Though I haven't researched it, I suspect much of the impetus behind such forward thinking, in the UK as well as on the continent, is because, as Lex Luthor so elequently "... they'll always need land. It's the one thing they're not making any more of." Not much land available to turn into landfills and you can't just dump it in the sea.
Uh, no. It's being pushed by the EU because of the greenie-weenies. Roughly 93% of the UK is not built on, so they can keep dumping garbage in landfills for a few million years before it becomes a probem.
And who's land will be the next landfill? Hmm? You volunteering for displacement or to have a dump next door over?
I fight (and surprisingly, I actually won once) stuff that makes no sense.. but this did make sense and has since proven to be successful.
There's a common resistance to change. Particularly where that change is perceived to cost something, such as time, effort or money. But when it turns out to be not just a good idea, but that someone's actually profitting from, then there's the complaining, gnashing of teeth and the slammin' o' the fist on the table when we're not getting our share of the proceeds.
Decades ago there was concern in Michigan regarding the recycling of two litre bottles, what would they do with this recovered plastic? Oh, the taxpayer would suffer an immense burden with having to recover and figure out how to recycle, reuse, whatever, a mountain of plastic. Then some clever engineer found this plastic could inexpensively be used to produce polyester fibres and offered to take all the bottles off the recovery agency's hands - no charge. A nice arrangement, right? Well, another company decided they wanted the plastic too, so a small bidding war broke out for these bottles - which ultimately went to the original source of the material - pre-bottle, driving up the market price of the PET raw material.
Or more likely, just refuse to collect garbage with substantial compostable materials.
We have a composing program here and it works fine. As a Canadian, the standard selfish American "fuck that shit" response to this kind of stuff is always humorous. I mean my god.. when you eat a banana, you toss the peel into a different bin. Tiny bit of effort, huge benifits to everyone! American response: "HAWR I PAY TAXES WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DO THAT SHIT!!"
Sadly, the American way of disposing of rubbish, the sanitation department won't take or will charge to collect, is to put it in your auto and drive to some empty road, abandoned neighborhood or ravine near a road and give it a heave. Too damn much of that going on already.
Yeh, but you are taking up space in scarce landfill with material that could be used, rather than... taking up space in Landfill. Where I am in London, we are supplied with 3 bins, compostables (which takes pretty much any organic matter apart from raw meat and bones), recyclable - almost all plastics, all metal and glass and regular rubbish. The compost created is sold to gardeners, used for public parks and gardens etc. and does a lot more good than it would causing a stink in landfill.
Though I haven't researched it, I suspect much of the impetus behind such forward thinking, in the UK as well as on the continent, is because, as Lex Luthor so elequently "... they'll always need land. It's the one thing they're not making any more of." Not much land available to turn into landfills and you can't just dump it in the sea.
Decomposing plants doesn't release any carbon dioxide overall - what it puts out is matched molecule-for-molecule by what it took in growing the plants.
Matched atom for atom, but the molecules are of a different construction and number, sir.
Please recall the petroleum is the result of plant decay, albeit from fatty, fast growing plants of a bygone era. A well constructed green landfill will produce natural gas for around 100 years, usually reaching peak production in 50. We have landfills around south San Francisco Bay which have some sort of combustion device, where captured gases are channeled into them and simply burned, generating no power in the process, but by the visible heat signature they certainly could be generating some power, even it just for the nearby street lights.
The reality of the 21st century is that *everyone* can be a journalist, whether you consider them one or not. You can define it any way you want, but anyone can be a part of the press: reporting, feedback, facilitating, etc. Good/factual/relevant journalist? That's up to one's own interpretation.
Silly question... if it is headed to a landfill, isn't it being 'composted' anyway? We are burying it, after all.
You're confusing "out of sight, out of mind" with composting or even proper disposal. Throwing the refuse on the ground and covering it with clay or other earth isn't thought out other than just getting rid of it.
Took a few decades for dumb humans to realize you couldn't just throw those electronics under the dirt and not expect Lead, Mercury, Chromium, PCB/PBB, etc, to show up one day in the well water. Driving through the Desert West, slowing down and taking a short walk off road frequently reveals the extent of communities to just assume putting something over there in the weeds was a good enough way to dispose of it - quite a lot of rubbish in the desert, over 50 years old and still sitting there, it didn't go away - consider Douglas Adams' concept of SEP, these dumping grounds, to the present, seem to radiate a strong SEP Field - though eventually they come back to us in some way.
Planning for disposal, recycling and composting should be part of any municipal plan, where larger cities can take advantage of an economy of scale to reduce initial cost. There's only so much land available for landfill and then what? The San Francisco Bay area has huge mounds of landfill around the South Bay, likely something in each of these will seep into the Bay, water table and food chain in some way. Shouldn't be doing these kinds of dumps anymore, but they still do.
Aside the fact much of this Green Waste will decompose over time, releasing hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, which could be harvested in a properly designed and maintained natural gas generating landfill, much of farm land is being depleted of minerals in topsoil, where this compost should be placed back.
Mandatory? No, people should be doing this because it makes good business sense.
No matter how many acts of journalism this guys commits I will never see him as a journalist. I have to like someone personally first and also make sure they have a flawless record using a standard that I set and reserve only for him. Until this impossible standard is met I will bash in any way I can regardless of logic and back calls for his extrajudicial murder.
It's really the only sensible path Very Serious People can take.
He's a facilitator. He made vast amounts of information available. He doesn't claim to the the journo or editor - that's the audience he's feeding to - assuming they'll do their job proper. You're always free to sift through the documents yourself, to stimulate your own personal outrage or mistrust of various world leaders, govenment functionaries, paper shufflers, rubber-stampers and pencil-pushers. Don't condemn the man for his journalistic shortcomings.
Somebody is conspicuously absent from the Kyoto Protocol.
America, fuck yeah.
In Germany you are taxed to death (by 'merkin standards) and the price of petrol is over 12$US per gallon - yet they have among the highest standard of living and the most robust economy in Europe.
When the people in Washington DC hear about raising the cost of petrol, so people won't waste it so stupidly on SUVs in the city and frivolous trips in the auto, they howl that it will destroy the American Way of Life and the Economy.
Fucking daft, scared "leaders" America is dynamic and can adapt, same as Germany did. Charge $10/gal at the pump and people will stop depending so heavily on petrol that the country has to go to war over it.
Not sure the Canadian North can count as "more usable land" once thawed -- it's largely frozen muskeg swamp at the moment, somewhat usable due to permafrost since at least that way you don't sink into it.
There's some interest in the northern seabed for gas exploration.
Great bit on the construction of the trans-Alaskan highway, in Mitchner's Alaska. When they tore the top layer off the tundra their equipment, paving, everything sunk into mud. The only way to build roads was on top of the Permafrost. Nobody going to do any mining, drilling or anything else if the ground is thawed and you have the biggest plain of mud in the world between you and your dreamed of profits.
That's usually a pretty bad sign, right there. While magazines seem to be dying everywhere, I'm completely at a loss for the hige number of magazines in a local bookseller, which appear to cater to select readership. There must be something they do right.
And a hotline for when the U.S. is under cyber attack by China would be useful in assessing how successful the attack is going, and how it should be modified.
Of course, it is also possible it could be used for good.
Like a Hotline to Lord Voldemort for every time Harry Potter suffers one of those headaches.
"Hello, Lord Voldemore speaking.... What do you mean you can see me in your dreams?!? And people call me sick!"
I'm glad everyone is so skeptical of this. My first thought was, "oh, so then when they hack the crap out of us and we call to say we're having a 'cyber crisis' they can deny it directly..."
Not like identification of attack source is immediately known. After the attack and the information is pieced together what do you do?
"Hey, we were attacked by a bunch of servers in your country yesterday."
"It was not us!
Yeah, that sounds useful. News media is more effective to get our displeasure across.
CorpCo, a company fulfilling contracts to sell missile defence components to Taiwan was under cyber attack on Sunday, attacks originated from Hu Jintao's mobile phone. When asked about the attack Hu said his mobile phone had been stolen a week ago and he was just now getting around to calling the police.
All the calls would be coming from the US, and China would just deny them anyway. If a global cyber attack starts affecting Chinese systems, then the PRC government just has to call down to whichever department or military unit is pulling off the attack, and tell them to cool it a bit. This is like a police department setting up a system to investigate robberies by talking with the pawn shop that happens to be the local fence. Not much is going to get done,
Chinese call going to US:
"You stop talking about Wayward Province of Taiwan, now or we filter all traffic!"
But now McMullen and all his awful associates have been dragged out into the daylight and they can't hide anymore. Yes, it is ugly. Yes, it is depressing. But. It will eventually get better. First, there must be the full investigation. Second, there must be the corrective measures. Hopefully they don't wedge a new government agency into the pressroom. For all the rot, there has been some good and press need ability to hold government to account, something which would be difficult if the government vetted news.
Amazing how less regulation and lower taxes are always the answer to any problem, isn't it?
UK has a concept of Fit and Proper, which could be applied to management of News International, forcing them to divest of certain properties if the government deems the Murdochs as unfit or improper. Could you imagine that in the USA? Not I.
Slashdot Mirror
Though I haven't researched it, I suspect much of the impetus behind such forward thinking, in the UK as well as on the continent, is because, as Lex Luthor so elequently "... they'll always need land. It's the one thing they're not making any more of." Not much land available to turn into landfills and you can't just dump it in the sea.
Uh, no. It's being pushed by the EU because of the greenie-weenies. Roughly 93% of the UK is not built on, so they can keep dumping garbage in landfills for a few million years before it becomes a probem.
And who's land will be the next landfill? Hmm? You volunteering for displacement or to have a dump next door over?
I fight (and surprisingly, I actually won once) stuff that makes no sense.. but this did make sense and has since proven to be successful.
There's a common resistance to change. Particularly where that change is perceived to cost something, such as time, effort or money. But when it turns out to be not just a good idea, but that someone's actually profitting from, then there's the complaining, gnashing of teeth and the slammin' o' the fist on the table when we're not getting our share of the proceeds.
It's a funny world.
Is driver on mobile phone? Add 1
Is driver drinking coffee? Add 1
Is driver putting on makeup/shaving/combing hair? Add 1
Is driver having animated (you can see heads turning and arms waving about) discussion with passenger/children? Add 1
Is driver speeding? Add 1
If your score is 3 or higher then expect them to run the light, hope you are not in a crossing lane.
"What's more, this industry generates additional jobs.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy
Decades ago there was concern in Michigan regarding the recycling of two litre bottles, what would they do with this recovered plastic? Oh, the taxpayer would suffer an immense burden with having to recover and figure out how to recycle, reuse, whatever, a mountain of plastic. Then some clever engineer found this plastic could inexpensively be used to produce polyester fibres and offered to take all the bottles off the recovery agency's hands - no charge. A nice arrangement, right? Well, another company decided they wanted the plastic too, so a small bidding war broke out for these bottles - which ultimately went to the original source of the material - pre-bottle, driving up the market price of the PET raw material.
Who would have foreseen it, eh?
Or more likely, just refuse to collect garbage with substantial compostable materials.
We have a composing program here and it works fine. As a Canadian, the standard selfish American "fuck that shit" response to this kind of stuff is always humorous. I mean my god.. when you eat a banana, you toss the peel into a different bin. Tiny bit of effort, huge benifits to everyone! American response: "HAWR I PAY TAXES WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DO THAT SHIT!!"
Sadly, the American way of disposing of rubbish, the sanitation department won't take or will charge to collect, is to put it in your auto and drive to some empty road, abandoned neighborhood or ravine near a road and give it a heave. Too damn much of that going on already.
Yeh, but you are taking up space in scarce landfill with material that could be used, rather than ... taking up space in Landfill. Where I am in London, we are supplied with 3 bins, compostables (which takes pretty much any organic matter apart from raw meat and bones), recyclable - almost all plastics, all metal and glass and regular rubbish. The compost created is sold to gardeners, used for public parks and gardens etc. and does a lot more good than it would causing a stink in landfill.
Though I haven't researched it, I suspect much of the impetus behind such forward thinking, in the UK as well as on the continent, is because, as Lex Luthor so elequently "... they'll always need land. It's the one thing they're not making any more of." Not much land available to turn into landfills and you can't just dump it in the sea.
Decomposing plants doesn't release any carbon dioxide overall - what it puts out is matched molecule-for-molecule by what it took in growing the plants.
Matched atom for atom, but the molecules are of a different construction and number, sir.
Please recall the petroleum is the result of plant decay, albeit from fatty, fast growing plants of a bygone era. A well constructed green landfill will produce natural gas for around 100 years, usually reaching peak production in 50. We have landfills around south San Francisco Bay which have some sort of combustion device, where captured gases are channeled into them and simply burned, generating no power in the process, but by the visible heat signature they certainly could be generating some power, even it just for the nearby street lights.
The reality of the 21st century is that *everyone* can be a journalist, whether you consider them one or not. You can define it any way you want, but anyone can be a part of the press: reporting, feedback, facilitating, etc. Good/factual/relevant journalist? That's up to one's own interpretation.
So what you call it, isn't really relevant. The laws haven't been updated to respect this, but with technology it's held true for quite some time.
Well stated, Citizen Journalist!
Silly question... if it is headed to a landfill, isn't it being 'composted' anyway? We are burying it, after all.
You're confusing "out of sight, out of mind" with composting or even proper disposal. Throwing the refuse on the ground and covering it with clay or other earth isn't thought out other than just getting rid of it.
Took a few decades for dumb humans to realize you couldn't just throw those electronics under the dirt and not expect Lead, Mercury, Chromium, PCB/PBB, etc, to show up one day in the well water. Driving through the Desert West, slowing down and taking a short walk off road frequently reveals the extent of communities to just assume putting something over there in the weeds was a good enough way to dispose of it - quite a lot of rubbish in the desert, over 50 years old and still sitting there, it didn't go away - consider Douglas Adams' concept of SEP, these dumping grounds, to the present, seem to radiate a strong SEP Field - though eventually they come back to us in some way.
Planning for disposal, recycling and composting should be part of any municipal plan, where larger cities can take advantage of an economy of scale to reduce initial cost. There's only so much land available for landfill and then what? The San Francisco Bay area has huge mounds of landfill around the South Bay, likely something in each of these will seep into the Bay, water table and food chain in some way. Shouldn't be doing these kinds of dumps anymore, but they still do.
Aside the fact much of this Green Waste will decompose over time, releasing hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, which could be harvested in a properly designed and maintained natural gas generating landfill, much of farm land is being depleted of minerals in topsoil, where this compost should be placed back.
Mandatory? No, people should be doing this because it makes good business sense.
No matter how many acts of journalism this guys commits I will never see him as a journalist. I have to like someone personally first and also make sure they have a flawless record using a standard that I set and reserve only for him. Until this impossible standard is met I will bash in any way I can regardless of logic and back calls for his extrajudicial murder.
It's really the only sensible path Very Serious People can take.
He's a facilitator. He made vast amounts of information available. He doesn't claim to the the journo or editor - that's the audience he's feeding to - assuming they'll do their job proper. You're always free to sift through the documents yourself, to stimulate your own personal outrage or mistrust of various world leaders, govenment functionaries, paper shufflers, rubber-stampers and pencil-pushers. Don't condemn the man for his journalistic shortcomings.
Somebody is conspicuously absent from the Kyoto Protocol.
America, fuck yeah.
In Germany you are taxed to death (by 'merkin standards) and the price of petrol is over 12$US per gallon - yet they have among the highest standard of living and the most robust economy in Europe.
When the people in Washington DC hear about raising the cost of petrol, so people won't waste it so stupidly on SUVs in the city and frivolous trips in the auto, they howl that it will destroy the American Way of Life and the Economy.
Fucking daft, scared "leaders" America is dynamic and can adapt, same as Germany did. Charge $10/gal at the pump and people will stop depending so heavily on petrol that the country has to go to war over it.
Not sure the Canadian North can count as "more usable land" once thawed -- it's largely frozen muskeg swamp at the moment, somewhat usable due to permafrost since at least that way you don't sink into it.
There's some interest in the northern seabed for gas exploration.
Great bit on the construction of the trans-Alaskan highway, in Mitchner's Alaska. When they tore the top layer off the tundra their equipment, paving, everything sunk into mud. The only way to build roads was on top of the Permafrost. Nobody going to do any mining, drilling or anything else if the ground is thawed and you have the biggest plain of mud in the world between you and your dreamed of profits.
Save! Save! Save! Operators standing by! Call now! 1-800-DOT-COMM to place your order!
Ugh. I can just hear the wretched radio adverts already...
That's usually a pretty bad sign, right there. While magazines seem to be dying everywhere, I'm completely at a loss for the hige number of magazines in a local bookseller, which appear to cater to select readership. There must be something they do right.
And a hotline for when the U.S. is under cyber attack by China would be useful in assessing how successful the attack is going, and how it should be modified.
Of course, it is also possible it could be used for good.
Like a Hotline to Lord Voldemort for every time Harry Potter suffers one of those headaches.
"Hello, Lord Voldemore speaking. ... What do you mean you can see me in your dreams?!? And people call me sick!"
I'm glad everyone is so skeptical of this. My first thought was, "oh, so then when they hack the crap out of us and we call to say we're having a 'cyber crisis' they can deny it directly..."
Not like identification of attack source is immediately known. After the attack and the information is pieced together what do you do?
"Hey, we were attacked by a bunch of servers in your country yesterday."
"It was not us!
Yeah, that sounds useful. News media is more effective to get our displeasure across.
CorpCo, a company fulfilling contracts to sell missile defence components to Taiwan was under cyber attack on Sunday, attacks originated from Hu Jintao's mobile phone. When asked about the attack Hu said his mobile phone had been stolen a week ago and he was just now getting around to calling the police.
All the calls would be coming from the US, and China would just deny them anyway. If a global cyber attack starts affecting Chinese systems, then the PRC government just has to call down to whichever department or military unit is pulling off the attack, and tell them to cool it a bit. This is like a police department setting up a system to investigate robberies by talking with the pawn shop that happens to be the local fence. Not much is going to get done,
Chinese call going to US:
"You stop talking about Wayward Province of Taiwan, now or we filter all traffic!"
It's about time we launched terraforming bacteria at all the planets and moons in the solar system.
Where, if the bacteria didn't outright die, it would proceed at a pace which would make glaciers appear as a blur.
is a single kudzu seed
Mars is mostly sandy - African Ice Plant
Wait in welcome to our Martian roundworm overlords.
In Soviet Russia worms colonize YOU!
Statistics is pretty good at determining relationships between variables - and lack thereof.
Why let lack of relationship between variables stand in your way?
You could suggest to people who should be their friends.
and people who want to be your friends could always boost their visibility with easy payments.
Facebook would like me to offer them up my email addresses so they can helpfully locate my friends on Facebook.
Cold day in Hell when I agree to that.
Makes you proud to be British really...
But now McMullen and all his awful associates have been dragged out into the daylight and they can't hide anymore. Yes, it is ugly. Yes, it is depressing. But. It will eventually get better. First, there must be the full investigation. Second, there must be the corrective measures. Hopefully they don't wedge a new government agency into the pressroom. For all the rot, there has been some good and press need ability to hold government to account, something which would be difficult if the government vetted news.
Amazing how less regulation and lower taxes are always the answer to any problem, isn't it?
UK has a concept of Fit and Proper, which could be applied to management of News International, forcing them to divest of certain properties if the government deems the Murdochs as unfit or improper. Could you imagine that in the USA? Not I.