>>It will be damn small scale. We just looked into solar PV for a similar (AC-hogging, pool) rental property in Florida. To cover the entire bill would require a $75k system.
$75k sounds like an overprovisioned, non-grid tied system with battery backup, yes?
$20k buys you a grid-tied system that will cover most of your power needs, with a coal/NG/nuclear backstop. Much more economical and practical.
>>And it would still require us to purchase power from the grid at night. Yes, we could "sell" back to the grid during the day, but someone somewhere would still be burning fossile fuels for us at night.
Every unit of energy you send into the grid is one less unit of energy that the backstop doesn't need to generate. So there's absolutely no rational reason to feel bad about building excess credits during the day and drawing them down at night.
Plus, backstops don't need to be fossil fuels. 20% of the power generated nationwide (and in Florida) comes from nuclear.
You think the average home pays $100 for power in California? Heh. Not if you live in the desert and run your AC at 50c/kWh.
$20k/home could install small-scale solar on all of these houses, and without the inevitable lawsuits (the Sierra Club has successfully blocked two sites already, costing $$) and cost overruns. It also demonstrates that the supposed economy of scale benefit from large scale solar are also illusory.
Mm, it doesn't have to be programming per se to teach fundamental concepts. I credit LogicWorks (is that the name) on the old Apple IIe to giving me a solid foundation of how to assemble complex AND / OR / NOT gates in the correct way.
Robowars was a great way to learn programming too, as your code was directly used to hunt and kill your competitors... taught basic code concepts, interrupts, and so forth.
Actually, illegal immigrants are indeed the reason 75% of ERs in San Diego have gone bankrupt. Talk about how wonderful EMTALA is all you want, but it kill people every day in my home town because they can't get to an ER on time.
EMTALA is indeed socialized medicine, but it is completely unfair, putting the burden on hospitals, who then go rent-seeking and end up screwing citizens that can pay and don't have insurance.
Republicans cut pensions, Democrats set pension levels to unsustainably high amounts. The sweetheart deals they (Democrats) make with the public employees around here are beyond ridiculous.
Democrats create budget problems. Republicans solve them. Or, depending on your perspective, it's the other way around. Like if you're one of the lifeguards who can retire at 40 on 200k a year.
Don't pretend they're the same issues at all. Public unions (teachers unions, or gov't worker unions) are inherently evil monopolies. Hey, just like Comcast!
Busting the public unions (which even FDR was for, and he was pretty pro-union in other cases) is a good thing. Destroying competition to AT&T is a bad thing.
Republicans and Democrats each get one of the issues right
Yeah, that's a good point. If I lived in Atlanta, I'd probably fly Delta more often.
Never had complaints with United. I fly a couple times a month. Well - we had a hydraulic issue once, they deplaned us and gave us free food and drink. Pretty reasonable, really.
United scores points in my book for EcobomyPlus service. Not many others offer the legroom of first class for free(ish).
It's great to say "Kill all the lawyers" - until you need one. There's a surprising number of people and companies willing to simply not pay you. Even if you have a contract, and completed the services rendered. My corporation has had to do it 3 times, and has won 100% of the owed money plus legal fees each time. Would we have won if I had self-represented? It's hard to say.
>>The issue at hand, is that you do not have the choice to be governed.
You can certainly by a boat, renounce your citizenship, and live on the ocean. Let me know how well that works out for you.
Personally, I think having police, fire services, roads, and a military are generally worth the price of admission to living in a country. This works out to about $3000 per person per year in America.
It doesn't mean a Renaissance Man is a contributor (this is often an arbitary thing anyway), but simply that a person has a good level of understanding in a lot of subjects. The latter is certainly possible - the former, perhaps not so much, unless you partner with someone else in the field. Publishing in a different field is difficult if you don't know the conventions.
Being a renaissance man can be good for your career. Easy examples are math, physics, and art with computer science, or basic layout/design skills learned in journalism applied to web site design.
But more esoteric cross-studies can be valuable as well. A friend of the family, Dr Bart Kosko, a rather preeminent EE professor at USC, drew a lot of inspiration for his chosen specialization, fuzzy logic, from his undergraduate background in philosophy, as well as his Buddhism.
Going outside of your field can give very valuable insights in your field.
>>This sort of thing breaks down as soon as the audience gets bored of it.
Indeed... but Rockstar has been making a killing at repeating the GTA formula (four times, and then again in the old west and again in the 1950s) even though most people get only about halfway through their games before they get bored. I beat Red Dead Redemption, but even I was feeling the drag as they kept going, "Oh, but just one more mission, Marsten!!" over and over.
My wife wanted me to pick up LA Noire today, but I just couldn't summon the excitement any more. But it's leading sales for this year...
>>And, really, unlike the pharma industry which waits until you can prove that something is causing harm before they pull it, the airline industry is waiting for proof that it doesn't cause harm before they allow it.
The situation with pharmaceuticals is complicated. I can think of a few times when pharma companies lied about risk (Vioxx being a big one), but the reaction to it (pulling Vioxx off the shelves entirely) was as harmful to some people as the drug itself - I used to have a landlord (old B-52 pilot during the Korean war) who had severe arthritis of the spine. Nothing worked for the pain but Vioxx and morphine. So when they pulled Vioxx, he got the morphine, and slept 16 hours a day. He told me he'd rather take the 1% increased risk of heart disease than sleep his life away.
But generally speaking, the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA are very very careful about patient health. Probably too cautious, to be perfectly honest. There's a lot of unique drugs they've pulled due to minor risks, that people can't get anywhere else.
I studied how Boeing does risk-assessment back in college, and they are also very very cautious when it comes to risk assessment. You could put a bullet through a cockpit in any place (excepting the pilot, I guess) and the plane would continue to fly. The notion that a small milliwatt signal from back in the steerage section of the plane could cause an autopilot to turn off is just laughable. It's much more likely that it was something else instead.
>>>>There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence >>Need I say more?
Yeah, exactly. They've compiled a list of 75 electronics glitches which "might have been caused by" personal electronic devices.
Calling BS on this - the inverse square law, shielding, and relatively low power of personal devices makes it much more likely that these glitches were caused by: 1) Bugs in the system 2) Cosmic rays flipping bits 3) Human error.
I can't begin to imagine how unlikely a weak RF signal 20 feet away could cause an event resulting in "the autopilot turned off". Hell, isn't the EMI from other devices next to the autopilot and inside the shielding a much more likely culprit?
>>Human beings are not "birth-control-farmo-bacteria" and never will be.
Heh. That's why all modern industrialized nations are relying on immigration to grow their populations, right? In societies where they educate women and offer them jobs, the crisis becomes having too few new babies instead of too many.
>>If you believe that we can control our population growth
We can. It's called "giving women an education".
>>or find new resources,
Yes and no. It's not like there's an infinite supply of metal or whatever, but I suspect you think our current reserves is all there is. But that's not how mining works. Essentially the owners of a mine do a lot of engineering and math, and determine a price point above which it is profitable to run their mine. For example, I was just at a gold mine last month that is profitable above $500/oz. It got shut down in the 80s with the metals crash, but since gold is now 3x that amount, they're going through the process of reopening it.
Gasoline works the same way. As gas prices increased, oil sands became economically viable, and now Canada is one of our biggest suppliers of gas. Similar story for oil shale, and coal. So it's not like the supply is infinite, but peak oilheads really can't fathom this point.
>>We can't even bring our 7 billion properly to full literacy.
Who's we? In countries that have functioning governments, the literacy rate has been going up quite steadily for the past 100 years. I wouldn't be so pessimistic over what is really a very positive trend.
Heh, no problem. I learned the same thing on Slashdot the last time a GMO food thread appeared. =)
>>I do agree. I still think it's the bureaucrats' fault for creating legislation where a significant part of our corn stocks are going into creating biofuel no one's using.
As long as Iowa farmers control the front-runners of the presidency, it's unclear if this will ever change.
>>To the point: The disposal costs are not factored in, since they are not known.
Back to my point: Disposal costs *are* factored in. Unlike coal or NG plants, where they could shut down tomorrow and have taxpayers pick up the tab on cleaning them up (IIRC - I'm not positive on this point), nuclear plants have their decommissioning fees built in.
You might argue the estimates are incorrect, since it's impossible to predict the future, but they do exist.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Yeah, right. If that's true how come the US Debt increases more under Republicans than it does Democrats?
In particular I was talking about state budgets.
Take a look in particular at whether red or blue states are more likely to have balanced budgets. (Actually balanced budgets, not faux-balanced.)
http://statebudgetwatch.org/50_State_Final.pdf
>>"Lifeguards who can retire at 50 on 200k a year." Do tell. Pull the other one while you're at it.
Let me Google that for you, asshat:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Lifeguards-high-pay-riles-apf-3067894082.html
>>Meanwhile, my grandmother worked for 40 years as a WI schoolteacher
That's why I said California, not WI. The public unions are out of control here.
>>It's clearly an obvious troll with no connection to reality.
Go fuck yourself.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Lifeguards-high-pay-riles-apf-3067894082.html
Public wages in California average 25% higher than Texas, after adjusting for COL. Texas doesn't allow public unions.
>>It will be damn small scale. We just looked into solar PV for a similar (AC-hogging, pool) rental property in Florida. To cover the entire bill would require a $75k system.
$75k sounds like an overprovisioned, non-grid tied system with battery backup, yes?
$20k buys you a grid-tied system that will cover most of your power needs, with a coal/NG/nuclear backstop. Much more economical and practical.
>>And it would still require us to purchase power from the grid at night. Yes, we could "sell" back to the grid during the day, but someone somewhere would still be burning fossile fuels for us at night.
Every unit of energy you send into the grid is one less unit of energy that the backstop doesn't need to generate. So there's absolutely no rational reason to feel bad about building excess credits during the day and drawing them down at night.
Plus, backstops don't need to be fossil fuels. 20% of the power generated nationwide (and in Florida) comes from nuclear.
What I'm saying is that a hilariously small percentage of the unpaid fees to ERs from illegal immigrants was covered by the bill.
You think the average home pays $100 for power in California? Heh. Not if you live in the desert and run your AC at 50c/kWh.
$20k/home could install small-scale solar on all of these houses, and without the inevitable lawsuits (the Sierra Club has successfully blocked two sites already, costing $$) and cost overruns. It also demonstrates that the supposed economy of scale benefit from large scale solar are also illusory.
Mm, it doesn't have to be programming per se to teach fundamental concepts. I credit LogicWorks (is that the name) on the old Apple IIe to giving me a solid foundation of how to assemble complex AND / OR / NOT gates in the correct way.
Robowars was a great way to learn programming too, as your code was directly used to hunt and kill your competitors... taught basic code concepts, interrupts, and so forth.
What's hilarious is that you are using the wikipedia article on EMTALA to support your point, when it contradicts your point.
Hint: 120 million is less than 6 billion.
Actually, illegal immigrants are indeed the reason 75% of ERs in San Diego have gone bankrupt. Talk about how wonderful EMTALA is all you want, but it kill people every day in my home town because they can't get to an ER on time.
EMTALA is indeed socialized medicine, but it is completely unfair, putting the burden on hospitals, who then go rent-seeking and end up screwing citizens that can pay and don't have insurance.
Republicans cut pensions, Democrats set pension levels to unsustainably high amounts. The sweetheart deals they (Democrats) make with the public employees around here are beyond ridiculous.
Democrats create budget problems. Republicans solve them. Or, depending on your perspective, it's the other way around. Like if you're one of the lifeguards who can retire at 40 on 200k a year.
Don't pretend they're the same issues at all. Public unions (teachers unions, or gov't worker unions) are inherently evil monopolies. Hey, just like Comcast!
Busting the public unions (which even FDR was for, and he was pretty pro-union in other cases) is a good thing. Destroying competition to AT&T is a bad thing.
Republicans and Democrats each get one of the issues right
Yeah, that's a good point. If I lived in Atlanta, I'd probably fly Delta more often.
Never had complaints with United. I fly a couple times a month. Well - we had a hydraulic issue once, they deplaned us and gave us free food and drink. Pretty reasonable, really.
United scores points in my book for EcobomyPlus service. Not many others offer the legroom of first class for free(ish).
My hatred for USAir is incomparable, though.
People that would pay $25 for a better flying service are NOT flying US Airways anyway. It has the worst customer service of all the legacy carriers.
It's great to say "Kill all the lawyers" - until you need one. There's a surprising number of people and companies willing to simply not pay you. Even if you have a contract, and completed the services rendered. My corporation has had to do it 3 times, and has won 100% of the owed money plus legal fees each time. Would we have won if I had self-represented? It's hard to say.
>>The issue at hand, is that you do not have the choice to be governed.
You can certainly by a boat, renounce your citizenship, and live on the ocean. Let me know how well that works out for you.
Personally, I think having police, fire services, roads, and a military are generally worth the price of admission to living in a country. This works out to about $3000 per person per year in America.
It doesn't mean a Renaissance Man is a contributor (this is often an arbitary thing anyway), but simply that a person has a good level of understanding in a lot of subjects. The latter is certainly possible - the former, perhaps not so much, unless you partner with someone else in the field. Publishing in a different field is difficult if you don't know the conventions.
Being a renaissance man can be good for your career. Easy examples are math, physics, and art with computer science, or basic layout/design skills learned in journalism applied to web site design.
But more esoteric cross-studies can be valuable as well. A friend of the family, Dr Bart Kosko, a rather preeminent EE professor at USC, drew a lot of inspiration for his chosen specialization, fuzzy logic, from his undergraduate background in philosophy, as well as his Buddhism.
Going outside of your field can give very valuable insights in your field.
Research why you're wrong, and get back to me on it.
>>This sort of thing breaks down as soon as the audience gets bored of it.
Indeed... but Rockstar has been making a killing at repeating the GTA formula (four times, and then again in the old west and again in the 1950s) even though most people get only about halfway through their games before they get bored. I beat Red Dead Redemption, but even I was feeling the drag as they kept going, "Oh, but just one more mission, Marsten!!" over and over.
My wife wanted me to pick up LA Noire today, but I just couldn't summon the excitement any more. But it's leading sales for this year...
>>And, really, unlike the pharma industry which waits until you can prove that something is causing harm before they pull it, the airline industry is waiting for proof that it doesn't cause harm before they allow it.
The situation with pharmaceuticals is complicated. I can think of a few times when pharma companies lied about risk (Vioxx being a big one), but the reaction to it (pulling Vioxx off the shelves entirely) was as harmful to some people as the drug itself - I used to have a landlord (old B-52 pilot during the Korean war) who had severe arthritis of the spine. Nothing worked for the pain but Vioxx and morphine. So when they pulled Vioxx, he got the morphine, and slept 16 hours a day. He told me he'd rather take the 1% increased risk of heart disease than sleep his life away.
But generally speaking, the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA are very very careful about patient health. Probably too cautious, to be perfectly honest. There's a lot of unique drugs they've pulled due to minor risks, that people can't get anywhere else.
I studied how Boeing does risk-assessment back in college, and they are also very very cautious when it comes to risk assessment. You could put a bullet through a cockpit in any place (excepting the pilot, I guess) and the plane would continue to fly. The notion that a small milliwatt signal from back in the steerage section of the plane could cause an autopilot to turn off is just laughable. It's much more likely that it was something else instead.
>>>>There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence
>>Need I say more?
Yeah, exactly. They've compiled a list of 75 electronics glitches which "might have been caused by" personal electronic devices.
Calling BS on this - the inverse square law, shielding, and relatively low power of personal devices makes it much more likely that these glitches were caused by:
1) Bugs in the system
2) Cosmic rays flipping bits
3) Human error.
I can't begin to imagine how unlikely a weak RF signal 20 feet away could cause an event resulting in "the autopilot turned off". Hell, isn't the EMI from other devices next to the autopilot and inside the shielding a much more likely culprit?
>>But we have never managed to do that. Not even in China. And meanwhile the population of earth is growing as predicted.
Well, that's good then. Because the population of the Earth is expected to level off in a few decades, and then start declining.
Cool, eh?
>>Human beings are not "birth-control-farmo-bacteria" and never will be.
Heh. That's why all modern industrialized nations are relying on immigration to grow their populations, right? In societies where they educate women and offer them jobs, the crisis becomes having too few new babies instead of too many.
>>If you believe that we can control our population growth
We can. It's called "giving women an education".
>>or find new resources,
Yes and no. It's not like there's an infinite supply of metal or whatever, but I suspect you think our current reserves is all there is. But that's not how mining works. Essentially the owners of a mine do a lot of engineering and math, and determine a price point above which it is profitable to run their mine. For example, I was just at a gold mine last month that is profitable above $500/oz. It got shut down in the 80s with the metals crash, but since gold is now 3x that amount, they're going through the process of reopening it.
Gasoline works the same way. As gas prices increased, oil sands became economically viable, and now Canada is one of our biggest suppliers of gas. Similar story for oil shale, and coal. So it's not like the supply is infinite, but peak oilheads really can't fathom this point.
>>We can't even bring our 7 billion properly to full literacy.
Who's we? In countries that have functioning governments, the literacy rate has been going up quite steadily for the past 100 years. I wouldn't be so pessimistic over what is really a very positive trend.
>>Thanks for setting that straight
Heh, no problem. I learned the same thing on Slashdot the last time a GMO food thread appeared. =)
>>I do agree. I still think it's the bureaucrats' fault for creating legislation where a significant part of our corn stocks are going into creating biofuel no one's using.
As long as Iowa farmers control the front-runners of the presidency, it's unclear if this will ever change.
>>To the point: The disposal costs are not factored in, since they are not known.
Back to my point: Disposal costs *are* factored in. Unlike coal or NG plants, where they could shut down tomorrow and have taxpayers pick up the tab on cleaning them up (IIRC - I'm not positive on this point), nuclear plants have their decommissioning fees built in.
You might argue the estimates are incorrect, since it's impossible to predict the future, but they do exist.