A point in your favor: according to Wikipedia, DARPA abandoned a program to use piezoelectric shoes to harvest 1-2 watts from marching soldiers to power their equipment. Apparently, even siphoning that much off was noticeable.[]
I really had hope for some sort of piezoelectric system, since they have no moving parts and would thus be lower maintenance. Still, part of me now longs for piezoelectric shoes.
Maybe not so arbitrary. How much of your physical effort are you willing to give away?
My entire point here was that, since much of the energy we spend walking is currently wasted, there might be a good chunk of energy that could be reclaimed without making it any harder to walk at all.
>> The figures provided to me by the notoriously inaccurate Internet say that a reasonably fit cyclist generates 1/3 HP
yes...
>> and walking can't be too much less than that.
Wanna think that over again? When I walk I'm probably not using more than 1/5 of my max output. Either you're *very* weak or you walk very fast.
You cannot maintain your "max output" indefinitely, and I have no idea how anyone could be capable of gauging the percentage of their "max output" that they were generating during a brisk stroll. I'm just going by the calorie charts, and they seem to indicate that on average cycling is about twice as laborious as walking. 1/5th or 1/6th horsepower is far closer to the correct value than 1/15th or 1/20th.
Plus, the proposal itself is using the figure of 120 watts (.16 horsepower).
We're not getting 1/5 or 1/4, or 1/20. And even if the numbers were 1000 times better, you couldnt even pay the interest on the money, much less pay for maintenance, or paying down the principal.
So even though you have no idea what the installation and maintenance costs would be for these floors, and only a very rough guess as to how much traffic they would be carrying, you know for absolute certain that they're so woefully inefficient that even a thousandfold increase in energy production would leave them a bad investment.
I can imagine this proposal being refined to the point where the flooring was basically maintenance free, and not much more expensive than floor tile. Maybe walking across them would be less like walking through wet sand, and more like walking across those sproingy running tracks made from recycled tires. I don't hear runners complaining about how hard they are to run across.
Look. I'm actually pretty suspicious of the usefulness of this idea, especially in the near term. An acquaintance of mine studying architecture at Berkeley said that architects are encouraged to draw up inspiring designs, and leave the implementation to the engineers. It's entirely possible that these guys made some truly basic errors (like assuming that the floors would capture 100% of the human power being walked across it). But listen to yourself. Without knowing the initial and maintenance costs of the flooring, or the costs of whatever flooring would have been used otherwise, or what percentage of walking energy could be usefully reclaimed without making walking more difficult, you've not only dismissed the project as financial suicide, but claimed that a thousand-fold improvement in efficiency would still fail to satisfy the beancounters.
This is why I have trouble taking off-the-cuff cost-benefit analyses seriously. That goes double for an analysis based on a detail-light media report, and it goes triple for an analysis found on Slashdot. At least wait to see the proposal itself before loudly insisting that it's foolishness to even build a prototype.
I've always thought that, if you wanted a product to fill the Think's particular niche, an electric bicycle plus a kid carrier for luggage would be awesome. The whole package could be put together very nicely for about $1000.
1) It is a mistake to compare the purchase cost of a mass-market car with decades of design revisions and massive economies of scale to a startup car with a fundamentally new design and much lower manufacturing volume.
1a) If economies of scale ever kick in, these cars will become more competitive. 1b) If battery research and larger volumes drive down the price of the batteries, the cars will become more competitive.
2) It is a mistake to assume that "more expensive" means "not really green." Normal cars are more expensive in part because they don't capture many of the costs that they create, from global warming to the health problems associated with urban pollution to the enormous toll in lives and treasure that is needed to keep our oil demands supplied.
3) It is a mistake to assume that your driving patterns are the ones which must be met by this product. There are lots of single people, lots of couples with no kids, lots of families with a "family car" and a "commute to work car", etc. Further, if this car enjoys enough success, I'm sure a three passenger, four passenger, or two-passenger-plus-trunk model will be made available quickly. It's not an outrage for them to field a product that isn't targeted to your needs. Don't be so self-centered.
4) It is a mistake to describe the $100-$200 "mobility fee" as buying wireless. That's just a little perk they want to throw in to make the option more attractive. The mobility fee is for the privilege of buying a $17,000 car without batteries instead of a $35,000 car. The monthly payment on that extra $18,000 is about $300 (7% interest over 72 months).
Aside from those few mistakes, I found your post to be spot on.
The Top Gear test was performed on a G-Wiz, and has nothing to do with the Norwegian cars being discussed. The G-Wiz basically an electric scooter with a metal enclosure, has a top speed of 40MPH, and isn't intended for highway use.
According to the article, the Think cars have a top speed of 62MPH (which their agreement with Tesla hopes to raise to 85-90MPH. It will very much be a highway car, and therefore subject to American and European safety standards. Lumping the Think and the G-Wiz together as "these cars" is like lumping your pet rabbit and your sister-in-law together under "these animals". Did that analogy make sense? No? That's my point: it's nonsensical. If Chewbacca lives on Krykkit, you must acquit.
You know how all the drive-up ATMs have braille buttons on them, because the manufacturers find it's simpler just to use the same keypads they install on the walk-up ATMs? This is probably one of those things. I'd be a bit disappointed if it really were just a stupid convention run amok.
I don't trust your first two assumptions. Given that nobody here seems sure how much of our normal "walking energy" is going to waste already, capping the extractable energy at 10% seems totally arbitrary.
The figures provided to me by the notoriously inaccurate Internet say that a reasonably fit cyclist generates 1/3 HP, and walking can't be too much less than that.
I also found a couple of sites that claim we burn around 150 food calories per hour while walking, which translates into 627kJ/h, or 174W, or 1/4 HP.
So if instead of 1/10 of 1/20 of a horsepower from each person, we imagine getting 1/5 of 1/4 of a horsepower, suddenly the numbers start looking ten times better.
Of course, it's a good idea to run the numbers (figure out how much the flooring costs and how much it will suck to walk on it). But it always floors me when Slashdot posts an interesting idea, and so many start pontificating on why it's physically impossible, or how the project will inevitably fail unless they account for X, Y, and Z (X and Y being incredibly obvious and Z being utterly wrong). I mean, sure, some people insist on pushing ideas that wouldn't make it past a bright high school physics student. But these guys are from MIT. Those guys are hardcore. If one of their students forgot to account for the laws of thermodynamics in a project, they'd probably spend a week in the on-campus stockade being pelted with vintage electronics. I heard an MIT undergrad once killed a whole village because a guy dropped a spoon!
The reason I asked you for your sources is because it sounded like you were just going with your gut instinct, which is completely at odds with what I've read. The reason I didn't give my sources is because I'm lazy, and I've trod this path many times with many people. It just isn't exciting anymore.
So understand that it bored me to collect this, and it made me a bit snippy:
This article claims that the Tesla produces about 2/5ths the CO2 per mile when compared to the best hybrid competitor (the Honda Insight). That's using natural gas to fire the grid, so I expect a coal-fired grid would raise it up to about 3/5ths.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates that EVs operating in the Los Angeles Basin would produce 98 percent fewer hydrocarbons, 89 percent fewer oxides of nitrogen, and 99 percent less carbon monoxide than ICE vehicles.
In a study conducted by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, EVs were significantly cleaner over the course of 100,000 miles than ICE cars. The electricity generation process produces less than 100 pounds of pollutants for EVs compared to 3000 pounds for ICE vehicles. (See Table 3)
[...]
CO2 emissions are also significantly lower. Over the course of 100,000 miles, CO2 emissions from EVs are projected to be 10 tons versus 35 tons for ICE vehicles (5).
Many EV critics remain skeptical of such findings because California's mix of power plants is relatively clean compared to that in the rest of the country. However, in Arizona where 67 percent of power plants are coal-fired, a study concluded that EVs would reduce greenhouse gases such as CO2 by 71 percent (6).
From a pure energy efficiency standpoint (BTUs per mile), electric vehicles are about twice as efficient, even if the electricity generation process is only 39% efficient (about what you'd expect from coal, the lossiest form) (same source).
This doesn't even begin to cover the other benefits of electric cars, which I gush about elsewhere.
What is true for electric cars is doubly true for electric lawnmowers, which are about the most pollutingest things around. Unlike automotive ICEs, mower motors generally don't have catalytic converters. Thus, a little bit of mowing goes a long way.
I'd suggest going in on an electric lawnmower with the neighbors. Not because they're particularly expensive. There is an e-mower at costco.com for about $200, which is a hundred dollars cheaper than any of the mowers at sears.com. Froogle came up with one for $128 from ACE Hardware, and I found an old mower on eBay for fifteen bucks (supposedly it still runs). No, I suggest sharing because it's a way to put five or six mowers out of commission, while saving garage space.
Regarding the speculation that this particular car model might be vastly less efficient than normal electric vehicles, I don't see why you'd expect that. It's probably not that much heavier than a standard EV (fewer batteries, more motor, should just about wash out), and I can't think of anything else that would make this model orders of magnitude less efficient in EV mode.
Some logical part of me does understand that most people are going to put their immediate sense of need or convenience ahead of abstract concepts like conservation. But for the most part, when I hear someone whining about how they can't bear to part with their conveniences, as they hungrily sap what little is left on this increasingly dessicated husk of a planet, it makes me want to go on a random crotch-punching spree. So please, don't bother trying to convince me that you're just being realistic. Fifty more years of
Why aren't those reasons enough? Even if you decide that the ribbon thing is an absolute boon, the other three points raise serious present and future expenses, and thus make it inappropriate for a budget-conscious educational environment.
The price tag is fairly cheap for the schools (who can buy in bulk), but the schools don't need to account for the money that parents have to spend keeping their systems compliant with whatever software the school chooses. Individual licenses cost more. Further, by going with Office, they've committed parents to Microsoft's upgrade treadmill, which amounts to hundreds of dollars every few years, regardless of whether the new features warrant the expense.
Had they instead decided to settle on OpenOffice (hell, AbiSuite would do 99% of what the average person does with office software) the download would be free, the upgrades would be free, etcetera etcetera etcetera.
System requirements are a huge deal, because the advice given by the school administrators ensures that lots of parents will have to upgrade to a new computer, as well as paying money for yet another marginal software upgrade. Further, settling on Office 2007 means that the district will have more trouble making use of donated computers.
Finally, Micrsoft's proprietary XML format raises questions as to whether you'll be able to interact with your own documents in the future. Currently they make the format available under "royalty-free licensing", which is a far cry from an open standard. The complexity of the format alone means it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see a perfect open-source implementation. Even if that happens, Office relies on proprietary sub-formats (DrawML support instead of the more open SVG, for example), which means that even products that handle OOXML aren't going to display the documents the way they were meant to be seen.
That sort of uncertainty is yet another cost that the district is passing off onto parents, very few of whom are remotely aware of the fact.
I don't trust the "research" that led you to despise electric lawnmowers. After all, small gasoline motors (chainsaws, lawnmowers, leafblowers, etc.) are among the worst polluting and least efficient fossil fuel motors on the market. They usually have minimal pollution controls and incomplete combustion. Unless you've got some hard numbers to back up your claims, I'm guessing that an electric motor (even powered by a smog belching coal-fired plant) is far, far more energy efficient and less polluting.
You seem to be claiming that, while a plugin is running off electricity, it's polluting as much as "your car" does. Unless you're driving an electric vehicle, you're simply wrong, and need to re-examine your assumptions.
You know, I don't care if Saddam had a dream of detonating a nuke in Times Square or not, because the simple fact is, he didn't have the programs or the infrastructure to pull it off. Plus, there is a good probability that, however insane he was, he still had enough of a grip on reality to know that such action would lead to the complete annihilation of his regime. So talk of "mushroom clouds" was mere fearmongering by the President. If he really thought it would be a good idea to reduce the risk of nuclear detonation, he wouldn't be drastically underfunding programs to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union (as Kerry so rightly criticized him for during the 2004 debates).
So be as amazed as you like when I say, I do not believe that Hussein's regime ever posed even a remote nuclear threat to the U.S. or its allies. I really couldn't care less.
As for the sixteen words, I'm aware of the wider debate over the factuality of the statement, and who knew what and when they forgot it. I was simply bringing it up to counter your ill-informed assertions about what anti-war activists are claiming. Nobody has claimed that there was no yellowcake in Iraq (and if you knew how easy it is to make the stuff, you'd understand why nobody is claiming it). So the fact that yellowcake was found proves nothing other than that Iraq had access to uranium ore and concentrated acid. As evidence for a determined nuclear weapons program, the stories you pointed to were laughable.
Back to the whole "George Tenet proves Bush made the right call" thing. You're still saying what I thought you were saying initially: the mere fact that Bush didn't install Tenet proves that he was independent, and would have acted as a brake on any attempts to doctor the evidence. That's utterly false. Stop focusing on the guy who appointed Tenet, and start focusing on the man himself. All the insider accounts (even that of Tenet himself, in his recent book) show that he either went along with the misuse of intelligence, or was unable to stop it.
I don't know why the hell you're dragging up the Scooter Libby case, unless you're simply trying to muddy the waters. But here are the facts: Richard Armitage was never charged with a crime because Fitzgerald couldn't find evidence that Armitage knew about Plame's covert status when he leaked the information. Such evidence would have been necessary to qualify for a conviction. You also appear to believe that it's impossible for more than one person to be the source of a leak, which is false.
You're right. A lot of people *do* believe that Bush came to office hell bent on invading Iraq. Maybe there's a reason for that, a reason which also explains why we've captured and executed Saddam Hussein (who didn't plan the 9/11 attacks) but not Osama bin Laden (who did).
The "lie" part of the yellowcake issue is the lie Bush put in the State of the Union address, which said that Iraq was seeking to import yellowcake from Nigeria. Yellowcake itself is a pretty common substance, created by any uranium mining process. Simply having yellowcake is a far, far cry from having the desire or ability to detonate a nuke within the United States.
Nobody disputes that hundreds of degraded shells and canisters of sarin and other chemical weapons were found in Iraq. Are these the "500 WMDs" you're talking about? If so, what a pathetic cry from what we expected to find.
If you think George Tenet -- by the mere fact of being a Clinton appointee -- somehow puts the Seal of Clintonian Approval on everything to come out of the CIA in the run-up to the war, well, your thinking is far too muddled for me to understand or to repair.
In her defense, Clinton only believed as much because the Bush Administration only gave Congress that portion of the intelligence findings that bolstered the case for WMDs. Had the Bushies played honestly, and not hidden the internal dissent within the CIA, Clinton would never have made that statement, would never have voted to authorize force, and Iraq would probably be stable and thoroughly inspected by now.
It still pisses me off that Clinton refuses to apologize for her vote authorizing the war.
BTW, which of the Democratic contenders do you consider "senile hippies?" I can tell you which of the Republican candidates I consider "warmongering", "bloodthirsty", "autocratic", "sellouts", "anti-scientific", "racist", and "corporate shills". But given the current crop of candidates, plus the non-candidacy of Al Gore, I see Mike Gravel as maybe-kinda-sorta-senile-in-the-absolute-loosest-s ense-of-the-word, and an unfortunate lack of hippies.
Of course, you're probably using "hippie" in the right-wing talk radio sense, which is to say "anyone to the left of Sean Hannity should be called a hippie." Being pro-environment, anti-war, and anti-poverty is hardly akin to quitting your job, joining a commune, and raising hemp. Show me a candidate on either side whose personal hygiene isn't up to snuff. C'mon, name one.
I'm not following your reasoning. While atheism demands no particular form of moral calculus (beyond rejecting any calculations based on "how much does this action piss off the Almighty"), I find it highly useful to consider questions like "Who is being harmed?" and "How much are they being harmed?" According to your reasoning, grabbing an unclaimed quarter off the gaming floor and swiping a stack of chips from someone while they're gawking at a waitress are morally equivalent acts. I find this incomprehensible, since I can imagine myself doing the first but not the second.
I suppose that "murder is still murder," whether the murderer accidentally hit a guy too hard in a bar fight, or whether he kidnapped, tortured, and executed the victim. Also, shoplifting is still shoplifting whether it's a six year old sneaking a candy bar or a forty year old filling a backpack full of DVDs.
No, the whole "a rule is a rule" mentality is based on the supposition that, however severe or trivial the practical effects of a violation are, all are equivalent in that they constitute an offense against the (usually omnipotent, omniscient, completely virtuous) rulemaker. Once you give up on the idea of a perfect rulemaker, you have to find a more flexible way of separating proper from improper actions.
Finally, just to go off on a tangent, "Whether you believe in bad luck or Jehovah, you're still superstitious" is a pretty silly statement. The first requires a belief in an all-powerful supernatural being taking a particular interest in the affairs of one specific Middle Eastern tribe, while the second simply requires an understanding that statistics doesn't deal every sentient being the same hand.
On the upside, this means that anyone who owns a website can search their logs for University of Kansas IP addresses, and send notices warning that students are violating their rules.
Signal? Meet noise. Noise, this is signal. You two become good friends.
I basically agree with you. But in the Rolex case, I think my defense would be "I don't know how to distinguish a fake Rolex from a real one." It would be the truth. But I'd never pay $40 bucks for a watch that doesn't have a square root function.:)
I'm not buying it, and I don't think a judge would either.
I'd believe it if it happened once. You put in a dollar, and get ten dollars credit? I can see the casino rigging the machines to do that.
But if I could repeat the trick an unlimited number of times on the same machine? I'd have to engage in some pretty hefty self-deceit to convince myself that the casino intended it to happen. It just doesn't pass the "reasonable person" test.
Clearly, he thinks your ethical outlook is harsh and inflexible. That sort of moral calculus often comes from a strict, religious upbringing.
Atheists are usually less hung up on the whole "a rule is a rule" mentality, and more inclined to actually weigh the actual effects of an action.
I understand that gambling is a whole different world, and that there might be some pretty severe repercussions for the casino if a customer decided to make an issue of it. So maybe that makes firing a justifiable option for the casino (though, I think simply deducting 400 quarters from his paycheck would be ample disincentive for most people).
But apparently, that's not the issue for you. For you, the issue is OMG TEH FUXXOR IS 5T333L1NG!!1 and it wouldn't matter if the guy was working the floor of a casino or the neighborhood grocery store. Sure, the only thing he knew for absolute certain was that the quarter wasn't his. But we've got some pretty strong social customs regarding small quantities of loose change. These customs effectively say, "It belonged to somebody else at some point in the past, but it's unlikely that the original owner noticed the loss, that he'll be significantly harmed by it, or that he'll be back for it. So the legal principle of 'finders keepers' applies."
If nothing else, the whole phenomenon of the "take a penny, leave a penny" trays should be ample proof that people generally don't care. It would take a strange mind to turn an unclaimed quarter into a moral outrage.
"Civil disobedience" requires more than simply deeming a law stupid then consciously breaking it. Instead, it requires breaking the law in such a way that the authorities charged with enforcing the law cannot ignore your violation, then triple-dog-daring them to enforce the stupid law.
Had Gandhi simply snuck down to the ocean one night to make some salt, he would have been in violation of the British monopoly on salt production, but he wouldn't have been engaged in civil disobedience. Instead, he announced his intention to manufacture salt to British authorities, then held a long march to the ocean.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget the solar powered car, and bring on the solar powered rollerblades. A photovoltaic cape would look pretty awesome.
A point in your favor: according to Wikipedia, DARPA abandoned a program to use piezoelectric shoes to harvest 1-2 watts from marching soldiers to power their equipment. Apparently, even siphoning that much off was noticeable.[ ]
I really had hope for some sort of piezoelectric system, since they have no moving parts and would thus be lower maintenance. Still, part of me now longs for piezoelectric shoes.
Plus, the proposal itself is using the figure of 120 watts (.16 horsepower).So even though you have no idea what the installation and maintenance costs would be for these floors, and only a very rough guess as to how much traffic they would be carrying, you know for absolute certain that they're so woefully inefficient that even a thousandfold increase in energy production would leave them a bad investment.
I can imagine this proposal being refined to the point where the flooring was basically maintenance free, and not much more expensive than floor tile. Maybe walking across them would be less like walking through wet sand, and more like walking across those sproingy running tracks made from recycled tires. I don't hear runners complaining about how hard they are to run across.
Look. I'm actually pretty suspicious of the usefulness of this idea, especially in the near term. An acquaintance of mine studying architecture at Berkeley said that architects are encouraged to draw up inspiring designs, and leave the implementation to the engineers. It's entirely possible that these guys made some truly basic errors (like assuming that the floors would capture 100% of the human power being walked across it). But listen to yourself. Without knowing the initial and maintenance costs of the flooring, or the costs of whatever flooring would have been used otherwise, or what percentage of walking energy could be usefully reclaimed without making walking more difficult, you've not only dismissed the project as financial suicide, but claimed that a thousand-fold improvement in efficiency would still fail to satisfy the beancounters.
This is why I have trouble taking off-the-cuff cost-benefit analyses seriously. That goes double for an analysis based on a detail-light media report, and it goes triple for an analysis found on Slashdot. At least wait to see the proposal itself before loudly insisting that it's foolishness to even build a prototype.
I've always thought that, if you wanted a product to fill the Think's particular niche, an electric bicycle plus a kid carrier for luggage would be awesome. The whole package could be put together very nicely for about $1000.
1) It is a mistake to compare the purchase cost of a mass-market car with decades of design revisions and massive economies of scale to a startup car with a fundamentally new design and much lower manufacturing volume.
1a) If economies of scale ever kick in, these cars will become more competitive.
1b) If battery research and larger volumes drive down the price of the batteries, the cars will become more competitive.
2) It is a mistake to assume that "more expensive" means "not really green." Normal cars are more expensive in part because they don't capture many of the costs that they create, from global warming to the health problems associated with urban pollution to the enormous toll in lives and treasure that is needed to keep our oil demands supplied.
3) It is a mistake to assume that your driving patterns are the ones which must be met by this product. There are lots of single people, lots of couples with no kids, lots of families with a "family car" and a "commute to work car", etc. Further, if this car enjoys enough success, I'm sure a three passenger, four passenger, or two-passenger-plus-trunk model will be made available quickly. It's not an outrage for them to field a product that isn't targeted to your needs. Don't be so self-centered.
4) It is a mistake to describe the $100-$200 "mobility fee" as buying wireless. That's just a little perk they want to throw in to make the option more attractive. The mobility fee is for the privilege of buying a $17,000 car without batteries instead of a $35,000 car. The monthly payment on that extra $18,000 is about $300 (7% interest over 72 months).
Aside from those few mistakes, I found your post to be spot on.
The Top Gear test was performed on a G-Wiz, and has nothing to do with the Norwegian cars being discussed. The G-Wiz basically an electric scooter with a metal enclosure, has a top speed of 40MPH, and isn't intended for highway use.
According to the article, the Think cars have a top speed of 62MPH (which their agreement with Tesla hopes to raise to 85-90MPH. It will very much be a highway car, and therefore subject to American and European safety standards. Lumping the Think and the G-Wiz together as "these cars" is like lumping your pet rabbit and your sister-in-law together under "these animals". Did that analogy make sense? No? That's my point: it's nonsensical. If Chewbacca lives on Krykkit, you must acquit.
You know how all the drive-up ATMs have braille buttons on them, because the manufacturers find it's simpler just to use the same keypads they install on the walk-up ATMs? This is probably one of those things. I'd be a bit disappointed if it really were just a stupid convention run amok.
I don't trust your first two assumptions. Given that nobody here seems sure how much of our normal "walking energy" is going to waste already, capping the extractable energy at 10% seems totally arbitrary.
The figures provided to me by the notoriously inaccurate Internet say that a reasonably fit cyclist generates 1/3 HP, and walking can't be too much less than that.
I also found a couple of sites that claim we burn around 150 food calories per hour while walking, which translates into 627kJ/h, or 174W, or 1/4 HP.
So if instead of 1/10 of 1/20 of a horsepower from each person, we imagine getting 1/5 of 1/4 of a horsepower, suddenly the numbers start looking ten times better.
Of course, it's a good idea to run the numbers (figure out how much the flooring costs and how much it will suck to walk on it). But it always floors me when Slashdot posts an interesting idea, and so many start pontificating on why it's physically impossible, or how the project will inevitably fail unless they account for X, Y, and Z (X and Y being incredibly obvious and Z being utterly wrong). I mean, sure, some people insist on pushing ideas that wouldn't make it past a bright high school physics student. But these guys are from MIT. Those guys are hardcore. If one of their students forgot to account for the laws of thermodynamics in a project, they'd probably spend a week in the on-campus stockade being pelted with vintage electronics. I heard an MIT undergrad once killed a whole village because a guy dropped a spoon!
You beat me to it. Damn!
So understand that it bored me to collect this, and it made me a bit snippy:
This article claims that the Tesla produces about 2/5ths the CO2 per mile when compared to the best hybrid competitor (the Honda Insight). That's using natural gas to fire the grid, so I expect a coal-fired grid would raise it up to about 3/5ths.
From a pure energy efficiency standpoint (BTUs per mile), electric vehicles are about twice as efficient, even if the electricity generation process is only 39% efficient (about what you'd expect from coal, the lossiest form) (same source).
This doesn't even begin to cover the other benefits of electric cars, which I gush about elsewhere.
What is true for electric cars is doubly true for electric lawnmowers, which are about the most pollutingest things around. Unlike automotive ICEs, mower motors generally don't have catalytic converters. Thus, a little bit of mowing goes a long way.
I'd suggest going in on an electric lawnmower with the neighbors. Not because they're particularly expensive. There is an e-mower at costco.com for about $200, which is a hundred dollars cheaper than any of the mowers at sears.com. Froogle came up with one for $128 from ACE Hardware, and I found an old mower on eBay for fifteen bucks (supposedly it still runs). No, I suggest sharing because it's a way to put five or six mowers out of commission, while saving garage space.
Regarding the speculation that this particular car model might be vastly less efficient than normal electric vehicles, I don't see why you'd expect that. It's probably not that much heavier than a standard EV (fewer batteries, more motor, should just about wash out), and I can't think of anything else that would make this model orders of magnitude less efficient in EV mode.
Some logical part of me does understand that most people are going to put their immediate sense of need or convenience ahead of abstract concepts like conservation. But for the most part, when I hear someone whining about how they can't bear to part with their conveniences, as they hungrily sap what little is left on this increasingly dessicated husk of a planet, it makes me want to go on a random crotch-punching spree. So please, don't bother trying to convince me that you're just being realistic. Fifty more years of
Why aren't those reasons enough? Even if you decide that the ribbon thing is an absolute boon, the other three points raise serious present and future expenses, and thus make it inappropriate for a budget-conscious educational environment.
The price tag is fairly cheap for the schools (who can buy in bulk), but the schools don't need to account for the money that parents have to spend keeping their systems compliant with whatever software the school chooses. Individual licenses cost more. Further, by going with Office, they've committed parents to Microsoft's upgrade treadmill, which amounts to hundreds of dollars every few years, regardless of whether the new features warrant the expense.
Had they instead decided to settle on OpenOffice (hell, AbiSuite would do 99% of what the average person does with office software) the download would be free, the upgrades would be free, etcetera etcetera etcetera.
System requirements are a huge deal, because the advice given by the school administrators ensures that lots of parents will have to upgrade to a new computer, as well as paying money for yet another marginal software upgrade. Further, settling on Office 2007 means that the district will have more trouble making use of donated computers.
Finally, Micrsoft's proprietary XML format raises questions as to whether you'll be able to interact with your own documents in the future. Currently they make the format available under "royalty-free licensing", which is a far cry from an open standard. The complexity of the format alone means it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see a perfect open-source implementation. Even if that happens, Office relies on proprietary sub-formats (DrawML support instead of the more open SVG, for example), which means that even products that handle OOXML aren't going to display the documents the way they were meant to be seen.
That sort of uncertainty is yet another cost that the district is passing off onto parents, very few of whom are remotely aware of the fact.
I don't trust the "research" that led you to despise electric lawnmowers. After all, small gasoline motors (chainsaws, lawnmowers, leafblowers, etc.) are among the worst polluting and least efficient fossil fuel motors on the market. They usually have minimal pollution controls and incomplete combustion. Unless you've got some hard numbers to back up your claims, I'm guessing that an electric motor (even powered by a smog belching coal-fired plant) is far, far more energy efficient and less polluting.
You seem to be claiming that, while a plugin is running off electricity, it's polluting as much as "your car" does. Unless you're driving an electric vehicle, you're simply wrong, and need to re-examine your assumptions.
You know, I don't care if Saddam had a dream of detonating a nuke in Times Square or not, because the simple fact is, he didn't have the programs or the infrastructure to pull it off. Plus, there is a good probability that, however insane he was, he still had enough of a grip on reality to know that such action would lead to the complete annihilation of his regime. So talk of "mushroom clouds" was mere fearmongering by the President. If he really thought it would be a good idea to reduce the risk of nuclear detonation, he wouldn't be drastically underfunding programs to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union (as Kerry so rightly criticized him for during the 2004 debates).
So be as amazed as you like when I say, I do not believe that Hussein's regime ever posed even a remote nuclear threat to the U.S. or its allies. I really couldn't care less.
As for the sixteen words, I'm aware of the wider debate over the factuality of the statement, and who knew what and when they forgot it. I was simply bringing it up to counter your ill-informed assertions about what anti-war activists are claiming. Nobody has claimed that there was no yellowcake in Iraq (and if you knew how easy it is to make the stuff, you'd understand why nobody is claiming it). So the fact that yellowcake was found proves nothing other than that Iraq had access to uranium ore and concentrated acid. As evidence for a determined nuclear weapons program, the stories you pointed to were laughable.
Back to the whole "George Tenet proves Bush made the right call" thing. You're still saying what I thought you were saying initially: the mere fact that Bush didn't install Tenet proves that he was independent, and would have acted as a brake on any attempts to doctor the evidence. That's utterly false. Stop focusing on the guy who appointed Tenet, and start focusing on the man himself. All the insider accounts (even that of Tenet himself, in his recent book) show that he either went along with the misuse of intelligence, or was unable to stop it.
I don't know why the hell you're dragging up the Scooter Libby case, unless you're simply trying to muddy the waters. But here are the facts: Richard Armitage was never charged with a crime because Fitzgerald couldn't find evidence that Armitage knew about Plame's covert status when he leaked the information. Such evidence would have been necessary to qualify for a conviction. You also appear to believe that it's impossible for more than one person to be the source of a leak, which is false.
You're right. A lot of people *do* believe that Bush came to office hell bent on invading Iraq. Maybe there's a reason for that, a reason which also explains why we've captured and executed Saddam Hussein (who didn't plan the 9/11 attacks) but not Osama bin Laden (who did).
The "lie" part of the yellowcake issue is the lie Bush put in the State of the Union address, which said that Iraq was seeking to import yellowcake from Nigeria. Yellowcake itself is a pretty common substance, created by any uranium mining process. Simply having yellowcake is a far, far cry from having the desire or ability to detonate a nuke within the United States.
Nobody disputes that hundreds of degraded shells and canisters of sarin and other chemical weapons were found in Iraq. Are these the "500 WMDs" you're talking about? If so, what a pathetic cry from what we expected to find.
If you think George Tenet -- by the mere fact of being a Clinton appointee -- somehow puts the Seal of Clintonian Approval on everything to come out of the CIA in the run-up to the war, well, your thinking is far too muddled for me to understand or to repair.
In her defense, Clinton only believed as much because the Bush Administration only gave Congress that portion of the intelligence findings that bolstered the case for WMDs. Had the Bushies played honestly, and not hidden the internal dissent within the CIA, Clinton would never have made that statement, would never have voted to authorize force, and Iraq would probably be stable and thoroughly inspected by now.
s ense-of-the-word, and an unfortunate lack of hippies.
It still pisses me off that Clinton refuses to apologize for her vote authorizing the war.
BTW, which of the Democratic contenders do you consider "senile hippies?" I can tell you which of the Republican candidates I consider "warmongering", "bloodthirsty", "autocratic", "sellouts", "anti-scientific", "racist", and "corporate shills". But given the current crop of candidates, plus the non-candidacy of Al Gore, I see Mike Gravel as maybe-kinda-sorta-senile-in-the-absolute-loosest-
Of course, you're probably using "hippie" in the right-wing talk radio sense, which is to say "anyone to the left of Sean Hannity should be called a hippie." Being pro-environment, anti-war, and anti-poverty is hardly akin to quitting your job, joining a commune, and raising hemp. Show me a candidate on either side whose personal hygiene isn't up to snuff. C'mon, name one.
I'm not following your reasoning. While atheism demands no particular form of moral calculus (beyond rejecting any calculations based on "how much does this action piss off the Almighty"), I find it highly useful to consider questions like "Who is being harmed?" and "How much are they being harmed?" According to your reasoning, grabbing an unclaimed quarter off the gaming floor and swiping a stack of chips from someone while they're gawking at a waitress are morally equivalent acts. I find this incomprehensible, since I can imagine myself doing the first but not the second.
I suppose that "murder is still murder," whether the murderer accidentally hit a guy too hard in a bar fight, or whether he kidnapped, tortured, and executed the victim. Also, shoplifting is still shoplifting whether it's a six year old sneaking a candy bar or a forty year old filling a backpack full of DVDs.
No, the whole "a rule is a rule" mentality is based on the supposition that, however severe or trivial the practical effects of a violation are, all are equivalent in that they constitute an offense against the (usually omnipotent, omniscient, completely virtuous) rulemaker. Once you give up on the idea of a perfect rulemaker, you have to find a more flexible way of separating proper from improper actions.
Finally, just to go off on a tangent, "Whether you believe in bad luck or Jehovah, you're still superstitious" is a pretty silly statement. The first requires a belief in an all-powerful supernatural being taking a particular interest in the affairs of one specific Middle Eastern tribe, while the second simply requires an understanding that statistics doesn't deal every sentient being the same hand.
On the upside, this means that anyone who owns a website can search their logs for University of Kansas IP addresses, and send notices warning that students are violating their rules.
Signal? Meet noise. Noise, this is signal. You two become good friends.
Ethically, it's no better if you actually play the slot machine. From a legal standpoint, it offers you some measure of plausible deniability.
I'm not sure how you'd relate this to the stock market.
I basically agree with you. But in the Rolex case, I think my defense would be "I don't know how to distinguish a fake Rolex from a real one." It would be the truth. But I'd never pay $40 bucks for a watch that doesn't have a square root function. :)
I'm not buying it, and I don't think a judge would either.
I'd believe it if it happened once. You put in a dollar, and get ten dollars credit? I can see the casino rigging the machines to do that.
But if I could repeat the trick an unlimited number of times on the same machine? I'd have to engage in some pretty hefty self-deceit to convince myself that the casino intended it to happen. It just doesn't pass the "reasonable person" test.
Clearly, he thinks your ethical outlook is harsh and inflexible. That sort of moral calculus often comes from a strict, religious upbringing.
Atheists are usually less hung up on the whole "a rule is a rule" mentality, and more inclined to actually weigh the actual effects of an action.
I understand that gambling is a whole different world, and that there might be some pretty severe repercussions for the casino if a customer decided to make an issue of it. So maybe that makes firing a justifiable option for the casino (though, I think simply deducting 400 quarters from his paycheck would be ample disincentive for most people).
But apparently, that's not the issue for you. For you, the issue is OMG TEH FUXXOR IS 5T333L1NG!!1 and it wouldn't matter if the guy was working the floor of a casino or the neighborhood grocery store. Sure, the only thing he knew for absolute certain was that the quarter wasn't his. But we've got some pretty strong social customs regarding small quantities of loose change. These customs effectively say, "It belonged to somebody else at some point in the past, but it's unlikely that the original owner noticed the loss, that he'll be significantly harmed by it, or that he'll be back for it. So the legal principle of 'finders keepers' applies."
If nothing else, the whole phenomenon of the "take a penny, leave a penny" trays should be ample proof that people generally don't care. It would take a strange mind to turn an unclaimed quarter into a moral outrage.
"Civil disobedience" requires more than simply deeming a law stupid then consciously breaking it. Instead, it requires breaking the law in such a way that the authorities charged with enforcing the law cannot ignore your violation, then triple-dog-daring them to enforce the stupid law.
Had Gandhi simply snuck down to the ocean one night to make some salt, he would have been in violation of the British monopoly on salt production, but he wouldn't have been engaged in civil disobedience. Instead, he announced his intention to manufacture salt to British authorities, then held a long march to the ocean.
Funny, I don't feel confounded...
Your calculations fail to account for the possibility of subatomic monkeys.