Go ahead. Show me a single commercial SULEV diesel. Just one. I'm waiting.
Ignoring for the moment that only a tiny percentage of cars (hybrid or otherwise) on the road actually meet that standard as of the time I write this, what you are looking for IS coming. The technology has already been under development for years. Supposedly Nissan was to introduce a SULEV diesel version of their Maxima this year. (we'll see if they actually do) But there has been no point until very recently because it wasn't commercially viable.
SULEV is a US only standard and the US market historically has not bought passenger diesels in sufficient quantities to justify the investment. Diesels comprise a tiny percentage of US passenger car sales. What likely will change this is the new CAFE standards. Diesels will pretty much have to get more attention to meet the new fuel efficiency standards. If more diesels sell, the tailpipe emissions will inevitably get more attention too.
The fact is that current diesels are similarly clean compared with most gasoline powered vehicles currently on the road AND they generally get better fuel economy for similar horsepower. Furthermore there is no reason to believe they will not continue to improve.
Go ahead -- show me a single commercial diesel that has the interior space of a Prius and does 0-60 in no more than 10 seconds, but gets 89g/km CO2 NEDC and 60g/km on the 10-15. Or even close. Just one. I'm waiting.
Show me a Prius that matches the acceleration and emissions of the Tesla Roadster. Show me a Prius that can generate 400ft-lb of torque and tow a 7000lb trailer like a Dodge Ram Diesel pickup. Show me a Prius that gets the fuel economy of a Honda VTR1000F motorcycle (>100MPG). Show me a Prius that can haul a ton of freight 400 miles on a gallon of gas like a diesel locomotive. Are you done missing the point with stupid comparisons?
I'm arguing that diesels as they exist are comparably clean versus similarly powered gasoline engines. I'm also completely for the notion that even cleaner diesels should continue to be developed. The fact that commercial efforts have gone elsewhere prior to this point is 100% irrelevant.
Manufacturing less now than in the past is not the equivalent of manufacturing nothing at all!
That's the myth though. The US is NOT manufacturing less. US manufacturing output has grown in the last 10 years. It's down in 2009 because of the crappy economy but that's true everywhere, not just in the US.
The ONLY thing that is changing is that the US is losing labor-intensive manufacturing to places with cheaper labor. The capital-intensive production continues to grow as productivity increases.
If you are concerned about the loss domestic manufacturing of jobs and and industrial capacity (as I am) the source of a product should always be part of the consideration of whether or not to purchase it.
The number of manufacturing jobs is GOING to shrink as long as cheaper labor is available elsewhere. Trying to fight this is like trying to prevent the tides from coming in. It's not just futile, it is wasteful. The good news is that this does NOT mean US manufacturing is going to shrink. Very much like farming, US manufacturing is simply going to have more produced by a smaller percentage of the population. It also means that the products produced in the US will change. In the long run that is not a bad thing.
petroleum, food, lumber, mining do not count for "manufacturing" in my book.
Then you know virtually nothing about those industries. You think gasoline comes straight out of the ground ready to be pumped into your car? No, it has to be processed and that is manufacturing. Ever use a plastic bag or nylon fabric or PVC pipe? Manufactured petroleum products. Want to talk lumber? How do you think all those boards you buy at Home Depot are produced? You think they just grow that way? No they have to be made ready for sale and the term for that is manufacturing. Ever buy a processed food? Guess what? That's manufacturing too. I've never seen a farm that harvested cookies. Do you think all the equipment they use in mining and farm is just in the ground waiting to be discovered? Do you think that the iron ore comes in the form of steel I-beams?
Of course they are. The US has one of the highest per-capita incomes and are thus its citizens able to pay more. Study Purchasing Power Parity sometime.
The truth is you go to the store and you can't find anything made in the US.
Think so? You haven't actually looked then. Yes a lot of stuff is made elsewhere. It's a global economy after all. But if you are in the US it doesn't have a country of origin label, odds are it was made in the US. The US produces over $1 Trillion worth of goods for domestic consumption. If you can't find them you aren't looking very hard.
In addition, final assembly of Toyota, Honda, BMW, and Kia cars != building cars in the US.
Actually yes it does. Your assumptions about where parts are made are wildly out of date. In many cases it's just not economical to produce parts overseas, especially if you are producing in a Just In Time system like Toyota uses.
I've been an engineer in the auto industry and have been in parts plants throughout the US for virtually every major auto manufacturer myself. Most of the cars assembled here in the US have most of their parts made here too, even for the "foreign" brands. Those Hondas they make in Ohio usually have well over 50% and sometimes over 80% of the parts made here in the US or in Canada. I own a Honda that was assembled in Alabama and over 70% of the parts were made domestically.
A car is just the sum of its parts. If all the parts are made outside the USA, then the car can't really said to be, "Made in the USA."
Good thing the parts usually aren't made outside the US then.
So there is ONE 2009 model out there with descent emissions.
If you bothered to actually look you'd find the diesels from Mercedes and BMW as well as Audi and VW all are quite clean these days. Seriously. Go look before you spout of unresearched nonsense.
What does that have to say about all the other soot and sulfur belching monstrosities?
Nothing whatsoever. There are lots of smog producing gasoline engines too. Has nothing to do with the ability to produce clean diesels. The technology exists and is in production.
Because everyone knows that Wikipedia is a great source and has a wonderful staff that is totally devoted to producing an unbiased, accurate website *eyeroll*.
Fine. Find me a source that proves the data wrong.
"A total of 3.2 million – one in six U.S. factory jobs – have disappeared since the start of 2000."
And yet the US is manufacturing more than ever. How could this be? The answer is that US manufacturing productivity has risen. Fewer people are needed to do the same job. Same thing happened in the farming sector. Fewer people work there and yet its among our most productive and important industries. The jobs shift elsewhere in the economy. Job losses doesn't mean that manufacturing is shrinking - it just means that it is changing. The US doesn't manufacturing labor intensive goods because labor is too expensive here. QED you should expect to see the quantity of labor drop in the manufacturing sector. This does NOT mean that manufacturing is disappearing.
That's because they ARE noisy, smelly and polluting..
Go straight to your local VW or BMW dealer and ask to see their diesels. I have so I know you are quite wrong. Heck VW diesels keep winning the green vehicle awards over the hybrids.
Besides, diesel is more inconvenient as I'd have to hunt to find a station that dispenses it. Not all do and they would be mainly on the big truck transport routes.
Just over half of all filling stations in the US have diesel. It's not even remotely hard to find.
He did answer your question. He stated that, for the target market (Under 40 Mi drivers) that diesel causes loss of efficiency due to weight.
And that would be factually wrong or at least misleading. I've driven plenty of diesels and even for relatively short distances they still beat the fuel economy of most equivalently powered gasoline engines. True, short trips don't maximize the advantages of diesel but the advantages still exist.
The problem is that a Diesel engine is very heavy and expensive. Most hybrids are made for short trips so it would be a great waste of resources to carry around a heavy engine.
Hybrids are made for the same purposes as every other cars and are driven no differently. I don't know why you think a hybrid is somehow driven any different than a car with just an internal combustion engine. Diesels are fine for even typical commuting distances. It doesn't have to be a 1000 mile journey to get benefits from a diesel.
As for cost, that has FAR more to do with economies of scale than it does any additional material and engineering costs. In Europe the majority of vehicles are diesel and the manufacturers produce diesel engines that are economically competitive with gasoline engines. They are not competitive here in the US because for various reasons only a small percentage of cars use diesel so there are no economies of scale to take advantage of.
Hybrid gasoline engines have a somewhat different cycle (Atkinson cycle) than normal gasoline engines (traditional Otto cycle) and thus are more economical.
That depends on the specific hybrid. Some hybrids use Otto cycle engines because they are tuned more for power than just fuel economy. Not all hybrids are Toyota Prius's. It's an engineering choice. You can tune a hybrid for power or for fuel economy - and there are gains to be made even without maximizing either. There are plenty of potential applications where a diesel would be a better choice in a hybrid vehicle than an Atkinson cycle gas engine. Conversely, sometimes a gasoline engine is the right choice. It's not as simple as you are making it out to be.
where the Diesel engine is often only connected to the generator so it can be in its most efficient revolution speed the whole time and (because of the constant speed) have a very long life.
You do know that the Chevy Volt has the engine only connected to the generator right? Very similar to a locomotive or a ship. The engine only kicks on when the batteries are drained and then only to recharge the batteries. There is NO mechanical linkage between the gas engine and the electric motors that propel the Volt. There is no reason a diesel could not be used instead.
The US has a manufacturing sector that produces over $2.6 Trillion annually - larger than any other country on earth including China and larger than the GDP of all but 5 countries. Total imports into the US are just over $2.1 Trillion (16% of those are from China) while US exports are around $1.3 Trillion. (only China and Germany export more)
But we don't make anything anymore... Right... Never let the facts stand in the way of a good sound bite.
Unfortunately where you publish *does* matter, especially if you need funding like with large grants
Not for research already completed. You're talking about advancing a career, not publishing already completed research.
Yes, publishing in certain journals can unquestionably be career enhancing. But just because a given article cannot get published in the most prestigious journal doesn't automatically mean that it is bad science, nor does it automatically mean that politics has "shut you out". If the science in question is not of wide interest, chances are you'll end up publishing in a journal with a narrow readership. It's perfectly normal to submit an article to a journal where publication is a long shot and if/when rejected publish somewhere else.
And this is the issue of the "impact factor" that influences an opinion (that can be one of a reviewer) whether it's worth or not.
In the short run yes this is true. However if it is good science, in the long run the good ideas tend to win out, regardless of their original source. Having a well known name can influence opinion but even Einstein found himself on the losing side of some scientific debates.
Of course this doesn't mean that if you write total crap you'll get published: but that for two identical valuable contributions, politics may favor one with respect to another.
ONLY in a specific publication. That doesn't mean that the contribution can't get published, it just might not be in Nature. So publish the research elsewhere. If the science is good ultimately it doesn't matter where it is published. Journals often will reject articles because they are judged to not be of wide enough interest for the readership of the journal. Has nothing to do with the quality of the science but it's a perfectly valid reason to choose one article over another.
I think part of the root of the problem is the outsourcing of manufacturing to overseas. Its more difficult to do real, useful R&D when you're disconnected from the concrete applications.
And this affects a college researcher how exactly? Nice appeal to populist sentiment but I don't think you understand manufacturing, outsourcing or research when you spout nonsense like that. Research can be outsourced too you know. Lots of companies do research and then either sell the results or even the entire company. Happens in pharmaceuticals and other technology sectors all the time. And academic research is only weakly affected by the physical location of manufacturing plants.
...but since the articles are publicly available, doesn't that mean that they can be more widely reviewed than traditional peer-reviewed papers?
Not necessarily. Peer reviewed articles can be and often are available in public domain sources.
It didn't sound like it was research, but rather mathematical theory based on looking at existing principles from a different direction. If there is enough underlying research in newtonian physics and general relativity, then wouldn't that same research also apply here?
I can't say without looking at the model but odds are that the model would still need at least some specific experimental confirmation.
Granted, I'm no mathematician, but it just seems a bit cliquish to say "don't pay attention to this" because of where the first publication is happening.
Only if you don't understand why people say that. The quality of research articles and standards of publications are not all the same between all journals just like not all research is equally important. Getting published in a journal like Nature requires a quality of research and significance of the results that is much higher than many other publications. Accordingly it is more likely that an article in such a journal will contain research that is worthy of attention. This is not to say that articles published elsewhere are poor research or unimportant but like any data you need to consider the source.
Let me put it another way. Would you be more likely to trust the information in an article from The Wall Street Journal or from The National Enquirer? One has earned a reputation for consistently providing high quality journalism and the other is widely considered a tabloid frequently containing outright fabrications. The same principle is at work with scientific and mathematical journals.
Now, I know you didn't actually read my post. If you had, you would have noticed that I wrote, "After years of seeing the high-quality research of others basically shut out by the peer review process,..."
I find it interesting that you post anonymously, your claims are vague and unsubstantiated, you refuse to even indicate the field of interest we are talking about. I think this is a troll frankly but what the heck...
My wife and quite a few of my friends have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I myself have worked in research labs and around scientists and researchers who regularly publish. I've even contributed to a few peer reviewed papers myself, though my contributions were too small to merit author credit. I'm very familair with the process and the problems with peer reviewed journals. Yes, they can be a bit political and even faddish at times. No, they are not always fair nor is all the critique of the submissions accurate.
That said, it's been my experience that those who are "basically shut out" are almost invariably kooks with ideas that do not stand up to serious scrutiny or who think their ideas are better and/or more important than they actually are. There are lots of journals out there and even relatively weird ideas can almost always still get published. There are various degrees of scrutiny depending on the journal in question. Your "friends" research might not be worthy of Nature or Science or whatever the most prestigious journal is in their given field but I've never personally seen worthy research get completely shut out. There are just too many ways to get published for this to be possible except in rare circumstances.
There were many other researchers who shared my views, and I know several of them who also moved to industry because they got tired of the scam that is academia.
Academia does have it's problems to be sure but calling it a "scam"? Sorry but my own experience says you are most likely just trolling.
IIRCC some EULAs give the "authorized representatives" the authority to check your computers.
True. Many of these agreements have such a clause. So now we have to define who an authorized representative is, how they will identify themselves as such, under what circumstances they are allowed to even be on your property much less touch your computers, how they will conduct the audit so as not to be unduly burdensome to your ongoing business, etc. They might have the right to audit but there are a LOT of details they'll have to address (if you are smart) before they get anywhere near your computers. It isn't carte-blanche to do whatever the hell they want.
You consent to the audits if you have any volume licensing at all. You also gave up your right to sue and have consented to going to arbitration.
So what? You might lose the suit but it doesn't mean you cannot sue even if you did "agree" to arbitration. Any sufficiently large software deal will (or should) have lawyers on both sides of the licensing agreement. It's quite possible to cost the software vendor a sizable fortune in legal fees if they can't act civilized so it's not as if the software vendor or even the BSA holds all the cards.
Furthermore if some random schmoe just one day shows up on my door claiming to be from Microsoft and claiming he's here to do an audit he'd better have some pretty convincing proof or he isn't getting past the secretary. Any audit worthy of the name would take some serious planning anyway for an organization of any size so "suprise inspections" usually aren't. (I'm an accountant so let's just say I'm familiar with audits) If the licensing agreement is being seriously broken, a surprise inspection will not be necessary to find this out.
The only ones who really get screwed are the smaller enterprises who lack the sophsitication to deal with issues like this properly.
I see how this works: it's too hard to do what's right, so let's not bother to try. And: they were doing it anyway, so why should we have to give up cheap goods?
Problem is that China's human rights record is not fixable by boycotting their manufactured goods. Seriously. I'd love you to walk me through your logic of how you think that a boycott of Chinese goods would in any way shape or form convince one of the worlds economic and nuclear powers to behave how you think they ought to. Such a boycott hasn't even worked with Cuba, so I can't conceive of why you think it would work with China.
Let's say that the US says we're going to boycott all Chinese made goods tomorrow. What would immediately happen is that the entire world would immediately go into a deep recession, the US included. The Chinese economy would experience massive disruptions. There would likely be civil unrest and there definitely would be deep, deep anger towards the US. Prices for goods across the board in the US would skyrocket and there would be shortages of many, many goods. Families in the US, China and elsewhere would have trouble putting food on the table and if you think our economy is in bad shape now, think Great Depression. (and no I'm not exaggerating)
What you don't get is that the Chinese government would not be persuaded by your boycott of anything other than that the US government is a bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites. Look at our own civil rights record in the US - slavery, native american relations, Guantanamo Bay, Japanese internment during WWII, Jim Crow laws, etc. The US is hardly a bastion of civil rights purity so why should the Chinese listen to us when we threaten them with economic warfare?
My phone will show 5 bars of reception but it will throw "no service" warnings when I try to make calls.
Not saying it isn't AT&T's fault but there is a highly non-zero chance the problem is with your phone instead. I've been an AT&T customer for over a decade (from back when they were AT&T Wireless before they became Cingular) so I'm pretty familiar with the good and bad about them. Whenever I've seen something like what you describe, a reboot of my phone has usually fixed the problem. I've also had cases where I couldn't get calls but other people with different phones could get calls standing right next to me. The problem turned out to be a wonky Nokia phone which I fixed by getting a new phone. Service didn't change but if the radio in the phone is broken (software or hardware) you can be standing next to a working tower and it won't matter.
You said you use basic phones so there is a good chance those phones are made as cheaply as possible. Wouldn't surprise me if a few corners got cut on the testing... Of course it could just be AT&T having crap service where you like too...
If you have a "working stiff" back-office job in the US you are among the wealthiest people in the planet. Top 5% for sure, probably top 2%.
Nonsense. The US has a population of roughly 300 million people which is roughly 5% of the global population. What you just said is that even the poorest person in the US is richer than almost anyone else in the world. Complete nonsense and easily debunked with about 10 seconds of searching on Google or Wikipedia. Yes, those who live here are generally quite well off, but your "numbers" are ludicrously wrong.
TSA wants everyone in submission at all times because then they are in control of you and everything you do.
Agreed, this bit of your argument makes sense but this was the last bit that did.
How many terrorists would succeed if you could openly carry handguns onto a plane?
A nice absurd strawman argument. Since letting firearms be carried on a plane is a security AND safety risk, it would be absurd to allow loaded firearms by the general public. First time someone loses their temper on an airplane an there is a shooting your argument would lose all credibility. Furthermore, if you carry a gun on a plane (even if legal) why shouldn't I think you might be a terrorist? I don't know you and I certainly don't trust you, especially with a firearm while we are trapped in a metal tube 30,000 feet above the ground. This remains true even if I am carrying a firearm of my own. Bear in mind that I generally support gun ownership rights including concealed carry. The idea of a Mexican standoff in the air doesn't hold a lot of appeal for me.
Also bear in mind that a gun is no defense against a bomb. If a terrorist smuggles explosives on board and is willing to die, a firearm is not going to save you.
The airlines industry will fail because of the TSA.
A tempting thought but no it won't. You would realize this if you gave it more than a second's worth of thought. Air travel is far too important to our modern economy. If the TSA really went overboard the voters and airline industry (which includes companies like GE, Boeing, and many others besides just the airlines) would grab the ear of our politicians in a big way and ultimately the TSA is answerable to the President and Congress. The TSA can screw with us but there are limits to their power.
Travel is so cumbersome and difficult that Amtrak has been gaining customers steadily for years.
Amtrak gaining customers has nothing to do with the TSA. Amtrak has gained customers because of capital improvements in the NE corridor and rising fuel prices. There is no evidence I am aware of that the TSA has had any significant impact on ridership of Amtrak or any other passenger rail.
And Obama loves the idea of spending trillions for high speed rail across the country.
So what? He'd have to get the idea through Congress and he's not stupid enough to try given the state of the economy. There may be money for subsidizing rail lines but thinking "trillions" will be spent is pure fantasy on your part.
I'm still trying to understand what a terrorist is going to do on a train.
Really? It's that hard for you to think of ways a terrorist could use a train for terrorism?
Or is there some physics that makes an explosion 30 minutes before landing more dangerous then 1 hour and 30 minutes?
No it's just more security theater. Many of the TSA's security precautions are pure theater and not based on any real threat.
Over on BoingBoing one recent traveller said that the onboard GPS position display was disabled as a security measure. Passengers were still able to time their journey though.
Security, riiiight... Never mind that my Garmin GPS works just fine on any airplane and is available at many fine retail establishments near you for less than $200.
Sure, they know that they need to backup their word documents, but most non-tech people don't think they need to back up things such as email or contacts.
Only because they haven't been told they should. Frankly, anyone who doesn't do backups of ALL their data is probably going to learn a harsh lesson sooner or later. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the small business owners I know who are diligent about backups are those who got burned in the past. Some people just seem to need to learn everything the hard way I guess.
That said, companies like Google could make the process easier. Wouldn't be all that hard to make a nice little button called Backup in the contacts manager to deposit a little file on your computer upon request with all the data bundled up. The functionality is already there.
The space program has given us. world wide telecommunications, GPS, weather satellite. How many lives and how much energy have those things saved? GPS alone applied to the transport industry has been a huge fuel saver.
Those are tremendous advances and there are many more besides. Problem is that the users of them often had nothing to do with the funding of them. That linking of the technology and the funding needs to happen for entrepreneurial activity to take place. To date the tremendous costs have made it very difficult for most entrepreneurs and businesses to directly pursue projects in space. (indirect opportunities such as building satellite parts or commercializing research are of course possible) Direct entrepreneurial ventures (Sirius Satellite Radio for instance) carry such high costs that commercial success is too risky to seriously contemplate most of the time. So right now we put up technologies that are subsidized. You are absolutely right that there has been valuable use of space but it's so expensive to get physical objects there that we've only been able to scratch the surface. So far only telecommunications, military and research (weather, etc) have directly participated because they mostly don't involve transporting more than the satellite itself into orbit - the data is the valuable thing and data weighs literally nothing.
My take on NASA is that it is useful as a research institution but not as a resource for lowering costs. There needs to be more emphasis on bringing the cost to orbit down. NASA may not be the best organization to pursue that goal. Absent some technological revolution however, orbital and higher launches are unlikely to become truly cheap anytime soon but cheaper would still open up many doors. Should we accomplish (relatively) inexpensive spaceflight then you need regulations and legal framework for activity in space by private enterprise so we don't stupidly abuse resources and cause other problems.
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Go ahead. Show me a single commercial SULEV diesel. Just one. I'm waiting.
Ignoring for the moment that only a tiny percentage of cars (hybrid or otherwise) on the road actually meet that standard as of the time I write this, what you are looking for IS coming. The technology has already been under development for years. Supposedly Nissan was to introduce a SULEV diesel version of their Maxima this year. (we'll see if they actually do) But there has been no point until very recently because it wasn't commercially viable.
SULEV is a US only standard and the US market historically has not bought passenger diesels in sufficient quantities to justify the investment. Diesels comprise a tiny percentage of US passenger car sales. What likely will change this is the new CAFE standards. Diesels will pretty much have to get more attention to meet the new fuel efficiency standards. If more diesels sell, the tailpipe emissions will inevitably get more attention too.
The fact is that current diesels are similarly clean compared with most gasoline powered vehicles currently on the road AND they generally get better fuel economy for similar horsepower. Furthermore there is no reason to believe they will not continue to improve.
Go ahead -- show me a single commercial diesel that has the interior space of a Prius and does 0-60 in no more than 10 seconds, but gets 89g/km CO2 NEDC and 60g/km on the 10-15. Or even close. Just one. I'm waiting.
Show me a Prius that matches the acceleration and emissions of the Tesla Roadster. Show me a Prius that can generate 400ft-lb of torque and tow a 7000lb trailer like a Dodge Ram Diesel pickup. Show me a Prius that gets the fuel economy of a Honda VTR1000F motorcycle (>100MPG). Show me a Prius that can haul a ton of freight 400 miles on a gallon of gas like a diesel locomotive. Are you done missing the point with stupid comparisons?
I'm arguing that diesels as they exist are comparably clean versus similarly powered gasoline engines. I'm also completely for the notion that even cleaner diesels should continue to be developed. The fact that commercial efforts have gone elsewhere prior to this point is 100% irrelevant.
Manufacturing less now than in the past is not the equivalent of manufacturing nothing at all!
That's the myth though. The US is NOT manufacturing less. US manufacturing output has grown in the last 10 years. It's down in 2009 because of the crappy economy but that's true everywhere, not just in the US.
The ONLY thing that is changing is that the US is losing labor-intensive manufacturing to places with cheaper labor. The capital-intensive production continues to grow as productivity increases.
If you are concerned about the loss domestic manufacturing of jobs and and industrial capacity (as I am) the source of a product should always be part of the consideration of whether or not to purchase it.
The number of manufacturing jobs is GOING to shrink as long as cheaper labor is available elsewhere. Trying to fight this is like trying to prevent the tides from coming in. It's not just futile, it is wasteful. The good news is that this does NOT mean US manufacturing is going to shrink. Very much like farming, US manufacturing is simply going to have more produced by a smaller percentage of the population. It also means that the products produced in the US will change. In the long run that is not a bad thing.
petroleum, food, lumber, mining do not count for "manufacturing" in my book.
Then you know virtually nothing about those industries. You think gasoline comes straight out of the ground ready to be pumped into your car? No, it has to be processed and that is manufacturing. Ever use a plastic bag or nylon fabric or PVC pipe? Manufactured petroleum products. Want to talk lumber? How do you think all those boards you buy at Home Depot are produced? You think they just grow that way? No they have to be made ready for sale and the term for that is manufacturing. Ever buy a processed food? Guess what? That's manufacturing too. I've never seen a farm that harvested cookies. Do you think all the equipment they use in mining and farm is just in the ground waiting to be discovered? Do you think that the iron ore comes in the form of steel I-beams?
You seem quite confused about what manufacturing actually is and clearly haven't given it much thought. Manufacturing is "the use of machines, tools and labor to make things for use or sale." It's everywhere and is critical to the US economy.
Besides, our internal prices are higher.
Of course they are. The US has one of the highest per-capita incomes and are thus its citizens able to pay more. Study Purchasing Power Parity sometime.
The truth is you go to the store and you can't find anything made in the US.
Think so? You haven't actually looked then. Yes a lot of stuff is made elsewhere. It's a global economy after all. But if you are in the US it doesn't have a country of origin label, odds are it was made in the US. The US produces over $1 Trillion worth of goods for domestic consumption. If you can't find them you aren't looking very hard.
In addition, final assembly of Toyota, Honda, BMW, and Kia cars != building cars in the US.
Actually yes it does. Your assumptions about where parts are made are wildly out of date. In many cases it's just not economical to produce parts overseas, especially if you are producing in a Just In Time system like Toyota uses.
I've been an engineer in the auto industry and have been in parts plants throughout the US for virtually every major auto manufacturer myself. Most of the cars assembled here in the US have most of their parts made here too, even for the "foreign" brands. Those Hondas they make in Ohio usually have well over 50% and sometimes over 80% of the parts made here in the US or in Canada. I own a Honda that was assembled in Alabama and over 70% of the parts were made domestically.
A car is just the sum of its parts. If all the parts are made outside the USA, then the car can't really said to be, "Made in the USA."
Good thing the parts usually aren't made outside the US then.
No. 2009 was the FIRST year a VW diesel won
Are you sure about that? Because I'm pretty sure you are wrong.
So there is ONE 2009 model out there with descent emissions.
If you bothered to actually look you'd find the diesels from Mercedes and BMW as well as Audi and VW all are quite clean these days. Seriously. Go look before you spout of unresearched nonsense.
What does that have to say about all the other soot and sulfur belching monstrosities?
Nothing whatsoever. There are lots of smog producing gasoline engines too. Has nothing to do with the ability to produce clean diesels. The technology exists and is in production.
Because everyone knows that Wikipedia is a great source and has a wonderful staff that is totally devoted to producing an unbiased, accurate website *eyeroll*.
Fine. Find me a source that proves the data wrong.
"A total of 3.2 million – one in six U.S. factory jobs – have disappeared since the start of 2000."
And yet the US is manufacturing more than ever. How could this be? The answer is that US manufacturing productivity has risen. Fewer people are needed to do the same job. Same thing happened in the farming sector. Fewer people work there and yet its among our most productive and important industries. The jobs shift elsewhere in the economy. Job losses doesn't mean that manufacturing is shrinking - it just means that it is changing. The US doesn't manufacturing labor intensive goods because labor is too expensive here. QED you should expect to see the quantity of labor drop in the manufacturing sector. This does NOT mean that manufacturing is disappearing.
That's because they ARE noisy, smelly and polluting..
Go straight to your local VW or BMW dealer and ask to see their diesels. I have so I know you are quite wrong. Heck VW diesels keep winning the green vehicle awards over the hybrids.
Besides, diesel is more inconvenient as I'd have to hunt to find a station that dispenses it. Not all do and they would be mainly on the big truck transport routes.
Just over half of all filling stations in the US have diesel. It's not even remotely hard to find.
He did answer your question. He stated that, for the target market (Under 40 Mi drivers) that diesel causes loss of efficiency due to weight.
And that would be factually wrong or at least misleading. I've driven plenty of diesels and even for relatively short distances they still beat the fuel economy of most equivalently powered gasoline engines. True, short trips don't maximize the advantages of diesel but the advantages still exist.
The problem is that a Diesel engine is very heavy and expensive. Most hybrids are made for short trips so it would be a great waste of resources to carry around a heavy engine.
Hybrids are made for the same purposes as every other cars and are driven no differently. I don't know why you think a hybrid is somehow driven any different than a car with just an internal combustion engine. Diesels are fine for even typical commuting distances. It doesn't have to be a 1000 mile journey to get benefits from a diesel.
As for cost, that has FAR more to do with economies of scale than it does any additional material and engineering costs. In Europe the majority of vehicles are diesel and the manufacturers produce diesel engines that are economically competitive with gasoline engines. They are not competitive here in the US because for various reasons only a small percentage of cars use diesel so there are no economies of scale to take advantage of.
Hybrid gasoline engines have a somewhat different cycle (Atkinson cycle) than normal gasoline engines (traditional Otto cycle) and thus are more economical.
That depends on the specific hybrid. Some hybrids use Otto cycle engines because they are tuned more for power than just fuel economy. Not all hybrids are Toyota Prius's. It's an engineering choice. You can tune a hybrid for power or for fuel economy - and there are gains to be made even without maximizing either. There are plenty of potential applications where a diesel would be a better choice in a hybrid vehicle than an Atkinson cycle gas engine. Conversely, sometimes a gasoline engine is the right choice. It's not as simple as you are making it out to be.
where the Diesel engine is often only connected to the generator so it can be in its most efficient revolution speed the whole time and (because of the constant speed) have a very long life.
You do know that the Chevy Volt has the engine only connected to the generator right? Very similar to a locomotive or a ship. The engine only kicks on when the batteries are drained and then only to recharge the batteries. There is NO mechanical linkage between the gas engine and the electric motors that propel the Volt. There is no reason a diesel could not be used instead.
Which is why you should always buy American!
Oh wait...we don't make anything anymore.
The US has a manufacturing sector that produces over $2.6 Trillion annually - larger than any other country on earth including China and larger than the GDP of all but 5 countries. Total imports into the US are just over $2.1 Trillion (16% of those are from China) while US exports are around $1.3 Trillion. (only China and Germany export more)
But we don't make anything anymore... Right... Never let the facts stand in the way of a good sound bite.
Unfortunately where you publish *does* matter, especially if you need funding like with large grants
Not for research already completed. You're talking about advancing a career, not publishing already completed research.
Yes, publishing in certain journals can unquestionably be career enhancing. But just because a given article cannot get published in the most prestigious journal doesn't automatically mean that it is bad science, nor does it automatically mean that politics has "shut you out". If the science in question is not of wide interest, chances are you'll end up publishing in a journal with a narrow readership. It's perfectly normal to submit an article to a journal where publication is a long shot and if/when rejected publish somewhere else.
And this is the issue of the "impact factor" that influences an opinion (that can be one of a reviewer) whether it's worth or not.
In the short run yes this is true. However if it is good science, in the long run the good ideas tend to win out, regardless of their original source. Having a well known name can influence opinion but even Einstein found himself on the losing side of some scientific debates.
Of course this doesn't mean that if you write total crap you'll get published: but that for two identical valuable contributions, politics may favor one with respect to another.
ONLY in a specific publication. That doesn't mean that the contribution can't get published, it just might not be in Nature. So publish the research elsewhere. If the science is good ultimately it doesn't matter where it is published. Journals often will reject articles because they are judged to not be of wide enough interest for the readership of the journal. Has nothing to do with the quality of the science but it's a perfectly valid reason to choose one article over another.
I think part of the root of the problem is the outsourcing of manufacturing to overseas. Its more difficult to do real, useful R&D when you're disconnected from the concrete applications.
And this affects a college researcher how exactly? Nice appeal to populist sentiment but I don't think you understand manufacturing, outsourcing or research when you spout nonsense like that. Research can be outsourced too you know. Lots of companies do research and then either sell the results or even the entire company. Happens in pharmaceuticals and other technology sectors all the time. And academic research is only weakly affected by the physical location of manufacturing plants.
...but since the articles are publicly available, doesn't that mean that they can be more widely reviewed than traditional peer-reviewed papers?
Not necessarily. Peer reviewed articles can be and often are available in public domain sources.
It didn't sound like it was research, but rather mathematical theory based on looking at existing principles from a different direction. If there is enough underlying research in newtonian physics and general relativity, then wouldn't that same research also apply here?
I can't say without looking at the model but odds are that the model would still need at least some specific experimental confirmation.
Granted, I'm no mathematician, but it just seems a bit cliquish to say "don't pay attention to this" because of where the first publication is happening.
Only if you don't understand why people say that. The quality of research articles and standards of publications are not all the same between all journals just like not all research is equally important. Getting published in a journal like Nature requires a quality of research and significance of the results that is much higher than many other publications. Accordingly it is more likely that an article in such a journal will contain research that is worthy of attention. This is not to say that articles published elsewhere are poor research or unimportant but like any data you need to consider the source.
Let me put it another way. Would you be more likely to trust the information in an article from The Wall Street Journal or from The National Enquirer? One has earned a reputation for consistently providing high quality journalism and the other is widely considered a tabloid frequently containing outright fabrications. The same principle is at work with scientific and mathematical journals.
Now, I know you didn't actually read my post. If you had, you would have noticed that I wrote, "After years of seeing the high-quality research of others basically shut out by the peer review process, ..."
I find it interesting that you post anonymously, your claims are vague and unsubstantiated, you refuse to even indicate the field of interest we are talking about. I think this is a troll frankly but what the heck...
My wife and quite a few of my friends have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I myself have worked in research labs and around scientists and researchers who regularly publish. I've even contributed to a few peer reviewed papers myself, though my contributions were too small to merit author credit. I'm very familair with the process and the problems with peer reviewed journals. Yes, they can be a bit political and even faddish at times. No, they are not always fair nor is all the critique of the submissions accurate.
That said, it's been my experience that those who are "basically shut out" are almost invariably kooks with ideas that do not stand up to serious scrutiny or who think their ideas are better and/or more important than they actually are. There are lots of journals out there and even relatively weird ideas can almost always still get published. There are various degrees of scrutiny depending on the journal in question. Your "friends" research might not be worthy of Nature or Science or whatever the most prestigious journal is in their given field but I've never personally seen worthy research get completely shut out. There are just too many ways to get published for this to be possible except in rare circumstances.
There were many other researchers who shared my views, and I know several of them who also moved to industry because they got tired of the scam that is academia.
Academia does have it's problems to be sure but calling it a "scam"? Sorry but my own experience says you are most likely just trolling.
IIRCC some EULAs give the "authorized representatives" the authority to check your computers.
True. Many of these agreements have such a clause. So now we have to define who an authorized representative is, how they will identify themselves as such, under what circumstances they are allowed to even be on your property much less touch your computers, how they will conduct the audit so as not to be unduly burdensome to your ongoing business, etc. They might have the right to audit but there are a LOT of details they'll have to address (if you are smart) before they get anywhere near your computers. It isn't carte-blanche to do whatever the hell they want.
You consent to the audits if you have any volume licensing at all. You also gave up your right to sue and have consented to going to arbitration.
So what? You might lose the suit but it doesn't mean you cannot sue even if you did "agree" to arbitration. Any sufficiently large software deal will (or should) have lawyers on both sides of the licensing agreement. It's quite possible to cost the software vendor a sizable fortune in legal fees if they can't act civilized so it's not as if the software vendor or even the BSA holds all the cards.
Furthermore if some random schmoe just one day shows up on my door claiming to be from Microsoft and claiming he's here to do an audit he'd better have some pretty convincing proof or he isn't getting past the secretary. Any audit worthy of the name would take some serious planning anyway for an organization of any size so "suprise inspections" usually aren't. (I'm an accountant so let's just say I'm familiar with audits) If the licensing agreement is being seriously broken, a surprise inspection will not be necessary to find this out.
The only ones who really get screwed are the smaller enterprises who lack the sophsitication to deal with issues like this properly.
China currently has unprecedented influence on the US, even if none of us wants to come right out and say.
And the US has enormous influence on China. Happens anytime two countries are major trading partners and world powers. What exactly is your point?
I see how this works: it's too hard to do what's right, so let's not bother to try. And: they were doing it anyway, so why should we have to give up cheap goods?
Nice hand wave. Tip of the hat sir.
Problem is that China's human rights record is not fixable by boycotting their manufactured goods. Seriously. I'd love you to walk me through your logic of how you think that a boycott of Chinese goods would in any way shape or form convince one of the worlds economic and nuclear powers to behave how you think they ought to. Such a boycott hasn't even worked with Cuba, so I can't conceive of why you think it would work with China.
Let's say that the US says we're going to boycott all Chinese made goods tomorrow. What would immediately happen is that the entire world would immediately go into a deep recession, the US included. The Chinese economy would experience massive disruptions. There would likely be civil unrest and there definitely would be deep, deep anger towards the US. Prices for goods across the board in the US would skyrocket and there would be shortages of many, many goods. Families in the US, China and elsewhere would have trouble putting food on the table and if you think our economy is in bad shape now, think Great Depression. (and no I'm not exaggerating)
What you don't get is that the Chinese government would not be persuaded by your boycott of anything other than that the US government is a bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites. Look at our own civil rights record in the US - slavery, native american relations, Guantanamo Bay, Japanese internment during WWII, Jim Crow laws, etc. The US is hardly a bastion of civil rights purity so why should the Chinese listen to us when we threaten them with economic warfare?
My phone will show 5 bars of reception but it will throw "no service" warnings when I try to make calls.
Not saying it isn't AT&T's fault but there is a highly non-zero chance the problem is with your phone instead. I've been an AT&T customer for over a decade (from back when they were AT&T Wireless before they became Cingular) so I'm pretty familiar with the good and bad about them. Whenever I've seen something like what you describe, a reboot of my phone has usually fixed the problem. I've also had cases where I couldn't get calls but other people with different phones could get calls standing right next to me. The problem turned out to be a wonky Nokia phone which I fixed by getting a new phone. Service didn't change but if the radio in the phone is broken (software or hardware) you can be standing next to a working tower and it won't matter.
You said you use basic phones so there is a good chance those phones are made as cheaply as possible. Wouldn't surprise me if a few corners got cut on the testing... Of course it could just be AT&T having crap service where you like too...
If you have a "working stiff" back-office job in the US you are among the wealthiest people in the planet. Top 5% for sure, probably top 2%.
Nonsense. The US has a population of roughly 300 million people which is roughly 5% of the global population. What you just said is that even the poorest person in the US is richer than almost anyone else in the world. Complete nonsense and easily debunked with about 10 seconds of searching on Google or Wikipedia. Yes, those who live here are generally quite well off, but your "numbers" are ludicrously wrong.
TSA wants everyone in submission at all times because then they are in control of you and everything you do.
Agreed, this bit of your argument makes sense but this was the last bit that did.
How many terrorists would succeed if you could openly carry handguns onto a plane?
A nice absurd strawman argument. Since letting firearms be carried on a plane is a security AND safety risk, it would be absurd to allow loaded firearms by the general public. First time someone loses their temper on an airplane an there is a shooting your argument would lose all credibility. Furthermore, if you carry a gun on a plane (even if legal) why shouldn't I think you might be a terrorist? I don't know you and I certainly don't trust you, especially with a firearm while we are trapped in a metal tube 30,000 feet above the ground. This remains true even if I am carrying a firearm of my own. Bear in mind that I generally support gun ownership rights including concealed carry. The idea of a Mexican standoff in the air doesn't hold a lot of appeal for me.
Also bear in mind that a gun is no defense against a bomb. If a terrorist smuggles explosives on board and is willing to die, a firearm is not going to save you.
The airlines industry will fail because of the TSA.
A tempting thought but no it won't. You would realize this if you gave it more than a second's worth of thought. Air travel is far too important to our modern economy. If the TSA really went overboard the voters and airline industry (which includes companies like GE, Boeing, and many others besides just the airlines) would grab the ear of our politicians in a big way and ultimately the TSA is answerable to the President and Congress. The TSA can screw with us but there are limits to their power.
Travel is so cumbersome and difficult that Amtrak has been gaining customers steadily for years.
Amtrak gaining customers has nothing to do with the TSA. Amtrak has gained customers because of capital improvements in the NE corridor and rising fuel prices. There is no evidence I am aware of that the TSA has had any significant impact on ridership of Amtrak or any other passenger rail.
And Obama loves the idea of spending trillions for high speed rail across the country.
So what? He'd have to get the idea through Congress and he's not stupid enough to try given the state of the economy. There may be money for subsidizing rail lines but thinking "trillions" will be spent is pure fantasy on your part.
I'm still trying to understand what a terrorist is going to do on a train.
Really? It's that hard for you to think of ways a terrorist could use a train for terrorism?
Or is there some physics that makes an explosion 30 minutes before landing more dangerous then 1 hour and 30 minutes?
No it's just more security theater. Many of the TSA's security precautions are pure theater and not based on any real threat.
Over on BoingBoing one recent traveller said that the onboard GPS position display was disabled as a security measure. Passengers were still able to time their journey though.
Security, riiiight... Never mind that my Garmin GPS works just fine on any airplane and is available at many fine retail establishments near you for less than $200.
Sure, they know that they need to backup their word documents, but most non-tech people don't think they need to back up things such as email or contacts.
Only because they haven't been told they should. Frankly, anyone who doesn't do backups of ALL their data is probably going to learn a harsh lesson sooner or later. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the small business owners I know who are diligent about backups are those who got burned in the past. Some people just seem to need to learn everything the hard way I guess.
That said, companies like Google could make the process easier. Wouldn't be all that hard to make a nice little button called Backup in the contacts manager to deposit a little file on your computer upon request with all the data bundled up. The functionality is already there.
The space program has given us. world wide telecommunications, GPS, weather satellite. How many lives and how much energy have those things saved? GPS alone applied to the transport industry has been a huge fuel saver.
Those are tremendous advances and there are many more besides. Problem is that the users of them often had nothing to do with the funding of them. That linking of the technology and the funding needs to happen for entrepreneurial activity to take place. To date the tremendous costs have made it very difficult for most entrepreneurs and businesses to directly pursue projects in space. (indirect opportunities such as building satellite parts or commercializing research are of course possible) Direct entrepreneurial ventures (Sirius Satellite Radio for instance) carry such high costs that commercial success is too risky to seriously contemplate most of the time. So right now we put up technologies that are subsidized. You are absolutely right that there has been valuable use of space but it's so expensive to get physical objects there that we've only been able to scratch the surface. So far only telecommunications, military and research (weather, etc) have directly participated because they mostly don't involve transporting more than the satellite itself into orbit - the data is the valuable thing and data weighs literally nothing.
My take on NASA is that it is useful as a research institution but not as a resource for lowering costs. There needs to be more emphasis on bringing the cost to orbit down. NASA may not be the best organization to pursue that goal. Absent some technological revolution however, orbital and higher launches are unlikely to become truly cheap anytime soon but cheaper would still open up many doors. Should we accomplish (relatively) inexpensive spaceflight then you need regulations and legal framework for activity in space by private enterprise so we don't stupidly abuse resources and cause other problems.