In the case of countries that shut off their nuclear power plants, such as Japan and Germany, a better question might be, what has the cost been for their not using said power?
Japan's goals under the Kyoto protocols were shot even before they started old coal and oil standby plants back up. They're burning through natural gas at an accellerated rate, causing additional pollution.
And there is not enough battery capacity out there to store the surplus to even it out.
Except that there's plenty of non-battery methods used to store power on industrial scales, actual batteries are incredibly rare in such usage. There are alternative methods. One I've seen decouples the turbines and the electrical generators - instead the turbines are used to pump air into a storage system, and turbines are then used to produce electricity from the pressurized air. Pressurize a large building, or better yet a pre-existing formation like a salt cave or even a depleted oil well and you can even out power production over up to a week. With solar power, specifically solar thermal, you increase your molten salt amount and keep heated mass in an insulated container to run your system when the sun isn't out.
That being said, doing such things increases the base cost of the power. So while you'll certainly want to do some of this, I believe that nuclear remains a good option for 'most' of the baseload.
Heck, TMI's reactor design was safer, and it's design predated Chernobyl's by a couple decades.
One thing to realize about Chernobyl's design was that it was really intended to be a plutonium producing reactor that made electric power as a side effect. If you're not worrying about that, you can go with much safer reactors. I like the idea of LFTR(thorium) reactors, but recognize that there are still design issues remaining. I'd actually have no problems with a 'manhattan style' government funded project to get a full size 'test' power generating station operating. Perhaps have it supply power to one of the bigger military bases as an excuse. Put a couple 'tiny' ones in at Eielson AFB up in Alaska that are set up to provide heat as well as power.
You're falling prey to the 'One True Source!' fallacy that says that ONE SOURCE obviously has to be the best to the point it's the best in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. In reality there's lots of reasons to want a variety of methods of generating electricity.
The trick is that when you're only generating 20% of your joules from wind or solar, you're going to need less than 1/5th the towers or panels because you'll be able to optimize your install locations much more. IE let's say you study sufficient locations to power the USA off of solar and divide them into 1% blocks. The 'best' 20 blocks will be much more ideal than the last 20. Same with wind. So you don't want to overdo it. In any ONE source. Heck, for the short term you're going to run into supply problems just trying to double the number of reactors in the USA(to reach 40%), and thus using alternative sources is necessary to meet the time scale.
It's actually VERY predictable once you've expanded the install base to somewhere the size of the USA or Europe. It's not controllable though, which is why I mention peaking.
and nuclear too constant. You cannot vary the power from a NPP very much.
False, but a common mistake. BWRs have the capability to 'load follow' down to somewhat under 60% of capacity. With the correct construction, PWRs can go between 30-100%, at 5% a minute.
They're just typically not used in this fashion because nuclear power has the lowest marginal power cost going - it doesn't save significant amounts of money to load follow given that most of the costs are capital and operating, not fuel. So you literally shut off the coal plants before you start throttling nuclear. France does load following because they have just so much nuclear.
Gas power plants are for this use case
But NG plants aren't carbon neutral. Unless you're using biomass for the gas, which would be included in 'other', explicitly for peaking.
So your reactor no one has built and used is ok for important stuff but well developed and currently in use wind power is too much of a gamble for important uses?
Yeah, we aren't going to be depending on thorium reactors anytime soon, but I'd kind of like to see a manhattan type project, perhaps world wide with cooperation between India, China, France, Japan, and the United States to build 3-5 more or less identical test plants.
Unlike with ITER, we should be able to start designing a electric power producing LFTR reactor today.
My 'perfect' carbon neutral electricity source is 40% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, and 20% hydro/geo/other.
20% solar is a 'perfect' fit for the average 50% increase in power demand during the day. 1.5(day) + 1(night) = 2.5 * 20% =.5. 40% nuclear gives you a good amount of stability, while the 20% wind doesn't make you strain too much if power demand happens to increase when the wind isn't blowing ideally. The remaining 20% is for peaking capability(which hydro is good at), and niche electrical providers where they're just the best answer for that spot.
Best yet, since you have a variety of sources, you're nicely diversified and not likely to be as screwed by unusual situations.
1. "Replace or turn off a couple of lights": I and my family already USE CFLs. The only incandescents left are in the crawlspace(on for maybe 5 minutes a month, average) and on the garage door opener(will be replaced with CFL/LED when they fail). Second: Average household lighting is only 17% of the electricity use, so a 'couple lights' is unlikely to save 10%. A CFL typically uses 1/3rd the energy, so you could hit 11% if you replaced EVERY bulb in the house. However, what happens when you go to save 10% of electricity costs in a house when you walk in with a box of CFL/LED bulbs, and find the house already using them? 2. Turn up the thermostat - Turning 'up' the thermostat betrays your location a bit - in my family you'd typically save more energy turning the thermostat DOWN. I and my GP's don't even HAVE AC. Heck, turning the temperature down won't save my grandparents electricity - they mostly heat with wood, then coal, then oil. 3. Well insulated/caulked? We do that regularly anyways.
The stuff remaining that can counteract a 10% increase in cost of electricity all cost real amounts of money to impliment, unless you're in a household that's missing some of the really basic stuff like turning off the lights when you're not there, but even that's reduced by using energy efficient lights in the first place. Which a lot of 'poor' households are already doing because they can't afford the energy bills as is.
Everything I've read about frequency response is that 90+% of 'fairly good' headphones are still pretty lousy at reproducing 20kHz sounds. They start losing response that high(takes more power to make the sound at the right energy level). Heck, 90% of headphones that advertise that they go that high are outright lying(per my sources). And you're correct about the sub - but I'm willing to still consider the possibility of a 10hz tone being used occasionally for a bit of music; sure, it's more 'special effect' at that point, but it's still 'art'(though I might not agree with it if used excessively).
Thus the comment about 'expensive' if you want to exceed CD quality.
There's a reason I specified 90% of music as well - most forms today are engineered to be within those limits. Classical is a notable exemption, but it's not even really 'designed' to be reproduced by electric equipment. It's intented to be experienced in some sort of listening hall(Generally).
I'm relatively tin-eared; I've read the articles and science though. People tend to buy sound systems on the basis of it 'sounding better'. This is a different standard than 'more accurate reproduction of sound'. Thus the comment. I KNOW of people who prefer the distortions that tube amplifiers make in the playback of sound. It's technically less accurate, but their preference. It could be the same if you found somebody who likes the 'sound' of a scratched up vinyl record. Some like the bass turned all the way up(I don't). Heck, different speakers have different response levels for different frequency sounds(how much power it takes to produce a given frequency sound at a given level of energy).
It's complicated; you need actual sound engineers to avoid distortion, but many prefer certain kinds.
Depends on your definition of 'new system' I guess, but my proposal(short, rough, off the cuff, debate welcome): 1. No more pleading guilty 2. You still have prosecution and defense, but now you also have 'truthseeker', who's position is determining the truth, regardless of guilt or innocence. 3. Professional juries are an option - serve for something like a year, are actually paid real wages. Any given trial that's NOT close to capital case will have a mix of new and experiences jurists. 4. Sentences will not be done in terms of punishment, but in compensation and rehabitulation. Let's say you stole and wrecked a car as a stupid skillless high school teen dropout. If you're a dumbass in prison it could be a life sentence. If you learn a trade and work at it, you 'pay for' the car in a couple years and get out. If you're a gangbanger you're stuck inside until you're NOT a gangbanger(prisons will need to be seriously reformed to do this). 5. One idea was to have 'counselours' who 'bid' on prisoners - they get a % of the convict's wages and/or bonuses if the convict stays out of trouble for good amounts of time. The bidding system is so that 'high risk' convicts are worth more, that people don't simply get into bidding wars over the Michael Vicks.
I'd keep the death penalty for those deemed unreformable. The worst gang-bangers, serial killers, etc... I'll note that this is triage - the right person can work miracles with reforming the worst gangers and even religious extremists. But we need to help reform the most possible. Warehousing unredeemable prisoners with our resources simply isn't possible without ending up with even more unredeemable because you're supporting more. It's a vicious circle.
Bernie got 'lucky' in how long his scam went on and the scale. He managed to keep it going long enough to make national news when it broke and make people want to make an example of him, at the same time that he's simply old enough that 'dropping dead of natural causes' is a fairly likely event any given year.
If he'd been caught(as he was predicting at the time) when he was in his 50's, he'd already be out of prison.
To be more serious about it: CD quality is more than what 90% of people can hear on 90% of sound systems, for 90% of music.
For a 'fuller' experience, you need several thousand worth of sound equipment and generally young ears to hear the high end that's not on CD, or a really good sub to reach lower.
It's quite possible to have music fuller that even I can hear, but then you're looking at a sound hall for it.
CD mastering techniques, and distortion preferences(such as prefering tube amplifiers) is a perception issue seperate from raw sound data.
I'd be careful about being so trivial about a 10% increase in electricity prices. It might be trivial for you, it's a fairly non-elastic good in most of the states, and increases in it, much like fuel prices, tend to hit the poor the hardest.
You could double my electricity bill and while I'd wince, I wouldn't need to substantially change my budget. Increase the bill of my grandparents on social security even 50% and they'd be cutting into the grocery money. Maybe even at 10%, but I don't know their finances that well.
Then you get into businesses and manufacturing and it's one more reason to leave the area. Civilization depends on cheap energy, the cheaper the better.
This brings up another argument - sure, global warming is happening. There will be both positives and negatives. Coastal cities might need to adjust their infrastructure in major ways; but at the same time a few degrees warmer average temperatures can add weeks to the growing season of major areas of North America, Siberia, and other regions. The studies I've seen predict warmer temperatures to increase potential farmland, not decrease it. So the question becomes: Is the economic cost of preventing global warming worth it, and by how much? I'll note that I'm in the camp of global warming is happening, and that we should do stuff about it, but the question becomes one of 'how much?'. There are easy fixes out there, and I think we should be doing more of them. But some of the proposals are crazy.
Finally - We don't ever want to become dependent upon one source of electricity. My 'ideal' carbon-neutral electrical mix is 40% nuclear, 20% solar(~20% of electricity is spent on cooling anyways, and demand is something like 50% higher during the day, so when you figure that solar only works during the day, it pretty much works out*), 20% wind, and 20% other(such as hydro, geothermal, biomass, etc...).
Another point is that if we massively go towards electrical vehicles(to get rid of that carbon), my estimates are for an average increase in electricity usage for househoulds of 50%. I figure that 'most' households, especially areas with more expensive electricity, have taken the easy fixes already - saving more juice will take things like replacing windows and putting more insulation in. Reducing a household's electrical usage by 50% to keep usage even after switching to EVs - that takes stuff like getting rid of electric heat, including the water heater(If they're on gas or oil, carbon could be avoided by switching to a heat pump, but again, that would increase electrical usage). This can be done, but isn't an 'easy fix' in most areas.
*Night usage: 1, Day usage: 1.5. Total: 2.5. 20% of 2.5 =.5, or the increase during the day.
Even the artists hate them. To get money, they need to pay an annual fee.
You know, I'm reminded of various scams with this? Various Nigerian and Lotto scams where 'Send us $X so we can process the paperwork to get you your winnings/smuggled money!'.
I mean, I advise people at work against this stuff.
"I think they're bullshitting and can't really do this" is a valid reason.
Depends on your contracting office. In one of my old units we had a choice between two radio companies. One company's shit was cheaper, but broke all the time. To buy the more expensive ones we had to do a study(NOT a multimillion dollar one, more like a week of a guy's time collating stats) showing that the cheap company's radios didn't really meet standards and broke so often that the additional required spares(due to reliability) actually made them cost more.
Anecdotal, but in my experience no military 'officer', whether Commissioned or not(enlisted), who makes it to retirement has no problem finding a job within view of their old office if they want it. Well, there are 'problems', but they're more in the line of helping to ensure that said retiring military people have the best shot at said jobs, whether contract, GS, etc...
Maybe we'd be better off going back to designing and building our own ships and aircraft (the Navy especially was into doing this... they even had their own aircraft factory, and they found that it kept costs down in the 20's and 30's as it kept 3rd party contractors honest).
You know, I've had this thought myself. We've reached the point that we're hiring companies to produce weapons for us where we retain full rights to the technology and design, and are thus the ONLY customer.
If we're going to be funding the design and be the only users, might as well do it entirely in-house. Contract in support when necessary, but have our own company doing it.
All other conditions being equal, it is _easier_ to pull the trigger and let the bullets chase somebody at about 1500 feet per second and rip through their bodies than running after people and hacking them with a blade.
Depends on the exact circumstances, but yes, killing with a gun is, on average, easier than using a blade. It's why militaries and police around the world upgraded.
"For the record books"? Do you watch any news other than local? It's not rare in Africa and Latin America.
Personally I read my news more. Don't really watch any TV. Yes, I read globally. Sadly, killing massive numbers of people isn't news in Africa and Latin America, and it's quickly NOT becoming news in Mexico. Also, the biggest genocide in recent history(IE the one most people were actually alive for) would be Rwanda, and that one was done 90% with knives.
As for killing hundreds with a blade- generally it took a few years, and yes, it generally got you into at least the local legends.
You apparently envision yourself as a "knight in shining armor" without even realizing that there has to be an ethical/moral basis for that. It's not enough to have "a fairly developed ROE". I just wish there was a way to tell the people like you apart from others without getting too close. You're a piece of glass buried in the sand waiting for a bare foot.
Without realizing? Ethical/Moral basis? Do you want to turn this into a debate about morality? I mean, that's stuff that fills books. Yes, my personal rules on the usage of force are shaped by my ethics and moral beliefs. How else am I to determine that you've become a threat? How else do I determine what the 'lesser means' are?
I'm not a 'knight in shining armor'. I'm simply a moral, ethical adult who's taken a look at life on this planet and given some thought as to what could go wrong. I've actually thought about at what point I'd undertake violence, and I find that 90% of people agree with the levels I set. Basically it takes 'immediate threat to life/limb' combined with 'can't see any alternatives'. How is this unreasonable?
I just wish there was a way to tell the people like you apart from others without getting too close.
I'll give you a hint: Avoid police officers, Military, firefighters, and paramedics. Avoid the guy who stops when you're broken down or slid into the ditch on the side of the road. Look out for guys who have a blanket, spare clothing, fire extinguisher and a medical pack in their car. Unless you're a 'thug', prone to attacking others, you are far more likely to be protected by me than attacked.
You're a piece of glass buried in the sand waiting for a bare foot.
Really. On the basis of a couple internet posts, you think that I'm that ready to go off at random? I'd prefer to think that I'm the foot that has at least put on sandals, on a beach with buried sand.
Because it's much easier to kill more with a semi-automatic rifle than a knife? Was that so hard to deduce?
Depends on how you're doing it. Like I said, successfully killing 50 might be easier with a gun, but it's still for the record books. Well, unless you go back to the ancient warlords before guns were common. Some of them killed hundreds with their blades.
Sooo, guns aren't designed only to kill? Pray tell what else you can do with them. And, no, if you cuddle with them, it doesn't count.
There are guns specifically designed only for target shooting, ones specifically for breaking clays, scaring birds, opening doors, and oddly enough, cleaning smokestacks. One enterprising Russian has one used to break dangerous icicles in a controlled manner. We also have air driven ones that people use for sport, shooting colorful paint at each other.
I'm afraid you need help.
<snark>Hey, I can chose my guns without any help!</snark> More seriously, what sort of 'help' do you envision that I need? Icebrain mentioned two perfectly reasonable scenarios where lethal force could be the best course of action(specific situations may vary). There's a lot more, and I actually have a fairly developed ROE, fortuantly which is still mostly theoretical; nobody's hit the 'I'm killing them' point yet, despite my job.
At least to me, your NOT having developed or considered those scenarios is a sign of immaturity. It'd take a fairly lenthy post to fully explain how you'd be able to get me do my level best to kill you, but it basically boils down to: 'I will do my best to kill you if you become an immediate or continuing threat to the lives of myself, my family, coworkers, or innocent parties when I cannot reasonably counter via lesser means and your death would resolve said threat'.
NRA is basically the pro-gun propaganda organization. It certainly does produce a lot of regurgitated crap that doesn't withstand any logical reasoning, but is full of soundbites and emotional hooks. But then so does Brady Campaign on the other side, for example. I see NRA as a kind of a match for Brady. Apparently, some people are convinced by this level of argumentation, so I finance them to compensate for the effect the other side of the debate has.
Good points. A lot of people don't agree with the NRA 100%. Heck, most people don't realize that the 'NRA' is actually two(or more) organziations. You have the NRA, which is a tax deductible charity that works on things like gun safety education, helps with the set-up and maintenance of safe shooting ranges, etc... Then you have the NRA-ILA, which is the non-tax deductible political organization that puts out said fear letters.
He said 'stab 50 people TO DEATH'. So I only included fatals. You can triple the numbers if you only go with stabbed.
Without guns(and even with them), people seem to transition to bombs next, and you can get into the hundreds with those if you're willing to put the work in.
Consider the batman shooter - he turned his apartment into a deathtrap. It was luck that it didn't go off.
when was there a case where a dude stabbed 50 people to death
Why 50? I find 8, 7, 4, with a couple seconds of searching on google.
Killing 50 people with a firearm still gets you into the record books.
Guns are only designed to kill things.
Not worth it to try to change your mind, but as long as you hold this, yeah, we're not going to agree on things. Especially when you get somebody like me who's convinced that sometimes killing something is the best solution, so it's best to have a proper tool for the job when you do have to kill something/someone.
I don't know about the 3d printer; but I know that they bust 2-3 illegal manufacturing shops a year in Britain. Of course, you don't get that in the USA because buying throught legal/grey/black market, such as with stolen guns, is cheaper due to the overal greater availability.
now this guy could have constructed the bottom part without a 3d printer too.
Somebody once made a working lower out of paper mache. The lower isn't the high-stress part of the gun. I'll note from the article that it mentioned the chamber was solid metal - I'll point out that the barrel is as well if he's using a standard upper as it states.
We've been able to make 100% plastic lowers for quite some time. They're just not durable enough quite yet for common use.
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In the case of countries that shut off their nuclear power plants, such as Japan and Germany, a better question might be, what has the cost been for their not using said power?
Japan's goals under the Kyoto protocols were shot even before they started old coal and oil standby plants back up. They're burning through natural gas at an accellerated rate, causing additional pollution.
And there is not enough battery capacity out there to store the surplus to even it out.
Except that there's plenty of non-battery methods used to store power on industrial scales, actual batteries are incredibly rare in such usage. There are alternative methods. One I've seen decouples the turbines and the electrical generators - instead the turbines are used to pump air into a storage system, and turbines are then used to produce electricity from the pressurized air. Pressurize a large building, or better yet a pre-existing formation like a salt cave or even a depleted oil well and you can even out power production over up to a week. With solar power, specifically solar thermal, you increase your molten salt amount and keep heated mass in an insulated container to run your system when the sun isn't out.
That being said, doing such things increases the base cost of the power. So while you'll certainly want to do some of this, I believe that nuclear remains a good option for 'most' of the baseload.
Heck, TMI's reactor design was safer, and it's design predated Chernobyl's by a couple decades.
One thing to realize about Chernobyl's design was that it was really intended to be a plutonium producing reactor that made electric power as a side effect. If you're not worrying about that, you can go with much safer reactors. I like the idea of LFTR(thorium) reactors, but recognize that there are still design issues remaining. I'd actually have no problems with a 'manhattan style' government funded project to get a full size 'test' power generating station operating. Perhaps have it supply power to one of the bigger military bases as an excuse. Put a couple 'tiny' ones in at Eielson AFB up in Alaska that are set up to provide heat as well as power.
You're falling prey to the 'One True Source!' fallacy that says that ONE SOURCE obviously has to be the best to the point it's the best in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. In reality there's lots of reasons to want a variety of methods of generating electricity.
The trick is that when you're only generating 20% of your joules from wind or solar, you're going to need less than 1/5th the towers or panels because you'll be able to optimize your install locations much more. IE let's say you study sufficient locations to power the USA off of solar and divide them into 1% blocks. The 'best' 20 blocks will be much more ideal than the last 20. Same with wind. So you don't want to overdo it. In any ONE source. Heck, for the short term you're going to run into supply problems just trying to double the number of reactors in the USA(to reach 40%), and thus using alternative sources is necessary to meet the time scale.
Sun/wind off yours is not predictable
It's actually VERY predictable once you've expanded the install base to somewhere the size of the USA or Europe. It's not controllable though, which is why I mention peaking.
and nuclear too constant. You cannot vary the power from a NPP very much.
False, but a common mistake. BWRs have the capability to 'load follow' down to somewhat under 60% of capacity. With the correct construction, PWRs can go between 30-100%, at 5% a minute.
They're just typically not used in this fashion because nuclear power has the lowest marginal power cost going - it doesn't save significant amounts of money to load follow given that most of the costs are capital and operating, not fuel. So you literally shut off the coal plants before you start throttling nuclear. France does load following because they have just so much nuclear.
Gas power plants are for this use case
But NG plants aren't carbon neutral. Unless you're using biomass for the gas, which would be included in 'other', explicitly for peaking.
like reservoirs or battery farms
Or hydro, like I mentioned?
So your reactor no one has built and used is ok for important stuff but well developed and currently in use wind power is too much of a gamble for important uses?
Yeah, we aren't going to be depending on thorium reactors anytime soon, but I'd kind of like to see a manhattan type project, perhaps world wide with cooperation between India, China, France, Japan, and the United States to build 3-5 more or less identical test plants.
Unlike with ITER, we should be able to start designing a electric power producing LFTR reactor today.
My 'perfect' carbon neutral electricity source is 40% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, and 20% hydro/geo/other.
20% solar is a 'perfect' fit for the average 50% increase in power demand during the day. 1.5(day) + 1(night) = 2.5 * 20% = .5. 40% nuclear gives you a good amount of stability, while the 20% wind doesn't make you strain too much if power demand happens to increase when the wind isn't blowing ideally. The remaining 20% is for peaking capability(which hydro is good at), and niche electrical providers where they're just the best answer for that spot.
Best yet, since you have a variety of sources, you're nicely diversified and not likely to be as screwed by unusual situations.
1. "Replace or turn off a couple of lights": I and my family already USE CFLs. The only incandescents left are in the crawlspace(on for maybe 5 minutes a month, average) and on the garage door opener(will be replaced with CFL/LED when they fail). Second: Average household lighting is only 17% of the electricity use, so a 'couple lights' is unlikely to save 10%. A CFL typically uses 1/3rd the energy, so you could hit 11% if you replaced EVERY bulb in the house. However, what happens when you go to save 10% of electricity costs in a house when you walk in with a box of CFL/LED bulbs, and find the house already using them?
2. Turn up the thermostat - Turning 'up' the thermostat betrays your location a bit - in my family you'd typically save more energy turning the thermostat DOWN. I and my GP's don't even HAVE AC. Heck, turning the temperature down won't save my grandparents electricity - they mostly heat with wood, then coal, then oil.
3. Well insulated/caulked? We do that regularly anyways.
The stuff remaining that can counteract a 10% increase in cost of electricity all cost real amounts of money to impliment, unless you're in a household that's missing some of the really basic stuff like turning off the lights when you're not there, but even that's reduced by using energy efficient lights in the first place. Which a lot of 'poor' households are already doing because they can't afford the energy bills as is.
Everything I've read about frequency response is that 90+% of 'fairly good' headphones are still pretty lousy at reproducing 20kHz sounds. They start losing response that high(takes more power to make the sound at the right energy level). Heck, 90% of headphones that advertise that they go that high are outright lying(per my sources). And you're correct about the sub - but I'm willing to still consider the possibility of a 10hz tone being used occasionally for a bit of music; sure, it's more 'special effect' at that point, but it's still 'art'(though I might not agree with it if used excessively).
Thus the comment about 'expensive' if you want to exceed CD quality.
There's a reason I specified 90% of music as well - most forms today are engineered to be within those limits. Classical is a notable exemption, but it's not even really 'designed' to be reproduced by electric equipment. It's intented to be experienced in some sort of listening hall(Generally).
I'm relatively tin-eared; I've read the articles and science though. People tend to buy sound systems on the basis of it 'sounding better'. This is a different standard than 'more accurate reproduction of sound'. Thus the comment. I KNOW of people who prefer the distortions that tube amplifiers make in the playback of sound. It's technically less accurate, but their preference. It could be the same if you found somebody who likes the 'sound' of a scratched up vinyl record. Some like the bass turned all the way up(I don't). Heck, different speakers have different response levels for different frequency sounds(how much power it takes to produce a given frequency sound at a given level of energy).
It's complicated; you need actual sound engineers to avoid distortion, but many prefer certain kinds.
Depends on your definition of 'new system' I guess, but my proposal(short, rough, off the cuff, debate welcome):
1. No more pleading guilty
2. You still have prosecution and defense, but now you also have 'truthseeker', who's position is determining the truth, regardless of guilt or innocence.
3. Professional juries are an option - serve for something like a year, are actually paid real wages. Any given trial that's NOT close to capital case will have a mix of new and experiences jurists.
4. Sentences will not be done in terms of punishment, but in compensation and rehabitulation. Let's say you stole and wrecked a car as a stupid skillless high school teen dropout. If you're a dumbass in prison it could be a life sentence. If you learn a trade and work at it, you 'pay for' the car in a couple years and get out. If you're a gangbanger you're stuck inside until you're NOT a gangbanger(prisons will need to be seriously reformed to do this).
5. One idea was to have 'counselours' who 'bid' on prisoners - they get a % of the convict's wages and/or bonuses if the convict stays out of trouble for good amounts of time. The bidding system is so that 'high risk' convicts are worth more, that people don't simply get into bidding wars over the Michael Vicks.
I'd keep the death penalty for those deemed unreformable. The worst gang-bangers, serial killers, etc... I'll note that this is triage - the right person can work miracles with reforming the worst gangers and even religious extremists. But we need to help reform the most possible. Warehousing unredeemable prisoners with our resources simply isn't possible without ending up with even more unredeemable because you're supporting more. It's a vicious circle.
Bernie got 'lucky' in how long his scam went on and the scale. He managed to keep it going long enough to make national news when it broke and make people want to make an example of him, at the same time that he's simply old enough that 'dropping dead of natural causes' is a fairly likely event any given year.
If he'd been caught(as he was predicting at the time) when he was in his 50's, he'd already be out of prison.
To be more serious about it: CD quality is more than what 90% of people can hear on 90% of sound systems, for 90% of music.
For a 'fuller' experience, you need several thousand worth of sound equipment and generally young ears to hear the high end that's not on CD, or a really good sub to reach lower.
It's quite possible to have music fuller that even I can hear, but then you're looking at a sound hall for it.
CD mastering techniques, and distortion preferences(such as prefering tube amplifiers) is a perception issue seperate from raw sound data.
I'd be careful about being so trivial about a 10% increase in electricity prices. It might be trivial for you, it's a fairly non-elastic good in most of the states, and increases in it, much like fuel prices, tend to hit the poor the hardest.
You could double my electricity bill and while I'd wince, I wouldn't need to substantially change my budget. Increase the bill of my grandparents on social security even 50% and they'd be cutting into the grocery money. Maybe even at 10%, but I don't know their finances that well.
Then you get into businesses and manufacturing and it's one more reason to leave the area. Civilization depends on cheap energy, the cheaper the better.
This brings up another argument - sure, global warming is happening. There will be both positives and negatives. Coastal cities might need to adjust their infrastructure in major ways; but at the same time a few degrees warmer average temperatures can add weeks to the growing season of major areas of North America, Siberia, and other regions. The studies I've seen predict warmer temperatures to increase potential farmland, not decrease it. So the question becomes: Is the economic cost of preventing global warming worth it, and by how much? I'll note that I'm in the camp of global warming is happening, and that we should do stuff about it, but the question becomes one of 'how much?'. There are easy fixes out there, and I think we should be doing more of them. But some of the proposals are crazy.
Finally - We don't ever want to become dependent upon one source of electricity. My 'ideal' carbon-neutral electrical mix is 40% nuclear, 20% solar(~20% of electricity is spent on cooling anyways, and demand is something like 50% higher during the day, so when you figure that solar only works during the day, it pretty much works out*), 20% wind, and 20% other(such as hydro, geothermal, biomass, etc...).
Another point is that if we massively go towards electrical vehicles(to get rid of that carbon), my estimates are for an average increase in electricity usage for househoulds of 50%. I figure that 'most' households, especially areas with more expensive electricity, have taken the easy fixes already - saving more juice will take things like replacing windows and putting more insulation in. Reducing a household's electrical usage by 50% to keep usage even after switching to EVs - that takes stuff like getting rid of electric heat, including the water heater(If they're on gas or oil, carbon could be avoided by switching to a heat pump, but again, that would increase electrical usage). This can be done, but isn't an 'easy fix' in most areas.
*Night usage: 1, Day usage: 1.5. Total: 2.5. 20% of 2.5 = .5, or the increase during the day.
Even the artists hate them. To get money, they need to pay an annual fee.
You know, I'm reminded of various scams with this? Various Nigerian and Lotto scams where 'Send us $X so we can process the paperwork to get you your winnings/smuggled money!'.
I mean, I advise people at work against this stuff.
"I think they're bullshitting and can't really do this" is a valid reason.
Depends on your contracting office. In one of my old units we had a choice between two radio companies. One company's shit was cheaper, but broke all the time. To buy the more expensive ones we had to do a study(NOT a multimillion dollar one, more like a week of a guy's time collating stats) showing that the cheap company's radios didn't really meet standards and broke so often that the additional required spares(due to reliability) actually made them cost more.
Anecdotal, but in my experience no military 'officer', whether Commissioned or not(enlisted), who makes it to retirement has no problem finding a job within view of their old office if they want it. Well, there are 'problems', but they're more in the line of helping to ensure that said retiring military people have the best shot at said jobs, whether contract, GS, etc...
Maybe we'd be better off going back to designing and building our own ships and aircraft (the Navy especially was into doing this... they even had their own aircraft factory, and they found that it kept costs down in the 20's and 30's as it kept 3rd party contractors honest).
You know, I've had this thought myself. We've reached the point that we're hiring companies to produce weapons for us where we retain full rights to the technology and design, and are thus the ONLY customer.
If we're going to be funding the design and be the only users, might as well do it entirely in-house. Contract in support when necessary, but have our own company doing it.
All other conditions being equal, it is _easier_ to pull the trigger and let the bullets chase somebody at about 1500 feet per second and rip through their bodies than running after people and hacking them with a blade.
Depends on the exact circumstances, but yes, killing with a gun is, on average, easier than using a blade. It's why militaries and police around the world upgraded.
"For the record books"?
Do you watch any news other than local? It's not rare in Africa and Latin America.
Personally I read my news more. Don't really watch any TV. Yes, I read globally. Sadly, killing massive numbers of people isn't news in Africa and Latin America, and it's quickly NOT becoming news in Mexico. Also, the biggest genocide in recent history(IE the one most people were actually alive for) would be Rwanda, and that one was done 90% with knives.
As for killing hundreds with a blade- generally it took a few years, and yes, it generally got you into at least the local legends.
You apparently envision yourself as a "knight in shining armor" without even realizing that there has to be an ethical/moral basis for that. It's not enough to have "a fairly developed ROE". I just wish there was a way to tell the people like you apart from others without getting too close. You're a piece of glass buried in the sand waiting for a bare foot.
Without realizing? Ethical/Moral basis? Do you want to turn this into a debate about morality? I mean, that's stuff that fills books. Yes, my personal rules on the usage of force are shaped by my ethics and moral beliefs. How else am I to determine that you've become a threat? How else do I determine what the 'lesser means' are?
I'm not a 'knight in shining armor'. I'm simply a moral, ethical adult who's taken a look at life on this planet and given some thought as to what could go wrong. I've actually thought about at what point I'd undertake violence, and I find that 90% of people agree with the levels I set. Basically it takes 'immediate threat to life/limb' combined with 'can't see any alternatives'. How is this unreasonable?
I just wish there was a way to tell the people like you apart from others without getting too close.
I'll give you a hint: Avoid police officers, Military, firefighters, and paramedics. Avoid the guy who stops when you're broken down or slid into the ditch on the side of the road. Look out for guys who have a blanket, spare clothing, fire extinguisher and a medical pack in their car. Unless you're a 'thug', prone to attacking others, you are far more likely to be protected by me than attacked.
You're a piece of glass buried in the sand waiting for a bare foot.
Really. On the basis of a couple internet posts, you think that I'm that ready to go off at random? I'd prefer to think that I'm the foot that has at least put on sandals, on a beach with buried sand.
Because it's much easier to kill more with a semi-automatic rifle than a knife? Was that so hard to deduce?
Depends on how you're doing it. Like I said, successfully killing 50 might be easier with a gun, but it's still for the record books. Well, unless you go back to the ancient warlords before guns were common. Some of them killed hundreds with their blades.
Sooo, guns aren't designed only to kill? Pray tell what else you can do with them. And, no, if you cuddle with them, it doesn't count.
There are guns specifically designed only for target shooting, ones specifically for breaking clays, scaring birds, opening doors, and oddly enough, cleaning smokestacks. One enterprising Russian has one used to break dangerous icicles in a controlled manner. We also have air driven ones that people use for sport, shooting colorful paint at each other.
I'm afraid you need help.
<snark>Hey, I can chose my guns without any help!</snark>
More seriously, what sort of 'help' do you envision that I need? Icebrain mentioned two perfectly reasonable scenarios where lethal force could be the best course of action(specific situations may vary). There's a lot more, and I actually have a fairly developed ROE, fortuantly which is still mostly theoretical; nobody's hit the 'I'm killing them' point yet, despite my job.
At least to me, your NOT having developed or considered those scenarios is a sign of immaturity. It'd take a fairly lenthy post to fully explain how you'd be able to get me do my level best to kill you, but it basically boils down to: 'I will do my best to kill you if you become an immediate or continuing threat to the lives of myself, my family, coworkers, or innocent parties when I cannot reasonably counter via lesser means and your death would resolve said threat'.
NRA is basically the pro-gun propaganda organization. It certainly does produce a lot of regurgitated crap that doesn't withstand any logical reasoning, but is full of soundbites and emotional hooks. But then so does Brady Campaign on the other side, for example. I see NRA as a kind of a match for Brady. Apparently, some people are convinced by this level of argumentation, so I finance them to compensate for the effect the other side of the debate has.
Good points. A lot of people don't agree with the NRA 100%. Heck, most people don't realize that the 'NRA' is actually two(or more) organziations. You have the NRA, which is a tax deductible charity that works on things like gun safety education, helps with the set-up and maintenance of safe shooting ranges, etc... Then you have the NRA-ILA, which is the non-tax deductible political organization that puts out said fear letters.
He said 'stab 50 people TO DEATH'. So I only included fatals. You can triple the numbers if you only go with stabbed.
Without guns(and even with them), people seem to transition to bombs next, and you can get into the hundreds with those if you're willing to put the work in.
Consider the batman shooter - he turned his apartment into a deathtrap. It was luck that it didn't go off.
when was there a case where a dude stabbed 50 people to death
Why 50? I find 8, 7, 4, with a couple seconds of searching on google.
Killing 50 people with a firearm still gets you into the record books.
Guns are only designed to kill things.
Not worth it to try to change your mind, but as long as you hold this, yeah, we're not going to agree on things. Especially when you get somebody like me who's convinced that sometimes killing something is the best solution, so it's best to have a proper tool for the job when you do have to kill something/someone.
I don't know about the 3d printer; but I know that they bust 2-3 illegal manufacturing shops a year in Britain. Of course, you don't get that in the USA because buying throught legal/grey/black market, such as with stolen guns, is cheaper due to the overal greater availability.
now this guy could have constructed the bottom part without a 3d printer too.
Somebody once made a working lower out of paper mache. The lower isn't the high-stress part of the gun. I'll note from the article that it mentioned the chamber was solid metal - I'll point out that the barrel is as well if he's using a standard upper as it states.
We've been able to make 100% plastic lowers for quite some time. They're just not durable enough quite yet for common use.