The funny thing is, with the right incentives, we could create jobs. Moving to renewable (and cleaner) energy will be a gazillion dollar industry for the first few that do it right. Our options are: we can be in the first wave of technology (with the international patent rights to go along with them), or we can be in the next waves (and puchase said patent exploitation rights from others).
So, by forcing us to get off our lazy butts and fix something that could benefit the whole world, we could lead the world in this technology sector, create jobs at home, and work towards a more positive global trade balance. But no....
1) Europe seems to have no problem selling ULSD. Neither does the state of California. If it increases the price of petroluem based fuels, in order to preserve life on this planet as we know it, so be it.
2) I change my oil at the recommended interval of my manufacturer, 10,000 miles. Diesel (Cx rated) engine oils have additives to help deal with the high sulfur content of today's fuel supply.
3) Biodiesel has negligible amounts of sulfur in it. Ethanol probably also has negligible amounts of sulfur in it, but I'm not that up on the details of Ethanol as a fuel. So far, about 1/3 of the fuel I've put in my VW TDI Beetle has been biodiesel. (Yes biodiesel increases NOx emissions over petrodiesel, but with emissions systems designed for ULSD, that pretty much goes away.
4) It's going to happen by 2006, unless unnamed political factions overturn the ULSD mandate as handily as they did the EPAct.
My point is that diesel technology in this country is at least 5-10 years behind that in Europe, largely due to the lack of low sulfur fuel. Moving to a low sulfur fuel supply means we can clean up the diesel emissions to the LEV or ULEV (maybe even SULEV) levels. If that's because German metalworking is superior to that in the US, then we should learn something...
Introducing diesel cars that meet stricter emissions requirements in the US only requires reducing the sulfur content of diesel fuel. Once that happens, the US can use all the cool exhaust treatments that are used *today* in the EU to meet their stricter emissions requirements. In 2006, ULSD (ultra low sulfur diesel) standards take effect, and you will see some more diesel vehicles on the market.
Last year, the only manufacturer of diesel passenger vehicles in the US was Volkswagen. This year, Mercedes (3xx CDI), and Jeep (Liberty CRD) also join the field. By 2006, who knows, maybe we'll even have diesel-electric hybrids...
Here's something you'll never see again, a concession:
Now that I've taken some time to review the details of the site, and some other external referrences, I believe that Condorcet processing of the ranked list isn't such a bad idea after all. In my head, I've been trying to make IRV easier to process computationally (immediately eliminate any candidates with no mathematical chance of winning), and simplifying the results (NxN-1xN-2x..., multi-dimensional results arrays), but it appears that Condorcet voting makes that problem reduce to a mere NxN problem. The ability to simply process results from multiple precincts is quite attractive, too.
As far as explaining it to the masses, the casting of the votes is just as simple as IRV (rank the candidates in preferred order). Explaining the processing should be as simple as possible: The winner is the candidate whose preference is ranked highest. "The winner of a sequence of 1 on 1..." is quite elegant, but won't be easy to sell to a large portion of the electorate. Them's more of them fancy college school words.
The only thing holding me back from a full-fleged endorsement is the issue of ambiguity resolution, which will take me more time to process. Congratulations to all that have offered their input on the matter. I've found it all very enlightening. Does that make me an evil flip-flopper now? =)
Y = total number of "approve", N = total number of "disapprove", A = "abstain", T = total voters, C = number of candidates.
Although, I would go for IRV personally. Yes there are contrived conditions where you can show that some mathematically disproportionate fraction of the populace would be "happier" with a different candidate, but look at the reality of voting in the US. 90-99% of the voters split their votes relatively evenly between the two major parties. The rest split them fairly unevenly between the remaining minor contenders.
As shown in 2000, this can be a factor in pushing a "dark horse" candidate to the top, even if that candidate represents the views of fewer voters. The classic example is: A gets 30 votes, B (similar platform as A) gets 30 votes, C (diametrically opposed to A) gets 40 votes and wins. Clearly, either A or B would more closely represent the views of more voters than C.
IRV fixes this problem. Realistically, in IRV, you would have people generally voting for the "left" candidates, and people generally voting for "right" candidates. You would not have preference lists of "Cobb", "Bush", "Kerry". These are the types of contrived preference lists that are purported to show that IRV is poorly designed.
In more realistic situations, IRV allows voters to unequivocably state a true "first choice" candidate/platform, and also state a "safe" vote for someone more likely to win, whom they could live with. With plurality voting, many times the smart choice is to vote for the "safe" candidate, thus giving the candidate the potentially mistaken opinion that all who voted for them did so as their first choice.
I hope, if they're going to do this, they're at least going to have the sense to perfume the hydrogen, like they do natural gas, so we can go 'Oh, crap, hydrogen leak' and run like hell.
BURNABY, B.C. (CP) - Experts from United States have arrived to help investigate the explosion which resulted from a tanker truck leaking hydrogen at the Ballard Power facility.
The leak sparked an explosion and small fire that sent the truck's driver to hospital with minor injuries. Officials from the Department of Transport, the U.S.-based Jack B. Kelly Inc. trucking company and Praxair will be meeting to investigate the incident in the coming days, Burnaby Fire Department assistant chief Jake Reynolds said Sunday he's been told.
"It's a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's," he said.
At around 9 p.m. Friday, a tanker moving fuel at the suburban Ballard Power Systems plant backed into an industrial building.
The impact ruptured a hole in the tank, sparking a fire and leak.
The truck driver suffered minor burns to his face but there were no other injuries or damage to the plant, Reynolds said.
Crews let the fire burn out but were afraid the gas could explode again.
A nearby golf course was evacuated, along with dozens of Ballard employees and those at a nearby Future Shop warehouse.
Now, admittedly, the driver only suffered minor burns. However, they did still evacuate a nearby golf course and warehouse. And the explosion was triggered solely by the leak (static electricity buildup as the gas leaves the tank, likely).
Personally, I use biodiesel in my '03 TDI Beetle. For now, I believe it's the best option for a minimal footprint vehicle. When something in a reasonable price range comes along, I may have to reconsider my choice. But for today, biodiesel is certainly one of thebetter options.
So about 250 miles on 35 gallons of hydrogen. But its only at about 7 atm pressure by my calcs.
I would be concerned if my safety involved keeping a 35 gallon tank (about 2/3 of a 55 gallon oil drum) at -253 C. That's 20 above absolute zero? That's gotta be a damn good cooling system.
Because it is currently more efficient (power out/power in) to use the power generated from wind for other purposes, rather than use it to split hydrogen from something, pressurize it, and convert it back into mechanical energy via combustion. Its more efficient to use it to recharge a battery, and use the battery to power the car than it is to convert to hydrogen, pressurize, etc.
Actually, the majority of biodiesel in the US is made from virgin soybean oil, as there is a surplus of the feedstock available. According to http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html , soy-based biodiesel has a fossil energy balance of 3.2:1, which is quite positive.
Also, biodiesel is at least "carbon neutral". The carbon that gets released into the atmosphere from the combustion is the same carbon that built the plant from which the biodiesel was made from.
The fundamental problem with our current transportation infrastructure is that nothing is going to work long term. Petroleum is a limited resource, and we only have a small amount of what the world can provide there. Biodiesel and ethanol will need some work to fully replace out current transportation needs. But, as far as currently available technology goes, it's about as good as it gets. When something better comes along, I'll consider the options available then...
Actually, the FDA has recommended that "women of childbearing age" not consume long-lived predatory fish. The tuna lobby has their own guidelines for how much is "safe", presumably because they can afford some research into the matter.
Oh, and I have sources that would disagree that the amount of mercury in vaccines is "safe". There's a reason Japan and Europe have banned Thimerisol as a vaccine preservative for years...
All because, here, in the US, our diesel fuel has insanely high proportions of sulfur. Once ULSD becomes the federally mandated standard for diesel fuel (in 2006), we can use all the wonderful exhaust treatment techonologies in use in Europe today. These more effective exhaust treament systems are killed by the high levels of sulfur in todays US diesel fuel.
Using biodiesel, even on our current diesel passenger cars, lowers the emmissions significantly. All modern diesel engines should be capable of operation on biodiesel with no modifications required. Gasoline engines (unless they are FFVs) cannot switch their fuel source away from gasoline. Well, maybe a 10% ethanol blend would work, I'll admit I'm not that familiar with that side of the fence...
Using ethanol as a fuel results in a fossil energy balance of approximately 1.1:1, you get just a little more out of it than you put into extracting it. Biodiesel from soy beans tends to average about 3:1, due to the large solar input (which is not considered in the fossil energy balance). Soy is by far, not the most efficient (economic, nor energy) feedstock for biodiesel. Nuts, algaes, and even mustard seed are far more efficient for that sort of thing.
Oh, and most diesel engines today require no conversion to run on biodiesel. I pull up to the B100 (100% biodiesel) pump in my TDI New Beetle, pump and go. All I have to "convert" is which pump I pull up to. Older diesel cars may require replacement of fuel lines (natural rubber and biodiesel are not a good combination), but that's about it.
It's not particularly efficient as a transportable energy medium, that's the problem. You need highly pressurized tanks to do this, and leaks are quite dangerous in these circumstances. It's more efficient to charge a battery, and use that stored energy than it is to generate hydrogren, pressurize it, distribute it, and convert it back to usable energy.
The problem with centralized generation is distribution losses. Upgrading thousands of plants is just not going to happen. The plants out there will run until they fall apart, or are otherwise decommissioned for safety reasons.
Replacing hundreds of millions of cars (and refueling pumps, and transport trucks, and hydrogren manufacturing plants) is exactly what's necessary to implement this hydrogen scheme. There's an easier way to increase energy independence, especially in the transportation sector, and that's via biofuels. Biodiesel and Ethanol can resuse the majority of the current transportation infrastructure: existing tanks, pumps, and with no or only minor modifications, even the cars. All that changes is where the tanker trucks fill up.
Also, decentralizing the infrastructure, renders it less susceptible to disruption (plant downtime, maintenance, terrorist attack, etc.).
...is that it isn't an energy *source*. You have to make hydrogen, either by splitting it out of water, or some hydrocarbon source (e.g. petroleum), then pressurize it to extremes in order to get any usable range out of it in an automobile. If hydrogen can be manufactured by renewable means (geothermal, for example, would work well in Iceland), then there is some benefit to it.
However, if you use solar energy to create electricity to electrolyze water, and make hydrogen gas that way, you end up with less energy at the wheels of a car than you would just charging a battery from the same solar energy.
So you have to ask yourself, who benefits from multi-billion dollars of investment into a Hydrogen energy infrastructure?
I use the PXES boot cd image for just this purpose. I'm typing this on the PXES PC in the kitchen, which is really an X terminal to the Linux PC in the bedroom. X rules.
Ah yes, the days of poop brown skies that was LA in the '70's...
It really has improved since then. Most days, you can see from one side of the basin to the other now. Back then, it was a toos up. And the sky did have that eerie tint to it.
Oh, and actually, Houston has worse air pollution than LA now. One of Bush's other great accomplishments as Governor...
Echouafni allegedly paid Ashley $1,000 to snuff out two competing websites that he claimed had stolen some of his content and were staging DDoS attacks against his company.
he quietly subcontracted the job to Richard "Krashed" Roby, who allegedly took the assignment in exchange for a free shell account.
$1000 and a Free Shell Account. Cheaper than kneecaps...
I think they spent their entire $10 budget on the special effect. Not effects. Effect. I watched 10 minutes, then watched the rest at high speed, just in case there was something interesting in it. There wasn't.
I got the movie poster from a friend of mine, which features a terminatoresque skeletoid robot standing over a burning motorcycle. This scene never appeared in the movie. All in all, the worst movie I've ever seen.
Another problem is both the Reform and Green parties have deteriorated in to a complete shambles on their own, they simply lack a coherent organization and appear to have fallen in to chaos...
From http://www.greens.org/elections/ (the Greens In Office frame)
Green Party members holding elected office in the United States: At least 209 Greens in 27 states hold elected office as of July 2004
This is a shambles? They're on the ballot for many offices in 39 states this year. That's a lot of ballots they've been able to gain access to. They're trying to turn the system upside down from the roots. That takes time. They are gaining positions at the City and County level (even a few at the State level). This takes time.
The internet moves much faster than politics. If you agree with their views, support them as best you can. Hell, if you are mote aligned with the Libertarians, or the Reform, or even the Constitution Party (not that they seem to get the gist of Amendment #1), vote for them...
Slashdot Mirror
But if you only count the useful data ...
The funny thing is, with the right incentives, we could create jobs. Moving to renewable (and cleaner) energy will be a gazillion dollar industry for the first few that do it right. Our options are: we can be in the first wave of technology (with the international patent rights to go along with them), or we can be in the next waves (and puchase said patent exploitation rights from others).
So, by forcing us to get off our lazy butts and fix something that could benefit the whole world, we could lead the world in this technology sector, create jobs at home, and work towards a more positive global trade balance. But no....
He tried. He failed at that, too...
"off by one" software mistakes even more significant. Maybe this has been The Secret Plan (tm) all along.
For what it's worth, this same statistical analysis is what means *your* vote actually counts for something.
http://www.animusic.com
CGI movies driven by MIDI. Pretty neat stuff. Fun to watch. PBS plays some of their stuff before Dr. Who.
What's the MIDI code for stick twirls again?
Random thoughts.
1) Europe seems to have no problem selling ULSD. Neither does the state of California. If it increases the price of petroluem based fuels, in order to preserve life on this planet as we know it, so be it.
2) I change my oil at the recommended interval of my manufacturer, 10,000 miles. Diesel (Cx rated) engine oils have additives to help deal with the high sulfur content of today's fuel supply.
3) Biodiesel has negligible amounts of sulfur in it. Ethanol probably also has negligible amounts of sulfur in it, but I'm not that up on the details of Ethanol as a fuel. So far, about 1/3 of the fuel I've put in my VW TDI Beetle has been biodiesel. (Yes biodiesel increases NOx emissions over petrodiesel, but with emissions systems designed for ULSD, that pretty much goes away.
4) It's going to happen by 2006, unless unnamed political factions overturn the ULSD mandate as handily as they did the EPAct.
My point is that diesel technology in this country is at least 5-10 years behind that in Europe, largely due to the lack of low sulfur fuel. Moving to a low sulfur fuel supply means we can clean up the diesel emissions to the LEV or ULEV (maybe even SULEV) levels. If that's because German metalworking is superior to that in the US, then we should learn something...
Introducing diesel cars that meet stricter emissions requirements in the US only requires reducing the sulfur content of diesel fuel. Once that happens, the US can use all the cool exhaust treatments that are used *today* in the EU to meet their stricter emissions requirements. In 2006, ULSD (ultra low sulfur diesel) standards take effect, and you will see some more diesel vehicles on the market.
Last year, the only manufacturer of diesel passenger vehicles in the US was Volkswagen. This year, Mercedes (3xx CDI), and Jeep (Liberty CRD) also join the field. By 2006, who knows, maybe we'll even have diesel-electric hybrids...
Here's something you'll never see again, a concession:
..." is quite elegant, but won't be easy to sell to a large portion of the electorate. Them's more of them fancy college school words.
Now that I've taken some time to review the details of the site, and some other external referrences, I believe that Condorcet processing of the ranked list isn't such a bad idea after all. In my head, I've been trying to make IRV easier to process computationally (immediately eliminate any candidates with no mathematical chance of winning), and simplifying the results (NxN-1xN-2x..., multi-dimensional results arrays), but it appears that Condorcet voting makes that problem reduce to a mere NxN problem. The ability to simply process results from multiple precincts is quite attractive, too.
As far as explaining it to the masses, the casting of the votes is just as simple as IRV (rank the candidates in preferred order). Explaining the processing should be as simple as possible: The winner is the candidate whose preference is ranked highest. "The winner of a sequence of 1 on 1
The only thing holding me back from a full-fleged endorsement is the issue of ambiguity resolution, which will take me more time to process. Congratulations to all that have offered their input on the matter. I've found it all very enlightening. Does that make me an evil flip-flopper now? =)
Y + N + A = T*C
Y = total number of "approve", N = total number of "disapprove", A = "abstain", T = total voters, C = number of candidates.
Although, I would go for IRV personally. Yes there are contrived conditions where you can show that some mathematically disproportionate fraction of the populace would be "happier" with a different candidate, but look at the reality of voting in the US. 90-99% of the voters split their votes relatively evenly between the two major parties. The rest split them fairly unevenly between the remaining minor contenders.
As shown in 2000, this can be a factor in pushing a "dark horse" candidate to the top, even if that candidate represents the views of fewer voters. The classic example is: A gets 30 votes, B (similar platform as A) gets 30 votes, C (diametrically opposed to A) gets 40 votes and wins. Clearly, either A or B would more closely represent the views of more voters than C.
IRV fixes this problem. Realistically, in IRV, you would have people generally voting for the "left" candidates, and people generally voting for "right" candidates. You would not have preference lists of "Cobb", "Bush", "Kerry". These are the types of contrived preference lists that are purported to show that IRV is poorly designed.
In more realistic situations, IRV allows voters to unequivocably state a true "first choice" candidate/platform, and also state a "safe" vote for someone more likely to win, whom they could live with. With plurality voting, many times the smart choice is to vote for the "safe" candidate, thus giving the candidate the potentially mistaken opinion that all who voted for them did so as their first choice.
Now, admittedly, the driver only suffered minor burns. However, they did still evacuate a nearby golf course and warehouse. And the explosion was triggered solely by the leak (static electricity buildup as the gas leaves the tank, likely).
Now tell me why I want one of these in my car?
Personally, I use biodiesel in my '03 TDI Beetle. For now, I believe it's the best option for a minimal footprint vehicle. When something in a reasonable price range comes along, I may have to reconsider my choice. But for today, biodiesel is certainly one of thebetter options.
So about 250 miles on 35 gallons of hydrogen. But its only at about 7 atm pressure by my calcs.
I would be concerned if my safety involved keeping a 35 gallon tank (about 2/3 of a 55 gallon oil drum) at -253 C. That's 20 above absolute zero? That's gotta be a damn good cooling system.
Because it is currently more efficient (power out/power in) to use the power generated from wind for other purposes, rather than use it to split hydrogen from something, pressurize it, and convert it back into mechanical energy via combustion. Its more efficient to use it to recharge a battery, and use the battery to power the car than it is to convert to hydrogen, pressurize, etc.
Any word on the range of this vehicle?
and if that doesn't cut it, Radio Pacifica.
Actually, the majority of biodiesel in the US is made from virgin soybean oil, as there is a surplus of the feedstock available. According to http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html , soy-based biodiesel has a fossil energy balance of 3.2:1, which is quite positive.
Also, biodiesel is at least "carbon neutral". The carbon that gets released into the atmosphere from the combustion is the same carbon that built the plant from which the biodiesel was made from.
The fundamental problem with our current transportation infrastructure is that nothing is going to work long term. Petroleum is a limited resource, and we only have a small amount of what the world can provide there. Biodiesel and ethanol will need some work to fully replace out current transportation needs. But, as far as currently available technology goes, it's about as good as it gets. When something better comes along, I'll consider the options available then...
Actually, the FDA has recommended that "women of childbearing age" not consume long-lived predatory fish. The tuna lobby has their own guidelines for how much is "safe", presumably because they can afford some research into the matter.
Oh, and I have sources that would disagree that the amount of mercury in vaccines is "safe". There's a reason Japan and Europe have banned Thimerisol as a vaccine preservative for years...
All because, here, in the US, our diesel fuel has insanely high proportions of sulfur. Once ULSD becomes the federally mandated standard for diesel fuel (in 2006), we can use all the wonderful exhaust treatment techonologies in use in Europe today. These more effective exhaust treament systems are killed by the high levels of sulfur in todays US diesel fuel.
Using biodiesel, even on our current diesel passenger cars, lowers the emmissions significantly. All modern diesel engines should be capable of operation on biodiesel with no modifications required. Gasoline engines (unless they are FFVs) cannot switch their fuel source away from gasoline. Well, maybe a 10% ethanol blend would work, I'll admit I'm not that familiar with that side of the fence...
Using ethanol as a fuel results in a fossil energy balance of approximately 1.1:1, you get just a little more out of it than you put into extracting it. Biodiesel from soy beans tends to average about 3:1, due to the large solar input (which is not considered in the fossil energy balance). Soy is by far, not the most efficient (economic, nor energy) feedstock for biodiesel. Nuts, algaes, and even mustard seed are far more efficient for that sort of thing.
Oh, and most diesel engines today require no conversion to run on biodiesel. I pull up to the B100 (100% biodiesel) pump in my TDI New Beetle, pump and go. All I have to "convert" is which pump I pull up to. Older diesel cars may require replacement of fuel lines (natural rubber and biodiesel are not a good combination), but that's about it.
It's not particularly efficient as a transportable energy medium, that's the problem. You need highly pressurized tanks to do this, and leaks are quite dangerous in these circumstances. It's more efficient to charge a battery, and use that stored energy than it is to generate hydrogren, pressurize it, distribute it, and convert it back to usable energy.
The problem with centralized generation is distribution losses. Upgrading thousands of plants is just not going to happen. The plants out there will run until they fall apart, or are otherwise decommissioned for safety reasons.
Replacing hundreds of millions of cars (and refueling pumps, and transport trucks, and hydrogren manufacturing plants) is exactly what's necessary to implement this hydrogen scheme. There's an easier way to increase energy independence, especially in the transportation sector, and that's via biofuels. Biodiesel and Ethanol can resuse the majority of the current transportation infrastructure: existing tanks, pumps, and with no or only minor modifications, even the cars. All that changes is where the tanker trucks fill up.
Also, decentralizing the infrastructure, renders it less susceptible to disruption (plant downtime, maintenance, terrorist attack, etc.).
...is that it isn't an energy *source*. You have to make hydrogen, either by splitting it out of water, or some hydrocarbon source (e.g. petroleum), then pressurize it to extremes in order to get any usable range out of it in an automobile. If hydrogen can be manufactured by renewable means (geothermal, for example, would work well in Iceland), then there is some benefit to it.
However, if you use solar energy to create electricity to electrolyze water, and make hydrogen gas that way, you end up with less energy at the wheels of a car than you would just charging a battery from the same solar energy.
So you have to ask yourself, who benefits from multi-billion dollars of investment into a Hydrogen energy infrastructure?
I use the PXES boot cd image for just this purpose. I'm typing this on the PXES PC in the kitchen, which is really an X terminal to the Linux PC in the bedroom. X rules.
Ah yes, the days of poop brown skies that was LA in the '70's...
It really has improved since then. Most days, you can see from one side of the basin to the other now. Back then, it was a toos up. And the sky did have that eerie tint to it.
Oh, and actually, Houston has worse air pollution than LA now. One of Bush's other great accomplishments as Governor...
I think they spent their entire $10 budget on the special effect. Not effects. Effect. I watched 10 minutes, then watched the rest at high speed, just in case there was something interesting in it. There wasn't.
I got the movie poster from a friend of mine, which features a terminatoresque skeletoid robot standing over a burning motorcycle. This scene never appeared in the movie. All in all, the worst movie I've ever seen.
From http://www.greens.org/elections/ (the Greens In Office frame)
Green Party members holding elected office in the United States:
At least 209 Greens in 27 states
hold elected office as of July 2004
This is a shambles? They're on the ballot for many offices in 39 states this year. That's a lot of ballots they've been able to gain access to. They're trying to turn the system upside down from the roots. That takes time. They are gaining positions at the City and County level (even a few at the State level). This takes time.
The internet moves much faster than politics. If you agree with their views, support them as best you can. Hell, if you are mote aligned with the Libertarians, or the Reform, or even the Constitution Party (not that they seem to get the gist of Amendment #1), vote for them...