Had you said, "there aren't enough high-wind areas to produce meaningful amounts of power," then I would have simply asked for citations. Instead, you seemed to be rambling about how there was some sort of fundamental physical principle being violated by wind power. I think I did a wonderful job of shooting down the argument that you appeared to be framing, but since that isn't what you were really trying to say, it was wasted effort.
You may prove correct. I found it especially interesting that the amount of power you can generate falls with the cube of the wind speed (which blunts my hope for improved designs that would successfully harvest power at lower speeds). But it's safe to say that we're nowhere near the limits of what can be economically extracted with current technology, and the price is still on a downward trend (which wouldn't be expected if there were few good sites left).
Final point before I depart: reasonable people haven't been claiming that wind power can supply 100% of our power. However, we do have the ability to move power around on the grid, so it can be more reliable than people seem to assume. There would always need to be backup generation capacity, but it hardly needs to be 1 unit backup for 1 unit of wind power.
Umm... why does "the environment" have to care whether it's being treated well? How are environmentalists supposed to not make social or economic recommendations? Why would we go through all the bother of "providing a framework in which individuals may contribute valuable services (blah blah blah)" if the end result wasn't happier people? How can having more and better access to a vital natural resource not improve the economy of Mexico?
Forget it. You're not even a good troll. A good troll would have left at least contemplating the possibility that he might be trying to engage in a reasoned discussion.
The solution seems pretty simple to me: a greatly expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, or some similar measure that keeps the program from especially impacting the poor.
I'm not convinced the overall idea is a good one (and the page isn't loading up for me), but I don't see this as a huge obstacle.
"On par" in what sense? Wind power can already be generated in some areas at $.05/kwh, even without the economies of scale that would come from greater adoption. If you factor in the environmental problems caused by coal, hydro, and nuclear, plus the security risks posed by fission byproducts (costs which aren't being factored into the sticker price), the wind power that is being produced now looks like a great deal.
Don't give me this, "Y' kanna cheat the laws o' physics, Cap'n!" It's obvious that some amount of wind power is already being produced at economically competitive prices, so something in your analysis is fishy to say the least. Wind isn't a concentrated energy source, but it doesn't have to be. You overcome the dispersed nature of it by putting up large numbers of them and by making the rotors really big.
Anyhow, all mass has the same energy density, including air: 9.0x10^16 joules / kg. Even Einstein knows this, and he's dead. Take that, Mister "I know physics!"
Perhaps you fail to see the point of this assertion. Now you know how I felt when I read your post. One clear misapplication of a single scientific principle deserves another. If wind power is so obviously rendered impractical by the physics, where are the legions of physicists protesting it as a dead end?
> Actually, *better* than neutral in this case. You start with raw seawater, and end with potable water....which gets spit out your exhaust pipe and probably finds its way back to the ocean. Some have already pointed out that raw seawater might not work out well as a raw material. If it ends up only being feasible if we use "irrigation water or better," then it's probably not the best approach.
The media makes the mistake of treating hydrogen as a source, rather than a carrier. This article doesn't. They're simply trying to demonstrate that throwing hydrogen into the equation for a given application nearly triples the amount of energy that you need to produce. I can't assume they're correct, though the results sound plausible, and match my own concerns with the idea of a hydrogen economy. But if they are, it really does seem like the "electron economy" they discuss is the better route.
Question: Isn't chlorine useful in its own right? And don't the insoluble precipitates just fall to the bottom of the tank? It seems like once the chlorine is out of the water, the rest of the process should go smoothly.
Of course, unless this is a relatively cheap way to make chlorine, to the point that it would supplant traditional methods, it still just represents another inefficiency in the energy -> hydrogen -> energy conversion process.
I would argue that environmentalists simply accept the fact that a rapidly growing economy is nigh impossible to manage without seriously harming the environment. And I certainly don't see how it undermines the message of the environmental movement when its members point out that we're taking necessities from poor countries to provide luxuries for ourselves. After all, what is the point of the economy if not to allocate limited resources in such a way as to produce maximum happiness?
While I'm not clear how California's usage could affect the amount of water in the Rio Grande, your riposte misses the point. I see his reasoning: if there is less (and more polluted) water flowing into Mexico because California is slurping it up to spray all over its lawns, this impoverishes the economy of Mexico. If their economy was doing better (imagine that you could only make seven or eight times as much in the U.S., rather than the ten you quote) then less people would be hopping the border. If we're doing great damage to others to provide minimal benefit to ourselves (death before xeriscaping, anyone?), then it's really annoying for you to pass that very real concern off with blather about environmentalists not wanting you to be prosperous.
It seems like the alternative the article is touting is "electric vehicles with regenerative braking." I know some posters have claimed the article must be a front for the oil industry, but that doesn't seem like the sort of alternative the oilers would be waving around.
I've always thought there was a simple and easy way to refuel electric cars: take out the discharged battery and drop in a full battery. All you have to do is adopt the mindset that the batteries aren't actually part of your car, any more than the fuel in your tank is today. The biggest problem I can think of is the potential for fraud; if you can find batteries that are waiting to be scrapped, and exchange them at a service station for newer batteries, that might be worth a non-trivial sum of money.
The analogy is better than you imply. "Money" is an abstract entity, which is easy enough to replace with other abstract entities. But crude oil is a specific substance with a very specific and unique set of physical properties. So even if we transition our economy away from using oil for fuel, for plastics, for fertilizers, etc., to the point where we supposedly don't need it anymore, there is still some value in having it available, because new uses might be found for it.
Your "we must use every ounce of oil available before we transition away from it, else waste nature's bounty" attitude ignores a dozen salient facts. First, when we burn oil it puts CO2 into the atmosphere. Even run-of-the-mill global warming deniers should recognize that making these huge changes in the composition of our atmosphere might affect something, and it will be very tricky and expensive to undo the change we're making.
Next, it ignores the environmental impact of actually extracting resources. I brought this up before, and you didn't address it.
Next, the bigger we grow our oil-dependent economy, the more infrastructure has to be replaced during the transition phase. The harder we work to maintain current extraction rates, the more quickly and suddenly the supply will bottom out, and the more damaging it will be to the overall economy. To extend your analogy, it's like knowing you have a finite supply of wood, but building major additions to the house, upgrading the furnace-based heating system, and waiting until your supply is mostly gone before you start even exploring getting the power company to string power lines out to your house or installing the electric heaters.
What I'm saying is, if we'd recognized that our reliance on oil was bad for our country back in the 70's, and started seriously exploring our other options (biofuels, electric cars, Dread Nuclear), we would not be having this discussion today, we would not have involved ourselves in two separate wars in the Middle East, we would have bigger oil reserves (which we're still extremely dependent on for chemical fertilizer), and less CO2 in the atmosphere.
You're happy just knowing that we'll find replacements for oil if the price per barrel goes high enough. I'm not. It will mean that, at least in the short term, we'll be living in an economy where energy is significantly more expensive than it was historically. This has huge, long-term consequences for an economy that has been relying on cheap energy for over a century. We moved the bulk of our manufacturing capacity to China on the assumption that we could get goods from there to here cheaply, and we can't just turn on a dime and bring all that manufacturing back the moment shipping costs become prohibitive. We built millions of acres of suburban housing under the assumption that we could cheaply shuttle people to far-flung jobs and shopping centers, and it will be difficult to transition to a denser, less fuel-hungry system. All that churn necessary to adapt to changes in the economy amount to waste, and could have been avoided if we'd seen it coming and planned ahead for it.
Of course, it's possible that the energy crunch will be a short-term thing, and intensive research into alternative energies might eventually lead energy to be cheap again. But there will still be a very difficult transition period that could have been much simpler if we'd begun seriously investing in that intensive research decades ago.
You want to make this entire conversation about oil. What about metal? What about fish? What about timber? What about fresh water? You can't tell me that it's a good idea to be pushing every one of the resources we depend on to the breaking point, with the glib assumption that we'll easily find a replacement for each of them as they run out. Sure, we can run out of metal. We'll just use plastics. Which... depend on oil. And if we run out of fish, we'll just eat more beef. But modern agriculture also depends heavily on oil for fertilizer. Timber?
Re:+1 That applies to any language
on
Rails Recipes
·
· Score: 1
Good probability of that, yes. Even better probability that you really don't care if anyone else knows what you're doing.:)
Running Windows and Linux at the same time is a pretty big deal, if you need access to Windows-only apps. It's good for web developers, who need to check out their results in IE, and it may make some Windows to Linux migration attempts easier (since the migration might otherwise be held up by a desperate need for a single legacy app).
What else does it offer you, the consumer? Well, you can try things that no sane mortal should attempt with their computer. Install crapware and find out what it actually does to your system, and just delete the VM when you're done. Or let your kid loose on your computer knowing that there isn't much he can do to hose it.
Since you ask "what could it possibly offer anyone", I'd also point out that VMs are getting popular on computer farms (web hosting, etc), where clients are allowed to rent a virtual machine with guaranteed access to a certain amount of memory, a certain amount of clock cycles, etc. In clusters, there is also technology for halting a virtual machine on one box, migrating it to another, then starting it running there. That makes it much easier to take down a given box for maintenance.
One other thing you can do is network simulations. You could have a dozen VMs running on a single host, all forming a virtual network of whatever topology you desired. This can be useful for trying out new network protocols and distributed applications.
I'm sure there are lots of other examples that I'm not aware of.
Two possible answers: What kind of benefit do you get from money that's sitting undisturbed in your bank account? Now, the bauxite vein probably isn't bearing interest, but the returns on bank accounts are also pitiful. The benefit of keeping money in a bank account is knowing that it will be there later, when you actually do need it.
Meanwhile, resources like forests and fish actually do bear interest. If we use such resources faster than they can replenish themselves, then we're guaranteed a lower quality of life in the long term.
Second answer: The benefit of leaving the bauxite alone is not having to deal with the environmental damage that occurs when we extract, process, and use it.
That would be a nice counterargument, if "economic growth" in modern terms wasn't just shorthand for "turning nonrenewable natural resources into trash at a faster rate than ever before." Our entire economic infrastructure is based on ever accelerating consumption of oil, metals, water, and timber, all of which are being used faster than they can be replenished. The faster we consume, the harder it's going to hit us when we finally run out of all the things we need.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is flagrantly violating the treaty, increasing its nuclear stockpile
I'd love to see a link to an article saying that the us in increasing it's nuke stockpile. An article that actually says we are doing it. Got one?
Sorry, I got carried away there. But I don't see how we're going to get these bunker busters and low-yield warheads without building new weapons, and Bush has given every indication that he has no qualms about doing so.
First of all, I don't believe any of these robots cost anywhere near $10mil. Not even $1mil. But, regardless, would you rather that $300 IED blow up your friend or child or an innocent civilian?
You were the one who was going ga-ga about the idea of robots that could entirely replace infantrymen on the battlefield. That's going to cost a hell of a lot more than anything we'll be deploying in the forseeable future.
Go ahead and keep trying to paint me as someone who wants to see little children and frolicking puppies blown up by evil terrorists. It's not convincing. My point isn't that I want American soldiers blown up instead of robots. My point is that I don't want us to go to war, and the more powerful we are in relation to the countries around us, the more likely we are to do so, in the same disastrous style that we've seen in Iraq. 625,000 Iraqi casualties, in a country of 22,000,000 (on top of the hundreds of thousands of casualties inflicted by our economic sanctions after the first Gulf War).
If we come up with a robot or other weapon system that allows us to invade without any American casualties, then what is left to make us stand back and say, "maybe we shouldn't do this?" Obviously the fear of inflicting casualties on our enemies doesn't give us the slightest pause.
I've never understood those who want a fair fight. The more the enemy realizes they are dead meat the less likely they will be to provoke a war. Yes, the US spends more on military than the rest of the world combined. That's pretty intimidating for anybody thinking about messing with the US. And I like it that way.
Well, I've never understood those who want to live in a dog-eat-dog world, so long as they're the biggest, scariest dog out there. Well, congratulations. We're getting that world. And notice how all the little dogs, like North Korea and Iraq have decided that they need bigger teeth to protect themselves against the big dog?
Of course, they're not America. They're not "righteous". They don't value goodness and decency and baseball on a crisp October evening. So they can't be trusted with nuclear weapons. But we can.
There was a time, in the years after World War II, where America was seen as great because it was good. There was a time when, had we gone to the U.N. and said, "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," we would have been believed and supported. Of course, that was also a time when we wouldn't have gone to the U.N. with such flimsy evidence, or initiated a war on such flimsy pretexts. Today, much of the rest of the world sees us as a danger to international peace, and for good reason.
Given that we are universally feared and universally disliked, given that a large number of nations (including some you might assume to be allies) are eager to see China rise up and challenge our hegemony, what will happen to us if we fall on hard times? What if the housing bubble collapses, and China starts spending all those dollars it's been sucking up? Our economy would collapse, for starters, and all that pent up anti-American resentment will compel rivals to start challenging us on various fronts.
I don't know how it would play out, but I do know it will go a whole lot worse for us because of our hypocritical attitude towards international law and international cooperation. If the U.N. is an ineffective body that can't convince its members to uph
Fine. Read over the definition of 'truthiness' carefully, and suggest a single-word synonym. The only one I can think of is 'bellyfeel,' and because of its blatant associations with 1984, there was no way Colbert could have plausibly pretended to mean it.
"Collateral damage" wasn't coined because some American general was too lazy to look up a synonym for "demolished schoolhouse". You cite laziness as the primary motivator, when in fact the primary motivation was to obfuscate rather than to reveal. This sort of linguistic shenanigans isn't healthy, but neither is it an entirely American phenomenon.
"Infomercial" isn't just marketspeak for "well, okay, it's a commercial, but we want you to focus on the fact that we're giving you *information*" as you seem to suggest. In Americanese, it refers to a specific format of commercial, thirty minutes in length, used by many TV channels to fill crappy time slots with programming that they get paid for, rather than programming they have to pay for. Since it has a specific and unique meaning, it's a bad example.
I'm perfectly fine with "blog" and "podcasting". Thin-slicing sounds like a hyped word for "snap judgment". I'd never heard of captology, and I really can't make heads or tails of it. It seems to embundle a lot of semi-related ideas that all sound intriguing. "Folksonomy" probably has some close synonyms in anthropology, but I don't know how well the mainstream would digest them. I certainly can't think of a synonym that I could use and be understood by most people.
Sure, there is some element of hype to many of these new terms, but branding an old idea with a new term might also give you the chance to say something new about it. Take 'blog' for example. You can't call it an 'online diary' or 'web journal' because the 'diary' and 'journal' both imply a certain need for privacy, when you're actually publishing to the whole world. Even the 'log' portion of 'web log' implies something about the nature of the communication that is patently untrue. Anyhow, can you see the mainstream media sitting up and taking notice of "the online journalling community"? Using an old word starts people with the assumption that there is nothing fundamentally new going on, and I don't think that's the case with blogging.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go drive my horseless carriage somewhere.
I recommend everyone check out the first link, since you get all sorts of goodies like "pope-squatting", "man date", "jump the couch", "crotch fruit", and "sudden loss of wealth syndrome" (2000).
God, I hate having to explain the joke. If you actually knew what the word "truthy" meant, you'd never have written that last line. But I fully agree with the statement, as written.
You have explained why a cutting-edge military is expensive. I don't disagree. But we don't need a cutting-edge military to protect our borders. Nobody else in the world spends a fraction of what we do on military hardware. These sort of expenditures aren't for national defense, but for geopolitical offense, the ability to inflict our will upon all the other nations of the world. If we have the right to use military force to "ensure access to natural resources" as the Clinton administration put it, then why doesn't China, or Europe, or Iraq have the same right? Self-defense is a legitimate right for any country. The right to effect its will abroad is not.
The only possible self-defense justification for this level of military spending is to counter nuclear threats from other countries. But the same ends could be more effectively pursued through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, if only Der Chimpenmeister didn't insist on treating the treaty (which by "legitimate constitutional responsibility" is the law of the land) as toilet paper. Apparently, in his world Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear technology because it would give them the opportunity to violate the NNPT. Meanwhile, the U.S. is flagrantly violating the treaty, increasing its nuclear stockpile, and granting nuclear technology to non-signatory allies like India.
I don't know why conservatives are so uptight about our involvement in the U.N., when we obviously see international law as something to be inflicted on our enemies, not something to be upheld by ourselves and our allies.
And holy hell, robots? Talk about preparing to fight the wrong war. The only place you might reasonably want a robot is fifty feet ahead of the troop unit it's trying to protect, sniffing out possible booby traps. Or on the stereotypical battlefield where everything with two legs is a target to be eliminated. As the first few weeks of the Iraqi invasion showed, we're already plenty good at that sort of warfare. The sort of warfare we suck at is the sort of warfare where a robot would suck far worse: in the middle of an urban setting where nine out of every ten two-leggers around you are innocent bystanders. You want a robot making decisions about who lives and who dies in a situation like that? Or someone in a remote control station in Akron? And let's ignore the obvious asymmetry of a situation where a cluster of $10M robots can be taken out by a $300 IED.
That's only dealing with the practical issues. It doesn't begin to address the inherent immorality of a situation where America could invade, occupy, and control a country without exposing itself to any risk. We've already shown that we have zero concern for the lives of Iraqis. We've clearly shown more concern for the 3000 American troops dead than for the estimated 625,000 Iraqis dead in this conflict.[1] And now you think it would be just peachy if we could fight wars with zero casualties to our side? No, it would be a bad thing, because the risk of casualties is apparently the only thing holding us back from a state of eternal war, which would be bad for our nation and the world, but great for the aforementioned military-industrial complex, which would be getting way more orders for equipment.
[1] Most likely casualty figure as reported by the Lancet, using standard and well tested epidemiological techniques. The Iraqi government (which has a bias towards making it look like the country is running well) reported a "mere" 125,000 deaths. Meanwhile, Bush (in a moment of wondrous cluelessness), said that he didn't know, but guessed maybe 30,000.
Now, I never called anyone an "idiot brute." In fact, I think my analysis is far more fair (and quite frankly, less racist) than yours. Why? Because I'm relying on a single assumption: If I and the people around me had grown up in the same culture, under the same conditions of poor education and incredible poverty, we would very likely make very similar decisions. The fact that a particular decision flummoxes and outrages westerners like ourselves doesn't begin to imply that we have some sort of inherent superior moral sensibility that would carry over if we had been raised in Rwandan culture rather than our own. To assume that you would choose differently than they do is to claim that you are simply a better person, with that betterness not being dependent on your culture or your upbringing, but inherent in your very genes. Which is utter crap.
I've never asked you to agree that these decisions are the right ones to make. I don't believe that they are. All I've ever asked is for you to show the tiniest mote of sympathy and humility. So long as you insist that you just wouldn't behave that way under the same circumstances, you close yourself off to any opportunity to understand the conditions they live under. It's easier to depersonalize suffering people, to see them only as victims of their own moral inferiority, and reject any responsibility for helping them. But don't expect me to respect you for taking the easy way out.
I don't see your position as a valid one. It might be if our only involvement in Africa up to this point had been "sending aid." But between the slave trade, British imperialism, interference in African foreign policy, and foreign corporate ownership of many of Africa's natural resources (under the sort of terms and conditions you always get when the powerful negotiate with the powerless), our efforts in screwing that continent over have been legion. Just saying, "You're on your own now," and dropping what little aid we do send them would be positively criminal. Doubly so if we continued to insist that they repay their foreign debts and honor contracts which primarily enrich foreign investors.
Slashdot Mirror
Had you said, "there aren't enough high-wind areas to produce meaningful amounts of power," then I would have simply asked for citations. Instead, you seemed to be rambling about how there was some sort of fundamental physical principle being violated by wind power. I think I did a wonderful job of shooting down the argument that you appeared to be framing, but since that isn't what you were really trying to say, it was wasted effort.
You may prove correct. I found it especially interesting that the amount of power you can generate falls with the cube of the wind speed (which blunts my hope for improved designs that would successfully harvest power at lower speeds). But it's safe to say that we're nowhere near the limits of what can be economically extracted with current technology, and the price is still on a downward trend (which wouldn't be expected if there were few good sites left).
Final point before I depart: reasonable people haven't been claiming that wind power can supply 100% of our power. However, we do have the ability to move power around on the grid, so it can be more reliable than people seem to assume. There would always need to be backup generation capacity, but it hardly needs to be 1 unit backup for 1 unit of wind power.
Umm... why does "the environment" have to care whether it's being treated well? How are environmentalists supposed to not make social or economic recommendations? Why would we go through all the bother of "providing a framework in which individuals may contribute valuable services (blah blah blah)" if the end result wasn't happier people? How can having more and better access to a vital natural resource not improve the economy of Mexico?
Forget it. You're not even a good troll. A good troll would have left at least contemplating the possibility that he might be trying to engage in a reasoned discussion.
The solution seems pretty simple to me: a greatly expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, or some similar measure that keeps the program from especially impacting the poor.
I'm not convinced the overall idea is a good one (and the page isn't loading up for me), but I don't see this as a huge obstacle.
"On par" in what sense? Wind power can already be generated in some areas at $.05/kwh, even without the economies of scale that would come from greater adoption. If you factor in the environmental problems caused by coal, hydro, and nuclear, plus the security risks posed by fission byproducts (costs which aren't being factored into the sticker price), the wind power that is being produced now looks like a great deal.
Don't give me this, "Y' kanna cheat the laws o' physics, Cap'n!" It's obvious that some amount of wind power is already being produced at economically competitive prices, so something in your analysis is fishy to say the least. Wind isn't a concentrated energy source, but it doesn't have to be. You overcome the dispersed nature of it by putting up large numbers of them and by making the rotors really big.
Anyhow, all mass has the same energy density, including air: 9.0x10^16 joules / kg. Even Einstein knows this, and he's dead. Take that, Mister "I know physics!"
Perhaps you fail to see the point of this assertion. Now you know how I felt when I read your post. One clear misapplication of a single scientific principle deserves another. If wind power is so obviously rendered impractical by the physics, where are the legions of physicists protesting it as a dead end?
> Actually, *better* than neutral in this case. You start with raw seawater, and end with potable water. ...which gets spit out your exhaust pipe and probably finds its way back to the ocean. Some have already pointed out that raw seawater might not work out well as a raw material. If it ends up only being feasible if we use "irrigation water or better," then it's probably not the best approach.
The media makes the mistake of treating hydrogen as a source, rather than a carrier. This article doesn't. They're simply trying to demonstrate that throwing hydrogen into the equation for a given application nearly triples the amount of energy that you need to produce. I can't assume they're correct, though the results sound plausible, and match my own concerns with the idea of a hydrogen economy. But if they are, it really does seem like the "electron economy" they discuss is the better route.
Question: Isn't chlorine useful in its own right? And don't the insoluble precipitates just fall to the bottom of the tank? It seems like once the chlorine is out of the water, the rest of the process should go smoothly.
Of course, unless this is a relatively cheap way to make chlorine, to the point that it would supplant traditional methods, it still just represents another inefficiency in the energy -> hydrogen -> energy conversion process.
I'm more of a fan of electric cars, myself.
Wow. This Civilization game gets harder with each release.
I would argue that environmentalists simply accept the fact that a rapidly growing economy is nigh impossible to manage without seriously harming the environment. And I certainly don't see how it undermines the message of the environmental movement when its members point out that we're taking necessities from poor countries to provide luxuries for ourselves. After all, what is the point of the economy if not to allocate limited resources in such a way as to produce maximum happiness?
While I'm not clear how California's usage could affect the amount of water in the Rio Grande, your riposte misses the point. I see his reasoning: if there is less (and more polluted) water flowing into Mexico because California is slurping it up to spray all over its lawns, this impoverishes the economy of Mexico. If their economy was doing better (imagine that you could only make seven or eight times as much in the U.S., rather than the ten you quote) then less people would be hopping the border. If we're doing great damage to others to provide minimal benefit to ourselves (death before xeriscaping, anyone?), then it's really annoying for you to pass that very real concern off with blather about environmentalists not wanting you to be prosperous.
It seems like the alternative the article is touting is "electric vehicles with regenerative braking." I know some posters have claimed the article must be a front for the oil industry, but that doesn't seem like the sort of alternative the oilers would be waving around.
I've always thought there was a simple and easy way to refuel electric cars: take out the discharged battery and drop in a full battery. All you have to do is adopt the mindset that the batteries aren't actually part of your car, any more than the fuel in your tank is today. The biggest problem I can think of is the potential for fraud; if you can find batteries that are waiting to be scrapped, and exchange them at a service station for newer batteries, that might be worth a non-trivial sum of money.
The analogy is better than you imply. "Money" is an abstract entity, which is easy enough to replace with other abstract entities. But crude oil is a specific substance with a very specific and unique set of physical properties. So even if we transition our economy away from using oil for fuel, for plastics, for fertilizers, etc., to the point where we supposedly don't need it anymore, there is still some value in having it available, because new uses might be found for it.
Your "we must use every ounce of oil available before we transition away from it, else waste nature's bounty" attitude ignores a dozen salient facts. First, when we burn oil it puts CO2 into the atmosphere. Even run-of-the-mill global warming deniers should recognize that making these huge changes in the composition of our atmosphere might affect something, and it will be very tricky and expensive to undo the change we're making.
Next, it ignores the environmental impact of actually extracting resources. I brought this up before, and you didn't address it.
Next, the bigger we grow our oil-dependent economy, the more infrastructure has to be replaced during the transition phase. The harder we work to maintain current extraction rates, the more quickly and suddenly the supply will bottom out, and the more damaging it will be to the overall economy. To extend your analogy, it's like knowing you have a finite supply of wood, but building major additions to the house, upgrading the furnace-based heating system, and waiting until your supply is mostly gone before you start even exploring getting the power company to string power lines out to your house or installing the electric heaters.
What I'm saying is, if we'd recognized that our reliance on oil was bad for our country back in the 70's, and started seriously exploring our other options (biofuels, electric cars, Dread Nuclear), we would not be having this discussion today, we would not have involved ourselves in two separate wars in the Middle East, we would have bigger oil reserves (which we're still extremely dependent on for chemical fertilizer), and less CO2 in the atmosphere.
You're happy just knowing that we'll find replacements for oil if the price per barrel goes high enough. I'm not. It will mean that, at least in the short term, we'll be living in an economy where energy is significantly more expensive than it was historically. This has huge, long-term consequences for an economy that has been relying on cheap energy for over a century. We moved the bulk of our manufacturing capacity to China on the assumption that we could get goods from there to here cheaply, and we can't just turn on a dime and bring all that manufacturing back the moment shipping costs become prohibitive. We built millions of acres of suburban housing under the assumption that we could cheaply shuttle people to far-flung jobs and shopping centers, and it will be difficult to transition to a denser, less fuel-hungry system. All that churn necessary to adapt to changes in the economy amount to waste, and could have been avoided if we'd seen it coming and planned ahead for it.
Of course, it's possible that the energy crunch will be a short-term thing, and intensive research into alternative energies might eventually lead energy to be cheap again. But there will still be a very difficult transition period that could have been much simpler if we'd begun seriously investing in that intensive research decades ago.
You want to make this entire conversation about oil. What about metal? What about fish? What about timber? What about fresh water? You can't tell me that it's a good idea to be pushing every one of the resources we depend on to the breaking point, with the glib assumption that we'll easily find a replacement for each of them as they run out. Sure, we can run out of metal. We'll just use plastics. Which... depend on oil. And if we run out of fish, we'll just eat more beef. But modern agriculture also depends heavily on oil for fertilizer. Timber?
Good probability of that, yes. Even better probability that you really don't care if anyone else knows what you're doing. :)
Running Windows and Linux at the same time is a pretty big deal, if you need access to Windows-only apps. It's good for web developers, who need to check out their results in IE, and it may make some Windows to Linux migration attempts easier (since the migration might otherwise be held up by a desperate need for a single legacy app).
What else does it offer you, the consumer? Well, you can try things that no sane mortal should attempt with their computer. Install crapware and find out what it actually does to your system, and just delete the VM when you're done. Or let your kid loose on your computer knowing that there isn't much he can do to hose it.
Since you ask "what could it possibly offer anyone", I'd also point out that VMs are getting popular on computer farms (web hosting, etc), where clients are allowed to rent a virtual machine with guaranteed access to a certain amount of memory, a certain amount of clock cycles, etc. In clusters, there is also technology for halting a virtual machine on one box, migrating it to another, then starting it running there. That makes it much easier to take down a given box for maintenance.
One other thing you can do is network simulations. You could have a dozen VMs running on a single host, all forming a virtual network of whatever topology you desired. This can be useful for trying out new network protocols and distributed applications.
I'm sure there are lots of other examples that I'm not aware of.
Two possible answers: What kind of benefit do you get from money that's sitting undisturbed in your bank account? Now, the bauxite vein probably isn't bearing interest, but the returns on bank accounts are also pitiful. The benefit of keeping money in a bank account is knowing that it will be there later, when you actually do need it.
Meanwhile, resources like forests and fish actually do bear interest. If we use such resources faster than they can replenish themselves, then we're guaranteed a lower quality of life in the long term.
Second answer: The benefit of leaving the bauxite alone is not having to deal with the environmental damage that occurs when we extract, process, and use it.
/me vents a celebratory canister of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Irrelevant quote from my favoritest movie EVAR!: "If only it did have hands, my wife. If only... it did... have... hands..."
Whew! Gives me chills just thinking about it!
The last argument anyone on your side of the aisle should ever be trotting out is, "We shouldn't be mucking around trying to change nature."
That would be a nice counterargument, if "economic growth" in modern terms wasn't just shorthand for "turning nonrenewable natural resources into trash at a faster rate than ever before." Our entire economic infrastructure is based on ever accelerating consumption of oil, metals, water, and timber, all of which are being used faster than they can be replenished. The faster we consume, the harder it's going to hit us when we finally run out of all the things we need.
Sorry, I got carried away there. But I don't see how we're going to get these bunker busters and low-yield warheads without building new weapons, and Bush has given every indication that he has no qualms about doing so.
You were the one who was going ga-ga about the idea of robots that could entirely replace infantrymen on the battlefield. That's going to cost a hell of a lot more than anything we'll be deploying in the forseeable future.
Go ahead and keep trying to paint me as someone who wants to see little children and frolicking puppies blown up by evil terrorists. It's not convincing. My point isn't that I want American soldiers blown up instead of robots. My point is that I don't want us to go to war, and the more powerful we are in relation to the countries around us, the more likely we are to do so, in the same disastrous style that we've seen in Iraq. 625,000 Iraqi casualties, in a country of 22,000,000 (on top of the hundreds of thousands of casualties inflicted by our economic sanctions after the first Gulf War).
If we come up with a robot or other weapon system that allows us to invade without any American casualties, then what is left to make us stand back and say, "maybe we shouldn't do this?" Obviously the fear of inflicting casualties on our enemies doesn't give us the slightest pause.
Well, I've never understood those who want to live in a dog-eat-dog world, so long as they're the biggest, scariest dog out there. Well, congratulations. We're getting that world. And notice how all the little dogs, like North Korea and Iraq have decided that they need bigger teeth to protect themselves against the big dog?
Of course, they're not America. They're not "righteous". They don't value goodness and decency and baseball on a crisp October evening. So they can't be trusted with nuclear weapons. But we can.
There was a time, in the years after World War II, where America was seen as great because it was good. There was a time when, had we gone to the U.N. and said, "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," we would have been believed and supported. Of course, that was also a time when we wouldn't have gone to the U.N. with such flimsy evidence, or initiated a war on such flimsy pretexts. Today, much of the rest of the world sees us as a danger to international peace, and for good reason.
Given that we are universally feared and universally disliked, given that a large number of nations (including some you might assume to be allies) are eager to see China rise up and challenge our hegemony, what will happen to us if we fall on hard times? What if the housing bubble collapses, and China starts spending all those dollars it's been sucking up? Our economy would collapse, for starters, and all that pent up anti-American resentment will compel rivals to start challenging us on various fronts.
I don't know how it would play out, but I do know it will go a whole lot worse for us because of our hypocritical attitude towards international law and international cooperation. If the U.N. is an ineffective body that can't convince its members to uph
Fine. Read over the definition of 'truthiness' carefully, and suggest a single-word synonym. The only one I can think of is 'bellyfeel,' and because of its blatant associations with 1984, there was no way Colbert could have plausibly pretended to mean it.
"Collateral damage" wasn't coined because some American general was too lazy to look up a synonym for "demolished schoolhouse". You cite laziness as the primary motivator, when in fact the primary motivation was to obfuscate rather than to reveal. This sort of linguistic shenanigans isn't healthy, but neither is it an entirely American phenomenon.
"Infomercial" isn't just marketspeak for "well, okay, it's a commercial, but we want you to focus on the fact that we're giving you *information*" as you seem to suggest. In Americanese, it refers to a specific format of commercial, thirty minutes in length, used by many TV channels to fill crappy time slots with programming that they get paid for, rather than programming they have to pay for. Since it has a specific and unique meaning, it's a bad example.
I'm perfectly fine with "blog" and "podcasting". Thin-slicing sounds like a hyped word for "snap judgment". I'd never heard of captology, and I really can't make heads or tails of it. It seems to embundle a lot of semi-related ideas that all sound intriguing. "Folksonomy" probably has some close synonyms in anthropology, but I don't know how well the mainstream would digest them. I certainly can't think of a synonym that I could use and be understood by most people.
Sure, there is some element of hype to many of these new terms, but branding an old idea with a new term might also give you the chance to say something new about it. Take 'blog' for example. You can't call it an 'online diary' or 'web journal' because the 'diary' and 'journal' both imply a certain need for privacy, when you're actually publishing to the whole world. Even the 'log' portion of 'web log' implies something about the nature of the communication that is patently untrue. Anyhow, can you see the mainstream media sitting up and taking notice of "the online journalling community"? Using an old word starts people with the assumption that there is nothing fundamentally new going on, and I don't think that's the case with blogging.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go drive my horseless carriage somewhere.
So, if I started pulling out your hair one follicle at a time, upon which plucking would you go from being 0% bald to 100% bald?
I recommend everyone check out the first link, since you get all sorts of goodies like "pope-squatting", "man date", "jump the couch", "crotch fruit", and "sudden loss of wealth syndrome" (2000).
I believe the story uses the word correctly.
I just do.
God, I hate having to explain the joke. If you actually knew what the word "truthy" meant, you'd never have written that last line. But I fully agree with the statement, as written.
You have explained why a cutting-edge military is expensive. I don't disagree. But we don't need a cutting-edge military to protect our borders. Nobody else in the world spends a fraction of what we do on military hardware. These sort of expenditures aren't for national defense, but for geopolitical offense, the ability to inflict our will upon all the other nations of the world. If we have the right to use military force to "ensure access to natural resources" as the Clinton administration put it, then why doesn't China, or Europe, or Iraq have the same right? Self-defense is a legitimate right for any country. The right to effect its will abroad is not.
The only possible self-defense justification for this level of military spending is to counter nuclear threats from other countries. But the same ends could be more effectively pursued through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, if only Der Chimpenmeister didn't insist on treating the treaty (which by "legitimate constitutional responsibility" is the law of the land) as toilet paper. Apparently, in his world Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear technology because it would give them the opportunity to violate the NNPT. Meanwhile, the U.S. is flagrantly violating the treaty, increasing its nuclear stockpile, and granting nuclear technology to non-signatory allies like India.
I don't know why conservatives are so uptight about our involvement in the U.N., when we obviously see international law as something to be inflicted on our enemies, not something to be upheld by ourselves and our allies.
And holy hell, robots? Talk about preparing to fight the wrong war. The only place you might reasonably want a robot is fifty feet ahead of the troop unit it's trying to protect, sniffing out possible booby traps. Or on the stereotypical battlefield where everything with two legs is a target to be eliminated. As the first few weeks of the Iraqi invasion showed, we're already plenty good at that sort of warfare. The sort of warfare we suck at is the sort of warfare where a robot would suck far worse: in the middle of an urban setting where nine out of every ten two-leggers around you are innocent bystanders. You want a robot making decisions about who lives and who dies in a situation like that? Or someone in a remote control station in Akron? And let's ignore the obvious asymmetry of a situation where a cluster of $10M robots can be taken out by a $300 IED.
That's only dealing with the practical issues. It doesn't begin to address the inherent immorality of a situation where America could invade, occupy, and control a country without exposing itself to any risk. We've already shown that we have zero concern for the lives of Iraqis. We've clearly shown more concern for the 3000 American troops dead than for the estimated 625,000 Iraqis dead in this conflict.[1] And now you think it would be just peachy if we could fight wars with zero casualties to our side? No, it would be a bad thing, because the risk of casualties is apparently the only thing holding us back from a state of eternal war, which would be bad for our nation and the world, but great for the aforementioned military-industrial complex, which would be getting way more orders for equipment.
[1] Most likely casualty figure as reported by the Lancet, using standard and well tested epidemiological techniques. The Iraqi government (which has a bias towards making it look like the country is running well) reported a "mere" 125,000 deaths. Meanwhile, Bush (in a moment of wondrous cluelessness), said that he didn't know, but guessed maybe 30,000.
Now, I never called anyone an "idiot brute." In fact, I think my analysis is far more fair (and quite frankly, less racist) than yours. Why? Because I'm relying on a single assumption: If I and the people around me had grown up in the same culture, under the same conditions of poor education and incredible poverty, we would very likely make very similar decisions. The fact that a particular decision flummoxes and outrages westerners like ourselves doesn't begin to imply that we have some sort of inherent superior moral sensibility that would carry over if we had been raised in Rwandan culture rather than our own. To assume that you would choose differently than they do is to claim that you are simply a better person, with that betterness not being dependent on your culture or your upbringing, but inherent in your very genes. Which is utter crap.
I've never asked you to agree that these decisions are the right ones to make. I don't believe that they are. All I've ever asked is for you to show the tiniest mote of sympathy and humility. So long as you insist that you just wouldn't behave that way under the same circumstances, you close yourself off to any opportunity to understand the conditions they live under. It's easier to depersonalize suffering people, to see them only as victims of their own moral inferiority, and reject any responsibility for helping them. But don't expect me to respect you for taking the easy way out.
I don't see your position as a valid one. It might be if our only involvement in Africa up to this point had been "sending aid." But between the slave trade, British imperialism, interference in African foreign policy, and foreign corporate ownership of many of Africa's natural resources (under the sort of terms and conditions you always get when the powerful negotiate with the powerless), our efforts in screwing that continent over have been legion. Just saying, "You're on your own now," and dropping what little aid we do send them would be positively criminal. Doubly so if we continued to insist that they repay their foreign debts and honor contracts which primarily enrich foreign investors.