Personally, I look at this as a good solution to the problem of existing plants that can't be gotten rid of right now because the alternatives aren't ready yet. I would only have issues if the coal companies tried to use this tech as a way to justify the building of new plants or to lobby for a reduction in spending on alternative technologies. I can see why people would be justified in being wary of the coal industry's intentions here.
Actually, the numbers I've seen don't support the idea that there is enough Uranium in the ground to last, quite, that long, especially at current prices. However, there is that much uranium in small particles spread throughout the world's oceans. Should the price of uranium go up by a small amount, it will be cost effective to implement the more expensive technology needed to tap that source. Also, since fuel prices are a minuscule percentage of the total cost of operating a nuclear power plant, the price of the electricity should see, virtually, no increase.
The trick isn't whether or not money was spent developing this technology. The trick is in deciding where this should be implemented and what it means for the future of coal as a technology. Sure, it makes sense to implement this, and any other feasible clean coal technology, in older plants as those plants aren't going to go away for a long time. However, what we shouldn't be doing is allowing the coal industry to use this, or similar, technology as an excuse to build new plants or lobby for a decrease in effort to develop alternative technologies. I think that's what people have an issue with here. Of course, the realist in me says that economic and national security reasons might end up justifying the construction of a small number of additional coal plants in the time-frame before those alternative technologies mature to the point where they can be implemented. But, that should be kept to an absolute minimum as those kinds of pressure, as long as they aren't strong enough to destabilize the country, will serve to accelerate the alternatives.
Actually, yes our challenge is to stop using ancient sunlight completely, eventually. Burning fossil fuels as a significant portion of our energy generation produces lots of nasty air pollution (which is bad for human health and the environment, even if you don't believe in global climate change) and almost guarantees a horrible economic crash once the resources finally start to run out (which will be in the not so distant future considering the amount we consume now and the rate at which that consumption is growing). We can't afford to let industry make a token gesture towards solving the problem and use that as an excuse to keep expanding the use of fossil fuels. Sure, we should let them convert old plants over to using this tech (as well as any other "clean coal" tech that comes along) but we should never allow them to build more plants even if they're using this technology in their construction. The others above are right to be wary of the possibility that the coal industry will use this technology as a red herring to distract from the bigger picture.
Most of the time, stereotypes suck, but virtually all home-school parents fall into one of two categories (or both). They're either religious fundamentalists or they're morons and it seems to me that there are more of the latter than the former. So many people in this country have bought into the meme that public schools suck that they just think that they can, naturally, do a better job. While I agree that there are plenty of places in this country where the school systems need to be improved, the truth is that theyâ(TM)re nowhere near as bad as people make them out to be.
The simple fact is that most states (such as NY, IL, and most of the northeast) require full-time teachers to earn masters degrees in order to get a license to teach in public schools. In NY they also, slowly, increase their pay rate if theyâ(TM)re willing to continue taking advanced classes throughout their careers. Since, in most cases, they do this as a career dealing with hundreds or thousands of students over the course of their careers they get massive amounts of experience compared to a parent teaching a few kids. Also, teachers often stick to one grade level or shift within a limited range of grades. This means that a kid going through the system is more likely to encounter teachers that are specialized in dealing with kids their age/grade.
Beyond the experience of the teachers, you have obscene numbers of man-hours that have gone into designing the curriculums that public schools implement. There is much more to these curriculums and teaching systems than just the textbooks that a home-schooling parent may be able to purchase. Often, some of those advanced classes that teachers go to train them in the accompanying teaching method designed with the textbook in mind. These teaching systems (more common in the lower elementary school grades) are designed by experts in the field of education and use decades of practical results to justify their formulation.
You may be wondering why I know so much about this topic. My mom has been an early elementary school teacher since before I was born. For the last decade, or so, sheâ(TM)s been teaching second grade. Iâ(TM)ve seen what she goes through to succeed at her job, the hours of planning and paperwork before and after classes; the college classes in her spare time; the set-up and organization of her classroom; etc. Most of this stuff is never seen by the students or the parents, certainly not by the whiners that complain about how teachers are lazy and overpaid. Iâ(TM)m not saying that all teachers put this much effort into it, but itâ(TM)s a lot more common that most people think.
All this has additional meaning for me when I hear people talk about home-schooling because of the stories sheâ(TM)s relayed to me about her interactions with such parents. Usually, they go like this:
Parent decides that public schools are cesspits and that they can do a much better job teaching their little Johnny or Cindy themselves. After all, those teachers only work six hours a day and get all summer of, how hard can it really be?
A couple months or years later, they decide to speak with a teacher at their kidâ(TM)s equivalent grade level for one reason or another. (they need teaching materials, they need to get the kid tested with standardized tests, whatever.)
While in the meeting, the topic inevitably steers towards the little tikeâ(TM)s present academic progress as it compares to what is being taught in the school. The parent, inevitably, starts out the discussion very proud of the progress theyâ(TM)ve made in teaching their child. The look on their face, slowly, goes from confident pride to horror as the teacher (especially if dealing with the formative early elementary grades) runs down a massive laundry list of topics that the class has already gone through and the parent realizes just how far behind their own child now is. Often, that same child finds themselves back in public school the nex
Actually, it works just fine. They use a similar technique in the new 3d projectors theaters have been installing for movies like James Cameron's Avatar. They use passively polarized glasses instead of the active shutter glasses in this article, but it's the same basic effect. They wouldn't be wasting the money to install them if a significant portion of the population wasn't capable of seeing the effect.
Of course, for dynamic content like video games, you could increase the effect dramatically by pairing it with head tracking technology like that demonstrated by Johnny Lee. In fact, there's even an Open Source project called FreeTrack that uses standard webcams and simple LED circuits to do exactly that at extremely low costs. They've had a stable release version out for a while now.
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THE ONE-WAY TRIP TO MARS!!!
That's right, now you can lay down your life to advance the state of human knowledge!
A return trip from the red planet is EXPENSIVE. Why should Uncle Sam have to pay to schlep your worthless behind back to Earth once you've outlived your usefulness?
By being a good, little, worker bee and, willing, laying down your life at the end of your assigned task, you will help save the most important thing in life, MONEY! And, as an added bonus, you save us the expense of the, otherwise traditional, ticker-tape parade.
So, if you happen to have the advanced skill-set needed to explore another world, come on down to your nearest NASA recruiter. If you qualify, we could be kissing your, disposable, ass goodbye, on your very own suicide mission, before you know it!
You seem to be implying that the Japanese government is being foolish in spending this money. However, even if you have this problem with the US government, assuming that the Japanese are the same is like comparing apples and oranges. The Japanese (people and government) are known for, on the average, being extremely fiscally conservative. One of the reason that their recessions tend to be so long lasting is that they, usually, don't do much stimulus spending to try pulling out of them. Sure, this is a $21 billion project, but it's spread out over three decades (which is how long the article says it'll take to make it operational). Also, the article implies that they will be working with independent companies and other countries which may be helping to defray some of the cost. Of course, we have to assume that the cost will run over budget (as these kinds of projects often do considering that they're trying to do something that's never been done before) but even so it's not a bad deal if it produces a new source of low cost energy which doesn't consume any, Earth based, natural resources (which Japan is, notoriously, short on). It will provide Japan, along with any other country that decides to implement it, with significant economic independence from the other countries in the world, especially the, notoriously unstable, ones which posses much of the fossil fuel resources.
On the other hand, we can look at the other possibilities should the have chosen to not get involved. Space based solar power is a MASSIVELY expensive venture to get into. Considering that we are, just now, beginning to see companies break into orbital space travel (with most companies involved still stuck in sub-orbital status) it's reasonable to state that it's unlikely that we would see private industry get to a point where they could consider doing a project like this within out lifetimes (barring the invention of life extending technologies). This isn't to say that the Japanese government won't be able to take advantage of what strides private industry has made to use companies like SpaceX for low cost orbital launching of the components of this project (a major issue for this project is the cost, per pound, of launching the components into orbit).
Without this kind of technology becoming available in the next few decades, the number of options available to the Japanese is slimmed when it comes to producing power for their population. Sure, they can try to use other eco-friendly (and, conveniently, free of most encumbering ties to the less stable countries of the world) technologies such as geothermal, solar, and wind; but those probably won't cover all their needs.
They could try to fill the rest of their need with Nuclear (which I am a big fan of and would, also, free them from entangling relationships with the oil producing countries), but they have to put the spent fuel somewhere and space is, obviously, at a premium in Japan. They also may, simply, not have good geological structures within their boarders to produce a stable location for long-term storage. Another, possible, issue is the Japanese public's opinion on nuclear power. I don't know much about it, but I'm under the impression that they, understandably, have seriously negative attitude toward nuclear weapons. If this attitude extends to nuclear power, then I can see where that might stop any plans for it's use.
In the end, they'd probably be stuck with, traditional, fossil fuel technology. This would mean they'd be producing large amounts of green-house gasses (which you, personally, may not care about but the fact that the "Kyoto" treaty was signed in Kyoto Japan implies that the Japanese population probably is concerned about the issue of human caused global climate change) and would still be tied to the instability in the oil producing nations of the world.
What the Japanese seem to have decided is that they have a good potential to improve the long-term stability/quality of life for their country by using government funds to acce
Can someone fill me in on what this would be good for? Since it's statistics based and not, officially, affiliated with the airlines, you can't really expect to use it to arrive at the airport later than officially scheduled (I suppose you could, but there's a good chance that your, particular, flight will buck the statistical averages and will take off sooner than predicted without you). If they worked, directly, with the airlines and got the airlines to guarantee that they wont take off earlier than the statistical model predicts then I could see it being useful but that's never gonna happen because they only care about finishing as many flights per hour as possible.
"There were no charitable organizations or free clinics that he could have gone to? (doubtful)"
You have no personal experience with trying to get medical care while poor do you? Are you just talking out your ass? Charitable organizations willing to cover the medical bills for a major illness are few and far between in this country. Even if you happen to be in an area where there is one, you still have to get them to accept you as a case and, often, there is a huge waiting list. Don't agree? Then, put up or shut up. Name off a few such agencies yourself. If they're so common, then you must know some by name.
"I also doubt that not having health care was the primary concern for this death. What was the cause?"
Ah, the old "blame the victim" game. You know nothing about this person's situation but you are ready to assume the worst about them because it fits your personal agenda/beliefs. The truth is that not having health care leads to an inability to see a doctor for regular checkups or even minor treatment. In fact, as others have pointed out, you aren't guaranteed any health care at all unless you have an immediate emergency (and a terminal condition doesn't count until you are minutes away from death). Many serious illnesses (such as Cancer, AIDS, Gangreen, Rabies, etc.) are either easily treated if found early leading to either a cure (for gangreen and Rabis) or a vast increase in lifespan (for Cancer or AIDS). These same illnesses are virtually impossible to treat if they're only addresses minutes before they kill the patient.
"And I'd love to see somebody pay 2200/yr for the cheapest medical insurance advertised on tv when they make about 16.5K before taxes."
Also, if you're in the situation the OP's friend was in you couldn't get health insurance for 10x that much money. American health insurance companies can refuse, outright, to cover you if you have a pre-existing condition. So, someone making minimum wage, and having a hard time even putting food on the table, has to choose between paying that $2200/yr in the off chance they develop a serious illness later in life, or they can go without it and be unable to receive adequate medical care should they end up getting seriously ill.
Ok, I'll be the first to admit that Lucas isn't the best designer in the world, and that the prequels sucked, but most of the points brought up are kinda garbage.
R2-D2:
Stairs aren't a problem when you're original design included jets.
The "slapstick" oil could have, simply, been a standard coolant/lubricant drain.
The voice is an issue, but we don't really know what species designed that model of robot. Perhaps they can understand the chirps he makes. Since he's a technical component and not a protocol droid he would have no need for a large collection of languages.
C3PO:
He wasn't just put together by an eight year old, he was put together by an eight year old slave using scrap parts.
As has been pointed out by others here, he's intended to be a "protocol droid" which implies that he's meant to, primarily, focus on things like knowing proper etiquette for a situation and language translation. The need for him to have more than basic mobility/flexibility would be non-existent. The fact that Anikan says he built the droid to help his mother do chores could simply mean that he's making do with a sub-optimal helper for his mom because of the limited source of parts he can scavenge.
The comments about C3-P0's personality are 100% opinion base and have no real justification. It's not unreasonable to expect that servant robots might be designed with an effeminate personality in order to look more subservient to their wealth masters pair that with the fact that we don't know how much impact the eight year old builder might have had on it and it could, easily, end up being a poor stereotype as seen through the eyes of an eight year old.
Lightsaber
Since we don't know how to build a real lightsaber, we don't know how they react when they come into contact with each other (other than the fact that they can't pass through each other). For all we know, two lightsabers coming into contact with each other may create a form of electrostatic friction with each other that stops people from sliding the two "blades" along each other. That would make a blade guard unnecessary.
Blaster
There is nothing about the blaster that, necessarily, implies that it's firing light beams. In fact, the slow speed the author ridicules implies that it might be some form of super-heated plasma ball.
As for dodging them, the movies never gave me the impression that they moved all that slow. They seemed, to me, to move no slower than traditional tracer rounds. The only people I saw being show to react fact enough to "dodge" individual rounds were the Jedi characters who are, specifically, supposed to posses super-human reflexes. Plenty of people dodged when they were fired at, but even people in real life respond, ineffectively, when bullets are wizzing past their heads.
Landspeeders, etc.
As others have pointed out, Luke is supposed to be a poor farmer's adopted child and a crack pilot. Poor farmers, the world over, drive far worse (and less safe) vehicles that a Yugo. The idea that he "hot dogs" it without seat belts isn't so hard to believe in that context.
Stormtrooper Armor
It may have been designed to protect more against physical attacks more than blasters since, without the armor, the troops might be even more susceptible to injury. This would lead to a situation, like in the Dune novels, where a whole class of weapons would become useless (in this case physical weapons like clubs and bullets) and only the most advanced of enemies have the technology to be any kind of threat (or, in the case of the Dune novels, the skill level/training to use a bladed weapon to get through the personal energy shields).
Perhaps the armor protects them more than we see in the movie. Just because they fall down when shot, doesn't mean that they're, necessarily, dead. In real life, the best "bullet-proof" tactical armo
Never underestimate the need to be grandiose just for the hell of it, especially when it comes to government. The US congress could meet in a high-school gym, but they chose to build the massive, ornate, capital rotunda instead. For that matter, the same goes for the open pits in the Emperor's thrown room. Even if you didn't claim that it hadn't been completed yet (since the station was supposed to be incomplete at that point), perhaps he was going for a grandiose, and in this case intimidating, look with huge, bottomless, pits.
Sure, there's no weather on the moon, and we could just require the astronauts give the panels a wide berth to avoid dust being kicked up or accidental impacts, but even the process of installation will kick up a lot of dust, and moon dust is notorious for being extra fine and sticking to everything (I've heard that it's even questionable as to whether it might help cause lung cancer because of the tiny particle size). Then, as you pointed out, there is the question of night time for orbital satellites/stations and things on other planets such as Mars and whether it would cause the need to absurd amounts of batteries.
I don't think we shouldn't be planning anything with an expectation of being able to make use of Fusion power (with the exception of that already implemented in Hydrogen bombs for things like the original Orion Project concept). On the other hand, I don't think it's entirely fair to make the 5-10 year criticisms regarding Fusion research. Even the politicians have been honest enough to acknowledge that Fusion is, at least, 50 years away from being useful. The scientists tend to be even more honest about it and suggest 50-60 years if it even turns out to be economically feasible at all (an important addendum that the politicians tend to leave off). I think we'll see it eventually (hopefully much sooner than, generally, expected if projects like Brussard's Polywell work out) but, as I said, I don't think we can plan other things assuming it will happen.
Personally, I think that nuclear fusion is the perfect energy source for space travel as it, inherently, provides a much higher energy density than any chemical based technology can possibly provide. As an added bonus, we've spent much of the last 50 years developing compact; self contained; and high power nuclear generators for use in our nuclear submarine fleet. For long distance vehicle usage, we could probably save lots of weight by only shielding the part of the reactor that points towards the crew compartment. For stationary usage on the Moon or Mars, we could probably eliminate the need for most artificial shielding, entirely, by burying the generator in the soil. There's even a chance that, in the process of modifying the generators for use in space based environments, they will be able to greatly decrease the inherent weight of the generators using advanced materials as, my understanding is that, submarines don't put as much emphasis on weight savings since, sometimes, additional weight can be useful for the control of buoyancy (not 100% sure of that, but it's what I've been lead to believe).
I think we could really give intra-solar system travel a kick in the pants if we used Nuclear submarine sized Fission reactors to power large, high powered, ion engines. The trick, of course, is to develop extremely high durability launch containers for the fuel (possibly pebble bed technology) and, possibly, requiring that these systems are never used in systems designed to stay in constant Earth orbit (we wouldn't want that stuff to fall back to Earth later when the thing had been decommissioned/abandoned like how we treat old satellites today).
Oh, and don't forget that, if you're one of those sticklers that doesn't want to immigrate, you should invest in one of those lead codpieces. You wouldn't want to devolve into a "special" now would you...
Of course, 99% of the middle class won't see it. $50 million is a drop in the bucket considering, both, the size of the US budget and the population of the country. Even if it were divided evenly, a dollar each, there wouldn't be enough to go around. However, there is a good chance that, assuming you aren't too old, this might boost your 401k in time for your retirement.
The US, simply, can't compete against much of the rest of the world at most of the traditional industries. Our quality of life is too high and would have to nose-dive to make us competitive. The places that we've always dominated, since WWII when we really first developed a middle class with above average quality of life, have been high-tech such as computers, pharmaceuticals, materials science, etc. As we move forward, it's inevitable that other countries will start to catch up in some of those places and out population will continue to grow.
In order to stay competitive we need to continue to advance our most competitive industries and seek out new ones that revolutionize life enough such that they become the next "semiconductor industry". One example is the development of new/economical energy generation/transport methods such as Nuclear/solar/wind/"clean coal"/bio-fuel/wave/geothermal/fuel cells/batteries/etc. Another example, more applicable to this discussion, is commercialized space travel.
We've reached a point where the price of space travel is withing "spitting distance" of being cheap enough for commercial ventures to develop their own vehicle/stations. There are already a number of start-ups that are flirting with it such as Virgin Galactic developing a sub-orbital vehicle and Bigilow Aaerospace designing fractional size prototype space stations but implementing vehicles capable of re-entry and full size/fully functional stations will be much, much more expensive. Government grants are a way to accelerate the development of this technology and, potentially, open up the field to a broader market faster in the same way the plumitting cost of semiconductors in the 80's made it possible for everyone in the country to have a computer on their desk within a decade or so instead of just big companies/colleges having expensive supercomputers.
Right now, the only, practical, uses for space travel are communications satellites, military, GPS, and pure research. Sure, there have been a few tourist that have been lucky enough to go to the ISS, but even at the high prices they've paid, they don't represent a realistic "industry". If we could get the cost of entry to drop by an order of magnitude (which is realistic to expect when you take it out of the hands of a military-like organization like NASA, implement the most modern tech, and increase the number of flights to take advantage of economies of scale) then it should open up all sorts of other growth markets for things like tourism, power generation/transmission, commercial materials science development/production, and the mining of things like the moon and asteroids for rare materials.
So, sinking a mere $50 million (mere in government terms as well as relation to what it takes to get anything of significance done in today's world, of course) is a small price to pay if it can help someone like Burt Rutan produce a low cost vehicle that opens up a revolutionary new industry to help re-grow the economy.
Of course he's trolling. Only a troll would deny the existence of sock gnomes. It's a well known fact that sock gnomes are a staple of the troll diet. If everyone knew how good they were, the troll population would starve to death. Seriously, writing BS posts online and living under bridges can make a person really hungry.
Actually, as an American, I just assumed that, since they hadn't been able to get the British legal system to refuse extradition, they were planning to attack the problem from the other end and try to get the American legal system to rescind the extradition request. Of course, I was a little confused about how they planned on getting the US court system to just skip over all the levels of appeals courts and go straight to the Supreme Court.
Then it turns out that his "wife" is actually one of his split personalities and he is, at this very moment, working as a kernal hacker wearing a dress, stilettos, and a wig.
I'm pretty sure that you end up paying the application fees no matter if they end up awarding the patent or not. In fact, last time I checked the costs of applying for a patent, I was under the impression that you keep having to pay out more for each time the patent gets kicked back to you for modification by the patent clerks. (I could be misunderstanding the process though).
Yea, the type of battery they're using is bleeding edge technology and isn't really massed produced enough to have dropped in price. The real breakthrough for advance automotive battery pricing should come when Chevy and Toyota come out with their plug-in hybrids and Nissan comes out with the EV they just announced. Not only will they mass produce them in quantities that should drop the price, they will also have engineered battery packs rugged enough for long-term use in all weather conditions.
Nope, the batteries used in iPods and laptops use a different chemistry from the ones the article mentions are being used here. They're made by a company called a123systems and are designed to not be able to self-ignite like normal Lithium Ion batteries. One downside is that they have slightly lower power density, however they make up for it by being able to charge/discharge vastly faster than the older batteries. This is one of the companies that was working with GM to design the battery packs for the Chevy Volt.
A capacitor that large would have a number of problems:
* It would be, monumentally, more expensive than the, already expensive, battery pack in the car.
* Since capacitors don't have, even close, to the same power density as a battery, it would take up a massive amount of space.e
* It would discharge way too fast for even the most advanced battery to handle (giving you the exact opposite problem as what you started with).
* The ultra-fast discharge would vaporize even the largest normal connector you could use, requiring obscenely expensive industrial connectors designed for long distance power transmission.
Those are just the problems I can think of off the top of my head...
The way I see it, the real question should be "does it increase the ambiguity of the language or decrease it's expressive power?". As long as someone understands what is being said (with slang like "ain't" that has been in use long enough so it is widely known) then I don't see a problem with it. We may become, somewhat Balkanized in the short-term, but, hopefully, this will serve to get those conservatives used to living in a pluralistic society and will wear down some of their xenophobia. I see the real problem as being the mindset of fearing anyone that talks differently from you. Sure, a little of it is natural but we have been way past that point for a long time and it's something that the US, as a culture, should train itself away from.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I look at this as a good solution to the problem of existing plants that can't be gotten rid of right now because the alternatives aren't ready yet. I would only have issues if the coal companies tried to use this tech as a way to justify the building of new plants or to lobby for a reduction in spending on alternative technologies. I can see why people would be justified in being wary of the coal industry's intentions here.
Actually, the numbers I've seen don't support the idea that there is enough Uranium in the ground to last, quite, that long, especially at current prices. However, there is that much uranium in small particles spread throughout the world's oceans. Should the price of uranium go up by a small amount, it will be cost effective to implement the more expensive technology needed to tap that source. Also, since fuel prices are a minuscule percentage of the total cost of operating a nuclear power plant, the price of the electricity should see, virtually, no increase.
The trick isn't whether or not money was spent developing this technology. The trick is in deciding where this should be implemented and what it means for the future of coal as a technology. Sure, it makes sense to implement this, and any other feasible clean coal technology, in older plants as those plants aren't going to go away for a long time. However, what we shouldn't be doing is allowing the coal industry to use this, or similar, technology as an excuse to build new plants or lobby for a decrease in effort to develop alternative technologies. I think that's what people have an issue with here. Of course, the realist in me says that economic and national security reasons might end up justifying the construction of a small number of additional coal plants in the time-frame before those alternative technologies mature to the point where they can be implemented. But, that should be kept to an absolute minimum as those kinds of pressure, as long as they aren't strong enough to destabilize the country, will serve to accelerate the alternatives.
Actually, yes our challenge is to stop using ancient sunlight completely, eventually. Burning fossil fuels as a significant portion of our energy generation produces lots of nasty air pollution (which is bad for human health and the environment, even if you don't believe in global climate change) and almost guarantees a horrible economic crash once the resources finally start to run out (which will be in the not so distant future considering the amount we consume now and the rate at which that consumption is growing). We can't afford to let industry make a token gesture towards solving the problem and use that as an excuse to keep expanding the use of fossil fuels. Sure, we should let them convert old plants over to using this tech (as well as any other "clean coal" tech that comes along) but we should never allow them to build more plants even if they're using this technology in their construction. The others above are right to be wary of the possibility that the coal industry will use this technology as a red herring to distract from the bigger picture.
Most of the time, stereotypes suck, but virtually all home-school parents fall into one of two categories (or both). They're either religious fundamentalists or they're morons and it seems to me that there are more of the latter than the former. So many people in this country have bought into the meme that public schools suck that they just think that they can, naturally, do a better job. While I agree that there are plenty of places in this country where the school systems need to be improved, the truth is that theyâ(TM)re nowhere near as bad as people make them out to be.
The simple fact is that most states (such as NY, IL, and most of the northeast) require full-time teachers to earn masters degrees in order to get a license to teach in public schools. In NY they also, slowly, increase their pay rate if theyâ(TM)re willing to continue taking advanced classes throughout their careers. Since, in most cases, they do this as a career dealing with hundreds or thousands of students over the course of their careers they get massive amounts of experience compared to a parent teaching a few kids. Also, teachers often stick to one grade level or shift within a limited range of grades. This means that a kid going through the system is more likely to encounter teachers that are specialized in dealing with kids their age/grade.
Beyond the experience of the teachers, you have obscene numbers of man-hours that have gone into designing the curriculums that public schools implement. There is much more to these curriculums and teaching systems than just the textbooks that a home-schooling parent may be able to purchase. Often, some of those advanced classes that teachers go to train them in the accompanying teaching method designed with the textbook in mind. These teaching systems (more common in the lower elementary school grades) are designed by experts in the field of education and use decades of practical results to justify their formulation.
You may be wondering why I know so much about this topic. My mom has been an early elementary school teacher since before I was born. For the last decade, or so, sheâ(TM)s been teaching second grade. Iâ(TM)ve seen what she goes through to succeed at her job, the hours of planning and paperwork before and after classes; the college classes in her spare time; the set-up and organization of her classroom; etc. Most of this stuff is never seen by the students or the parents, certainly not by the whiners that complain about how teachers are lazy and overpaid. Iâ(TM)m not saying that all teachers put this much effort into it, but itâ(TM)s a lot more common that most people think.
All this has additional meaning for me when I hear people talk about home-schooling because of the stories sheâ(TM)s relayed to me about her interactions with such parents. Usually, they go like this:
Actually, it works just fine. They use a similar technique in the new 3d projectors theaters have been installing for movies like James Cameron's Avatar. They use passively polarized glasses instead of the active shutter glasses in this article, but it's the same basic effect. They wouldn't be wasting the money to install them if a significant portion of the population wasn't capable of seeing the effect.
Of course, for dynamic content like video games, you could increase the effect dramatically by pairing it with head tracking technology like that demonstrated by Johnny Lee. In fact, there's even an Open Source project called FreeTrack that uses standard webcams and simple LED circuits to do exactly that at extremely low costs. They've had a stable release version out for a while now.
In the hallowed tradition of such human endeavors as the Tuskegee Anemia experiments, German medical experiments on Jews, and Japanese biological weapons experiments on POWs; we bring you...
THE ONE-WAY TRIP TO MARS!!!
That's right, now you can lay down your life to advance the state of human knowledge!
A return trip from the red planet is EXPENSIVE. Why should Uncle Sam have to pay to schlep your worthless behind back to Earth once you've outlived your usefulness?
By being a good, little, worker bee and, willing, laying down your life at the end of your assigned task, you will help save the most important thing in life, MONEY! And, as an added bonus, you save us the expense of the, otherwise traditional, ticker-tape parade.
So, if you happen to have the advanced skill-set needed to explore another world, come on down to your nearest NASA recruiter. If you qualify, we could be kissing your, disposable, ass goodbye, on your very own suicide mission, before you know it!
You seem to be implying that the Japanese government is being foolish in spending this money. However, even if you have this problem with the US government, assuming that the Japanese are the same is like comparing apples and oranges. The Japanese (people and government) are known for, on the average, being extremely fiscally conservative. One of the reason that their recessions tend to be so long lasting is that they, usually, don't do much stimulus spending to try pulling out of them. Sure, this is a $21 billion project, but it's spread out over three decades (which is how long the article says it'll take to make it operational). Also, the article implies that they will be working with independent companies and other countries which may be helping to defray some of the cost. Of course, we have to assume that the cost will run over budget (as these kinds of projects often do considering that they're trying to do something that's never been done before) but even so it's not a bad deal if it produces a new source of low cost energy which doesn't consume any, Earth based, natural resources (which Japan is, notoriously, short on). It will provide Japan, along with any other country that decides to implement it, with significant economic independence from the other countries in the world, especially the, notoriously unstable, ones which posses much of the fossil fuel resources.
On the other hand, we can look at the other possibilities should the have chosen to not get involved. Space based solar power is a MASSIVELY expensive venture to get into. Considering that we are, just now, beginning to see companies break into orbital space travel (with most companies involved still stuck in sub-orbital status) it's reasonable to state that it's unlikely that we would see private industry get to a point where they could consider doing a project like this within out lifetimes (barring the invention of life extending technologies). This isn't to say that the Japanese government won't be able to take advantage of what strides private industry has made to use companies like SpaceX for low cost orbital launching of the components of this project (a major issue for this project is the cost, per pound, of launching the components into orbit).
Without this kind of technology becoming available in the next few decades, the number of options available to the Japanese is slimmed when it comes to producing power for their population. Sure, they can try to use other eco-friendly (and, conveniently, free of most encumbering ties to the less stable countries of the world) technologies such as geothermal, solar, and wind; but those probably won't cover all their needs.
They could try to fill the rest of their need with Nuclear (which I am a big fan of and would, also, free them from entangling relationships with the oil producing countries), but they have to put the spent fuel somewhere and space is, obviously, at a premium in Japan. They also may, simply, not have good geological structures within their boarders to produce a stable location for long-term storage. Another, possible, issue is the Japanese public's opinion on nuclear power. I don't know much about it, but I'm under the impression that they, understandably, have seriously negative attitude toward nuclear weapons. If this attitude extends to nuclear power, then I can see where that might stop any plans for it's use.
In the end, they'd probably be stuck with, traditional, fossil fuel technology. This would mean they'd be producing large amounts of green-house gasses (which you, personally, may not care about but the fact that the "Kyoto" treaty was signed in Kyoto Japan implies that the Japanese population probably is concerned about the issue of human caused global climate change) and would still be tied to the instability in the oil producing nations of the world.
What the Japanese seem to have decided is that they have a good potential to improve the long-term stability/quality of life for their country by using government funds to acce
Can someone fill me in on what this would be good for? Since it's statistics based and not, officially, affiliated with the airlines, you can't really expect to use it to arrive at the airport later than officially scheduled (I suppose you could, but there's a good chance that your, particular, flight will buck the statistical averages and will take off sooner than predicted without you). If they worked, directly, with the airlines and got the airlines to guarantee that they wont take off earlier than the statistical model predicts then I could see it being useful but that's never gonna happen because they only care about finishing as many flights per hour as possible.
"There were no charitable organizations or free clinics that he could have gone to? (doubtful)"
You have no personal experience with trying to get medical care while poor do you? Are you just talking out your ass? Charitable organizations willing to cover the medical bills for a major illness are few and far between in this country. Even if you happen to be in an area where there is one, you still have to get them to accept you as a case and, often, there is a huge waiting list. Don't agree? Then, put up or shut up. Name off a few such agencies yourself. If they're so common, then you must know some by name.
"I also doubt that not having health care was the primary concern for this death. What was the cause?"
Ah, the old "blame the victim" game. You know nothing about this person's situation but you are ready to assume the worst about them because it fits your personal agenda/beliefs. The truth is that not having health care leads to an inability to see a doctor for regular checkups or even minor treatment. In fact, as others have pointed out, you aren't guaranteed any health care at all unless you have an immediate emergency (and a terminal condition doesn't count until you are minutes away from death). Many serious illnesses (such as Cancer, AIDS, Gangreen, Rabies, etc.) are either easily treated if found early leading to either a cure (for gangreen and Rabis) or a vast increase in lifespan (for Cancer or AIDS). These same illnesses are virtually impossible to treat if they're only addresses minutes before they kill the patient.
"And I'd love to see somebody pay 2200/yr for the cheapest medical insurance advertised on tv when they make about 16.5K before taxes."
Also, if you're in the situation the OP's friend was in you couldn't get health insurance for 10x that much money. American health insurance companies can refuse, outright, to cover you if you have a pre-existing condition. So, someone making minimum wage, and having a hard time even putting food on the table, has to choose between paying that $2200/yr in the off chance they develop a serious illness later in life, or they can go without it and be unable to receive adequate medical care should they end up getting seriously ill.
Ok, I'll be the first to admit that Lucas isn't the best designer in the world, and that the prequels sucked, but most of the points brought up are kinda garbage.
Never underestimate the need to be grandiose just for the hell of it, especially when it comes to government. The US congress could meet in a high-school gym, but they chose to build the massive, ornate, capital rotunda instead. For that matter, the same goes for the open pits in the Emperor's thrown room. Even if you didn't claim that it hadn't been completed yet (since the station was supposed to be incomplete at that point), perhaps he was going for a grandiose, and in this case intimidating, look with huge, bottomless, pits.
Sure, there's no weather on the moon, and we could just require the astronauts give the panels a wide berth to avoid dust being kicked up or accidental impacts, but even the process of installation will kick up a lot of dust, and moon dust is notorious for being extra fine and sticking to everything (I've heard that it's even questionable as to whether it might help cause lung cancer because of the tiny particle size). Then, as you pointed out, there is the question of night time for orbital satellites/stations and things on other planets such as Mars and whether it would cause the need to absurd amounts of batteries.
I don't think we shouldn't be planning anything with an expectation of being able to make use of Fusion power (with the exception of that already implemented in Hydrogen bombs for things like the original Orion Project concept). On the other hand, I don't think it's entirely fair to make the 5-10 year criticisms regarding Fusion research. Even the politicians have been honest enough to acknowledge that Fusion is, at least, 50 years away from being useful. The scientists tend to be even more honest about it and suggest 50-60 years if it even turns out to be economically feasible at all (an important addendum that the politicians tend to leave off). I think we'll see it eventually (hopefully much sooner than, generally, expected if projects like Brussard's Polywell work out) but, as I said, I don't think we can plan other things assuming it will happen.
Personally, I think that nuclear fusion is the perfect energy source for space travel as it, inherently, provides a much higher energy density than any chemical based technology can possibly provide. As an added bonus, we've spent much of the last 50 years developing compact; self contained; and high power nuclear generators for use in our nuclear submarine fleet. For long distance vehicle usage, we could probably save lots of weight by only shielding the part of the reactor that points towards the crew compartment. For stationary usage on the Moon or Mars, we could probably eliminate the need for most artificial shielding, entirely, by burying the generator in the soil. There's even a chance that, in the process of modifying the generators for use in space based environments, they will be able to greatly decrease the inherent weight of the generators using advanced materials as, my understanding is that, submarines don't put as much emphasis on weight savings since, sometimes, additional weight can be useful for the control of buoyancy (not 100% sure of that, but it's what I've been lead to believe).
I think we could really give intra-solar system travel a kick in the pants if we used Nuclear submarine sized Fission reactors to power large, high powered, ion engines. The trick, of course, is to develop extremely high durability launch containers for the fuel (possibly pebble bed technology) and, possibly, requiring that these systems are never used in systems designed to stay in constant Earth orbit (we wouldn't want that stuff to fall back to Earth later when the thing had been decommissioned/abandoned like how we treat old satellites today).
Oh, and don't forget that, if you're one of those sticklers that doesn't want to immigrate, you should invest in one of those lead codpieces. You wouldn't want to devolve into a "special" now would you...
Of course, 99% of the middle class won't see it. $50 million is a drop in the bucket considering, both, the size of the US budget and the population of the country. Even if it were divided evenly, a dollar each, there wouldn't be enough to go around. However, there is a good chance that, assuming you aren't too old, this might boost your 401k in time for your retirement.
The US, simply, can't compete against much of the rest of the world at most of the traditional industries. Our quality of life is too high and would have to nose-dive to make us competitive. The places that we've always dominated, since WWII when we really first developed a middle class with above average quality of life, have been high-tech such as computers, pharmaceuticals, materials science, etc. As we move forward, it's inevitable that other countries will start to catch up in some of those places and out population will continue to grow.
In order to stay competitive we need to continue to advance our most competitive industries and seek out new ones that revolutionize life enough such that they become the next "semiconductor industry". One example is the development of new/economical energy generation/transport methods such as Nuclear/solar/wind/"clean coal"/bio-fuel/wave/geothermal/fuel cells/batteries/etc. Another example, more applicable to this discussion, is commercialized space travel.
We've reached a point where the price of space travel is withing "spitting distance" of being cheap enough for commercial ventures to develop their own vehicle/stations. There are already a number of start-ups that are flirting with it such as Virgin Galactic developing a sub-orbital vehicle and Bigilow Aaerospace designing fractional size prototype space stations but implementing vehicles capable of re-entry and full size/fully functional stations will be much, much more expensive. Government grants are a way to accelerate the development of this technology and, potentially, open up the field to a broader market faster in the same way the plumitting cost of semiconductors in the 80's made it possible for everyone in the country to have a computer on their desk within a decade or so instead of just big companies/colleges having expensive supercomputers.
Right now, the only, practical, uses for space travel are communications satellites, military, GPS, and pure research. Sure, there have been a few tourist that have been lucky enough to go to the ISS, but even at the high prices they've paid, they don't represent a realistic "industry". If we could get the cost of entry to drop by an order of magnitude (which is realistic to expect when you take it out of the hands of a military-like organization like NASA, implement the most modern tech, and increase the number of flights to take advantage of economies of scale) then it should open up all sorts of other growth markets for things like tourism, power generation/transmission, commercial materials science development/production, and the mining of things like the moon and asteroids for rare materials.
So, sinking a mere $50 million (mere in government terms as well as relation to what it takes to get anything of significance done in today's world, of course) is a small price to pay if it can help someone like Burt Rutan produce a low cost vehicle that opens up a revolutionary new industry to help re-grow the economy.
Of course he's trolling. Only a troll would deny the existence of sock gnomes. It's a well known fact that sock gnomes are a staple of the troll diet. If everyone knew how good they were, the troll population would starve to death. Seriously, writing BS posts online and living under bridges can make a person really hungry.
Actually, as an American, I just assumed that, since they hadn't been able to get the British legal system to refuse extradition, they were planning to attack the problem from the other end and try to get the American legal system to rescind the extradition request. Of course, I was a little confused about how they planned on getting the US court system to just skip over all the levels of appeals courts and go straight to the Supreme Court.
Then it turns out that his "wife" is actually one of his split personalities and he is, at this very moment, working as a kernal hacker wearing a dress, stilettos, and a wig.
I'm pretty sure that you end up paying the application fees no matter if they end up awarding the patent or not. In fact, last time I checked the costs of applying for a patent, I was under the impression that you keep having to pay out more for each time the patent gets kicked back to you for modification by the patent clerks. (I could be misunderstanding the process though).
He left off the second half of the quote:
"'I haven't failed; I've found 10,000 ways that don't work. Then, I, simply, stole a working idea from Telsa."
Yea, the type of battery they're using is bleeding edge technology and isn't really massed produced enough to have dropped in price. The real breakthrough for advance automotive battery pricing should come when Chevy and Toyota come out with their plug-in hybrids and Nissan comes out with the EV they just announced. Not only will they mass produce them in quantities that should drop the price, they will also have engineered battery packs rugged enough for long-term use in all weather conditions.
Nope, the batteries used in iPods and laptops use a different chemistry from the ones the article mentions are being used here. They're made by a company called a123systems and are designed to not be able to self-ignite like normal Lithium Ion batteries. One downside is that they have slightly lower power density, however they make up for it by being able to charge/discharge vastly faster than the older batteries. This is one of the companies that was working with GM to design the battery packs for the Chevy Volt.
A capacitor that large would have a number of problems:
* It would be, monumentally, more expensive than the, already expensive, battery pack in the car.
* Since capacitors don't have, even close, to the same power density as a battery, it would take up a massive amount of space.e
* It would discharge way too fast for even the most advanced battery to handle (giving you the exact opposite problem as what you started with).
* The ultra-fast discharge would vaporize even the largest normal connector you could use, requiring obscenely expensive industrial connectors designed for long distance power transmission.
Those are just the problems I can think of off the top of my head...
The way I see it, the real question should be "does it increase the ambiguity of the language or decrease it's expressive power?". As long as someone understands what is being said (with slang like "ain't" that has been in use long enough so it is widely known) then I don't see a problem with it. We may become, somewhat Balkanized in the short-term, but, hopefully, this will serve to get those conservatives used to living in a pluralistic society and will wear down some of their xenophobia. I see the real problem as being the mindset of fearing anyone that talks differently from you. Sure, a little of it is natural but we have been way past that point for a long time and it's something that the US, as a culture, should train itself away from.