... is if it would be possible to combine solar-thermal power generation with desalination.
Build Fresnel-lens solar concentrators and stick them near a source of seawater. Boil the water using the sunlight, and use it as the working fluid in an ordinary steam-turbine-type power generator. But instead of recycling the same water once the steam recondenses, realize that you've just made a giant distiller: drink the water and use "new" seawater.
I help teach a class in computational physics for sophomores.
The VERY FIRST ASSIGNMENT is looking at this. We give them a simple numeric integral to do -- one that they can do analytically -- and tell them to make a log/log plot of the error vs. the number of bins used to do the Riemann sum. Of course they get wrong answers for too few bins (since it's too coarse) and wrong answers for too many bins (floating-point rounding errors). Then we have them do it again with doubles and have them do it again with a better algorithm.
After that we do Euler and Runge-Kutta.
The biggest problem isn't students being blissfully unaware of floating-point precision issues; it's them blaming precision issues when they've really just got broken code.
In the process Reagan bankrupted us by spending billions of dollars more on our defense budget than we could afford. We've just not maxed out our credit cards from the Bank of China yet, so it's not as obvious.
No people out of low-earth orbit, no. (I should have said "The US manned space program" in my original post.)
Sure, we've been doing things. Cool things. Hubble, for instance. Making a space station. But that's all rather small potatoes compared to going somewhere that's not Earth.
Oh, yes -- I'm aware of that. That's not a criticism of NASA -- it's a criticism of the United States' screwed-up way of doing things. We spend $600 billion annually on the military, and the Iraq war will cost $2.5 trillion when all is said and done... and yet we can't give NASA enough support that they can launch more than once every four years?
... four years between missions? We went from nothing to the Moon in under ten years; it's taking us four years between test launches of something that we've done before?
Oh, yes -- most chanraids are exactly that, because there's no real impetus to organize on a large scale. But Chanology showed that if you give a bunch of randomly disorganized people sufficient motivation they will efficiently organize just the way you say, without a centralized organizing force.
Just because there's no command authority pointing everyone in the same direction doesn't mean that there's no organization. There was in fact an elaborate system of forums and subforums and IRC channels and wiki pages keeping things organized during the whole thing.
This is also the NASA that is facing such intense political pressure to justify the continuation of its manned spaceflight program -- and the NASA that Feynman slammed for its veneer-over-veracity attitude surrounding the Challenger disaster.
I mean not accepting alternative forms of identification. Theaters aren't obligated to provide a braille copy of the screenplay for blind people, but I would think for a pub to refuse to serve a blind dude some beer because he can't get a driver's license is illegal.
I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to make the GRUB splash screen equal to goatse, with a note "Look hard enough at the dude's rectum -- the login password is written in there. Want to find my pirated stuff? You'll have to work for it."
Life is brutal, but that doesn't mean we should give up on trying to make it less so. Asking whether CT scanners can be redesigned to make this not happen, and whether it's worthwhile to do so, is very valid.
The issue is that monopolies are only bad when customers wind up with a sub-par product, or get otherwise screwed, because nobody can compete with the monopoly.
This is the case with Microsoft and, some people worry, with Google. But digital distribution systems aren't hard to build. If Steam sucks or treats customers like assholes, people can just make another one. Don't have the cash for massive servers? Use bittorrent or similar.
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... is if it would be possible to combine solar-thermal power generation with desalination.
Build Fresnel-lens solar concentrators and stick them near a source of seawater. Boil the water using the sunlight, and use it as the working fluid in an ordinary steam-turbine-type power generator. But instead of recycling the same water once the steam recondenses, realize that you've just made a giant distiller: drink the water and use "new" seawater.
Except if my boss is investigating me, *his* boss gets to know about it.
In this case, Congress' boss is the citizenry.
I help teach a class in computational physics for sophomores.
The VERY FIRST ASSIGNMENT is looking at this. We give them a simple numeric integral to do -- one that they can do analytically -- and tell them to make a log/log plot of the error vs. the number of bins used to do the Riemann sum. Of course they get wrong answers for too few bins (since it's too coarse) and wrong answers for too many bins (floating-point rounding errors). Then we have them do it again with doubles and have them do it again with a better algorithm.
After that we do Euler and Runge-Kutta.
The biggest problem isn't students being blissfully unaware of floating-point precision issues; it's them blaming precision issues when they've really just got broken code.
EMP's propagate well underwater?
In the process Reagan bankrupted us by spending billions of dollars more on our defense budget than we could afford. We've just not maxed out our credit cards from the Bank of China yet, so it's not as obvious.
This, incidentally, is a point that sophomores who have been writing C code for a month and a half can figure out. (My students have.)
The US's "vast military superiority over everyone else on the planet" is due to us spending an equally vast amount of cash on our military.
No people out of low-earth orbit, no. (I should have said "The US manned space program" in my original post.)
Sure, we've been doing things. Cool things. Hubble, for instance. Making a space station. But that's all rather small potatoes compared to going somewhere that's not Earth.
Science and art are, ultimately, about the same thing.
But we're not keeping our parks up either.
Oh, yes -- I'm aware of that. That's not a criticism of NASA -- it's a criticism of the United States' screwed-up way of doing things. We spend $600 billion annually on the military, and the Iraq war will cost $2.5 trillion when all is said and done ... and yet we can't give NASA enough support that they can launch more than once every four years?
My nation is pathetic.
... four years between missions? We went from nothing to the Moon in under ten years; it's taking us four years between test launches of something that we've done before?
My grandfather fell out of a tree when he was 45 years old and powdered his hip and femur. He wasn't able to walk for a year after that.
You can imagine he was pretty excited when he took his first halting step after a year of immobility.
This is sort of like the US space program.
Oh, yes -- most chanraids are exactly that, because there's no real impetus to organize on a large scale. But Chanology showed that if you give a bunch of randomly disorganized people sufficient motivation they will efficiently organize just the way you say, without a centralized organizing force.
Just because there's no command authority pointing everyone in the same direction doesn't mean that there's no organization. There was in fact an elaborate system of forums and subforums and IRC channels and wiki pages keeping things organized during the whole thing.
This is also the NASA that is facing such intense political pressure to justify the continuation of its manned spaceflight program -- and the NASA that Feynman slammed for its veneer-over-veracity attitude surrounding the Challenger disaster.
Maybe they've changed their tune; maybe not.
They put together a global protest involving 60k people in something like ten days.
Chaos can spontaneously organize very effectively under the right conditions. Tom Cruise going nuts is one of them.
Cool story, bro.
... because that would be socialistic.
(or so sayeth the GOP)
I mean not accepting alternative forms of identification. Theaters aren't obligated to provide a braille copy of the screenplay for blind people, but I would think for a pub to refuse to serve a blind dude some beer because he can't get a driver's license is illegal.
Wouldn't that violate the Americans with Disabilities Act?
I, for one, welcome this.
I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to make the GRUB splash screen equal to goatse, with a note "Look hard enough at the dude's rectum -- the login password is written in there. Want to find my pirated stuff? You'll have to work for it."
The trouble is that the retina itself performs some very heavy data compression, so dumping it off the optic nerve isn't a very high quality signal.
Life is brutal, but that doesn't mean we should give up on trying to make it less so. Asking whether CT scanners can be redesigned to make this not happen, and whether it's worthwhile to do so, is very valid.
The issue is that monopolies are only bad when customers wind up with a sub-par product, or get otherwise screwed, because nobody can compete with the monopoly.
This is the case with Microsoft and, some people worry, with Google. But digital distribution systems aren't hard to build. If Steam sucks or treats customers like assholes, people can just make another one. Don't have the cash for massive servers? Use bittorrent or similar.
Thankfully Office is considered quaint where I work. Anybody who wants to be taken seriously uses vi/emacs/kwrite/textpad and LaTeX.
It's a very good security strategy to piss off all your customers with WGA and Windows Media bullshit until they all turn off automatic updates.