I was responding to someone who claimed that by 2020, the US could be using E85 across the board for gasoline by calculations showing that, without major changes (a phrase I used in the original post), we don't have the room to practically do it. Major changes include efficient cellulosic conversion.
If you believe that I have some error in my calculations based on what is provable now and not on what kinds of technology might develop, please point it out. I realize that there is a possibility for a sizable margin of error, but I do not believe it is enough to invalidate the point.
First of all, the only long running research into ethanol has been done by agri-business involved in the corn industry.
Agreed, and there are now more players involved, some of them with billions to spend. There is some promise of improvement, but there are questions as to how efficient the overall processes will be, especially with cellulosic conversion. Many pin their hopes on that process, but so far it's extremely inefficient.
Second, that 19% is the amount of land actually under active cultivation, not the amount that could be brought under cultivation.
This is true, and a more useful number would be the amount of land that cannot be cultivated. Much of the Rocky Mountains, for example, are useless for growing ethanol feedstock. So are most of Alaska and large parts of Florida. I would venture that most of New Jersey is also not ideal, given the commercial density there. When defining "arable" as "that which can be farmed" instead of "that which is farmed," the number grows. By how much it grows is the crucial point.
Third, you assume that the same land - even the same crop - can't generate both foodstuff and fuel. Think about using cornstalks as a driver for fuel.
As above, this is a cellulosic conversion concern. Perhaps thermal depolymerization will assist here, but for now, it's still a research concern. Once it can be overcome, there is no shortage of energy sources, and there may actually be a need to restrain some people.
Fourth, you make the assumption that the yield will remain constant. In only the last few years the yield from corn has gone from 400 g/acre to over 500 g/acre.
I did say that they were back-of-the-envelope. At the same time, you can't count completely on future increases. It may be possible to reach 2000g/acre, but is there a certainty? Not really. You have to work with what you have and what is realistic, or else you oversell, and that can be worse than not selling at all.
Last, you make the assumption that the inputs will only be crops. Non-agricultural inputs can also be applied. For instance, suburban lawn clippings and leaves.
I clearly stated that switchgrass may be an option as it has the potential for more ethanol per acre. The other products you mention are cellulosic, which right now is so much more energy-intensive than corn sugars that it has a negative return. I also opened up the post saying that it would take major changes to minimize the use of land.
Where are you going to get the ethanol to make all of this E85? Without some really major changes, the land required for this would be prohibitive. Some back-of-the-envelope numbers from a post I made elsewhere:
Gasoline consumed by United States annually: 140 billion gallons Average energy of gasoline: 114,000 btu per gallon Annual energy from gasoline in the United States: 16.0 E+15 btu
Average energy from ethanol: 76,100 btu per gallon Volume of ethanol required to meet gasoline energy needs: 210 billion gallons Volume of ethanol per bushel of corn: 2.7 gallons Volume of corn required to replace gasoline use: 78 billion bushels Volume of corn per area of farmland: 150 bushels per acre Volume of ethanol per area of farmland: 410 gallons per acre Area required to replace gasoline use: 520 million acres, or 2.1 million km^2
Total land area of United States: 9,161,000 km^2 Fraction of land required to meet gasoline energy needs: 23%
That fraction declines with other, more efficient stocks, but there are sometimes other expenses involved depending on the particular crop. Corn is the most widely-known and -used input, but sugarcane and sugarbeets are also possible. Switchgrass can reportedly yield as much as 1200 gallons per acre (though the energy efficiency is debated) and would thus significantly reduce the area required, but 8% of the country is still almost the size of North and South Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas combined.
To put this in further perspective, according to the CIA World Factbook, the total arable land for the United States is about 18%, so even with switchgrass, nearly half of the arable land would be devoted to fuel use, putting a massive dent in the ability of this nation to feed itself.
This is for straight ethanol use with no gasoline, but E85 barely dulls the edge of that blade.
The US forces have begun to pull back for a few reasons, one of them pressure to relinquish the space consumed by bases in and around Seoul, which are wanted for commercial development. The other is that the US wants to keep what assets it has there outside of artillery range. The North has seen this withdrawal as a sign of preparation for war, but then it sees butterflies in the DMZ as a sign that the US is preparing for war.
They can only print a few million each year (I've seen estimates of $15 million to $20 million). They need billions to be able to come up with miniaturization. They make more from heroin sales than they do from counterfeit currency.
Bush specifically said in that policy that we should use nukes to put weapons in space.
I just went through the policy, and was unable to find where it called for that, so if I missed something, I'd appreciate it if you could point it out. There is mention of craft using nuclear power sources, including those "with a potential for criticality or above a minimum threshold of radioactivity," but that would refer to nuclear reactors. Absent criticality, they're RTGs.
Rumsfeld has been putting nukes on US missiles for years
The first ICBMs in the US went live in 1958. At that time, he was serving as an assistant to a Congressman, and then moved on to banking for a couple of years before getting elected to Congress himself. He moved to the Nixon administration handling economic affairs before being appointed the US ambassador to NATO in 1973, his first foray into military issues as a main part of his job. It wasn't until he became SecDef for Ford in 1975 that he had any real direct powers over missile warheads. By that time, of course, the main delivery methods for US nuclear warheads were the ICBM and the SLBM, so I think it's fair that most of the blame lies outside of Rumsfeld.
The solution is for the Senate to force Bush to fire Rumsfeld, which a Democratic Senate will probably do next year.
I'm really interested in hearing how this would come about. The Senate has no power to force a president to fire a cabinet officer. It may only approve; it may not remove that approval with the result of the cabinet officer being removed. Congress can impeach a cabinet officer, and the Senate can try the officer once impeached, but conviction requires a two-thirds majority vote, which is not going to happen unless the Democrats somehow manage to add more than 20 seats to their portion of the Senate.
They're not doing an H-bomb, but a classic "atomic" bomb -- a low-yield fission weapon. Their bomb, by all descriptions, is closer to Little Boy in size if not design (I don't think anyone has mentioned whether it's an implosion or gun-type design).
Yes, it's more for the psychological impact, because once the probability of presence of nuclear weapons reaches one, battle plans change to minimize the chance of the enemy ever using them.
US "support" for the Taleban didn't last very long, especially once word of their continuing oppressive activities got round, and it was tepid in the first place. What was there was closer to an acknowledgement that they had largely ended the war across most of the country. The Taleban had one friendly visit to the US, which was for a briefly-floated idea for a pipeline across Afghanistan, but that vanished quickly, and the US dropped all support for the idea. It was never recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, even though it controlled the vast majority of it.
Every port is monitored by satellite and the capability to put a U-2 or a UAV overhead is there, as well. Every ship that leaves North Korea is tracked by satellite, and they have been interdicted in the past, including one carrying missiles to Yemen that was intercepted in 2002 (though later released as there were no violations of law). Another was stopped in Cyprus carrying parts of an air defense system (the manifest said weather observation equipment) to Syria, and while Interpol was the primary source of the request, I have little doubt that US intelligence was working behind the scenes.
As for subs, I find it unthinkable that the US would not have at least one fast attack submarine outside of each North Korean sub base (I believe there are two), and the subs they have are not impossible to track. It's certainly a possible threat, but any place that they'd want to detonate such a weapon would be over a long distance and would have to get past a technologically advanced naval force, and it would be further from Kim Jong-Il's grasp. A couple thousand miles of ocean presents a long time for a crew -- even one that's pretty dedicated -- to decide that they're in better shape delivering the goods more quietly with a payoff and a home in a quiet section of Montana.
Miniaturization work is the next step, but it's not one of those things that qualifies as a "just." Miniaturization of a nuclear weapon is hard stuff. It took until 1957 and 1958 to get the first ICBMs in place for the USSR and the USA, respectively, and each had a massive program that was funded with a significant portion of the defense budget. Modern computers will help this somewhat, but there's still a lot of machine work and testing to do, and Pyongyang simply doesn't have the cash to push ahead that quickly.
There were Republican Guard members that continued fighting in pointless locales, and some of them went underground and provided a serious nuisance even before the announced end of hostilities. They were the ones who had the best weapons (such as the Kornet missiles that managed to knock a couple of Abrams tanks out of service) and the training to use them. Not all of them gave up at the sound of firecrackers.
It's actually 30,000, and will be dropping to 25,000 in a couple of years. And if you think that they want us out so badly, consider that the US wants to turn over wartime command of the forces to Seoul by 2009, but the South Koreans say they won't be ready until 2012. We're primarily there for overall wartime command, air superiority and close air support, artillery, and to provide a reason to bring in more forces when US soldiers are killed in combat.
Note that I didn't say that there's no reason for the US to be in South Korea. I said that no one wants to fight in North Korea. North Korea does not need a deterrent, but South Korea does. The border between the two is the most heavily-fortified area of the world, with a million or so soldiers watching each other, thousands of artillery pieces in constant state of readiness, and millions of land mines in place to make any thoughts of crossing the border suicidal.
The US did do the right thing in Korea. It was China sending millions of troops across the border to reinforce the North Koreans that set things back. Had MacArthur had the chance to use nuclear weapons on China, it would have opened the path for the Soviets to use them, and the chances for a large-scale nuclear war would have grown much bigger.
The first use of nuclear weapons was an awakening for the world, and they saw something to fear: Pandora's Box. No one wanted -- or wants -- to turn its key.
North Korea doesn't need a deterrent because the US won't invade unless North Korea crosses the border first. The US has seen significantly more hawkish characters than Bush and Rumsfeld on the topic of Korea. No one wants to fight there. It's horrendously mountainous, the winters are bitter cold, and the elite corps that would be handling any nuclear weapons are bound to be even more fanatical than the best of the Iraqi Republican Guard.
That said, the descriptions from the Russians about North Korea's bomb place it at 3m in length and weighing about four tons, which is far more than any North Korean missile can mount and more than most of their planes can handle. There is zero chance of North Korea mounting nuclear missile attack in the next few years, and they would have to learn some very powerful miniaturization tricks before they could threaten anyone at a significant range.
Providing material support to an organization that is engaged in hostilities against the United States earns you the designation of enemy combatant.
Doing so as a citizen of the United States is treason. From Article III, Section 3, of the Constutution: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
Providing material support to an organization hostile to the US is providing aid to the enemy, and therefore treason. One just has to find two witnesses to the act to get a conviction.
I find it ironic that the same group of people (though perhaps not you, wwiiol) talked about how great it was when Opera had the ad-supported version, since Opera would still get some income without people having to pay for it. When someone else tries to do that -- giving the option to not install the ads and still get full functionality -- they get lambasted for it.
That makes more sense. Three nines is easily possible. Five nines is possible with some precautions. I've even seen a few devices rated for six nines in certain configurations (clustered, multiple redundant failovers, multiple connection links, carefully-designed hardware... really expensive stuff). More nines makes maintenance a real bastard, though.:)
Nine nines? I'd like to see where this is documented. This would mean that the connection can only be down for.031 seconds every year, or one second every 32 years. I'm not sure that's technically achievable.
By the way, are all Fry's as disorganized as the one in Wilsonville, OR?
They're hit and miss. The one in Fountain Valley, CA, is pretty well-organized, and doesn't have a lot of open space to traverse. The one in Anaheim, CA, is less well-organized (the CD section is split in two by a pseudo-cafe), has much more open space (an issue when running in for a part at 8:58pm, which I do more often than I should), and lacks some very basic parts that a large computer store should have (such as SATA-PATA adapters). There are several in Los Angeles that I recall were very well-structured, but it's been several years since I have been to them, so they may have been broken since then.
This is because people will buy the same amount of gas no matter how much it costs, because they need the gas to live their lives.
Not that I'm a proponent of Prop 87 (at least, not yet -- I've yet to read it all the way through), but gasoline demand does seem to be changing, apparently due to pricing. In a report from the Dept of Energy Energy Information Administration released today, gasoline inventories are running about 9% above last year's levels, despite a decline of 1% in the refiners' utilization of capacity. This suggests that Americans actually have begun to tame their gasoline usage to some extent, which is how the market is supposed to work to begin with, higher prices reducing demand to an extent. It's still necessary, but people have been re-evaluating just how necessary it is.
Your headset may switch to a new pattern, but Bluetooth uses frequency hopping along the 2.4GHz spectrum. You may be confusing it with how 802.11b and later work, using channels on specific frequencies. (OK, technically, he's correct in some manner, as the frequency may well change, but I don't think that's what he meant.)
It depends on where you are. In California, you can usually sell it back insofar as your meter reverses direction, but the electric companies are not usually required to pay you for more than a reset to the prior month's value, and so you end up with zero usage cost but still have to pay connection fees.
In California, we got rid of much of the ESL thought that kept kids in their primary language for years, and it's shown some positive results. Now, parents have to go through extra steps to keep the old way, and the kids dropped into immersion teaching have picked up the language much faster and improved their test scores more rapidly. There are still those that cling to the old way and claim that it's better based largely on anecdotal evidence (and claims the year after it went into effect of lower test scores, due to more kids taking the test with limited skills before immersion had really had a chance to take effect), but they have been losing steam as more solid results come in.
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I was responding to someone who claimed that by 2020, the US could be using E85 across the board for gasoline by calculations showing that, without major changes (a phrase I used in the original post), we don't have the room to practically do it. Major changes include efficient cellulosic conversion.
If you believe that I have some error in my calculations based on what is provable now and not on what kinds of technology might develop, please point it out. I realize that there is a possibility for a sizable margin of error, but I do not believe it is enough to invalidate the point.
First of all, the only long running research into ethanol has been done by agri-business involved in the corn industry.
:)
Agreed, and there are now more players involved, some of them with billions to spend. There is some promise of improvement, but there are questions as to how efficient the overall processes will be, especially with cellulosic conversion. Many pin their hopes on that process, but so far it's extremely inefficient.
Second, that 19% is the amount of land actually under active cultivation, not the amount that could be brought under cultivation.
This is true, and a more useful number would be the amount of land that cannot be cultivated. Much of the Rocky Mountains, for example, are useless for growing ethanol feedstock. So are most of Alaska and large parts of Florida. I would venture that most of New Jersey is also not ideal, given the commercial density there. When defining "arable" as "that which can be farmed" instead of "that which is farmed," the number grows. By how much it grows is the crucial point.
Third, you assume that the same land - even the same crop - can't generate both foodstuff and fuel. Think about using cornstalks as a driver for fuel.
As above, this is a cellulosic conversion concern. Perhaps thermal depolymerization will assist here, but for now, it's still a research concern. Once it can be overcome, there is no shortage of energy sources, and there may actually be a need to restrain some people.
Fourth, you make the assumption that the yield will remain constant. In only the last few years the yield from corn has gone from 400 g/acre to over 500 g/acre.
I did say that they were back-of-the-envelope. At the same time, you can't count completely on future increases. It may be possible to reach 2000g/acre, but is there a certainty? Not really. You have to work with what you have and what is realistic, or else you oversell, and that can be worse than not selling at all.
Last, you make the assumption that the inputs will only be crops. Non-agricultural inputs can also be applied. For instance, suburban lawn clippings and leaves.
See cellulosic concerns.
I clearly stated that switchgrass may be an option as it has the potential for more ethanol per acre. The other products you mention are cellulosic, which right now is so much more energy-intensive than corn sugars that it has a negative return. I also opened up the post saying that it would take major changes to minimize the use of land.
Where are you going to get the ethanol to make all of this E85? Without some really major changes, the land required for this would be prohibitive. Some back-of-the-envelope numbers from a post I made elsewhere:
Gasoline consumed by United States annually: 140 billion gallons
Average energy of gasoline: 114,000 btu per gallon
Annual energy from gasoline in the United States: 16.0 E+15 btu
Average energy from ethanol: 76,100 btu per gallon
Volume of ethanol required to meet gasoline energy needs: 210 billion gallons
Volume of ethanol per bushel of corn: 2.7 gallons
Volume of corn required to replace gasoline use: 78 billion bushels
Volume of corn per area of farmland: 150 bushels per acre
Volume of ethanol per area of farmland: 410 gallons per acre
Area required to replace gasoline use: 520 million acres, or 2.1 million km^2
Total land area of United States: 9,161,000 km^2
Fraction of land required to meet gasoline energy needs: 23%
That fraction declines with other, more efficient stocks, but there are sometimes other expenses involved depending on the particular crop. Corn is the most widely-known and -used input, but sugarcane and sugarbeets are also possible. Switchgrass can reportedly yield as much as 1200 gallons per acre (though the energy efficiency is debated) and would thus significantly reduce the area required, but 8% of the country is still almost the size of North and South Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas combined.
To put this in further perspective, according to the CIA World Factbook, the total arable land for the United States is about 18%, so even with switchgrass, nearly half of the arable land would be devoted to fuel use, putting a massive dent in the ability of this nation to feed itself.
This is for straight ethanol use with no gasoline, but E85 barely dulls the edge of that blade.
The US forces have begun to pull back for a few reasons, one of them pressure to relinquish the space consumed by bases in and around Seoul, which are wanted for commercial development. The other is that the US wants to keep what assets it has there outside of artillery range. The North has seen this withdrawal as a sign of preparation for war, but then it sees butterflies in the DMZ as a sign that the US is preparing for war.
They can only print a few million each year (I've seen estimates of $15 million to $20 million). They need billions to be able to come up with miniaturization. They make more from heroin sales than they do from counterfeit currency.
I just went through the policy, and was unable to find where it called for that, so if I missed something, I'd appreciate it if you could point it out. There is mention of craft using nuclear power sources, including those "with a potential for criticality or above a minimum threshold of radioactivity," but that would refer to nuclear reactors. Absent criticality, they're RTGs.
The first ICBMs in the US went live in 1958. At that time, he was serving as an assistant to a Congressman, and then moved on to banking for a couple of years before getting elected to Congress himself. He moved to the Nixon administration handling economic affairs before being appointed the US ambassador to NATO in 1973, his first foray into military issues as a main part of his job. It wasn't until he became SecDef for Ford in 1975 that he had any real direct powers over missile warheads. By that time, of course, the main delivery methods for US nuclear warheads were the ICBM and the SLBM, so I think it's fair that most of the blame lies outside of Rumsfeld.
I'm really interested in hearing how this would come about. The Senate has no power to force a president to fire a cabinet officer. It may only approve; it may not remove that approval with the result of the cabinet officer being removed. Congress can impeach a cabinet officer, and the Senate can try the officer once impeached, but conviction requires a two-thirds majority vote, which is not going to happen unless the Democrats somehow manage to add more than 20 seats to their portion of the Senate.
They're not doing an H-bomb, but a classic "atomic" bomb -- a low-yield fission weapon. Their bomb, by all descriptions, is closer to Little Boy in size if not design (I don't think anyone has mentioned whether it's an implosion or gun-type design).
Yes, it's more for the psychological impact, because once the probability of presence of nuclear weapons reaches one, battle plans change to minimize the chance of the enemy ever using them.
US "support" for the Taleban didn't last very long, especially once word of their continuing oppressive activities got round, and it was tepid in the first place. What was there was closer to an acknowledgement that they had largely ended the war across most of the country. The Taleban had one friendly visit to the US, which was for a briefly-floated idea for a pipeline across Afghanistan, but that vanished quickly, and the US dropped all support for the idea. It was never recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, even though it controlled the vast majority of it.
Every port is monitored by satellite and the capability to put a U-2 or a UAV overhead is there, as well. Every ship that leaves North Korea is tracked by satellite, and they have been interdicted in the past, including one carrying missiles to Yemen that was intercepted in 2002 (though later released as there were no violations of law). Another was stopped in Cyprus carrying parts of an air defense system (the manifest said weather observation equipment) to Syria, and while Interpol was the primary source of the request, I have little doubt that US intelligence was working behind the scenes.
As for subs, I find it unthinkable that the US would not have at least one fast attack submarine outside of each North Korean sub base (I believe there are two), and the subs they have are not impossible to track. It's certainly a possible threat, but any place that they'd want to detonate such a weapon would be over a long distance and would have to get past a technologically advanced naval force, and it would be further from Kim Jong-Il's grasp. A couple thousand miles of ocean presents a long time for a crew -- even one that's pretty dedicated -- to decide that they're in better shape delivering the goods more quietly with a payoff and a home in a quiet section of Montana.
Miniaturization work is the next step, but it's not one of those things that qualifies as a "just." Miniaturization of a nuclear weapon is hard stuff. It took until 1957 and 1958 to get the first ICBMs in place for the USSR and the USA, respectively, and each had a massive program that was funded with a significant portion of the defense budget. Modern computers will help this somewhat, but there's still a lot of machine work and testing to do, and Pyongyang simply doesn't have the cash to push ahead that quickly.
There were Republican Guard members that continued fighting in pointless locales, and some of them went underground and provided a serious nuisance even before the announced end of hostilities. They were the ones who had the best weapons (such as the Kornet missiles that managed to knock a couple of Abrams tanks out of service) and the training to use them. Not all of them gave up at the sound of firecrackers.
It's actually 30,000, and will be dropping to 25,000 in a couple of years. And if you think that they want us out so badly, consider that the US wants to turn over wartime command of the forces to Seoul by 2009, but the South Koreans say they won't be ready until 2012. We're primarily there for overall wartime command, air superiority and close air support, artillery, and to provide a reason to bring in more forces when US soldiers are killed in combat.
Note that I didn't say that there's no reason for the US to be in South Korea. I said that no one wants to fight in North Korea. North Korea does not need a deterrent, but South Korea does. The border between the two is the most heavily-fortified area of the world, with a million or so soldiers watching each other, thousands of artillery pieces in constant state of readiness, and millions of land mines in place to make any thoughts of crossing the border suicidal.
The US did do the right thing in Korea. It was China sending millions of troops across the border to reinforce the North Koreans that set things back. Had MacArthur had the chance to use nuclear weapons on China, it would have opened the path for the Soviets to use them, and the chances for a large-scale nuclear war would have grown much bigger.
The first use of nuclear weapons was an awakening for the world, and they saw something to fear: Pandora's Box. No one wanted -- or wants -- to turn its key.
North Korea doesn't need a deterrent because the US won't invade unless North Korea crosses the border first. The US has seen significantly more hawkish characters than Bush and Rumsfeld on the topic of Korea. No one wants to fight there. It's horrendously mountainous, the winters are bitter cold, and the elite corps that would be handling any nuclear weapons are bound to be even more fanatical than the best of the Iraqi Republican Guard.
That said, the descriptions from the Russians about North Korea's bomb place it at 3m in length and weighing about four tons, which is far more than any North Korean missile can mount and more than most of their planes can handle. There is zero chance of North Korea mounting nuclear missile attack in the next few years, and they would have to learn some very powerful miniaturization tricks before they could threaten anyone at a significant range.
Providing material support to an organization that is engaged in hostilities against the United States earns you the designation of enemy combatant.
Doing so as a citizen of the United States is treason. From Article III, Section 3, of the Constutution: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
Providing material support to an organization hostile to the US is providing aid to the enemy, and therefore treason. One just has to find two witnesses to the act to get a conviction.
I find it ironic that the same group of people (though perhaps not you, wwiiol) talked about how great it was when Opera had the ad-supported version, since Opera would still get some income without people having to pay for it. When someone else tries to do that -- giving the option to not install the ads and still get full functionality -- they get lambasted for it.
That makes more sense. Three nines is easily possible. Five nines is possible with some precautions. I've even seen a few devices rated for six nines in certain configurations (clustered, multiple redundant failovers, multiple connection links, carefully-designed hardware... really expensive stuff). More nines makes maintenance a real bastard, though. :)
Nine nines? I'd like to see where this is documented. This would mean that the connection can only be down for .031 seconds every year, or one second every 32 years. I'm not sure that's technically achievable.
By the way, are all Fry's as disorganized as the one in Wilsonville, OR?
They're hit and miss. The one in Fountain Valley, CA, is pretty well-organized, and doesn't have a lot of open space to traverse. The one in Anaheim, CA, is less well-organized (the CD section is split in two by a pseudo-cafe), has much more open space (an issue when running in for a part at 8:58pm, which I do more often than I should), and lacks some very basic parts that a large computer store should have (such as SATA-PATA adapters). There are several in Los Angeles that I recall were very well-structured, but it's been several years since I have been to them, so they may have been broken since then.
This is because people will buy the same amount of gas no matter how much it costs, because they need the gas to live their lives.
Not that I'm a proponent of Prop 87 (at least, not yet -- I've yet to read it all the way through), but gasoline demand does seem to be changing, apparently due to pricing. In a report from the Dept of Energy Energy Information Administration released today, gasoline inventories are running about 9% above last year's levels, despite a decline of 1% in the refiners' utilization of capacity. This suggests that Americans actually have begun to tame their gasoline usage to some extent, which is how the market is supposed to work to begin with, higher prices reducing demand to an extent. It's still necessary, but people have been re-evaluating just how necessary it is.
Your headset may switch to a new pattern, but Bluetooth uses frequency hopping along the 2.4GHz spectrum. You may be confusing it with how 802.11b and later work, using channels on specific frequencies. (OK, technically, he's correct in some manner, as the frequency may well change, but I don't think that's what he meant.)
But the explosion itself was neatly contained by a plexiglass housing.
Where's the fun in that?
It depends on where you are. In California, you can usually sell it back insofar as your meter reverses direction, but the electric companies are not usually required to pay you for more than a reset to the prior month's value, and so you end up with zero usage cost but still have to pay connection fees.
In California, we got rid of much of the ESL thought that kept kids in their primary language for years, and it's shown some positive results. Now, parents have to go through extra steps to keep the old way, and the kids dropped into immersion teaching have picked up the language much faster and improved their test scores more rapidly. There are still those that cling to the old way and claim that it's better based largely on anecdotal evidence (and claims the year after it went into effect of lower test scores, due to more kids taking the test with limited skills before immersion had really had a chance to take effect), but they have been losing steam as more solid results come in.