This need for better batteries reminds me of the Robert A. Heinlein novel Friday.
The guy who owned most of the country did so because he invented basically a super-battery. And it's true. Someone who could invent a 50-lb briefcase-sized brick that could give a car 150 hp and a 300-mile range in adverse conditions (A/C or heater on) would be a zillionaire.
My mom was a computer operator in the 70s
on
Girls Go Geek Again
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· Score: 3, Insightful
These days your average person pushes a button, types in a username/password, and starts clicking things to get to work.
She powered up various large devices in order, typed a long hex boot string into the system, then proceded to load punch cards, open reel tapes and hard drive cake platters, and perform other various complicated tasks.
Long ago on cars you didn't have to fumble with keys, you cranked the car.
Then came self-starters. You turned a key to enable the ignition system, then pushed a starter button. Key-as-starter-button came much later.
This goes back to the old time, simply push the starter button. Only now the key is high-tech wireless and you don't even have to insert or turn it, just have it in your pocket.
My "carbon footprint" would shrink to a tiny fraction of what it is now. I'd have an ultra-insulated house, underground pool to help the cooling, rewire the house for LED lighting, solar panels, an electric car for 90% of my driving (no hybrid, electric would do it), an ultra-efficient fridge, and ultra-efficient washer/dryer, etc.
Anybody got a couple hundred grand lying around to make me eco-friendly through technology?
A lot of these dreamers forget that not everybody's rich.
Of course throughout history the person who fights against the group-think has been persecuted, so maybe skepticism being undesired is the history and persecution of deniers is the norm.
I was hoping we'd left that behind along with the witch hunts.
There is a reason long-term capital gains taxes are lower. One, it's incentive to invest, which keeps companies going, which keeps and makes jobs. Second, capital gains have already gone through business taxes and have taken a hit for inflation. A lower tax rate compensates for these built-in losses to investments.
I'm rich and invest $1 million in an average stock. It made 10% in a year and I pull out the $100,000 profit. I pay my full 35% income tax on that, $35,000, for a supposedly realized profit of $65,000.
But what about inflation? The 2.3% inflation rate carved $23,000 of the value out of my $1 million in that year. After taxes my inflation-adjusted profit is only $42,000. The government, through its inflationary monetary policy and taxes, just effectively took 58%.
Now let's do it with the 15% capital gains tax. I make $100,000, tax is $15,000, inflation loss is $23,000, I get $62,000. The government, through inflation and taxes, took 38%, a bit higher than my income tax rate, but at least in the same ballpark so as to make sense.
This inflation compensation doesn't count much in normal non-invested income because you make it this year, you spend it this year. Investments can get killed by inflation as shown above, so capital gains tax eases that. This makes investment, a necessary driver of our economy and the source of almost everybody's retirement funds, more attractive.
That's a constant in a known equation, and you'd use it only once ever in your program. But he'd still want us to define the constant HP_CONVERSION_FACTOR(5252) and use that in the equation.
If they don't authorize it by law, then any debt above the current authorized amount is simply not valid and can be questioned. Right now they're trying to authorize more debt by law so that further debt will be valid and not questioned. It doesn't say we can't default on payments on the current debt.
The Constitution is really very simple. It's people twisting it to mean what they want as opposed to what's in the text that makes it complicated.
The "tax break" on "jets" was part of Obama's own stimulus plan. What a hypocrite.
The "tax break" was really accelerated depreciation on private aircraft, all the way down to two-person, single-engine Pipers, not just big jets. The company still pays in full, but they get to write off the depreciation faster. This was meant to spur jobs in a very delicate industry that was still reeling from 9/11 and had been hit very hard by the recession because their regular customers were too worried about spending that kind of money in that economic environment.
It worked, too. Orders shot up and jobs were saved all across the country. The government probably made more tax revenue from the jobs and airplane manufacturers than it lost on the depreciation.
And we do have tax breaks for washing machines in the form of energy saver tax credits and rebates.
If we confiscated the ENTIRE net worth of the Forbes 400 richest people in America, we would get $1.4 trillion, barely enough to cover the 2010 deficit.
Then we're left screwed for next year because we will not have gotten our spending under control.
He's the one who has threatened that people might not get their checks.
The other side (which includes some Democrats) is trying to get him to accept a plan that will have some hope of putting this country back on track to solvency.
I'd say somewhere between 40-50% (but I'm going from old memory). Given the tax system is supposed to be progressive (you mightn't like that, but clearly it is designed to be so) having 45% of the income pay 70% of the taxes doesn't seem unreasonable
Your numbers are about correct for 2008. I am not contesting the reasonableness of the current situation either way. My problem is when demagogues such as Obama try to portray these people as greedy freeloaders who aren't paying their "fair share" when their tax burden is already quite disproportionally progressive.
Note also the historical trend from that page. Since 1980 (from before Reagan, starting in the Carter years) the top 5% have gone from paying 36% to 58% of income taxes, while their income has gone from 21% to 34%. Notice the expanding gap between income earned and taxes paid, was 15%, and is now 24%. We have become steadily more progressive over the years, and Obama still says they're not paying their "fair share."
It's pure unabashed class warfare demagoguery.
The real complaint is the rules that allow hedge fund managers to claim what is clearly income as capital gains.
That is quite the loophole that needs to be closed.
That post was a statement of reality. Muslims give up nothing, ever, except by force, and they want everything. They have their #1 and #2 holy places, and would go to war over allowing Israel to have their #1.
Muslims have over a dozen countries spread over a very wide area that are under direct Sharia law that does not respect non-Muslims as equals, and even punishes the preaching any other religion. They have many more that are majority Muslim and effectively ruled as Muslim.
Yet they begrudge the very existence of one tiny country with a Jewish majority that has a basic law that dictates the equal rights of minority non-Jewish citizens, including the 1/6 Muslim population.
A Cessna 140 has about an 85 hp engine, which translates to 62 kW as you said. It has 15 sq/m of wing area, say we can use even 10 at 1 kW/sqm. That's about 13 hp. I doubt you'll even be able to cruise with that. Think about it, that's the power of two average lawnmowers, it's not going to keep a Cessna in the air.
Forget batteries. The gross weight of the Cessna is only 250 kg higher than the empty weight. Say person weight of 75 kg, two people, you have 100 kg left for batteries. Cruise is usually 50% power, 31 kW. The 24 kW/h battery in a Nissan Leaf weighs 300 kg. Take 1/3 of that to fit it and you have 8 kW/h for flight. That means 15 minutes cruise. The full-power takeoff probably more than offsets the 2.5 kW/h you'll charge in-flight with the solar cells.
Oops, I forgot to calculate in the weight of the solar cells...
Batteries just can't carry their own load in a commercial transport or passenger airplane. It's a great idea for a recon drone-type vehicle that's almost all wing, slowly circling above on solar power, using batteries to stretch between clouds. But then the cargo is only a few cameras and sensors, and the batteries.
1. That is one LONG period of transition. As a country we've been borrowing and/or carrying debt for a very long time. And most of that debt has nothing to do with wars (what was long ago considered the main justification for this country to carry debt).
2. Governments also raise revenue by encouraging business growth. That in turn raises revenue at the same level of taxation.
I've always wondered, where does increased taxation end? People pay taxes at a set rate. The country grows, government grows, the government gets more taxes simply by virtue of there being more people paying. When we raise taxes, that means the government is growing faster than the population. At some point you will hit a financially unsupportable point.
Point of reference: The total British tax burdern on the colonies prior to the revolution was under 5%.
Slashdot Mirror
This need for better batteries reminds me of the Robert A. Heinlein novel Friday.
The guy who owned most of the country did so because he invented basically a super-battery. And it's true. Someone who could invent a 50-lb briefcase-sized brick that could give a car 150 hp and a 300-mile range in adverse conditions (A/C or heater on) would be a zillionaire.
These days your average person pushes a button, types in a username/password, and starts clicking things to get to work.
She powered up various large devices in order, typed a long hex boot string into the system, then proceded to load punch cards, open reel tapes and hard drive cake platters, and perform other various complicated tasks.
It's a lot easier now.
I think it's pretty obvious he's talking about MWh, one megawatt of power for one hour, even with the added "/".
Long ago on cars you didn't have to fumble with keys, you cranked the car.
Then came self-starters. You turned a key to enable the ignition system, then pushed a starter button. Key-as-starter-button came much later.
This goes back to the old time, simply push the starter button. Only now the key is high-tech wireless and you don't even have to insert or turn it, just have it in your pocket.
I'm waiting for the Captain Chaos movie.
As you can see, that's already much better than the situation in Android land. Of the two iPhones that have gone out of support:
iPhone: Jan 2007 - Jul 2008, last update Feb 2010, support 3 years, 1.5 years after last sale
iPhone 3G Jul 2008 - Jun 2009, last update Nov 2010, support for 2.5 years, 1.5 years after last sale
I'm seeing a pattern here, and it's better than most Androids.
It would at least get JIT compiling, tethering and the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, along with a bunch of other vague "performance optimizations."
My "carbon footprint" would shrink to a tiny fraction of what it is now. I'd have an ultra-insulated house, underground pool to help the cooling, rewire the house for LED lighting, solar panels, an electric car for 90% of my driving (no hybrid, electric would do it), an ultra-efficient fridge, and ultra-efficient washer/dryer, etc.
Anybody got a couple hundred grand lying around to make me eco-friendly through technology?
A lot of these dreamers forget that not everybody's rich.
Verizon started selling the Droid Eris in November 2009, issued an update to 2.1 in March 2010, and then nothing since.
Only four months of active support. That's gotta be a record.
Of course throughout history the person who fights against the group-think has been persecuted, so maybe skepticism being undesired is the history and persecution of deniers is the norm.
I was hoping we'd left that behind along with the witch hunts.
There is a reason long-term capital gains taxes are lower. One, it's incentive to invest, which keeps companies going, which keeps and makes jobs. Second, capital gains have already gone through business taxes and have taken a hit for inflation. A lower tax rate compensates for these built-in losses to investments.
I'm rich and invest $1 million in an average stock. It made 10% in a year and I pull out the $100,000 profit. I pay my full 35% income tax on that, $35,000, for a supposedly realized profit of $65,000.
But what about inflation? The 2.3% inflation rate carved $23,000 of the value out of my $1 million in that year. After taxes my inflation-adjusted profit is only $42,000. The government, through its inflationary monetary policy and taxes, just effectively took 58%.
Now let's do it with the 15% capital gains tax. I make $100,000, tax is $15,000, inflation loss is $23,000, I get $62,000. The government, through inflation and taxes, took 38%, a bit higher than my income tax rate, but at least in the same ballpark so as to make sense.
This inflation compensation doesn't count much in normal non-invested income because you make it this year, you spend it this year. Investments can get killed by inflation as shown above, so capital gains tax eases that. This makes investment, a necessary driver of our economy and the source of almost everybody's retirement funds, more attractive.
That he took a decent idea to such an extreme was my problem. Let's say you have a function to converte torque to horsepower
#define HP_CALC(torque, enginespeed) (torque * enginespeed / 5252)
That's a constant in a known equation, and you'd use it only once ever in your program. But he'd still want us to define the constant HP_CONVERSION_FACTOR(5252) and use that in the equation.
"So they have a choice between helping a bunch of deniers uninterested in the science and out to prove a point no matter what the data says "
No, it couldn't be ANYONE who wants to do a scientific analysis of the data, could it? Anybody who disagrees is a "denier"!
It's scientific data. For the purposes of advancement of science, transparency and honesty, it should have just been released upon basic request.
That ANY effort was used to fight the release of the data makes me extremely suspicious.
If they don't authorize it by law, then any debt above the current authorized amount is simply not valid and can be questioned. Right now they're trying to authorize more debt by law so that further debt will be valid and not questioned. It doesn't say we can't default on payments on the current debt.
The Constitution is really very simple. It's people twisting it to mean what they want as opposed to what's in the text that makes it complicated.
The "tax break" on "jets" was part of Obama's own stimulus plan. What a hypocrite.
The "tax break" was really accelerated depreciation on private aircraft, all the way down to two-person, single-engine Pipers, not just big jets. The company still pays in full, but they get to write off the depreciation faster. This was meant to spur jobs in a very delicate industry that was still reeling from 9/11 and had been hit very hard by the recession because their regular customers were too worried about spending that kind of money in that economic environment.
It worked, too. Orders shot up and jobs were saved all across the country. The government probably made more tax revenue from the jobs and airplane manufacturers than it lost on the depreciation.
And we do have tax breaks for washing machines in the form of energy saver tax credits and rebates.
If we confiscated the ENTIRE net worth of the Forbes 400 richest people in America, we would get $1.4 trillion, barely enough to cover the 2010 deficit.
Then we're left screwed for next year because we will not have gotten our spending under control.
And you have to promise to keep her off TV.
He's the one who has threatened that people might not get their checks.
The other side (which includes some Democrats) is trying to get him to accept a plan that will have some hope of putting this country back on track to solvency.
Your numbers are about correct for 2008. I am not contesting the reasonableness of the current situation either way. My problem is when demagogues such as Obama try to portray these people as greedy freeloaders who aren't paying their "fair share" when their tax burden is already quite disproportionally progressive.
Note also the historical trend from that page. Since 1980 (from before Reagan, starting in the Carter years) the top 5% have gone from paying 36% to 58% of income taxes, while their income has gone from 21% to 34%. Notice the expanding gap between income earned and taxes paid, was 15%, and is now 24%. We have become steadily more progressive over the years, and Obama still says they're not paying their "fair share."
It's pure unabashed class warfare demagoguery.
That is quite the loophole that needs to be closed.
In 2008, the top 0.1% (140,000 people) earned 10% of all income and paid 19% of all income taxes.
The top 1% (over $380,000) earned 20% of income and paid 38% of all taxes.
The top 5% (over $160,000) earned 35% of income and paid 59% of taxes.
Notice the trend, they all pay MORE in taxes than their percentage of earnings.
Now when you go below that, the top 5-10%, $114,000-$160,000, the percentage of earnings about equals the percentage of taxes paid at 11% each.
It gets flipped when you go below that, $67,000-$114,000 pays 16% of the taxes, but has 22% of the income.
$33,000 to $67,000 has 20% of the income, but pays 11% of the taxes.
You are already looking at a highly progressive tax structure.
Wouldn't you know it, the top 10% paid almost exactly 70% of the taxes, although earning only 46% of the income.
Probably because they're already paying a far higher precentage than everyone else.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
All data from the IRS, raw data links on the page.
The truth hurts.
That post was a statement of reality. Muslims give up nothing, ever, except by force, and they want everything. They have their #1 and #2 holy places, and would go to war over allowing Israel to have their #1.
Muslims have over a dozen countries spread over a very wide area that are under direct Sharia law that does not respect non-Muslims as equals, and even punishes the preaching any other religion. They have many more that are majority Muslim and effectively ruled as Muslim.
Yet they begrudge the very existence of one tiny country with a Jewish majority that has a basic law that dictates the equal rights of minority non-Jewish citizens, including the 1/6 Muslim population.
Plastics and solvents and such probably don't survive reentry heat.
A Cessna 140 has about an 85 hp engine, which translates to 62 kW as you said. It has 15 sq/m of wing area, say we can use even 10 at 1 kW/sqm. That's about 13 hp. I doubt you'll even be able to cruise with that. Think about it, that's the power of two average lawnmowers, it's not going to keep a Cessna in the air.
Forget batteries. The gross weight of the Cessna is only 250 kg higher than the empty weight. Say person weight of 75 kg, two people, you have 100 kg left for batteries. Cruise is usually 50% power, 31 kW. The 24 kW/h battery in a Nissan Leaf weighs 300 kg. Take 1/3 of that to fit it and you have 8 kW/h for flight. That means 15 minutes cruise. The full-power takeoff probably more than offsets the 2.5 kW/h you'll charge in-flight with the solar cells.
Oops, I forgot to calculate in the weight of the solar cells...
Batteries just can't carry their own load in a commercial transport or passenger airplane. It's a great idea for a recon drone-type vehicle that's almost all wing, slowly circling above on solar power, using batteries to stretch between clouds. But then the cargo is only a few cameras and sensors, and the batteries.
1. That is one LONG period of transition. As a country we've been borrowing and/or carrying debt for a very long time. And most of that debt has nothing to do with wars (what was long ago considered the main justification for this country to carry debt).
2. Governments also raise revenue by encouraging business growth. That in turn raises revenue at the same level of taxation.
I've always wondered, where does increased taxation end? People pay taxes at a set rate. The country grows, government grows, the government gets more taxes simply by virtue of there being more people paying. When we raise taxes, that means the government is growing faster than the population. At some point you will hit a financially unsupportable point.
Point of reference: The total British tax burdern on the colonies prior to the revolution was under 5%.