How many movies cover the Inquisition? The Crusades? Bad Buddhist Kung Fu? Make Hindi Gods into animated villains? Show faithful anywhere to be subversive and evil in the name of good?
I haven't seen The Innocence of Muslims, nor its trailer, but I understand it contains a mocking portrayal of Mohammed himself. Not some historical incident committed by Muslims, but the central holy figure of the religion.
None of the above target the central tenet of the religion in question. Most Christians can look at the Crusades or the Inquisition, and say "that's not my religion".
It's more akin to something like The Last Temptation of Christ (in which Jesus marries Mary Magdalene - perhaps in a dream) or Jerry Springer The Opera -- both of these received widespread protests from Christians. Of course a lot of Christians ignored it, just as a lot of Muslims are ignoring this.
I have heard many Muslim teachers and Imams say that killing people over films, books, cartoons, lifestyle, or choice of belief is not just right but an obligation.
Out of interest, how many?
How about as a percentage of the 1.6 Million imams in the world (rough estimate, based on one imam per 1000 muslims)?
Obviously that's part of the world where solar power isn't viable in the winter (but is extra useful in the summer). But that's OK, not everywhere needs the same mix of energy sources. Alaska, for example.
Without human intervention, I think the planet did a pretty good job of being a net importer of energy from sunlight. Much of that biomass, including coal and oil, is stored sunlight.
There is a difference between a "brownfield" (environmentally contaminated area)
That's not what Brownfield means. It just means land that's been previously built on. It can be lightly contaminated, but doesn't have to be.
Hence if there's an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a town, you clear it and build homes on it, it's brownfield development -- as opposed to greenfield development, which is farmland or wilderness.
on demands don't make any sense for anyone right now.
Well, that's questionable. The nice thing about on-demand is that you never heat water you're not going to use. If it's gas powered, you're using a storable fuel. Maybe gas isn't sustainable in the very long term, and the pendulum would swing the other way -- but on the other hand perhaps gas could be replaced by hydrogen from sea water + renewables. In some parts of the world, space in the home is at a premium, and a 120L hot water tank uses space that could be used for storage.
we can greatly upsize tanks and store heat for space heat too.
Or use a better thermal storage material than water: such as ceramic bricks.
Eh? Who mentioned government? And who mentioned spending more money?
Something similar to what I described has already been done in West Wales. Not with wind power, but the principle is the same.
The local electricity company wanted to flatten their demand curve, because there was much more power being used in the daytime than at night. So they introduced a tariff in which night-time energy was much cheaper than the standard tariff, but daytime electricity was quite a lot more expensive. You could reduce your overall bill if you reduced your daytime electricity usage to a minimum, by shifting whatever you could to the night. The electricity company provided advice on how to achieve this (they may also have sold appliances, and even subsidised - I can't remember).
Things we'd do included:
- Leave clothes washing and tumble-drying until the night-time tariff kicks in
- Use storage heaters to heat the house (they pay for themselves in a couple of years)
- Insulate your hot water tank properly, and heat it at night
Clearly things like watching TV, running a PC, were sometimes on the more expensive daytime tariff, but the savings on heating etc. more than offset this.
That's a market-driven thing, and resulted in reduced costs for those who could adapt.
Solar as part of the power generation mix might make daytime power cheaper than night-time power (it depends where it is in the mix). The point is that you can use tariffs to make the usage track the actual costs.
Actually I've seen proposals for much more fine-grained changes in tariff, such that consumer systems react to prices supplied in real-time by the supplier.
Effects of wind farm, known: mixes the air so that temperature readings just downwind are higher, then the air thermally stratifies and things are back to normal not far from there.
Zero times any number is zero. HTH!
Hmm, but it can't be zero, otherwise we'd have a perpetual motion machine. Either it's not quite zero, or at that downwind measurement point, energy has been introduced from elsewhere.
However, my instinct is that the amount of energy we could usefully extract from the wind would always be a rounding error in terms of weather patterns.
This also happens near where I grew up in Wales. However, I think its capacity is pretty low, and to increase it you'd have to flood another valley to make a new reservoir. This tends to be unpopular with the people who live there.
....No one has actually _built_ a wind power turbine setup that operates at well above the ground. I mean, consider the issues involved:
1. How are we going to keep those turbines up at altitude? 2. What are the costs of tethering these high-flying wind turbine installations? 3. Will these installations become hazards to migratory birds flying at high altitude, let alone passing airplanes of all sizes?
One mechanism that's been investigated is kites at high altitude, steered by robots. They'd be pretty simple devices, but big. Fly them in a power position to reel out line, powering a generator on the ground. Move them to a parked position to reel them back in, using less power than they supplied on the way up. Repeat.
Another option, previously a/. story, is to have kites pull around an enormous "wheel". ISTR researchers concluding that an arrangement like this on the site of a decommissioned nuclear plant, would generate as much power as the nuclear plant it replaces. And nuclear plants already have no-fly zones.
I find it amusing you cite a game that was a flop. It required one gamecube and 3 gameboys plus linkcable. Not counting the gamecube we're talking about a ~$400 investment in external addons just to play a game. Very few people had a chance to play Pacman Vs. since they couldn't afford it.
Absolutely. It's like a lot of games that have hefty hardware needs: people think "that's really cool, but I'm not spending all that money on wacky hardware just for one game". Samba De Amigo. Steel Battalion. Saturn Bomberman with 10 players (2 multitaps, for the 10 controllers).
But I think a game with that kind of mechanic, played on the standard, mainstream, console's basic hardware (Wii U) could convince people.
BTW Pac Man Vs. was later on Namco Museum DS, and all it needs is a DS for each player.
The exemption for Lolita is something you've invented. It's not in the article.
It does *not* say, "there will be a list of pre-existing books which we would allow, even though they would otherwise be the kind of thing we'd ban".
It says (paraphrasing) "Lolita is an example of the kind of stuff we definitely wouldn't ban". And that also covers stuff of a similar nature to Lolita that hasn't been written yet.
There's all kinds of valid questions about who judges whether "Lolita 2013" is art or porn, and whether it's right to ban porn anyway. But let's discuss that instead of something that the proposal doesn't have.
To look on the other side of the coin on this one.... it's mostly irrelevant what the victim posting the story believes. All that matter is that someone with an axe to grind finds it, and claims it to be for arousal.
Like you'd find a single judge, juror, or politician that would back up the 'this isn't child porn' perspective. The victim would be thrown in prison and labelled a sex offender faster than they could post a reply on the message board.
I don't know about your country. In the UK, I think most judges, jurors and even politicians would take a rational view. Of course there's the occasional bonkers judge; you'd need 12 bonkers jurors.
Bear in mind, we're talking about a piece of writing which would likely be peppered with phrases like "the memory that haunts me most is..." etc.
There would be more borderline cases, and it's partly for that reason I oppose censorship. But this hypothetical victim support forum scenario isn't one of them.
This time around, the console has a concept which may or may not be good, but which is much harder to communicate in a 15-20 second TV advert. It's a tabletty... touchpaddy... thing. That does something.
It just needs a simple game that shows that capability. Something akin to Pacman Vs. -- a simple game where the player with the tablet has more information than his opponent, except with a Nintendo flavour. Show some gameplay; job done.
Slashdot Mirror
Only a few Christians actually bomb abortion clinics, but it would be lunacy to say that only a few Christians are anti-abortion.
It would also be lunacy to tar all Christians as being anti-abortion.
Oh FFS. If that matters, then I Googled "Imam condemns riots" and got a bunch of hits. You could do the same.
MCB is more of a bellweather though.
You realise, I hope, that The Life Of Brian was the subject of many protests (albeit not violent as far as I know), and was banned in many places?
How many movies cover the Inquisition? The Crusades? Bad Buddhist Kung Fu? Make Hindi Gods into animated villains? Show faithful anywhere to be subversive and evil in the name of good?
I haven't seen The Innocence of Muslims, nor its trailer, but I understand it contains a mocking portrayal of Mohammed himself. Not some historical incident committed by Muslims, but the central holy figure of the religion.
None of the above target the central tenet of the religion in question. Most Christians can look at the Crusades or the Inquisition, and say "that's not my religion".
It's more akin to something like The Last Temptation of Christ (in which Jesus marries Mary Magdalene - perhaps in a dream) or Jerry Springer The Opera -- both of these received widespread protests from Christians. Of course a lot of Christians ignored it, just as a lot of Muslims are ignoring this.
I found this condemnation of the current riots within 30 seconds of searching. http://www.mcb.org.uk/media/presstext.php?ann_id=501
I'm certain you'd find similar condemnations for the cartoons episode, if you looked.
He doesn't "beg for forgiveness at all".
He makes it clear that he (and the Norwegian authorities) "utterly reject" the video, and he calls for a calm response.
It all seems perfectly appropriate to me.
I have heard many Muslim teachers and Imams say that killing people over films, books, cartoons, lifestyle, or choice of belief is not just right but an obligation.
Out of interest, how many?
How about as a percentage of the 1.6 Million imams in the world (rough estimate, based on one imam per 1000 muslims)?
why do so many of its adherents riot and call for executions every time someone does/says something vaguely (or not vaguely) insulting?
Define "so many". There are 1,600 million Muslims, most of whom are not extremists.
Obviously that's part of the world where solar power isn't viable in the winter (but is extra useful in the summer). But that's OK, not everywhere needs the same mix of energy sources. Alaska, for example.
And how would you have a wind farm near an airport?
How about not doing that? They don't put nuclear power stations near airports either.
Without human intervention, I think the planet did a pretty good job of being a net importer of energy from sunlight. Much of that biomass, including coal and oil, is stored sunlight.
There is a difference between a "brownfield" (environmentally contaminated area)
That's not what Brownfield means. It just means land that's been previously built on. It can be lightly contaminated, but doesn't have to be.
Hence if there's an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a town, you clear it and build homes on it, it's brownfield development -- as opposed to greenfield development, which is farmland or wilderness.
Not where?
It's been going in the UK for decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7 (and elsewhere I'm sure)
on demands don't make any sense for anyone right now.
Well, that's questionable. The nice thing about on-demand is that you never heat water you're not going to use. If it's gas powered, you're using a storable fuel. Maybe gas isn't sustainable in the very long term, and the pendulum would swing the other way -- but on the other hand perhaps gas could be replaced by hydrogen from sea water + renewables. In some parts of the world, space in the home is at a premium, and a 120L hot water tank uses space that could be used for storage.
we can greatly upsize tanks and store heat for space heat too.
Or use a better thermal storage material than water: such as ceramic bricks.
Eh? Who mentioned government? And who mentioned spending more money?
Something similar to what I described has already been done in West Wales. Not with wind power, but the principle is the same.
The local electricity company wanted to flatten their demand curve, because there was much more power being used in the daytime than at night. So they introduced a tariff in which night-time energy was much cheaper than the standard tariff, but daytime electricity was quite a lot more expensive. You could reduce your overall bill if you reduced your daytime electricity usage to a minimum, by shifting whatever you could to the night. The electricity company provided advice on how to achieve this (they may also have sold appliances, and even subsidised - I can't remember).
Things we'd do included:
- Leave clothes washing and tumble-drying until the night-time tariff kicks in
- Use storage heaters to heat the house (they pay for themselves in a couple of years)
- Insulate your hot water tank properly, and heat it at night
Clearly things like watching TV, running a PC, were sometimes on the more expensive daytime tariff, but the savings on heating etc. more than offset this.
That's a market-driven thing, and resulted in reduced costs for those who could adapt.
Solar as part of the power generation mix might make daytime power cheaper than night-time power (it depends where it is in the mix). The point is that you can use tariffs to make the usage track the actual costs.
Actually I've seen proposals for much more fine-grained changes in tariff, such that consumer systems react to prices supplied in real-time by the supplier.
Effects of wind farm, known: mixes the air so that temperature readings just downwind are higher, then the air thermally stratifies and things are back to normal not far from there.
Zero times any number is zero. HTH!
Hmm, but it can't be zero, otherwise we'd have a perpetual motion machine. Either it's not quite zero, or at that downwind measurement point, energy has been introduced from elsewhere.
However, my instinct is that the amount of energy we could usefully extract from the wind would always be a rounding error in terms of weather patterns.
Wasn't it Jeanette Winterson who said that?
How do you get that solar power from the light side of Earth to the dark side of Earth?
You don't. You introduce variable tariffs so that night-time energy costs more than daytime energy. Then people will buy storage heaters.
This also happens near where I grew up in Wales. However, I think its capacity is pretty low, and to increase it you'd have to flood another valley to make a new reservoir. This tends to be unpopular with the people who live there.
The overriding problem with wind power is that, for large parts of the world, it is not constant or predictable.
I get the impression (though I have no source) that at higher altitudes, wind is not only faster, but more constant.
....No one has actually _built_ a wind power turbine setup that operates at well above the ground. I mean, consider the issues involved:
1. How are we going to keep those turbines up at altitude?
2. What are the costs of tethering these high-flying wind turbine installations?
3. Will these installations become hazards to migratory birds flying at high altitude, let alone passing airplanes of all sizes?
One mechanism that's been investigated is kites at high altitude, steered by robots. They'd be pretty simple devices, but big. Fly them in a power position to reel out line, powering a generator on the ground. Move them to a parked position to reel them back in, using less power than they supplied on the way up. Repeat.
Another option, previously a /. story, is to have kites pull around an enormous "wheel". ISTR researchers concluding that an arrangement like this on the site of a decommissioned nuclear plant, would generate as much power as the nuclear plant it replaces. And nuclear plants already have no-fly zones.
I dunno about the birds though.
I find it amusing you cite a game that was a flop. It required one gamecube and 3 gameboys plus linkcable. Not counting the gamecube we're talking about a ~$400 investment in external addons just to play a game. Very few people had a chance to play Pacman Vs. since they couldn't afford it.
Absolutely. It's like a lot of games that have hefty hardware needs: people think "that's really cool, but I'm not spending all that money on wacky hardware just for one game". Samba De Amigo. Steel Battalion. Saturn Bomberman with 10 players (2 multitaps, for the 10 controllers).
But I think a game with that kind of mechanic, played on the standard, mainstream, console's basic hardware (Wii U) could convince people.
BTW Pac Man Vs. was later on Namco Museum DS, and all it needs is a DS for each player.
The exemption for Lolita is something you've invented. It's not in the article.
It does *not* say, "there will be a list of pre-existing books which we would allow, even though they would otherwise be the kind of thing we'd ban".
It says (paraphrasing) "Lolita is an example of the kind of stuff we definitely wouldn't ban". And that also covers stuff of a similar nature to Lolita that hasn't been written yet.
There's all kinds of valid questions about who judges whether "Lolita 2013" is art or porn, and whether it's right to ban porn anyway. But let's discuss that instead of something that the proposal doesn't have.
To look on the other side of the coin on this one.... it's mostly irrelevant what the victim posting the story believes. All that matter is that someone with an axe to grind finds it, and claims it to be for arousal.
Like you'd find a single judge, juror, or politician that would back up the 'this isn't child porn' perspective. The victim would be thrown in prison and labelled a sex offender faster than they could post a reply on the message board.
I don't know about your country. In the UK, I think most judges, jurors and even politicians would take a rational view. Of course there's the occasional bonkers judge; you'd need 12 bonkers jurors.
Bear in mind, we're talking about a piece of writing which would likely be peppered with phrases like "the memory that haunts me most is..." etc.
There would be more borderline cases, and it's partly for that reason I oppose censorship. But this hypothetical victim support forum scenario isn't one of them.
This time around, the console has a concept which may or may not be good, but which is much harder to communicate in a 15-20 second TV advert. It's a tabletty... touchpaddy... thing. That does something.
It just needs a simple game that shows that capability. Something akin to Pacman Vs. -- a simple game where the player with the tablet has more information than his opponent, except with a Nintendo flavour. Show some gameplay; job done.