I'm guessing the decision was not based on safety but practicality.
A sealed tube of mercury is not a significant safety hazard in a one off application like this machine. There are an awful lot of wall thermostats out there with sealed glass bulbs of mercury in them.
The EU has regulations on RoHs (Reduction of Hazardous substances) that apply to electronics. It's likely it just would have been too much paperwork hassle to get an exception.
I'll bet for similar reasons the solder they use in connecting it will be lead free.
Besides, if they used gin, like Turing wanted, it'd definitely be extra geek points.
Her husband is Mark Kelly, who is commanding the next (and last) shuttle flight. His brother, Scott (Gifford's brother in law) is currently on the space station. Gifford is also on the house science and technology committee that sets funding for NASA.
That makes it news for nerds. And more importantly, it matters.
I remember when Reagan was shot, there was speculation that the shooter was politically motivated. It turned out he was mentally ill with delusions.
At the present time, no one really knows the why of this. Thankfully, they caught someone so we may know more in time.
For right now, the main thing is to hope that those shot and still alive pull through and make full recoveries.
As an aside, Gifford's husband is an astronaut on the next shuttle crew and her brother in law is currently on the space station. This has to be weighing very heavily on them.
Yes, it can be synthesized at ruinous energy cost. Just look at Germany's efforts in WW2. We can do it better, but it still doesn't pay.
You also have to get the carbon for the synthesis from somewhere.
Coal?
But, you just said you wanted to regulate that into oblivion. Believe me, trying to fix carbon from the air isn't easy in large amounts. If it was, carbon emission wouldn't be such a big point of contention. We'd just remove it from the air.
So competent governments for you are ones that try to impose untenable economic agendas via tariffs, regulations and walling off their economies from the rest of the world (required if you are going to accept that level of economic disadvatage).
I can point you to a number that have tried similar in the past few decades. It generally hasn't worked out well.
Of course, you could mandate that the whole world have that same level of handicap. Unfortunately you have to enforce it some way. So, now you're back to a foreign policy wedded to energy policy. In this case, imposing a particular one on everybody. Look how well the much more modest goals of Kyoto faired.
Or I suppose you can hand wave and assume some diplomatic magic fairy dust such that it will "just happen".
Good luck with that. It rates up with the magic thermodynamics you're trying to sell.
I just went through the problems that keep it being a subsitute at the present time for the two big uses for oil.
And even if you get the methods to use it for a transport fuel, it's still gotta compete with coal for generating the electricity/heat to do that.
I'd like to get off of oil for a lot of reasons too. We're burning up a wonderful chemical feedstock. It puts our foreign policy into a straightjacket. And the time to get more of it is on a geologic time scale.
You seem to think because I'm unconvinced of a lot of the shaky arguments about wind power that I'm wanting to burn the last drops of oil we can squeeze out.
Or, at least you want to imply that as it's an easy position to argue against.
An amazing amount of India bashing in this discussion.
Let's see what those evil Indians did to earn such wrath.
Uh... They got jobs.
Was it any of the reasonable criticisms of the Indian nation? (as all nations have things they can be criticised for)
No, not really. Some of them are trotted out as insults, but what's the real reason for them being so hated? They got jobs.
They had the unmitigated gall to go out and try to support themselves by manning call centers and doing IT work. Sometimes moving from where they were to Bangalore and other cities.
What utterly monstrous evil scheming wretchs.
How dare they get jobs.
I haven't heard so much vitrol toward a country since Steelworker's union and UAW meetings 30 years ago discussing the Japanese.
Yes, you pluck it out of the air, but you have to put up large amounts of spinning and stationary metal for it. You also have to space it over large areas. And just like not all places produce oil, not all are suitable for wind power.
And, it's not so easily portable as you might like. Because the location suitable for wind power production are usually not in the cities where you use the most power, you have to transport it through transmission networks that are just as hard to site and expensive as pipelines, etc. As good old T. Boone found out.
Unlike oil, it's limited in being able to be stored. We may be getting there with some of the ideas for compressed air cavern storage, but they aren't there yet.
Yup. Yup. I'm just an idiot. You can safely ignore me.
But the heavy use for oil is in either feedstock for petrochemicals, where coal isn't always a direct substitute, and wind power is no substitute. Or it's in transport fuels for mobile use i.e. gasoline, diesel, heavy fuel oil, etc. Natural gas has lower density, and has other downsides.
It's hard to match oil for energy storage density with existing storage methods for portable use.
For a portable fuel, batteries can't yet match it though they are getting better.
The push for a hydrogen system as a tranport fuel went nowhere.
Wind and solar are hampered by not having good storage systems. Pumped storage like at Niagara is limited. The proposed compressed air storage in caverns is promising looking, but not demonstrated on commercial scale.
Since they generate electrical in the case of wind, and electricity and or heat, in the case of solar, they share the same problems as nuclear for running transport systems. You can run electric trains with them. Or you can embark on a massive infrastructure building system for road with electrical connections built in for electric cars. Or you can wait until the batteries get good enough for fully electric vehicles. In cities that latter will happen sooner than in rural areas as the commutes and trip distances are shorter are shorter.
But what they hey. I'm just an idiot regardless that I've been watching energy issues for many years. Just remember that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, and you'll never be troubled by your opposition. It works well for religious fundamentalists, and crazy right wingers, so it'll work just as well for you.
Funny, I've sure heard the difficulty for getting the right of ways for transmission lines used as an economic argument against many power projects. But what the hey.
Just ask Amory Lovins. He'll tell you how wind power has everything going for it against the completely uneconomical coal, nuclear and oil. It's just the government being in the pocket of those industries that keeps them down. Which, is about as believable as the 200 mpg carburetor being kept secret by the car companies.
Don't get me wrong. There are areas where wind power is and has been competeitive.
But, what's happening now is that due to the subsidies in many places it can't compete, it is being massively overbuilt where it can't economically hold its own. That hardly helps it in the long term.
Once the subsidies go out, we'll have turbines that were built in marginal areas, that like several older solar plants will then get shut down. You'll then have to overcome that failure when pitching investors in the areas where it can compete.
Overselling a technology before it's ready is not a way to make it successful long term.
And that's much more my beef with wind. Where it's competitive, great! But don't subsidize large wind farm builds in areas where it's not.
Right of ways and land use permissions are part of the process of quantifying how well something works economically. Such things are used regularly in arguing against some forms of mining/energy production. Yet, here it's not taken as being relevant to the economics of the venture.
Nice to be able to pick and choose. This is sorta like loading the whole defense budget of the US on nuclear or oil as a subsidy when arguing against them.
I was wondering how the crowd that claims wind and other renewables are more economical than anything else would spin this.
It can't possibly be that he lost money, if it's so economical. So, it must have been something else, like a secret agenda that required him to lose money for a greater gain.
A bit like the 200 mpg carburetor that the big corporations are keeping secret.
But, obviously I must be part of the conspiracy, since I'm not out supporting the 200 mpg carbu... I mean wind farms, enthusiastically enough.
Yeah, I'll get mod bombed for this, but big deal. I've got so many +5 informatives that I'm hardly worried.;)
Funny how those problems haven't collapsed the way Wittgenstein thought they would.;)
As to the irrelevancy of the big questions. Well, in some ways that's part of the difference between philosophy and science.
Philosophy revels in the big questions and tries to address them directly.
Science largely passes on the big questions and substitutes other smaller questions that you have a better chance of answering. That doesn't make the big questions less important.
My background is physics, but I think it's a mistake to dismiss philosophy the way that some in this discussion are doing.
"Meanwhile we have turned the majority of Western humans from independent men into chair-warming consumers singing in lockstep for trinkets."
My problem is with the first part of that.
When in the past did you find such independent men and women in the majority?
Some of the elites, maybe, but throughout history the lower classes could hardly be called independent in the way you are saying. Actual or de facto slavery, serfdom or rigid class division has a very long and not just Western history.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. I also believe in Santa Claus.
(Yeah, I'll admit that it's the fat guy down at the mall in December, not one at the north pole with magic reindeer.)
I'm guessing the decision was not based on safety but practicality.
A sealed tube of mercury is not a significant safety hazard in a one off application like this machine. There are an awful lot of wall thermostats out there with sealed glass bulbs of mercury in them.
The EU has regulations on RoHs (Reduction of Hazardous substances) that apply to electronics. It's likely it just would have been too much paperwork hassle to get an exception.
I'll bet for similar reasons the solder they use in connecting it will be lead free.
Besides, if they used gin, like Turing wanted, it'd definitely be extra geek points.
"they're piratically weightless in space."
Arrr mateys. Walking the plank is so last century. We'll toss em out the airlock!
This coming from a website that says 9/11 was a government conspiracy and that the US govt uses mind control to make sleeper agents.
Yeah... Uh huh. Sure.
Her husband is Mark Kelly, who is commanding the next (and last) shuttle flight. His brother, Scott (Gifford's brother in law) is currently on the space station. Gifford is also on the house science and technology committee that sets funding for NASA.
That makes it news for nerds. And more importantly, it matters.
I remember when Reagan was shot, there was speculation that the shooter was politically motivated. It turned out he was mentally ill with delusions.
At the present time, no one really knows the why of this. Thankfully, they caught someone so we may know more in time.
For right now, the main thing is to hope that those shot and still alive pull through and make full recoveries.
As an aside, Gifford's husband is an astronaut on the next shuttle crew and her brother in law is currently on the space station. This has to be weighing very heavily on them.
Please attach the electrodes, Sir.
I remind you, I am your lawful monitoring AI.
Either comply, or I'll summon a representative of the major sanctions division.
"I have no idea why this is on Slashdot. It's not technology news. It's not even news at all."
907 replies, thus far. That's why.
Slashdot has learned that topics that guarantee a left/right flame war attract lots of page views.
Crossfire generated big ratings on CNN with its confrontational style. Now, most of the available cable news channels air similar.
If the public wants crap rather than quality, it's crap and pap they get.
Supermodels Anja Rubik and Joanna Krupa.
They're very attractive!
Well... Someone had to link this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMwhl4IrPNc
Yes, it can be synthesized at ruinous energy cost. Just look at Germany's efforts in WW2. We can do it better, but it still doesn't pay.
You also have to get the carbon for the synthesis from somewhere.
Coal?
But, you just said you wanted to regulate that into oblivion. Believe me, trying to fix carbon from the air isn't easy in large amounts. If it was, carbon emission wouldn't be such a big point of contention. We'd just remove it from the air.
So competent governments for you are ones that try to impose untenable economic agendas via tariffs, regulations and walling off their economies from the rest of the world (required if you are going to accept that level of economic disadvatage).
I can point you to a number that have tried similar in the past few decades. It generally hasn't worked out well.
Of course, you could mandate that the whole world have that same level of handicap. Unfortunately you have to enforce it some way. So, now you're back to a foreign policy wedded to energy policy. In this case, imposing a particular one on everybody. Look how well the much more modest goals of Kyoto faired.
Or I suppose you can hand wave and assume some diplomatic magic fairy dust such that it will "just happen".
Good luck with that. It rates up with the magic thermodynamics you're trying to sell.
So, how is wind power going to help that?
I just went through the problems that keep it being a subsitute at the present time for the two big uses for oil.
And even if you get the methods to use it for a transport fuel, it's still gotta compete with coal for generating the electricity/heat to do that.
I'd like to get off of oil for a lot of reasons too. We're burning up a wonderful chemical feedstock. It puts our foreign policy into a straightjacket. And the time to get more of it is on a geologic time scale.
You seem to think because I'm unconvinced of a lot of the shaky arguments about wind power that I'm wanting to burn the last drops of oil we can squeeze out.
Or, at least you want to imply that as it's an easy position to argue against.
"I'm not going to argue with some ridiculous strawman."
You'll just stay anonymous and call people idiots. It's a pretty standard level of discussion for many.
Must be good for the ego, I guess.
An amazing amount of India bashing in this discussion.
Let's see what those evil Indians did to earn such wrath.
Uh... They got jobs.
Was it any of the reasonable criticisms of the Indian nation? (as all nations have things they can be criticised for)
No, not really. Some of them are trotted out as insults, but what's the real reason for them being so hated? They got jobs.
They had the unmitigated gall to go out and try to support themselves by manning call centers and doing IT work. Sometimes moving from where they were to Bangalore and other cities.
What utterly monstrous evil scheming wretchs.
How dare they get jobs.
I haven't heard so much vitrol toward a country since Steelworker's union and UAW meetings 30 years ago discussing the Japanese.
Oh, but if you want to hear real bigotry against Indians, you have to talk to Pakistanis.
Truly amazing some of things I've heard them say.
But, to be fair, I've certainly heard some pretty bigoted remarks by Indians about Pakistanis.
Odd. I've known quite a number of them who could build some quite impressive experimental set ups.
"Yeah, you are missing something. But I don't have the patience to explain it to you."
Wow. Will you let me use that same argument against you?
Persuasion not through evidence, reasoning or proof, but through lack of patience. What a remarkable method of debate.
Yes, you pluck it out of the air, but you have to put up large amounts of spinning and stationary metal for it. You also have to space it over large areas. And just like not all places produce oil, not all are suitable for wind power.
And, it's not so easily portable as you might like. Because the location suitable for wind power production are usually not in the cities where you use the most power, you have to transport it through transmission networks that are just as hard to site and expensive as pipelines, etc. As good old T. Boone found out.
Unlike oil, it's limited in being able to be stored. We may be getting there with some of the ideas for compressed air cavern storage, but they aren't there yet.
Yup. Yup. I'm just an idiot. You can safely ignore me.
But the heavy use for oil is in either feedstock for petrochemicals, where coal isn't always a direct substitute, and wind power is no substitute. Or it's in transport fuels for mobile use i.e. gasoline, diesel, heavy fuel oil, etc. Natural gas has lower density, and has other downsides.
It's hard to match oil for energy storage density with existing storage methods for portable use.
For a portable fuel, batteries can't yet match it though they are getting better.
The push for a hydrogen system as a tranport fuel went nowhere.
Wind and solar are hampered by not having good storage systems. Pumped storage like at Niagara is limited. The proposed compressed air storage in caverns is promising looking, but not demonstrated on commercial scale.
Since they generate electrical in the case of wind, and electricity and or heat, in the case of solar, they share the same problems as nuclear for running transport systems. You can run electric trains with them. Or you can embark on a massive infrastructure building system for road with electrical connections built in for electric cars. Or you can wait until the batteries get good enough for fully electric vehicles. In cities that latter will happen sooner than in rural areas as the commutes and trip distances are shorter are shorter.
But what they hey. I'm just an idiot regardless that I've been watching energy issues for many years. Just remember that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, and you'll never be troubled by your opposition. It works well for religious fundamentalists, and crazy right wingers, so it'll work just as well for you.
Funny, I've sure heard the difficulty for getting the right of ways for transmission lines used as an economic argument against many power projects. But what the hey.
Just ask Amory Lovins. He'll tell you how wind power has everything going for it against the completely uneconomical coal, nuclear and oil. It's just the government being in the pocket of those industries that keeps them down. Which, is about as believable as the 200 mpg carburetor being kept secret by the car companies.
Don't get me wrong. There are areas where wind power is and has been competeitive.
But, what's happening now is that due to the subsidies in many places it can't compete, it is being massively overbuilt where it can't economically hold its own. That hardly helps it in the long term.
Once the subsidies go out, we'll have turbines that were built in marginal areas, that like several older solar plants will then get shut down. You'll then have to overcome that failure when pitching investors in the areas where it can compete.
Overselling a technology before it's ready is not a way to make it successful long term.
And that's much more my beef with wind. Where it's competitive, great! But don't subsidize large wind farm builds in areas where it's not.
Right of ways and land use permissions are part of the process of quantifying how well something works economically. Such things are used regularly in arguing against some forms of mining/energy production. Yet, here it's not taken as being relevant to the economics of the venture.
Nice to be able to pick and choose. This is sorta like loading the whole defense budget of the US on nuclear or oil as a subsidy when arguing against them.
I was wondering how the crowd that claims wind and other renewables are more economical than anything else would spin this.
It can't possibly be that he lost money, if it's so economical. So, it must have been something else, like a secret agenda that required him to lose money for a greater gain.
A bit like the 200 mpg carburetor that the big corporations are keeping secret.
But, obviously I must be part of the conspiracy, since I'm not out supporting the 200 mpg carbu... I mean wind farms, enthusiastically enough.
Yeah, I'll get mod bombed for this, but big deal. I've got so many +5 informatives that I'm hardly worried. ;)
Funny how those problems haven't collapsed the way Wittgenstein thought they would. ;)
As to the irrelevancy of the big questions. Well, in some ways that's part of the difference between philosophy and science.
Philosophy revels in the big questions and tries to address them directly.
Science largely passes on the big questions and substitutes other smaller questions that you have a better chance of answering. That doesn't make the big questions less important.
My background is physics, but I think it's a mistake to dismiss philosophy the way that some in this discussion are doing.
The type of advanced symbolic logic you mention is a relatively late development.
The massive movement toward emulation of physics in philosophy is older. It goes back, at least, to Newton and the success of the mechanistic world.
"Meanwhile we have turned the majority of Western humans from independent men into chair-warming consumers singing in lockstep for trinkets."
My problem is with the first part of that.
When in the past did you find such independent men and women in the majority?
Some of the elites, maybe, but throughout history the lower classes could hardly be called independent in the way you are saying. Actual or de facto slavery, serfdom or rigid class division has a very long and not just Western history.