This is another symptom that the US is sliding out of the first world and into the third world. It goes along with our creaky unmaintained road, water and sewage infrastructure, along with our badly out of date airports and crappy passenger rail system.
And then there's our overpriced and underperforming health delivery system. (Note: ACA/Obamacare is a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.) And our failing K-12 education, which is severely underfunded and strangling on bureaucracy.
Along with the steadily declining state level college/university systems. (And before the right wingers start screaming about foreign students, remember that they come from places where it's much harder to get into any school and a lot of the higher educations options are not as good as the US, even with our decline. Both public and private schools love out of country students because they pay full tuition.)
Although taxes paid by corporations, measured as a share of the economy, rose modestly during the boom years of the 1990s, they remained sharply lower even in the boom years than in previous decades. According to OMB historical data, corporate taxes averaged 2 percent of GDP in the 1990s. That represented only about two-fifths of their share of GDP in the 1950s, half of their share in the 1960s, and three-quarters of their share in the 1970s.
The share that corporate tax revenues comprise of total federal tax revenues also has collapsed, falling from an average of 28 percent of federal revenues in the 1950s and 21 percent in the 1960s to an average of about 10 percent since the 1980s.
The effective corporate tax rate — that is, the percentage of corporate profits that is paid in federal corporate income taxes — has followed a similar pattern. During the 1990s, corporations as a group paid an average of 25.3 percent of their profits in federal corporate income taxes, according to new Congressional Research Service estimates. By contrast, they paid more than 49 percent in the 1950s, 38 percent in the 1960s, and 33 percent in the 1970s.
So it it any wonder that the US is at best standing still, and more likely moving backwards when it comes to national infrastructure spending? And guess where the money goes?
Evidence is the loaded term here. It's only evidence in the context of a hypothesis, otherwise it is an observation, i.e. data.
The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram was proposed in 1910. It wasn't until the 1930's that it was understood how fusion was the energy producing mechanism for stars. Without understanding fusion and stellar evolution, there was no context in which to fit the observation of enhanced metallic elements in the star's spectrum.
So this only became evidence decades after the initial observation. It's interesting that the observation was made so early, but only retrospect makes it significant.
So are the postal workers sharks with lasers on their heads that burn stamps? Or do you get a tank with a shark with a laser on it's head to burn the stamps? I'm confused.
Safety is not about technology, it's about human error. As long as people do dumb things, no design will prevent a catastrophe.
Look at the three big reactor failures: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. All three were caused by human error. For Chernobyl, it was a dangerous design and running dangerous tests. For TMI, it was a less dangerous design, and they still screwed it up with bad procedures. For Fukushima, they made a series of globally bad design choices because they refused to consider realistic worst case external events. Plus they uncovered a flaw in the containment structure design that lead to the hydrogen explosions.
All of these are human error.
And it's not just reactors. The British Petroleum oil platform blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was human error. The sinking of the ferry Sewol in Korea was human error, as was the sinking of the Concordia off of Italy. BP also had a refinery blow up in Texas because of bad operations and ignoring a known problem with volatile fume leakage.
So no matter how secure a technology looks, it will still suffer a complete worst case failure. Assuming anything else is wishful thinking.
What's the worst case for LFTR? No one seems willing to even talk about it. It's remarkably like the head in the sand attitude that lead to the Fukshima disaster.
So here's a question: what happens when a molten salt containing fluorine, uranium, thorium and other miscellaneous radioactive elements comes in contact with water? Does it explode? Does it burn in air? How toxic are the substances entering the environment? (Trick question: both uranium and fluorine are very toxic elements. Fluorine forms many toxic compounds with carbon.) What is the equivilant explosive energy of tons of molten uranium salts?
If it is burning, how do you put it out? (Note: with fluorine compounds water is a bad idea. It's explosive.) How do you build a containment vessel that will withstand all of that? How will the cost of proper containment and emergency planning and equipment impact the economics of power generation?
A burning LFTR makes a burning graphite reactor seem like a campfire for a marshmallow roast. Good luck with that.
You're observation about Slashdot is correct. The attitude of a large fraction of posts is, for want of a better word, stupid.
Teh Stupid is characterized by mindless criticism, nitpicking, absolutist rhetoric, and willful negation of facts. All of which are on display in the response to this thread.
The aspect I find most disturbing is a clear anti-intellectualism. Comments are not based in fact or logic, but self centered illogic: if I say something is right/wrong, that all I have to say.
As for the "agenda driven posters", I think the agenda is egomania. That would explain the obsessive negative attitudes. Being relentlessly negative is a way of asserting yourself if you don't have anything else to say.
Is this getting worse? I'm not sure. I think I see more of it, but don't know if that is because I am more aware of it, rather then an real increase.
At any rate, when I become annoyed enough, I respond with evidence oriented responses. I find references to uphold my position, and include quotes and links. Now someone may disagree with me, but at least I am not making assertions based solely on my individual position. I am generally disappointed because very few people respond with their own external references.
In this case I don't feel the need quote very many examples, because the behavior in this thread is rather self evident.
The first building constructed for the Library of Congress was the Thomas Jefferson building in Washington DC. It opened in 1897.
The current floor space is approximately 600,000 square feet or 55741.8 square meters or.021522039 square mile. The state of Delaware is approximately 2026 square miles.
Therefore, the size of the methane hot spot is around 94136.23 times the size of the Library of Congress.
Any references? And by references I mean something that was not funded my the energy industry. Preferably in a peer reviewed journal that is not funded by the energy industry. You know, some organization that is actually credible, rather then being a bunch of paid shills.
Lacking that, I'm just going to assume that your are making stuff up. The "logic" of "Fracking has been responsible for a big decline in US greenhouse gas emissions" seems to be lacking. How could the conclusion follow from the premise? How about "An increase in the consumption of Nutella has been responsible for a big decline in US greenhouse gas emissions"? Makes about as much sense.
Ciavarella pleaded guilty on February 13, 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement, to federal charges of honest services fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion in connection with receiving $2.6 million in kickbacks from Robert Powell and Robert Mericle, the co-owner and builder respectively, of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities. In exchange for these kickbacks, Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, and shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.
There was originally a plea agreement, but Ciaverella refused to admit that he had accepted bribes for funneling juvenile offenders to a private jail. The agreement was dropped and he and his co-defendants went to trial.
On February 18, 2011, a jury in federal court found Ciavarella guilty of racketeering. This charge stemmed from Ciavarella accepting $997,000 in illegal payments from Robert Mericle, the real estate developer of PA Child Care, and attorney Robert Powell, a co-owner of the facility. Ciavarella was also on trial for 38 other counts including accepting numerous payments from Mericle and Powell as well as tax evasion.
On August 11, 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison. On May 24, 2013, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals vacated one count of the indictment against Ciavarella, but upheld all other charges, as well as his sentence. The Third Circuit refused to reconsider on July 24, 2013. The Supreme Court, which rarely accepts such cases, declined to hear the appeal in 2014, although Ciavarella could file a post-conviction relief motion before U.S. District Court within one year. With good behavior, he could be released in less than 24 years, when he would be 85. Ciavarella, inmate number 15008-067, is serving his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Pekin in Pekin, Illinois. His earliest projected release date is December 30, 2035.
So children have already been thrown in jail because of a corrupt judge accepting bribes from the people who built the prison. How can you doubt that in our current "campaign contribution" aka "bribe" driven political system that people aren't being sent to jail for corporate profit. It's just that the bribes have been made legal, and every one, including the so called prosecutors, are in on the scheme. We have accepted a society where corruption is the norm, and you refuse to acknowledge it.
People were soliciting for hit men on Silk Road. You good with that?
Even if no one had been killed by the time they were shut down, when you have an marketplace that enables payments for illegal acts what kind of behavior do you expect? Do you think that it would stop at drugs? Murder and sex trafficking are just as illegal. Even if Silk Road had prohibited payments for that kind of activity, don't you realize that another market allowing these transactions would exist?
I wonder if Kickstarter would let me set up a project so I could pay for someone to kick the shit out of you. Nothing personal, just to make a point. How does it feel when you are the target?
“Here we imposed the asymmetric field, so the plasma doesn’t have to go unstable in order for us to drive the current. We’ve shown that we can sustain a stable equilibrium and we can control the plasma, which means the bottle will be able to hold more plasma,” Jarboe said.
The UW apparatus uses two handle-shaped coils to alternately generate currents on either side of the central core, a method the authors call imposed dynamo current drive. Results show the plasma is stable and the method is energy-efficient, but the UW research reactor is too small to fully contain the plasma without some escaping as a gas. Next, the team hopes to attach the device to a larger reactor to see if it can maintain a sufficiently tight magnetic bottle.
It is a Spheromak that makes use of technology developed for the ITER fusion reactor.
A high- spheromak reactor concept has been formulated with an estimated overnight capital cost that is competitive with conventional power sources. This reactor concept utilizes recently discovered imposed-dynamo current drive (IDCD) and a molten salt (FLiBe) blanket system for first wall cooling, neutron moderation and tritium breeding. Currently available materials and ITER-developed cryogenic pumping systems were implemented in this concept from the basis of technological feasibility. A tritium breeding ratio (TBR) of greater than 1.1 has been calculated using a Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP5) neutron transport simulation. High temperature superconducting tapes (YBCO) were used for the equilibrium coil set, substantially reducing the recirculating power fraction when compared to previous spheromak reactor studies. Using zirconium hydride for neutron shielding, a limiting equilibrium coil lifetime of at least thirty full-power years has been achieved. The primary FLiBe loop was coupled to a supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle due to attractive economics and high thermal efficiencies. With these advancements, an electrical output of 1000 MW from a thermal output of 2486 MW was achieved, yielding an overall plant efficiency of approximately 40%.
I have no idea if this is a breakthrough or not. I don't know if it will scale up. It's not my field.
I do know that you are a Slashdot Pundit who lives in a fact free void and you are spewing meaningless nonsense. Although you quote some of the UW press information, you obviously did not bother to read or comprehend what they were saying. You didn't even bother to get the facts right about what kind of magnetic confinement topology they use. You went off on a rant about a completely different system.
Do Slashdot and the world a favor: STFU. You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and leave us alone. You are wasting every one's time.
So the DOJ also involved her child by posting his picture? As part of a drug investigation?
She should also be suing them on behalf of her child for endangerment. In drug transactions family members can be targets of violence. The DOJ was putting a minor in harms way.
That would go really well for the DOJ in court. I would love to be in the courtroom and watch some lawyer from the DOJ defend a practice that puts a child at risk. I'm sure that the jury would hear that testimony and decide there and then that the DOJ should loose the case very painfully.
Also, aren't their laws pertaining to the use of images of minors without parental consent? Even if the image was obtained legally (not likely in this case). Sounds like a potential criminal case to me. Of course, considering it's the DOJ, they could have used the image in a pedophilia sting and nothing would happen.
Oh, it's the racist slug again. Making up more shit as well.
Sorry to interrupt your masturbatory political fantasy, but Iraq stabilization and reconstruction was so incredibly screwed up by Bush and his incompetent neo-con thugs that the current Middle East clusterfuck, or is equivalent, was inevitable. It's like the python infestation in Florida. Once those suckers get out and start breeding, there's no way in hell to clean up the mess.
After the collapse of the Hussein regime, the Bush administration had no effective plan to deal with the aftermath. That's why we're screwed right now. Some examples, with references.
The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."
The team that the Bush administration sent for Iraq reconstrction was riddled with incompetence and cronyism.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
Then there was the case of General Shinseki who was right about the troop levels needed to occupy Iraq, and was publicly shot down for expressing his correct opinion.
Shinseki publicly clashed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the planning of the war in Iraq over how many troops the United States would need to keep in Iraq for the postwar occupation of that country. As Army Chief of Staff, General Shinseki testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for postwar Iraq. This was an estimate far higher than the figure being proposed by Secretary Rumsfeld in his invasion plan, and it was rejected in strong language by both Rumsfeld and his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who was another chief planner of the invasion and occupation. From then on, Shinseki's influence on the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly waned. Critics of the Bush Administration alleged that Shinseki was forced into early retirement as Army Chief of Staff because of his comments on troop levels; however, his retirement was announced nearly a year before those comments.
When the insurgency took hold in postwar Iraq, Shinseki's comments and their public rejection by the civilian leadership were often cited by those who felt the Bush administration deployed too few troops to Iraq. On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid said that General Shinseki had been correct that more troops were needed.
Over here in the real world, we are still living with the horrible consequences of invading the wrong country
Nice to know your professional opinion about how useless this study is.
Here's the list of authors:
Andrew R Wood,
Tonu Esko,
Jian Yang,
Sailaja Vedantam,
Tune H Pers,
Stefan Gustafsson,
Audrey Y Chu,
Karol Estrada,
Jian'an Luan,
Zoltán Kutalik,
Najaf Amin,
Martin L Buchkovich,
Damien C Croteau-Chonka,
Felix R Day,
Yanan Duan,
Tove Fall,
Rudolf Fehrmann,
Teresa Ferreira,
Anne U Jackson,
Juha Karjalainen,
Ken Sin Lo,
Adam E Locke,
Reedik Mägi,
Evelin Mihailov,
Eleonora Porcu,
Joshua C Randall,
André Scherag,
Anna A E Vinkhuyzen,
Harm-Jan Westra,
Thomas W Winkler,
Tsegaselassie Workalemahu,
Jing Hua Zhao,
Devin Absher,
Eva Albrecht,
Denise Anderson,
Jeffrey Baron,
Marian Beekman,
Ayse Demirkan,
Georg B Ehret,
Bjarke Feenstra,
Mary F Feitosa,
Krista Fischer,
Ross M Fraser,
Anuj Goel,
Jian Gong,
Anne E Justice,
Stavroula Kanoni,
Marcus E Kleber,
Kati Kristiansson,
Unhee Lim,
Vaneet Lotay,
Julian C Lui,
Massimo Mangino,
Irene Mateo Leach,
Carolina Medina-Gomez,
Michael A Nalls,
Dale R Nyholt,
Cameron D Palmer,
Dorota Pasko,
Sonali Pechlivanis,
Inga Prokopenko,
Janina S Ried,
Stephan Ripke,
Dmitry Shungin,
Alena Stancáková,
Rona J Strawbridge,
Yun Ju Sung,
Toshiko Tanaka,
Alexander Teumer,
Stella Trompet,
Sander W van der Laan,
Jessica van Setten,
Jana V Van Vliet-Ostaptchouk,
Zhaoming Wang,
Loïc Yengo,
Weihua Zhang,
Uzma Afzal,
Johan Ärnlöv,
Gillian M Arscott,
Stefania Bandinelli,
Amy Barrett,
Claire Bellis,
Amanda J Bennett,
Christian Berne,
Matthias Blüher,
Jennifer L Bolton,
Yvonne Böttcher,
Heather A Boyd,
Marcel Bruinenberg,
Brendan M Buckley,
Steven Buyske,
Ida H Caspersen,
Peter S Chines,
Robert Clarke,
Simone Claudi-Boehm,
Matthew Cooper,
E Warwick Daw,
Pim A De Jong,
Joris Deelen,
Graciela Delgado,
Josh C Denny,
Rosalie Dhonukshe-Rutten,
Maria Dimitriou,
Alex S F Doney,
Marcus Dörr,
Niina Eklund,
Elodie Eury,
Lasse Folkersen,
Melissa E Garcia,
Frank Geller,
Vilmantas Giedraitis,
Alan S Go,
Harald Grallert,
Tanja B Grammer,
Jürgen Gräßler,
Henrik Grönberg,
Lisette C P G M de Groot,
Christopher J Groves,
Jeffrey Haessler,
Per Hall,
Toomas Haller,
Goran Hallmans,
Anke Hannemann,
Catharina A Hartman,
Maija Hassinen,
Caroline Hayward,
Nancy L Heard-Costa,
Quinta Helmer,
Gibran Hemani,
Anjali K Henders,
Hans L Hillege,
Mark A Hlatky,
Wolfgang Hoffmann,
Per Hoffmann,
Oddgeir Holmen,
Jeanine J Houwing-Duistermaat,
Thomas Illig,
Aaron Isaacs,
Alan L James,
Janina Jeff,
Berit Johansen,
Åsa Johansson,
Jennifer Jolley,
Thorhildur Juliusdottir,
Juhani Junttila,
Abel N Kho,
Leena Kinnunen,
Norman Klopp,
Thomas Kocher,
Wolfgang Kratzer,
Peter Lichtner,
Lars Lind,
Jaana Lindström,
Stéphane Lobbens,
Mattias Lorentzon,
Yingchang Lu,
Valeriya Lyssenko,
Patrik K E Magnusson,
Anubha Mahajan,
Marc Maillard,
Wendy L McArdle,
Colin A McKenzie,
Stela McLachlan,
Paul J McLaren,
Cristina Menni,
Sigrun Merger,
Lili Milani,
Alireza Moayyeri,
Keri L Monda,
Mario A Morken,
Gabriele Müller,
Martina Müller-Nurasyid,
Arthur W Musk,
Narisu Narisu,
Matthias Nauck,
Ilja M Nolte,
Markus M Nöthen,
Laticia Oozageer,
Stefan Pilz,
Nigel W Rayner,
Frida Renstrom,
Neil R Robertson,
Lynda M Rose,
Ronan Roussel,
Serena Sanna,
Hubert Scharnagl,
Salome Scholtens,
Fredrick R Schumacher,
Heribert
They must be protected against the rabble, and few official food tasters will be cheaper then paying a decent wage to all the people who could possibly poison them. And if a food taster does get poisoned, there will be plenty of people standing in line for the job, because working at Google means you're not one of the peasants. You might even be able to afford to retire and not eat dog food!
The Irken Empire has a hierarchical class structure in which shorter individuals are both figuratively and literally looked down upon. The tallest Irken born in a specific generation takes command of the entirety of the Empire.
I look forward to the day when humankind are ruled by our own Almighty Tallest.
So it's all about Obama? What about Bush. Talking about anything having to do with Iraq and not framing the situation with the Bush invasion is like talking about the sinking of the Titanic and never saying the word iceberg.
Obama already admitted that there was a US intelligence failure in understanding the fast rise of ISIS. Maybe if the US So Called Intelligence community spent less time spying on Americans, Germans, Australians, British, etc, they might have some time and money left over to look out for trouble in the rest of the world. Of course that might reduce the amount of Homeland Pork, so clearly it's not going to happen.
Actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently not perceived to serve U.S. interests; instead, the Reagan administration did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument to prevent an Iranian victory. Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide assistance. The Iraqi government's repressive internal policies, though well known to the U.S. government at the time, did not figure at all in the presidential directives that established U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. was concerned with its ability to project military force in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing.
So during the Iran/Iraq war, the Regan administration wanted to keep Iraqi oil flowing and engage in a poxy war with Iran. The brutal nature of the Hussein regime was of no consequence, and the reality that Iraq was using chemical weapons was ignored and treated as a public relations issue.
Then Hussein invaded Kuwait and things spun 180 degrees. The conservative/neo-con policy establishment decided that "regime change" in Iraq was the single most important policy goal in the Middle East. Figures like Perle, Wolfowitz and Kristal started the Project for the New American Century in the late 90's. One of their major themes was
getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
Richard Perle, who later became a core member of PNAC, was involved in similar activities to those pursued by PNAC after its formal organization. For instance, in 1996 Perle composed a report that proposed regime changes in order to restructure power in the Middle East. The report was titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm and called for removing Saddam Hussein from power, as well as other ideas to bring change to the region. The report was delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two years later, in 1998, Perle and other core members of the PNAC—Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, and John Bolton—"were among the signatories of a letter to President Clinton calling for the removal of Hussein."
Suddenly the chemical weapons that were ignored during the Iraq/Iran war were such an immediate danger that it was critical that the US back the invasion of Iraq. Many of the people who were in or supporters the GW Bush administration when it was backing Hussein were in or supporting the New American Century Project and calling for Hussein's overthrow. (And then there were the fabrications and lies about biological and nuclear weapons. but that's another successfully covered up conspiracy.)
Remember, this was all years before the September 11th attacks. They wanted to get Hussein in real bad way.
Then the World Trade Center attack occurred, and the neo-con propaganda machine whet into high gear claiming that Hussein, not Iraq the country, but their leader, was World Enemy Number One. Then the US invaded the wrong country, and now is in a fight with ISIS, which is arguably worse then Iraq under Hussein. Would ISIS even exist if the US hadn't occupied Iraq? How come no one even asks this question?
There is no rational case for the policy shift from pro-Hussein to anti-Hussein in the US right wing. As a person or as a political figure he did not change very much between the Regan, George Herbert Walker Bush and George Bush eras. The only thing that changed is that he went from be an attack dog for the US, to attacking US i
Your comment is irrelevant and ignorant. It's not about the economic/political/Western Europe nature of the state, it's about what happens in a power vacuum when central authority goes away.
And if you want some irrelevant historical trash talk, when the Germans were filthy tribesmen squatting in the forest in Europe, the Arabs had one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet.
How does it feel when the racist implication is on the other side?
On Slashdot, every time Obama proposes legislation or executes an executive order, or wears a tan suit, there are these 2nd Amendment types that crawl out from under the stove (think cockroaches) and start growling about "da ebil gummment gonna take my freedom/gun/dick away", and threaten they are going to use their right to bare arms to shoot at mailmen, the guy who mows the grass on the highway and forest rangers, or whatever.
So now the guy running the FCC, who for all intents has "Property of the Cable Industry" and his capital equipment serial number tattooed on his ass, is getting ready to turn US internet access into a monopoly that will dive the user experience back to the days of 9600 baud dial up access. So where are the threats and bluster? Where are the outraged howls about inalienable rights, and prying guns out of their cold dead hands? Sound of crickets...
In one case there is a black guy, and in the other case a conservative old white guy. I can't imagine why one would invoke talk of violence, and the other gets none of that flack. Gosh, what could possibly be the reason?
Because without some form of regulation, some dickhead is going to start selling grades. Just like without regulation, you would end up being poisoned by the food you eat. If you don't believe me, just look at what's going on in China. There was a case last year where someone got caught recycling cooking oil from a sewer. Chinese with more money to spend by imports from Taiwan and Japan, since it is much less likely that they will get sick.
I'm fed up with dolts like you. You live in a place where the government keeps your day to day life reasonably together, and then all do is whine. I hope your mother goes to a medical clinic where someone cheated on their grades, and she ends up dieing. Better her then me, or anyone I know. That is is only way a shithead like you will ever start paying attention.
Let's assume for a moment that you have a child going to second grade. You piss someone off, and they decide to get back at you through your family. They take you child's photo, pictures of the school they attend and your house and phone number and post it on websites frequented by pedophiles. They imply that your child is available for sex. You start getting horrible phone calls at all hours of the day and night, creepy guys drive by your house, and even knock on your door. Someone tries to snatch the child off the street near the school.
Then you try and get the information off the web, and all the sites say they don't have to do anything because "private enterprise". What then? What if the worst happens and the child is abducted and killed? Yeah, the perp can end up in jail, but what about the "free enterprise" businesses that make money off this. Do you really want to count on the civil law to protect you?
I happened to pick a hypothetical case with a child, but the equivalent happen to women with psycho ex-boyfriends all the time: set up a fake account with real contact information and advertise for kinky sex. Not good.
Total number of monthly active Facebook users 1,310,000,000
Total number of mobile Facebook users 680,000,000
Increase in Facebook users from 2012 to 2013 22 %
Total number of minutes spent on Facebook each month 640,000,000
Percent of all Facebook users who log on in any given day 48 %
Average time spent on Facebook per visit 18 minutes
Total number of Facebook pages 54,200,000
Percent of 18-34 year olds who check Facebook when they wake up 48 %
Percent of 18-34 year olds who check Facebook before they get out of bed 28 %
Average number of friends per facebook user 130
Average number of pages, groups, and events a user is connected to 80
Average number of photos uploaded per day 205
Number of fake Facebook profiles 81,000,000
Remember, for the LGBT community the consequences can be as serious as grievous bodily injury or death at the hands of a complete stranger. Chanting "free enterprise" as a justification in this situation puts you firmly on the side of potential violent thugs.
And just to help you sleep well tonight, there is no way to know if all the people who were targeted were LGBT or not. Given the vile stupidity of the perpetrator, there might have been cases of mistaken identity. It's not like the person who did this is the most stable or thoughtful person around. In fact, you could have been on the list. Sleep tight.
Slashdot Mirror
And then there's our overpriced and underperforming health delivery system. (Note: ACA/Obamacare is a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.) And our failing K-12 education, which is severely underfunded and strangling on bureaucracy.
Along with the steadily declining state level college/university systems. (And before the right wingers start screaming about foreign students, remember that they come from places where it's much harder to get into any school and a lot of the higher educations options are not as good as the US, even with our decline. Both public and private schools love out of country students because they pay full tuition.)
But it's all OK, because the upper 10%, and mostly the upper .01% and above are doing really good. For example six members of the Walton family had the same net worth as either the bottom 28% or 41% of American families combined (depending on how it is counted).
Of course historically low corporate tax levels have nothing to do with this, right?
So it it any wonder that the US is at best standing still, and more likely moving backwards when it comes to national infrastructure spending? And guess where the money goes?
The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram was proposed in 1910. It wasn't until the 1930's that it was understood how fusion was the energy producing mechanism for stars. Without understanding fusion and stellar evolution, there was no context in which to fit the observation of enhanced metallic elements in the star's spectrum.
So this only became evidence decades after the initial observation. It's interesting that the observation was made so early, but only retrospect makes it significant.
So are the postal workers sharks with lasers on their heads that burn stamps? Or do you get a tank with a shark with a laser on it's head to burn the stamps? I'm confused.
They might as well be Wall Street bankers.
Look at the three big reactor failures: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. All three were caused by human error. For Chernobyl, it was a dangerous design and running dangerous tests. For TMI, it was a less dangerous design, and they still screwed it up with bad procedures. For Fukushima, they made a series of globally bad design choices because they refused to consider realistic worst case external events. Plus they uncovered a flaw in the containment structure design that lead to the hydrogen explosions.
All of these are human error.
And it's not just reactors. The British Petroleum oil platform blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was human error. The sinking of the ferry Sewol in Korea was human error, as was the sinking of the Concordia off of Italy. BP also had a refinery blow up in Texas because of bad operations and ignoring a known problem with volatile fume leakage.
So no matter how secure a technology looks, it will still suffer a complete worst case failure. Assuming anything else is wishful thinking.
What's the worst case for LFTR? No one seems willing to even talk about it. It's remarkably like the head in the sand attitude that lead to the Fukshima disaster.
So here's a question: what happens when a molten salt containing fluorine, uranium, thorium and other miscellaneous radioactive elements comes in contact with water? Does it explode? Does it burn in air? How toxic are the substances entering the environment? (Trick question: both uranium and fluorine are very toxic elements. Fluorine forms many toxic compounds with carbon.) What is the equivilant explosive energy of tons of molten uranium salts?
If it is burning, how do you put it out? (Note: with fluorine compounds water is a bad idea. It's explosive.) How do you build a containment vessel that will withstand all of that? How will the cost of proper containment and emergency planning and equipment impact the economics of power generation?
A burning LFTR makes a burning graphite reactor seem like a campfire for a marshmallow roast. Good luck with that.
This is even more true in Texas, which is great news for keeping an ebola epidemic from spreading in the USA.
Teh Stupid is characterized by mindless criticism, nitpicking, absolutist rhetoric, and willful negation of facts. All of which are on display in the response to this thread.
The aspect I find most disturbing is a clear anti-intellectualism. Comments are not based in fact or logic, but self centered illogic: if I say something is right/wrong, that all I have to say.
As for the "agenda driven posters", I think the agenda is egomania. That would explain the obsessive negative attitudes. Being relentlessly negative is a way of asserting yourself if you don't have anything else to say.
Is this getting worse? I'm not sure. I think I see more of it, but don't know if that is because I am more aware of it, rather then an real increase.
At any rate, when I become annoyed enough, I respond with evidence oriented responses. I find references to uphold my position, and include quotes and links. Now someone may disagree with me, but at least I am not making assertions based solely on my individual position. I am generally disappointed because very few people respond with their own external references.
In this case I don't feel the need quote very many examples, because the behavior in this thread is rather self evident.
Sounds like a malware creation kit to me.
The current floor space is approximately 600,000 square feet or 55741.8 square meters or .021522039 square mile. The state of Delaware is approximately 2026 square miles.
Therefore, the size of the methane hot spot is around 94136.23 times the size of the Library of Congress.
Note that this leaves out the sizes of the Annex, built in 1930, and the Madison building, built in 1981. The Madison building is over 2 million square feet.
Lacking that, I'm just going to assume that your are making stuff up. The "logic" of "Fracking has been responsible for a big decline in US greenhouse gas emissions" seems to be lacking. How could the conclusion follow from the premise? How about "An increase in the consumption of Nutella has been responsible for a big decline in US greenhouse gas emissions"? Makes about as much sense.
There was originally a plea agreement, but Ciaverella refused to admit that he had accepted bribes for funneling juvenile offenders to a private jail. The agreement was dropped and he and his co-defendants went to trial.
So children have already been thrown in jail because of a corrupt judge accepting bribes from the people who built the prison. How can you doubt that in our current "campaign contribution" aka "bribe" driven political system that people aren't being sent to jail for corporate profit. It's just that the bribes have been made legal, and every one, including the so called prosecutors, are in on the scheme. We have accepted a society where corruption is the norm, and you refuse to acknowledge it.
Even if no one had been killed by the time they were shut down, when you have an marketplace that enables payments for illegal acts what kind of behavior do you expect? Do you think that it would stop at drugs? Murder and sex trafficking are just as illegal. Even if Silk Road had prohibited payments for that kind of activity, don't you realize that another market allowing these transactions would exist?
I wonder if Kickstarter would let me set up a project so I could pay for someone to kick the shit out of you. Nothing personal, just to make a point. How does it feel when you are the target?
"It attaches current-carrying handles to either end of the central plasma"
It is a Spheromak that makes use of technology developed for the ITER fusion reactor.
I have no idea if this is a breakthrough or not. I don't know if it will scale up. It's not my field.
I do know that you are a Slashdot Pundit who lives in a fact free void and you are spewing meaningless nonsense. Although you quote some of the UW press information, you obviously did not bother to read or comprehend what they were saying. You didn't even bother to get the facts right about what kind of magnetic confinement topology they use. You went off on a rant about a completely different system.
Do Slashdot and the world a favor: STFU. You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and leave us alone. You are wasting every one's time.
She should also be suing them on behalf of her child for endangerment. In drug transactions family members can be targets of violence. The DOJ was putting a minor in harms way.
That would go really well for the DOJ in court. I would love to be in the courtroom and watch some lawyer from the DOJ defend a practice that puts a child at risk. I'm sure that the jury would hear that testimony and decide there and then that the DOJ should loose the case very painfully.
Also, aren't their laws pertaining to the use of images of minors without parental consent? Even if the image was obtained legally (not likely in this case). Sounds like a potential criminal case to me. Of course, considering it's the DOJ, they could have used the image in a pedophilia sting and nothing would happen.
Sorry to interrupt your masturbatory political fantasy, but Iraq stabilization and reconstruction was so incredibly screwed up by Bush and his incompetent neo-con thugs that the current Middle East clusterfuck, or is equivalent, was inevitable. It's like the python infestation in Florida. Once those suckers get out and start breeding, there's no way in hell to clean up the mess.
After the collapse of the Hussein regime, the Bush administration had no effective plan to deal with the aftermath. That's why we're screwed right now. Some examples, with references.
The 12 Billion in cash that was airlifted into Iraq and pretty much disappeared into thin air
The team that the Bush administration sent for Iraq reconstrction was riddled with incompetence and cronyism.
Then there was the case of General Shinseki who was right about the troop levels needed to occupy Iraq, and was publicly shot down for expressing his correct opinion.
Over here in the real world, we are still living with the horrible consequences of invading the wrong country
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
Here's the list of authors:
They must be protected against the rabble, and few official food tasters will be cheaper then paying a decent wage to all the people who could possibly poison them. And if a food taster does get poisoned, there will be plenty of people standing in line for the job, because working at Google means you're not one of the peasants. You might even be able to afford to retire and not eat dog food!
I look forward to the day when humankind are ruled by our own Almighty Tallest.
Obama already admitted that there was a US intelligence failure in understanding the fast rise of ISIS. Maybe if the US So Called Intelligence community spent less time spying on Americans, Germans, Australians, British, etc, they might have some time and money left over to look out for trouble in the rest of the world. Of course that might reduce the amount of Homeland Pork, so clearly it's not going to happen.
As long as Hussein was the US attack dog, going after Iran, then the conservatives backed him 100%. Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, 1983.
So during the Iran/Iraq war, the Regan administration wanted to keep Iraqi oil flowing and engage in a poxy war with Iran. The brutal nature of the Hussein regime was of no consequence, and the reality that Iraq was using chemical weapons was ignored and treated as a public relations issue.
Then Hussein invaded Kuwait and things spun 180 degrees. The conservative/neo-con policy establishment decided that "regime change" in Iraq was the single most important policy goal in the Middle East. Figures like Perle, Wolfowitz and Kristal started the Project for the New American Century in the late 90's. One of their major themes was getting rid of Saddam Hussein.
Suddenly the chemical weapons that were ignored during the Iraq/Iran war were such an immediate danger that it was critical that the US back the invasion of Iraq. Many of the people who were in or supporters the GW Bush administration when it was backing Hussein were in or supporting the New American Century Project and calling for Hussein's overthrow. (And then there were the fabrications and lies about biological and nuclear weapons. but that's another successfully covered up conspiracy.)
Remember, this was all years before the September 11th attacks. They wanted to get Hussein in real bad way.
Then the World Trade Center attack occurred, and the neo-con propaganda machine whet into high gear claiming that Hussein, not Iraq the country, but their leader, was World Enemy Number One. Then the US invaded the wrong country, and now is in a fight with ISIS, which is arguably worse then Iraq under Hussein. Would ISIS even exist if the US hadn't occupied Iraq? How come no one even asks this question?
There is no rational case for the policy shift from pro-Hussein to anti-Hussein in the US right wing. As a person or as a political figure he did not change very much between the Regan, George Herbert Walker Bush and George Bush eras. The only thing that changed is that he went from be an attack dog for the US, to attacking US i
And if you want some irrelevant historical trash talk, when the Germans were filthy tribesmen squatting in the forest in Europe, the Arabs had one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet.
How does it feel when the racist implication is on the other side?
So now the guy running the FCC, who for all intents has "Property of the Cable Industry" and his capital equipment serial number tattooed on his ass, is getting ready to turn US internet access into a monopoly that will dive the user experience back to the days of 9600 baud dial up access. So where are the threats and bluster? Where are the outraged howls about inalienable rights, and prying guns out of their cold dead hands? Sound of crickets...
In one case there is a black guy, and in the other case a conservative old white guy. I can't imagine why one would invoke talk of violence, and the other gets none of that flack. Gosh, what could possibly be the reason?
I'm fed up with dolts like you. You live in a place where the government keeps your day to day life reasonably together, and then all do is whine. I hope your mother goes to a medical clinic where someone cheated on their grades, and she ends up dieing. Better her then me, or anyone I know. That is is only way a shithead like you will ever start paying attention.
Let's assume for a moment that you have a child going to second grade. You piss someone off, and they decide to get back at you through your family. They take you child's photo, pictures of the school they attend and your house and phone number and post it on websites frequented by pedophiles. They imply that your child is available for sex. You start getting horrible phone calls at all hours of the day and night, creepy guys drive by your house, and even knock on your door. Someone tries to snatch the child off the street near the school.
Then you try and get the information off the web, and all the sites say they don't have to do anything because "private enterprise". What then? What if the worst happens and the child is abducted and killed? Yeah, the perp can end up in jail, but what about the "free enterprise" businesses that make money off this. Do you really want to count on the civil law to protect you?
I happened to pick a hypothetical case with a child, but the equivalent happen to women with psycho ex-boyfriends all the time: set up a fake account with real contact information and advertise for kinky sex. Not good.
Remember Facebook is big.
Remember, for the LGBT community the consequences can be as serious as grievous bodily injury or death at the hands of a complete stranger. Chanting "free enterprise" as a justification in this situation puts you firmly on the side of potential violent thugs.
And just to help you sleep well tonight, there is no way to know if all the people who were targeted were LGBT or not. Given the vile stupidity of the perpetrator, there might have been cases of mistaken identity. It's not like the person who did this is the most stable or thoughtful person around. In fact, you could have been on the list. Sleep tight.