(Link to my other comment did not work. copied here)
There is a startup out there that has a sevice up and running with maps and commercial entries that runs on Palm Pilots and soon other small Java based handhelds. And the client sevice is free. Works with GPS enabled boxes as well (see the list on their site).
They have done a pilot in Minneapolis. They have extensive maps and parks and historical sites loaded and hooks for not only for commerce but for special interest adhoc communities. War Drivers, birders, Civil War buffs etc.
There is a startup out there that has a sevice up and running with maps and commercial entries that runs on Palm Pilots and soon other small Java based handhelds. And the client sevice is free. Works with GPS enabled boxes as well (see the list on their site).
They have done a pilot in Minneapolis. They have extensive maps and parks and historical sites loaded and hooks for not only for commerce but for special interest adhoc communities. War Drivers, birders, Civil War buffs etc.
Thats all fine and good but Science is neutral when it comes to questions of faith. Science addresses the "What happens if" question not the "Why" question. Science is a study of causality influences. The conflict occurs when the Faith based "Science" which is not science actually, short circuits the process and gives an explaination for Why up front that is not testable. It stops the search. We have seen that this faith based approach has been horribly wrong in the past as when the Central Christian Church doctrine "KNEW" as a matter of faith that the Earth was the center of the universe.
I suspect as we seek more the evolution question will be exposed to the light of obvious truth to all as the facts about the traveling of the planets is.
Actually the Sun and earth dance together with each effecting the orbit of the other. The sun rotates around a slight center because of the earth too.
"When you burn coal, you have no hope of avoiding the loss of kLives. You know you're going to kill massive numbers of people. Heigh-ho."
Actually unproven conjecture. All that can be said from the studies is that there seems to be some contributing factor, NOT that the coal fire pollution causes those deaths. If you did the analysis with automobile pollution you probably would find the same result. If coal fires were the only thing in the air probably none of those people would die. This is a case of miss use of statistical studies.
We did have a close to core melt down at 3 Mile island so dont tell me we have nothing in common with Chernobyl. We were lucky then. We have in common the very deadly radioactive material that by the way ages the materials around it and an accelerated rate so anything we use to contain it lasts a much shorter time than it would otherwise and I don't think we have enough data (mererly extrapolations) about how things will hold together for the long term. Generally after the live of a reactor the plants will just be quarentined essentailly for ever.
As to the energy costs and I have seen some analysis that showed that if you factor in all the technologies involved and the cost producing the fisionable material and of keeping the waste safe, the total energy outlay is larger than you get out of the reactor. If that is true then somone is making money for just smoke and mirrors and our great grand children will be left with the debt.
Not unlike the current adminstrations deficit spending spree.
But whatever.. take a look at that John Gall book, a very good book and humorous to boot, with serious examples of how systems can work or not work on the large scale.
I think the same about your analysis, or rather your lack of analysis in the long term.
"So then, barring accidents, and presuming we do something half-way sensible with the waste, we would then have a shot at (a) saving kilolife or two, (b) slowing global warming."
You have to consider when not if and it is clear we can not bar these accidents but factor them into the analysis, as well as the waste.
""we do something half-way sensible with the waste""
How long have we had nuclear power? When is this question going to be answered in a half-way sensible manner? or is it that it is a problem that has not good answer. There is no area of the planet that is geologically stable enough for the long period of time to store the waste without risk. There is no known container technology that would contain it for the thousands of years that the waste will be hot. Nuclear waste will be dangerous for longer than what has already been recorded human history! Hell we were ape like that long ago (25k years). Think about that. We have only been flying for 100 years.
What we have done is not create radioactivity with coal but released it into the atmosphere. Not good and the other gasses not good. But those are needle pricks compared to what happened to Chernobl. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/n2constr.html
I refer you to the book by John Gall
http://www.generalsystemantics.com/Systemantics. ht m
and the new edition (not read by me yet)
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/n2constr.ht ml
The first is a must read.
With nuclear reactors we actually make new radioactive material, not just decay existing material. Plutonium, a favorite in not only reactors but also weaponry is extremely toxic.
I think if we are looking at the difference between Nuclear and coal, the same comparison can be made between Solar and Coal. Where we see a step down in pollution levels and a step down in concentration of energy.
We loose more energy in power transmission than you would imagine. The issue there is that it is difficult for someone to make million and millions of dollars off a distributed solution. It gets in the way of the Empire builders.
We have two major problems that the energy problems are symptoms of. Over Population and wasteful use of energy.
We need to change cultures to solve the poputlation issue (very unpopular and long term).
or fix the wasteful energy practice.
The nuclear option is short term and very dangerous and if taken the people will still say, well now we have energy, let someone else some other time consider the waste and disaster recovery issues.
I don't see any deaths as warrented but I think it is true that the death toll of nuclear is just in the future when the waste gets out into the envirionment through disaster or leakage or terrorist action.
You would not run your car on nitro glycerine. At least not unless you were planning on crashing it into a building for political or religious reasons.
"Also, I don't think that any country has laws against discrimination on the basis of the web server you run...
Or possibly a monopolistic practice
Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in search engine market."
No but the USA has laws on monopolistic practices with which MS has been to court for. Microsoft does not have a monopoly on search engines. The issue here is they do have a monoploy on OS and part of the offering of their OS is IIS which comes with the systems like the IE browser comes with the system. I think one may make the argument that they are not giving preferential treatment to their customers but unfairly making their IIS product more valuable to customers using their Search Engine which should probably neutral when it comes to the type of Web Site searched. So the message, "buy our system and IIS because our big search engine will bring you more business" I think we might have some more monopolistic law suits just waiting in the wings.
The one difference is when you have a monopoly which MS does and has been taken to court for. With the free market capitalism it has been found and legislated into law that a company can not get so powerful and/or control a market in such a way that it stiffles competition. So things that you might not think as criminal in the usual case become illegal in that case where there is a clear pattern of behaviour towards monopolistic practice and unfair suppression of competition. Same is true with discrimination cases, where a single act by one individual may seem small and insignificant but when a pattern of behaviour is found that suppresses the economic actualization of a minority group then it becomes illegal and then the courts can step in.
"BTW, this isn't a "conspiracy" in the legal sense since it's not a crime to give preferential service on the basis of web server. It's sleazy unless it's fully disclosed, but it's not a crime unless they actually sell the search engine as an unbiased tool."
This would not be true if it having a higher status in the search engine meant more hits which meant more business. It could be argued that that was a discriminatory practice that could be quantified as a loss in dollars. Or possibly a monopolistic practice, and we know there has never been any suggestion that MS had any issues with those types of descriminator practices. Pattern of behaivour comes to mind.
No It appears the original proof was dis-proven by someone finding a flaw in the logic. Then the original proof was resurrected by changing some of the logic so it was correct. That was publised in 1994.
A proof that has a flaw is not a proof.
The 1994 proof I think still stands and has not yet been found to have flaws. That is the other shoe that could drop possibly. It did with the first attempt.
Doom wrote: "Consider the fact that there is not "coal waste disposal" problem: you're just expected to breath it. The fact that nuclear power gives you the option of thinking about what to do with the waste is something of an advantage."
There is a coal waste problem. Coal produces clunkers and greenhouse gasses, not a good thing when done to excess like now. But the CO2 is natural and if not too much can be absorbed naturally into the ecosystem from where it came.
Radioactive waste is not natural in that it can not easily or safely be absorbed into the ecosystem. There are not natural cleaning/re-use systems that we know of for it. So coal is a much safer choice if not done to excess.. Lets cut down the amount of energy we use then we can back off that excess.
Doom wrote:
"Which is convienient, because they means we can tell the experts to get lost if they tell us something we don't want to hear. (How do you feel about the fundamentalist christians take on teaching biology, or the corporate conservative view of global warming scenarios?)"
I think you missed the point. I was describing the nature of the scientific process which is trying to prove things through trying and failing and trying and succeeding and rigorous peer review and continual changes. Scientists are always working on new things that are at the edge of what we don't know, that is why they are there. So my point is that if you ask a scientist about what something he will most likely be very careful in his explaination and give boundries about his answer and qualifications to the certainty of his results. If you ask a corporation or a drug company about what they know. Well all the qualifications get lost in the marketing because they have a vested interested in not appearing as though what they know they really are not entirely certain about.
It has nothing to do with the pseudo faith based "science" that one can find with certain groups that do not go through the rigorous testing to make sure process but just read a book and say it must be true without testing it. The issue there is not a scientific knowlege issue but an attribution issue. Scientists will not say. This happened because. They will say if you do this that will happen. A very different thing altogether.
"Doh! Waste products, Charlie! Damn, why didn't we think about that?"
Your probably right, but if you look at the extreme focus of scienctists on a particular task. Especially if they are given an applied problem to solve. They will work tirelessly to solve it. But if you remeber there were some famous nuclear scientists that after they had solved their particular small part of the puzzle and stood back and saw the atomic explosion, they thought "what have we done" and became outspoken anti-nuclear advocates. One person giving a small task to focus on quite often does not do global thinking or long range thinking. They probably thought, another team will solve that problem while I am working on my problem. I turns out that team has not solved that problem yet. They just keep sweeping it under the rug. The rug is getting very lumpy don't you think. And no it does not necesarrily follow that the people working on engine of a car think about what the rules of the road should be or the posibility that their son or daughter might be run over by a drunk driver. Think about it.
"We will soon be running out of oil and natural gas. So then we will have to start burning our vast coal reserves. But wait, per unit of energy, coal produces more radioactive material than a nuclear reactor. So I guess we will have to count out coal."
I assume you were talking about this point. My point was in response, that the energy needs can be cut down if energy is an issue.
As to coal producing more radioactivity I suspect you are talking about radioactivity released into the atmosphere. But if you think about it nuclear energy "IS" radioactivity just contained for a time, it is released from the reactor in the form of concentrated waste and is still around and we don't know what to do with it. So I think it is not looking at the entire picture to say that coal produces more radioactivity.
Lets get rid of that disposable society that throws out plastic plates and knifes and forks and packing materials that are all made from precious oil reserves too.
We keep focusing on short term cost just to let our descendants pick up the tab. You would think nobody had children or thought of their futures anymore.
Well lets see. I guess an important issue to cover first is whether you feel that there are some real problems that are national if not global in scale.
Let pick a few.
1. Projected Populations too large to be easily sustained at current levels of production and resources.
Projected Energy needs too large to be sustained at current levels of production.
Projected Petorleum needs too large to be sustained at current levels of production and current levels of resources.
If you believe that yes these are some national if not global problems we face. Then there are several degrees of freedom availble to us. Some more popular than others.
If say you allowed effective family planning you might help in #1 above. Wars, famine and pestilence effect those numbers but we are controlling the famine and pestilence better now and we haven't had a good purge of populations since well within the last few months (northern Africa I believe).
We have a system and ecology or an economy if you will with various part keeping other parts in balance. We are out of balance as we can see with our energy consumption and population and global warming.
What we can do is do a strong push to get the SUV's off the roads and go to hybrid technology which in the short and mid term would cut down our oil needs tremendously and help in the greenhouse gas department. What has our "representative" government done for all of us in this reguard? They rolled back pollution standard guidlines. Rather short term and self serving dont you think. A very small change in gas milage makes big change in gas needs. Besides we will need that dwindling resource of oil for other purposes like medicines and plastics and fertilizers, rather than letting that precious resource go up in smoke.
We can use less electronics, cutting out those instant on appliances that are continuously draining energy. Use more solar heating, and solar electric. We can push in that direction.
We can foster more public transportation like they have in Europe and Japan. Everyone does not need a car if we plan it right.
Your assumption is that we "NEED" to consume. We don't. True a lot of our economy is based on consumption but then consuption is a desease as well. We will at some point find a new way to live, a new equalibrium. It is time to start making that move. If you have faith in the science then listen to what the scientists are saying about where the whole global environment is headed and why. The nuclear options has always been short term thinking as the pile of unusable highly radioactive waste grows. The same thinking and actions that is building in the globe in terms of global warming and systemic toxicity globally.
We are not taking responsibilty, some are taking the money and running. That will stop eventuall, I hope before some more major man made catastrophies.
It appears as though he was talking about Quantum Computation which is of course part of Quantum theory and yes Qbits store all the solutions to a computation until you read them when they collapse down to a specific result. Sort of like being in a different dimension of all possibilites and collapsing down into this reality. So what he was talking about seems to pertain.
Correction (not unlike what the article you refered to explained). The original 1995 proof was not correct as stated and had to be re-worked and resurrected in 1994 in a correct version. That is not to say that Wiles did not prove it but if his proof in 1955 was found to be flawed, then it was not proven in 1955. Not until all the steps are correct and bullet proof is it considered proven.
"It has long been very frustrating to see environmentalist romantics fly in the face of reason in railing against genetically-modified plants as a possible solution to population pressures, or arguing against nuclear power as a clean energy source."
Well if you ask a scientist if he knows what he is doing especially in his field of study, of course he will tell you he knows what he is doing, but at the same time the process they are involved in is making theories, testing theories, peer review tearing down theories. The process is full of miss steps and rushes to conclusion and backing away when proven wrong or side effects are found.
When it comes to nuclear power. The nuclear physist or neuclear engineer have the job of finding ways of making it work and they are less involved in the waste products as we have seen. We have large quantities of very hot nuclear waste that have been generated by that clean energy source that no one knows what to do with. That knows what to do with of course includes the fact that no one wants it in there back yard or their aquafir. Just because we can do something that does not mean that when everything is factored in it is a good thing to do.
Science gave us Thalidamide in the 50's , remember, if you don't look up that catastrophe here http://www.obgyn.nus.edu.sg/maxdata1/The%20thalido mide%20disaster.htm Look at Minamata http://www.american.edu/TED/MINAMATA.HTM
Sciece typically looks at one thing and controls out the rest of the envirionment to make the stucy simplier but something like Genentics which will be released out into an uncontrolled ecosystem that we all depend on "IS" a risk which the type of studies done do not provide any possiblility of showing the altered genes interactions with all of the things they can come in contact with out in the world.
Another short sided example is the use of Leaded Glaze cups by the Roman elite which some theorize was one of the contributing factors to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
Science is a human endevor filled with egos, competition, corporate greed etc. Look at the Tabaco companies withholding addiction knowledge. Look at the drug companies record of putting drugs on the market when they had known sever side effects. With Genetic engineering as with Nuclear Power, big business is also involved and as much as we can trust Science and Scientists, the businessmen have a vested interested in salable product as a bottom line whether they have alteristic motives as well. The recent examples besides the drug companies would be Enron and World Com.
By the way Nuclear energy is NOT a clean energy source. The really really really bad byproducts are just very concentrated so you can keep them out of sight. But tell that to Russian countryside that is still hot.
If I got the spelling correct form Economics class, where the cheap potato's sales rose when your raised the price of potatoes because people. Because people were so poor they did not then have enough money to spend on more expensive food, they had to back fill that by buying more potatoes. An inverted yeild curve. The same may be true with TV resources, the choice being, get cable and give up going out or to the movies because you cant afford both. But you get more entertainment at home and all those luscious mini drama sales presentations in between things.
Because they are selling you the OS as well and that has value. Should you pay for something extra that you don't want that if you didn't get you would have to pay several extra hundred dollars more for.
If you went to a car dealer and said I want that car but not the CD changer. They would pull the cd changer and put in the standard radio and sell it to you because they can do that and that part is a small part of the sale.
I think in the story they talked about tight spiriling molecules that caused the light to spin around an extremly long path on the way through. The best glass was ground to a precise thickness so the you saw the proper season in your stored view always. That glass was the most expensive and the thicker the glass the longer time it recored and was more expensive.
But that was all technical cover for the central literary tool to show a man caught in the memory of his wife long dead. Not leaving the "Slow Glass" farm because he could still glimpse her in the window of their home which was also slow glass. Cleaver effective writting.
One of my favorite stories "Slow Glass" I think it was called. The 10 year delay was used as a poigant device to show a person living in the past with a wife and I think a child that he had lost. In the Scotish Highlands I believe where his business was to position "Slow Glass" to soak up the scenery for Urban dewellers to have a country view.
Exactly, the Justice Department has a vested interest in there not being violations of the Partriat act exposed. After all it gives them more freedom and leeway to do what they think needs to be done to accomplish their goal which is to capture and prosecute criminals. The freedoms and safeguards of the Constitution have always gotten in the way of their "doing their job". The watchdog commission of the Justice Department is a little like asking Enron to audit itself. No matter how consciencious the auditor, the politics of interest taints the whole thing.
Slashdot Mirror
(Link to my other comment did not work. copied here)
There is a startup out there that has a sevice up and running with maps and commercial entries that runs on Palm Pilots and soon other small Java based handhelds. And the client sevice is free. Works with GPS enabled boxes as well (see the list on their site).
http://www.earthcomber.com/splash/index.html [earthcomber.com]
They have done a pilot in Minneapolis. They have extensive maps and parks and historical sites loaded and hooks for not only for commerce but for special interest adhoc communities. War Drivers, birders, Civil War buffs etc.
Here is another offering for handhelds. See my comment
2 4240&tid=188&tid=218
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/23/22
But also just limited currently to the US.
There is a startup out there that has a sevice up and running with maps and commercial entries that runs on Palm Pilots and soon other small Java based handhelds. And the client sevice is free. Works with GPS enabled boxes as well (see the list on their site).
http://www.earthcomber.com/splash/index.html
They have done a pilot in Minneapolis. They have extensive maps and parks and historical sites loaded and hooks for not only for commerce but for special interest adhoc communities. War Drivers, birders, Civil War buffs etc.
Thats all fine and good but Science is neutral when it comes to questions of faith. Science addresses the "What happens if" question not the "Why" question. Science is a study of causality influences. The conflict occurs when the Faith based "Science" which is not science actually, short circuits the process and gives an explaination for Why up front that is not testable. It stops the search. We have seen that this faith based approach has been horribly wrong in the past as when the Central Christian Church doctrine "KNEW" as a matter of faith that the Earth was the center of the universe.
I suspect as we seek more the evolution question will be exposed to the light of obvious truth to all as the facts about the traveling of the planets is.
Actually the Sun and earth dance together with each effecting the orbit of the other. The sun rotates around a slight center because of the earth too.
"When you burn coal, you have no hope of avoiding the loss of kLives. You know you're going to kill massive numbers of people. Heigh-ho."
Actually unproven conjecture. All that can be said from the studies is that there seems to be some contributing factor, NOT that the coal fire pollution causes those deaths. If you did the analysis with automobile pollution you probably would find the same result. If coal fires were the only thing in the air probably none of those people would die. This is a case of miss use of statistical studies.
We did have a close to core melt down at 3 Mile island so dont tell me we have nothing in common with Chernobyl. We were lucky then. We have in common the very deadly radioactive material that by the way ages the materials around it and an accelerated rate so anything we use to contain it lasts a much shorter time than it would otherwise and I don't think we have enough data (mererly extrapolations) about how things will hold together for the long term. Generally after the live of a reactor the plants will just be quarentined essentailly for ever.
As to the energy costs and I have seen some analysis that showed that if you factor in all the technologies involved and the cost producing the fisionable material and of keeping the waste safe, the total energy outlay is larger than you get out of the reactor. If that is true then somone is making money for just smoke and mirrors and our great grand children will be left with the debt.
Not unlike the current adminstrations deficit spending spree.
But whatever.. take a look at that John Gall book, a very good book and humorous to boot, with serious examples of how systems can work or not work on the large scale.
"This is total and complete nonsense."
l
. ht m
t ml
I think the same about your analysis, or rather your lack of analysis in the long term.
"So then, barring accidents, and presuming we do something half-way sensible with the waste, we would then have a shot at (a) saving kilolife or two, (b) slowing global warming."
You have to consider when not if and it is clear we can not bar these accidents but factor them into the analysis, as well as the waste.
""we do something half-way sensible with the waste""
How long have we had nuclear power? When is this question going to be answered in a half-way sensible manner? or is it that it is a problem that has not good answer. There is no area of the planet that is geologically stable enough for the long period of time to store the waste without risk. There is no known container technology that would contain it for the thousands of years that the waste will be hot. Nuclear waste will be dangerous for longer than what has already been recorded human history! Hell we were ape like that long ago (25k years). Think about that. We have only been flying for 100 years.
What we have done is not create radioactivity with coal but released it into the atmosphere. Not good and the other gasses not good. But those are needle pricks compared to what happened to Chernobl. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/n2constr.htm
I refer you to the book by John Gall
http://www.generalsystemantics.com/Systemantics
and the new edition (not read by me yet)
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/n2constr.h
The first is a must read.
With nuclear reactors we actually make new radioactive material, not just decay existing material. Plutonium, a favorite in not only reactors but also weaponry is extremely toxic.
I think if we are looking at the difference between Nuclear and coal, the same comparison can be made between Solar and Coal. Where we see a step down in pollution levels and a step down in concentration of energy.
We loose more energy in power transmission than you would imagine. The issue there is that it is difficult for someone to make million and millions of dollars off a distributed solution. It gets in the way of the Empire builders.
We have two major problems that the energy problems are symptoms of. Over Population and wasteful use of energy.
We need to change cultures to solve the poputlation issue (very unpopular and long term).
or fix the wasteful energy practice.
The nuclear option is short term and very dangerous and if taken the people will still say, well now we have energy, let someone else some other time consider the waste and disaster recovery issues.
I don't see any deaths as warrented but I think it is true that the death toll of nuclear is just in the future when the waste gets out into the envirionment through disaster or leakage or terrorist action.
You would not run your car on nitro glycerine. At least not unless you were planning on crashing it into a building for political or religious reasons.
"Also, I don't think that any country has laws against discrimination on the basis of the web server you run...
Or possibly a monopolistic practice
Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in search engine market."
No but the USA has laws on monopolistic practices with which MS has been to court for. Microsoft does not have a monopoly on search engines. The issue here is they do have a monoploy on OS and part of the offering of their OS is IIS which comes with the systems like the IE browser comes with the system. I think one may make the argument that they are not giving preferential treatment to their customers but unfairly making their IIS product more valuable to customers using their Search Engine which should probably neutral when it comes to the type of Web Site searched. So the message, "buy our system and IIS because our big search engine will bring you more business" I think we might have some more monopolistic law suits just waiting in the wings.
The one difference is when you have a monopoly which MS does and has been taken to court for. With the free market capitalism it has been found and legislated into law that a company can not get so powerful and /or control a market in such a way that it stiffles competition. So things that you might not think as criminal in the usual case become illegal in that case where there is a clear pattern of behaviour towards monopolistic practice and unfair suppression of competition. Same is true with discrimination cases, where a single act by one individual may seem small and insignificant but when a pattern of behaviour is found that suppresses the economic actualization of a minority group then it becomes illegal and then the courts can step in.
As I understand it.
"BTW, this isn't a "conspiracy" in the legal sense since it's not a crime to give preferential service on the basis of web server. It's sleazy unless it's fully disclosed, but it's not a crime unless they actually sell the search engine as an unbiased tool."
This would not be true if it having a higher status in the search engine meant more hits which meant more business. It could be argued that that was a discriminatory practice that could be quantified as a loss in dollars. Or possibly a monopolistic practice, and we know there has never been any suggestion that MS had any issues with those types of descriminator practices. Pattern of behaivour comes to mind.
I'm sure it was not intentional. I suspect that a few percent is much less than they intended.
No It appears the original proof was dis-proven by someone finding a flaw in the logic. Then the original proof was resurrected by changing some of the logic so it was correct. That was publised in 1994.
A proof that has a flaw is not a proof.
The 1994 proof I think still stands and has not yet been found to have flaws. That is the other shoe that could drop possibly. It did with the first attempt.
Doom wrote: "Consider the fact that there is not "coal waste disposal" problem: you're just expected to breath it. The fact that nuclear power gives you the option of thinking about what to do with the waste is something of an advantage."
There is a coal waste problem. Coal produces clunkers and greenhouse gasses, not a good thing when done to excess like now. But the CO2 is natural and if not too much can be absorbed naturally into the ecosystem from where it came.
Radioactive waste is not natural in that it can not easily or safely be absorbed into the ecosystem. There are not natural cleaning
Doom wrote:
"Which is convienient, because they means we can tell the experts to get lost if they tell us something we don't want to hear. (How do you feel about the fundamentalist christians take on teaching biology, or the corporate conservative view of global warming scenarios?)"
I think you missed the point. I was describing the nature of the scientific process which is trying to prove things through trying and failing and trying and succeeding and rigorous peer review and continual changes. Scientists are always working on new things that are at the edge of what we don't know, that is why they are there. So my point is that if you ask a scientist about what something he will most likely be very careful in his explaination and give boundries about his answer and qualifications to the certainty of his results. If you ask a corporation or a drug company about what they know. Well all the qualifications get lost in the marketing because they have a vested interested in not appearing as though what they know they really are not entirely certain about.
It has nothing to do with the pseudo faith based "science" that one can find with certain groups that do not go through the rigorous testing to make sure process but just read a book and say it must be true without testing it. The issue there is not a scientific knowlege issue but an attribution issue. Scientists will not say. This happened because. They will say if you do this that will happen. A very different thing altogether.
"Doh! Waste products, Charlie! Damn, why didn't we think about that?"
Your probably right, but if you look at the extreme focus of scienctists on a particular task. Especially if they are given an applied problem to solve. They will work tirelessly to solve it. But if you remeber there were some famous nuclear scientists that after they had solved their particular small part of the puzzle and stood back and saw the atomic explosion, they thought "what have we done" and became outspoken anti-nuclear advocates. One person giving a small task to focus on quite often does not do global thinking or long range thinking. They probably thought, another team will solve that problem while I am working on my problem. I turns out that team has not solved that problem yet. They just keep sweeping it under the rug. The rug is getting very lumpy don't you think. And no it does not necesarrily follow that the people working on engine of a car think about what the rules of the road should be or the posibility that their son or daughter might be run over by a drunk driver. Think about it.
"We will soon be running out of oil and natural gas. So then we will have to start burning our vast coal reserves. But wait, per unit of energy, coal produces more radioactive material than a nuclear reactor. So I guess we will have to count out coal."
I assume you were talking about this point. My point was in response, that the energy needs can be cut down if energy is an issue.
As to coal producing more radioactivity I suspect you are talking about radioactivity released into the atmosphere. But if you think about it nuclear energy "IS" radioactivity just contained for a time, it is released from the reactor in the form of concentrated waste and is still around and we don't know what to do with it. So I think it is not looking at the entire picture to say that coal produces more radioactivity.
Lets get rid of that disposable society that throws out plastic plates and knifes and forks and packing materials that are all made from precious oil reserves too.
We keep focusing on short term cost just to let our descendants pick up the tab. You would think nobody had children or thought of their futures anymore.
Well lets see. I guess an important issue to cover first is whether you feel that there are some real problems that are national if not global in scale.
Let pick a few.
1. Projected Populations too large to be easily sustained at current levels of production and resources.
Projected Energy needs too large to be sustained at current levels of production.
Projected Petorleum needs too large to be sustained at current levels of production and current levels of resources.
If you believe that yes these are some national if not global problems we face. Then there are several degrees of freedom availble to us. Some more popular than others.
If say you allowed effective family planning you might help in #1 above. Wars, famine and pestilence effect those numbers but we are controlling the famine and pestilence better now and we haven't had a good purge of populations since well within the last few months (northern Africa I believe).
We have a system and ecology or an economy if you will with various part keeping other parts in balance. We are out of balance as we can see with our energy consumption and population and global warming.
What we can do is do a strong push to get the SUV's off the roads and go to hybrid technology which in the short and mid term would cut down our oil needs tremendously and help in the greenhouse gas department. What has our "representative" government done for all of us in this reguard? They rolled back pollution standard guidlines. Rather short term and self serving dont you think.
A very small change in gas milage makes big change in gas needs. Besides we will need that dwindling resource of oil for other purposes like medicines and plastics and fertilizers, rather than letting that precious resource go up in smoke.
We can use less electronics, cutting out those instant on appliances that are continuously draining energy. Use more solar heating, and solar electric. We can push in that direction.
We can foster more public transportation like they have in Europe and Japan. Everyone does not need a car if we plan it right.
Your assumption is that we "NEED" to consume. We don't. True a lot of our economy is based on consumption but then consuption is a desease as well. We will at some point find a new way to live, a new equalibrium. It is time to start making that move. If you have faith in the science then listen to what the scientists are saying about where the whole global environment is headed and why. The nuclear options has always been short term thinking as the pile of unusable highly radioactive waste grows. The same thinking and actions that is building in the globe in terms of global warming and systemic toxicity globally.
We are not taking responsibilty, some are taking the money and running. That will stop eventuall, I hope before some more major man made catastrophies.
It appears as though he was talking about Quantum Computation which is of course part of Quantum theory and yes Qbits store all the solutions to a computation until you read them when they collapse down to a specific result. Sort of like being in a different dimension of all possibilites and collapsing down into this reality. So what he was talking about seems to pertain.
Correction (not unlike what the article you refered to explained). The original 1995 proof was not correct as stated and had to be re-worked and resurrected in 1994 in a correct version. That is not to say that Wiles did not prove it but if his proof in 1955 was found to be flawed, then it was not proven in 1955. Not until all the steps are correct and bullet proof is it considered proven.
Riiiiiight.... what's a Qbit?
"It has long been very frustrating to see environmentalist romantics fly in the face of reason in railing against genetically-modified plants as a possible solution to population pressures, or arguing against nuclear power as a clean energy source."
o mide%20disaster.htm Look at Minamata http://www.american.edu/TED/MINAMATA.HTM
Well if you ask a scientist if he knows what he is doing especially in his field of study, of course he will tell you he knows what he is doing, but at the same time the process they are involved in is making theories, testing theories, peer review tearing down theories. The process is full of miss steps and rushes to conclusion and backing away when proven wrong or side effects are found.
When it comes to nuclear power. The nuclear physist or neuclear engineer have the job of finding ways of making it work and they are less involved in the waste products as we have seen. We have large quantities of very hot nuclear waste that have been generated by that clean energy source that no one knows what to do with. That knows what to do with of course includes the fact that no one wants it in there back yard or their aquafir. Just because we can do something that does not mean that when everything is factored in it is a good thing to do.
Science gave us Thalidamide in the 50's , remember, if you don't look up that catastrophe here http://www.obgyn.nus.edu.sg/maxdata1/The%20thalid
Sciece typically looks at one thing and controls out the rest of the envirionment to make the stucy simplier but something like Genentics which will be released out into an uncontrolled ecosystem that we all depend on "IS" a risk which the type of studies done do not provide any possiblility of showing the altered genes interactions with all of the things they can come in contact with out in the world.
Another short sided example is the use of Leaded Glaze cups by the Roman elite which some theorize was one of the contributing factors to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
Science is a human endevor filled with egos, competition, corporate greed etc. Look at the Tabaco companies withholding addiction knowledge. Look at the drug companies record of putting drugs on the market when they had known sever side effects. With Genetic engineering as with Nuclear Power, big business is also involved and as much as we can trust Science and Scientists, the businessmen have a vested interested in salable product as a bottom line whether they have alteristic motives as well. The recent examples besides the drug companies would be Enron and World Com.
By the way Nuclear energy is NOT a clean energy source. The really really really bad byproducts are just very concentrated so you can keep them out of sight. But tell that to Russian countryside that is still hot.
You also have to look at failure modes you know.
If I got the spelling correct form Economics class, where the cheap potato's sales rose when your raised the price of potatoes because people. Because people were so poor they did not then have enough money to spend on more expensive food, they had to back fill that by buying more potatoes. An inverted yeild curve. The same may be true with TV resources, the choice being, get cable and give up going out or to the movies because you cant afford both. But you get more entertainment at home and all those luscious mini drama sales presentations in between things.
Because they are selling you the OS as well and that has value. Should you pay for something extra that you don't want that if you didn't get you would have to pay several extra hundred dollars more for.
If you went to a car dealer and said I want that car but not the CD changer. They would pull the cd changer and put in the standard radio and sell it to you because they can do that and that part is a small part of the sale.
Next the ban on cucumbers. Woe is the salad of life.
I think in the story they talked about tight spiriling molecules that caused the light to spin around an extremly long path on the way through. The best glass was ground to a precise thickness so the you saw the proper season in your stored view always. That glass was the most expensive and the thicker the glass the longer time it recored and was more expensive.
But that was all technical cover for the central literary tool to show a man caught in the memory of his wife long dead. Not leaving the "Slow Glass" farm because he could still glimpse her in the window of their home which was also slow glass. Cleaver effective writting.
One of my favorite stories "Slow Glass" I think it was called. The 10 year delay was used as a poigant device to show a person living in the past with a wife and I think a child that he had lost. In the Scotish Highlands I believe where his business was to position "Slow Glass" to soak up the scenery for Urban dewellers to have a country view.
Wonderful writting. Thanks for the re-memory.
Exactly, the Justice Department has a vested interest in there not being violations of the Partriat act exposed. After all it gives them more freedom and leeway to do what they think needs to be done to accomplish their goal which is to capture and prosecute criminals. The freedoms and safeguards of the Constitution have always gotten in the way of their "doing their job". The watchdog commission of the Justice Department is a little like asking Enron to audit itself. No matter how consciencious the auditor, the politics of interest taints the whole thing.