Bear in mind also, that the summary and article both specify "US-Designated" terrorist groups. The words slippery slope and precedent immediately spring to mind when you let the government label certain political speech as illegal, and then demand to have the speakers silenced. The US terrorist designation is notoriously politically motivated, and not based on any form of metric or logical definition. For example Hamas are terrorists mainly for their firing of rockets at Israel. Out of all of the groups that fire rockets at other people - an activity that the US and Israel also both do on an almost constant basis, and that most of Europe, the UK, many Asian countries and many militant groups all over the world have engaged in at some point in the last few decades - only Hamas is singled out as a terrorist organisation.
Hamas gets 50% of its funding from Saudi Arabia, you know, the country that crashed planes into the world trade center. Is Saudi Arabia labelled a terrorist state or even called out for funding them? No. Well you will have to forgive me for not giving a fuck about who the US "designates" as a terorist group.
Maybe it is time for slashdot to designate fox news and other people we don't like (Microsoft? Apple?) as terrorist groups and demand that twitter take down the accounts of slashdot-designated terrorist groups.
I live in Berlin, and while I agree that a lot of Germany's green image is PR hype, there are a few facts I want to add:
Germany also has huge amounts of wind generators, you did mention this but in the wrong paragraph.
The majority of buildings in Berlin don't have elevators (that might become wrong soon, all new ones do).
and also one that supports your point:
Germany's waste sorting is a giant sham, they put almost everything non-organic into a 'recycling bin' and then they only recycle the stuff that it is profitable to recycle, and send the rest to the third world. I think it is around 25% of the contents of those bins that is actually recycled. The bottle refund system seems to work though
All of these calculations assume that the air, once the water is absorbed out of it, will flow out of the vessel and be replaced by humid air again at the optimal speed. It also requires power to operate. It may be that the power is used to pump the air which would mean the system has only one of these drawbacks, but the article is light on details so I can't be sure. It is also not a system that can be built at home. On the other hand I read an article by an engineer a few years ago that proposed a system that used piping running below the ground to cool the air and cause condensation, using a wind catcher at one end to push it through. His estimates included air flow and showed that a 10 meter long system could provide drinking water in desert air with a moderate wind for several people. I am unable to find the article again unfortunately.
My point is that a temperature gradient is far cheaper and available to poor third world desert countries where such a system is required. This technology is neat but not all that practical. Still a combination of the two systems, ie. lining the inside of underground pipes with this substance and letting the wind push air through might have a much higher rate of condensation and could be used for commercial and military operations in the desert.
Even the summary covered that: "However, THC can remain in blood and saliva for highly variable times after the last use of the drug."
While on the subject, does anyone have the source for this quote? "Driving within three hours of smoking pot is associated with a near doubling of the risk of fatal crashes" I find it doubtful and would like to read the methodology. In my experience impairment from marijuana use in the absence of other substances impairs driving very little. There are some issues with concentration and alertness but in most people it also has the effect of lowering their speed and therefore I find it hard to believe the crashes are fatal so often. Unless they pull out in front of a speeding driver or something. Of course this is all speculation based on personal experience, hence why I want to read the study referred to in the summary. It isn't mentioned in tfa either in those words.
Israel is only defending themselves following a massive rocket bombardment.
Ok let's pretend when two sides are firing rockets at each other continuously for many years, that the much larger, richer and better armed side can be referred to as 'defending itself'.
Given that assumption, explain how air strikes and shelling are intended to resolve the situation.
It is the same with me, caffeine and nicotine while programming, pot afterwards. I can use the weed as an incentive to get work done by saying 'can't smoke weed till it is done.' I can't program while stoned though, it makes my mind wander too much and simply means it takes 5 times as long to get the work done. I can however design programs on a conceptual level when stoned, and it leads to more inventive and interesting ideas. This even applies to designing complex algorithms. For me though a stoned brain doesn't lend itself well to slow logical stepwise operation, and therefore the actual typing of code will always be left to caffeine and nicotine.
1. Windows 8 has a new interface.
2. Not many people have moved to windows 8.
a = People must find windows 8 too difficult to use
3. A 3 year old has been observed using it
b = all users of windows XP and 7 are less smart than a 3 year old
Fuck you. I don't upgrade microsoft products because they rarely work properly at release. People laughed at me when I didn't upgrade to Vista, but not for long, soon I was laughing at them. Windows 7 came out and again people encouraged me to ditch XP. Then they explained that we couldn't play a huge range of the old games we used to play when I tried to lan with them, because they weren't compatible. I did't upgrade to XP when it first came out either. I want stable and reliable not new. Windows 7 is now 3 years old and most of the kinks are worked out, so I will probably upgrade in the next few months. I will probably upgrade to windows 8 in 3 years time. The interface has nothing to do with anything.
Actually in ethics null is not unethical, therefore it is ethical by default. The question was 'is non prescription adhd medication use ever ethical'. If people use it for fun and harm no one, then the answer is yes.
How do we know this method has a sane cost? The cost and efficiency numbers are conspicuously absent from the article which states only "the process is still too inefficient to allow a commercial-scale operation". Without numbers the whole better/worse than batteries argument is pointless, except for the fact that if it were more efficient/cheaper than batteries they probably would have made that claim.
Your position that religion is demonstrably false, and is also destructive and counter-productive, seems to me to be tailored to the three Abrahamic middle eastern religion Judaism, Christianity and Islam. While I agree with almost every word as far as those religions are concerned, isn't it true that one could have religious beliefs where some or all of your arguments are invalid? For example if one were a sun worshiper. It is a scientific fact that the sun exists, and also that it is as near to all powerful and benevolent as makes no difference. It gives life to all things and enables our existence. What if one were to consider himself a divine being, or for that matter you. If I believe Richard Dawkins is my god how would you answer the question 'does god exist'. What if I believe in the supreme power of science to eventually furnish us with all possible knowledge about the universe? Ok there is more than 1 question here. Consider this my official question:
"Hasn't society's narrow focus on the three stupidest religions of all time caused the debate to be skewed against belief of all kinds such that certain beliefs that may be based in truth and also psychologically or socially beneficial are discarded without consideration?"
I never even touched a computer till i was like 8. It might have set back my computer skills (I am mediocre at programming) but my knowledge about the non-digital world and my skills in practical things more than make up for it. I think computer use should be taught after reading is taught with paper. So around 6 years.
Never was a big fan of Orwell. I read a few of his books and found them all kind of depressing and not as groundbreakingly original as everyone else finds them. I think 'A Brave New World' was much more original and thought provoking than 1984. 'Animal farm' is just patronising and 'Coming Up for Air' was just bleak.
I also should mention:
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
Everything Douglas Adams wrote
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card (actually it was the later books in the Ender series that really influenced me, the first one is just the hook)
The Bible (anyone who doesn't put this on their list is interpreting the question differently to me. I am not religious)
Some children's book about a bear I forget the name of (first book I ever read)
Where did this come from? Isn't the cat already out of the bag on this one? People are building their own open source 3d printers and I don't see how a law could really be implemented in any meaningful way to change this. Assuming I am not totally wrong in the first part of this, doesn't that also mean that whatever company owns this patent will simply be producing broken printers that no one wants to buy, and that their competition without this method will clean them up?
I agree with you overall, but there are a couple of things I would like to add. I was involved in a similar study a couple of years ago, with similar findings. With regard to the cost of extraction and refining of fuels, it may simply not have been mentioned because it is standard practice to assume that is taken into account when any reputable academic is doing efficiency/impact studies. The cost of those is well known and has been extensively studied, and the figures are easy to obtain. I am not sure this is true for the other (non energy) costs however. I imagine the whole study would have been laughed away by now if they failed to use a full well to wheel energy calculation.
Actually a lot of sensible people are arguing that EVs are... well that they can achieve things that are impossible without magic. It is important to point out the realities of the situation. You are correct that EVs are future proof and would be ideal if we had renewable energy. However it seems risky to advocate a technology that may increase our energy consumption and pollution in the short term as a solution to having too little energy and too much pollution. I always advocate a reduction in the use of private vehicles. The US has about 1.1 private passenger vehicles per person (over the age of 15). It also has a very low average mileage for its fleet, due to age and big engines. A massive reduction in fuel reliance and pollution could be achieved if the least efficient 10% of vehicles were simply taken off the road and never replaced.
There is pollution from shipping electricity around, there is a percentage lost in power line resistance, there is some lost to spinning reserve which is when power is generated that is never used, a percentage is lost when you charge your battery, and another percentage is lost when you discharge it. None of these are the major factor however, the major factor is the practice of burning lignite coal in power stations. I was involved in a similar (ignored) study two years ago and I have done the math. Lignite is increasing in use as a fuel source as it is plentiful, it was considered too low energy and too dirty for use and other coals were preferred in the past so there is a lot of it still in the ground. Coal plants that burn it are less efficient and more polluting than ICEs burning petroleum or diesel. The thermal efficiency difference is minimal (actually the plants are more efficient if you ignore the losses I mentioned above), but the pollution is huge. The rationale that EVs are greener is absurd when you are burning this stuff, and the pollution produced by them is significantly higher than an ICE.
tl:dr - Your point only holds if the power station is burning 95+ octane petrol or automotive diesel. They don't, they burn nasty nasty crap.
Here is how:
Firstly it takes more than a decade for a coal power station to get replaced, a lot more.
Secondly the difference between modern 'clean' coal plants and their older variants both in terms of thermal efficiency and co2 output is about 5%, and future technology being worked on does not show any promise of pushing that much further than another 5% at best. This is discluding co2 sequestration as that can be done on an ICE as well as a power station and is not really a viable solution on either. The difference in thermal efficiency between a modern efficient ICE powered car and an equivalent electric car powered exclusively by coal plants burning lignite is far above that amount. I don't remember the exact figures but I believe the lignite EV used about 25% more energy and produced up to double the pollution of the ICE.
When I posted a submission about a study that showed exactly these facts it was rejected. That was two years ago when everyone was jumping on the 'yay electric cars are the way of the future' bandwagon. Way to filter the news to fit your current paradigm.
It is not that incredible, a lot of moderators mod based on apparent insightfulness, without checking for things like grip on reality, or relevance to the actual universe. Sometimes good mods come along and correct things though.
Ok fair enough, other countries have bad beer too. I live in Germany though so calling out fosters and corona (in New Zealand we had some pretty shocking ones too: ranfurly, nz lager) doesn't seem like much of an excuse. In Germany they have had a law since like the 1500's about how beer has to be brewed. They almost didn't join the EU because there were issues with it. 1/3 of all the breweries in the world are here and if you tried a new type of German beer every day it would take you 15 years to get though them all. It is fairly cheap too, 50c for a 500ml bottle at the supermarket.
Perhaps you mean the the original classic Czech beer called 'Budweiser'. The one that the US brews on license and is famous for being of much lower quality. You should try the original, then you will know what a travesty that rancid 'sex in a canoe' swill that passes for beer in the US is.
I worked out that a Europe wide 0.5% financial transaction tax would be enough to pay an unconditional base income of 400euro/month to every single person living in Europe with money to spare....just saying.
The politics thing is basically believers in the 'true pure strain' of humans, what the nazis called aryans, are a different species from people of other cultures and nations. Your question was a scienctific one, but it was read through glasses stained with ideology.
I think the real answer is twofold: firstly a single genesis is much simpler and people like to cling to occams razor as though it is a scientific doctrine and not a blunt problem solving rule of thumb. Most of historical theory is rife with the simplest most cut down possible version of events. The second reason is that the idea of conquering and out competing another species appeals more to most people's pride than the idea of interspecies breeding. Neither of these are particular good reasons for supporting a scientific theory but where ancient history is concerned evidence is much scarcer than most people think, so minor influences like this can sway some people.
It is especially ironic that according to most of the paleontologists in the world the purest 'aryan' race is actually the Iranians.
Slashdot Mirror
Bear in mind also, that the summary and article both specify "US-Designated" terrorist groups. The words slippery slope and precedent immediately spring to mind when you let the government label certain political speech as illegal, and then demand to have the speakers silenced. The US terrorist designation is notoriously politically motivated, and not based on any form of metric or logical definition. For example Hamas are terrorists mainly for their firing of rockets at Israel. Out of all of the groups that fire rockets at other people - an activity that the US and Israel also both do on an almost constant basis, and that most of Europe, the UK, many Asian countries and many militant groups all over the world have engaged in at some point in the last few decades - only Hamas is singled out as a terrorist organisation.
Hamas gets 50% of its funding from Saudi Arabia, you know, the country that crashed planes into the world trade center. Is Saudi Arabia labelled a terrorist state or even called out for funding them? No. Well you will have to forgive me for not giving a fuck about who the US "designates" as a terorist group.
Maybe it is time for slashdot to designate fox news and other people we don't like (Microsoft? Apple?) as terrorist groups and demand that twitter take down the accounts of slashdot-designated terrorist groups.
I live in Berlin, and while I agree that a lot of Germany's green image is PR hype, there are a few facts I want to add:
Germany also has huge amounts of wind generators, you did mention this but in the wrong paragraph.
The majority of buildings in Berlin don't have elevators (that might become wrong soon, all new ones do).
and also one that supports your point:
Germany's waste sorting is a giant sham, they put almost everything non-organic into a 'recycling bin' and then they only recycle the stuff that it is profitable to recycle, and send the rest to the third world. I think it is around 25% of the contents of those bins that is actually recycled. The bottle refund system seems to work though
Other than that you have it about right
All of these calculations assume that the air, once the water is absorbed out of it, will flow out of the vessel and be replaced by humid air again at the optimal speed. It also requires power to operate. It may be that the power is used to pump the air which would mean the system has only one of these drawbacks, but the article is light on details so I can't be sure. It is also not a system that can be built at home. On the other hand I read an article by an engineer a few years ago that proposed a system that used piping running below the ground to cool the air and cause condensation, using a wind catcher at one end to push it through. His estimates included air flow and showed that a 10 meter long system could provide drinking water in desert air with a moderate wind for several people. I am unable to find the article again unfortunately.
My point is that a temperature gradient is far cheaper and available to poor third world desert countries where such a system is required. This technology is neat but not all that practical. Still a combination of the two systems, ie. lining the inside of underground pipes with this substance and letting the wind push air through might have a much higher rate of condensation and could be used for commercial and military operations in the desert.
Even the summary covered that: "However, THC can remain in blood and saliva for highly variable times after the last use of the drug."
While on the subject, does anyone have the source for this quote? "Driving within three hours of smoking pot is associated with a near doubling of the risk of fatal crashes" I find it doubtful and would like to read the methodology. In my experience impairment from marijuana use in the absence of other substances impairs driving very little. There are some issues with concentration and alertness but in most people it also has the effect of lowering their speed and therefore I find it hard to believe the crashes are fatal so often. Unless they pull out in front of a speeding driver or something. Of course this is all speculation based on personal experience, hence why I want to read the study referred to in the summary. It isn't mentioned in tfa either in those words.
america and most of the west LOVES the notion of revenge or payback.
If you're interpreting that as "the West loves Israel", you need your head examined.
You were the one who interpreted what he said as the 'west loves Israel'. If you want to go get your head examined I don't imagine anyone will object.
Israel is only defending themselves following a massive rocket bombardment.
Ok let's pretend when two sides are firing rockets at each other continuously for many years, that the much larger, richer and better armed side can be referred to as 'defending itself'.
Given that assumption, explain how air strikes and shelling are intended to resolve the situation.
It is the same with me, caffeine and nicotine while programming, pot afterwards. I can use the weed as an incentive to get work done by saying 'can't smoke weed till it is done.' I can't program while stoned though, it makes my mind wander too much and simply means it takes 5 times as long to get the work done. I can however design programs on a conceptual level when stoned, and it leads to more inventive and interesting ideas. This even applies to designing complex algorithms. For me though a stoned brain doesn't lend itself well to slow logical stepwise operation, and therefore the actual typing of code will always be left to caffeine and nicotine.
Why is everyone accepting this retarded premise.
1. Windows 8 has a new interface.
2. Not many people have moved to windows 8.
a = People must find windows 8 too difficult to use
3. A 3 year old has been observed using it
b = all users of windows XP and 7 are less smart than a 3 year old
Fuck you. I don't upgrade microsoft products because they rarely work properly at release. People laughed at me when I didn't upgrade to Vista, but not for long, soon I was laughing at them. Windows 7 came out and again people encouraged me to ditch XP. Then they explained that we couldn't play a huge range of the old games we used to play when I tried to lan with them, because they weren't compatible. I did't upgrade to XP when it first came out either. I want stable and reliable not new. Windows 7 is now 3 years old and most of the kinks are worked out, so I will probably upgrade in the next few months. I will probably upgrade to windows 8 in 3 years time. The interface has nothing to do with anything.
America has a lot of problems right now.
You failed to mention one of the most serious ones.
Actually in ethics null is not unethical, therefore it is ethical by default. The question was 'is non prescription adhd medication use ever ethical'. If people use it for fun and harm no one, then the answer is yes.
How do we know this method has a sane cost? The cost and efficiency numbers are conspicuously absent from the article which states only "the process is still too inefficient to allow a commercial-scale operation". Without numbers the whole better/worse than batteries argument is pointless, except for the fact that if it were more efficient/cheaper than batteries they probably would have made that claim.
Your position that religion is demonstrably false, and is also destructive and counter-productive, seems to me to be tailored to the three Abrahamic middle eastern religion Judaism, Christianity and Islam. While I agree with almost every word as far as those religions are concerned, isn't it true that one could have religious beliefs where some or all of your arguments are invalid? For example if one were a sun worshiper. It is a scientific fact that the sun exists, and also that it is as near to all powerful and benevolent as makes no difference. It gives life to all things and enables our existence. What if one were to consider himself a divine being, or for that matter you. If I believe Richard Dawkins is my god how would you answer the question 'does god exist'. What if I believe in the supreme power of science to eventually furnish us with all possible knowledge about the universe? Ok there is more than 1 question here. Consider this my official question:
"Hasn't society's narrow focus on the three stupidest religions of all time caused the debate to be skewed against belief of all kinds such that certain beliefs that may be based in truth and also psychologically or socially beneficial are discarded without consideration?"
I never even touched a computer till i was like 8. It might have set back my computer skills (I am mediocre at programming) but my knowledge about the non-digital world and my skills in practical things more than make up for it. I think computer use should be taught after reading is taught with paper. So around 6 years.
Never was a big fan of Orwell. I read a few of his books and found them all kind of depressing and not as groundbreakingly original as everyone else finds them. I think 'A Brave New World' was much more original and thought provoking than 1984. 'Animal farm' is just patronising and 'Coming Up for Air' was just bleak.
I also should mention:
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
Everything Douglas Adams wrote
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card (actually it was the later books in the Ender series that really influenced me, the first one is just the hook)
The Bible (anyone who doesn't put this on their list is interpreting the question differently to me. I am not religious)
Some children's book about a bear I forget the name of (first book I ever read)
PS. Irregardless - not a word
...if this technology becomes mandatory...
Where did this come from? Isn't the cat already out of the bag on this one? People are building their own open source 3d printers and I don't see how a law could really be implemented in any meaningful way to change this. Assuming I am not totally wrong in the first part of this, doesn't that also mean that whatever company owns this patent will simply be producing broken printers that no one wants to buy, and that their competition without this method will clean them up?
Yeah because those are the only two options... X will live forever or died already 3 months ago. Nothing in between is possible.
Shut the fuck up already.
This message was written on a desktop PC
I agree with you overall, but there are a couple of things I would like to add. I was involved in a similar study a couple of years ago, with similar findings. With regard to the cost of extraction and refining of fuels, it may simply not have been mentioned because it is standard practice to assume that is taken into account when any reputable academic is doing efficiency/impact studies. The cost of those is well known and has been extensively studied, and the figures are easy to obtain. I am not sure this is true for the other (non energy) costs however. I imagine the whole study would have been laughed away by now if they failed to use a full well to wheel energy calculation.
Actually a lot of sensible people are arguing that EVs are... well that they can achieve things that are impossible without magic. It is important to point out the realities of the situation. You are correct that EVs are future proof and would be ideal if we had renewable energy. However it seems risky to advocate a technology that may increase our energy consumption and pollution in the short term as a solution to having too little energy and too much pollution. I always advocate a reduction in the use of private vehicles. The US has about 1.1 private passenger vehicles per person (over the age of 15). It also has a very low average mileage for its fleet, due to age and big engines. A massive reduction in fuel reliance and pollution could be achieved if the least efficient 10% of vehicles were simply taken off the road and never replaced.
There is pollution from shipping electricity around, there is a percentage lost in power line resistance, there is some lost to spinning reserve which is when power is generated that is never used, a percentage is lost when you charge your battery, and another percentage is lost when you discharge it. None of these are the major factor however, the major factor is the practice of burning lignite coal in power stations. I was involved in a similar (ignored) study two years ago and I have done the math. Lignite is increasing in use as a fuel source as it is plentiful, it was considered too low energy and too dirty for use and other coals were preferred in the past so there is a lot of it still in the ground. Coal plants that burn it are less efficient and more polluting than ICEs burning petroleum or diesel. The thermal efficiency difference is minimal (actually the plants are more efficient if you ignore the losses I mentioned above), but the pollution is huge. The rationale that EVs are greener is absurd when you are burning this stuff, and the pollution produced by them is significantly higher than an ICE.
tl:dr - Your point only holds if the power station is burning 95+ octane petrol or automotive diesel. They don't, they burn nasty nasty crap.
Here is how:
Firstly it takes more than a decade for a coal power station to get replaced, a lot more.
Secondly the difference between modern 'clean' coal plants and their older variants both in terms of thermal efficiency and co2 output is about 5%, and future technology being worked on does not show any promise of pushing that much further than another 5% at best. This is discluding co2 sequestration as that can be done on an ICE as well as a power station and is not really a viable solution on either. The difference in thermal efficiency between a modern efficient ICE powered car and an equivalent electric car powered exclusively by coal plants burning lignite is far above that amount. I don't remember the exact figures but I believe the lignite EV used about 25% more energy and produced up to double the pollution of the ICE.
When I posted a submission about a study that showed exactly these facts it was rejected. That was two years ago when everyone was jumping on the 'yay electric cars are the way of the future' bandwagon. Way to filter the news to fit your current paradigm.
It is not that incredible, a lot of moderators mod based on apparent insightfulness, without checking for things like grip on reality, or relevance to the actual universe. Sometimes good mods come along and correct things though.
Ok fair enough, other countries have bad beer too. I live in Germany though so calling out fosters and corona (in New Zealand we had some pretty shocking ones too: ranfurly, nz lager) doesn't seem like much of an excuse. In Germany they have had a law since like the 1500's about how beer has to be brewed. They almost didn't join the EU because there were issues with it. 1/3 of all the breweries in the world are here and if you tried a new type of German beer every day it would take you 15 years to get though them all. It is fairly cheap too, 50c for a 500ml bottle at the supermarket.
Perhaps you mean the the original classic Czech beer called 'Budweiser'. The one that the US brews on license and is famous for being of much lower quality. You should try the original, then you will know what a travesty that rancid 'sex in a canoe' swill that passes for beer in the US is.
I worked out that a Europe wide 0.5% financial transaction tax would be enough to pay an unconditional base income of 400euro/month to every single person living in Europe with money to spare. ...just saying.
The politics thing is basically believers in the 'true pure strain' of humans, what the nazis called aryans, are a different species from people of other cultures and nations. Your question was a scienctific one, but it was read through glasses stained with ideology.
I think the real answer is twofold: firstly a single genesis is much simpler and people like to cling to occams razor as though it is a scientific doctrine and not a blunt problem solving rule of thumb. Most of historical theory is rife with the simplest most cut down possible version of events. The second reason is that the idea of conquering and out competing another species appeals more to most people's pride than the idea of interspecies breeding. Neither of these are particular good reasons for supporting a scientific theory but where ancient history is concerned evidence is much scarcer than most people think, so minor influences like this can sway some people.
It is especially ironic that according to most of the paleontologists in the world the purest 'aryan' race is actually the Iranians.