I don't think it was coincidental that the cops routinely check all pawn shops in the city and your stolen goods happen to show up at a pawn shop right outside the city limits.
Very true. Of course, the whole ID thing and entry of serial numbers into databases is because for a long time an alternative name for a pawn shop was 'fence'.
The clerk probably knew that they never got inquries about things stolen in the city. The clerk probably knew that even if you typo'd a serial noone ever complained about it.
Thus, the clerk was knowingly taking stolen goods, gaming the system - earning him prosecution under any anti-fence laws the state might have.
You messed up their system exactly because you went above and beyond what the cops would do.
Thus cops should, just like a good sports team or teacher, occasionally mix up their methods/procedures. Invent a new procedure(like sticking a GPS tracker on a suspect's vehicle), ressurect an old one, investigate a different angle. Go 'all out' on 1-10% of even petty crimes - the whole CSI bit. Why? That way you catch the crime rings.
I'm just saying that if they checked everything inside say state limits you can be pretty sure your goods would be in the next state over. It's not quite as easy as "If they'd only checked just outside the city..."
Especially with high gas prices, there's a limit as to how far you can take that DVD player, TV, or other random stolen good and still make enough money to cover the risk.
Believe it or not, at one point there was a thriving car theft ring that'd take their stolen cars down to Mexico to sell. On actual car hauler trucks like what they move new cars on.
BTW, I'm all for random people protecting their goods in interesting ways. Stick a GPS tracker in that old X-Box. Install tracking software on your laptop/computer. It's not 100% - won't work on the criminals smart enough to format the HD, but it'll work on many of them.
Not to mention an effective department being able to crow about things like high crime clearance rates, low rates crime rates in general. Being able to respond quickly and competently to demands, giving the citizens a sense of the department being effective.
Oh.. and the person who stole the gun and laptop, they got busted for "possession of stolen property" instead of theft or anything like that. One served 6 months, the other had time served waiting for trial and they both got 5 years probation.
Arggggle!
Yes, I know the gun was likely cheaper than the laptop(this being/.). Still gun theft is a FELONY.
I might be a gun toting libertarian who's bugged various officials, but gun theft is one of the things I support coming down like a ton of bricks for.
Anyways, all this was possible because the local cops didn't go beyond "local" and didn't do anything more then what was absolutely necessary to get their salary.
Exactly. Here's the deal: Most petty crimes are committed by career petty criminals. You catch somebody shoplifting, odds are they've done it before. Same with any number of property crimes. They're doing it to make a living off of other people's backs or to feed a habit. That means that if you have an effective police and justice system, preventing them from doing it again can prevent dozens, even hundreds of crime.
Busting those 10 people probably had an appreciable effect on dropping the crime rate in the local area. It can be hard to understate this stuff.
So if a police department takes even petty crimes seriously, it can have some very good effects. First is the reduction in the crime rate - fewer petty crimes still reduce crime rates and insurance costs. Second is that you catch career headed criminals earlier, possibly before they start commiting felonies. Not to mention that being seen as effective helps the police department, and most people's experience with crime is the petty stuff. Oh, and on a side note effective policing/justice systems are the best way to prevent vigilante justice.
It's along the lines that yes, cleaning up graffeti and gang signs promptly can actually lead to a reduction in gang/youth crime.
Note: I think that the guy who stole your stuff far more deserves to be in prison than the guy who was just smoking/selling weed.
Online wise - I know there's some huge jurisdictional problems, because many of the scammers are overseas. I just think we could still do SOMETHING.
You're right, often there just isn't enough evidence. But when the person has the serial numbers of the stolen stuff, and it shows up in a local pawnshop, who HAS the ID of the seller, what's preventing them from following up at that point?
When the dude with the stolen laptop manages to track it down, going so far as to hand the police an ADDRESS.
Sure, there's lots of petty criminals. I figure that if we were more effective at catching them for a while, there'd quickly be a lot less of them.
Greater speed leads to greater a greater chance of fatalities. Inappropriate speed is anti-social. You want to make yourself the sole arbiter of what the safe speed of a road is. I think you're wrong, and I've got the law and that big fucking metal sign on my side.
The problem is that, in many areas, 'Safe speed' and 'legal speed' are two different things. For example, the autobahn has a lower accident rate than the USA, yet no speed limits.
Studies have shown that going after 'impolite' drivers, not just speeders, has a better effect on safety.
Just think about it. Seriously. Have you had a loved one killed in a auto accident? Can you imagine what it's going to feel like when you kill someone because you think you're entitled to go 15% above?
Closest I had was an aunt who died as a child before I was born by a drunk driver, on a sunday morning, at 3X the legal limit, back then!
Even before the manslaughter, he was breaking enough laws to spend time in prison and lose his license for essentially life. Repeat DUI, speeding, failure to stop, failure to yield, etc...
Doing 35mph in a 30, not as likely to cause anything. Lacking artificial speed limits, studies have shown that people overwhelmingly drive at a speed safe for conditions. IE in a lots of traffic situation they slow down.
On behalf of everyone who understands the forces involved in a car collision, I'm asking you to just please just slow down and get to your destination 5 minutes later (or at exactly the same time because traffic lights regulated the flow).
Or get there 15 minutes later because the bloody lights are timed for the higher speed. I've seen and driven it. Drive 5mph above the speed limit and you make every light. Drive the speed limit you hit every red light just as it goes red, for maximum wait.
Also, ceasing telling people that driving the speed limit is dangerous would be nice, too.
Paying attention, driving with traffic, signaling, etc... Are all more important than that square sign with a number on it.
If you really think about this statement, I think you'll find it to be demonstrably false.
Think about it a bit more. While raw speed is a big indicator for injury/death in accidents, failure to wear a seatbelt is also a bigger cause of death.
What speed differentials do is cause accidents.
There are literally areas in the USA where the speed limit is 20mph BELOW the average flow of traffic speed - it's 45, the VAST majority are doing at least 65. Yes - it'd be dangerous to try to do 45 on that road. The occasional one obeying the speed limit results in a raft of cars dodging around him - a likely cause of an accident, much more so than the one cruising at 70 in the left lane, smoothly passing the slower cars to the right.
Traffic management becomes a complex science in practice. Stop light cameras have been shown to INCREASE accidents, at least fender-benders. Speed cameras don't have any appreciable effect. Sometimes posting increased speed limit signs can decrease accidents, sometimes adjusting the roadway and decreasing speeds can decrease them. Sometimes lowering speed limits increase accidents.
If you look at law enforcement in general, and it's not just a US problem, petty crime has a pretty bad interest by police period.
If a citizen isn't essentially holding the criminal for police to arrive(like in the case of shoplifting), or the crime happens in front of the officer, if it's not violent they really don't do much.
So things like car theft, burglary of unoccupied homes, etc... All low priority. Heck, I've heard of burlary rings that don't even care of a house is alarmed - police response time is so slow that they have time to steal everything they want and leave before the police arrive. One was even spoofing the alarm people, delaying things even more.
This, of coures, irks the heck out of me because I hate to see crime pay, and effective law enforcement is a good way to ensure that it doesn't. Every crime that 'pays off' encourages them in the future.
I don't know about you, but I generally wouldn't count Canada/Mexico as importing very far. Maybe I should have specified 'domestic' as 'intra-continental'.
With a domestic use of 2 million*, but imports from the 'middle east' of around ~3k a month, and Norway coming in at another 3k, intercontinental shipping is insignificant, at less than 1% of the totals.
Heck, it's even coming from Egypt for the most part, and they at least have a fairly functional government.
Indeed, there's a lot of people who assume that killing somebody automatically leads to this huge amount of trauma - such that a 'majority' of WWII soldiers not firing their weapons.
I've seen some documentation that said that was more a training issue - soldiers were being trained to not fire until they had a 'sure' shot. Remember, at the time most soldiers had semi-automatic or even bolt action rifles. In the chaos of actual battle, 'sure' shots are rare, resulting in soldiers not shooting.
Meanwhile, much of the actual trauma associated with killing is more because of the high stress situations present in battle - the constant fear/risk of death is a bigger concern than psychological impacts of killing.
Firing a bomb/missile from a drone, even if you survey the damage afterwards, is far less than a sniper shooting a target in the head, then verifying the kill(looking at the body) afterwards. Or a soldier shooting enemies from close range, then helping collect the bodies.
A lot of the killing stress is actually caused by the person himself; it's expected of him, because our society talks about it as causing damage.
while an interesting thought, you'd probably have to engage in serious retraining for gamers. A game can be tweaked for playability and fun much more than a drone could. For example, 'interesting stuff happening' is much rarer for real life drone operations, part of the reason that they're having burn out problems.
That and the lack of a cheap reset switch - I mess up in a game, resetting is quick. I mess up in the piloting of a UAV, it's millions to 'reset'.
We have fighters that can sit around waiting to be called if there's a need for an interception. Over the long run, it's much cheaper to permit the very rare possibility that a fighter plane is going to shoot down a drone.
Very rare in Iraq or Afghanistan, maybe. But what if we decide we need to face down Russia over Georgia? Invade Iran? Make an example to an enemy with a still existant air force?
Simply solution would be to put an air to air missile on the drone, along with the necessary equipment/software to fire it properly.
Make it an option.
Right now fighters are heavily used to surpress the enemy's air force, then take out air defenses so you have air superiority, allowing you to bring in the bombers and such to destroy even extensive ground forces.
A reusable drone, with a number of missiles and the ability to perform evasive maneuvers in excess of what a pilot can would be both effective and survivable - you'd be able to use it for better intel than a cruise missile, it'd dispense munitions much cheaper than long range cruise missiles, have longer linger times, etc...
One more tool in the box, increasing the effectivness of the force.
At least in my area, inflation has been pretty much non-existent in the electricity market, which would hurt electricity; as the money that would have gone towards solar panels can instead be more profitably spent elsewhere to help with costs that are rising above the average inflation rate. Getting a new, more fuel efficient vehicle, for example.
She can afford to be nice. All the people on a starfleet vessel have already been vetted, and 'fixed' if necessary.;)
As for the totalitarian part, well, they've probably prettied it up quite a bit over today, much less that post-WWIII period where they had courts profiling people on the basis of genetic usefulness or somesuch(see the first Q episodes in TNG). I'd imagine that most 'adjustments' are made while the children are still young, maybe even babies, under the guise of mental health - they just have far more effective methods than ritalin and such. Add in a multi-generational parenting adjustment plan, and you'd have an average mental health level far higher than todays.
Fixing manic-depressives, depression, and various other mental issues isn't necessarily a bad thing, you know? How many parents would say no to fixing a biochemical imbalance, that left untreated, would lead to a child 1000x more likely to commit suicide, have trouble in school, etc...?
Who says that they're a 'free and open society'? Fact is, in a civilization where you trust ordinary citizens with pounds of antimatter(like what's going to be present in any warp-capable shuttle, much less freighter or larger starship), you have to be pretty sure they're stable. Same deal with phasers, transporters, or even replicators.
As to the details about their fixing of 'antisocial' behavior - that was deliberately left vague. Probably a a range of techniques from parenting skills to extensive modification of brain chemistry when necessary.
How many refrigerators actually have fans inside? I haven't seen one yet, of the dozens of fridges I've looked at. As other posters have pointed out - most fridges use passive convection.
Even if it DOES have a fan, the extra insulation that's part of an energy star fridge* will tend to muffle any such noise.
*Because in order to make it use less electricity not only do you need a higher efficiency compressor, an extra half inch or more of insulation doesn't hurt, and can be a heck of a lot cheaper.
Except that explanation is scientifically naive: evolution requires natural selection (which we stopped doing when we invented civilization), and doesn't necessarily make individuals morally better.
You have to remember the augments, WWIII and a miniature dark age happened before first contact and the formation of the federation.
After that, while the genetic evolution might have been minor, social evolution happened. At least in Kirk's time, not being able to 'fix' somebody's antisocial tendencies was rare.
I've even gotten into discussions with people who insisted that everyone on board Federation ships were officers, which to anyone who has ever served in the military knows is absurd...
I agree. I don't think that many want them to be too obvious, just the occasional sign of them. As others have noted - there's plenty of extras on a starfleet ship for there to be enlisted.
Unless they merged the tracks...
Who would do all the day to day maintenance? Not to mention how dangerously foolish it is to trust an officer with anything truly important.
Not all militaries have enlisted cores as competent as the USA, many have officers doing what a NCO or even E-3/E-4 would be doing in the US military.
The problem you run into here is still efficiency.
Having to go with multiple stages, especially if they're not incredibly efficient, is a token for inefficiency.
Let's say they're 200% efficient. For every unit of energy spent, they move 2 units of heat.
We're going to need 2 units for a fridge, 3 units for a freezer. (80-46=34, good for fridge, not good for freezer).
Trouble - We spend 1 unit of electricity, move 2 units of heat to hot side. Due to the efficiency loses, 3 units of heat end up on the hot side.
So the second stage needs to be 50% larger, use 50% more energy, to finish the job. 1.5 units of energy move 3 units of heat, to exhaust 4.5 units of heat out of whatever radiator system exists.
We end up spending 2.5 units of electricity to move 2 units of heat out of the refrigerator.
Meanwhile compressor refrigerators are capable of doing this in one stage, while being capable of moving 2, even 3 units of heat per unit of electricity.
unless we use nuclear, which requires storing waste material for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, which is absurd.
And propaganda for the most part. Long before that we'd be digging the stuff up to reprocess as the 'waste' is still 90-95% fuel.
The remaining waste is only radioactive for a few centuries.
With breeder reactors, it's energy positive to filter the necessary elements out of sea water.
Don't expect the Chinese or anyone to forgo the luxury of private cars
Two things about this - first is to vastly reduce the need for cars through proper city planning, to include mass transit. Second is to deploy an alternative to both such as PRT.
Then you can use biofuel/hydrogen/whatever for the few remaining long distance vehicles needed.
the solar recharging should be done where the car is located - for example, at the work place
Not always an option - in most areas the workplace is in a far more densely populated area, with heavy energy demands from the operation of lights, climate control, and industrial equipment. A walmart might be able to power itself via solar panels on the roof, but I doubt a 20 story bank building would, much less if you expect the workers in said building to charge their cars at the same time.
Not to mention the adjustments and retrofitting of parking lots to provide power receptacles for recharging cars, and the working out of billing for the energy consumed by people's vehicles.
Anyways - what I was trying to say with the cloud comment is that tying solar panels to recharging cars is a mistake. You have this nebulous cloud - on one side you have power source inputs. Coal, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, natural gas, etc... On the other side you have all the consumers - Computers, TVs, AC, heating, industrial equipment, lights, etc...
You don't tie solar panels to EVs, air conditioners, or any other specific consumer. It all goes to the grid, contributing evenly to power consumption.
global demand is growing - the Chinese economy will surpass the U.S. economy this century
I understand, but the Chinese(and Indian) economy is growing despite the increases in cost, and it's my hope that they end up helping to provide solutions - by skipping over the energy inefficient builds of america(and europe), and end up building energy efficient arcology analogs.
That's an awful lot of advancement to matter in the short term, though.
And, if it comes down to it, nuclear power plants would be rendered even more economical due to the load balancing effects of charging thousands of electric cars during off-peak periods. Especially if people allow them to be used to power the grid during peaks.
Any particular reason you decided to manually line break this post?
Solar panels will be used to charge batteries of electric and plug-in hybrid cars.
Possibly. I prefer to think of this stuff like a network cloud. Electricity from solar is no more suited to the powering of an electric car than electricity from a coal plant. A kwh is a kwh.
If anything, standard driving tendencies would make solar power LESS suitable for charging electric cars - they tend to be out and about during the day, which would require either additional batteries or fancy heat storage techniques to produce power during the time the car's plugged in at night.
Solar power is great for things like air conditioning, though, because of it's tendency to produce the most power during the hottest parts of the day.
Newer fuel cell technology will need solar power to split water.
How about using heat and energy from a nuclear plant to produce hydrogen using a highly efficient process?
ALL of this will become economical as the price of oil continues to rise, which it will since demand is now equal to or greater than supply and is growing more rapidly than supply.
Going by the news, demand in the USA is actually dropping, and by economic theory demand=supply. It's just that the demand/supply price curve is no longer at a price point for many traditional uses. People now see more benefit in alternatives and conservation.
Where I live, in Southern California, I believe SCE generates our electricity from oil and natural gas. Oil comes from oilfields.
You believe. Per SCE's site, it's "These resources include natural gas, a fossil fuel; falling water in hydroelectric plants; nuclear energy and renewable resources, like solar and wind."
A coal plant was shut down 3 years ago, due to failure to obtain new permits, rendered uneconomical due to increased pollution control requirements.
Oil is not listed.
Natural gas comes from oilfields and natural gas fields.
While NG does come from fields much like oil, it doesn't get shipped over here from the middle east. Production is domestic. Thus, engaging in wars overseas, for oil or not, won't have an effect on NG supplies.
The WSJ article you link to is talking about direct, overt government subsidies. Those aren't the subsidies I'm talking about.
Then which ones are you talking about? The ones where they aren't taxed like they should be for the environmental harm they cause? Or the portion of the military budget supposably spent to secure supplies?
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I don't think it was coincidental that the cops routinely check all pawn shops in the city and your stolen goods happen to show up at a pawn shop right outside the city limits.
Very true. Of course, the whole ID thing and entry of serial numbers into databases is because for a long time an alternative name for a pawn shop was 'fence'.
The clerk probably knew that they never got inquries about things stolen in the city. The clerk probably knew that even if you typo'd a serial noone ever complained about it.
Thus, the clerk was knowingly taking stolen goods, gaming the system - earning him prosecution under any anti-fence laws the state might have.
You messed up their system exactly because you went above and beyond what the cops would do.
Thus cops should, just like a good sports team or teacher, occasionally mix up their methods/procedures. Invent a new procedure(like sticking a GPS tracker on a suspect's vehicle), ressurect an old one, investigate a different angle. Go 'all out' on 1-10% of even petty crimes - the whole CSI bit. Why? That way you catch the crime rings.
I'm just saying that if they checked everything inside say state limits you can be pretty sure your goods would be in the next state over. It's not quite as easy as "If they'd only checked just outside the city..."
Especially with high gas prices, there's a limit as to how far you can take that DVD player, TV, or other random stolen good and still make enough money to cover the risk.
Believe it or not, at one point there was a thriving car theft ring that'd take their stolen cars down to Mexico to sell. On actual car hauler trucks like what they move new cars on.
BTW, I'm all for random people protecting their goods in interesting ways. Stick a GPS tracker in that old X-Box. Install tracking software on your laptop/computer. It's not 100% - won't work on the criminals smart enough to format the HD, but it'll work on many of them.
they get the PR they need to keep their budget.
Not to mention an effective department being able to crow about things like high crime clearance rates, low rates crime rates in general. Being able to respond quickly and competently to demands, giving the citizens a sense of the department being effective.
Oh.. and the person who stole the gun and laptop, they got busted for "possession of stolen property" instead of theft or anything like that. One served 6 months, the other had time served waiting for trial and they both got 5 years probation.
Arggggle!
Yes, I know the gun was likely cheaper than the laptop(this being /.). Still gun theft is a FELONY.
I might be a gun toting libertarian who's bugged various officials, but gun theft is one of the things I support coming down like a ton of bricks for.
Anyways, all this was possible because the local cops didn't go beyond "local" and didn't do anything more then what was absolutely necessary to get their salary.
Exactly. Here's the deal: Most petty crimes are committed by career petty criminals. You catch somebody shoplifting, odds are they've done it before. Same with any number of property crimes. They're doing it to make a living off of other people's backs or to feed a habit. That means that if you have an effective police and justice system, preventing them from doing it again can prevent dozens, even hundreds of crime.
Busting those 10 people probably had an appreciable effect on dropping the crime rate in the local area. It can be hard to understate this stuff.
So if a police department takes even petty crimes seriously, it can have some very good effects. First is the reduction in the crime rate - fewer petty crimes still reduce crime rates and insurance costs. Second is that you catch career headed criminals earlier, possibly before they start commiting felonies. Not to mention that being seen as effective helps the police department, and most people's experience with crime is the petty stuff. Oh, and on a side note effective policing/justice systems are the best way to prevent vigilante justice.
It's along the lines that yes, cleaning up graffeti and gang signs promptly can actually lead to a reduction in gang/youth crime.
Note: I think that the guy who stole your stuff far more deserves to be in prison than the guy who was just smoking/selling weed.
Online wise - I know there's some huge jurisdictional problems, because many of the scammers are overseas. I just think we could still do SOMETHING.
You're right, often there just isn't enough evidence. But when the person has the serial numbers of the stolen stuff, and it shows up in a local pawnshop, who HAS the ID of the seller, what's preventing them from following up at that point?
When the dude with the stolen laptop manages to track it down, going so far as to hand the police an ADDRESS.
Sure, there's lots of petty criminals. I figure that if we were more effective at catching them for a while, there'd quickly be a lot less of them.
Heck, one of the west coast states proposed putting them on EVERY car, in order to charge an appropriate amount of road use tax.
Then they wouldn't even need to plant anything - just request the records for the vehicle.
As for 'small enough', I'd suggest 'cheap enough' instead. They're already as small as a cell phone - the battery is one of the bigger components.
Greater speed leads to greater a greater chance of fatalities. Inappropriate speed is anti-social. You want to make yourself the sole arbiter of what the safe speed of a road is. I think you're wrong, and I've got the law and that big fucking metal sign on my side.
The problem is that, in many areas, 'Safe speed' and 'legal speed' are two different things. For example, the autobahn has a lower accident rate than the USA, yet no speed limits.
Studies have shown that going after 'impolite' drivers, not just speeders, has a better effect on safety.
Just think about it. Seriously. Have you had a loved one killed in a auto accident? Can you imagine what it's going to feel like when you kill someone because you think you're entitled to go 15% above?
Closest I had was an aunt who died as a child before I was born by a drunk driver, on a sunday morning, at 3X the legal limit, back then!
Even before the manslaughter, he was breaking enough laws to spend time in prison and lose his license for essentially life. Repeat DUI, speeding, failure to stop, failure to yield, etc...
Doing 35mph in a 30, not as likely to cause anything. Lacking artificial speed limits, studies have shown that people overwhelmingly drive at a speed safe for conditions. IE in a lots of traffic situation they slow down.
On behalf of everyone who understands the forces involved in a car collision, I'm asking you to just please just slow down and get to your destination 5 minutes later (or at exactly the same time because traffic lights regulated the flow).
Or get there 15 minutes later because the bloody lights are timed for the higher speed. I've seen and driven it. Drive 5mph above the speed limit and you make every light. Drive the speed limit you hit every red light just as it goes red, for maximum wait.
Also, ceasing telling people that driving the speed limit is dangerous would be nice, too.
Paying attention, driving with traffic, signaling, etc... Are all more important than that square sign with a number on it.
If you really think about this statement, I think you'll find it to be demonstrably false.
Think about it a bit more. While raw speed is a big indicator for injury/death in accidents, failure to wear a seatbelt is also a bigger cause of death.
What speed differentials do is cause accidents.
There are literally areas in the USA where the speed limit is 20mph BELOW the average flow of traffic speed - it's 45, the VAST majority are doing at least 65. Yes - it'd be dangerous to try to do 45 on that road. The occasional one obeying the speed limit results in a raft of cars dodging around him - a likely cause of an accident, much more so than the one cruising at 70 in the left lane, smoothly passing the slower cars to the right.
Traffic management becomes a complex science in practice. Stop light cameras have been shown to INCREASE accidents, at least fender-benders. Speed cameras don't have any appreciable effect. Sometimes posting increased speed limit signs can decrease accidents, sometimes adjusting the roadway and decreasing speeds can decrease them. Sometimes lowering speed limits increase accidents.
It all depends.
If you look at law enforcement in general, and it's not just a US problem, petty crime has a pretty bad interest by police period.
If a citizen isn't essentially holding the criminal for police to arrive(like in the case of shoplifting), or the crime happens in front of the officer, if it's not violent they really don't do much.
So things like car theft, burglary of unoccupied homes, etc... All low priority. Heck, I've heard of burlary rings that don't even care of a house is alarmed - police response time is so slow that they have time to steal everything they want and leave before the police arrive. One was even spoofing the alarm people, delaying things even more.
This, of coures, irks the heck out of me because I hate to see crime pay, and effective law enforcement is a good way to ensure that it doesn't. Every crime that 'pays off' encourages them in the future.
I don't know about you, but I generally wouldn't count Canada/Mexico as importing very far. Maybe I should have specified 'domestic' as 'intra-continental'.
With a domestic use of 2 million*, but imports from the 'middle east' of around ~3k a month, and Norway coming in at another 3k, intercontinental shipping is insignificant, at less than 1% of the totals.
Heck, it's even coming from Egypt for the most part, and they at least have a fairly functional government.
*millions of cubic feet
Indeed, there's a lot of people who assume that killing somebody automatically leads to this huge amount of trauma - such that a 'majority' of WWII soldiers not firing their weapons.
I've seen some documentation that said that was more a training issue - soldiers were being trained to not fire until they had a 'sure' shot. Remember, at the time most soldiers had semi-automatic or even bolt action rifles. In the chaos of actual battle, 'sure' shots are rare, resulting in soldiers not shooting.
Meanwhile, much of the actual trauma associated with killing is more because of the high stress situations present in battle - the constant fear/risk of death is a bigger concern than psychological impacts of killing.
Firing a bomb/missile from a drone, even if you survey the damage afterwards, is far less than a sniper shooting a target in the head, then verifying the kill(looking at the body) afterwards. Or a soldier shooting enemies from close range, then helping collect the bodies.
A lot of the killing stress is actually caused by the person himself; it's expected of him, because our society talks about it as causing damage.
while an interesting thought, you'd probably have to engage in serious retraining for gamers. A game can be tweaked for playability and fun much more than a drone could. For example, 'interesting stuff happening' is much rarer for real life drone operations, part of the reason that they're having burn out problems.
That and the lack of a cheap reset switch - I mess up in a game, resetting is quick. I mess up in the piloting of a UAV, it's millions to 'reset'.
We have fighters that can sit around waiting to be called if there's a need for an interception. Over the long run, it's much cheaper to permit the very rare possibility that a fighter plane is going to shoot down a drone.
Very rare in Iraq or Afghanistan, maybe. But what if we decide we need to face down Russia over Georgia? Invade Iran? Make an example to an enemy with a still existant air force?
Simply solution would be to put an air to air missile on the drone, along with the necessary equipment/software to fire it properly.
Make it an option.
Right now fighters are heavily used to surpress the enemy's air force, then take out air defenses so you have air superiority, allowing you to bring in the bombers and such to destroy even extensive ground forces.
A reusable drone, with a number of missiles and the ability to perform evasive maneuvers in excess of what a pilot can would be both effective and survivable - you'd be able to use it for better intel than a cruise missile, it'd dispense munitions much cheaper than long range cruise missiles, have longer linger times, etc...
One more tool in the box, increasing the effectivness of the force.
At least in my area, inflation has been pretty much non-existent in the electricity market, which would hurt electricity; as the money that would have gone towards solar panels can instead be more profitably spent elsewhere to help with costs that are rising above the average inflation rate. Getting a new, more fuel efficient vehicle, for example.
And I thought Troi was such a nice person!
She can afford to be nice. All the people on a starfleet vessel have already been vetted, and 'fixed' if necessary. ;)
As for the totalitarian part, well, they've probably prettied it up quite a bit over today, much less that post-WWIII period where they had courts profiling people on the basis of genetic usefulness or somesuch(see the first Q episodes in TNG). I'd imagine that most 'adjustments' are made while the children are still young, maybe even babies, under the guise of mental health - they just have far more effective methods than ritalin and such. Add in a multi-generational parenting adjustment plan, and you'd have an average mental health level far higher than todays.
Fixing manic-depressives, depression, and various other mental issues isn't necessarily a bad thing, you know? How many parents would say no to fixing a biochemical imbalance, that left untreated, would lead to a child 1000x more likely to commit suicide, have trouble in school, etc...?
Who says that they're a 'free and open society'? Fact is, in a civilization where you trust ordinary citizens with pounds of antimatter(like what's going to be present in any warp-capable shuttle, much less freighter or larger starship), you have to be pretty sure they're stable. Same deal with phasers, transporters, or even replicators.
As to the details about their fixing of 'antisocial' behavior - that was deliberately left vague. Probably a a range of techniques from parenting skills to extensive modification of brain chemistry when necessary.
How many refrigerators actually have fans inside? I haven't seen one yet, of the dozens of fridges I've looked at. As other posters have pointed out - most fridges use passive convection.
Even if it DOES have a fan, the extra insulation that's part of an energy star fridge* will tend to muffle any such noise.
*Because in order to make it use less electricity not only do you need a higher efficiency compressor, an extra half inch or more of insulation doesn't hurt, and can be a heck of a lot cheaper.
Except that explanation is scientifically naive: evolution requires natural selection (which we stopped doing when we invented civilization), and doesn't necessarily make individuals morally better.
You have to remember the augments, WWIII and a miniature dark age happened before first contact and the formation of the federation.
After that, while the genetic evolution might have been minor, social evolution happened. At least in Kirk's time, not being able to 'fix' somebody's antisocial tendencies was rare.
I've even gotten into discussions with people who insisted that everyone on board Federation ships were officers, which to anyone who has ever served in the military knows is absurd...
I agree. I don't think that many want them to be too obvious, just the occasional sign of them. As others have noted - there's plenty of extras on a starfleet ship for there to be enlisted.
Unless they merged the tracks...
Who would do all the day to day maintenance? Not to mention how dangerously foolish it is to trust an officer with anything truly important.
Not all militaries have enlisted cores as competent as the USA, many have officers doing what a NCO or even E-3/E-4 would be doing in the US military.
The problem you run into here is still efficiency.
Having to go with multiple stages, especially if they're not incredibly efficient, is a token for inefficiency.
Let's say they're 200% efficient. For every unit of energy spent, they move 2 units of heat.
We're going to need 2 units for a fridge, 3 units for a freezer. (80-46=34, good for fridge, not good for freezer).
Trouble - We spend 1 unit of electricity, move 2 units of heat to hot side. Due to the efficiency loses, 3 units of heat end up on the hot side.
So the second stage needs to be 50% larger, use 50% more energy, to finish the job. 1.5 units of energy move 3 units of heat, to exhaust 4.5 units of heat out of whatever radiator system exists.
We end up spending 2.5 units of electricity to move 2 units of heat out of the refrigerator.
Meanwhile compressor refrigerators are capable of doing this in one stage, while being capable of moving 2, even 3 units of heat per unit of electricity.
If your current fridge is too loud, then I suggest shopping for a new one. Many of the newer units feature far quieter compressors.
While you're at it, I'd suggest looking for an energy star one.
unless we use nuclear, which requires storing waste material for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, which is absurd.
And propaganda for the most part. Long before that we'd be digging the stuff up to reprocess as the 'waste' is still 90-95% fuel.
The remaining waste is only radioactive for a few centuries.
With breeder reactors, it's energy positive to filter the necessary elements out of sea water.
Don't expect the Chinese or anyone to forgo the luxury of private cars
Two things about this - first is to vastly reduce the need for cars through proper city planning, to include mass transit. Second is to deploy an alternative to both such as PRT.
Then you can use biofuel/hydrogen/whatever for the few remaining long distance vehicles needed.
the solar recharging should be done where the car is located - for example, at the work place
Not always an option - in most areas the workplace is in a far more densely populated area, with heavy energy demands from the operation of lights, climate control, and industrial equipment. A walmart might be able to power itself via solar panels on the roof, but I doubt a 20 story bank building would, much less if you expect the workers in said building to charge their cars at the same time.
Not to mention the adjustments and retrofitting of parking lots to provide power receptacles for recharging cars, and the working out of billing for the energy consumed by people's vehicles.
Anyways - what I was trying to say with the cloud comment is that tying solar panels to recharging cars is a mistake. You have this nebulous cloud - on one side you have power source inputs. Coal, solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, natural gas, etc... On the other side you have all the consumers - Computers, TVs, AC, heating, industrial equipment, lights, etc...
You don't tie solar panels to EVs, air conditioners, or any other specific consumer. It all goes to the grid, contributing evenly to power consumption.
global demand is growing - the Chinese economy will surpass the U.S. economy this century
I understand, but the Chinese(and Indian) economy is growing despite the increases in cost, and it's my hope that they end up helping to provide solutions - by skipping over the energy inefficient builds of america(and europe), and end up building energy efficient arcology analogs.
That's an awful lot of advancement to matter in the short term, though.
And, if it comes down to it, nuclear power plants would be rendered even more economical due to the load balancing effects of charging thousands of electric cars during off-peak periods. Especially if people allow them to be used to power the grid during peaks.
Any particular reason you decided to manually line break this post?
Solar panels will be used to charge batteries of electric and plug-in hybrid cars.
Possibly. I prefer to think of this stuff like a network cloud. Electricity from solar is no more suited to the powering of an electric car than electricity from a coal plant. A kwh is a kwh.
If anything, standard driving tendencies would make solar power LESS suitable for charging electric cars - they tend to be out and about during the day, which would require either additional batteries or fancy heat storage techniques to produce power during the time the car's plugged in at night.
Solar power is great for things like air conditioning, though, because of it's tendency to produce the most power during the hottest parts of the day.
Newer fuel cell technology will need solar power to split water.
How about using heat and energy from a nuclear plant to produce hydrogen using a highly efficient process?
ALL of this will become economical as the price of oil continues to rise, which it will since demand is now equal to or greater than supply and is growing more rapidly than supply.
Going by the news, demand in the USA is actually dropping, and by economic theory demand=supply. It's just that the demand/supply price curve is no longer at a price point for many traditional uses. People now see more benefit in alternatives and conservation.
Where I live, in Southern California, I believe SCE generates our electricity from oil and natural gas. Oil comes from oilfields.
You believe. Per SCE's site, it's "These resources include natural gas, a fossil fuel; falling water in hydroelectric plants; nuclear energy and renewable resources, like solar and wind."
A coal plant was shut down 3 years ago, due to failure to obtain new permits, rendered uneconomical due to increased pollution control requirements.
Oil is not listed.
Natural gas comes from oilfields and natural gas fields.
While NG does come from fields much like oil, it doesn't get shipped over here from the middle east. Production is domestic. Thus, engaging in wars overseas, for oil or not, won't have an effect on NG supplies.
The WSJ article you link to is talking about direct, overt government subsidies. Those aren't the subsidies I'm talking about.
Then which ones are you talking about? The ones where they aren't taxed like they should be for the environmental harm they cause? Or the portion of the military budget supposably spent to secure supplies?