The mechanism that makes cell phones harmful is that they inject comparatively high amounts of RF energy into cells, which damages the DNA.
Ionizing radiation damages DNA. Non-ionizing radiation (which is what cell phones and wifi networks use) can only damage cells by adding heat. Cell phones don't put out enough energy to raise the temperature by even 1o C.
It's possible that a yet-unknown mechanism exists for non-ionizing radiation to cause cancer. However, we've been dealing with energy in these frequencies for a long time, many of them in far more powerful amounts than cell phones (radar, microwave communication towers, etc.). Additionally, many of those sources are staffed by union workers, which are notorious for looking for any minor safety factor to justify a wage increase. If you want to prove a new mechanism in a mature area of physics, you're going to need very good proof.
Anecdotal evidence of "many brain tumors on that side of the head" is no replacement for a good scientific study; after all, 50% of brain tumors would happen on that side of the head, anyway. Actual studies on this matter have morethanadaquately disproven. Studies in support of a link are often shown to have problems.
I don't think there is any doubt that hand held analogue cell phones, when they used often, are associated with tumors. I don't know if this finding is also true for digital phones.
What's the mechanism that makes them dangerous? Why would digital phones be different from analog phones at similar frequencies?
Actually, I think that's the perfect word. The entire civil court system (at least in the US) is about vigilanteism (i.e., more concerned about personal revenge than justice). The rules for gathering evidence are much lower, and the rulings tend to make less sense (like burglars falling down somebody's stairs and suing for damages). While you won't go to jail, the financial burden might make you wish you had.
I'm curious--how often does a lower-court judge get overturned normally? From what I've seen, lower courts tend to defer to blind obedience to existing case law without considering all the facts; they don't like making waves. The higher courts set everything right on appeal. But my dataset might be skewed. Does anyone have some hard statistics on this matter?
Do you understand the difference between a radioactive metal isotope which releases high-energy biologically-damaging particles at a continuous rate for thousands of years . . .
That's the key right there: it's not at a continuous rate. The more radioactive the isotope is, the faster it sheds material and becomes something significantly less radioactive. Further, if it's still significantly radioactive, then it's almost always useful as fuel in another type of reactor (that radioactivity is energy that can be captured, after all). Whatever is left will half-life itself into insignificance within 50-100 years and then turns into something that you can sleep next to and absorb barely more radiation than an X-Ray for a broken bone.
And in the end all this does is tackle the electrical CO2 impact on the world. It does nothing about cars, and little about home heating/cooking (in Europe anyway).
Free Market will take care of home heating/cooking, assuming a nuclear program does get of the ground to keep electricity prices stable or even drop. As the cost of natural gas continues to rise, the affordability of pure electric heating devices becomes better. People will start switching over one by one on their own.
For cars, while electric cars may not be a big hit now, battery technology is only going to get better. Alternatively, there are ways to make synthetic petrol (which are carbon neutral). It takes a lot of energy to do it, of course, but again, at some point the cost of synthetic petrol is going to be cheaper than continuing to pump it out of the ground (and again, assuming a widespread nuclear program making cheap electricity).
110V mains? That contribution to loss of efficiency alone is really quite stunning.
This isn't something I've considered before. However, this is something that's probably too late to change now. We'll probably see IPv6 in widespread use before we see the US on European voltages.
By your logic, the planet as a whole is carbon neutral as nothing from the outside is adding carbon.
The earth is carbon neutral--the laws of thermodynamics make it that way. However, what matters is if the biosphere is carbon neutral. Carbon sequestered deep in the earth isn't part of the biosphere.
Carbon in the atmosphere can be absorbed by other plants, so putting carbon back in the atmosphere that was there already isn't an issue. Absorbing some carbon and burying it would be a good idea, though.
Guess what -- this working microbial fuel cell takes C,H,O in as vinegar or cellulose, and outputs H2 and CO2! Do you really call that 'carbon neutral' as a fuel source?
Yes, because that's what "carbon neutral" means. You only release as much carbon as you took out of the biosphere in the first place. It's not taking carbon that had been sequestered away for millions of years and releasing it over a 100 year timespan.
Of course, it's not 100% efficient, so it's still only a fancy battery. The additional power has to come from somewhere, and hopefully it won't be oil or coal. That said, I think supercapaciters are a more promising form of fancy battery.
There's certainly an element of self-actualization as a species involved here, but that doesn't mean the other levels of Maslow can't be served, too. That 600 billion has been spread over a 50 year time period. Just the assistance of satellites for weather forecasting alone makes up for that money, IMHO.
Many of these things are impractical or impossible to produce without a space program. They also spurn economic development down here (there's no market for GPS receivers if there's no GPS satellite in orbit). That money can and often is reinvested into further research. So it's not a zero-sum game of the space program taking away money from other research.
The first Red Alert was a direct predecessor to C&C1. Kane and Nod were working the USSR in the background the whole time (explicitly shown during the Russian campaign). Red Alert 2 does go off on a totally different tangent, though (a sort of alternate-alternate universe).
Of late, it seems that EA is cleaning itself up. I between screwing up C&C: Generals (a patch for the expansion left the game in a broken state for a few years), employee mistreatment, and generally writing mostly shovelware franchise titles like Madden, I had been boycotting them. But now I think they deserve another chance because:
Spore
Give away the original C&C
Made a C&C game that actually has a story connected to the rest of the C&C games
One of the first developers to realize the Wii had potential
So while I'm still keeping a close eye on them, they've at least convinced me that their games are worth buying.
Show me a fuel cell that can break 50% efficiency when you include the electrolysis process. Lithium cells are already well over 90%. "Making power" means being over 100% efficient.
A fuel cell is just a fancy battery, and not a particularly good one.
No, it's because the size of the optics was limited by what they could carry in the shuttle. Here's the math, for the interested.
In any case, pictures from the Hubble will never convince the moon hoax people. If the landings were faked in the first place, how much harder is it to fake a few telescope pictures?
Would I care if the moon suddenly became less beautiful? Yes. Yes I would. If I have to look up and see the moon obscured in never-settling dust from mining, the childhood memories I had of looking at the craters in clear view with a 100x telescope could never be experienced by the next couple generations.
OTOH, many environmentalists don't care about light pollution, which absolutely kills the view of the night sky. Plus, the easiest way to get rid of light pollution is to use better fixtures, which increases the amount of light being directed to the ground, and therefore requires less powerful lights. So it's a win for both the natural view of the night sky and for overall energy usage. If environmentalists weren't just luddites in disguise, they would support this.
Cell phones are not essential to your existence, They are nice to have but life doesn't stop without them.
An individual might be able to exist living a neolithic lifestyle, but all 6 billion people in the world cannot. To support that many people, you must have massive technological advantages to streamline food production and transportation, as well as other basic needs. Telecommunications plays a key role in that.
On top of that, my personal job (work-at-home programing contractor) can't be done without a phone and internet access. Ask me to throw those two things away, and I'll ask you to cover my expenses until I die.
AI was rarely limited by CPU power in the past. How many times have you seen articles of a game due for release in 6-12 months that claims "groundbreaking AI", but when it comes out is has the same piss-stupid AI as any other game?
The limitations on AI is with dev time. When deadlines are looming, it's the first thing cut.
Uhh, the post that started this thread tangent refered to the Hindenburg, which burned in 1936. Yes, the first Zepplin came out in 1900, but only one had the misfortune to burn to the ground and have it erroneously blamed on hydrogen.
They had asked the United States for helium, but the US feared that the Zeppelins would be converted for war (a legitimate concern, since Hitler was already in power and beginning expansionist policies). So they used hydrogen instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice theory, except that both the Wii and the DS are already multi-million sellers based largely on word of mouth.
The mechanism that makes cell phones harmful is that they inject comparatively high amounts of RF energy into cells, which damages the DNA.
Ionizing radiation damages DNA. Non-ionizing radiation (which is what cell phones and wifi networks use) can only damage cells by adding heat. Cell phones don't put out enough energy to raise the temperature by even 1o C.
It's possible that a yet-unknown mechanism exists for non-ionizing radiation to cause cancer. However, we've been dealing with energy in these frequencies for a long time, many of them in far more powerful amounts than cell phones (radar, microwave communication towers, etc.). Additionally, many of those sources are staffed by union workers, which are notorious for looking for any minor safety factor to justify a wage increase. If you want to prove a new mechanism in a mature area of physics, you're going to need very good proof.
Anecdotal evidence of "many brain tumors on that side of the head" is no replacement for a good scientific study; after all, 50% of brain tumors would happen on that side of the head, anyway. Actual studies on this matter have more than adaquately disproven. Studies in support of a link are often shown to have problems.
I don't think there is any doubt that hand held analogue cell phones, when they used often, are associated with tumors. I don't know if this finding is also true for digital phones.
What's the mechanism that makes them dangerous? Why would digital phones be different from analog phones at similar frequencies?
Math is funny. Those mathematicians will tell you that you actually can make a system where 2 + 2 = 5, as long as it's internally consistent.
A better example might be some easily measurable fact, like "the air we breathe is about 78% nitrogen".
Actually, I think that's the perfect word. The entire civil court system (at least in the US) is about vigilanteism (i.e., more concerned about personal revenge than justice). The rules for gathering evidence are much lower, and the rulings tend to make less sense (like burglars falling down somebody's stairs and suing for damages). While you won't go to jail, the financial burden might make you wish you had.
I'm curious--how often does a lower-court judge get overturned normally? From what I've seen, lower courts tend to defer to blind obedience to existing case law without considering all the facts; they don't like making waves. The higher courts set everything right on appeal. But my dataset might be skewed. Does anyone have some hard statistics on this matter?
Do you understand the difference between a radioactive metal isotope which releases high-energy biologically-damaging particles at a continuous rate for thousands of years . . .
That's the key right there: it's not at a continuous rate. The more radioactive the isotope is, the faster it sheds material and becomes something significantly less radioactive. Further, if it's still significantly radioactive, then it's almost always useful as fuel in another type of reactor (that radioactivity is energy that can be captured, after all). Whatever is left will half-life itself into insignificance within 50-100 years and then turns into something that you can sleep next to and absorb barely more radiation than an X-Ray for a broken bone.
And in the end all this does is tackle the electrical CO2 impact on the world. It does nothing about cars, and little about home heating/cooking (in Europe anyway).
Free Market will take care of home heating/cooking, assuming a nuclear program does get of the ground to keep electricity prices stable or even drop. As the cost of natural gas continues to rise, the affordability of pure electric heating devices becomes better. People will start switching over one by one on their own.
For cars, while electric cars may not be a big hit now, battery technology is only going to get better. Alternatively, there are ways to make synthetic petrol (which are carbon neutral). It takes a lot of energy to do it, of course, but again, at some point the cost of synthetic petrol is going to be cheaper than continuing to pump it out of the ground (and again, assuming a widespread nuclear program making cheap electricity).
110V mains? That contribution to loss of efficiency alone is really quite stunning.
This isn't something I've considered before. However, this is something that's probably too late to change now. We'll probably see IPv6 in widespread use before we see the US on European voltages.
Deep enough not to come back up on its own.
By your logic, the planet as a whole is carbon neutral as nothing from the outside is adding carbon.
The earth is carbon neutral--the laws of thermodynamics make it that way. However, what matters is if the biosphere is carbon neutral. Carbon sequestered deep in the earth isn't part of the biosphere.
Carbon in the atmosphere can be absorbed by other plants, so putting carbon back in the atmosphere that was there already isn't an issue. Absorbing some carbon and burying it would be a good idea, though.
Guess what -- this working microbial fuel cell takes C,H,O in as vinegar or cellulose, and outputs H2 and CO2! Do you really call that 'carbon neutral' as a fuel source?
Yes, because that's what "carbon neutral" means. You only release as much carbon as you took out of the biosphere in the first place. It's not taking carbon that had been sequestered away for millions of years and releasing it over a 100 year timespan.
Of course, it's not 100% efficient, so it's still only a fancy battery. The additional power has to come from somewhere, and hopefully it won't be oil or coal. That said, I think supercapaciters are a more promising form of fancy battery.
You mean the carbon they had already absorbed?
Stop breathing, you let out CO2 every time you exhale.
There's certainly an element of self-actualization as a species involved here, but that doesn't mean the other levels of Maslow can't be served, too. That 600 billion has been spread over a 50 year time period. Just the assistance of satellites for weather forecasting alone makes up for that money, IMHO.
Many of these things are impractical or impossible to produce without a space program. They also spurn economic development down here (there's no market for GPS receivers if there's no GPS satellite in orbit). That money can and often is reinvested into further research. So it's not a zero-sum game of the space program taking away money from other research.
The first Red Alert was a direct predecessor to C&C1. Kane and Nod were working the USSR in the background the whole time (explicitly shown during the Russian campaign). Red Alert 2 does go off on a totally different tangent, though (a sort of alternate-alternate universe).
Of late, it seems that EA is cleaning itself up. I between screwing up C&C: Generals (a patch for the expansion left the game in a broken state for a few years), employee mistreatment, and generally writing mostly shovelware franchise titles like Madden, I had been boycotting them. But now I think they deserve another chance because:
So while I'm still keeping a close eye on them, they've at least convinced me that their games are worth buying.
Even the ones that effectively have only two competing players?
Show me a fuel cell that can break 50% efficiency when you include the electrolysis process. Lithium cells are already well over 90%. "Making power" means being over 100% efficient.
A fuel cell is just a fancy battery, and not a particularly good one.
No, it's because the size of the optics was limited by what they could carry in the shuttle. Here's the math, for the interested.
In any case, pictures from the Hubble will never convince the moon hoax people. If the landings were faked in the first place, how much harder is it to fake a few telescope pictures?
Would I care if the moon suddenly became less beautiful? Yes. Yes I would. If I have to look up and see the moon obscured in never-settling dust from mining, the childhood memories I had of looking at the craters in clear view with a 100x telescope could never be experienced by the next couple generations.
OTOH, many environmentalists don't care about light pollution, which absolutely kills the view of the night sky. Plus, the easiest way to get rid of light pollution is to use better fixtures, which increases the amount of light being directed to the ground, and therefore requires less powerful lights. So it's a win for both the natural view of the night sky and for overall energy usage. If environmentalists weren't just luddites in disguise, they would support this.
Cell phones are not essential to your existence, They are nice to have but life doesn't stop without them.
An individual might be able to exist living a neolithic lifestyle, but all 6 billion people in the world cannot. To support that many people, you must have massive technological advantages to streamline food production and transportation, as well as other basic needs. Telecommunications plays a key role in that.
On top of that, my personal job (work-at-home programing contractor) can't be done without a phone and internet access. Ask me to throw those two things away, and I'll ask you to cover my expenses until I die.
AI was rarely limited by CPU power in the past. How many times have you seen articles of a game due for release in 6-12 months that claims "groundbreaking AI", but when it comes out is has the same piss-stupid AI as any other game?
The limitations on AI is with dev time. When deadlines are looming, it's the first thing cut.
Uhh, the post that started this thread tangent refered to the Hindenburg, which burned in 1936. Yes, the first Zepplin came out in 1900, but only one had the misfortune to burn to the ground and have it erroneously blamed on hydrogen.
And look! It was later decided in court that Stan Meyer is a fraud, to no great surprise of anyone who understands thermodynamics.
Germany *had* to use hydrogen; the Allies, in part of the long pissing-contest that lead up to WW1, wouldn't let them have any helium.
True enough. The main way get helium is to extract it from natural gas emitted from oil fields, such as the ones in Texas. Thus, the United States is one of the few countries with an abundance of helium.
They had asked the United States for helium, but the US feared that the Zeppelins would be converted for war (a legitimate concern, since Hitler was already in power and beginning expansionist policies). So they used hydrogen instead.