While you are correct that Chernobyl was a bad design and an ill-conceived experiment started the disaster, do you recall what caused Three Mile Island or what the consequences might have been had the hydrogen bubble ignited?
The hydrogen bubble did ignite- several times. Several Containment building pressure spikes were noted from the repeated conflaguration of the hydrogen generated by the destroyed reactor core.
Again, the containment building did it's job just fine. Further, reactors built after that accident had measures installed to mitigate the build-up of hydrogen.
Of course, I wouldn't expect a whole lot of deep thought from someone who bases his handle on the hatred of a politician. That kind of obsession betrays the fact you have a few screws loose.
(Whether or not the politician in question is worth hating is not the point- the point is your online identity is based on it.)
So, being highly qualified automatically leads to statism, eh?
It's the 'highly qualified' part that's in question. The elitist/statists derided by the right have an unjustified belief in their qualification to wield social power. This belief stems from their education and saying the right things to join the club. The belief generally does not stem from actual accomplishment in a productive field.
Education is great, as a prelude to, you know, actually doing something. Otherwise it's just an expensive hobby.
You think? Anybody paying any attention to the current presidential election will see the Republican Party attempting to portray education = bad, ignorant= good. (Dumb) people buy it. It's a serious cultural problem in there here United States.
Or, in contrast, you could observe the democratic party attempting to establish a ruling intelligentsia on the United States, whose sole qualifications seem to be a fancy degree and believing (or saying) the right things to belong to the club.
There is a large contingent in the United States who believe they are intelligent and educated, and as a result of this, believe they should wield considerable social power. They hang out with other people who share the same beliefs, and this creates a self-reinforcing structure of people who say to each other "We're so smart. Why aren't we running everything?"
The trouble with these people is they are folks of generally low or insignificant accomplishment, and moreover, have no concept that it's far more important to be able to effectively do anything productive than to sound like you know how things should be done.
What you deride as a Republican antipathy to education is in fact a disgust of over-educated but mostly useless sops who have ordained themselves wise, on no real basis whatsoever.
Further, we live in an era of extremely specialized knowledge. Having a PHD in Literature or Computer Engineering means that you're of adequate intelligence and you've put in the time and work to get such a degree.
Moreover, that time and work was generally done in an academic environment that in no way reflects the real world that supports that university.
Those PHD's indicate high qualification in those areas only. They do not mean the holder of those degrees knows how to change a tire, how to run a 7-11 for a week, how to conduct their personal lives in a competent manner, how to underwrite a profitable loan, how to build or run an injection mounding machine, how to make a car, how to keep a supply chain running, etc.
The theoretical knowledge of the educated is only useful if it can be applied in a way that makes other people's lives better, in reality. Currently, the 'learned' merely have really, really expensive hobbies that come with an unjustified entitlement for power.
I think it's rather informative that you words like 'monster' and 'evil' to describe Palin, and even Bush.
It shows a complete and utter inability on your part to consider views outside your own. The reverse is seldom true. Right wingers generally understand why those on the left hold their views- it's just we quite simply don't agree, for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion.
Labeling righties as 'evil' is an intellectually lazy and entirely common mode of thought among the left.
It certainly makes your life easier, not having to understand anything but your camp's point of view.
You also advocate attack, as if the sole problem democrats face is not attacking enough.
Could it ever cross your mind that the ideas presented by the Democrats have been weighed, measured, and found wanting?
Of course not. Because if you considered that, then what you screech at as 'evil' might be something you'd have to seriously evaluate.
Clearly that's too high a burden for you, but you can certainly fling poo on slashdot.
what gays and lesbians want is the right to be gays in lesbians. what gays and lesbians do in the privacy of their own homes in no way affects you whatsoever
I'm not so sure about that. San Francisco is clearly the leader in being gay-friendly, and look what they end up with:
If this kind of public spectacle is what we end up with then maybe some stuff needs to be pushed back into the closet.
So, coincidentally, where homosexual rights have been most clearly advanced in this country, we end up with public displays of:
1. Nudity 2. Masturbation 3. Urination on other people 4. Oral sex 5. BSDM
You'll note that several celebrants are men dressed up as boy scouts. I seem to recall on ongoing issue with the boy scouts and gay scoutmasters, yet here we have a rather creepy affinity displayed for boy scouts during an event that quite clearly is about gay sexual activities.
To be fair, I haven't seen a whole lot of lesbians engaging in this sort of behavoir.
I really don't care what two dudes do in the privacy of their own home, but it's instructive to see what happens when the city and community puts the stamp of approval on what passes for a 'lifestyle.'
No decorum, no decency. No self-restraint. Pedophiles wearing their desires on their sleeves. Public sex acts. Public humiliations (pissing on each other). Masturbating onto cheering crowds from a window.
Leaving aside simple blow jobs, several of the acts that occurred in that event are evidence of deep-seated, severe psychological problems suffered by the participants. Yet in the name of 'tolerance' and 'gay rights', we end up with these deranged acts celebrated amidst cheering crowds.
Being gay used to come with a great deal of shame. We have removed that shame, and in return, we see shameful, disgusting, revolting acts in public.
The participants of "Up your Alley 2008" quite frankly justify the stigma previously attached to homosexuality.
That 99 out of 100 times, anyone who speaks of making a 'statement' with their 'art' falls into most of the following categories:
1. Leftist. 2. Repeating cliche, trite ideas dressed up with a college sophomore's verbiage. 3. Incompetent at creating aesthetically pleasing work. 4. Using the 'statement' angle to try to get an audience for their work even though item 3 applies. 5. The 'art' in question, as a consequence of all of the above, is ugly and absurdly abstract*. 6. If you point out that the 'artist' is juvenile and incompetent, and the art is ugly, the 'you don't get it' scam is applied.
This statement nonsense is a long standing pattern with 'modern' art. Actual art speaks for itself.
No one who creates quality work that stands on it's own needs to tie themselves up with nonsense about 'statements.'
Only hacks with no skill or talent ever speak of 'statement' and 'art' in the same breath.
*(Picasso and many other famous abstract artists were accomplished Classical painters before they turned abstract. This solid base of skill gave them the tools to create aesthetically pleasing abstract pieces.)
Or perhaps, alternately, many of us consider it our personal duty to help our neighbors. We further realize that subcontracting that duty to the government doesn't work well.
If you look at the Charitable giving rate in the US, it's quite clear we are concerned about our neighbors, and we will contribute money towards the effort.
Your view seems constrained by the notion that only the government is capable of executing the concept of 'good will towards all.'
The people in the United States can, and do, execute the 'good will towards all.' concept directly & personally.
Saying 'eh, let the government handle it.' is both lazy and ultimately counterproductive.
I'm suprised that Pickens there is building 4 GW in Texas, as they've almost been burnt badly by wind power.
Not too long ago a large cold front swept through the state- the very high, and very sudden winds caused most of the turbines to overspeed and trip off (Toss the brakes on maybe? I'll have to check to be sure.)
The resulting power swing and voltage dip almost blacked out all of Texas.
I see what you mean, but I my basic issue with it is this:
There are always choices. The alternatives to what you normally do and normally expect folks to do may involve more discomfort or risk than one would prefer, but they are there.
Premises like yours presuppose people have little control over their overall situation. I disagree- they must simply seize it. In your scenario, this control would be siezed by voting with your feet and moving somewhere where you did have choices.
Easy? No. But 'ease' is a shameful goal for a society to have. It's a fine consequence of executing other goals, but as a goal itself it's rather shallow.
To be clear, I mean that people who are unhappy with their situation should take control of their lives and steer their way out of it, not tumble about as the wind blows around them and complain about how much their life sucks.
I do not see the goal of society should be to provide everyone with an easy life. Artificially restricting one's choices to a narrow scope of what is 'normal' to a person justifies your view.
Prove it. From what I've seen, free markets allow greedy and selfish people to accumulate more money than cooperative people.
Open up your wallet.
Got any money in there? Good.
Did you take it by force from anyone? No? Did you defraud anyone of it? No?
Then pat yourself on the back, because someone has found your efforts worth paying for. That cash is a certificate of appreciation from another human being.
We serve one another by going about earning our daily bread. That you get paid by other people for someway improving their lives does not invalidate the fact that you served them.
You got paid because you made someone else's life better. There may be layers of abstraction involved, but you did so.
Money is only voluntarily exchanged by people who believe they will benefit from the transaction. If someone benefits from your actions, you have served them. They have thanked you with money.
That some people serve their fellows to the point where they have vast sums of money doesn't negate the fact that the money came from serving other people's interests.
During the which period? Do you mean the now secular nations, that have a Judeo-Christian heritage? Or back when the church had real power, and could burn witches or condemn people to death for saying the sun is the center of the solar system, etc. Christianity has some very dark history. Apparently much, much more evil than you are aware Whichever religion has had political power has behaved in morally atrocious manners. That's the difference I see.
I'm quite aware of religious history, thank you. Do you imagine we allow the adherents of one religion to run rampant because our forebears have done atrocious things?
Nice. Now go and explain that to the other 99% of the Bible readers (those that probably don't read Slashdot). Starting with some idiotic Protestant churches my sister was involved with, the Pare de Sufrir cult here in Uruguay, and all those Catholics that believe that pope Benedict somehow has a direct line to God.
Oh, you want guarantees? You want promises? You want perfection? You want hard and fast rules? You want uniformity?
You get none of those. Further, you may well have convinced yourself of the vast sophistication of being an athiest, which would, without warrant, elevate your opinion of yourself and lower your opinion of any sort of believer. Including your sister.
I'm going to ask you to be a mature, rational adult and evaluate nations sprung from a Judeo-Christian heritage, and compare then against nations with an Islamic heritage.
Where would you rather live?
It's no secret that rubbish can fly for quite some time under the banner of religion. The discerning question then becomes "What is the result of practicing the belief system, as compared to demonstrated alternatives?"
But the problem to us heathens is that religious texts like the bible are supposed to be infallible morality from God.
Well, there's your first problem. You don't know what you're talking about. There are certainly some religious folks that believe that. I generally don't care to be around them.
In fact given that religious texts come from revelation, and most religions believe in the devil, how can you tell whether the bible was a revelation from God or from the Devil?
Your second problems is you don't expect anything from anyone. I expect a reader, who wants to get the most out of any text, to be a thinking adult with a strong moral code. You want life answers soley from a book, even a book such as the bible?
They aren't there, at least not all of them. It's a guide.
As I said before, the utility of the bible depends on the maturity of the reader. You don't seem to think that anyone reading the bible would have any intelligence or maturity, so you fall well short of grasping any sort of proper lessons from the bible.
That doesn't mean that any particular quote means a damn thing.
The utility of the bible depends largely on the maturity of it's reader. If you're some juvenile just looking for a 'gotcha' quote, then you're really not going to get anything out of it.
I've always had the option of getting a new ballot if I screwed up one of these sheets. If a voter can't be bothered to walk ten feet to get a new sheet, then they're too lazy and stupid to be allowed to vote anyway. You can also throw out a person's misvote on a particular candidate or matter and still read the rest of the ballot sheet that they managed to fill out correctly.
We could also have the machine immediately spit back ballots that where unreadable, so that the voter has a chance to revote until they can manage to make only one mark per issue or candidate, and fill in the circle enough to be read.
At some point beyond that we have to say "if you're too stupid to make a black mark on a f*cking page, then maybe your vote shouldn't count."
I mean, really, can't we have some minimum standard of competency to vote in the system? Isn't 'color within the lines, get a new ballot if you fail to do so' a really, really, really low standard?
Color within the lines. Or walk ten feet and repeat until you can color within the lines. Make only the appropriate number of marks for each office. If you fail to do so, walk ten feet and get another ballot.
If that's honestly the best objection you can come up with, then I'm gonna say it's clearly the best system available.
You can't have perfection with any method, so I'll take pretty damn good, and scantron sheets are pretty damn good.
New Hampshire and several other states use black markers, a scan tron sheet, and just a few scanners at each polling location.
Quite frankly I don't see the need, under any circumstance, to get more complicated than this.
Simple voting procedure, quick electronic counting, and a clear & easily verifiable paper trail.
If you wanted multiple voting reciepts, then it would be a (relatively) simple matter to hook up a printer to spit out a copy/reciept of each ballot inserted- but I don't really think that's necessary either.
Your position depends entirely on efficiency calculations that I'm guessing you don't know how to make, and a belief that being profitable is somehow wrong and indicative of energy inefficiency.
The latter is a philosophical debate that would be pointless. The former is an area where you can demonstrate wether or not you know what the hell you're talking about.
Tractor trailer vs 145,000 kV line. Do you even know where to start calculating?
* Waste that is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years I assume you mean radioactive, and the waste is as radioactive as the soil it was drawn from after 400 years. While you rail on those nasty pro-business conservatives, it might be good to know that waste fears are overblown. Further, if it's radioactive, it's still useful- we could reprocess it into more useful fuel.
* The profit motive leading to corners being cut and safety being a casualty My nuclear power plant basically prints money, and we're tops in any WANO, NRC, or INPO rating there is. Any safety comprimises we could make to increase profits would amount to a petty amount of money (relatively speaking) and would attract unwanted attention from the NRC, WANO, and INPO.
Not to mention it would violate the principles of the operators to make such a sacrifice in the first place. Of course, it's easy for you to think of a nebulous, evil corporation cutting corners to make an extra 0.005% profit. Imagining that there are good, highly qualified men and women at the controls would invalidate some of your theories.
* NIMBY (not in my back yard) Always a problem, but new plants will probably be built on the site of existing plants, minimizing that problem.
* Security - these plants are prime targets for terrorism We can buy plenty of security and still make plenty of money. I obviously can't go into details, but security around my plant is pretty tight.
On top of that, you would have to be extremely knowledgable about the plant and have unfettered access for quite some time to do damage that would result in a significant public health effect. Yes, I would know.
I know that other countries have made nuclear work (France is the most cited example.) However, those countries have been able to regulate the plants more closely without conservatives jumping all over their governments for 'promoting socialism' and 'over-regulation'. Our plants are (and would be) operated by for-profit companies. More corners being cut = more profit, so you better believe they'll cut those corners.
You are clearly ill-informed. Your socialist regulated paradise of France does a fine job, and so do Americans. Your political ideology seems to blind you to the latter.
I don't even know where to begin taking apart your post, but it's pretty absurd top to bottom.
You are saying, among other things, that:
1. Driving a 100,000 lb truck is a more efficient way to transport electricity than a 145,000 V+ three phase line.
2. That the current electrical grid was designed and built not with sound engineering and economic principles in mind, but as a way to extract subsidies while laying out real dollars and doing real work.
3. That smaller plants are more efficient, nevermind the volumetric power production vs the surface area ambient losses thing.
4. That smaller isolated grids would be more reliable than what we have now.
I'm not sure what rag you've been reading, but it wasn't written by competent, knowledgable adults who know what the hell is going on.
Incidentally, there 'national grid' is comprised of a great many smaller grids that are interconnected for reliability. Relaying protection schemes are generally sufficient to prevent massive outages, but as that huge blackout showed us a while ago, it breaks down occasionally.
The system now generally provides a great deal of reliability, but as we've seen, it occasionally bites us in the ass with a massive blackout.
What you didn't hear about was the hundreds of local or state blackouts that would have occured if you had the smaller independant grids like you envision.
Now I've got nothing against concentrated solar power or any number of technologies, but it helps to have a decent grasp on what's going on if you're going to advocate one thing or another.
I work in the power generation business. Please feel free to ask any specific questions you would like answered.
You assume that these rules are compiled with the purpose of benefiting most of us. That is not necessarily true. Many religious rules (or civil laws) we have were written to, for instance, maintain status quo, which in many cases is nothing short of "Cleptocracy" (e.g. "I, the king/high priest, and my buddies will take as much as we can from you the peasants").
The book Collapse by Jared Diamond is filled with data about systems of belief being drafted with lots of different purposes.
Can you point out where I defended every religion, every where, at every time? Of course some of them are sh*t. A thinking adult should be able to discern which practices were a net benefit to society, and which practices just screwed the lay people.
Hold the train there, we might be "morally superior" to our ancestors from 3,000 years ago when armies would invade and slaughter entire populations (although I suspect that the residents of Dresden or Hiroshima or Fallujah might argue with you on that claim), how 'bout comparing ourselves to our pre-agriculture ancestors?
Our current morally superiority is not inherent in our biology, it is the product of our traditions and cultures that have been honed in the past millenia.
I think you missed or misinterpreted the 'inherent' part of my statement. Let me rephrase it: Our biological brain structures today do not lend themselves to a higher morality than the brains of our ancestors 3,000 years ago.
Further, when you're comparing ourselves to our pre-agriculture ancenstors, you're just making things up, or parroting things other folks made up. The history of pre-agriculture societies is little more than our best guess on the meaning of cave drawings, arrowheads, and wishful luddite thinking about 'noble savages' we've found in north america and africa. The only reliable history we have about pre-agriculture societies comes from our advanced mercantile forbears running into them, and at best, learning their language, learning their oral history, and hoping it vaugely resembles something that actually happened when they finally wrote it down in books you probably haven't actually studied. Zinn's 'A people's history' doesn't count- there are first hand sources that can be found, because western civ has actually kept records for hundreds of years.
I guess what I'm saying is, given the history of the 20th century, when 100 million humans were killed by other humans, (about 60% of them civilians to boot) you're on very shaky ground to assume that humans in our current form are "morally superior" to anything.
The world is not one culture, so it's nonsensical to say we (the world) are morally superior to civilizations 3,000 years ago, because there are societies that exist today that have learned, collectively, nothing in the past 3,000 years.
Further, when comparing the various morality different societies produce, it makes sense to compare them to the REAL alternatives, not to some utopian society no one has ever seen but you somehow imagine you could produce, should everyone listen to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
Mohandas Gandhi
Ghandi used non-violence against the British because the Brits were basically moral people, and the strategy was clearly successful.
He knew quite well that non-violence was an unwise strategy in many real circumstances.
While you are correct that Chernobyl was a bad design and an ill-conceived experiment started the disaster, do you recall what caused Three Mile Island or what the consequences might have been had the hydrogen bubble ignited?
The hydrogen bubble did ignite- several times. Several Containment building pressure spikes were noted from the repeated conflaguration of the hydrogen generated by the destroyed reactor core.
Again, the containment building did it's job just fine. Further, reactors built after that accident had measures installed to mitigate the build-up of hydrogen.
Of course, I wouldn't expect a whole lot of deep thought from someone who bases his handle on the hatred of a politician. That kind of obsession betrays the fact you have a few screws loose.
(Whether or not the politician in question is worth hating is not the point- the point is your online identity is based on it.)
So, being highly qualified automatically leads to statism, eh?
It's the 'highly qualified' part that's in question. The elitist/statists derided by the right have an unjustified belief in their qualification to wield social power. This belief stems from their education and saying the right things to join the club. The belief generally does not stem from actual accomplishment in a productive field.
Education is great, as a prelude to, you know, actually doing something. Otherwise it's just an expensive hobby.
You think? Anybody paying any attention to the current presidential election will see the Republican Party attempting to portray education = bad, ignorant= good. (Dumb) people buy it. It's a serious cultural problem in there here United States.
Or, in contrast, you could observe the democratic party attempting to establish a ruling intelligentsia on the United States, whose sole qualifications seem to be a fancy degree and believing (or saying) the right things to belong to the club.
There is a large contingent in the United States who believe they are intelligent and educated, and as a result of this, believe they should wield considerable social power. They hang out with other people who share the same beliefs, and this creates a self-reinforcing structure of people who say to each other "We're so smart. Why aren't we running everything?"
The trouble with these people is they are folks of generally low or insignificant accomplishment, and moreover, have no concept that it's far more important to be able to effectively do anything productive than to sound like you know how things should be done.
What you deride as a Republican antipathy to education is in fact a disgust of over-educated but mostly useless sops who have ordained themselves wise, on no real basis whatsoever.
Further, we live in an era of extremely specialized knowledge. Having a PHD in Literature or Computer Engineering means that you're of adequate intelligence and you've put in the time and work to get such a degree.
Moreover, that time and work was generally done in an academic environment that in no way reflects the real world that supports that university.
Those PHD's indicate high qualification in those areas only. They do not mean the holder of those degrees knows how to change a tire, how to run a 7-11 for a week, how to conduct their personal lives in a competent manner, how to underwrite a profitable loan, how to build or run an injection mounding machine, how to make a car, how to keep a supply chain running, etc.
The theoretical knowledge of the educated is only useful if it can be applied in a way that makes other people's lives better, in reality. Currently, the 'learned' merely have really, really expensive hobbies that come with an unjustified entitlement for power.
I think it's rather informative that you words like 'monster' and 'evil' to describe Palin, and even Bush.
It shows a complete and utter inability on your part to consider views outside your own. The reverse is seldom true. Right wingers generally understand why those on the left hold their views- it's just we quite simply don't agree, for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion.
Labeling righties as 'evil' is an intellectually lazy and entirely common mode of thought among the left.
It certainly makes your life easier, not having to understand anything but your camp's point of view.
You also advocate attack, as if the sole problem democrats face is not attacking enough.
Could it ever cross your mind that the ideas presented by the Democrats have been weighed, measured, and found wanting?
Of course not. Because if you considered that, then what you screech at as 'evil' might be something you'd have to seriously evaluate.
Clearly that's too high a burden for you, but you can certainly fling poo on slashdot.
what gays and lesbians want is the right to be gays in lesbians. what gays and lesbians do in the privacy of their own homes in no way affects you whatsoever
I'm not so sure about that. San Francisco is clearly the leader in being gay-friendly, and look what they end up with:
Up Your alley Fair 2008
You can choose blurred, or unblurred pictures.
If this kind of public spectacle is what we end up with then maybe some stuff needs to be pushed back into the closet.
So, coincidentally, where homosexual rights have been most clearly advanced in this country, we end up with public displays of:
1. Nudity
2. Masturbation
3. Urination on other people
4. Oral sex
5. BSDM
You'll note that several celebrants are men dressed up as boy scouts. I seem to recall on ongoing issue with the boy scouts and gay scoutmasters, yet here we have a rather creepy affinity displayed for boy scouts during an event that quite clearly is about gay sexual activities.
To be fair, I haven't seen a whole lot of lesbians engaging in this sort of behavoir.
I really don't care what two dudes do in the privacy of their own home, but it's instructive to see what happens when the city and community puts the stamp of approval on what passes for a 'lifestyle.'
No decorum, no decency. No self-restraint. Pedophiles wearing their desires on their sleeves. Public sex acts. Public humiliations (pissing on each other). Masturbating onto cheering crowds from a window.
Leaving aside simple blow jobs, several of the acts that occurred in that event are evidence of deep-seated, severe psychological problems suffered by the participants. Yet in the name of 'tolerance' and 'gay rights', we end up with these deranged acts celebrated amidst cheering crowds.
Being gay used to come with a great deal of shame. We have removed that shame, and in return, we see shameful, disgusting, revolting acts in public.
The participants of "Up your Alley 2008" quite frankly justify the stigma previously attached to homosexuality.
That 99 out of 100 times, anyone who speaks of making a 'statement' with their 'art' falls into most of the following categories:
1. Leftist.
2. Repeating cliche, trite ideas dressed up with a college sophomore's verbiage.
3. Incompetent at creating aesthetically pleasing work.
4. Using the 'statement' angle to try to get an audience for their work even though item 3 applies.
5. The 'art' in question, as a consequence of all of the above, is ugly and absurdly abstract*.
6. If you point out that the 'artist' is juvenile and incompetent, and the art is ugly, the 'you don't get it' scam is applied.
This statement nonsense is a long standing pattern with 'modern' art. Actual art speaks for itself.
No one who creates quality work that stands on it's own needs to tie themselves up with nonsense about 'statements.'
Only hacks with no skill or talent ever speak of 'statement' and 'art' in the same breath.
*(Picasso and many other famous abstract artists were accomplished Classical painters before they turned abstract. This solid base of skill gave them the tools to create aesthetically pleasing abstract pieces.)
So how was your visit with the secret service?
Or perhaps, alternately, many of us consider it our personal duty to help our neighbors. We further realize that subcontracting that duty to the government doesn't work well.
If you look at the Charitable giving rate in the US, it's quite clear we are concerned about our neighbors, and we will contribute money towards the effort.
Your view seems constrained by the notion that only the government is capable of executing the concept of 'good will towards all.'
The people in the United States can, and do, execute the 'good will towards all.' concept directly & personally.
Saying 'eh, let the government handle it.' is both lazy and ultimately counterproductive.
I think it's actually less than 20%- perhaps 10%.
I'm suprised that Pickens there is building 4 GW in Texas, as they've almost been burnt badly by wind power.
Not too long ago a large cold front swept through the state- the very high, and very sudden winds caused most of the turbines to overspeed and trip off (Toss the brakes on maybe? I'll have to check to be sure.)
The resulting power swing and voltage dip almost blacked out all of Texas.
I see what you mean, but I my basic issue with it is this:
There are always choices. The alternatives to what you normally do and normally expect folks to do may involve more discomfort or risk than one would prefer, but they are there.
Premises like yours presuppose people have little control over their overall situation. I disagree- they must simply seize it. In your scenario, this control would be siezed by voting with your feet and moving somewhere where you did have choices.
Easy? No. But 'ease' is a shameful goal for a society to have. It's a fine consequence of executing other goals, but as a goal itself it's rather shallow.
To be clear, I mean that people who are unhappy with their situation should take control of their lives and steer their way out of it, not tumble about as the wind blows around them and complain about how much their life sucks.
I do not see the goal of society should be to provide everyone with an easy life.
Artificially restricting one's choices to a narrow scope of what is 'normal' to a person justifies your view.
Prove it. From what I've seen, free markets allow greedy and selfish people to accumulate more money than cooperative people.
Open up your wallet.
Got any money in there?
Good.
Did you take it by force from anyone?
No?
Did you defraud anyone of it?
No?
Then pat yourself on the back, because someone has found your efforts worth paying for. That cash is a certificate of appreciation from another human being.
We serve one another by going about earning our daily bread. That you get paid by other people for someway improving their lives does not invalidate the fact that you served them.
You got paid because you made someone else's life better. There may be layers of abstraction involved, but you did so.
Money is only voluntarily exchanged by people who believe they will benefit from the transaction. If someone benefits from your actions, you have served them. They have thanked you with money.
That some people serve their fellows to the point where they have vast sums of money doesn't negate the fact that the money came from serving other people's interests.
During the which period? Do you mean the now secular nations, that have a Judeo-Christian heritage? Or back when the church had real power, and could burn witches or condemn people to death for saying the sun is the center of the solar system, etc. Christianity has some very dark history. Apparently much, much more evil than you are aware
Whichever religion has had political power has behaved in morally atrocious manners. That's the difference I see.
I'm quite aware of religious history, thank you. Do you imagine we allow the adherents of one religion to run rampant because our forebears have done atrocious things?
Nice. Now go and explain that to the other 99% of the Bible readers (those that probably don't read Slashdot). Starting with some idiotic Protestant churches my sister was involved with, the Pare de Sufrir cult here in Uruguay, and all those Catholics that believe that pope Benedict somehow has a direct line to God.
Oh, you want guarantees? You want promises? You want perfection? You want hard and fast rules? You want uniformity?
You get none of those. Further, you may well have convinced yourself of the vast sophistication of being an athiest, which would, without warrant, elevate your opinion of yourself and lower your opinion of any sort of believer. Including your sister.
Oh, I bet you think you're clever, don't you?
I'm going to ask you to be a mature, rational adult and evaluate nations sprung from a Judeo-Christian heritage, and compare then against nations with an Islamic heritage.
Where would you rather live?
It's no secret that rubbish can fly for quite some time under the banner of religion. The discerning question then becomes "What is the result of practicing the belief system, as compared to demonstrated alternatives?"
But the problem to us heathens is that religious texts like the bible are supposed to be infallible morality from God.
Well, there's your first problem. You don't know what you're talking about. There are certainly some religious folks that believe that. I generally don't care to be around them.
In fact given that religious texts come from revelation, and most religions believe in the devil, how can you tell whether the bible was a revelation from God or from the Devil?
Your second problems is you don't expect anything from anyone. I expect a reader, who wants to get the most out of any text, to be a thinking adult with a strong moral code. You want life answers soley from a book, even a book such as the bible?
They aren't there, at least not all of them. It's a guide.
As I said before, the utility of the bible depends on the maturity of the reader. You don't seem to think that anyone reading the bible would have any intelligence or maturity, so you fall well short of grasping any sort of proper lessons from the bible.
Yes.
The devil can quote scripture for his purpose.
That doesn't mean that any particular quote means a damn thing.
The utility of the bible depends largely on the maturity of it's reader. If you're some juvenile just looking for a 'gotcha' quote, then you're really not going to get anything out of it.
I've always had the option of getting a new ballot if I screwed up one of these sheets. If a voter can't be bothered to walk ten feet to get a new sheet, then they're too lazy and stupid to be allowed to vote anyway. You can also throw out a person's misvote on a particular candidate or matter and still read the rest of the ballot sheet that they managed to fill out correctly.
We could also have the machine immediately spit back ballots that where unreadable, so that the voter has a chance to revote until they can manage to make only one mark per issue or candidate, and fill in the circle enough to be read.
At some point beyond that we have to say "if you're too stupid to make a black mark on a f*cking page, then maybe your vote shouldn't count."
I mean, really, can't we have some minimum standard of competency to vote in the system? Isn't 'color within the lines, get a new ballot if you fail to do so' a really, really, really low standard?
Color within the lines. Or walk ten feet and repeat until you can color within the lines. Make only the appropriate number of marks for each office. If you fail to do so, walk ten feet and get another ballot.
If that's honestly the best objection you can come up with, then I'm gonna say it's clearly the best system available.
You can't have perfection with any method, so I'll take pretty damn good, and scantron sheets are pretty damn good.
New Hampshire and several other states use black markers, a scan tron sheet, and just a few scanners at each polling location.
Quite frankly I don't see the need, under any circumstance, to get more complicated than this.
Simple voting procedure, quick electronic counting, and a clear & easily verifiable paper trail.
If you wanted multiple voting reciepts, then it would be a (relatively) simple matter to hook up a printer to spit out a copy/reciept of each ballot inserted- but I don't really think that's necessary either.
Your position depends entirely on efficiency calculations that I'm guessing you don't know how to make, and a belief that being profitable is somehow wrong and indicative of energy inefficiency.
The latter is a philosophical debate that would be pointless. The former is an area where you can demonstrate wether or not you know what the hell you're talking about.
Tractor trailer vs 145,000 kV line. Do you even know where to start calculating?
* Waste that is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years
I assume you mean radioactive, and the waste is as radioactive as the soil it was drawn from after 400 years. While you rail on those nasty pro-business conservatives, it might be good to know that waste fears are overblown. Further, if it's radioactive, it's still useful- we could reprocess it into more useful fuel.
* The profit motive leading to corners being cut and safety being a casualty
My nuclear power plant basically prints money, and we're tops in any WANO, NRC, or INPO rating there is. Any safety comprimises we could make to increase profits would amount to a petty amount of money (relatively speaking) and would attract unwanted attention from the NRC, WANO, and INPO.
Not to mention it would violate the principles of the operators to make such a sacrifice in the first place. Of course, it's easy for you to think of a nebulous, evil corporation cutting corners to make an extra 0.005% profit. Imagining that there are good, highly qualified men and women at the controls would invalidate some of your theories.
* NIMBY (not in my back yard)
Always a problem, but new plants will probably be built on the site of existing plants, minimizing that problem.
* Security - these plants are prime targets for terrorism
We can buy plenty of security and still make plenty of money. I obviously can't go into details, but security around my plant is pretty tight.
On top of that, you would have to be extremely knowledgable about the plant and have unfettered access for quite some time to do damage that would result in a significant public health effect. Yes, I would know.
I know that other countries have made nuclear work (France is the most cited example.) However, those countries have been able to regulate the plants more closely without conservatives jumping all over their governments for 'promoting socialism' and 'over-regulation'. Our plants are (and would be) operated by for-profit companies. More corners being cut = more profit, so you better believe they'll cut those corners.
You are clearly ill-informed. Your socialist regulated paradise of France does a fine job, and so do Americans. Your political ideology seems to blind you to the latter.
I don't even know where to begin taking apart your post, but it's pretty absurd top to bottom.
You are saying, among other things, that:
1. Driving a 100,000 lb truck is a more efficient way to transport electricity than a 145,000 V+ three phase line.
2. That the current electrical grid was designed and built not with sound engineering and economic principles in mind, but as a way to extract subsidies while laying out real dollars and doing real work.
3. That smaller plants are more efficient, nevermind the volumetric power production vs the surface area ambient losses thing.
4. That smaller isolated grids would be more reliable than what we have now.
I'm not sure what rag you've been reading, but it wasn't written by competent, knowledgable adults who know what the hell is going on.
Incidentally, there 'national grid' is comprised of a great many smaller grids that are interconnected for reliability. Relaying protection schemes are generally sufficient to prevent massive outages, but as that huge blackout showed us a while ago, it breaks down occasionally.
The system now generally provides a great deal of reliability, but as we've seen, it occasionally bites us in the ass with a massive blackout.
What you didn't hear about was the hundreds of local or state blackouts that would have occured if you had the smaller independant grids like you envision.
Now I've got nothing against concentrated solar power or any number of technologies, but it helps to have a decent grasp on what's going on if you're going to advocate one thing or another.
I work in the power generation business. Please feel free to ask any specific questions you would like answered.
You assume that these rules are compiled with the purpose of benefiting most of us. That is not necessarily true. Many religious rules (or civil laws) we have were written to, for instance, maintain status quo, which in many cases is nothing short of "Cleptocracy" (e.g. "I, the king/high priest, and my buddies will take as much as we can from you the peasants").
The book Collapse by Jared Diamond is filled with data about systems of belief being drafted with lots of different purposes.
Can you point out where I defended every religion, every where, at every time? Of course some of them are sh*t. A thinking adult should be able to discern which practices were a net benefit to society, and which practices just screwed the lay people.
Hold the train there, we might be "morally superior" to our ancestors from 3,000 years ago when armies would invade and slaughter entire populations (although I suspect that the residents of Dresden or Hiroshima or Fallujah might argue with you on that claim), how 'bout comparing ourselves to our pre-agriculture ancestors?
Our current morally superiority is not inherent in our biology, it is the product of our traditions and cultures that have been honed in the past millenia.
I think you missed or misinterpreted the 'inherent' part of my statement. Let me rephrase it: Our biological brain structures today do not lend themselves to a higher morality than the brains of our ancestors 3,000 years ago.
Further, when you're comparing ourselves to our pre-agriculture ancenstors, you're just making things up, or parroting things other folks made up. The history of pre-agriculture societies is little more than our best guess on the meaning of cave drawings, arrowheads, and wishful luddite thinking about 'noble savages' we've found in north america and africa. The only reliable history we have about pre-agriculture societies comes from our advanced mercantile forbears running into them, and at best, learning their language, learning their oral history, and hoping it vaugely resembles something that actually happened when they finally wrote it down in books you probably haven't actually studied. Zinn's 'A people's history' doesn't count- there are first hand sources that can be found, because western civ has actually kept records for hundreds of years.
I guess what I'm saying is, given the history of the 20th century, when 100 million humans were killed by other humans, (about 60% of them civilians to boot) you're on very shaky ground to assume that humans in our current form are "morally superior" to anything.
The world is not one culture, so it's nonsensical to say we (the world) are morally superior to civilizations 3,000 years ago, because there are societies that exist today that have learned, collectively, nothing in the past 3,000 years.
Further, when comparing the various morality different societies produce, it makes sense to compare them to the REAL alternatives, not to some utopian society no one has ever seen but you somehow imagine you could produce, should everyone listen to you.