The "Big E"'s first combat deployment was in the Gulf of Tonkin, on Yankee Station. As a veteran of TF77 (The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club) I find it appropriate that her last cruise will another Gulf...the Persian. Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R.
Bravo Zulu, CVN-65
Late 80's for me. I got to Big E just after Operation Praying Mantis in 88. One of my first duties was to assist senior ordies in building up some Skipper II's in case what remained of Iran's fleet wanted to take another shot at us. Gonna be sad to have a fleet without an Enterprise in it. You thinking about going to her de-commissioning? I am.
I remember finishing Nuke School in the early nineties, and one of my buddies went surface and got assigned to the Enterprise. It was kind of a good deal for him since he went straight to the shipyard instead of going out to see on a non-hoopty vessel. But we stayed in touch for a while after our assignments and I remember him telling me "dude, I will *never* go out to sea on this thing, I'll jump ship first." Obviously a bit of hyperbole involved, but the ship was showing its age even back then.
Back in the late 80's, we had constant reactor safety drills on Big E. She's got eight old and unique reactors which even then required a lot more TLC than the two more modern reactors on the Nimitz class. I almost got to hearing those drills on the 1MC in my sleep they happened so often. "Emergency in number 3 MMR", etc. They were always drills, of course, but man... they happened a lot.
Aren't most parts for US Navy vessels custom made regardless? I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.
Most modern US warships of a class are constructed with modern modular techniques, with tooling at the ready to reproduce standard, common parts. The Nimitz class... like all of our other modern warship classes... was basically built in modular parts in an indoor factory, and then put together piece by piece at the yards. You can look up pics of modern carrier construction where they're using cranes to lift factory made sections into the ship, where they're welded and secured into the vessel. The Enterprise... a unique design... was built the old fashioned way, completely (and uniquely) built in the drydock itself from the keel up. So when a major part on a Nimitz needs replacing, they simply tell Newport News Shipbuilding, where machinists simply make one quickly and economically from an existing productions template. The Enterprise's parts have to very much be custom made.
"Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R."
We once defended people who liked to party and fuck. Now our opponents AND clients are religious fanatics who BOTH hate "freedom".
I've been to Subic several times. In my younger stupid days, I once drank so much at the Tennessee Club in Olangapo City, that I had alcohol poisoning for three days afterwards.
I also wised up and got out of the regular sailor party haunts and actually saw some of the rest of the PI. And far from being a country where people like to "party and fuck", it's one of the most deeply Catholic countries in the world. Outside of Olangapo, the rest of the PI looked at the areas surrounding the Naval (and Air Force) bases as a kind of Filipino Sodom and Gomorra, a stain on the country and an embarrassment. We weren't all that popular once you got outside those gates. Filipinos were truly grateful for our chasing off the Japanese and rebuilding infrastructure after WWII, but were resentful for our continued presence. And yes, they thought... probably not illogically... that we were a bad influence on their kids. We were essentially kicked out just a few years after my time of service.
I think you'll find that overseas US bases are no different from overseas bases of the British Empire or the Roman Legions. Young horny troops with money to spend will always attract party people, prostitutes, and vice operations eager to take their money. Pretty sure there were Jewish hookers servicing those Roman soldiers in Judea back in the time of Jesus. It surely didn't make Judea a land where people liked to "party and fuck". So I think you're looking at the world in a rather skewed lens.
If the entire crew is wearing red shirts, I'd worry.
I was in the ordinance section ("G" section) on Big E. Aviation ops staff... ordinance, flight deck ops, fuel, safety, etc... all wear color coded shirts. The fuel guys wear purple shirts. Safety guys white, flight deck guys blue, plane captains brown, etc. Ordinance wore red shirts. So yeah, I was a redshirt on the Enterprise, and lived to tell about it:P
I've seen a lot of warning labels on electronic products with California-specific cancer warnings. Stuff like "The state of California has determined that this product may be a cancer risk". One of them was... I kid you not... a keyboard.
I love that Japan decided to move over 1/3 of their energy production away from the safest, most cost-efficient form of heat-power generation, and revert to something colossally terrible for the environment, with really no plan to do so in place. Clearly the best possible outcome, with the best results for everyone involved./s
What does "corporate America" have to do with the Japanese decision on their reactors? And since when is nuclear cost-efficient? One of the reasons it's so hard to get nuclear plants built in the US is the massive costs involved in building them.
You know what's even more dangerous than an accident at a nuclear plant? A world-wide war over the planet's dwindling fossil fuel supplies.
Those supplies will run out eventually of course, but we're nowhere near running out right now. "Eventually" is a long way away. New discoveries are being made all the time, and the world's coal supply... even if demand is ramped up... has enough for centuries of use. The US alone has one quarter of the Earth's coal reserves, and after hundreds of years of industrial use, we've barely dented it. Prices will definitely rise as demand rises, but supply won't be exhausted. There will be no "world-wide war" over fossil fuels, anymore than there'll be a war over food.
Typically anonymous and cowardly comment. Business decided where to put the reactor, in a location they knew were unsafe, and government forced that decision through. So while business didn't create the tsunami, they deliberately created the situation in which a tsunami would cause a meltdown, and did so with government oversight.
Business doesn't decide anything in Japan. Japan has one of the most rigid centralized governments anywhere in the world. If you want to move a local street sign, you have to get permission from Tokyo. The government decides everything over there. I don't want to call Japan fascist... since they do have free elections there... but the Japanese government certainly does pick winners and losers in their corporate field in the way that classic fascist governments did, and the corporations in Japan take their marching orders from Tokyo. This is by design, and it's been the model since post WWII. This model is supposedly why Japan was going to rule the world via business (instead of by military force) by the mid-90's. Several books in the 80's touted the superiority of this model to the American market system, declaring the US system obsolete. It didn't quite work out that way. Japan is now in its' third decade of economic doldrums, yet the government clings to this top-down model. One of the things that Japanese companies found when they started building factories and plants in the US and abroad was that they had much more freedom to operate locally than back at home.
You seem to think that businesses tell the government what to do over there. Quite the opposite. The government bureaucracy completely rules that country. If the reactors were built in a bad place, then Tokyo was just fine with that.
I've not really paid attention to Santorum, but listening to Obama speak and looking at what he did at Harvard it's pretty obvious that he's smarter than average. Whether or not he is more competent as a political leader than average is not necessarily dependent on this.
Yes, "smart" may have nothing to do with success in the office. Years ago I saw a study by political scientists about the presidents, their IQ's, and how that may have corresponded to success or failure in office. Most of the time, it was Presidents with average to low average IQ that did the best. FDR, Ike, and Reagan all had IQ's at or below the average for men of their education levels, all had successful presidencies. U.S. Grant was thought to be one of the dimmer bulbs in the office, but despite huge corruption scandals, had one of the most successful tenures in the office. On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was famously bright, and despite good marks for personal character, was seen as weak and ineffective. Woodrow Wilson... arguably the best educated man in the history of the office... ended his second term horribly, with a huge public backlash against him for years. John Quincy Adams, like his father, had one of the highest IQ's in the history of the office but was generally considered to be a failed President.
There were various speculations about these results, and the biggest one seemed to be that when a POTUS is too bright, he can't connect effectively with the mass of citizens, where presidents of average intelligence can. Jefferson seems to be the exception to the rule here.
I guess it is an idiocracy, because people are too stupid to realize how they get fooled.
There's always going to be shenanigans and tampering at the edges. Unless you believe in conspiracy theories... JFK won in 60 because Richard Daly had ballots altered in the basement of city hall, Diebold threw the election to Duyba in '04, etc... those shenanigans aren't enough to throw the result one way or the other.There are simply too many other people doing it right.
If we are an "idiocracy", it's not because of our politicians, but because of our own choices. We do things like demand budgets be cut, but then add "but not my *insert benefit here*".
President John Adams was just one of many who noted that unless the citizens themselves prize virtue, government will be corrupt and ineffective. We all complain about various political policies on both sides of the ideological spectrum, but at the core of our most important problems lies a big heapin' helping of hypocrisy... on our part. There's no conspiracy about that. We have to look in the mirror.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
Actually, nobody in the US likes our cars either. They all suck, and they're all copies of Japanese designs now (which is ironic considering that Japanese cars were nothing more than knockoffs of European designs). The exception is our muscle cars, which remain popular generation after generation. You'll always sell Ford Mustangs in America.
Now, our trucks? That's a different story. We love our trucks, and increaingly, so does the rest of the world.Our biggest sellers most years are our full size trucks and truck-based SUV's. The F-150 has been Ford's cash cow for decades now. American full sized trucks are being emulated by companies across the world. Toyota and Nissan came up V-8 powered full size trucks because they had nothing that could compete with what Ford, GM, and Dodge were making. When Daimler made their ill-fated purchase of Chrysler in the 90's, part of their rationale was that they had nothing like the Dodge Ram to offer emerging markets, where big trucks are popular.
the reason you have expensive fuel is your own fault. You elect governments that keep the price artificially high in order to discourage cars and shovel people into mass transit
Ah, then we should repeal gas taxes, encourage cars, and shoot demand through the roof. That will reduce gas prices, right?
You don't even have to encourage cars. Mass transit makes more sense for Europe as it is tightly packed compared to the US. But you still subsidize that mass transit... in part with those outrageous fuel taxes. If your governments didn't have an anti-auto policy, and if mass transit prices reflected the real cost of operation per rider, you'd probably have more car owners, but still not as high a rate as in the US. The convenience of trains might outweigh the expense of owning a car. The difference is that the price of owning and operating a car wouldn't be artificially jacked up (or the price of riding a train kept artificially low). You'd have more of a balance of transportation, more freedom of choice, and all without making that big of an impact on fuel supply.
I was going to say - if I only payed $5.00 a gallon I'd throw a party. Right around $8.50 (give or take based on the exchange rate) a gallon is what I consider normal. Between this and the Americans I heard complaining yesterday that the Raspberry Pi boards didn't look to be available in the US -- I have to say that it comes across as petty whinging to the rest of the world.
The rest of the world can go pound sand then, because the reason you have expensive fuel is your own fault. You elect governments that keep the price artificially high in order to discourage cars and shovel people into mass transit. A huge chunk of your price is taxes. If you don't like this, then it's fully in your power to change it by changing your governments. If high gas and mass transit is what you want, hey, have at it. But quit telling us we're "whining" because we want to do it differently, and actually notice when prices go up.
There seems to be something in the US psyche that resists anything like "best practices".
No, there's something in the US psyche that makes us go "OK, you say we should do this, or stop doing that. Prove it". And that takes time. We've seen too many snap-judgement science mistakes... Alar on apples anyone?... to just blindly fall into line. We see "best practices" discredited all the time, usually after a decade or more (Huh, how about that?) of experience on the issue. Scientists can make mistakes. They can misinterpret data. They can make bad theories. Lots of people were eating bran muffins everyday in the 80's because they were told... by scientists... that eating them would reduce cholesterol. In the 90's, scientists told them Sorry, you're wasting your time.
Best practices? Sure. But prove it first.
BTW, obesity is on the rise in Europe too. Guess they're developing a resistance to "best practices"?
But do they have the education to understand what they are reading?
Ah, the Cult of the Expert.
Not that we don't need experts. We do, obviously. What we don't need is the Cult of Expertise, which tells us that only experts understand things in their field, and that everyone else should, without question, just shut up and do as they're told by said experts. Nevermind that even in highly specialized fields, experts can disagree with each other vociferously on things.
You wouldn't want your next door neighbor to perform surgery on you. But it's silly... and quite arrogant... to miss the fact that it's quite easy to pick up books and fire up a browser to access a wealth of information where your neighbor can learn enough to understand the issues involved in surgery and make informed decisions regarding his self. This goes for any field. I don't have to be an expert in auto transmissions to read enough to spot trouble signs when they happen with my car. With stem cells, there's enough info out there... much of it peer reviewed... that's freely available to the public.
Eisenhower famously warned of the Military-Industrial Complex in his farewell speech. What he also warned of in the same address was the danger of citizens falling into line behind a scientific-technological elite, without question. We need to pay more attention to that part as well.
But only because they don't interact with peasants.
Most of "the rich" interact with "the peasants" a great deal, because that's where the money is made. If there's any truth to this study... and I have doubts... it's probably more because wealth brings power, and power is what the real corrupting influence is. Steve Jobs was infamous for doing things like parking in handicapped spaces and daring cops to do anything about it. They never did, and not because of his money per se, but because with a phone call, he could have them fired, because Apple carries a lot of weight with politicians and the various government bureaucracies. Wealth isn't the problem at all. The problem is the unwillingness for the law and government to punish those that assert power that legally they don't have. Blame cowardice here.
What killed Kodak was simple marketing. They were too late to associate digital photography with the Kodak brand. They invested in the tech early, they just didn't push hard enough for mindshare. There's no reason they couldn't have succeeded the way the Japanese camera companies did. They just made bad choices in promotion.
That's a Navy project. After the F-4 and A-7... both initiated as Navy projects... USAF basically swore it would never have a Naval aircraft forced on them again. There's a lot of "me-too"ism that goes on in the Pentagon, lots of identity politics and turf warfare over the budget pie and prestige.
Manned bombers for first strike are obsolete. You send in missiles, or from high altitudes, precision guided ordinance. Then when you've taken out enemy ground based anti-air and gained air superiority with your fighter force, then and only then do you send in bombers to basically level the opposing ground forces, their buildings, and other infrastructure.
This being the case, and with ever declining budgets, was USAF needs is a airliner-adapted airframe that can do multiple missions: drop bombs, carry missiles, carry fuel for buddy tanking, and do electronic warfare and intelligence work. This is essentially what the Navy did for years with the P-3 Orion, which was a Lockheed Electra airliner adapted for naval patrol duties. Lockeed put hardpoints on the wings and made weapons bays in the belly. For the P-3, this usually went for torpedoes (with Harpoon missiles and Skipper guided bombs on the wing hardpoints), but in an Air Force aircraft, you'd load it up with JDAMS and cruise missiles. A 757 or 767 airframe would work well, and you could even get away with using one of the 900 series of the 737 airframe (which the Navy has done with the P-8 Poseidon, which is replacing the P-3).
Off the shelf adaptation is the way to go here. Any stealthy bomber from the ground up will run in the billions apiece, and that's flyaway costs, not including development costs.
ESR ir right, but I think he sent his letter to the wrong Senator. It should have gone to the 100 corrupt Senators who actually legislate, rather than former corrupt Senators.
ESR does much more damage when he opens his mouth than he's ever helped by opening it. And I'm really, really tired of the whole tribal meme with regards to the Internet. There WAS an "Internet Culture" when the Internet was new and shiny and very few people were on it. But the Internet has been ubiquitous for years now, and it's just another communications service. Grandma uses it now. It's a technology. That's it. Not a movement, not a clan, and not a religion. Whenever ESR speaks of things like "our elders", I get flashbacks of all those people that saw the first Matrix movie and thought it was the beginning a deep religious movement or something. Unless you're a living parody right of the the Big Bang TV show, most people read this kind of stuff and just roll their eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
The French: they're everywhere.
The "Big E"'s first combat deployment was in the Gulf of Tonkin, on Yankee Station. As a veteran of TF77 (The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club) I find it appropriate that her last cruise will another Gulf...the Persian. Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R.
Bravo Zulu, CVN-65
Late 80's for me. I got to Big E just after Operation Praying Mantis in 88. One of my first duties was to assist senior ordies in building up some Skipper II's in case what remained of Iran's fleet wanted to take another shot at us. Gonna be sad to have a fleet without an Enterprise in it. You thinking about going to her de-commissioning? I am.
I remember finishing Nuke School in the early nineties, and one of my buddies went surface and got assigned to the Enterprise. It was kind of a good deal for him since he went straight to the shipyard instead of going out to see on a non-hoopty vessel. But we stayed in touch for a while after our assignments and I remember him telling me "dude, I will *never* go out to sea on this thing, I'll jump ship first." Obviously a bit of hyperbole involved, but the ship was showing its age even back then.
Back in the late 80's, we had constant reactor safety drills on Big E. She's got eight old and unique reactors which even then required a lot more TLC than the two more modern reactors on the Nimitz class. I almost got to hearing those drills on the 1MC in my sleep they happened so often. "Emergency in number 3 MMR", etc. They were always drills, of course, but man... they happened a lot.
Aren't most parts for US Navy vessels custom made regardless? I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.
Most modern US warships of a class are constructed with modern modular techniques, with tooling at the ready to reproduce standard, common parts. The Nimitz class... like all of our other modern warship classes... was basically built in modular parts in an indoor factory, and then put together piece by piece at the yards. You can look up pics of modern carrier construction where they're using cranes to lift factory made sections into the ship, where they're welded and secured into the vessel. The Enterprise... a unique design... was built the old fashioned way, completely (and uniquely) built in the drydock itself from the keel up. So when a major part on a Nimitz needs replacing, they simply tell Newport News Shipbuilding, where machinists simply make one quickly and economically from an existing productions template. The Enterprise's parts have to very much be custom made.
"Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R."
We once defended people who liked to party and fuck. Now our opponents AND clients are religious fanatics who BOTH hate "freedom".
I've been to Subic several times. In my younger stupid days, I once drank so much at the Tennessee Club in Olangapo City, that I had alcohol poisoning for three days afterwards.
I also wised up and got out of the regular sailor party haunts and actually saw some of the rest of the PI. And far from being a country where people like to "party and fuck", it's one of the most deeply Catholic countries in the world. Outside of Olangapo, the rest of the PI looked at the areas surrounding the Naval (and Air Force) bases as a kind of Filipino Sodom and Gomorra, a stain on the country and an embarrassment. We weren't all that popular once you got outside those gates. Filipinos were truly grateful for our chasing off the Japanese and rebuilding infrastructure after WWII, but were resentful for our continued presence. And yes, they thought... probably not illogically... that we were a bad influence on their kids. We were essentially kicked out just a few years after my time of service.
I think you'll find that overseas US bases are no different from overseas bases of the British Empire or the Roman Legions. Young horny troops with money to spend will always attract party people, prostitutes, and vice operations eager to take their money. Pretty sure there were Jewish hookers servicing those Roman soldiers in Judea back in the time of Jesus. It surely didn't make Judea a land where people liked to "party and fuck". So I think you're looking at the world in a rather skewed lens.
If the entire crew is wearing red shirts, I'd worry.
I was in the ordinance section ("G" section) on Big E. Aviation ops staff... ordinance, flight deck ops, fuel, safety, etc... all wear color coded shirts. The fuel guys wear purple shirts. Safety guys white, flight deck guys blue, plane captains brown, etc. Ordinance wore red shirts. So yeah, I was a redshirt on the Enterprise, and lived to tell about it :P
Everybody knows that everything causes cancer in California.
Thank California's Prop 65 for this nonsense.
I've seen a lot of warning labels on electronic products with California-specific cancer warnings. Stuff like "The state of California has determined that this product may be a cancer risk". One of them was... I kid you not... a keyboard.
I love that Japan decided to move over 1/3 of their energy production away from the safest, most cost-efficient form of heat-power generation, and revert to something colossally terrible for the environment, with really no plan to do so in place. Clearly the best possible outcome, with the best results for everyone involved. /s
What does "corporate America" have to do with the Japanese decision on their reactors? And since when is nuclear cost-efficient? One of the reasons it's so hard to get nuclear plants built in the US is the massive costs involved in building them.
You know what's even more dangerous than an accident at a nuclear plant? A world-wide war over the planet's dwindling fossil fuel supplies.
Those supplies will run out eventually of course, but we're nowhere near running out right now. "Eventually" is a long way away. New discoveries are being made all the time, and the world's coal supply... even if demand is ramped up... has enough for centuries of use. The US alone has one quarter of the Earth's coal reserves, and after hundreds of years of industrial use, we've barely dented it. Prices will definitely rise as demand rises, but supply won't be exhausted. There will be no "world-wide war" over fossil fuels, anymore than there'll be a war over food.
So business created the tsunami?
Typically anonymous and cowardly comment. Business decided where to put the reactor, in a location they knew were unsafe, and government forced that decision through. So while business didn't create the tsunami, they deliberately created the situation in which a tsunami would cause a meltdown, and did so with government oversight.
Business doesn't decide anything in Japan. Japan has one of the most rigid centralized governments anywhere in the world. If you want to move a local street sign, you have to get permission from Tokyo. The government decides everything over there. I don't want to call Japan fascist... since they do have free elections there... but the Japanese government certainly does pick winners and losers in their corporate field in the way that classic fascist governments did, and the corporations in Japan take their marching orders from Tokyo. This is by design, and it's been the model since post WWII. This model is supposedly why Japan was going to rule the world via business (instead of by military force) by the mid-90's. Several books in the 80's touted the superiority of this model to the American market system, declaring the US system obsolete. It didn't quite work out that way. Japan is now in its' third decade of economic doldrums, yet the government clings to this top-down model. One of the things that Japanese companies found when they started building factories and plants in the US and abroad was that they had much more freedom to operate locally than back at home.
You seem to think that businesses tell the government what to do over there. Quite the opposite. The government bureaucracy completely rules that country. If the reactors were built in a bad place, then Tokyo was just fine with that.
I've not really paid attention to Santorum, but listening to Obama speak and looking at what he did at Harvard it's pretty obvious that he's smarter than average. Whether or not he is more competent as a political leader than average is not necessarily dependent on this.
Yes, "smart" may have nothing to do with success in the office. Years ago I saw a study by political scientists about the presidents, their IQ's, and how that may have corresponded to success or failure in office. Most of the time, it was Presidents with average to low average IQ that did the best. FDR, Ike, and Reagan all had IQ's at or below the average for men of their education levels, all had successful presidencies. U.S. Grant was thought to be one of the dimmer bulbs in the office, but despite huge corruption scandals, had one of the most successful tenures in the office. On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was famously bright, and despite good marks for personal character, was seen as weak and ineffective. Woodrow Wilson... arguably the best educated man in the history of the office... ended his second term horribly, with a huge public backlash against him for years. John Quincy Adams, like his father, had one of the highest IQ's in the history of the office but was generally considered to be a failed President.
There were various speculations about these results, and the biggest one seemed to be that when a POTUS is too bright, he can't connect effectively with the mass of citizens, where presidents of average intelligence can. Jefferson seems to be the exception to the rule here.
Yeah, as if we had anything resembling democracy. There are Republicans tampering with voting machines and Democrats getting elected by dead people and any reform is blocked because the party that is losing by the reform just blocks it.
I guess it is an idiocracy, because people are too stupid to realize how they get fooled.
There's always going to be shenanigans and tampering at the edges. Unless you believe in conspiracy theories... JFK won in 60 because Richard Daly had ballots altered in the basement of city hall, Diebold threw the election to Duyba in '04, etc... those shenanigans aren't enough to throw the result one way or the other.There are simply too many other people doing it right.
If we are an "idiocracy", it's not because of our politicians, but because of our own choices. We do things like demand budgets be cut, but then add "but not my *insert benefit here*".
President John Adams was just one of many who noted that unless the citizens themselves prize virtue, government will be corrupt and ineffective. We all complain about various political policies on both sides of the ideological spectrum, but at the core of our most important problems lies a big heapin' helping of hypocrisy... on our part. There's no conspiracy about that. We have to look in the mirror.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
Actually, nobody in the US likes our cars either. They all suck, and they're all copies of Japanese designs now (which is ironic considering that Japanese cars were nothing more than knockoffs of European designs). The exception is our muscle cars, which remain popular generation after generation. You'll always sell Ford Mustangs in America.
Now, our trucks? That's a different story. We love our trucks, and increaingly, so does the rest of the world.Our biggest sellers most years are our full size trucks and truck-based SUV's. The F-150 has been Ford's cash cow for decades now. American full sized trucks are being emulated by companies across the world. Toyota and Nissan came up V-8 powered full size trucks because they had nothing that could compete with what Ford, GM, and Dodge were making. When Daimler made their ill-fated purchase of Chrysler in the 90's, part of their rationale was that they had nothing like the Dodge Ram to offer emerging markets, where big trucks are popular.
the reason you have expensive fuel is your own fault. You elect governments that keep the price artificially high in order to discourage cars and shovel people into mass transit
Ah, then we should repeal gas taxes, encourage cars, and shoot demand through the roof. That will reduce gas prices, right?
You don't even have to encourage cars. Mass transit makes more sense for Europe as it is tightly packed compared to the US. But you still subsidize that mass transit... in part with those outrageous fuel taxes. If your governments didn't have an anti-auto policy, and if mass transit prices reflected the real cost of operation per rider, you'd probably have more car owners, but still not as high a rate as in the US. The convenience of trains might outweigh the expense of owning a car. The difference is that the price of owning and operating a car wouldn't be artificially jacked up (or the price of riding a train kept artificially low). You'd have more of a balance of transportation, more freedom of choice, and all without making that big of an impact on fuel supply.
I wouldn't necessarily call what the Obama admin is doing on energy fascism. I would call it central planning though. High prices? They want this. His own energy secretary has long had a crusade to artificially jack up fuel prices in order to get Americans out of cars. Things are proceeding as hoped for:
“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” - Steven Chu, 2008
What was it that Obama's former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel said? Ah yes. "Never waste a crisis". And if you have to make one... do it.
I was going to say - if I only payed $5.00 a gallon I'd throw a party. Right around $8.50 (give or take based on the exchange rate) a gallon is what I consider normal. Between this and the Americans I heard complaining yesterday that the Raspberry Pi boards didn't look to be available in the US -- I have to say that it comes across as petty whinging to the rest of the world.
The rest of the world can go pound sand then, because the reason you have expensive fuel is your own fault. You elect governments that keep the price artificially high in order to discourage cars and shovel people into mass transit. A huge chunk of your price is taxes. If you don't like this, then it's fully in your power to change it by changing your governments. If high gas and mass transit is what you want, hey, have at it. But quit telling us we're "whining" because we want to do it differently, and actually notice when prices go up.
There seems to be something in the US psyche that resists anything like "best practices".
No, there's something in the US psyche that makes us go "OK, you say we should do this, or stop doing that. Prove it". And that takes time. We've seen too many snap-judgement science mistakes... Alar on apples anyone?... to just blindly fall into line. We see "best practices" discredited all the time, usually after a decade or more (Huh, how about that?) of experience on the issue. Scientists can make mistakes. They can misinterpret data. They can make bad theories. Lots of people were eating bran muffins everyday in the 80's because they were told... by scientists... that eating them would reduce cholesterol. In the 90's, scientists told them Sorry, you're wasting your time.
Best practices? Sure. But prove it first.
BTW, obesity is on the rise in Europe too. Guess they're developing a resistance to "best practices"?
But do they have the education to understand what they are reading?
Ah, the Cult of the Expert.
Not that we don't need experts. We do, obviously. What we don't need is the Cult of Expertise, which tells us that only experts understand things in their field, and that everyone else should, without question, just shut up and do as they're told by said experts. Nevermind that even in highly specialized fields, experts can disagree with each other vociferously on things.
You wouldn't want your next door neighbor to perform surgery on you. But it's silly... and quite arrogant... to miss the fact that it's quite easy to pick up books and fire up a browser to access a wealth of information where your neighbor can learn enough to understand the issues involved in surgery and make informed decisions regarding his self. This goes for any field. I don't have to be an expert in auto transmissions to read enough to spot trouble signs when they happen with my car. With stem cells, there's enough info out there... much of it peer reviewed... that's freely available to the public.
Eisenhower famously warned of the Military-Industrial Complex in his farewell speech. What he also warned of in the same address was the danger of citizens falling into line behind a scientific-technological elite, without question. We need to pay more attention to that part as well.
But only because they don't interact with peasants.
Spoken like a true Howell.
Nice trafficking of stereotypes there. Can we say you're spoken like a true Lenin or Trotsky?
But only because they don't interact with peasants.
Most of "the rich" interact with "the peasants" a great deal, because that's where the money is made. If there's any truth to this study... and I have doubts... it's probably more because wealth brings power, and power is what the real corrupting influence is. Steve Jobs was infamous for doing things like parking in handicapped spaces and daring cops to do anything about it. They never did, and not because of his money per se, but because with a phone call, he could have them fired, because Apple carries a lot of weight with politicians and the various government bureaucracies. Wealth isn't the problem at all. The problem is the unwillingness for the law and government to punish those that assert power that legally they don't have. Blame cowardice here.
What killed Kodak was simple marketing. They were too late to associate digital photography with the Kodak brand. They invested in the tech early, they just didn't push hard enough for mindshare. There's no reason they couldn't have succeeded the way the Japanese camera companies did. They just made bad choices in promotion.
Already done. Deploys from an aircraft carrier, carries 5000 lbs of bombs. Looks like a B2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B
That's a Navy project. After the F-4 and A-7... both initiated as Navy projects... USAF basically swore it would never have a Naval aircraft forced on them again. There's a lot of "me-too"ism that goes on in the Pentagon, lots of identity politics and turf warfare over the budget pie and prestige.
Manned bombers for first strike are obsolete. You send in missiles, or from high altitudes, precision guided ordinance. Then when you've taken out enemy ground based anti-air and gained air superiority with your fighter force, then and only then do you send in bombers to basically level the opposing ground forces, their buildings, and other infrastructure.
This being the case, and with ever declining budgets, was USAF needs is a airliner-adapted airframe that can do multiple missions: drop bombs, carry missiles, carry fuel for buddy tanking, and do electronic warfare and intelligence work. This is essentially what the Navy did for years with the P-3 Orion, which was a Lockheed Electra airliner adapted for naval patrol duties. Lockeed put hardpoints on the wings and made weapons bays in the belly. For the P-3, this usually went for torpedoes (with Harpoon missiles and Skipper guided bombs on the wing hardpoints), but in an Air Force aircraft, you'd load it up with JDAMS and cruise missiles. A 757 or 767 airframe would work well, and you could even get away with using one of the 900 series of the 737 airframe (which the Navy has done with the P-8 Poseidon, which is replacing the P-3).
Off the shelf adaptation is the way to go here. Any stealthy bomber from the ground up will run in the billions apiece, and that's flyaway costs, not including development costs.
ESR ir right, but I think he sent his letter to the wrong Senator. It should have gone to the 100 corrupt Senators who actually legislate, rather than former corrupt Senators.
ESR does much more damage when he opens his mouth than he's ever helped by opening it. And I'm really, really tired of the whole tribal meme with regards to the Internet. There WAS an "Internet Culture" when the Internet was new and shiny and very few people were on it. But the Internet has been ubiquitous for years now, and it's just another communications service. Grandma uses it now. It's a technology. That's it. Not a movement, not a clan, and not a religion. Whenever ESR speaks of things like "our elders", I get flashbacks of all those people that saw the first Matrix movie and thought it was the beginning a deep religious movement or something. Unless you're a living parody right of the the Big Bang TV show, most people read this kind of stuff and just roll their eyes.
The law disagrees with you. If you believed that, why aren't you out there protesting the difference between manslaughter and murder?
Because there's a difference between accidental death and killing someone on purpose. Murder is Murder is Murder.
Driving hummers, flying all over the place spewing carbon out the wazoo. Fools.
So the truth is finally out. What ended the Mayans? The SUV.