He used to be on in Blacksburg, VA. Once you've listened to him for a week, you've heard all the advice he has to give.
I've also found that he's a bit slim on his research at times. A good example was when he pimped the Yahoo Sitebuilder as a free tool for beginners to create nice business websites. It is a fun tool, but it's far from free, as you can't upload without a pay-to-play yahoo account. (and it'a PITA to re-path everything manually)
Harbor Freight is a bit of a crap shoot, but it's almost always cheaper than renting the same tool for a day or two. It may not last too long, but if you just need to brute force something, it'll usually do okay.
A bit of advice: "sale" prices are almost always available by using the appropriate "dash" number in the model. For example: an online item 12345-0VGA is the full retail online price:
By ordering from the printed catalog section (you can still use the VGA catalog dsignator) and varying the -X, you can usually find a better price. It takes a while, because the engine will give you the highest price of the lot you choose, and if there's one of that item in your shopping cart already, it won't add any discounted pieces of the same item (you have to empty your cart of the item each time you add a -x part if you want to try again for a better sale price).
I've always thought, with the advent of sniping that ebay would/shoud change the rules. I hate losing to a snipe, and hate it more when an auction on which I'm a seller gets sniped. (A snip bid usually reduces the potential final value by not allowing the auction to contiue until only one bidder is willing to bid higher)
I've alsways though a "going, going, gone" period should be instituted, whereby an auction would not close until there had been no bids for, say, 30 or 60 seconds, rather than a fixed end time. I suppose that would be less buyer-friendly for those who snipe bids, but would be more friendly for the casual ebayer (my mother would never understand sniping, and if it happened to her she'd probably just give up and not use ebay). It would certainly make ebay better for sellers.
Learned 6502 asm the summer when I was 13 or so. Of course, I didn't have the $150 for the cheapest assembler out there (the Ace1000 I had was a _very_ generous gift from my grandfather - a whopping $1200.) So I'd write my asm on paper, then draw a chart on lined paper and code the machine language by hand.
Very labor intensive, but at 13 it was one convenient way to kill a rainy afternoon. And it was very instructive in how computers work. It often baffles me how slow my handheld PC is today, with 300MHz at its disposal, when compared to what we did with the machines of my youth.
Even further off topic, I remember this one kid - paul reishi - who made the most foolish proclaimation in our computer group that he wanted to write a program that would automatically turn the computer on. Of course, that was preposterous, and we all sniggered behind his back. Realize - we were in 7th grade and we had TRS80s and used BASIC. I remebered him for the first time in years when I saw my first wake-on-lan type functionality. Hope he made a mint.
Actually, I would suspect that 60% is "about half" when viewed from a marketing perspective. To a marketer, 60% is just 10% more than 50%, so that's pretty close (those with more than third grade math will, of course, note that 60% is 20% more than 50%, but I wouldn't even attempt to explain that to a communications major for fear of encountering glazed-eye syndrome).
FWIW - here's a comparison of other lossless codecs and their representative compression ratios:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html
You'll note that FLAC is squarely in the middle of the pack at about 53%-54%, which is certainly "about half", and Monkey's and others can dip below the half mark. One of FLAC's advantages is the highly asymetric coding, which minimizes the decode half of the codec for low decode processor burden (not that it's really necessary today).
Neither here nor there, really, but it's good to know where everybody stands. I compress to FLAC now, since HD space is cheap and I've only got 200-220 CDs in my collection. Foobar lets me transcode easily to suit the target storage size.
Re:Character Record Sheets
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 1
And she proabably rolled her eyes just like she did when you first got the set. Mine would, no dowbt, have the same respose should I ever drag my old stuff out. I keep it around 'cause I can't seem to throw it away, but I suspect it just wouldn't hold up to the fond memories I have of playing the game way back when.
I've tried some of the online games, but it was really about a group of friends getting together...something mostly lost on the computer generation.
BTW - my friends and I used the Apple IIs (And some hand coding for the MX-80 printers) we had to make up snazzy character sheets after we'd graduated from just lined paper, but by then we were getting towards the end of the AD&D run for us. Sports, girls, and studies started cutting into fantasy time, and AD&D all but disappeared by the time computers were good enough for anything but number crunching and text output. (I remember wondering why anyone would buy Rogue's Gallery when you could code up the same thing in 20 minutes in basic).
Calculators are very personal things. I was going to answer with "HP48GX", but you might go look at the ConstructionMaster line of calculators for her. In fact, if I were to get any calculator for an architect, it would be one of these - they're purpose built for building projects.
http://www.calculated.com/products/construction/
I have the ConstructionMaster IV, and like it a lot for feet-inch-fraction operations. It was a gift, but if I were to buy one for myself, I'd probably get the CM Pro-Trig III version, as I do a lot of trig for loading vectors.
BTW - I also use an HP 48GX, though you have to buy it used, AFAIK. As a principal in a structural engineering firm (buildings & such), I use it on a daily basis. Though it's not included in the std memory, I've added an equation for singly reinforced concrete beams, which I'm not sure I could live without.
The 48GX does come with equations for Euler buckling, eccentric columns, simply supported and cantilever beams, but she'll know those by heart by now (it's faster to enter wL^2/8 than have the calculator solve for SS moment). Of course, if she's like most architects, she'll forget them in a year or two - almost all of them do.
I say allow only NCEES standard mayonnaise or unlimited garnishing...um...no...that's not it.
Yeah, it's a good thing they banned them for the ability to enter alphanumeric data. Since everyone who takes those won't have the mental capacity to memorize the questions and jot the multi-choice data into the margins of the reference meterials.
I say unrestricted calculating power or standard calculators handed out with the tests. I favor the latter, as it levels the playing field.
(BTW - I've taken and passed the FE & PE, and there was no strict monitoring of the PE which would have prevented me from jotting down key data into my references, and nothing on the FE which was hard enough to warrant needing more than a simple arithmetic calculator with a power function)
Why is it that Palm gets the good stuff? There's an emulator for the 48 for pocketPC, but it's so amazingly slow as to be unusable (1-1.5 sec between tap and display register). Calculations are also slooooooow to register.
It's amazing to think that a 300Mhz StrongArm processor is so easily bested by the old 4Mhz saturn in my HP.
Yeah, but it runs into that buy vs license grey area. Physical signatures on a contract delineating the rights and responsibilities of both parties, agreed to without coersion on the part of either side? The ability to make and ratify modifications agreed to by both parties?
It may be "data", but it still looks like a sale.
That said, If you're using linux or Win, why are you shopping iTMS?
A smart ruling would, at a minimum, limit the payments to usual and customary royalites over the period which includes only the time following the initiation of licensing talks.
Of course, if I were apple or adobe or any of the other companies being sued, you can bet my blood-sucking lawyers would be working overtime on this. Not just the defense, but if there was any counter-suit possibilities. Consider the costs of including the use of these algorithms when the licensing was thought to be available at no cost. That sounds like a frivilous lawsuit that would suck any royaty payments right back out of theor pockets.
One way to determine the "honesty" of a claim is to offer to stop the offending action in return for dropping the suit (or offering the act as the settlement). I'd be likely to agree to remove the infringing compression from my product for the remainder of the patent period. If the other side agrees, then the suit is genuine. If they don't they're really just after the quick buck.
---Those concerned about being on topic may stop here---
I've always thought that about the cigarette industry. Facing all of these lawsuits, why not just offer to stop producing and distributing them to the American market? Anti-smoking lawyers claim terrible hazards, and seek to extract $billions, which will be used for anti-smoking campaigns (andother general-fund uses). If there really is concern over the health of the citizenry, and "it's not about the money", then force them to put up or shut up. The large legitimate beer/wine/liquor industries found a way to survive US prohibition (and those are the only ones being sued), the econnomy would not collapse.
Of course, the government would never acquiesce (sp?) - they make too much money off the sin taxes. The families would never agree either - that's a 400 page thick court document that looks way too much like a lottery ticket to these folks. I just think the cig co.'s could have really separated the issue, had they been willing to play for all the marbles.
(btw - I'm a fervent anti-smoker. I'm offended by people who smoke in confined public places and the public trash/litter generated by careless smokers. I think it's more harmful to society than alcohol, though I'm not much of a drinker anymore, either. I think the money won is being wasted, and would rather have seen a fight on principal - win or lose - than the circus it became.)
Using Dubya's own use of the language (no doubt learned from Bill) concering the fast that there were no Iraq war plans "on his desk", this announcement merely implys that this is the first time they've outfitted this to a 747-400F. That aircraft is not a common item on CNNs US battle inventory pages.
And to those of you who think that it's a big deal that this thing takes up a whole 747 and can only get off half a dozen shots with the available fuel payload, I direct you to the historical news reels of the late 1970's where a similar weapon which could be used against an entire planet required a vehicle the size of a small moon.
Okay, let's say I were to develop the perfect genetically engineered strain of corn, and patent my "invention" and publish a scientific paper on it. Now, lots of companies would like to sell this corn, and any half-decent biotech lab can reproduce my work.
Continuing, lets say that I didn't limit the reproductive viability of the corn in my engineering work. So after the first few paroducts came to market and there was an ample opportunity to harvest the kernals for commercial re-sale. Every Southern States and TSC has a house brand of Overzeetop Super Corn. It's everywhere - on the grocery shelves, in the newspapers, on the web...the corn is ubiquitous worldwide.
Here's my question: If, after a dozen years, I decide to sue every maker and distributer of my corn, do I really have a case?
Naturally, IANAL, but I do know that you can lose a trademark if it is not defended. This seems awfully similar, but the laws regarding these two are different. Is there an equivalent loss of rights for a patent?
Yes, most locks are made to prevent the honest folks from being tempted. Ever look at the hinges on a typical bag? Think they're hard to break? 15 seconds with a cordless dremel will liberate the contents of most bags.
The zip ties are a good idea, especially if you use a particular color / marking.
Agreed. I always read LPI (lines per inch) as "line PAIRS per inch", as it is a black/white pair which must be resolved. Of course, I think in mm, as that's how most kodak 35mm films are spec'd.
FWIW, most color negs run 60-80 line pairs per millimeter (1500-2000 lpi). Ektar 25 color neg claimed 125 line pairs per mm, comparable to kodak's Tmax b&w negative films. Kodak TechPan - a high contrast technical film - can be shot at 25-40ASA and developed in a special low contrast developer to yield (IMHO beautiful) continuous tone B&W negatives which come in at about 200 line pairs per mm. Enlarging TechPan by hand can be tricky, as you need a high power grain focuser to get the image in perfect focus, but it can provide the amatuer photog print quality which rivals medium format (2.25" negative) images with "normal" films.
Yes, it seems infeasable, since you lack both convective and conductive heat sinks, but you do get to radiate your excess heat to a 3K (-270C) heatsink.
It's still an annoying problem, as radiators take up valuable surface area / FOV space which would preferable used for observational instrumentation.
Ummm...my point exactly, hence the dumb @$$ comment about the current man-in-charge in D.C. I doubt he has enough science background to understand such things. Not that putting an engineer in the White House would result in a utopia - we tried that in the late 70s...nice guys make poor presidents.
No, astroturf will rip your arms out of their sockets if you try to take proper divot. A good fairway, OTOH, will yield with almost no resistance, producing a shallow, dollar bill sized strip (which, if replaced properly, will mend in a short period of time).
If you're a duffer, like me, the soft ground can be quite a savior when you "hit the big ball before the little ball" a bit too strongly.
While I'm not a big fan of the volume of chemicals required to maintain a golf course, their addition to many urban areas provides an attractive (to most) drained area for surface water runoff. And, yes, they actually apply a chemical to make sure the water absorbtion is uniform through the grass. (Don't ask me for details..I don't knwo any, but I have a friend who works for a local course).
1 - yeah, it's probably no worse than the current situation, though most folks complain it's pretty bad right now.
2 - I'll buy that one
3 - I'll buy that too, but we buy lots of things from countries where people hate us: China - everything, most of Africa - minerals, France - wine (sorry, couldn't resist the dig on France)
3a - I've always maintained that Oil has little to do with Iraq. It all comes down to a phone conversation overheard in January 2001, when an unidentified speaker remarked "Don't worry, Dad, I'll get him for ya!"
4 - That's what illegal's are for. They have most of the nasty, filthy poultry processing jobs in the US.
5 - Oil generally has very high specific stored energy, but it is quite complex to extract that energy (ever looked at a modern engine schematic?). Right now, electric power is not viable because the Big 3 have not yet found it profitable to switch. Can you imagine how expensive a modern internal combustion engine would be to build from scratch, without a tuned assembly-line approach? That's where electric is.
True, but you're ignoring the sunk cost of picking up said trash to begin with. If the stuff has to be hauled away to a landfill or hauled away to a recycling facility, then there's no net energy consumption for recycling. The "far more energy than what is gained from recycling" assumes that if the trash wasn't picked up by recyclers, it wouldn't be picked up at all.
That said, recycling is horribly inefficient- mainly because of contaminants and/or separation requirements in the process flow. It is also very costly in terms of man-hours to recover valuable (saleable) materials.
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He used to be on in Blacksburg, VA. Once you've listened to him for a week, you've heard all the advice he has to give.
I've also found that he's a bit slim on his research at times. A good example was when he pimped the Yahoo Sitebuilder as a free tool for beginners to create nice business websites. It is a fun tool, but it's far from free, as you can't upload without a pay-to-play yahoo account. (and it'a PITA to re-path everything manually)
Harbor Freight is a bit of a crap shoot, but it's almost always cheaper than renting the same tool for a day or two. It may not last too long, but if you just need to brute force something, it'll usually do okay.
A bit of advice: "sale" prices are almost always available by using the appropriate "dash" number in the model. For example: an online item 12345-0VGA is the full retail online price:
"12345" Item number
"-0" retail price level
"VGA" online catalog designator
By ordering from the printed catalog section (you can still use the VGA catalog dsignator) and varying the -X, you can usually find a better price. It takes a while, because the engine will give you the highest price of the lot you choose, and if there's one of that item in your shopping cart already, it won't add any discounted pieces of the same item (you have to empty your cart of the item each time you add a -x part if you want to try again for a better sale price).
I've always thought, with the advent of sniping that ebay would/shoud change the rules. I hate losing to a snipe, and hate it more when an auction on which I'm a seller gets sniped. (A snip bid usually reduces the potential final value by not allowing the auction to contiue until only one bidder is willing to bid higher)
I've alsways though a "going, going, gone" period should be instituted, whereby an auction would not close until there had been no bids for, say, 30 or 60 seconds, rather than a fixed end time. I suppose that would be less buyer-friendly for those who snipe bids, but would be more friendly for the casual ebayer (my mother would never understand sniping, and if it happened to her she'd probably just give up and not use ebay). It would certainly make ebay better for sellers.
Learned 6502 asm the summer when I was 13 or so. Of course, I didn't have the $150 for the cheapest assembler out there (the Ace1000 I had was a _very_ generous gift from my grandfather - a whopping $1200.) So I'd write my asm on paper, then draw a chart on lined paper and code the machine language by hand.
Very labor intensive, but at 13 it was one convenient way to kill a rainy afternoon. And it was very instructive in how computers work. It often baffles me how slow my handheld PC is today, with 300MHz at its disposal, when compared to what we did with the machines of my youth.
Even further off topic, I remember this one kid - paul reishi - who made the most foolish proclaimation in our computer group that he wanted to write a program that would automatically turn the computer on. Of course, that was preposterous, and we all sniggered behind his back. Realize - we were in 7th grade and we had TRS80s and used BASIC. I remebered him for the first time in years when I saw my first wake-on-lan type functionality. Hope he made a mint.
Actually, I would suspect that 60% is "about half" when viewed from a marketing perspective. To a marketer, 60% is just 10% more than 50%, so that's pretty close (those with more than third grade math will, of course, note that 60% is 20% more than 50%, but I wouldn't even attempt to explain that to a communications major for fear of encountering glazed-eye syndrome).
FWIW - here's a comparison of other lossless codecs and their representative compression ratios:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html
You'll note that FLAC is squarely in the middle of the pack at about 53%-54%, which is certainly "about half", and Monkey's and others can dip below the half mark. One of FLAC's advantages is the highly asymetric coding, which minimizes the decode half of the codec for low decode processor burden (not that it's really necessary today).
Neither here nor there, really, but it's good to know where everybody stands. I compress to FLAC now, since HD space is cheap and I've only got 200-220 CDs in my collection. Foobar lets me transcode easily to suit the target storage size.
And she proabably rolled her eyes just like she did when you first got the set. Mine would, no dowbt, have the same respose should I ever drag my old stuff out. I keep it around 'cause I can't seem to throw it away, but I suspect it just wouldn't hold up to the fond memories I have of playing the game way back when.
I've tried some of the online games, but it was really about a group of friends getting together...something mostly lost on the computer generation.
BTW - my friends and I used the Apple IIs (And some hand coding for the MX-80 printers) we had to make up snazzy character sheets after we'd graduated from just lined paper, but by then we were getting towards the end of the AD&D run for us. Sports, girls, and studies started cutting into fantasy time, and AD&D all but disappeared by the time computers were good enough for anything but number crunching and text output. (I remember wondering why anyone would buy Rogue's Gallery when you could code up the same thing in 20 minutes in basic).
Calculators are very personal things. I was going to answer with "HP48GX", but you might go look at the ConstructionMaster line of calculators for her. In fact, if I were to get any calculator for an architect, it would be one of these - they're purpose built for building projects.
/
http://www.calculated.com/products/construction
I have the ConstructionMaster IV, and like it a lot for feet-inch-fraction operations. It was a gift, but if I were to buy one for myself, I'd probably get the CM Pro-Trig III version, as I do a lot of trig for loading vectors.
BTW - I also use an HP 48GX, though you have to buy it used, AFAIK. As a principal in a structural engineering firm (buildings & such), I use it on a daily basis. Though it's not included in the std memory, I've added an equation for singly reinforced concrete beams, which I'm not sure I could live without.
The 48GX does come with equations for Euler buckling, eccentric columns, simply supported and cantilever beams, but she'll know those by heart by now (it's faster to enter wL^2/8 than have the calculator solve for SS moment). Of course, if she's like most architects, she'll forget them in a year or two - almost all of them do.
I say allow only NCEES standard mayonnaise or unlimited garnishing...um...no...that's not it.
Yeah, it's a good thing they banned them for the ability to enter alphanumeric data. Since everyone who takes those won't have the mental capacity to memorize the questions and jot the multi-choice data into the margins of the reference meterials.
I say unrestricted calculating power or standard calculators handed out with the tests. I favor the latter, as it levels the playing field.
(BTW - I've taken and passed the FE & PE, and there was no strict monitoring of the PE which would have prevented me from jotting down key data into my references, and nothing on the FE which was hard enough to warrant needing more than a simple arithmetic calculator with a power function)
Why is it that Palm gets the good stuff? There's an emulator for the 48 for pocketPC, but it's so amazingly slow as to be unusable (1-1.5 sec between tap and display register). Calculations are also slooooooow to register.
It's amazing to think that a 300Mhz StrongArm processor is so easily bested by the old 4Mhz saturn in my HP.
Yeah, but it runs into that buy vs license grey area. Physical signatures on a contract delineating the rights and responsibilities of both parties, agreed to without coersion on the part of either side? The ability to make and ratify modifications agreed to by both parties?
It may be "data", but it still looks like a sale.
That said, If you're using linux or Win, why are you shopping iTMS?
A smart ruling would, at a minimum, limit the payments to usual and customary royalites over the period which includes only the time following the initiation of licensing talks.
Of course, if I were apple or adobe or any of the other companies being sued, you can bet my blood-sucking lawyers would be working overtime on this. Not just the defense, but if there was any counter-suit possibilities. Consider the costs of including the use of these algorithms when the licensing was thought to be available at no cost. That sounds like a frivilous lawsuit that would suck any royaty payments right back out of theor pockets.
One way to determine the "honesty" of a claim is to offer to stop the offending action in return for dropping the suit (or offering the act as the settlement). I'd be likely to agree to remove the infringing compression from my product for the remainder of the patent period. If the other side agrees, then the suit is genuine. If they don't they're really just after the quick buck.
---Those concerned about being on topic may stop here---
I've always thought that about the cigarette industry. Facing all of these lawsuits, why not just offer to stop producing and distributing them to the American market? Anti-smoking lawyers claim terrible hazards, and seek to extract $billions, which will be used for anti-smoking campaigns (andother general-fund uses). If there really is concern over the health of the citizenry, and "it's not about the money", then force them to put up or shut up. The large legitimate beer/wine/liquor industries found a way to survive US prohibition (and those are the only ones being sued), the econnomy would not collapse.
Of course, the government would never acquiesce (sp?) - they make too much money off the sin taxes. The families would never agree either - that's a 400 page thick court document that looks way too much like a lottery ticket to these folks. I just think the cig co.'s could have really separated the issue, had they been willing to play for all the marbles.
(btw - I'm a fervent anti-smoker. I'm offended by people who smoke in confined public places and the public trash/litter generated by careless smokers. I think it's more harmful to society than alcohol, though I'm not much of a drinker anymore, either. I think the money won is being wasted, and would rather have seen a fight on principal - win or lose - than the circus it became.)
Using Dubya's own use of the language (no doubt learned from Bill) concering the fast that there were no Iraq war plans "on his desk", this announcement merely implys that this is the first time they've outfitted this to a 747-400F. That aircraft is not a common item on CNNs US battle inventory pages.
And to those of you who think that it's a big deal that this thing takes up a whole 747 and can only get off half a dozen shots with the available fuel payload, I direct you to the historical news reels of the late 1970's where a similar weapon which could be used against an entire planet required a vehicle the size of a small moon.
(takes off tin foil hat and sniggers a bit)
Okay, let's say I were to develop the perfect genetically engineered strain of corn, and patent my "invention" and publish a scientific paper on it. Now, lots of companies would like to sell this corn, and any half-decent biotech lab can reproduce my work.
Continuing, lets say that I didn't limit the reproductive viability of the corn in my engineering work. So after the first few paroducts came to market and there was an ample opportunity to harvest the kernals for commercial re-sale. Every Southern States and TSC has a house brand of Overzeetop Super Corn. It's everywhere - on the grocery shelves, in the newspapers, on the web...the corn is ubiquitous worldwide.
Here's my question: If, after a dozen years, I decide to sue every maker and distributer of my corn, do I really have a case?
Naturally, IANAL, but I do know that you can lose a trademark if it is not defended. This seems awfully similar, but the laws regarding these two are different. Is there an equivalent loss of rights for a patent?
Yes, most locks are made to prevent the honest folks from being tempted. Ever look at the hinges on a typical bag? Think they're hard to break? 15 seconds with a cordless dremel will liberate the contents of most bags.
The zip ties are a good idea, especially if you use a particular color / marking.
Agreed. I always read LPI (lines per inch) as "line PAIRS per inch", as it is a black/white pair which must be resolved. Of course, I think in mm, as that's how most kodak 35mm films are spec'd.
FWIW, most color negs run 60-80 line pairs per millimeter (1500-2000 lpi). Ektar 25 color neg claimed 125 line pairs per mm, comparable to kodak's Tmax b&w negative films. Kodak TechPan - a high contrast technical film - can be shot at 25-40ASA and developed in a special low contrast developer to yield (IMHO beautiful) continuous tone B&W negatives which come in at about 200 line pairs per mm. Enlarging TechPan by hand can be tricky, as you need a high power grain focuser to get the image in perfect focus, but it can provide the amatuer photog print quality which rivals medium format (2.25" negative) images with "normal" films.
But then it wouldn't be a DMCA violation, as no unauthorized method was used to remove the encryption, AFAICT.
Jimmy Carter. Smart fellow, nice guy. Will never make the top 10 list of American Presidents.
Yes, it seems infeasable, since you lack both convective and conductive heat sinks, but you do get to radiate your excess heat to a 3K (-270C) heatsink.
It's still an annoying problem, as radiators take up valuable surface area / FOV space which would preferable used for observational instrumentation.
Ummm...my point exactly, hence the dumb @$$ comment about the current man-in-charge in D.C. I doubt he has enough science background to understand such things. Not that putting an engineer in the White House would result in a utopia - we tried that in the late 70s...nice guys make poor presidents.
Dubya's new space initiative to look for extraterrestrial oil hasn't filtered through to the mission planners yet...
(Just proof that any dumb @$$ can get elected in America...ooooh, pretty shiney!)
No, astroturf will rip your arms out of their sockets if you try to take proper divot. A good fairway, OTOH, will yield with almost no resistance, producing a shallow, dollar bill sized strip (which, if replaced properly, will mend in a short period of time).
If you're a duffer, like me, the soft ground can be quite a savior when you "hit the big ball before the little ball" a bit too strongly.
While I'm not a big fan of the volume of chemicals required to maintain a golf course, their addition to many urban areas provides an attractive (to most) drained area for surface water runoff. And, yes, they actually apply a chemical to make sure the water absorbtion is uniform through the grass. (Don't ask me for details..I don't knwo any, but I have a friend who works for a local course).
Let college students play golf on it. That's the fastest way I know to tear up golf course fairways...
okay, I'll bite:
1 - yeah, it's probably no worse than the current situation, though most folks complain it's pretty bad right now.
2 - I'll buy that one
3 - I'll buy that too, but we buy lots of things from countries where people hate us: China - everything, most of Africa - minerals, France - wine (sorry, couldn't resist the dig on France)
3a - I've always maintained that Oil has little to do with Iraq. It all comes down to a phone conversation overheard in January 2001, when an unidentified speaker remarked "Don't worry, Dad, I'll get him for ya!"
4 - That's what illegal's are for. They have most of the nasty, filthy poultry processing jobs in the US.
5 - Oil generally has very high specific stored energy, but it is quite complex to extract that energy (ever looked at a modern engine schematic?). Right now, electric power is not viable because the Big 3 have not yet found it profitable to switch. Can you imagine how expensive a modern internal combustion engine would be to build from scratch, without a tuned assembly-line approach? That's where electric is.
True, but you're ignoring the sunk cost of picking up said trash to begin with. If the stuff has to be hauled away to a landfill or hauled away to a recycling facility, then there's no net energy consumption for recycling. The "far more energy than what is gained from recycling" assumes that if the trash wasn't picked up by recyclers, it wouldn't be picked up at all.
That said, recycling is horribly inefficient- mainly because of contaminants and/or separation requirements in the process flow. It is also very costly in terms of man-hours to recover valuable (saleable) materials.