Whoops, replied to the poster who was comparing to oil rigs. you were asking about oil rigs. Other posters in this thread were talking about coal mines....
Anyway, from what I can gather, fatality rates among oil workers are somewhat higher than coal mining, but in the same ballpark as coal or wind.
there is zero chance you'll be able to come up with a convincing case for one oil rig being less dangerous to workers than any practical size of wind farm
The grandparent post is definitely talking out his ass, but it's an interesting question, so I ran the numbers myself.
No question more people die mining coal than running wind power, but since coal is a much bigger industry, I think the fairest comparison is number of accidental deaths per unit electricity produced.
As a resident of SE Mass, I'm thrilled. Just think: Massachusetts has enough windy coastline to power most of the state with turbine farms. All we need to do is go through this process another 30-40 times! We should be done by the year 2500 or so!
The Enterprise doesn't count. It's more of a mockup than a prototype. Slightly more sophisticated than writing SPACE SHIP on the side of a cardboard box with Sharpie, but it ain't launchable hardware.
I agree that New York is a piss-poor choice: as I've posted elsewhere, the Intrepid is a lousy place to preserve historically-significant machinery. Outdoors in the salt air? No.
No argument about the Smithsonian either: it's *the* federal museum.
But I'm not sure about KSC and Space Center Houston. They've got a lot of great stuff, but I consider their mission to be primarily the business of spaceflight, with tourism and museum projects second. Also, I'd like to see key space artifacts spread around the country, both so they can inspire a wider range of people, and so that a really nasty hurricane can't wipe out *all* of our space artifacts in one go.
Me, I'm voting for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, which does a great job of preserving and displaying really big machinery, gets a *ton* of visitors, and could use a centerpiece like this.
If the goal is to make it last 500 years -- or even 100 -- it can't be outdoors, and you DEFINITELY won't be able to crawl around inside.
It seems to me that the Intrepid museum is a very poor choice for museum-quality long-term preservation. It doesn't have any real indoor climate-controlled space, does it?
Of the museums I've seen, the best choice I can think of would be the the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. The Chicago museum has more available indoor floorspace than any other museum of its kind I've seen. Just move one of their full-sized locomotives, or the 707, into the corner where the John Deere combines are.
The issue isn't friends and family, it's your former neighbors, the lady who worked at your bank, casual coworkers from a job you retired from ten years ago. People who'd like to know, but whom your heirs wouldn't think to call.
Newspapers aren't face-to-face, of course, but death notices are designed to solve a notification problem that only exists if your relationships are primarily face-to-face.
Us young people (I'm 37) would use Facebook or something to handle this today: all in all it's a better solution, but it's a sign of our "Naked Sun" lives that we can't comprehend the problem.
Let me set the stage for you. You're an old man. Once, you lived in a "neighborhood", which is a place where you know and hang out with people who live and work next door. But as you got older, you moved away, into a retirement or nursing home.
Then you died. You know thousands of people face-to-face by name, who'd like to know that you're no longer around. How does your family let them know? For this generation, the answer is *not* "Facebook".
I swear, the concept of face-to-face friendship is so foreign to young people today, our society is starting to look like Asimov's "The Naked Sun".
But anyway, any business whose primary profit center comes from people who'll be dead in a few years is in trouble.
Good news! Russia *does* have some secret police watching out for this sort of issue. Their job is to KILL YOU when you start to complain about this problem.
Those dealing with such countries are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they don't bribe they won't suceed, if they do bribe and someone decides to make an example of them for whatever reason then they may end up doing time.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why corruption destroys national economies. Investors and multinationals understand this fact, and only the most desperate or stupid choose to do business in such an environment.
Russia has been hanging foreign and domestic corporations out to dry for a decade using the corruption catch-22. NTV, Yukos... I'll go out on a limb and say that any foreign corporation doing business in Russia is insane. Sorry, my Russian Slashdot friends, you're great people, but your government is a business deathtrap.
"My recommendation is: 'Maybe you should reconsider doing business in Russia,'" she said. "I am considerably more optimistic about Nigeria than I am about Russia on this issue."
Agreed. The "three worlds" metaphor doesn't account for the rise of nuclear nations with their own agenda like China and India, for the fact that the standard of living in Mexico and Argentina exceeds that of Russia, for the fact that many of the former East Bloc countries have moved toward the west or actually joined the E.U...
It was simplistic in 1970. In 2010, it's just useless.
The moon is not a stepping stone to missions further out in the solar system. Say it with me, Admiral Ackbar:
"That's no moon!" "It's a trap!"
The moon is a prison where delta-V goes to die. Paraphrasing well-known space curmudgeon Robert Zubrin: "Even if rocket fuel were sitting in tanks on the surface of the Moon, it wouldn't be worth stopping to pick them up."
1) Ice fraction is apparently very small, though estimates vary. 2) No solar power available at the locations where ice exists. 4,5) It requires more fuel to get stuff to/from the Moon than it does to get stuff to/from Mars, because Mars has an atmosphere you can use to slow down with.
The way I see it, the problem is not that the military fucked up. Of course that is going to happen, it is a sad reality. The problem is that instead of owning up to their fuckup, they tried to bury it and make it go away.
Militaries kill innocents: it's a fact of life. Bureaucracies cover up embarassments: that too is a fact of life.
I say, the problem is that we as a nation made a conscious choice to engage our military bureaucracy in this war, with full knowledge of how militaries and bureaucracies operate.
I feel that we as a nation are using this fiasco to shift blame onto the soldiers rather than facing it ourselves: it's a case of the tradesman blaming his tools.
Screw you for trying to protect trailer park trash like this which shouldn't even be allowed access to weapons of any kind, never mind heavily armed assault choppers.
Your average soldier has never been a genius, going back through milennia of military history. Soldiers have been killing innocents, through malice, fear, or accident, in every war since the dawn of time. Did you expect it to be different this time around?
My point is that while this was a case of poor soldiering of the highest order, the only useful place to lay blame is at YOUR feet. You, me, and every American citizen who allowed our military to enter Iraq.
Militaries are like tigers. No matter how finely you train them, if you let them out of their cage, the consequences are your responsibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoops, replied to the poster who was comparing to oil rigs. you were asking about oil rigs. Other posters in this thread were talking about coal mines....
Anyway, from what I can gather, fatality rates among oil workers are somewhat higher than coal mining, but in the same ballpark as coal or wind.
there is zero chance you'll be able to come up with a convincing case for one oil rig being less dangerous to workers than any practical size of wind farm
The grandparent post is definitely talking out his ass, but it's an interesting question, so I ran the numbers myself.
No question more people die mining coal than running wind power, but since coal is a much bigger industry, I think the fairest comparison is number of accidental deaths per unit electricity produced.
US coal mine deaths, 2005-2009: 30/year
http://www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coal2009yearend.asp
US coal energy produced, 2008: 22.4 quads (or exajoules)
Heat -> Electricity efficiency factor: 30%
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/energy/energy.html
US energy from coal: 6.7 exajoules/year
Worldwide wind power deaths, 2000-2006: At least 15, avg 2.7/year
http://www.windaction.org/documents/1318
Worldwide wind power installed capacity, avg 2001-2006: 40,000 MW
http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php
Average capacity factor for wind plants: 25%
Estimated world wind energy output, 2001-2006 avg: 0.32 exajoules/year
Bottom line:
US Coal mining deaths per exajoule electricity produced: 4.5
World wind power deaths per exajoule electricity produced: at least 8.4
Surprised? I sure was! I expect the wind power number to drop dramatically as the industry develops, of course.
You're using the most pessimistic forecasts. I'm using the most optimistic (a century or two) and then adding a century to make sure.
300 years from now, liquid fuels will still be very useful for powering vehicles, but I think we both agree that liquid won't come from crude oil.
You're right, if you take a short-sighted view.
But energy is fungible, and it gets more and more fungible as technology advances and energy gets more expensive.
Every bit of coal we save now is a bit of synthetic gasoline we can make 300 years in the future.
As a resident of SE Mass, I'm thrilled. Just think: Massachusetts has enough windy coastline to power most of the state with turbine farms. All we need to do is go through this process another 30-40 times! We should be done by the year 2500 or so!
Mod parent up.
Reminds me of the exploded 747 hanging from someone's ceiling in Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon".
The Enterprise doesn't count. It's more of a mockup than a prototype. Slightly more sophisticated than writing SPACE SHIP on the side of a cardboard box with Sharpie, but it ain't launchable hardware.
I'd worry more about the country lasting that long
Just like the Mona Lisa has outlived the Duchy of Milan, hopefully early space-age artifacts will outlive the nations which created them...
but that's not gonna happen if they're sitting outdoors on a rusting aircraft carrier.
I agree that New York is a piss-poor choice: as I've posted elsewhere, the Intrepid is a lousy place to preserve historically-significant machinery. Outdoors in the salt air? No.
No argument about the Smithsonian either: it's *the* federal museum.
But I'm not sure about KSC and Space Center Houston. They've got a lot of great stuff, but I consider their mission to be primarily the business of spaceflight, with tourism and museum projects second. Also, I'd like to see key space artifacts spread around the country, both so they can inspire a wider range of people, and so that a really nasty hurricane can't wipe out *all* of our space artifacts in one go.
Me, I'm voting for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, which does a great job of preserving and displaying really big machinery, gets a *ton* of visitors, and could use a centerpiece like this.
I think there's no question the Smithsonian is getting one: the question is, where should the other two go?
If the goal is to make it last 500 years -- or even 100 -- it can't be outdoors, and you DEFINITELY won't be able to crawl around inside.
It seems to me that the Intrepid museum is a very poor choice for museum-quality long-term preservation. It doesn't have any real indoor climate-controlled space, does it?
Of the museums I've seen, the best choice I can think of would be the the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. The Chicago museum has more available indoor floorspace than any other museum of its kind I've seen. Just move one of their full-sized locomotives, or the 707, into the corner where the John Deere combines are.
The issue isn't friends and family, it's your former neighbors, the lady who worked at your bank, casual coworkers from a job you retired from ten years ago. People who'd like to know, but whom your heirs wouldn't think to call.
Newspapers aren't face-to-face, of course, but death notices are designed to solve a notification problem that only exists if your relationships are primarily face-to-face.
Us young people (I'm 37) would use Facebook or something to handle this today: all in all it's a better solution, but it's a sign of our "Naked Sun" lives that we can't comprehend the problem.
Ever looked at an obit page in a real physical paper? They're full of ads for elderly medical products, retirement communities, etc.
Most papers have more taste than to advertise funeral homes on the same page, but they're definitely taking advantage of this.
Let me set the stage for you. You're an old man. Once, you lived in a "neighborhood", which is a place where you know and hang out with people who live and work next door. But as you got older, you moved away, into a retirement or nursing home.
Then you died. You know thousands of people face-to-face by name, who'd like to know that you're no longer around. How does your family let them know? For this generation, the answer is *not* "Facebook".
I swear, the concept of face-to-face friendship is so foreign to young people today, our society is starting to look like Asimov's "The Naked Sun".
But anyway, any business whose primary profit center comes from people who'll be dead in a few years is in trouble.
Good news! Russia *does* have some secret police watching out for this sort of issue. Their job is to KILL YOU when you start to complain about this problem.
http://www.cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1071933.html
Cited as evidence of a sea change in patent law: the FSF makes a Youtube video. Some academics wrote some papers.
This puts patent law reform at about the same level of public interest as this video on pouring shampoo out of a bottle.
I'll wait for in re Bilski, thanks.
Sounds good. So what do you do if the "people who accept bribes" are the same as the people in charge of prosecuting bribery?
This is not a hypothetical question.
Those dealing with such countries are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they don't bribe they won't suceed, if they do bribe and someone decides to make an example of them for whatever reason then they may end up doing time.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why corruption destroys national economies. Investors and multinationals understand this fact, and only the most desperate or stupid choose to do business in such an environment.
Russia has been hanging foreign and domestic corporations out to dry for a decade using the corruption catch-22. NTV, Yukos... I'll go out on a limb and say that any foreign corporation doing business in Russia is insane. Sorry, my Russian Slashdot friends, you're great people, but your government is a business deathtrap.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62E1SU20100315
"My recommendation is: 'Maybe you should reconsider doing business in Russia,'" she said. "I am considerably more optimistic about Nigeria than I am about Russia on this issue."
I believe cartoon physics says that if we do so, California will stay in place and the rest of the U.S. will fall into the Atlantic.
Agreed. The "three worlds" metaphor doesn't account for the rise of nuclear nations with their own agenda like China and India, for the fact that the standard of living in Mexico and Argentina exceeds that of Russia, for the fact that many of the former East Bloc countries have moved toward the west or actually joined the E.U...
It was simplistic in 1970. In 2010, it's just useless.
The moon is not a stepping stone to missions further out in the solar system. Say it with me, Admiral Ackbar:
"That's no moon!"
"It's a trap!"
The moon is a prison where delta-V goes to die. Paraphrasing well-known space curmudgeon Robert Zubrin: "Even if rocket fuel were sitting in tanks on the surface of the Moon, it wouldn't be worth stopping to pick them up."
1) Ice fraction is apparently very small, though estimates vary.
2) No solar power available at the locations where ice exists.
4,5) It requires more fuel to get stuff to/from the Moon than it does to get stuff to/from Mars, because Mars has an atmosphere you can use to slow down with.
The way I see it, the problem is not that the military fucked up. Of course that is going to happen, it is a sad reality. The problem is that instead of owning up to their fuckup, they tried to bury it and make it go away.
Militaries kill innocents: it's a fact of life. Bureaucracies cover up embarassments: that too is a fact of life.
I say, the problem is that we as a nation made a conscious choice to engage our military bureaucracy in this war, with full knowledge of how militaries and bureaucracies operate.
I feel that we as a nation are using this fiasco to shift blame onto the soldiers rather than facing it ourselves: it's a case of the tradesman blaming his tools.
Screw you for trying to protect trailer park trash like this which shouldn't even be allowed access to weapons of any kind, never mind heavily armed assault choppers.
Your average soldier has never been a genius, going back through milennia of military history. Soldiers have been killing innocents, through malice, fear, or accident, in every war since the dawn of time. Did you expect it to be different this time around?
My point is that while this was a case of poor soldiering of the highest order, the only useful place to lay blame is at YOUR feet. You, me, and every American citizen who allowed our military to enter Iraq.
Militaries are like tigers. No matter how finely you train them, if you let them out of their cage, the consequences are your responsibility.