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User: budgenator

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  1. Re:It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... on Coal Plants Get New Lease On Life With Natural Gas · · Score: 1

    John Hillerman, the guy that played Higgs in "Magnum PI" had a better moustache.

  2. Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... on Coal Plants Get New Lease On Life With Natural Gas · · Score: 1

    Wow I guess all of the Nuclear Aircraft carriers are chugging around on unicorn farts and pixie dust!

  3. Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... on Coal Plants Get New Lease On Life With Natural Gas · · Score: 1

    Just like a lot of Military base closings, It's all politics, it's the rule of reciprocity and what makes modern society even possible. Favors owed are favors to be repaid, without reciprocity your money would be useless, because basically all your money is worth is what it can buy and at the end of the day you can't eat gold. About the power grid, it's brittle, Northeast blackout of 2003 was one tree brushing against one transmission line and one software bug. Everything effects everything, taking out a power plant reduces redundancy in the system, You should watch Great Britian to see whats likely to happen this year because they don't have enough reserve capacity in their power grid and are depending on renewables for a significant portion of the power supply.

  4. Re: It's still reacting carbon and oxygen... on Coal Plants Get New Lease On Life With Natural Gas · · Score: 1

    CO2 is causing problems, right now. Real problems.

    Actually Crop production is at near record highes, in part because the necessary nutrient CO2 is available in increased amounts. Both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is increasing, and there hasn't been any statistically significant Global Warming/Climate Change for 18 years; so please feel free to be more specific. If you'd go outside and actually experience some enviroment, you'd realizes that it's pretty fucking cold outside and we still have 4 weeks to go before winter starts.

  5. Re:Simple on Lessons Learned From Google's Green Energy Bust · · Score: 1

    Discusions often get heated and unreasonable when your talking about religon.

  6. Re:Simple on Lessons Learned From Google's Green Energy Bust · · Score: 1

    it might be worth it to power a reaction that pulls CO2 from the air to generate propane, ship that via pipeline to be burned and turned back into electricity at the receiving end.

    CO2 is in the atmosphere at a concentration of just under 400 parts per million, the energy to caputure would produce more CO2 than would be captured. Even if the energy were completely "green and carbon-free" the energy would be better used to offset an CO2 producing power source instead that Capturing Free-Range CO2 from the atmosphere, I'm sure the watermellons would love the idea to shove more economically unviable variable-speed bird and bat choppers on us.

  7. Re:What it means on Lessons Learned From Google's Green Energy Bust · · Score: 1

    Some were, one of the more famous "200 MPG carburettor" is the Fish carburettor was actually produced and of course got anywhere near an impossible 200 MPG, but as a more effiecent system, it was used by weekend racers untill fuel injection and computer fuel management made engine tuning a programming exercise.

  8. Re:Capitalism does not reward morality on Is a Moral Compass a Hindrance Or a Help For Startups? · · Score: 1

    That's true, but probably not to the extent most would think, mostly you just have to put more effort into activities that are productive and less into activities that are non-productive. About 20% of your activity is going to produce 80% of your results, so you hire assistants to do the 80% and you consentrate on the 20% of that that is making 80% of your money and do more of it.

  9. PC Cleaner on Court Shuts Down Alleged $120M Tech Support Scam · · Score: 1

    I kind of figure something was up when PC Cleaner said my linux machine had currupt entries in the registry; but al you can say is P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute.

  10. Re:Ask the credit card for a refund on UK Hotel Adds Hefty Charge For Bad Reviews Online · · Score: 1

    The "Despite the fact that repeat customers and couples love our hotel, your friends and family may not." made me wonder if most of their customer rent rooms by the hour, with clean sheets extra.

  11. Re: Ask the credit card for a refund on UK Hotel Adds Hefty Charge For Bad Reviews Online · · Score: 1

    With businesses acting like this all over the place, communism ain't lookin' so bad these days.

    <sarcasim>Yeah buddy it's so much better to have your Government, that controls the police and military acting like that!</sarcasim>

  12. Re:Germany! on What the US Can Learn From Canada's Internet Policy · · Score: 1

    When I was there the local brewery, Löwenbräu of Grafenwöhr (not München) delivered to your door untill they went out of business.

  13. Re:Change Last Mile on What the US Can Learn From Canada's Internet Policy · · Score: 1

    Actually the cable company we had wasn't too bad execpt they didn't have enough capital to upgrade the system. Comcast just bought them out, upgraded to a fiber-based system, then went all draconian on us.

  14. Re:Was impressed until.. on What the US Can Learn From Canada's Internet Policy · · Score: 1

    Hughesnet Gen4, 10 Gb anytime, 10Gb from 02:00-08:00, it's pretty hard to not hit the cap for me. No DSL possible, they'd have to replace the telephone line from the DSLAM to the house, comcast just laughes. Our electricity comes in single phase, we don't even have cross beams on the power poles, just hot and neutral one above the other. OBTW I am in the US, not Afganistan or Hati.

  15. Re:Was impressed until.. on What the US Can Learn From Canada's Internet Policy · · Score: 1

    The only rational reason that ACA exisists is to make Insurance-funded heathcare so bad that a socialized single payer system looks better in comparison. Under US law, Income taxes are specifically excluded from discharge via bankruptcy proceedings so we've gone from a system where people were forced into bankruptcy for medical expenses, to a system where even bankruptcy will not save you from your medical expenses and if for any reason the IRS finds that your subsidy was in error, they will not only required repayment, but tack on penalties (which are typically the amount to be repayed) and interest.

  16. Re:Haha, very funny... on Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate · · Score: 1

    Research suggests that blind people are superior to sighted in echolocation, but systematic psychoacoustic studies on environmental conditions such as distance to objects, signal duration, and reverberation are lacking. Therefore, two experiments were conducted. Noise bursts of 5, 50, or 500 ms were reproduced by a loudspeaker on an artificial manikin in an ordinary room and in an anechoic chamber. The manikin recorded the sounds binaurally in the presence and absence of a reflecting 1.5-mm thick aluminium disk, 0.5 m in diameter, placed in front, at distances of 0.5 to 5 m. These recordings were later presented to ten visually handicapped and ten sighted people, 30-62 years old, using a 2AFC paradigm with feedback. The task was to detect which of two sounds that contained the reflecting object. The blind performed better than the sighted participants. All performed well with the object at 2 m was not by chance. Detection thresholds showed that blind participants could detect the object at longer distances in the conference room than in the anechoic chamber, when using the longer-duration sounds and also as compared to the sighted people. Audiometric tests suggest that equal hearing in both ears is important for echolocation. Possible echolocation mechanisms are discussed. Human echolocation: Blind and sighted persons' ability to detect sounds recorded in the presence of a reflecting object.

    I would certainly suspect that a non-sighted person who echo-locates would be far better than a sighted person, if for no other reason than getting much more practice, I would be interested in comparing a non-sighted and sighted echo-locator in a similar investigation. Could be that that part of the visual cortex could be used in both eyesighted and earsighted vision to varying degrees.

  17. Re: SO on How 4H Is Helping Big Ag Take Over Africa · · Score: 1

    I'm seeing a lot of no-till and low-till farming in my area, now the large-scale crop farmers are using precise soil testing and only using the amount of artificial fertilizers absolutely necessary. A lot of what your saying is standard practises have went out of style in the late '70s.

  18. Re:We echolocate all the time on Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure it's something that can be consciencely heard, they just learn to echolocate.

  19. Re:over 40 comments so far and no one on Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate · · Score: 1

    Real geeks read the comics and piss and moan that the movies suck donkey's balls.

  20. Re:Haha, very funny... on Study Shows How Humans Can Echolocate · · Score: 1

    No actually anyone can supposedly do it,

    A study of sighted people newly trained to echolocate now suggests that the secret to Kish’s skill isn’t just supersensitive ears. Instead, the entire body, neck, and head are key to “seeing” with sound—an insight that could assist blind people learning the skill. ... Although some people are more naturally talented than others at echolocation, most got “quite good” after 2 to 3 weeks of training, Wiegrebe says, and could reliably orient themselves to walk down the corridor without running into any walls using just clicks and echoes.How blind people use batlike sonar

    does seem like they learned to do it about twice as fast as I've seen reported elsewhere too.

  21. Re:Units. on Fukushima Radiation Nears California Coast, Judged Harmless · · Score: 1

    No they aren't used in the US, except by a few old farts like me and all those young whipper-snapper don't understand me anyways unless I'm yelling "Get off my lawn".

  22. Re:caesium137 has an approx 30yr half-life on Fukushima Radiation Nears California Coast, Judged Harmless · · Score: 1

    350,000 curies x 0.0114 gram Cs-137/curie = 3980 grams (4 kg) – of Cs-137. It decays by beta emission which in water is quickly absorbed; typically within 10mm - 15mm.

    But don't let a good scare story go to waste.

    Which means if you eat or drink the stuff, the radiation is totally absorbed by your tissues, unlike Gamma radiation that for the most part goes through you like light through glass.

  23. Re:bike? on 333 Km/h Rocket-Powered Bicycle Sets New Speed Record · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes indeed, Craig Breadlove's "Spirit of America" a tricycle set an average speed of over 400 mph (640 km/h), and still holds the World record for making the longest skid mark.
    Fred Rompelberg from Maastricht, the Netherlands is the holder of the motor paced speed world record cycling with 268.831 km/h (166.9 mph) and was oldest professional cyclist in the world at the time.

    36-year-old Austrian Markus Stöckl, director and owner of the MS Evil Racing Team, set a new world speed record for serial mountain bikes on gravel on a volcano in Nicaragua when he hit 164.95 kph. By doing so, he eclipsed the record which the Frenchman Eric Barone set nine years ago. Downhill moutainbiker Markus Stöckl sets new world speed record

    Gissy's feat just seems lame.

  24. Re:Obama on President Obama Backs Regulation of Broadband As a Utility · · Score: 1

    Hillary is now unelectable, her chance really went to Obama and Benghazi sealed that fate.

  25. Re:USA are a country? on New Particle Collider Is One Foot Long · · Score: 1

    I know, "The point is you're arguing about grammar, and I'm arguing about politics." the political point my sig is making is that the relationship between the several States and the Federal Government isn't necessarily hierarchical, therefore in many cases, the united States of America could more properly being a plurality of States rather than a singularity of a Federal Government and by butchering the grammar I've sometimes made the statement more visible.