"Many years ago, we had a veteran politician getting farmers to agitate against dams claiming that the dams removed the electricity from the water, so when it reached the fields it did not have any electricity left. The lack of electricity was affecting the quality of the crops."
Send that politician to Europe. He could make Chancellor in Germany with ease.
Fortunately, the right-wing component of the antiscience movement has no history of actually stopping progress. No creationist has ever filed a lawsuit halting work on vital energy infrastructure, for example. The anti-fluoridationist right had a moment in the early Fifties, but to get votes against fluoridation to stick in modern times, the anti-fuoridationists had to switch sides and ally with the left, as recently happened in Oregon.
"This story is a dupe from my grandfather's generation..."
Those were the days! I remember standing in line to send telegram posts to Slashdot, then waiting all week for the printed edition to land in the mailbox.
There's no need to "disband" anything. When cab companies are subject to competition from other services they adapt, just as Darwin and Smith said they would. In Phoenix, where taxi service is unregulated, the rise of Uber has motivated cab companies to hire English-spoeaking drivers and to start using smartphone apps to take orders.
For Uber to become a "monopoly" it would need to get ordinances passed that prevented other companies from competing in given cities. In other words, it would have to become a cab company.
Regulations can improve public safety and fair trade if they just cover such things as meter accuracy, insurance, and driver background. But the moment you see a specified limit on the number of cabs in a city, that's when you know the fix is in and we need Uber.
I started life with coke-bottle glasses, and then got contact lenses right after high school. Now fifty years later, I have just stepped up to implanted lenses. These give me crisp distance vision again, and the Milky Way at night, with no more obscuring glare rays coming out of oncoming headlights. We're a Dark Sky Community, and I can now see M31 naked eye, which I never could reach before.
But implants are fixed focus, so I have to pay close attention to near-diatance correction. I bought Walgreens readers for the computer/reading distance and another pair for the "TV distance" of ten feet or so. This combination gives me a large focus area in both modes at very low cost.
Even assuming that we do invent those magic baseload batteries soon, your all-renewable energy system is a wavery network (requiring a "smart grid", to be built from scratch at the cost of teradollar or so) of fluctuating sources requiring vast amounts of mechanical maintenance. I would rather have a few AP-1000s chugging away in secluded valleys while we work on getting thorium up to commercial speed.
Cautionary tale: Germany is now in the throes of building out its smart grid. The flat-earth lobby, now that it no longer has anything nuclear yo protest, has turned its attention to stopping the new transmission lines needed to bring renewable power to market:
It's called "Mind Games" - board game manufacturers use the Mensa organization to test new games over an intensive period of several days in a different city each year. Board game addicts within the organization converge on this event from a wide variety of places.
"Robber baron" was nineteenth-century leftspeak for the entrepreneurs who gave us railroads, steel,telephones, automobiles and electricity. So far as I'm concerned, their self-indulgenct use of riches is more than fair exchange for the value they brought to every one of us with their creations.
Before China put its peasants to work making tech toys, those same people were starving to death in the millions. You young whippersnappers don't remember the "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution.
I have just the organization for you, and all fellow misanthropes: http://vhemt.org/
Please visit this site and abide by its recommendations. For the good of humanity and for all the promise of our future, encourage all your fellow Greens to do the same.
Nobody in his right mind would build a worldwide communication network that would shoot information anywhere in the world with negligible friction, either. But there were entrepreneurs who just went out and did it, so it will be these very people who are most likely to open up extraterrestrial destinations for us.
I can personally remember a time when getting a long-distance phone call meant that somebody had died.
More importantly, you don't build large-scale infrastructure like China's new Silk Road bullet freight operation out of thin air. Large-scale infrastructure of this kind will require large amounts of pure metals. Having large new sources of supply in turn encourages bigger projects. How much copper is it going to take for the Silk Road to go maglev?
Slashdot Mirror
"Many years ago, we had a veteran politician getting farmers to agitate against dams claiming that the dams removed the electricity from the water, so when it reached the fields it did not have any electricity left. The lack of electricity was affecting the quality of the crops."
Send that politician to Europe. He could make Chancellor in Germany with ease.
Fortunately, the right-wing component of the antiscience movement has no history of actually stopping progress. No creationist has ever filed a lawsuit halting work on vital energy infrastructure, for example. The anti-fluoridationist right had a moment in the early Fifties, but to get votes against fluoridation to stick in modern times, the anti-fuoridationists had to switch sides and ally with the left, as recently happened in Oregon.
"This story is a dupe from my grandfather's generation..."
Those were the days! I remember standing in line to send telegram posts to Slashdot, then waiting all week for the printed edition to land in the mailbox.
Apparently that's what she was wearing at the time.
In your mother's basement, nobody can hear you scream.
" quotas exist to prevent city streets from being clogged by taxis..."
No, the market exists to prevent city streets being clogged by unneeded cabs. Quotas exist to lock up the market and keep prices artificially high.
There's no need to "disband" anything. When cab companies are subject to competition from other services they adapt, just as Darwin and Smith said they would. In Phoenix, where taxi service is unregulated, the rise of Uber has motivated cab companies to hire English-spoeaking drivers and to start using smartphone apps to take orders.
And if Uber was all that people disliked about these things, nobody would ride it.
For Uber to become a "monopoly" it would need to get ordinances passed that prevented other companies from competing in given cities. In other words, it would have to become a cab company.
Regulations can improve public safety and fair trade if they just cover such things as meter accuracy, insurance, and driver background. But the moment you see a specified limit on the number of cabs in a city, that's when you know the fix is in and we need Uber.
Minor quibble: if a Bussard ramjet can't be built, how can you salvage one?
I started life with coke-bottle glasses, and then got contact lenses right after high school. Now fifty years later, I have just stepped up to implanted lenses. These give me crisp distance vision again, and the Milky Way at night, with no more obscuring glare rays coming out of oncoming headlights. We're a Dark Sky Community, and I can now see M31 naked eye, which I never could reach before.
But implants are fixed focus, so I have to pay close attention to near-diatance correction. I bought Walgreens readers for the computer/reading distance and another pair for the "TV distance" of ten feet or so. This combination gives me a large focus area in both modes at very low cost.
Gee, thanks. When the handwriting is on the wall, my block watch committee is in charge of cleaning it off.
Even assuming that we do invent those magic baseload batteries soon, your all-renewable energy system is a wavery network (requiring a "smart grid", to be built from scratch at the cost of teradollar or so) of fluctuating sources requiring vast amounts of mechanical maintenance. I would rather have a few AP-1000s chugging away in secluded valleys while we work on getting thorium up to commercial speed.
Cautionary tale: Germany is now in the throes of building out its smart grid. The flat-earth lobby, now that it no longer has anything nuclear yo protest, has turned its attention to stopping the new transmission lines needed to bring renewable power to market:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12...
It's called "Mind Games" - board game manufacturers use the Mensa organization to test new games over an intensive period of several days in a different city each year. Board game addicts within the organization converge on this event from a wide variety of places.
So does this mean the Pontiff is going to bless a nuclear plant?
I too have noticed the similarity of MikeyD's posts with a certain set of posts in here. Now we have at least a screen name to put to the troll.
On Slashdot, we of the dark side don't thump Bibles. We thump "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."
"Robber baron" was nineteenth-century leftspeak for the entrepreneurs who gave us railroads, steel,telephones, automobiles and electricity. So far as I'm concerned, their self-indulgenct use of riches is more than fair exchange for the value they brought to every one of us with their creations.
We're talking about journalists here, not historians.
Teach a billion men to fish, and they will be forced to come up with a better system than strip-mining the ocean.
Before China put its peasants to work making tech toys, those same people were starving to death in the millions. You young whippersnappers don't remember the "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution.
I have just the organization for you, and all fellow misanthropes: http://vhemt.org/
Please visit this site and abide by its recommendations. For the good of humanity and for all the promise of our future, encourage all your fellow Greens to do the same.
Nobody in his right mind would build a worldwide communication network that would shoot information anywhere in the world with negligible friction, either. But there were entrepreneurs who just went out and did it, so it will be these very people who are most likely to open up extraterrestrial destinations for us.
I can personally remember a time when getting a long-distance phone call meant that somebody had died.
More importantly, you don't build large-scale infrastructure like China's new Silk Road bullet freight operation out of thin air. Large-scale infrastructure of this kind will require large amounts of pure metals. Having large new sources of supply in turn encourages bigger projects. How much copper is it going to take for the Silk Road to go maglev?