The utilities will never allow it. Seriously, this is one of their worst nightmares, and one of the major reasons that they consistently oppose programs that promote distributed renewable. They are, for the most part, regulated monopolies. Their political power derives from the fact that, no matter how much they suck, they are the only game in town. Change that, and they start to become superfluous. And they know it.
At least they're willing to say they they were wrong, unlike hundreds of years ago.
They are... as long as profits are not at stake.
While the scientific research community is willing to acknowledge the limits of their understanding, the corporations developing genetically engineered foodcrops maintain that their products are proven perfectly safe (implying that they have a perfect understanding of the effects of the changes they have made). This claim flies in the face of significant research. And they have no compunctions about applying political and economic pressure to independent university researchers who claim otherwise.
The grand irony in the whole mess is that, as far as Monsanto etc are concerned, it's really not about genetic engineering and whatever dubious advantages it might provide. It's really an intellectual property maneuver to establish ownership of the seed supply.
The long-lived mice in the new experiments tend to be less fertile.
That's good. I hope it continues to be true. Live forever, or breed, but don't do both. There's only so much planet to go around, and there aren't any other really good ones in the neighborhood.
This invention follows a typical pattern: engineers (or would-be engineers) are so enamoured with their technology that they run out to solve problems with it, without first asking which problem they ought to be solving.
The majority of automotive airconditioning load is used to cool down cars that have gotten hot sitting, baking in the sun. There are very simple measures that automotive manufacturers could incorporate to cut down on that heat load: Radiant barrier material in the rooftop, low-e window coatings, and a small air circulation fan to exhaust the hot air that builds up in the cab when the car is parked.
None of these features are high-tech, and none would be particularly expensive to implement. Taken together, they would do a great deal to reduce the need for airconditioning, and contribute greatly to driver comfort (because the car would be cooler when you first get into it!). But they aren't sexy or high-tech, so they get overlooked. Of course, the peltier-based A/C system will almost certainly be ignored as well. The kids get accolades, but the technology isn't going to make it into actual production cars.
As Amory Lovins has said about the adoption of new automotive technologies: "Large automakers face two problems when trying to innovate -- they are large, and they are automakers."
During this year and the next, a pair of directives will go into effect in the European Union.
WEEE and RoHS mandate manufacturer takebake of waste electronics, and prohibit the use of lead, cadmium, mercury, or polybrominated fire retardants in electronic equipment.
Fun trivia fact: Did you know that most all network cables include a significant amount of lead in them?
Along side your regular AC house wiring, you should run DC wiring. You could install a single transformer running at the highest DC voltage you wish to supply, then install voltage dividers at each wall outlet, so that you can select the voltage you want at point of use.
What does this mean? NO MORE WALL WARTS! Also, you'll save quite a bit of power because the wall warts are very inefficient and burn power (1-5 watts) even when nothing is plugged into them. In a modern (esp. geek) house, those multiple small loads running 24/7 add up really fast.
You are basically correct. NASA's only real function anymore is to generate pork-barrel projects for members of Congress. Getting into space isn't even part of the equation.
There are major components of the Space Shuttle manufacturered in every single state in the country, vastly increasing the cost of coordination and assembly. They have to spread the money around, or Congress won't support their programs. That's realpolitik in the space business.
Space exploration is a relatively new, and dangerous field of endevour. It's an activity that pushes the envelope. That's why the call it "exploration", ya know.
Worker saftey standards are appropriate for industry, where established technologies are being used to crank out the same result, over and over, for a profit. But to impose these standards on a fledgling industry is unreasonable and stupid. No one who is going to get a chance to climb into a rocket is going to do so in ignorance of the risks.
In the 50's, they lost a couple of test pilots a month, on average, at Muroc (later Edwards AFB). That's just the way it was with a new technology in those days. They had plenty of hotshot pilots who knew the risk and were willing to take it.
If your attitude had prevailed in those early days of the jet age, all our airplanes would still use propellors.
That works at the moment, but that lifestyle is very much dependent on cheap energy. And while we are not actually running out of oil, we are definitely running out of cheap oil.
Current GM techniques are very different, both in approach and results, from what you get by breeding. Just for starters, GM techniques:
- often place plant DNA in animals and vice-versa. Dangerous? Who knows?
- involve the insertion of promoter sequences, which stimulate the expression of the desired sequence. What else do they stimulate? Again, no one really knows.
- also involve the insertion of a gene for antibiotic resistance, to help isolate those cells in which the gene transfer "takes". Dangerous? Hell yes! Horizontal gene transfer (between macro-organism and bacteria) is documented fact.
For a lengthy discussion of this subject, read this paper.
For a brief (albeit slanted, but not untrue) summary, check out this.
For a discussion of an exciting and viable alternative, one which really is just an extension of selective breeding, read about marker-assisted breeding.
I don't disagree that it would be useful if their algorithm had some effective way of separating the cluefull from the clueless. However, your statement that
It would seem that you will get more detail and understanding from a source closer to the story, or specializing in the story's subject.
is not to be taken for granted. In particular, it is often the case that foreign reporting of domesitic issues is more balanced and useful than what we get from American news sources. Particularly under this latest administration.
This will be of interest to architects and building designers. Geopraxis has developed gbXML (Green Building XML), which is a protocol for communicating energy-related building design parameters between design packages (e.g. AutoCAD) and analysis packages (e.g. eQuest or Energy-10). They also provide a free webtool that will do a quick energy use analysis (more like an estimate) based on the uploaded gbXML file. Given that 95% of all new building designs are never analyzed at all for energy use, this is potentially a huge step forward.
I'm not associated with them in any way. I just thought it was a cool application of the technology.
Just a couple of notes, from someone who is currently selling solar for a living in California:
- a "typical" residential system (2.4kW AC peak output) is going to run $9000-12000 after the state rebate - there's also a 15% state tax credit - the utility buyback of power is called "net metering" and they actually pay the retail price for the power (i.e. they credit you for power you produce at the same rate they charge you for what you use)
As to one of the original, unaswered questions: if you don't have batteries (and you don't need them if you are grid connected), the only maintenance required is hosing off the panels a couple of times a year. The panels are warranteed for 25 years, and generally good for much longer.
There is exactly one family in the entire world with people capable of having selfless thoughts; every single other character in the series (no matter how unimportant) will be mean, vicious, cruel bastards - often literally.
Hardly! While it's true that the Starks are obsessed with honor, it's as much a weakness for them as it is a strength. And a number of the characters who initially come across as "evil" (if only by association to characters who clearly are evil) actually turn out to be complex and even sympathetic characters (more so in the later books).
One of the best features of his stories is the fact that the line between the good guys and the bad guys is never very clear, and gets murkier and more complex as the story unfolds.
Everyone wants to make sure that no matter how much you disagree with the politics of the administration or the military as a whole, you never turn your anger on the individual solders, sailors, airmen and marines who are out there doing their jobs.
Of course, the by the Shrub's own statement "I was just following orders" will not excuse the commission of atrocities. Oh, but he only meant that to apply to the Iraquis. Well, then, that's different.
Bottom line: The men and women of the armed forces are "doing their jobs", but only because each and every one of them made a choice: they chose to join the military, and thus become an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. I don't see why they should be above reproach or question regarding the morality of their actions.
Remeber: the Iraqui army is largely conscripts, but the U.S military is entirely a volunteer force (at least so far).
Rats and vermin are not generally a problem with straw bale construction. That's because you're using straw, not hay. It has no nutritive value, and is unpleasant for critters to eat. This is doubly true for rice straw.
Same thing applies for rot mildew: As long as you keep the bales from getting soaked or sitting in water, they will naturally air-dry and decay will not be a problem. A good roof with deep eaves, and a well-drained foundation, and you're good to go. YMMV in extremely wet places, like Florida. But it works fine in Northern CA, which isn't exactly dry.
NASA is a victim of its past successes. When Kennedy decided to beat Russia to the moon, what was previously a small, tight research organization got given a blank check and a mandate. After we won the race, the mandate went away. This meant that NASA was a large organization that had grown to its full size too quickly, still possessing a fairly large budget but no clear impelling direction. It's hardly surprising that they fell into bureaucracy.
STS is a system that might has well have been designed for unreliability. Something like 30,000 people are involved in the refit of the orbiter between each mission. The main engines are partially disassembled, which means de-welding them, between each flight!
Space travel is expensive and dangerous. It is vastly more expensive and dangerous as a result of NASA's approach.
A large part of this is politics, and is not really NASA's fault (for whatever that's worth). They make important decisions (like who is going to build different parts of the Orbiter) for purely political reasons, because they need Congress' support. The STS system has major components manufacturered in something like 40 out of the 50 states, because they have to spread the federal dollars around. This is not the way to design a cheap, reliable solution.
Even doing all that, they can't count on their budget from year to year, which makes it almost impossible for them to undertake long-term projects with confidence.
No grassroots road, eh? Why not? It's a technical challenge, sure. But so far no entity other than NASA has had a real chance to attack the problem. Back a few years, there was a flurry of small private rocket companies, all of which collapsed after spending a few $million. They were successfully moving the technology forward, but were unable to raise the $100-200 million that was the rough budget for developing a new launch system: most investors just don't have that kind of vision.
$100-$200 million sounds like a lot, but consider this: NASA spent over $30 million just selecting the bloody launch site for the X-33, which ultimately never got built.
It is possible to build reliable rockets cheaply. It is even possible to mount them in piloted vehicles safely. It's been done. So don't tell us it is impossible.
I will agree with your statement insofar as a literal interpretation goes: there is no military/industrial conspiracy. It's just a bunch of people and bureaucrats all acting to protect their personal short-term interests. Most of them don't care any more about space than the Post Office employee cares about your mail. And given how bound up in bureaucracy NASA is, I can hardly blame them.
One of the big reasons given for not porting OS X to the x86 platform is the variety of hardware configurations that it would be required to work with. Over the years, Apple has stacked the deck in their favor (in terms of OS stability and reliability) by maintaining control over the hardware specifications of its systems.
According to this PR piece, it sounds like Intel is trying to do a similar thing: The Centrino name refers not just to the new processor, but to an integrated package including chipset and WLAN capabilities.
If Apple wants to crack the X86 market for OS X, this would be a good place for them to drive the wedge in. Because Intel is maintaining tighter-than-usual control over the hardware specification, Apple could port to X86 without spending the next decade writing hardware drivers. And Centrino could be (at least for awhile) the only platform available with OS X as an option. And finally, it would be possible to buy an OS X laptop with a built-in two-button bloody mouse!
Although it is common practice in the East to grow food in humanure, most western humanure experts will tell you not to use the stuff on food plants. I follow this rule myself, although I feel comfortable using it to fertilize food (fruit and nut) trees.
Alot of it also depends on the source of the humanure. If you and your family are providing most of it, and you're generally healthy, then you should be OK. But large scale collection for application to commercial agriculture is probably a bad idea.
The recyclable car is great, but the overall design is still more or less conventional. Personally, I am more excited by the potential represented by another concept car, GM's Hy-Wire.
The Hy-wire name comes from the fact that it is a fuel-cell vehicle (therefore nominally "hybrid") with an entirely computerized control system (i.e. drive-by-wire). But what is exciting is that the Hy-wire is a real "back to the drawing board" resdesign of the automobile. Most of the features you see in a conventional car are gone. Instead the entire power train and fueling system is contained in a 12" thick "skateboard" chassis to which many different styles of body can be attached. Since the control cluster is connected to the rest of the car only by wires, it can be placed litterally wherever you want. The upshot is a car that is totally reconfigurable, with the potential for 100% visibility and improved crash protection. And, while the car is very "high tech", it is actually simpler than a conventional car and should be more reliable: compared to a conventional car, there are almost no moving parts to wear out or break. And although the Hy-wire concept car is not specifically designed for high recylceability, this same fundemental simplicity should make it a whole lot easier to design for recycling.
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The utilities will never allow it. Seriously, this is one of their worst nightmares, and one of the major reasons that they consistently oppose programs that promote distributed renewable. They are, for the most part, regulated monopolies. Their political power derives from the fact that, no matter how much they suck, they are the only game in town. Change that, and they start to become superfluous. And they know it.
At least they're willing to say they they were wrong, unlike hundreds of years ago.
They are... as long as profits are not at stake.
While the scientific research community is willing to acknowledge the limits of their understanding, the corporations developing genetically engineered foodcrops maintain that their products are proven perfectly safe (implying that they have a perfect understanding of the effects of the changes they have made). This claim flies in the face of significant research. And they have no compunctions about applying political and economic pressure to independent university researchers who claim otherwise.
The grand irony in the whole mess is that, as far as Monsanto etc are concerned, it's really not about genetic engineering and whatever dubious advantages it might provide. It's really an intellectual property maneuver to establish ownership of the seed supply.
The long-lived mice in the new experiments tend to be less fertile.
That's good. I hope it continues to be true. Live forever, or breed, but don't do both. There's only so much planet to go around, and there aren't any other really good ones in the neighborhood.
This invention follows a typical pattern: engineers (or would-be engineers) are so enamoured with their technology that they run out to solve problems with it, without first asking which problem they ought to be solving.
The majority of automotive airconditioning load is used to cool down cars that have gotten hot sitting, baking in the sun. There are very simple measures that automotive manufacturers could incorporate to cut down on that heat load: Radiant barrier material in the rooftop, low-e window coatings, and a small air circulation fan to exhaust the hot air that builds up in the cab when the car is parked.
None of these features are high-tech, and none would be particularly expensive to implement. Taken together, they would do a great deal to reduce the need for airconditioning, and contribute greatly to driver comfort (because the car would be cooler when you first get into it!). But they aren't sexy or high-tech, so they get overlooked. Of course, the peltier-based A/C system will almost certainly be ignored as well. The kids get accolades, but the technology isn't going to make it into actual production cars.
As Amory Lovins has said about the adoption of new automotive technologies: "Large automakers face two problems when trying to innovate -- they are large, and they are automakers."
During this year and the next, a pair of directives will go into effect in the European Union.
WEEE and RoHS mandate manufacturer takebake of waste electronics, and prohibit the use of lead, cadmium, mercury, or polybrominated fire retardants in electronic equipment.
Fun trivia fact: Did you know that most all network cables include a significant amount of lead in them?
Along side your regular AC house wiring, you should run DC wiring. You could install a single transformer running at the highest DC voltage you wish to supply, then install voltage dividers at each wall outlet, so that you can select the voltage you want at point of use.
What does this mean? NO MORE WALL WARTS! Also, you'll save quite a bit of power because the wall warts are very inefficient and burn power (1-5 watts) even when nothing is plugged into them. In a modern (esp. geek) house, those multiple small loads running 24/7 add up really fast.
Not much, apparently, judging by what we have done and are doing to this planet.
You are basically correct. NASA's only real function anymore is to generate pork-barrel projects for members of Congress. Getting into space isn't even part of the equation.
There are major components of the Space Shuttle manufacturered in every single state in the country, vastly increasing the cost of coordination and assembly. They have to spread the money around, or Congress won't support their programs. That's realpolitik in the space business.
Space exploration is a relatively new, and dangerous field of endevour. It's an activity that pushes the envelope. That's why the call it "exploration", ya know.
Worker saftey standards are appropriate for industry, where established technologies are being used to crank out the same result, over and over, for a profit. But to impose these standards on a fledgling industry is unreasonable and stupid. No one who is going to get a chance to climb into a rocket is going to do so in ignorance of the risks.
In the 50's, they lost a couple of test pilots a month, on average, at Muroc (later Edwards AFB). That's just the way it was with a new technology in those days. They had plenty of hotshot pilots who knew the risk and were willing to take it.
If your attitude had prevailed in those early days of the jet age, all our airplanes would still use propellors.
That works at the moment, but that lifestyle is very much dependent on cheap energy. And while we are not actually running out of oil, we are definitely running out of cheap oil.
- often place plant DNA in animals and vice-versa. Dangerous? Who knows?
- involve the insertion of promoter sequences, which stimulate the expression of the desired sequence. What else do they stimulate? Again, no one really knows.
- also involve the insertion of a gene for antibiotic resistance, to help isolate those cells in which the gene transfer "takes". Dangerous? Hell yes! Horizontal gene transfer (between macro-organism and bacteria) is documented fact.
For a lengthy discussion of this subject, read this paper.
For a brief (albeit slanted, but not untrue) summary, check out this.
For a discussion of an exciting and viable alternative, one which really is just an extension of selective breeding, read about marker-assisted breeding.
is not to be taken for granted. In particular, it is often the case that foreign reporting of domesitic issues is more balanced and useful than what we get from American news sources.
Particularly under this latest administration.
I'm not associated with them in any way. I just thought it was a cool application of the technology.
Very well.
For lots of good solar news and information, check out my employer's website.
- a "typical" residential system (2.4kW AC peak output) is going to run $9000-12000 after the state rebate
- there's also a 15% state tax credit
- the utility buyback of power is called "net metering" and they actually pay the retail price for the power (i.e. they credit you for power you produce at the same rate they charge you for what you use)
As to one of the original, unaswered questions: if you don't have batteries (and you don't need them if you are grid connected), the only maintenance required is hosing off the panels a couple of times a year. The panels are warranteed for 25 years, and generally good for much longer.
Hardly! While it's true that the Starks are obsessed with honor, it's as much a weakness for them as it is a strength. And a number of the characters who initially come across as "evil" (if only by association to characters who clearly are evil) actually turn out to be complex and even sympathetic characters (more so in the later books).
One of the best features of his stories is the fact that the line between the good guys and the bad guys is never very clear, and gets murkier and more complex as the story unfolds.
Maybe you should go work for NASA.
Of course, the by the Shrub's own statement "I was just following orders" will not excuse the commission of atrocities. Oh, but he only meant that to apply to the Iraquis. Well, then, that's different.
Bottom line: The men and women of the armed forces are "doing their jobs", but only because each and every one of them made a choice: they chose to join the military, and thus become an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. I don't see why they should be above reproach or question regarding the morality of their actions.
Remeber: the Iraqui army is largely conscripts, but the U.S military is entirely a volunteer force (at least so far).
Same thing applies for rot mildew: As long as you keep the bales from getting soaked or sitting in water, they will naturally air-dry and decay will not be a problem. A good roof with deep eaves, and a well-drained foundation, and you're good to go. YMMV in extremely wet places, like Florida. But it works fine in Northern CA, which isn't exactly dry.
NASA is a victim of its past successes. When Kennedy decided to beat Russia to the moon, what was previously a small, tight research organization got given a blank check and a mandate. After we won the race, the mandate went away. This meant that NASA was a large organization that had grown to its full size too quickly, still possessing a fairly large budget but no clear impelling direction. It's hardly surprising that they fell into bureaucracy.
STS is a system that might has well have been designed for unreliability. Something like 30,000 people are involved in the refit of the orbiter between each mission. The main engines are partially disassembled, which means de-welding them, between each flight!
Space travel is expensive and dangerous. It is vastly more expensive and dangerous as a result of NASA's approach.
A large part of this is politics, and is not really NASA's fault (for whatever that's worth). They make important decisions (like who is going to build different parts of the Orbiter) for purely political reasons, because they need Congress' support. The STS system has major components manufacturered in something like 40 out of the 50 states, because they have to spread the federal dollars around. This is not the way to design a cheap, reliable solution.
Even doing all that, they can't count on their budget from year to year, which makes it almost impossible for them to undertake long-term projects with confidence.
No grassroots road, eh? Why not? It's a technical challenge, sure. But so far no entity other than NASA has had a real chance to attack the problem. Back a few years, there was a flurry of small private rocket companies, all of which collapsed after spending a few $million. They were successfully moving the technology forward, but were unable to raise the $100-200 million that was the rough budget for developing a new launch system: most investors just don't have that kind of vision.
$100-$200 million sounds like a lot, but consider this: NASA spent over $30 million just selecting the bloody launch site for the X-33, which ultimately never got built.
It is possible to build reliable rockets cheaply. It is even possible to mount them in piloted vehicles safely. It's been done. So don't tell us it is impossible.
I will agree with your statement insofar as a literal interpretation goes: there is no military/industrial conspiracy. It's just a bunch of people and bureaucrats all acting to protect their personal short-term interests. Most of them don't care any more about space than the Post Office employee cares about your mail. And given how bound up in bureaucracy NASA is, I can hardly blame them.
Oh, and some clear and concise advice about women, of course...
According to this PR piece, it sounds like Intel is trying to do a similar thing: The Centrino name refers not just to the new processor, but to an integrated package including chipset and WLAN capabilities.
If Apple wants to crack the X86 market for OS X, this would be a good place for them to drive the wedge in. Because Intel is maintaining tighter-than-usual control over the hardware specification, Apple could port to X86 without spending the next decade writing hardware drivers. And Centrino could be (at least for awhile) the only platform available with OS X as an option. And finally, it would be possible to buy an OS X laptop with a built-in two-button bloody mouse!
Alot of it also depends on the source of the humanure. If you and your family are providing most of it, and you're generally healthy, then you should be OK. But large scale collection for application to commercial agriculture is probably a bad idea.
The Hy-wire name comes from the fact that it is a fuel-cell vehicle (therefore nominally "hybrid") with an entirely computerized control system (i.e. drive-by-wire). But what is exciting is that the Hy-wire is a real "back to the drawing board" resdesign of the automobile. Most of the features you see in a conventional car are gone. Instead the entire power train and fueling system is contained in a 12" thick "skateboard" chassis to which many different styles of body can be attached. Since the control cluster is connected to the rest of the car only by wires, it can be placed litterally wherever you want. The upshot is a car that is totally reconfigurable, with the potential for 100% visibility and improved crash protection. And, while the car is very "high tech", it is actually simpler than a conventional car and should be more reliable: compared to a conventional car, there are almost no moving parts to wear out or break. And although the Hy-wire concept car is not specifically designed for high recylceability, this same fundemental simplicity should make it a whole lot easier to design for recycling.
More Hy-wire information here.