I hope you misinterpreted him. Human power generation is too tiny to contribute a meaningful amount of heat to the planet (on the order of 0.02% of solar input).
The sun strikes the earth with petawatts of power. On average, the earth radiates petawatts of power into space. Adding even a few terawatts to that will not shift the average temperature in any noticeable way. Gigawatts even less.
There is a healthy debate that the whole notion of a virgin birth is a historical insertion (basically, instead of meaning Jesus was divine, it can be taken to mean that Mary was married to Joseph as a virgin).
So the (or a) modern English bible isn't necessarily the right interpretation of the bible as it was written.
(The gist of the article is that all house cats come from Middle Eastern stock, probably because of agriculture)
Re:Why would anyone want to use lousy software?
on
IT and Health Care
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· Score: 1
Do you think the systems try to do too much? I only have a view from the cheap seats, but there seems to be a pervasive focus on building the perfect system from the get go rather than something that bests paper and then incrementally improving from there.
The hot dry rock technology is still being developed. The injection wells mentioned in the graphic (at the Geysers) are injecting to enhance the existing aquifer, rather than creating the fractures needed to heat the water.
Maybe they could compare a period from before the drilling to a similar length of time during the drilling and compare the frequency, magnitude and locations of the quakes?
Might get them a little further than taking it one quake at a time.
None of this means I think that a few quakes are reason not to try to build the power plant. They need to be a little cautious that they don't start generating a large number of huge quakes, but that doesn't seem very likely to me.
I was a little irritated with myself yesterday when I accidentally figured out that the device labels on my universal remote are just for me; the chip inside doesn't care.
Rather obvious, but even for something like that, I had built up big walls of assumptions that made it so I never even considered that my model of how it worked was incorrect.
If you told that to Jules Verne, he would have thought it was pretty sweet that people figured out ways to make his ideas real.
Anyway, weird claims are a good reason to be extra skeptical. Weird claims and notable attempts at avoiding the scientific method and honest disclosure are good reason to walk away. So if someone came up with a real free energy box, they wouldn't have much trouble convincing a pretty good portion of scientists that it worked.
I think a big part of why so many people hate economics is that they take an introductory class on macroeconomics and never take any other classes.
I mean, as obvious as much of the stuff in a introductory microeconomics class can be, at least it mostly makes sense (and much of it can actually be tested in interesting ways).
I'm not sure expecting a bar to understand a traditional unit (they are often traditional establishments) is the same sort of unreasonable as expecting a bar to take arbitrary currency.
I did not, however, consider that there would be a fair chance of the natives not understanding my foreign gibbering during such encounters (for reasons of language rather than measurement). Good thing it was largely a flip remark on the internet.
People are pinning my expectations when I ask for a pint pretty finely. Mostly, I expect something close to a pint. I simply can't fathom that people involved in the bar business would be utterly unfamiliar with the unit (in some form).
I suppose I sort of pinned myself a bit when I said no further explanation, but I'm not sure them saying something and me saying 'fine' counts as explanation.
I don't consider myself qualified to accurately judge the veracity of information about the flight characteristics of airplanes and nothing 'official' and 'technical' looking shows up (within my level of enthusiasm) on Google.
That's the truckers problem. And someone will tell him the amount in the unit he wants, either when it is loaded or when it is weighed. The grocer doesn't ever need to care. Or at least, I can't figure out why he would.
When the hell is he going to need to convert to ounces or pounds?
All he needs to know is how many potatoes his customers buy. The company he buys potatoes from will sell them in pounds or bags and worry about the shipping (that I cherry picked 2000 pounds means I new the tons before you started shifting a decimal; 32,000 ounces isn't exactly the biggest challenge ever faced by an arithmetician either).
That article on the Gimli Glider is evil, as it does not mention how close the pilot got with his seat of the pants guess for the best glide ratio speed (there are some links on Google that say about 18:1, so it sounds like he did pretty good).
The last part, from Norvig, suggests that the issues were more subtle than that.
Saving Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
"The MCO [Mars Climate Orbiter] MIB [Mishap Investigation Board] has determined that the root cause for the loss of the MCO spacecraft was the failure to use metric units in the coding of a ground software file, "Small Forces," used in trajectory models. Specifically, thruster performance data in English units instead of metric units was used in the software application code titled SM_FORCES (small forces)."
--Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board, Phase I Report
This is not to take away from the designers of a wonderfully complex spacecraft that can travel to Mars; that's an incredibly difficult problem, and I couldn't do it. However, this is just the type of error that Frink was designed to help avoid, and because I make these type of errors a lot, I've designed this tool to help me. Frink tracks units through all calculations and makes conversions between them transparent. This is why I'm working toward making Frink a feasible solution for calculations of this type.
Update: I received the following from Peter Norvig:
"I ran across Frink, and as a member of the MCO review board, I appreciate your efforts. Note, however that more than just language support is necessary. First, you'd have to have conventions on data I/O -- the misinterpreted data was from a file, not from another function in the program. Also, there was an issue of software reuse -- the errant portion of the system had been used before on a previous mission, and in that case it was used in a non-critical, non-navigational way. It was not properly reviewed because the team did not realize that in MCO it became critical."
What do you think when it is -10 or -20 C (it reaches those temperatures here at least a few days each year...and it doesn't get terribly cold here compared to Canada and such)?
Slashdot Mirror
The attenuation is not huge. Here are numbers for solar intensity at orbital radii:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation#Sunlight_intensity_in_the_Solar_System
I hope you misinterpreted him. Human power generation is too tiny to contribute a meaningful amount of heat to the planet (on the order of 0.02% of solar input).
Not venting all that CO2 might help though.
Don't forget that tribes of Homo sapiens were likely also warring with each other. Tribalism doesn't need two species.
The sun strikes the earth with petawatts of power. On average, the earth radiates petawatts of power into space. Adding even a few terawatts to that will not shift the average temperature in any noticeable way. Gigawatts even less.
There is a healthy debate that the whole notion of a virgin birth is a historical insertion (basically, instead of meaning Jesus was divine, it can be taken to mean that Mary was married to Joseph as a virgin).
So the (or a) modern English bible isn't necessarily the right interpretation of the bible as it was written.
Maybe the later authors had access to the earlier material? Makes it easier to be consistent. This guy goes on about this idea for a while:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm
How do the dates in this article fit in with what you are saying? Article:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-taming-of-the-cat
(The gist of the article is that all house cats come from Middle Eastern stock, probably because of agriculture)
Do you think the systems try to do too much? I only have a view from the cheap seats, but there seems to be a pervasive focus on building the perfect system from the get go rather than something that bests paper and then incrementally improving from there.
The hot dry rock technology is still being developed. The injection wells mentioned in the graphic (at the Geysers) are injecting to enhance the existing aquifer, rather than creating the fractures needed to heat the water.
Maybe they could compare a period from before the drilling to a similar length of time during the drilling and compare the frequency, magnitude and locations of the quakes?
Might get them a little further than taking it one quake at a time.
None of this means I think that a few quakes are reason not to try to build the power plant. They need to be a little cautious that they don't start generating a large number of huge quakes, but that doesn't seem very likely to me.
If the 5 minutes of PBS that I caught were the correct five minutes, it was sold in an open air market, marketed as 'working'.
I was a little irritated with myself yesterday when I accidentally figured out that the device labels on my universal remote are just for me; the chip inside doesn't care.
Rather obvious, but even for something like that, I had built up big walls of assumptions that made it so I never even considered that my model of how it worked was incorrect.
If you told that to Jules Verne, he would have thought it was pretty sweet that people figured out ways to make his ideas real.
Anyway, weird claims are a good reason to be extra skeptical. Weird claims and notable attempts at avoiding the scientific method and honest disclosure are good reason to walk away. So if someone came up with a real free energy box, they wouldn't have much trouble convincing a pretty good portion of scientists that it worked.
I think a big part of why so many people hate economics is that they take an introductory class on macroeconomics and never take any other classes.
I mean, as obvious as much of the stuff in a introductory microeconomics class can be, at least it mostly makes sense (and much of it can actually be tested in interesting ways).
Perhaps more methane and bio-oil (from the algae) comes out than play energy goes in?
I'm not sure expecting a bar to understand a traditional unit (they are often traditional establishments) is the same sort of unreasonable as expecting a bar to take arbitrary currency.
I did not, however, consider that there would be a fair chance of the natives not understanding my foreign gibbering during such encounters (for reasons of language rather than measurement). Good thing it was largely a flip remark on the internet.
People are pinning my expectations when I ask for a pint pretty finely. Mostly, I expect something close to a pint. I simply can't fathom that people involved in the bar business would be utterly unfamiliar with the unit (in some form).
I suppose I sort of pinned myself a bit when I said no further explanation, but I'm not sure them saying something and me saying 'fine' counts as explanation.
An Imperial (long) ton is 2240 pounds. A U.S. customary (short) ton is 2000 pounds. A tonne (metric ton) is 1000 kg.
I don't consider myself qualified to accurately judge the veracity of information about the flight characteristics of airplanes and nothing 'official' and 'technical' looking shows up (within my level of enthusiasm) on Google.
That's the truckers problem. And someone will tell him the amount in the unit he wants, either when it is loaded or when it is weighed. The grocer doesn't ever need to care. Or at least, I can't figure out why he would.
ounces or tons in that first paragraph, and knew in that second one. Yeash.
When the hell is he going to need to convert to ounces or pounds?
All he needs to know is how many potatoes his customers buy. The company he buys potatoes from will sell them in pounds or bags and worry about the shipping (that I cherry picked 2000 pounds means I new the tons before you started shifting a decimal; 32,000 ounces isn't exactly the biggest challenge ever faced by an arithmetician either).
That article on the Gimli Glider is evil, as it does not mention how close the pilot got with his seat of the pants guess for the best glide ratio speed (there are some links on Google that say about 18:1, so it sounds like he did pretty good).
The following comes from this page:
http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/#MCO
The last part, from Norvig, suggests that the issues were more subtle than that.
Saving Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
"The MCO [Mars Climate Orbiter] MIB [Mishap Investigation Board] has determined that the root cause for the loss of the MCO spacecraft was the failure to use metric units in the coding of a ground software file, "Small Forces," used in trajectory models. Specifically, thruster performance data in English units instead of metric units was used in the software application code titled SM_FORCES (small forces)."
--Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board, Phase I Report
This is not to take away from the designers of a wonderfully complex spacecraft that can travel to Mars; that's an incredibly difficult problem, and I couldn't do it. However, this is just the type of error that Frink was designed to help avoid, and because I make these type of errors a lot, I've designed this tool to help me. Frink tracks units through all calculations and makes conversions between them transparent. This is why I'm working toward making Frink a feasible solution for calculations of this type.
Update: I received the following from Peter Norvig:
"I ran across Frink, and as a member of the MCO review board, I appreciate your efforts. Note, however that more than just language support is necessary. First, you'd have to have conventions on data I/O -- the misinterpreted data was from a file, not from another function in the program. Also, there was an issue of software reuse -- the errant portion of the system had been used before on a previous mission, and in that case it was used in a non-critical, non-navigational way. It was not properly reviewed because the team did not realize that in MCO it became critical."
What do you think when it is -10 or -20 C (it reaches those temperatures here at least a few days each year...and it doesn't get terribly cold here compared to Canada and such)?