I think most wood gasification furnaces/boilers have a bypass feature that is usually used when getting the initial fire built, it basically turns the gasifier into a standard wood burner while a lever is in a certain position. It probably wouldn't be too hard to rig it so that if power was lost the system would automatically kick to bypass. Its a bit of a moot point though these days as most wood burners are being moved outside as boilers in their own separate enclosure (wood burner/gasifier is used to heat water, water is pumped through pex pipe into house where it goes through a heat exchanger of some kind) for insurance, smoke, and fire risk reasons.
"ZOMG GOVERNMENT IS OUTLAWING WOODBURNING COMPLETELY"
These days you don't try to outlaw something, you wrap it in red tape until the industry/organization dies and you call it "common sense". I'm not saying that wood burning stoves don't need improvements, but you don't slap multiple arbitrary, overreaching requirements on them all at once. You do it slowly, over time to give the industry time to adapt, find solutions, retool, etc. Unless that is you are trying to stamp them out, which at first glance seems to be what is happening here. Try this with any other industry and see how it sounds, lets say the automotive industry. From this moment on cars that get less than 30 MPG are no longer saleable, all production lines building such cars must cease immediately, this will effect about 80% of vehicle owners. Can you imagine the outrage, can you imagine the effect on the economy?
They basically force exhaust from the fire down into a secondary burning chamber that burns much hotter and extracts more energy from the same amount of wood and decreases emissions. I think they exhaust slow enough as well that most of the particulates fall out of the exhaust and can be collected in an ash trap. The only issue though is that these burners are much more expensive. I think you can get a standard wood boiler for ~$4,000, I believe wood gasification boilers run $10,000 or more.
So instead of harvesting a renewable resource that is growing not more than a quarter mile from the point of use, I have to rely on a massive mining, transportation, refining, and re transportation network that belches untold amounts of toxins into the atmosphere? Government logic never ceases to amaze me.
Yes and no, yes it has fallen from ~22% but it did that back in 1966, since then it has bounced between 11 & 15%. There seems to be little evidence that the 1964 "war on poverty" did anything but take credit for an already declining poverty rate.
At our current rate our government spends our nation over $4.2 billion further into debt every day. That $24 billion was less than a week of normal federal debt growth. If it can even start us down the road towards a balanced budget it will be well worth it. That is if Standard & Poor's "estimate" is even accurate, more than a few articles have remarked that their numbers are questionable at best.
Could you get much intact DNA from sewage? I have a hard time believing that with the witches brew of chemicals, low sample density & ravenous bacteria you would be able to profile even 1% of the population connected to a particular sewer system.
This is idiotic, what bomb maker is going to dump anything down a drain the second they even suspect that a few areas are going to have these kinds of sensors installed. They'll simply dump it out in the countryside or bury it in the back yard. On top of that with all of the crap people dump down drains I have to imagine that false positives are going to be commonplace. And as others have mentioned while "bomb detection" is the claimed objective drugs/alcohol/pharmaceuticals are going to be the actual target of any such sensor net with a healthy profit margin for the defense contractor subsidiaries designing/installing said net.
The Tea Party, like any political group, is a mix of people with a varied political mindsets. You have many very reasonable Tea Party members, a few "far right" (shutdown the gov, defund everything, etc) and a few "far left" (support the unions, regulate everything, etc). The same can be said of any political group. There is no doubt that the Republicans have tried to co-opt them as a wing of their party, but every Tea Party rally I've ever seen (admittedly only a few) has been equally disappointed in both mainstream political parties. The Tea Party in and of itself is probably never going to bring about meaningful change, but the fact that they have shook up the political landscape a little, forcing some of D.C.s issues (debt, waste, pork, political favors, etc) out into the open I feel is a very good thing and hopefully will continue for many years to come.
That assumes that police will limit themselves to using these ONLY in such situations, it takes a 5 minute Google search to turn up case after case where police used laws/equipment far outside of their original intent. In this case assuming the price comes down and the use of them is not properly tracked officers could easily tag former girlfriends, enemies, & family members to track their whereabouts. Of course it is illegal, but that hasn't stopped officers from threatening to murder people, framing people for vehicular assault, & attempting to destroy evidence. I'm all for police having the tools and legal status to do their work, but there needs to be severe criminal penalties for when they over step their bounds.
I could be misinformed, but last I heard most of the single payer systems (UK, Australia, etc) were trying to wean people off into private health insurers because of unsustainable increases in costs. Not that the our private health system is a sparkling example of efficiency (OK its a dismal nightmare that more than doubles in cost every 10 years) but the answer does not seem to lie in either the single payer system or the private insurance system.
That section specifically says that FOUO documents are NOT classified documents. A person distributing them outside of established guidelines may be in violation of their employment contract but it does not appear to be a crime in and of itself. That section also doesn't seem to prescribe any criminal/civil penalties for violations which would seem to be necessary for it to be considered a "crime".
True, but if a judge can order the confiscation/destruction of programing on a persons personal computer because of an Intellectual Property dispute (Battelle Energy Alliance v. Southfork Security) they can likely order government agencies to cease distribution of illegally confiscated documents and destroy any copies they may have. Sure there is ZERO chance they will completely comply but if they ever try to bring it up in any official proceedings (termination of employment, court case, etc) it likely won't go well for them. But as you noted they will probably still try to use it "unofficially" to varying degrees of success.
Could you reference the law that makes possession of FOUO or LES documents illegal? Seeing as how even the personnel in question seem to not know if this is illegal (He responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it was 'legitimate' for her to have them.) this seems to be a clear violation of the law. Also note that per "Horton V California" there is the requirement that "incriminating character of the object must be "immediately apparent."" to fall under Plain View doctrine exception. There is also case law stating that moving object to check for legal status is also illegal (I think the case specifically relates to an officer moving a stereo to get its SN was deemed to be a violation of the fourth), the officers in question not only moved the documents but removed them from the residence without knowledge that their possession was illegal.
The "plain view doctrine" seems to specifically require that the "incriminating character of the object must be "immediately apparent."" (per Horton V California) Spotting some FOIA documents bearing a federal "please don't distribute" label so you can "make sure it was 'legitimate' for her to have" while serving a firearms warrant seem to be FAR outside of the law.
There's this pesky part of the Fourth Amendment that say "and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.". A warrant is supposed to be specific to the supposed crime, and while sadly there have been "plain site" exceptions tacked on that are being extensively abused (supposed to be so if police spot cocaine while serving a warrant for check fraud its still admissible) this seems a step FAR beyond reasonable. Its like getting a warrant to search for stolen jewelry but confiscating all of their legally owned firearms to test their rifling, serial numbers, etc for any possible criminal connections, it is completely outside the scope of the original warrant and should be highly illegal.
For a forest fire or flooding situation you'd probably be right, minutes aren't going to matter much. But for something like a poison gas release at a chemical plant or tornado warning seconds can count. Theirs stories from tornado alley where people heard an emergency alert over the radio/TV and as they were making their way to their basement/shelter a minute later the house was being torn apart around them.
Much of the early history of the car was seen in the same light. As the automobile became more popular inexperienced drivers, unwary pedestrians, faulty designs & poor safety systems caused many injuries,fatalities & property damage. And just because a "flying car" has a mechanical issue doesn't mean the occupants are doomed, even today many small aircraft have a "Ballistic Parachute" which deploys a parachute large enough and quick enough to safely land an entire light aircraft.
It does look like one of the better flying car designs. Its not simply a car with some wings that can be strapped to it and it looks to be pretty decent on the roads. I suppose the only questions left would be cost, if its going to cost $400K plus for one you're not going to see much interest beyond millionaires. But if it is in the $50 - $100K range and proves to be a stable aircraft that can be flown regularly it could very well see widespread usage.
I lived out in San Diego for about 9 months (somewhere around Rancho San Diego I think), If there was a (small) furnace hidden in that house somewhere it never came on the entire time I was there. I can't recall what I would have considered to a "chilly" morning, though being Southern California the varying climates could get crazy. You could be sweating on the patio at lunch, jump in the car and in an hour or two be skiing, another hour drive and you could be in the desert.
Without some kind of conveyance system this building is going to be next to useless. Either some kind of shuttle or miniature rail system, maybe even those horizontal escalators they have in airports would do the job. But no one is going to work in a building where you have to walk several miles every day. And whats with all of the soft focus renderings? Was the software they were using so bad that they had to blur every single image to make them look less crappy?
" the stunning net-zero home is a versatile enough for life in both sunny California or the team's more temperate native land."
Austria, if I'm not mistaken, can have some pretty heavy snowfall. I have a hard time believing this kind of house is practical in that kind of climate. It seems specifically suited to southern California/Florida climates where homes sometimes don't even have furnaces, let alone have to deal with significant snowfall.
So instead of using a $5 metal ash tray, they have to design a heavy glass ashtray that will break into three shard-less pieces? And what was that ashtray doing on an office desk instead of a nuclear sub where the questionable reasoning for its existence supposedly lied? I know its just a TV show (West Wing), but sadly in this case I am sure that real life imitates art and this kind of thinly veiled excuse to burn massive amounts of taxpayer money is commonplace in our federal government.
If this is the same system I saw a few years ago there is no chance of runaway reactions or explosions. Basically they put a BB sized amount of fuel into the center of a several story sphere and blast it with a bunch of lasers for a femtosecond. The amount of energy produced is basically a combination of the amount/type of fuel placed in the center of the chamber and the amount of laser energy they are able to hit it with. Sure they could put a baseball sized chunk of fuel in, but with the available laser energy it would never go nuclear. At current there is no way of adding fuel continuously to the chamber, and even if there were I don't think the lasers can fire in a sustained fashion.
"that to manage people effectively is to delegate, and then get out of the way."
This is a very good lesson to teach when, as in the case of most managers, they have no clue as to the subject at hand. It does not apply when the manager actually DOES have a decent amount of expertise in the field. For example you wouldn't want someone with a background only in management and dentistry to micromanage a group of turbine engineers. However switch that experience in dentistry to schooling/experience in high pressure fluid dynamics and/or mechanical engineering they would possibly have something to contribute via micromanagement.
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I think most wood gasification furnaces/boilers have a bypass feature that is usually used when getting the initial fire built, it basically turns the gasifier into a standard wood burner while a lever is in a certain position. It probably wouldn't be too hard to rig it so that if power was lost the system would automatically kick to bypass. Its a bit of a moot point though these days as most wood burners are being moved outside as boilers in their own separate enclosure (wood burner/gasifier is used to heat water, water is pumped through pex pipe into house where it goes through a heat exchanger of some kind) for insurance, smoke, and fire risk reasons.
"ZOMG GOVERNMENT IS OUTLAWING WOODBURNING COMPLETELY"
These days you don't try to outlaw something, you wrap it in red tape until the industry/organization dies and you call it "common sense". I'm not saying that wood burning stoves don't need improvements, but you don't slap multiple arbitrary, overreaching requirements on them all at once. You do it slowly, over time to give the industry time to adapt, find solutions, retool, etc. Unless that is you are trying to stamp them out, which at first glance seems to be what is happening here. Try this with any other industry and see how it sounds, lets say the automotive industry. From this moment on cars that get less than 30 MPG are no longer saleable, all production lines building such cars must cease immediately, this will effect about 80% of vehicle owners. Can you imagine the outrage, can you imagine the effect on the economy?
They already do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fui5d946rW8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vSEspltuM
http://www.centralboiler.com/e-classic.html
They basically force exhaust from the fire down into a secondary burning chamber that burns much hotter and extracts more energy from the same amount of wood and decreases emissions. I think they exhaust slow enough as well that most of the particulates fall out of the exhaust and can be collected in an ash trap. The only issue though is that these burners are much more expensive. I think you can get a standard wood boiler for ~$4,000, I believe wood gasification boilers run $10,000 or more.
So instead of harvesting a renewable resource that is growing not more than a quarter mile from the point of use, I have to rely on a massive mining, transportation, refining, and re transportation network that belches untold amounts of toxins into the atmosphere? Government logic never ceases to amaze me.
"22% to 15% over the last 50 years."
Yes and no, yes it has fallen from ~22% but it did that back in 1966, since then it has bounced between 11 & 15%. There seems to be little evidence that the 1964 "war on poverty" did anything but take credit for an already declining poverty rate.
At our current rate our government spends our nation over $4.2 billion further into debt every day. That $24 billion was less than a week of normal federal debt growth. If it can even start us down the road towards a balanced budget it will be well worth it. That is if Standard & Poor's "estimate" is even accurate, more than a few articles have remarked that their numbers are questionable at best.
Could you get much intact DNA from sewage? I have a hard time believing that with the witches brew of chemicals, low sample density & ravenous bacteria you would be able to profile even 1% of the population connected to a particular sewer system.
This is idiotic, what bomb maker is going to dump anything down a drain the second they even suspect that a few areas are going to have these kinds of sensors installed. They'll simply dump it out in the countryside or bury it in the back yard. On top of that with all of the crap people dump down drains I have to imagine that false positives are going to be commonplace. And as others have mentioned while "bomb detection" is the claimed objective drugs/alcohol/pharmaceuticals are going to be the actual target of any such sensor net with a healthy profit margin for the defense contractor subsidiaries designing/installing said net.
The Tea Party, like any political group, is a mix of people with a varied political mindsets. You have many very reasonable Tea Party members, a few "far right" (shutdown the gov, defund everything, etc) and a few "far left" (support the unions, regulate everything, etc). The same can be said of any political group. There is no doubt that the Republicans have tried to co-opt them as a wing of their party, but every Tea Party rally I've ever seen (admittedly only a few) has been equally disappointed in both mainstream political parties. The Tea Party in and of itself is probably never going to bring about meaningful change, but the fact that they have shook up the political landscape a little, forcing some of D.C.s issues (debt, waste, pork, political favors, etc) out into the open I feel is a very good thing and hopefully will continue for many years to come.
"A hot pursuit is the perfect situation"
That assumes that police will limit themselves to using these ONLY in such situations, it takes a 5 minute Google search to turn up case after case where police used laws/equipment far outside of their original intent. In this case assuming the price comes down and the use of them is not properly tracked officers could easily tag former girlfriends, enemies, & family members to track their whereabouts. Of course it is illegal, but that hasn't stopped officers from threatening to murder people, framing people for vehicular assault, & attempting to destroy evidence. I'm all for police having the tools and legal status to do their work, but there needs to be severe criminal penalties for when they over step their bounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pjXKCKyP44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuyvzWwvRBM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MesDaXPkrNQ
I could be misinformed, but last I heard most of the single payer systems (UK, Australia, etc) were trying to wean people off into private health insurers because of unsustainable increases in costs. Not that the our private health system is a sparkling example of efficiency (OK its a dismal nightmare that more than doubles in cost every 10 years) but the answer does not seem to lie in either the single payer system or the private insurance system.
That section specifically says that FOUO documents are NOT classified documents. A person distributing them outside of established guidelines may be in violation of their employment contract but it does not appear to be a crime in and of itself. That section also doesn't seem to prescribe any criminal/civil penalties for violations which would seem to be necessary for it to be considered a "crime".
True, but if a judge can order the confiscation/destruction of programing on a persons personal computer because of an Intellectual Property dispute (Battelle Energy Alliance v. Southfork Security) they can likely order government agencies to cease distribution of illegally confiscated documents and destroy any copies they may have. Sure there is ZERO chance they will completely comply but if they ever try to bring it up in any official proceedings (termination of employment, court case, etc) it likely won't go well for them. But as you noted they will probably still try to use it "unofficially" to varying degrees of success.
Could you reference the law that makes possession of FOUO or LES documents illegal? Seeing as how even the personnel in question seem to not know if this is illegal (He responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it was 'legitimate' for her to have them.) this seems to be a clear violation of the law. Also note that per "Horton V California" there is the requirement that "incriminating character of the object must be "immediately apparent."" to fall under Plain View doctrine exception. There is also case law stating that moving object to check for legal status is also illegal (I think the case specifically relates to an officer moving a stereo to get its SN was deemed to be a violation of the fourth), the officers in question not only moved the documents but removed them from the residence without knowledge that their possession was illegal.
The "plain view doctrine" seems to specifically require that the "incriminating character of the object must be "immediately apparent."" (per Horton V California) Spotting some FOIA documents bearing a federal "please don't distribute" label so you can "make sure it was 'legitimate' for her to have" while serving a firearms warrant seem to be FAR outside of the law.
There's this pesky part of the Fourth Amendment that say "and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.". A warrant is supposed to be specific to the supposed crime, and while sadly there have been "plain site" exceptions tacked on that are being extensively abused (supposed to be so if police spot cocaine while serving a warrant for check fraud its still admissible) this seems a step FAR beyond reasonable. Its like getting a warrant to search for stolen jewelry but confiscating all of their legally owned firearms to test their rifling, serial numbers, etc for any possible criminal connections, it is completely outside the scope of the original warrant and should be highly illegal.
For a forest fire or flooding situation you'd probably be right, minutes aren't going to matter much. But for something like a poison gas release at a chemical plant or tornado warning seconds can count. Theirs stories from tornado alley where people heard an emergency alert over the radio/TV and as they were making their way to their basement/shelter a minute later the house was being torn apart around them.
Much of the early history of the car was seen in the same light. As the automobile became more popular inexperienced drivers, unwary pedestrians, faulty designs & poor safety systems caused many injuries ,fatalities & property damage. And just because a "flying car" has a mechanical issue doesn't mean the occupants are doomed, even today many small aircraft have a "Ballistic Parachute" which deploys a parachute large enough and quick enough to safely land an entire light aircraft.
It does look like one of the better flying car designs. Its not simply a car with some wings that can be strapped to it and it looks to be pretty decent on the roads. I suppose the only questions left would be cost, if its going to cost $400K plus for one you're not going to see much interest beyond millionaires. But if it is in the $50 - $100K range and proves to be a stable aircraft that can be flown regularly it could very well see widespread usage.
I lived out in San Diego for about 9 months (somewhere around Rancho San Diego I think), If there was a (small) furnace hidden in that house somewhere it never came on the entire time I was there. I can't recall what I would have considered to a "chilly" morning, though being Southern California the varying climates could get crazy. You could be sweating on the patio at lunch, jump in the car and in an hour or two be skiing, another hour drive and you could be in the desert.
Without some kind of conveyance system this building is going to be next to useless. Either some kind of shuttle or miniature rail system, maybe even those horizontal escalators they have in airports would do the job. But no one is going to work in a building where you have to walk several miles every day. And whats with all of the soft focus renderings? Was the software they were using so bad that they had to blur every single image to make them look less crappy?
" the stunning net-zero home is a versatile enough for life in both sunny California or the team's more temperate native land."
Austria, if I'm not mistaken, can have some pretty heavy snowfall. I have a hard time believing this kind of house is practical in that kind of climate. It seems specifically suited to southern California/Florida climates where homes sometimes don't even have furnaces, let alone have to deal with significant snowfall.
So instead of using a $5 metal ash tray, they have to design a heavy glass ashtray that will break into three shard-less pieces? And what was that ashtray doing on an office desk instead of a nuclear sub where the questionable reasoning for its existence supposedly lied? I know its just a TV show (West Wing), but sadly in this case I am sure that real life imitates art and this kind of thinly veiled excuse to burn massive amounts of taxpayer money is commonplace in our federal government.
If this is the same system I saw a few years ago there is no chance of runaway reactions or explosions. Basically they put a BB sized amount of fuel into the center of a several story sphere and blast it with a bunch of lasers for a femtosecond. The amount of energy produced is basically a combination of the amount/type of fuel placed in the center of the chamber and the amount of laser energy they are able to hit it with. Sure they could put a baseball sized chunk of fuel in, but with the available laser energy it would never go nuclear. At current there is no way of adding fuel continuously to the chamber, and even if there were I don't think the lasers can fire in a sustained fashion.
"that to manage people effectively is to delegate, and then get out of the way."
This is a very good lesson to teach when, as in the case of most managers, they have no clue as to the subject at hand. It does not apply when the manager actually DOES have a decent amount of expertise in the field. For example you wouldn't want someone with a background only in management and dentistry to micromanage a group of turbine engineers. However switch that experience in dentistry to schooling/experience in high pressure fluid dynamics and/or mechanical engineering they would possibly have something to contribute via micromanagement.