perhaps not even breathing.
Keep in mind that I Will Fear No Evil was written during the time that Heinlein became seriously ill for a time. The book was a first draft, printed while he was convalescing. Heinlein never had a chance to go through the book and edit out the chaff; and the publisher was disinclined to edit the Master too harshly.
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I can only smile as I recall the heady days of the PC revolution. All the ancient Big Iron sealed away in a hermetically sealed room, and all the expensive and unapproachable priesthood that tended and worshipped the Iron, would be sent packing. The whole shebang replaced by inexpensive PC's controlled by the user, O glorious day! All the expense and complexity, gone!
Snicker. Meet the new iron, same as the old iron.
Troll? Every word was true. You just don't want to hear the truth, so it's an incitement to riot.
We killed ten thousand people for a lie, and to point it out is "trolling".
A poster claims Clinton's "lie" is more serious than Bush's months of lying to establish a pretext to invade another nation. This is not a troll of course; it is neocon "truth".
Madness. My God have mercy on you all, because history surely will not.
Actually, he got in trouble for exactly nothing. All the accusations, all the cable TV screamers, all the innuendo of murder and theft...
and the special prosecutor found nothing.
In Arkansas. They could find absolutely nothing he did that would even be defined as a parking ticket offense. In ARKANSAS, where corruption is like the morning dew. Clinton had to live the life of an angel for them to find NOTHING after a hundred million dollars of nicely-padded billings.
A blow job? A set up, none of their business, and the line of questioning should never have been allowed by the judge. The lawyers who pled for the judge to permit them to persist in the line of questioning about Lewinsky should have been fined and disbarred after it became apparent they were simply trying to ruin him personally, and had no intention of persuing the line of questioning they had held the hearing for.
And Clinton didn't shut down the inquiries about his sex life the way Bush and Cheney are shutting down and out the 9-11 commission. Maybe he should have. Apparently it's okay not to participate in an investigation about why you failed to stop 3000+ people being killed, but not okay to tell people to mind their own business about your penis.
Geez.
Soooooo. "Lying" is never performed by Bush, because he isn't set up on false charges of attacking women, put under oath, and then quizzed about his private sex life, while the judge allows the irrelevant line of questions to go on. Telling the *precise* truth, as the judge defines it (oral sex NE sex) doesn't cut it. Lying about your private sex life because some filthy swine hornswoggled a judge into permitting it is a FELONY.
LYING OUTRIGHT about certain knowledge of weapons trained on us and about to be used any minute, got to go to war now, NOW: just fine, because HE WASN'T UNDER OATH??!? He KILLED over ten thousand people!! KILLED THEM! INCINERATED THEM! BLEW KIDS' ARMS AND LEGS OFF! FOR A PACK OF FUCKING LIES! So he could take over Iraq's oil spigot and kill OPEC someday! He looked right into Diane Sawyer's eyes, smirked, and dared her to make something of the difference between actual knowledge of Iraq's danger and a total fucking fantasy, because he knew assholes like you would never let people call him on it in the media!
There is a big difference, you pitbull braindead Republican! It's called the difference between not telling some goons about your private sex life so they can destroy you personally, and mass FUCKING MURDER.
BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE.
Paper. Ballots. Count them. Works for everything.
Electronic ballots: enables cheating. Period.
We don't need systems with paper audit trails. We are just adding insane cost to a very simple process. We have systems that work, called "paper". The only people who claim they don't work were the ones who wanted an election to stop *
Why, oh why, do these "designers" insist on an unauditable system, when it is trivial to add a printout? **
And why have a even have a system with a paper backup for audits when we had the paper system working in the first place? At no extra cost? ***
* Bush, Cheney and Rove. And a gullible pack of journalists.
** Because they want to cheat, and make sure they never lose control of the United States government. Yes, the neocons.
*** Lots and lots of money, money, money.
**** We aren't in Iraq to "build democracy". We won't permit free elections, because they will vote to kick our asses out. And all the rebuilding money is coming to American Bush/Cheney connected firms -- the Iraqis and Europeans are frozen out. And our porkers are failing miserably at the task. And we are in Iraq because of a colossal series of lies. We are there to control the spigot the world's largest reserve of oil, to break OPEC's back, and usher in a new age of, well, not cheap oil, because the oil lords of the US will not permit that, but at least oil cheap enough to ruin OPEC's control of pricing. Period.
***** All the squads in the world can't guard a voting process that is controlled by coders not physically present. People are tippy-toeing around saying what they are really afraid of -- that right wing military officers will make sure they deliver the vote for their favorite candidates, one way or another. It would only take one rogue to swing a close election by twigging a few thousand votes. The 2000 election showed us that political pressure enabled the military to permit votes to be cast by overseas personnel AFTER THE ELECTION WAS OVER -- votes that conceivably give Bush the presidency. If voting after an election is over won't stonker right-wing fanatics, tweaking a few votes on a elctronic system would be downright honest.
You guys do know they didn't invent this? The technique has been known for years. The car manufacturers will be using it for the first fuel cell vehicles -- gasoline to hydrogen via catalysts, then feed the H2 to the fuel cell, making electricity to run the electric motors that drive the car. Almost no moving parts.
Just saying, it's not the military that came up with it. They are jsut waking up to what it implies about the logistics of refueling vehicles -- a factor of three improvement in range means fewer refueling trucks, and longer supply lines.
Actually, yes it did. The flame burned upwards, rather than out and down, napalm-like, as gasoline does. The heat was flaring away from the passenger compartment. Most of the people died from jumping from the airship when it was still too high from the ground. Those who kept their heads waited for the ship to drift to the ground, then hopped off and ran. They survived for the most part.
And, oh yes, the bright searing flame you see in the picture? It's the paint. It was basically thermite. Powdered metal. The company wanted pretty silver shiny skin. One electrical arc, and WHOOMP - hydrogen gets the blame.
And fuel cells fueled by gasoline or diesel are in no way more dangerous than a straight IC design! As a matter of fact, since you get more MPG, you can have a smaller tank of what is essentially napalm.
Hydrogen is not "dangerous" in the sense that gasoline is. Gasoline is heavy, adhears to surfaces, ignites easily when vaporized, burns outward in a mushrooming effect, and also is every vehicle in America - and is dispensed from gas pumps like it is as safe as water!
Not oil - diesel fuel.The process has been well known for a while. Remove the oxygen and carbon with catalysts, then burn the liberated hydrogen.
Can be done with gasoline, too, of course. When car manufacturers go on about "fuel cells", they are not talking about hydrogen tanks. They want to use plain old gas out of a plain old gas station.
Makes sense to the oil companies as well.
Not quite a perfect process, emissions wise, but at least you get three times the miles per gallon, and fewer impurities are spewing into the air.
Swimmers? ANOTHER vocabulary enhancement from Continent XXXX. Thanks again!
You'd hope in vain. Executives go to minimum security prison, which is code for "rich white man prison where you are actually guarded from rape".
But for the vast majority of wealthy offenders, they will never see the inside of a courthouse, much less a prison. Ken Lay's Enron stole billions from California, with the White House providing political cover ("it's all the environmentalists' fault! Black Helicopters! Conspiracy theorists! And by the way, here's Arnold!") and will never even see the NEWS about his crimes, if he chooses not to, much less do a perp walk.
Steal $20 from a cash register, go to jail and get raped. With the People cheering and demanding pay per view.
I just noodled the reason why people don't care about wealthy people getting away with major crime: they want to BE the guys getting away with the crimes. They think it's cool! Moore might actually have nailed it: the Horatio Algier syndrome (YOU can be the rich guy who gets away with it -- it's the American Dream!) So people want, in a perverse way, a stratum of people who get all the cash and can't get convicted. In America, it's barely possible to join the elite -- although stats show most such people are just born to their status.
I have perspective born of experience. I grew up in a poor neighborhood, where just walking the street could get you arrested if you didn't look right to a cop. I've had cops break into my house right in front of me.
Contrast it to my later experience in the Chicago northern suburbs, where drugs were sold openly around school. The young scions of the suburbs openly assaulted and battered people of different colors, shapes, and religions. Car theft was common. You'd see kids you know driving around and smashing people's cars with rocks.
And there was NO CRIME RATE among these kids, officially. They never "committed" crimes -- it was invisible to the local cops, unless it was committed right in front of them.
Rich and/or connected people don't commit crimes, and they certainly don't go to jail. Well, there are exceptions, but you get the drift.
PMITAP is for the poor.
bathers? Australian vocab word for today! Thanks!
"Both sides of the issue"... I know people today, most especially those who consider themseves journalists, think that presenting both "sides" of an issue results in a "balanced" article.
But it is not balanced. A real journalist doesn't mutely present both "sides". A journalist also has to judge, and present, the motivations and past behaviors of the people involved as well. All sides are NOT equal. A journalist is not a debate moderator.
Evolution theory is not the same as creationism. Creationism is not science, it is religion.
Corporate sponsored anti-environmentalist screed is NOT the same as a global scientific consensus. The motivations of each side are wildly different, and should not be given equal weight.
People who believe tax cuts are always beneficial are not as believable as pay-as-you-go fiscal conservatives: The tax cutters have twenty years of debt accumulation and other after-cut hangovers undercutting their position. Presenting them as equally believable as a pay-your-bills economist is misleading and does not serve the reader well.
Presenting pro-war neocons' arguments, long after they were proven farcical, as equivalent to those who have actual on-the-ground experience in political matters is not fair, nor is it balanced.
Life is not a football game! Everything is not an two-sided matchup of two noble teams!
Presenting the pro-Fax.com side as roughly believable as the anti-fax.com "side" is disingenous on any level. It is not journalism; at worst it is Machiavellan manipulation of perception. In this instance, it rehabilitates the fax.commers as underdog victims of liberal trial lawyering bloodsuckers in the eyes of the readership of Forbes.
A journalist has the responsiblity of weighing the credibility of the sources of arguments. And to inform the readership of the fact.
Sometimes there just isn't a balance! Sometimes one side is just wrong. And a journalist must say why.
" somehow see the phone in the dumpster as a big clue that something is up."
So would not phoning home from a friend's house, or not coming home at all.
The cell phone in a dumpster is useless as an indicator, Q.E.D. So that "use" is a farce.
So what is the real use?
1. Selling ads.
2. Tracking law abiding citizens.
3. Locator service for the user. A selling point, but 1. and 2. are the winners here.
Be more cynical.
Bush is allocating 1 billion a year for the moon and Mars. Impossible.
In return, NASA is being asked to give up the Hubble, the Shuttle, the Space Station (eventually). And funding for all other programs will be cut or eliminated as well, "for the Mars mission".
The "Mars Mission" is twenty years in the future. It will have to survive five administrations, ten Congresses, and the eventually bankrupting of the Federal kitty by the tax cuts and increased non-discretionary spending.
Point is, the "Mars mission" won't survive. I've watched the space program for thirty-five years, and things like this don't maintain momentum, especially in hard financial times.
NASA, I hear, initially was jubilant; now they realize what they are being asked to give up: everything. For a pig in a poke.
You are being just cynical enough. This is a way of disbanding the manned program while looking like heros, or "spatial pioneers", as Bush called them (I am not making that up).
Five years from now, NASA will be all but gone, with a few contractors making a bit of money researching new systems that never make it to reality.
I didn't believe it would happen so fast! Hubble already given up?
I only wonder if Bush is smart enough to have thought this up himself, or if his Grand Viziers came up with the scheme while telling George about Mars and "Spatial Pioneers"? Does the King actually believe what he is saying? Is he that dumb, or that smart?
And these comments are "flamebait" if you are a far-right whacko, kids.
I'm not laughing.
Points:
This is the wrong way to go to space again. The nadir, the opposite, the way it shouldn't be.
I've been a space fanatic for 35 years. And emulating the Apollo model of spectaular and ultimately useless manned shots was proved a dead end thirty years ago. It is a dead end now.
We should go to the moon, but to establish mining and material processing plants. We should use mass drivers on the moon, rather than rockets, to move material into L2, L5, or earth orbit for contruction purposes. Using the moon for a launching platform for Mars is a terrible idea -- if you are in orbit, in zero G, you can use an ion engine to get to mars in weeks. But to launch from the moon, you have to use a high energy rocket, which actually gets you to Mars more slowly than the high-efficiency and always-on ion engine.
Build in space, not on the moon. Move lunar materials to Earth-moon space using an electric mass-driver on the surface, and make aluminum, steel, and titanium by the thousands of tons in lunar orbit or L5.
If you want to go to space as a nation, you go BIG, which means you proceed deliberately. No spectacular space shots of interest to geologists only. You build up industrial capacity in orbit and on the moon, and after that you can go anywhere at a much cheaper cost than lifting tons of miniaturized and fragile components from Earth, because you simply make what you need at the launching complex from raw materials. It's more expensive in the short term, but it the long term it pays for itself in materials and energy (powersats), AND you get the solar system as a bonus for cheap.
Additionally, if you industrialize near Earth, it means normal people could go and live off planet, because there would be enough resources to actually build habitats, regular shuttle services, make powersats for selling juice back home. Launching it all from Earth guarantees that although the "mission" of landing some miltary pilots on Mars would be accomplished, that no one else could go, and ultimately the whole program would be shut down because,and it pains me to say this, all we would have for our money would be some rocks, some video, and a small cadre of semi-military men who actually got to go to another world. It didn't work for Apollo, and it won't work here. This idea is pure Old NASA, and should be stopped immediately. Space should not be the province of ultrahealthy supermen who go up and come down. It should be about resources, economically sound exploitation, and the ability of a normal human to participate someday.
And finally, Bush's (Old NASA's) dream is a crock. The money will not be there after Supply Side 2, the Looting. The old dream will die again as the neocon party ball goes dim in the next ten years and all the bills come due.
"Right- so find a job that pays more than that. You either pick a job that you like and hope the pay is enough, or you pick a salary that you like and hope the job is ok. If everybody could pick what job they wanted AND how much they got paid for it, then we would only have a bunch of rich lazy people. Throwing a tantrum because you want to work in engineering AND get paid a lot for it won't help anything."
Corporations are expert tantrum throwers. It's why they don't pay taxes anymore.
If left unchecked, all engineering positions can be offshored and eliminated in the U.S. And they will be, if no laws are passed. Greed is infinite. And it isn't only engineering; I'm thinking a lot bigger than that. I'm not an engineer. There is no manufacturing or professional job that cannot be moved to an area of the world that works for peanuts. This inevitably leads to a collapse in the standard of living for the American people, not the companies. It is not to be allowed.
"Corporations exist for 1 and only 1 reason- to make a profit."
Where is that written down? Is it a law? Says who? Says them? Where did this tripe come from? Corporations also exist to obey laws and exercise judgement. If they don't, then they are above all law, and are extremely dangerous, for they can shut down the American economy and pollute and corrupt at will.
Corporations are LICENSED TO EXIST BY THE PEOPLE, THROUGH THEIR GOVERNMENT. If they cannot find it within themselves to behave like an entity who gives a shit about anything other than their own bank accounts, then they should be disbanded, for they give no value to the country. They are highwaymen. They have violated the contract they agreed to when their charter was given. And if they don't agree that they have a contract with the U.S. people, then we should invent one and make them sign it. After all, reneging on contracts is soup and bread to those people -- so is lying, stealing, and damn near anything else they can get away with. Morality doesn't apply to them -- it's a vacation from values, to be in a corporation. So if we "change" the rules allowing them to exist, they have no reason to bleat. They still will be rich. Just not infinitely so.
This is the Libertarian paradise. A hell for anyone not in the top tier.
"You have some pretty big misconceptions about basic economics. Unrestrained business is what has created our economy! Why else do you think the US economy is the largest in the world? We have one of the most business friendly economies in the world. Artificial market forces, like salary floors, hurt everybody. "
With all respect, you have a gigantic misconception about economics. Businesses have always been regulated. Taxes have always been levied. Whether chartered by the king, or a fisherman on sea ruled by the local council of fisherman, people always had to obey rules. Corporations should never have had the status of individuals, but they finagled one anyway in the 1880's -- with the disaster of the Depression in '29 to show for it. We reregulated the hell out of them in the '30's, and because of that we have had the most robust economy in the world.
Businesses from the time of the Egyptians to the time of Bush II had to obey rules. No theft. Pay taxes. Line up here, go there. They did well regardless.
It is not "economics" as we know it to permit amorphous immortal fictitious "individuals" carte blanche to shut down sections of the economy, refuse to pay taxes, buy a government, move "operations" to islands to avoid laws, pollute at will, and become sole proprietors of occupied countries. This is no longer business. It is a new government, a virtual one, but one with real teeth. A interwoven mesh of lawless boards of directors who move freely between government, the military, and the corporate bodies themselves. Writing their own laws, backing wars, erasing jobs, and all to line their own pockets, with a few dollars thrown to the shareholders to justify their greed.
This is not America.
Somehow, that argument, a hoary one indeed, breaks down somewhere. If corporations don't pay taxes, then individuals don't either -- their employers do! And those employers don't pay taxes either -- the employers' customers do!
See? Regression into nonsense. As the American voters will find later in this decade, when corporations don't pay taxes, their taxes DO go up. And up. And up.
If if corporations can't stand being taxed, and pass on all taxes to their customers rather than take a hit on profit$, then we should pass some real laws regulating their greed.
The point is that WE CAN'T live on a dollar an hour -- and Carly sure won't.
If the shareholders of her company would fire her because she won't fire her work force, than perhaps some new laws should be passed to make the greedy bastards toe the line. Corporations are LICENSED by the people to exist for their benefit. If they can't show simple patriotism and loyalty to their own country, if they can't check themselves from impoverishing their own people, then laws need to be created that will remind them that they are indeed part of a country, not a gang of looters.
Unrestrained, they will destroy our economy. That means jobs and salaries, not the stock market. The stock market is a casino, not a national policy body.
I think revoking the licenses of corporate entities is the solution to this problem, not bribing them even more than they already have been.
Corporations are licensed by government to exist for the benefit of all; if they no longer consider themselves part of the U.S.social contract, then they can be disbanded and replaced with entities who will show less greed.
This idea that the corporations are beyond all law and sanity save profit is destructive of human civilization. The FICTION that corporations are individuals is revokable. The great experiment started in the 1880's has failed, kids. The men behind these beasts have lost all sense of patriotism and common decency.
Time to bring back som LAW.
"When the overpaid factory jobs went elsewhere"
Overpaid by whose standards? Those jobs are now paying less than an dollar an hour.
Are YOU willing to live on $.75 an hour?
If not, shut up about being overpaid, because YOU are being overpaid by your own standard.
Ye gods. Are you all insane?
"Carly's totally right -- what makes a job yours by birthright? Compete like everyone else."
Okay, I'll bite.
Can you live on one dollar an hour? Can you? Aren't you competitive enough to cut your extravagant lifestyle so that you can make yourself into a fully participating member of the global economy?
"Neoprotectionist policies help a few people out in the short run, but hurt everyone in the long run by imposing unnecessary costs on products. "
"Unnecessary" costs. Like a living wage for an American worker? Hm.
You know, I seem to recall that America has survived for over 225 years while paying something resembling a living wage to the workers. It was working 10 years ago, and 5 years ago. What happened? Businesses "need" to cut costs that didn't hurt them only last year. What changed?
Greed.
As for "neoprotectionism" -- try moving to India to cash in on those $5/hr jobs. Guess what? You can't. "Neoprotectionism", as you call it, or "sanity", as the rest of the world calls it, is the law of the land in India and prolly everywhere else as well. Foreigners are NOT allowed to move over en masse.
"Neoprotectionism" sounds like yet another anti-intellectual coinage made up by neocons to smear sane people who are pointing out that we will turn into a nation of superwealthy CEOs and the rest a slave force of $5/hr 12-hour/day (+ "donated" time if you want to keep your job) 7-day workers hammering themselves to afford even a basic place to live and something to eat. Even as inflation caused by hyperwealthy people drives up real estate costs in any area lucky enough to employ workers, the health care system turned into yet another slash-and-grow looting party, social secutity destroyed, medicare annihilated, unions all but barred, schools "left behind".
Carly, the unreconstructed know-nothing, knows she is going to be hyper wealthy on tax cuts and wage slashing. She doesn't give a flaming damn about anyone but her circle of wealthy friends. I discount her self-serving bullshit.
It is impossible for our present society to survive the elimination of all but the lowest paid service positions. And let's not forget to read between the lines of Bush's new "immigration guidelines". The point will be to flood even the service jobs with a new wave of even lower-cost immigrants. There isn't anywhere for anyone to go, not unless they are born to the right family, have the right friends, and go to the right schools -- Carly's covered there.
This is a process that only has one ending. Wages driven to near-zero levels, gobs of cash for those who got in on the scheme early, and massive under- and un-employment for generations to come. With trillion of dollars of new federal debt causing hundreds of billions of tax dollars paid to service the debt to flow yearly into the bond holders, which coincidentally will include Carly.
What a scam. What a horror.
Um, he won a Hugo for that story. Best Novela of the Year, I believe, 1976.
It is obvious, and Americans still haven't developed the suspicious frame of mind they need to even recognize the prison being built around them, brick by brick.
Of course. A nationwide car detection system. Thus taking away the only relatively anonymous system of transportation we have.
America in fifteen years? I don't want to live there.
Give me somthing to vote for other then Sock Puppet A or Sock Puppet B and I may care more.
If you don't think that we live in a colossally different world because Bush was installed instead of Gore being elected, you really shouldn't be allowed to vote. I have doubts you are sentient. Perhaps not even breathing.
Keep in mind that I Will Fear No Evil was written during the time that Heinlein became seriously ill for a time. The book was a first draft, printed while he was convalescing. Heinlein never had a chance to go through the book and edit out the chaff; and the publisher was disinclined to edit the Master too harshly.