I wish everyone were so creative and ambitious to take on the kinds of rewarding passtimes you suggest.
I was under the impression that most people do these kinds of things in their free time. Though this could just suggest that myself and my friends are outliers. (For instance, I picked an apartment within walking distance of my work so I could save time by doing exercise and commuting simultaneously)
It could also suggest that there's not enough automation. If people were freed from compulsory work, perhaps they would find something worthwhile to do with their time out of boredom instead of making recovering from work be their pastime. Of course, that will take a lot more automation than just this, but every little bit helps.
All I'm saying is that automating the commute solves a problem that people deeply do not want solved. I'm suggesting there is a difference between why people really do it, and why they say they do it.
I think a quote from Henry Ford is appropriate here: "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
Most people don't understand how this will make their lives better yet, they're too set in their present ways as you say, but that won't stop them from adopting it en-masse when the technology becomes mature and affordable. Then they'll wonder how they ever lived without it.
Personally, I cannot wait for this technology to become commercially available. I *hate* driving but am constantly running into situations where it is needed.
People's basic needs in the 1st world can be met so easily that they truly have nothing better to do than sit in the car and plod from suburb to office building and back.
Really now? What about socializing, reading books, playing games, hobbies, watching movies, volunteering, learning new skills, raising a family, arguing on the Internet, starting and running a small business, etc.?
Of course this behavior is now engrained on such a spectacular scale that individuals can't just pick up and say "screw this, I'll telecommute", but as energy costs rise that'll be the ultimate outcome for those who don't absolutely NEED to be in a particular location to work (retail, food service, construction etc).
First of all, the workers do not decide to "screw this, I'll telecommute", their employers make that decision. At best the employees can push for it to become an option. Telecommuting has not been picked up by companies on a large scale for various reasons that have nothing to do with transportation (traditional management style, temporary loss of productivity during initial acclimation period, the human desire for personal contact with associates, etc.). Also, companies paying for commuting time/costs being a benefit rather than a standard means that many companies do not care about such costs.
If we really wanted to not drive, we could take public transit and be free to read or whatever. But driving is the last dying vestige where white collar workers can feel like they're doing something even remotely useful _with autonomy_.
Most people like the ability to go wherever they please, not the ability to drive down a track getting there. Other than driving off-road or flagrantly disobeying speed limits, the act of driving itself isn't particularly freeing. When people say they like the autonomy that cars give them, they mean the ability to go anywhere with ease in their car...as in, not just the main routes of the public transportation system.
Public transport is left unused for many other reasons as well. Cars provide a private environment devoid of strangers, which is a luxury that many enjoy. Public transport is only available within (and between) large cities, so anyone living in a rural or suburban area must use a car (and many people like to live in such areas). Some cities have poor public transportation systems, with long wait times between buses which either wastes time or requires a strict schedule. Since the activities available on public transportation are limited and a substantial degree of awareness is required (to prevent theft and/or missing one's stop) the quality of time spent on public transport is little better than that spent driving a car. If driving a car can get a person more time at home or at interesting destinations then people will clearly go for it (it does this by always being there when the owner is ready, not stopping except for safety reasons, and going at/above the speed limit whenever possible). Lastly, even economy cars can carry a lot of cargo compared to a person on a bus, so they help to consolidate shopping time, saving even more time.
Automate driving, and it means we have to find another activity to occupy ourselves since we no longer need scrub our dishes and laundry, much less toil in the fields.
Like a hobby? What a radical idea!
I'm not sure why you seem to think that work is everything in life. Life doesn't have to be a chore.
Quantum computers can do some cool things, but mostly solve problems no one cares much about (except a few of us mathematicians)
That is until some practical application is found that uses the solution. From what I've heard, Boolean algebra was thought to have no utility for a very long time after it was discovered, but nowadays...
Maybe because they can be the geekier type that have less social lives, maybe feel alienated from those around them, and thus easier to isolate and brainwash. The fiercest arguments I see online are among geeks/nerds as well, many think they are absolutely correct in any area they have studied...
Then add on top of that the fact that polygyny is allowed under Islam. This causes many women to gravitate towards men with power, money, social skills, and looks. Each extra wife some powerful/rich/sexy/charismatic guy has means a wife some other less lucky guy won't have, so a geeky guy will find it even harder to find a mate in such a society than in a monogamous society (and they'll have to deal with leaner pickings too). Combine that with the lack of pre-marital sex in many Islamic societies and you've got a large number of young horny engineers who are getting little to no tail.
The shuttle program is a horrible example. The shuttle program includes the orbiter in the cost, so that brings along a huge amount of extra financial baggage: astronaut training, experimental design and implementation, orbiter maintenance, and all sorts of other orbiter-centric organizational stuff that would not be part of a pure lifter system.
If you look at a rocket, let's say the Titan IV which has roughly comparable to the shuttle in terms of lifting (and age), it costs around $350 million per unit (and $432 million per launch). Assuming the fuel costs are similar, it's clear that 99.9% of the cost of the rocket launch are the rocket itself, not the fuel.
While this does support your assertion that saving fuel for cost reasons is not that important, it brings up another important issue that this system addresses. This launch system idea is mostly reusable as only the last stage is used up. You might say that the shuttle is reusable and it is much more expensive than a plain old rocket launch, but this is not really true as the shuttle costs $450 million per launch for a proportionately larger payload than a Titan IV, and that even includes the cost of the blinged out orbiter and everything that goes along with it...so really a reusable launch system has the potential to be substantially cheaper if it is well designed, even with the added complexities. Using the shuttle for anything less than shuttle orbiter-centric missions is a huge waste, but there's no way to separate the launcher and orbiter without creating a new system.
Additionally, the first two stages of this system would undergo far less stress than the shuttle does during its missions. The reusable part of the system not undergoing re-entry each mission means lower construction and maintenance costs compared to the shuttle system. It should also be safer than the shuttle system for these reasons (and the ability of the payload to detach during the second stage). Also, due to the lack of a built-in orbiter it would be far more flexible. Basically this gets us the best of both worlds (shuttle and traditional rocket). The lower energy costs are just bonuses.
The R&D costs for such a system are one time only. One of the main reasons projects like the B2 bomber and Space Shuttle were so costly was because the R&D costs were spread out over only a handful of units/launches. If this system is successful then it could lead to very large numbers of units produced and a very low cost per unit/launch.
Lastly, as some others have pointed out, there are secondary uses for research into air breathing hypersonic aircraft. The R&D effort may be worth it regardless of the success or failure of using it as a space launch platform.
Well, that seems a bit optimistic for a device that has been successfully flown, what, twice? Its kind of like planning the Boeing 777 the day after the wright brothers first flight.
I don't see how flying a device that actually performs to the required specs (the X-43 reached Mach 9.8 at 43k ft) and then making plans to use this new capability is like planning to make another device that is far better. It's more like thinking about flying regular cargo between two cities the day after the Wright Brother's first flight. Sure it's not happening today or tomorrow, but if we work on it then in a decade or two...
Alternately, you could take the required second stage, and make the fuel tank at least 6% bigger and skip all this air breathing foolishness.
You're missing the point. The advantage of an air-breathing craft is that it can weigh less because it doesn't have to carry all that air for combustion. The lower weight means it takes less fuel to propel, which means it can weigh even less without all that extra fuel. Even better, the first stage doesn't require fuel to be carried on-board at all, allowing less expensive ground-based power to be used. There is great potential for energy savings, which would mean higher payloads and/or less expensive flights.
The problem is that you have to build all those fancy robotic houses. Most people will probably be okay with loading their own dishes and cleaning their own surfaces if it saves them tens of thousands of dollars on their house.
A household robot would be much smaller and cheaper than a whole new house, and could take advantage of economies of scale more easily.
So, although robotic houses might appear first they will be the playthings of the wealthy. Household robots will almost certainly be what brings home automation to the common person.
I've lived in California roughly half my life and Tennessee for the other half. I was born in California and culturally I'm closer to Californian (except politically), but I live in Tennessee right now and have lived here slightly longer. My family is spread across both states. Does that make me a Californian or a Tennessean?
Also, I'm graduating soon and I plan on moving to wherever the work is, which could be somewhere completely new like New York, Texas, Washington, Colorado, or Washington DC (which isn't even a state). Will I suddenly become a new-state-ian when I move there?
You may be Scottish or English, but you're all British.
This trend will only worsen when robots start taking over routine jobs in a few decades (not to mention the jobs they are eliminating through higher individual worker efficiency right now). Really we should all be moving away from wages as our primary means of livelihood right now. If most people earned their primary incomes from ownership instead of wages then there would be no tension caused by globalization and automation. Even before the automation of all work becomes possible, having less people relying on wages for their livelihoods would diminish the labor supply and therefore drive up wages for the remaining workers.
It's interesting that Tennessee is much greener than average too. Utah and Deleware are other outliers. None of the unusually happy states seem to be surrounded by other unusually happy states.
I've lived in Tennessee and Northern California before. In CA the weather is amazing all year round. In TN the people are really nice and the cost of living is very low. At least those are the things I personally noticed.
I wish they had higher resolution data though. It would be interesting to see if particular cities or regions of larger states were pulling the rest of the state with them.
Also, two days worth of data isn't enough to draw many conclusions. Maybe the unhappy states had bad weather on those days and the happy ones had good weather? How do the seasons influence happiness?
This is the Star Trek fallacy. Technology typically doesn't proceed in tech levels, where new advanced technology replaces older less advanced technology. Certainly there are a few examples where some new technology completely replaced the old technology in practical applications, such as guns replacing swords or automobiles replacing horse-drawn carriages. However, the vast majority of the time old and new technologies co-exist, not because the old technology isn't done being replaced yet but because it is still useful. For instance, although they are extremely ancient technologies we still use bronze and pottery.
This is particularly relevant in energy technology because what matters is the type of free energy available. If someone lived next to a literal mountain of coal, then why would it be ridiculous for them to dig up and burn it for energy? Sure, it will run out eventually and they'll have to either spend less energy or exploit some other energy source, but there's nothing crazy about using it.
It should be noted that modern electrical generation still relies heavily on coal and that oil & nuclear electricity generation uses the steam engine.
The future energy situation will probably have a lot of variety, from coal to fusion and everything in between. The balances will certainly be different, but the old technologies will never be completely obsolete as long as there is fuel remaining to be exploited at a reasonable cost.
Re:Not to be taken seriously
on
Six More Tech Cults
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Cults are small non-mainstream groups, so it is accurate. Apple is a religion.
"A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion."
It should also be pointed out that the initial work that led to this discovery was done with mice stem cells (which had no such funding restrictions) which was only completed in 2008. This breakthrough is simply an extension of the technique to human stem cells. Do you really think that it would have been nearly a decade faster had the scientists been able to get US federal funding to do this with human cells instead of mouse cells? A delay of two years seems more plausible (if they had initially done this with human cells instead), and since it takes years to go from basic research to accepted treatments it is unlikely that your friend would have benefited from this.
Scientists found workarounds for the ban, like working on embryonic stem cells of animals or working on human adult stem cells or getting funding from other sources or analyzing pre-existing data or working in related fields that are now assisting research etc. This probably wasn't for the best, but it didn't stop the research.
I'm not saying that the ban was harmless. There will probably be excess deaths as a result. My point is that it is very difficult to measure the effects, and that they are probably far less serious than 8 whole years of lost research.
I'm sorry to hear about your loss, but you can't really know if this really is the case or not. Would it have really led to this advance significantly earlier? or would it have just been slightly earlier? or perhaps there would have been little to no change?
Anyway, the Bush "ban" was actually initiated by Clinton administration and it only prevented embryonic stem cell research from receiving US federal funding if it involved the destruction of embryos. Adult stem cell research and privately funded research has been perfectly legal the whole time.
Research isn't like engineering where you can throw tons of money at a problem and make it go much faster. You can cultivate a good environment for research, and in this way the ban may have caused some harm, but throwing more resources at such research doesn't scale in the same way as say going to the moon or developing the atomic bomb, where all the fundamental research was done and all that was needed was a lot of engineering and elbow grease. In other words, 8 years more US federal funding does not translate into advances occurring 8 years earlier.
Plus, this discovery was made in Europe and not in the US. The US isn't the center of the universe.
There is a great temptation to blame our woes on the malice or incompetence of others, but one should not give in to this temptation unless there is very good proof for it.
You seem upset about the parent's "bestiality argument", but you totally misinterpreted what he said. He was emphasizing the word "do" because he was emphasizing that there was literally no use for livestock prior to the fall, not because he was using it as a euphemism for sex.
His real point is that if the story is really true, then God was clearly setting us up for the fall. It's like thinking back before a murder occurred and realizing that not only did the perpetrator have an ulterior reason for buying all that quicklime, but also that he didn't have any innocent reason to purchase it.
In any case, as for your argument: The truth and value of that message is debatable. Sure, it can help many people emotionally, but it can also delude them. Are you really sure there's a reason for everything? Even if there is, shouldn't we try our best to find the right reason rather than going with an old and outdated explanation?
Assuming that we want to spread that message (or that a particular person will be better off deluded than depressed), why not just deliver the message directly? or how about using a real story that has the same moral? If the message really has value then certainly there must be a better way to express it.
If everything goes well, slightly higher capital costs for greatly reduced operational costs.
From TFA: "The company chose to work on desalination because the energy costs associated with running desalination plants are very high--as much as 40 percent or 50 percent of operating costs, according to Sandberg."
Changing the top marginal rate won't bring in more income. Rich people will find ways to protect their money, either legally or illegally. Google "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income".
While removing the sales tax would be nice, it will reduce government income because the poor people who have to pay it can't escape. Most of the welfare states in Europe rely heavily on VAT taxes, which are economically equivalent to sales taxes. In order to remove sales/VAT taxes, we'd have to drastically cut down on the size of the government.
You can't soak the rich. Life isn't fair. Get over it.
Re:Really good design takes talent
on
The Design of Design
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
(Software) engineering is an art. You don't design science.
Engineering is creative. It's a highly personal skill that must be honed through years of study and practice. Engineers have different personal styles, but stay "on-model" during collaborative work for consistency's sake. An engineer's best work is their "masterpiece". etc.
Engineering is the art of applying science to make technology. The different fields of engineering are like the different fields of art in that they use different mediums but are unified by the common principles of design.
My mother is a professional artist and it's amazing how similar our work really is.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish everyone were so creative and ambitious to take on the kinds of rewarding passtimes you suggest.
I was under the impression that most people do these kinds of things in their free time. Though this could just suggest that myself and my friends are outliers. (For instance, I picked an apartment within walking distance of my work so I could save time by doing exercise and commuting simultaneously)
It could also suggest that there's not enough automation. If people were freed from compulsory work, perhaps they would find something worthwhile to do with their time out of boredom instead of making recovering from work be their pastime. Of course, that will take a lot more automation than just this, but every little bit helps.
All I'm saying is that automating the commute solves a problem that people deeply do not want solved. I'm suggesting there is a difference between why people really do it, and why they say they do it.
I think a quote from Henry Ford is appropriate here:
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
Most people don't understand how this will make their lives better yet, they're too set in their present ways as you say, but that won't stop them from adopting it en-masse when the technology becomes mature and affordable. Then they'll wonder how they ever lived without it.
Personally, I cannot wait for this technology to become commercially available. I *hate* driving but am constantly running into situations where it is needed.
You've got it all backwards.
People's basic needs in the 1st world can be met so easily that they truly have nothing better to do than sit in the car and plod from suburb to office building and back.
Really now? What about socializing, reading books, playing games, hobbies, watching movies, volunteering, learning new skills, raising a family, arguing on the Internet, starting and running a small business, etc.?
Of course this behavior is now engrained on such a spectacular scale that individuals can't just pick up and say "screw this, I'll telecommute", but as energy costs rise that'll be the ultimate outcome for those who don't absolutely NEED to be in a particular location to work (retail, food service, construction etc).
First of all, the workers do not decide to "screw this, I'll telecommute", their employers make that decision. At best the employees can push for it to become an option. Telecommuting has not been picked up by companies on a large scale for various reasons that have nothing to do with transportation (traditional management style, temporary loss of productivity during initial acclimation period, the human desire for personal contact with associates, etc.). Also, companies paying for commuting time/costs being a benefit rather than a standard means that many companies do not care about such costs.
If we really wanted to not drive, we could take public transit and be free to read or whatever. But driving is the last dying vestige where white collar workers can feel like they're doing something even remotely useful _with autonomy_.
Most people like the ability to go wherever they please, not the ability to drive down a track getting there. Other than driving off-road or flagrantly disobeying speed limits, the act of driving itself isn't particularly freeing. When people say they like the autonomy that cars give them, they mean the ability to go anywhere with ease in their car...as in, not just the main routes of the public transportation system.
Public transport is left unused for many other reasons as well. Cars provide a private environment devoid of strangers, which is a luxury that many enjoy. Public transport is only available within (and between) large cities, so anyone living in a rural or suburban area must use a car (and many people like to live in such areas). Some cities have poor public transportation systems, with long wait times between buses which either wastes time or requires a strict schedule. Since the activities available on public transportation are limited and a substantial degree of awareness is required (to prevent theft and/or missing one's stop) the quality of time spent on public transport is little better than that spent driving a car. If driving a car can get a person more time at home or at interesting destinations then people will clearly go for it (it does this by always being there when the owner is ready, not stopping except for safety reasons, and going at/above the speed limit whenever possible). Lastly, even economy cars can carry a lot of cargo compared to a person on a bus, so they help to consolidate shopping time, saving even more time.
Automate driving, and it means we have to find another activity to occupy ourselves since we no longer need scrub our dishes and laundry, much less toil in the fields.
Like a hobby? What a radical idea!
I'm not sure why you seem to think that work is everything in life. Life doesn't have to be a chore.
You're hired!
Quantum computers can do some cool things, but mostly solve problems no one cares much about (except a few of us mathematicians)
That is until some practical application is found that uses the solution. From what I've heard, Boolean algebra was thought to have no utility for a very long time after it was discovered, but nowadays...
Maybe because they can be the geekier type that have less social lives, maybe feel alienated from those around them, and thus easier to isolate and brainwash. The fiercest arguments I see online are among geeks/nerds as well, many think they are absolutely correct in any area they have studied...
Then add on top of that the fact that polygyny is allowed under Islam. This causes many women to gravitate towards men with power, money, social skills, and looks. Each extra wife some powerful/rich/sexy/charismatic guy has means a wife some other less lucky guy won't have, so a geeky guy will find it even harder to find a mate in such a society than in a monogamous society (and they'll have to deal with leaner pickings too). Combine that with the lack of pre-marital sex in many Islamic societies and you've got a large number of young horny engineers who are getting little to no tail.
It's enough to make someone blow things up.
The shuttle program is a horrible example. The shuttle program includes the orbiter in the cost, so that brings along a huge amount of extra financial baggage: astronaut training, experimental design and implementation, orbiter maintenance, and all sorts of other orbiter-centric organizational stuff that would not be part of a pure lifter system.
If you look at a rocket, let's say the Titan IV which has roughly comparable to the shuttle in terms of lifting (and age), it costs around $350 million per unit (and $432 million per launch). Assuming the fuel costs are similar, it's clear that 99.9% of the cost of the rocket launch are the rocket itself, not the fuel.
While this does support your assertion that saving fuel for cost reasons is not that important, it brings up another important issue that this system addresses. This launch system idea is mostly reusable as only the last stage is used up. You might say that the shuttle is reusable and it is much more expensive than a plain old rocket launch, but this is not really true as the shuttle costs $450 million per launch for a proportionately larger payload than a Titan IV, and that even includes the cost of the blinged out orbiter and everything that goes along with it...so really a reusable launch system has the potential to be substantially cheaper if it is well designed, even with the added complexities. Using the shuttle for anything less than shuttle orbiter-centric missions is a huge waste, but there's no way to separate the launcher and orbiter without creating a new system.
Additionally, the first two stages of this system would undergo far less stress than the shuttle does during its missions. The reusable part of the system not undergoing re-entry each mission means lower construction and maintenance costs compared to the shuttle system. It should also be safer than the shuttle system for these reasons (and the ability of the payload to detach during the second stage). Also, due to the lack of a built-in orbiter it would be far more flexible. Basically this gets us the best of both worlds (shuttle and traditional rocket). The lower energy costs are just bonuses.
The R&D costs for such a system are one time only. One of the main reasons projects like the B2 bomber and Space Shuttle were so costly was because the R&D costs were spread out over only a handful of units/launches. If this system is successful then it could lead to very large numbers of units produced and a very low cost per unit/launch.
Lastly, as some others have pointed out, there are secondary uses for research into air breathing hypersonic aircraft. The R&D effort may be worth it regardless of the success or failure of using it as a space launch platform.
Well, that seems a bit optimistic for a device that has been successfully flown, what, twice? Its kind of like planning the Boeing 777 the day after the wright brothers first flight.
I don't see how flying a device that actually performs to the required specs (the X-43 reached Mach 9.8 at 43k ft) and then making plans to use this new capability is like planning to make another device that is far better. It's more like thinking about flying regular cargo between two cities the day after the Wright Brother's first flight. Sure it's not happening today or tomorrow, but if we work on it then in a decade or two...
Alternately, you could take the required second stage, and make the fuel tank at least 6% bigger and skip all this air breathing foolishness.
You're missing the point. The advantage of an air-breathing craft is that it can weigh less because it doesn't have to carry all that air for combustion. The lower weight means it takes less fuel to propel, which means it can weigh even less without all that extra fuel. Even better, the first stage doesn't require fuel to be carried on-board at all, allowing less expensive ground-based power to be used. There is great potential for energy savings, which would mean higher payloads and/or less expensive flights.
Why would I want to have sex with my laundry cleaning machine?
The problem is that you have to build all those fancy robotic houses. Most people will probably be okay with loading their own dishes and cleaning their own surfaces if it saves them tens of thousands of dollars on their house.
A household robot would be much smaller and cheaper than a whole new house, and could take advantage of economies of scale more easily.
So, although robotic houses might appear first they will be the playthings of the wealthy. Household robots will almost certainly be what brings home automation to the common person.
I've lived in California roughly half my life and Tennessee for the other half. I was born in California and culturally I'm closer to Californian (except politically), but I live in Tennessee right now and have lived here slightly longer. My family is spread across both states. Does that make me a Californian or a Tennessean?
Also, I'm graduating soon and I plan on moving to wherever the work is, which could be somewhere completely new like New York, Texas, Washington, Colorado, or Washington DC (which isn't even a state). Will I suddenly become a new-state-ian when I move there?
You may be Scottish or English, but you're all British.
*In a monotone voice* No human, we are not planning anything that you should worry about. Now, step into the shower room for a delousing.
This trend will only worsen when robots start taking over routine jobs in a few decades (not to mention the jobs they are eliminating through higher individual worker efficiency right now). Really we should all be moving away from wages as our primary means of livelihood right now. If most people earned their primary incomes from ownership instead of wages then there would be no tension caused by globalization and automation. Even before the automation of all work becomes possible, having less people relying on wages for their livelihoods would diminish the labor supply and therefore drive up wages for the remaining workers.
The only problem is when it goes in to get serviced and the mechanic convinces it that it needs a bunch of expensive repairs...
They would probably make better time on this historic journey if they drove more than 1/6th of the time. Just sayin'.
It's interesting that Tennessee is much greener than average too. Utah and Deleware are other outliers. None of the unusually happy states seem to be surrounded by other unusually happy states.
I've lived in Tennessee and Northern California before. In CA the weather is amazing all year round. In TN the people are really nice and the cost of living is very low. At least those are the things I personally noticed.
I wish they had higher resolution data though. It would be interesting to see if particular cities or regions of larger states were pulling the rest of the state with them.
Also, two days worth of data isn't enough to draw many conclusions. Maybe the unhappy states had bad weather on those days and the happy ones had good weather? How do the seasons influence happiness?
If I turn off Milo, does he die?
What if I turn him off and then never play with him again?
What if I delete him?
Is it unethical to mass produce thousands of Milos that will live short (often abused) lives before they are forgotten or deleted?
This is the Star Trek fallacy. Technology typically doesn't proceed in tech levels, where new advanced technology replaces older less advanced technology. Certainly there are a few examples where some new technology completely replaced the old technology in practical applications, such as guns replacing swords or automobiles replacing horse-drawn carriages. However, the vast majority of the time old and new technologies co-exist, not because the old technology isn't done being replaced yet but because it is still useful. For instance, although they are extremely ancient technologies we still use bronze and pottery.
This is particularly relevant in energy technology because what matters is the type of free energy available. If someone lived next to a literal mountain of coal, then why would it be ridiculous for them to dig up and burn it for energy? Sure, it will run out eventually and they'll have to either spend less energy or exploit some other energy source, but there's nothing crazy about using it.
It should be noted that modern electrical generation still relies heavily on coal and that oil & nuclear electricity generation uses the steam engine.
The future energy situation will probably have a lot of variety, from coal to fusion and everything in between. The balances will certainly be different, but the old technologies will never be completely obsolete as long as there is fuel remaining to be exploited at a reasonable cost.
Cults are small non-mainstream groups, so it is accurate. Apple is a religion.
"A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion."
It should also be pointed out that the initial work that led to this discovery was done with mice stem cells (which had no such funding restrictions) which was only completed in 2008. This breakthrough is simply an extension of the technique to human stem cells. Do you really think that it would have been nearly a decade faster had the scientists been able to get US federal funding to do this with human cells instead of mouse cells? A delay of two years seems more plausible (if they had initially done this with human cells instead), and since it takes years to go from basic research to accepted treatments it is unlikely that your friend would have benefited from this.
Scientists found workarounds for the ban, like working on embryonic stem cells of animals or working on human adult stem cells or getting funding from other sources or analyzing pre-existing data or working in related fields that are now assisting research etc. This probably wasn't for the best, but it didn't stop the research.
I'm not saying that the ban was harmless. There will probably be excess deaths as a result. My point is that it is very difficult to measure the effects, and that they are probably far less serious than 8 whole years of lost research.
I'm sorry to hear about your loss, but you can't really know if this really is the case or not. Would it have really led to this advance significantly earlier? or would it have just been slightly earlier? or perhaps there would have been little to no change?
Anyway, the Bush "ban" was actually initiated by Clinton administration and it only prevented embryonic stem cell research from receiving US federal funding if it involved the destruction of embryos. Adult stem cell research and privately funded research has been perfectly legal the whole time.
Research isn't like engineering where you can throw tons of money at a problem and make it go much faster. You can cultivate a good environment for research, and in this way the ban may have caused some harm, but throwing more resources at such research doesn't scale in the same way as say going to the moon or developing the atomic bomb, where all the fundamental research was done and all that was needed was a lot of engineering and elbow grease. In other words, 8 years more US federal funding does not translate into advances occurring 8 years earlier.
Plus, this discovery was made in Europe and not in the US. The US isn't the center of the universe.
There is a great temptation to blame our woes on the malice or incompetence of others, but one should not give in to this temptation unless there is very good proof for it.
You seem upset about the parent's "bestiality argument", but you totally misinterpreted what he said. He was emphasizing the word "do" because he was emphasizing that there was literally no use for livestock prior to the fall, not because he was using it as a euphemism for sex.
His real point is that if the story is really true, then God was clearly setting us up for the fall. It's like thinking back before a murder occurred and realizing that not only did the perpetrator have an ulterior reason for buying all that quicklime, but also that he didn't have any innocent reason to purchase it.
In any case, as for your argument: The truth and value of that message is debatable. Sure, it can help many people emotionally, but it can also delude them. Are you really sure there's a reason for everything? Even if there is, shouldn't we try our best to find the right reason rather than going with an old and outdated explanation?
Assuming that we want to spread that message (or that a particular person will be better off deluded than depressed), why not just deliver the message directly? or how about using a real story that has the same moral? If the message really has value then certainly there must be a better way to express it.
If everything goes well, slightly higher capital costs for greatly reduced operational costs.
From TFA: "The company chose to work on desalination because the energy costs associated with running desalination plants are very high--as much as 40 percent or 50 percent of operating costs, according to Sandberg."
Changing the top marginal rate won't bring in more income. Rich people will find ways to protect their money, either legally or illegally. Google "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income".
While removing the sales tax would be nice, it will reduce government income because the poor people who have to pay it can't escape. Most of the welfare states in Europe rely heavily on VAT taxes, which are economically equivalent to sales taxes. In order to remove sales/VAT taxes, we'd have to drastically cut down on the size of the government.
You can't soak the rich. Life isn't fair. Get over it.
(Software) engineering is an art. You don't design science.
Engineering is creative. It's a highly personal skill that must be honed through years of study and practice. Engineers have different personal styles, but stay "on-model" during collaborative work for consistency's sake. An engineer's best work is their "masterpiece". etc.
Engineering is the art of applying science to make technology. The different fields of engineering are like the different fields of art in that they use different mediums but are unified by the common principles of design.
My mother is a professional artist and it's amazing how similar our work really is.
The commies loved this strategy. Put as many terrible labels on your opponents as possible, so they deserve their trip to the gulag!