Launch about 10 million square km worth of aluminum foil into mid-earth orbit. The foil will be small, one-square-foot pieces that can move about freely. At any instant, some will be facing into the sun and blocking out light, while others are facing the sun edge-on and letting light through. Together, they will permanently block out 1% of the sun and reduce surface temperatures to a manageable level.
Yes, it'll be expensive, but it might not be so bad compared to the cost of ending all CO2 production. It's also a one-time investment so nobody can change their mind afterwards (or need to, since the cost is sunk). There are no undesirable side effects on the ground, and if you position it right, you can cool the equator much more than the poles, turning much more of the earth into livable habitat.
Some might say this is Kessler Syndrome on steroids, but if all of the foils are within a relatively small range of orbits, it wouldn't be all that hard to avoid. Aluminum is also highly reflective and easy to see with radar, so if one does come your way, you can easily see and dodge it.
Nuclear weapons have prevented major wars for 70 years
5 years ago I planted a greengage tree in my back garden. I have not had an elephant sit on my fence in 5 years. Behold the protective effect of my greengage tree.
Correlation is not causation.
Being afraid of being nuked into oblivion is plenty of reason not to start a major war. We have lots of evidence that people behave in a self-preserving manner, and we have 70 years of history that corroborates the MAD theory. If that's not enough proof for some people, that's okay, since in real life, no one will ever prove causation sufficiently to satisfy a nut-job.
It's ironic how some of the biggest internet companies couldn't figure out how to get work done without having everyone physically present. All of these location-dependent problems would go away if they just allowed their employees to telecommute.
Think J. S. Bach, where there's often little melody but very much harmony.
You obviously don't listen to Bach much. That's just wrong. Listen for yourself and look at what the notes are doing.
"Oh but that's not what most of Bach's music sound like."
Ok, then let's use this one. Take only the highest notes in each chord and remove all the rest. What do you have? A melody. Now repeat with the 2nd highest. Now you have another melody. You can do this several times and end up with 4 or 5 melodies. The fact that they can be combined together as harmonies is the genius of Bach.
The questions are nothing like that. Here's the reading material:
Packet mode communication may be implemented with or without intermediate forwarding nodes (packet switches or routers). Packets are normally forwarded by intermediate network nodes asynchronously using first-in, first-out buffering, but may be forwarded according to some scheduling discipline for fair queuing, traffic shaping, or for differentiated or guaranteed quality of service, such as weighted fair queuing or leaky bucket. In case of a shared physical medium (such as radio or 10BASE5), the packets may be delivered according to a multiple access scheme.
And here's the questions:
How are packets normally forwarded?
Answer: asynchronously using first-in, first-out buffering, but may be forwarded according to some scheduling discipline for fair queuing
How is packet mode communication implemented?
Answer: with or without intermediate forwarding nodes
In cases of shared physical medium how are they delivered?
Answer: according to a multiple access scheme
So the test taker only needs to find a selection of the original text that answers the question.
The way I see it, the real issue with the "reading comprehension" quiz is that you don't need to actually comprehend the text to answer it. A better question than "How are packets normally forwarded?" would be something like "What are some situations where packets are not forwarded in the fifo order?" The first question only requires you to find the words "packets", "normally" and "forwarded" in the paragraph and answer with the rest of the sentence. The second question requires you to understand that the text is presenting 2 options, one is "normal" and the other isn't.
There's also some official answers that are just plain incorrect. The answer to "How is packet mode communication implemented?" is the entire rest of the paragraph, not just "with or without intermediate forwarding nodes".
You simply disagreeing with an opening line of a book doesn't mean it's garbage.
Nor does it make his arguments INCORRECT.
No, but it does throw doubt on his statistics. How much data is he hiding that would have shown a conclusion opposite to his personal belief? Did he chose a certain metric that supports his point, ignoring others that would have refuted them?
And no, I'm not going to buy his book just to debunk him.
So the place to be is somewhere on Oahu that is outside of the southern coastal strip, and you will want to be at least nine miles away from its detonation point. This would put you outside of the thermal burn range (even for first degree) even if its yield is 500 kT. So most anywhere on the north half of the island will be fine.
Assuming the incoming missile actually hits what it was targeting.
Without inflation, a decision you make today that seems financially sound might not be such a good idea when you factor in some future unknown expenses. With inflation, the commitment you make today on buying a house isn't such a large factor in 10+ years when that new expense comes up. On the other hand, deflation is the exact opposite. A seemingly financially sound decision today does not remain financially sound 10 years from now even if no new expenses come up.
Your future cost is going to be equally risky whether the currency is inflationary or deflationary. If it's inflationary, that cost is going to have a higher number in dollar terms. If it's deflationary, it's going to have a lower number in dollar terms. But the absolute value is going to be the same compared to your income.
In a deflationary system, you can simply save up to protect against the risk. If you start with a satisfactory amount saved, you can be sure that amount is going to cover the risk no matter how much time passed. In an inflationary system, no matter how much you save, you can't be sure you'll have enough to cover that risk. You'll need to continually add to it from your income stream. Which do you think is easier for the average person to understand? Something they put away once, or something they need to add an ever increasing amount to?
An inflationary economy punishes people who save, and that's by design. What it ignores is what happens when a risk actually materializes. Instead of putting money away at the bank, what you end up with is a whole bunch of people (who as you say, don't understand finances very well) taking risk that is both unnecessary and that they don't fully understand.
It's only worked so far because the government is able to step in and eat up all of the bad debt whenever the risk actually materializes, as it did back in 2009. But who knows how long that will last?
Most people have more debt than they do savings. Deflation is good for you if you have lots of savings, but not lots of debt.
And how many of them have debt because the currency is inflationary? For them, it's better to invest in a house and take on that debt than to have the money sitting around. Unfortunately, all that does for the economy is drive up housing and rent prices, which benefit the least productive bunch: land owners.
When you buy a mortgage, you owe a fixed amount of currency. With inflation, over time your income tends to increase slightly year to year, and over the years the mortgage becomes a smaller and smaller part of your income, making it more and more affordable.
The banks are not morons. They know money is worth less in the future, and their interest rate takes that into account. You're not getting a free ride because your currency is constantly being devalued.
It's like having a passport. Yeah, you have a right to enter the US as an US citizen, but it's much, much easier with a US passport.
Likewise, having a Voter ID could make it much easier for you to vote, leading to shorter lines at the polling station the same way registering beforehand helps speed up the process.
Having super long lines is much worse for voter turnout and democratic representation than any voter ID law.
And you don't have to show ID to enjoy your rights.
That's just patently false.
As a US citizen, I have a right to enter the country, but I am still required to show my passport at the border. As a person over 21, I have a right to purchase alcohol from any business wanting to sell to me, but I'm still required to show an ID proving my age.
Glass and paper are just as bad as plastic, just in different ways... The processes used to recycle paper and glass generate millions of tons of toxic waste every year, which then gets dumped into landfills.
Classic FUD. Neither of those processes produce "millions of tons" of waste. Recycling glass doesn't produce any waste. Glass is washed, sorted, and then melted. Recycling paper is the same, pulp, sort, bleach and then remade into paper.
But if tomorrow, anyone can copy your work, what motivated you to produce it in the first place?
There are other motivations besides money. Take your comment for example. It's a copyrighted piece of work. It took you time to create. But you're not going to make a penny off of it. So why did you write it?
Actually most of the Syrian refugees are quite well educated and liberal.
Really? More than half? I for one can't find a source for Europe, but for those who are approved for entry into the US, less than 20% have anything more than a high school diploma.
...If it's true for example that we (and some animals) can smell a single molecule of certain substances, which may alert us to do or not do something crucial, it would be very difficult to match that level of input in a sensor-connected AI.
Biological neural networks that we are have been trained for that kind of sensitivity over millions of years, you just can't do it from scratch...
First of all, humans do not have the capability to pick up the presence of a single molecule in the air, nor does any animal. Second, there are sensors such as mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs, which are much more sensitive than your nose. Yes, the AI that can recognize molecules from the mass spectrum and chromatogram would take some time to build, but it's well within the realms of possibility today.
Just go to Miami or some other touristy place and try the taxi there. I guarantee you will be taken the scenic route and charged extra. When an Uber driver tried that with me, I sent an email and complained, and they refunded me immediately. You're not going to get that kind of service from an independent taxi driver.
Regulations cannot be tailor-made to everyone, and while you inspecting your roof with a drone 20 miles from the nearest airport is in reality a so-what deal...
More importantly, if he is flying low over his own property (possibly as high as 500 feet AGL), FAA may not have any legal standing to regulate his use of it. At least according to the Supreme Court, such airspace is considered private property, not navigable airspace, and the government cannot interfere with "their possession and enjoyment of it or with any use they might conceivably make of it".
Want to live in a remote area? Well, you should be prepared to pay for it.
Want to live in an urban environment and have access to food, building materials, power, and fuel. Well, you should be prepared to pay for it. Your utopian urban environment isn't self sufficient so get off your high horse.
You missed the entire point. City dwellers don't need to make everything themselves to be self sufficient. There are literally billions of people out there who would happily give them whatever they need in exchange for what cities produce. Heck, the computer you typed on is made in a city, as is this website, amongst millions of other things.
Besides, there aren't many rural areas that are completely self-sufficient either. Modern farming requires things like fertilizers, pesticides, weather predictions, farming equipment and fuel to run them. Farmers also want to have luxuries such as clothing, cars, and medicine. Those are all either made in a city, made by people who were trained in a city, made with equipment manufactured in a city, or designed by those living in a city.
As it stands, cities produce much more than they need and that extra wealth is transferred to rural states via subsidies, either directly in the case of the corn subsidy, or indirectly through services like USPS. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to suggest that perhaps not all of those subsidies should exist and rural states should bear more responsibility for their own well-being.
Slashdot Mirror
Launch about 10 million square km worth of aluminum foil into mid-earth orbit. The foil will be small, one-square-foot pieces that can move about freely. At any instant, some will be facing into the sun and blocking out light, while others are facing the sun edge-on and letting light through. Together, they will permanently block out 1% of the sun and reduce surface temperatures to a manageable level.
Yes, it'll be expensive, but it might not be so bad compared to the cost of ending all CO2 production. It's also a one-time investment so nobody can change their mind afterwards (or need to, since the cost is sunk). There are no undesirable side effects on the ground, and if you position it right, you can cool the equator much more than the poles, turning much more of the earth into livable habitat.
Some might say this is Kessler Syndrome on steroids, but if all of the foils are within a relatively small range of orbits, it wouldn't be all that hard to avoid. Aluminum is also highly reflective and easy to see with radar, so if one does come your way, you can easily see and dodge it.
More than 50% of the price you pay for gasoline at the pump in the US goes to the government in the form of taxes
Gas tax is $0.56 per gallon in California, one of the highest tax states, while the total price is $2.80 a gallon, making it a 25% tax rate.
Nuclear weapons have prevented major wars for 70 years
5 years ago I planted a greengage tree in my back garden. I have not had an elephant sit on my fence in 5 years. Behold the protective effect of my greengage tree.
Correlation is not causation.
Being afraid of being nuked into oblivion is plenty of reason not to start a major war. We have lots of evidence that people behave in a self-preserving manner, and we have 70 years of history that corroborates the MAD theory. If that's not enough proof for some people, that's okay, since in real life, no one will ever prove causation sufficiently to satisfy a nut-job.
It's ironic how some of the biggest internet companies couldn't figure out how to get work done without having everyone physically present. All of these location-dependent problems would go away if they just allowed their employees to telecommute.
NYC has the same attitude, except maybe 10X more extreme. But at least for NYC it is somewhat justifiable.
The Bronx in NYC has 1.4 million people, which is 60% more than all of SF. So I'd say it's justified.
And along the same vein, the Pudong district in Shanghai has 5.4 million residents, though I doubt many people know about that.
Hmm, link got swallowed. Here was what I tried to link to.
Think J. S. Bach, where there's often little melody but very much harmony.
You obviously don't listen to Bach much. That's just wrong. Listen for yourself and look at what the notes are doing.
"Oh but that's not what most of Bach's music sound like."
Ok, then let's use this one. Take only the highest notes in each chord and remove all the rest. What do you have? A melody. Now repeat with the 2nd highest. Now you have another melody. You can do this several times and end up with 4 or 5 melodies. The fact that they can be combined together as harmonies is the genius of Bach.
Packet mode communication may be implemented with or without intermediate forwarding nodes (packet switches or routers). Packets are normally forwarded by intermediate network nodes asynchronously using first-in, first-out buffering, but may be forwarded according to some scheduling discipline for fair queuing, traffic shaping, or for differentiated or guaranteed quality of service, such as weighted fair queuing or leaky bucket. In case of a shared physical medium (such as radio or 10BASE5), the packets may be delivered according to a multiple access scheme.
And here's the questions:
How are packets normally forwarded?
Answer: asynchronously using first-in, first-out buffering, but may be forwarded according to some scheduling discipline for fair queuing
How is packet mode communication implemented?
Answer: with or without intermediate forwarding nodes
In cases of shared physical medium how are they delivered?
Answer: according to a multiple access scheme
So the test taker only needs to find a selection of the original text that answers the question.
The way I see it, the real issue with the "reading comprehension" quiz is that you don't need to actually comprehend the text to answer it. A better question than "How are packets normally forwarded?" would be something like "What are some situations where packets are not forwarded in the fifo order?" The first question only requires you to find the words "packets", "normally" and "forwarded" in the paragraph and answer with the rest of the sentence. The second question requires you to understand that the text is presenting 2 options, one is "normal" and the other isn't.
There's also some official answers that are just plain incorrect. The answer to "How is packet mode communication implemented?" is the entire rest of the paragraph, not just "with or without intermediate forwarding nodes".
You simply disagreeing with an opening line of a book doesn't mean it's garbage.
Nor does it make his arguments INCORRECT.
No, but it does throw doubt on his statistics. How much data is he hiding that would have shown a conclusion opposite to his personal belief? Did he chose a certain metric that supports his point, ignoring others that would have refuted them?
And no, I'm not going to buy his book just to debunk him.
So the place to be is somewhere on Oahu that is outside of the southern coastal strip, and you will want to be at least nine miles away from its detonation point. This would put you outside of the thermal burn range (even for first degree) even if its yield is 500 kT. So most anywhere on the north half of the island will be fine.
Assuming the incoming missile actually hits what it was targeting.
Another problem is people refusing to recognize racism that exists, perpetuating it for generation after generation.
That's an appeal to hypocrisy, aka. whataboutism. Both are problems, and both need to be fixed.
That's the worst citation needed I've seen in a long time. A quick Google search brings up a SJW mouthpiece claiming 31% of Americans are white males.
Without inflation, a decision you make today that seems financially sound might not be such a good idea when you factor in some future unknown expenses. With inflation, the commitment you make today on buying a house isn't such a large factor in 10+ years when that new expense comes up. On the other hand, deflation is the exact opposite. A seemingly financially sound decision today does not remain financially sound 10 years from now even if no new expenses come up.
Your future cost is going to be equally risky whether the currency is inflationary or deflationary. If it's inflationary, that cost is going to have a higher number in dollar terms. If it's deflationary, it's going to have a lower number in dollar terms. But the absolute value is going to be the same compared to your income.
In a deflationary system, you can simply save up to protect against the risk. If you start with a satisfactory amount saved, you can be sure that amount is going to cover the risk no matter how much time passed. In an inflationary system, no matter how much you save, you can't be sure you'll have enough to cover that risk. You'll need to continually add to it from your income stream. Which do you think is easier for the average person to understand? Something they put away once, or something they need to add an ever increasing amount to?
An inflationary economy punishes people who save, and that's by design. What it ignores is what happens when a risk actually materializes. Instead of putting money away at the bank, what you end up with is a whole bunch of people (who as you say, don't understand finances very well) taking risk that is both unnecessary and that they don't fully understand.
It's only worked so far because the government is able to step in and eat up all of the bad debt whenever the risk actually materializes, as it did back in 2009. But who knows how long that will last?
Most people have more debt than they do savings. Deflation is good for you if you have lots of savings, but not lots of debt.
And how many of them have debt because the currency is inflationary? For them, it's better to invest in a house and take on that debt than to have the money sitting around. Unfortunately, all that does for the economy is drive up housing and rent prices, which benefit the least productive bunch: land owners.
When you buy a mortgage, you owe a fixed amount of currency. With inflation, over time your income tends to increase slightly year to year, and over the years the mortgage becomes a smaller and smaller part of your income, making it more and more affordable.
The banks are not morons. They know money is worth less in the future, and their interest rate takes that into account. You're not getting a free ride because your currency is constantly being devalued.
Entering the country is a right for citizens, which is why they want you to have your passport to prove your citizenship.
Voting is a right, it doesn't require ID.
Voting is a right for citizens. Which is why it should require an ID or passport.
It's like having a passport. Yeah, you have a right to enter the US as an US citizen, but it's much, much easier with a US passport.
Likewise, having a Voter ID could make it much easier for you to vote, leading to shorter lines at the polling station the same way registering beforehand helps speed up the process.
Having super long lines is much worse for voter turnout and democratic representation than any voter ID law.
And you don't have to show ID to enjoy your rights.
That's just patently false.
As a US citizen, I have a right to enter the country, but I am still required to show my passport at the border. As a person over 21, I have a right to purchase alcohol from any business wanting to sell to me, but I'm still required to show an ID proving my age.
Glass and paper are just as bad as plastic, just in different ways... The processes used to recycle paper and glass generate millions of tons of toxic waste every year, which then gets dumped into landfills.
Classic FUD. Neither of those processes produce "millions of tons" of waste. Recycling glass doesn't produce any waste. Glass is washed, sorted, and then melted. Recycling paper is the same, pulp, sort, bleach and then remade into paper.
But if tomorrow, anyone can copy your work, what motivated you to produce it in the first place?
There are other motivations besides money. Take your comment for example. It's a copyrighted piece of work. It took you time to create. But you're not going to make a penny off of it. So why did you write it?
Actually most of the Syrian refugees are quite well educated and liberal.
Really? More than half? I for one can't find a source for Europe, but for those who are approved for entry into the US, less than 20% have anything more than a high school diploma.
They don't hate Jews for the most part either.
How do you know this?
...If it's true for example that we (and some animals) can smell a single molecule of certain substances, which may alert us to do or not do something crucial, it would be very difficult to match that level of input in a sensor-connected AI.
Biological neural networks that we are have been trained for that kind of sensitivity over millions of years, you just can't do it from scratch...
First of all, humans do not have the capability to pick up the presence of a single molecule in the air, nor does any animal. Second, there are sensors such as mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs, which are much more sensitive than your nose. Yes, the AI that can recognize molecules from the mass spectrum and chromatogram would take some time to build, but it's well within the realms of possibility today.
Just go to Miami or some other touristy place and try the taxi there. I guarantee you will be taken the scenic route and charged extra. When an Uber driver tried that with me, I sent an email and complained, and they refunded me immediately. You're not going to get that kind of service from an independent taxi driver.
Ha... I'll believe that when married people stop complaining about not getting any sex.
Regulations cannot be tailor-made to everyone, and while you inspecting your roof with a drone 20 miles from the nearest airport is in reality a so-what deal...
It's actually 5 miles from an airport.
More importantly, if he is flying low over his own property (possibly as high as 500 feet AGL), FAA may not have any legal standing to regulate his use of it. At least according to the Supreme Court, such airspace is considered private property, not navigable airspace, and the government cannot interfere with "their possession and enjoyment of it or with any use they might conceivably make of it".
Want to live in a remote area? Well, you should be prepared to pay for it.
Want to live in an urban environment and have access to food, building materials, power, and fuel. Well, you should be prepared to pay for it. Your utopian urban environment isn't self sufficient so get off your high horse.
You missed the entire point. City dwellers don't need to make everything themselves to be self sufficient. There are literally billions of people out there who would happily give them whatever they need in exchange for what cities produce. Heck, the computer you typed on is made in a city, as is this website, amongst millions of other things.
Besides, there aren't many rural areas that are completely self-sufficient either. Modern farming requires things like fertilizers, pesticides, weather predictions, farming equipment and fuel to run them. Farmers also want to have luxuries such as clothing, cars, and medicine. Those are all either made in a city, made by people who were trained in a city, made with equipment manufactured in a city, or designed by those living in a city.
As it stands, cities produce much more than they need and that extra wealth is transferred to rural states via subsidies, either directly in the case of the corn subsidy, or indirectly through services like USPS. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to suggest that perhaps not all of those subsidies should exist and rural states should bear more responsibility for their own well-being.