Speaking of which, for all those who are so vocal against this but do not have children... this subject does not pertain to you.
If you are talking about things that parents can do themselves you are correct but if you plan to use the force of law to regulate my behavior then it absolutely pertains to me, children or not.
Regardless of the risks, the fact that you're fine is no shock because there will always been somebody to tell that story. The kids that don't make it aren't around to tell their story.
A better way to use anecdote would be to ask, "How many of the people I went to grade school with were abducted by strangers" vs. "How many of the people I went to school with were hurt in car accidents?"
Younger kids don't understand the consequences of their actions or have the wisdom of how to use that knowledge. Many adults don't for that matter.
Mostly this is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Sure there is some physical limit before which it's not possible for a child to respond to delayed consequences but if parents never expect this behavior from their children then they won't learn it as quickly. The brain is very flexable like that.
and just watched someone butcher a live cat for fun
Is it any different if a person butchers a cat for food? My parents participated in butchering chickens as when they were children. My siblings and I watched our father butcher a deer about once per year. Maybe it's sick to raise children without an understanding and appreciation of where their food comes from.
Some limits need to be put in place because there are really sick people out there. 'Click here to proceed' and 'you must be 18' just won't cut it.
Thanks to the internet, I don't have to drive my kids to the red light district so they can play in the park across from prostitutes and sex shops while watching drug dealers sell drugs and having other kids show them how to sniff chemicals to get high or become bulimic because it's beautiful.. The internet brings that all to my living room. Oh and I can check email too.
No one is forcing you to give your children unsupervised access to the internet, but for some reason you want to force the entire rest of the world to change their behavior to suit your particular parenting style.
After arcades, but before games that you could play in your own house. D&D was published in 1974. Pong didn't get realeased in a home version until 1975.
The only reason the FCC exists is to manage access to the EM sprectrum so that the public can use it without stepping on each other's toes. Expanding their authority beyond that has no legal justification.
I guess it does form a sort of paradox. If the grade of "D" is in fact an accurate measure of the quality of the source code of the grading program, then maybe the program deserves an "A" after all.
The fiendish prof announced that he will run that code through itself. Whatever letter grade it spits out will be his thesis grade. He got a D. He begged and cried and threw a hissy fit and wangled a B and scraped through the degree.
Fiendish? What could possibly be more fair and objective than making him eat his own dogfood?
A lithium ion battery that stores the same amount of energy would weigh more than three tons and take up more space than the car itself.
You can mitigate reduce that by about a factor of three since an electric vehicle efficiency is higher but still batteries have a long way to go before they are as practical for storing energy as fossil fuels.
That's why electric vehicles are not suited for long distance travel at the moment.
Personally, I'd suggest that all those that constantly moan about carbon emissions do something about it themselves. Stopping exhaling would be a good start.
Coincidentally I just suggested a similar course of action to a person who has angst about eating meat.
I'm simply saying we're not as far off as you imply...
It's been a while since I did the calculations so I'm to them again.
By mass:
Gasoline contains 40 megajoules per kilogram of energy A car has approximately 30% pump-to-wheel efficiency An electric car has approximately 80% plug-to-wheel efficiency
In order for an electric car to have the same long-distance performance as a gasoline powered car then you need to be able to store 15 megajoules per kilogram of battery (or capacitor)
Lithium ion batteries top out at 160 Wh/kg which is about 1/2 of a megajoule per kilogram.
Actually, I was wrong. Lithium ion batteries need to improve by a factor of 30 before they match the performance of gasoline as it relates to propelling a motor vehicle.
Now let's look at volume:
Gasoline: 32 MJ/l -> 12 MJ/l when you account for electric efficiency Li-Ion: 360 Wh/l -> 1.3 MJ/l
That's a little better, in that lithium ion batteries only need to shrink by a factor of 9 before your electric car can have the same cargo capacity as your equivalent gasoline powered car
Still have a long way to go before electric is as practical as fossil fuel for long distance travel.
You know what, plants are alive too. There is no way for me to survive without killing other forms of life. In fact almost every living organisms on the planet eats other living organisms in order to survive. If you can't handle this simple truth then feel free to stop eating.
Sorry that your mind can't handle life. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
I don't understand how anyone would use this as an excuse not to do something to improve safety
Are you talking about improving safety via individual decisions or by government mandates? I always wear seatbelts myself but I oppose legally mandated use of safety devices in general (with certain exceptions for devices that protect innocent bystanders).
This thread was about giving up a "little bit" of freedom in exchange for saving some lives, but that entire excercise is moot if no lives are actually saved. If a person persists in demanding that we give up some freedom even after the evidence shows that no lives will be saved then you begin to wonder about their true intentions.
Electric cars are much more efficient than combustion engines at all speeds however the efficiency falls off faster for electrics than is does for combustion engines.
To understand this you need to seperate the energy consumption of the vehicle into two categories: energy that propells the vehicle (propulsion) and energy that operates the machinery (overhead).
With the vehicle turned on but at a stop, all the energy is overhead you are operating at a minimum possible efficiency. As the speed increases the overhead remains relatively constant so the propulsion energy becomes a larger and larger fraction of the total. Efficiency increases until the point where the efficiency improvement gained by reducing overhead (as a fraction of total energy used) equals the efficiency lost by wind resistance.
Since the overhead is so much smaller for electric vehicles they reach their maximum efficiency at a slower speed then combustion engines.
100% of the time, people wearing properly functioning seat belts are not ejected from the vehicle, flung 100 meters through the air, and head first into a tree.
Correct
Certainly they may die because they couldn't get unseated from the vehicle as it slowly sank to the bottom of the ocean
That has nothing to do with it. The reason that seat belts do not reduce overall highway deaths is that people take more risks when they feel safer, thus are more likely to be in an accident in the first place.
Yes you are more likely to survive an accident if you are wearing a seatbelt but if you weren't wearing it you might have been driving more slowly or more carefully and avoided the accident in the first place. The data shows that the two probabilities just about completely cancel themselves out.
the force of air resistance increases as the square of the velocity
The force of air resistance increases proportional to the cube of velocity.
Efficiency decreases proportional to the square of velocity.
If I double my speed then air resistance increases by a factor of 8 but I get to my destination twice as fast so the efficiency falls by a factor of 4.
If you wanted to charge it within 1 hour, you would need a 53000W power source, that's about 240Amps@220Volt, 480Amps@110Volts. Considering that the main circuit breaker to my house is rated 200Amps, I could never charge the Tesla at my house in 1 hour, even if it had super capacitors or whatever else you wanted.
Install the capacitors in your house, not the car and charge them during non-peak hours.
Slashdot Mirror
Trinity?
If you are talking about things that parents can do themselves you are correct but if you plan to use the force of law to regulate my behavior then it absolutely pertains to me, children or not.
A better way to use anecdote would be to ask, "How many of the people I went to grade school with were abducted by strangers" vs. "How many of the people I went to school with were hurt in car accidents?"
Mostly this is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Sure there is some physical limit before which it's not possible for a child to respond to delayed consequences but if parents never expect this behavior from their children then they won't learn it as quickly. The brain is very flexable like that.
Is it any different if a person butchers a cat for food? My parents participated in butchering chickens as when they were children. My siblings and I watched our father butcher a deer about once per year. Maybe it's sick to raise children without an understanding and appreciation of where their food comes from.
No one is forcing you to give your children unsupervised access to the internet, but for some reason you want to force the entire rest of the world to change their behavior to suit your particular parenting style.
After arcades, but before games that you could play in your own house. D&D was published in 1974. Pong didn't get realeased in a home version until 1975.
The only reason the FCC exists is to manage access to the EM sprectrum so that the public can use it without stepping on each other's toes. Expanding their authority beyond that has no legal justification.
I guess it does form a sort of paradox. If the grade of "D" is in fact an accurate measure of the quality of the source code of the grading program, then maybe the program deserves an "A" after all.
Fiendish? What could possibly be more fair and objective than making him eat his own dogfood?
Or at least require a certain amount of work (even a token) in order to receive benefits.
Not so creepy when you know that the founders of Second Life read Snow Crash and intentionally tried to build the system described in the book.
Same with Google Earth.
12 gallons of gasoline weighs 73 pounds.
A lithium ion battery that stores the same amount of energy would weigh more than three tons and take up more space than the car itself.
You can mitigate reduce that by about a factor of three since an electric vehicle efficiency is higher but still batteries have a long way to go before they are as practical for storing energy as fossil fuels.
That's why electric vehicles are not suited for long distance travel at the moment.
The company I work for uses two 4/0 welding cables to carry 1000 amps continuous.
Sure they get hot but if you enforce a 50% duty cycle on the cable you can mitigate that quite a bit.
The weight aspect can be mitigated by using a string and spring/counterweight.
Or you just require an attendant.
Coincidentally I just suggested a similar course of action to a person who has angst about eating meat.
It's been a while since I did the calculations so I'm to them again.
By mass:
Gasoline contains 40 megajoules per kilogram of energy
A car has approximately 30% pump-to-wheel efficiency
An electric car has approximately 80% plug-to-wheel efficiency
In order for an electric car to have the same long-distance performance as a gasoline powered car then you need to be able to store 15 megajoules per kilogram of battery (or capacitor)
Lithium ion batteries top out at 160 Wh/kg which is about 1/2 of a megajoule per kilogram.
Actually, I was wrong. Lithium ion batteries need to improve by a factor of 30 before they match the performance of gasoline as it relates to propelling a motor vehicle.
Now let's look at volume:
Gasoline: 32 MJ/l -> 12 MJ/l when you account for electric efficiency
Li-Ion: 360 Wh/l -> 1.3 MJ/l
That's a little better, in that lithium ion batteries only need to shrink by a factor of 9 before your electric car can have the same cargo capacity as your equivalent gasoline powered car
Still have a long way to go before electric is as practical as fossil fuel for long distance travel.
I was talking about the speed of the vehicle, not the RPM of the prime mover.
I'm well aware of the torque-speed characteristics of electric motors.
You know what, plants are alive too. There is no way for me to survive without killing other forms of life. In fact almost every living organisms on the planet eats other living organisms in order to survive. If you can't handle this simple truth then feel free to stop eating.
Sorry that your mind can't handle life. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Sounds familiar.
Are you talking about improving safety via individual decisions or by government mandates? I always wear seatbelts myself but I oppose legally mandated use of safety devices in general (with certain exceptions for devices that protect innocent bystanders).
This thread was about giving up a "little bit" of freedom in exchange for saving some lives, but that entire excercise is moot if no lives are actually saved. If a person persists in demanding that we give up some freedom even after the evidence shows that no lives will be saved then you begin to wonder about their true intentions.
Electric cars are much more efficient than combustion engines at all speeds however the efficiency falls off faster for electrics than is does for combustion engines.
To understand this you need to seperate the energy consumption of the vehicle into two categories: energy that propells the vehicle (propulsion) and energy that operates the machinery (overhead).
With the vehicle turned on but at a stop, all the energy is overhead you are operating at a minimum possible efficiency. As the speed increases the overhead remains relatively constant so the propulsion energy becomes a larger and larger fraction of the total. Efficiency increases until the point where the efficiency improvement gained by reducing overhead (as a fraction of total energy used) equals the efficiency lost by wind resistance.
Since the overhead is so much smaller for electric vehicles they reach their maximum efficiency at a slower speed then combustion engines.
An electric vehicle is not a replacement for a gasoline powered vehicle unless you can carry cargo as well as people.
It does no good to travel 1000 miles if you don't have enough trunk space to bring luggage along.
The cars don't need to go 6000 miles. The batteries need to get smaller and lighter so that they can propel more than just two people and a briefcase.
Correct
That has nothing to do with it. The reason that seat belts do not reduce overall highway deaths is that people take more risks when they feel safer, thus are more likely to be in an accident in the first place.
Yes you are more likely to survive an accident if you are wearing a seatbelt but if you weren't wearing it you might have been driving more slowly or more carefully and avoided the accident in the first place. The data shows that the two probabilities just about completely cancel themselves out.
The force of air resistance increases proportional to the cube of velocity.
Efficiency decreases proportional to the square of velocity.
If I double my speed then air resistance increases by a factor of 8 but I get to my destination twice as fast so the efficiency falls by a factor of 4.
Install the capacitors in your house, not the car and charge them during non-peak hours.