Nuclear waste isn't even as bad as most think. Most nuclear waste is actually gloves, test tubes, coats, etc. that have been only potentially exposed. Actual nuclear material in waste is only a small fraction of the overall mass. Also, radiation can't be both high energy and long lasting. Materials that are radioactive for thousands of years are usually almost edible.
The biggest annoyance I see with nuclear power is just how it's converted to electricity. A nuclear power plant, with all that tech, simply heats water to steam and moves a turbine. The nuclear part is just a better heater. This strikes me as silly.
"...that were there essentially to defend the colonies from the evil empire (aka Europe)..."
As far as I can tell, from the writings of the writers, the 2nd amendment was for national defense against other countries, citizens defense against our coutnry, personal defense against other persons, and as a last resort to back up the people's sovereignty (aka--you'd better let us vote).
Emotions and Humanity
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Review: A.I.
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Why do story-tellers always portray emotions (especially love) as the test of humanity, and then equate humanity with personhood? No love==no personhood? But, I always though Spock was a great guy!
An idea flowing out of the cognition field is that a human brain is mainly one big collection of pre-computed things to spare the mind from having to deal with everything.
Imagine you are in a dark cave and you hear a growl. You could determine logically that it's unsafe and leave, or you could become afraid and leave. The result of emotion is often the same as the logic--just pre-computed and generalized. Every emotion from love to greed to lust to charity can have this generalized logic applied to it--so it's possible that's all it really is.
But if you could create a faster mind capable of dealing with logically deducing if it's unsafe in a cave, you don't need emotion--and not only that--it's superior logic may often cause it to act in ways consistant to that of emotional beings. You might call logic "real-time emotion" instead of "pre-computed emotion"?
I'll take Spock over Kirk any day!
Re:a.i. represents human experience (spoilers)
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Review: A.I.
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He was supposed to have worked on this (off and on) for the last 20 years.
Take nuclear weapons for example. There are enough to destroy the earth a billion times over (or so). Most people/countries are very afraid to use even one nuke.
What would happen if there were only enough nukes to destroy only half the earth. Half the earth would be missing in a week. I guarantee it.
What if there were no more nuclear weapons at all? Someone would build one--a logical given. He would make it count--it's in his interest. It would really suck dick--another given.
In the world today, even pacifist nations have agreements with non-pacifist nations for national defense. (Ex. we defend Japan)
If anyone could find a way to disarm the world AND defend against the next nut AND avoid passionate conflicts, i'd be the first to support the plan. But, agree with me, that's fantasy.
I live in the US. Every war we got into followed someone saying "we don't need that military any more" and enacting military cuts. Every war was started during a Democratic presidency (the military cuts explained). Most were ended in a Republican presidency (military buildups explained).
We slowly learned that the only way to prevent war is to be very ready for it. Otherwise, others get you into a war very fast.
Then, with Iraq, the Republicans jumped into a war before the Democrats did, and this confused the hell out of everone.
It's security through the unknown. Way back when, most countries didn't know we had the U2--and no country knew exactly how high it flew. If they did, they'd find a better way of shooting it down. The same with the SR-71.
Stealth's advantage was surprise. The government already knew how to spot stealth aircraft and likely knew others would find out--so they introduced them to the world in action.
Any knowledge given to an enemy is his advantage. The aurora that's been talked about (I believe) exists. There have been sightings of smoke trals with the "beads on a string" pattern of a scram-jet engine--an engine that gets you up to maybe mach 5 or mach 15. But this was all in the early 90's. They'd be working on something new by now...
The US Gov admitted knowing how to spot stealth around the time they admitted there were such aircraft (early 80's I believe). If it took everyone this long to do, that's pretty good.
My point was that I could not identify any real advertising and that it seems strange that for a $15 CD, at least $7.50 goes to this. It's just strange that they would just point to advertising as the main reason for high prices, when we don't see any. Doesn't anybody ask questions?
It's my understanding that most (all) of the money an artist makes is from live concerts, so I don't fear they'll be going without food because of any record company shafting. I just don't want to pay extra for a CD and I don't want my money paying a radio station to play what I don't want to hear.
Even more, English is expressive. Depending on what you want to say, you can choose a word derived from another language, say greek or french, to set the tone.
To really understand the English language itself, you need some knowledge of the many languages that it adopted words and rules from. Sadly, I don't know a lot about that.
But, while English is one of the most difficult languages to use correctly, no one cares. Bad punctuation, spelling and improper plurals may look bad, but English can be understood no matter how many mistakes are introduced. That's why it takes only a few months to learn enough English to be understood, but many years to get most of it right.
It's something like: 1% materials, 5% artist pay, 20% publishing fee, 15% studio fee, 59% advertising. (No one will give actual numbers, so I just made them up based on what little information the RIAA will shell out.)
I don't care how much goes to artists or materials or publishing or studio. The RIAA says advertising takes most of the pie. WHAT ADVERTISING?!
Some please tell me what is music advertising? I hear no advertising; I see no advertising...
My understanding of the brit invasion, is that the Beatles were huge and US record companies didn't know what to do--so they signed anyone who applied. They made a lot of bad music we don't hear any more, and a lot we still do.
Punk, I agree. It's an economy thing.
New wave, as I see it, was MTV acting as the new DJ. The european new wave artists were the only ones with videos. It's just too bad MTV doesn't play any music any more....
The economy is taking a down-turn and we're all REALLY sick of sugar-crap-music. I'm curious what's next.
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, the more liberal a place, the more "protection" they want from themselves and each other--granting more power to the gov.
Plutonium is simply a poisonous substance without radiation. A radiated apple, yes, I would eat that.
To me, it looks like a Star Trek issue warp-coil powering a steam engine. We expect more than a "better coal" from a warp-coil.
Direct particle conversion would be nice--maybe somehow radiating quanta of energy that manafest as electrons....
I guess I'll just have to invent it myself over the weekend.
Nuclear waste isn't even as bad as most think. Most nuclear waste is actually gloves, test tubes, coats, etc. that have been only potentially exposed. Actual nuclear material in waste is only a small fraction of the overall mass. Also, radiation can't be both high energy and long lasting. Materials that are radioactive for thousands of years are usually almost edible. The biggest annoyance I see with nuclear power is just how it's converted to electricity. A nuclear power plant, with all that tech, simply heats water to steam and moves a turbine. The nuclear part is just a better heater. This strikes me as silly.
"...that were there essentially to defend the colonies from the evil empire (aka Europe)..."
As far as I can tell, from the writings of the writers, the 2nd amendment was for national defense against other countries, citizens defense against our coutnry, personal defense against other persons, and as a last resort to back up the people's sovereignty (aka--you'd better let us vote).
Despite all the faults of the US, we can still point to China as worse.
It makes me feel better than at least one country...
For perfect coffee, don't use a coffee maker! FRENCH PRESS!!!!
Now I can detect exactly who I should mug.
This is great!
Why do story-tellers always portray emotions (especially love) as the test of humanity, and then equate humanity with personhood? No love==no personhood? But, I always though Spock was a great guy!
An idea flowing out of the cognition field is that a human brain is mainly one big collection of pre-computed things to spare the mind from having to deal with everything.
Imagine you are in a dark cave and you hear a growl. You could determine logically that it's unsafe and leave, or you could become afraid and leave. The result of emotion is often the same as the logic--just pre-computed and generalized. Every emotion from love to greed to lust to charity can have this generalized logic applied to it--so it's possible that's all it really is.
But if you could create a faster mind capable of dealing with logically deducing if it's unsafe in a cave, you don't need emotion--and not only that--it's superior logic may often cause it to act in ways consistant to that of emotional beings. You might call logic "real-time emotion" instead of "pre-computed emotion"?
I'll take Spock over Kirk any day!
He was supposed to have worked on this (off and on) for the last 20 years.
There were no debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Many did get very involved in details, like lawyers often do.
The angels things was a joke; as in "Next thing he'll be debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."
I'm a Lain fan and I can be sure that disney won't be stealing _that_ one for a long time! The American audience is just too.... ah.... stupid.
Britain sends troops into battle under the age of 18. THAT'S barkaric!
Take nuclear weapons for example. There are enough to destroy the earth a billion times over (or so). Most people/countries are very afraid to use even one nuke.
What would happen if there were only enough nukes to destroy only half the earth. Half the earth would be missing in a week. I guarantee it.
What if there were no more nuclear weapons at all? Someone would build one--a logical given. He would make it count--it's in his interest. It would really suck dick--another given.
In the world today, even pacifist nations have agreements with non-pacifist nations for national defense. (Ex. we defend Japan)
If anyone could find a way to disarm the world AND defend against the next nut AND avoid passionate conflicts, i'd be the first to support the plan. But, agree with me, that's fantasy.
I live in the US. Every war we got into followed someone saying "we don't need that military any more" and enacting military cuts. Every war was started during a Democratic presidency (the military cuts explained). Most were ended in a Republican presidency (military buildups explained).
We slowly learned that the only way to prevent war is to be very ready for it. Otherwise, others get you into a war very fast.
Then, with Iraq, the Republicans jumped into a war before the Democrats did, and this confused the hell out of everone.
Those goals were reflected in the design of the F-117. But the F-22 is supersonic--and though superexpensive--designed to be in the line of fire.
It's security through the unknown. Way back when, most countries didn't know we had the U2--and no country knew exactly how high it flew. If they did, they'd find a better way of shooting it down. The same with the SR-71.
Stealth's advantage was surprise. The government already knew how to spot stealth aircraft and likely knew others would find out--so they introduced them to the world in action.
Any knowledge given to an enemy is his advantage. The aurora that's been talked about (I believe) exists. There have been sightings of smoke trals with the "beads on a string" pattern of a scram-jet engine--an engine that gets you up to maybe mach 5 or mach 15. But this was all in the early 90's. They'd be working on something new by now...
"deemed not expensive enough for development"
I knew that's the way our Gov operated!
The US Gov admitted knowing how to spot stealth around the time they admitted there were such aircraft (early 80's I believe). If it took everyone this long to do, that's pretty good.
My point was that I could not identify any real advertising and that it seems strange that for a $15 CD, at least $7.50 goes to this. It's just strange that they would just point to advertising as the main reason for high prices, when we don't see any. Doesn't anybody ask questions?
It's my understanding that most (all) of the money an artist makes is from live concerts, so I don't fear they'll be going without food because of any record company shafting. I just don't want to pay extra for a CD and I don't want my money paying a radio station to play what I don't want to hear.
Even more, English is expressive. Depending on what you want to say, you can choose a word derived from another language, say greek or french, to set the tone.
To really understand the English language itself, you need some knowledge of the many languages that it adopted words and rules from. Sadly, I don't know a lot about that.
But, while English is one of the most difficult languages to use correctly, no one cares. Bad punctuation, spelling and improper plurals may look bad, but English can be understood no matter how many mistakes are introduced. That's why it takes only a few months to learn enough English to be understood, but many years to get most of it right.
It's not two alphabets, it's two similar forms for each letter. And the usage is really really really easy.
Have you seen what goes into the cost of a CD?
It's something like: 1% materials, 5% artist pay, 20% publishing fee, 15% studio fee, 59% advertising. (No one will give actual numbers, so I just made them up based on what little information the RIAA will shell out.)
I don't care how much goes to artists or materials or publishing or studio. The RIAA says advertising takes most of the pie. WHAT ADVERTISING?!
Some please tell me what is music advertising? I hear no advertising; I see no advertising...
My understanding of the brit invasion, is that the Beatles were huge and US record companies didn't know what to do--so they signed anyone who applied. They made a lot of bad music we don't hear any more, and a lot we still do.
Punk, I agree. It's an economy thing.
New wave, as I see it, was MTV acting as the new DJ. The european new wave artists were the only ones with videos. It's just too bad MTV doesn't play any music any more....
The economy is taking a down-turn and we're all REALLY sick of sugar-crap-music. I'm curious what's next.