You forgot to mention that the perps will also be able to see when you've left your house... so much less tedious to burgle the place when there's no owner present to be outraged...
The problem is, a lot of things genuinely done in the name of reducing crime (ie. "for your own good") actually increase it.
Disarming honest citizens is a good example. As I recall, since this was done in Britain small-scale crime has skyrocketed. So now we need cameras to keep up with crime that didn't exist when the average would-be perp was at least somewhat discouraged by the risk of getting shot in the act.
I'm reminded of this old (and reputedly true) tale:
Texas: We're overrun with armadillos! What do you have that can help us reduce their population?? Arizona: Coyotes. Here, we have extras, we'll send you some. [time passes] Texas: Help! We're overrun with coyotes!! Arizona: No problem, here's some rattlesnakes. They'll reduce your coyote problem in a jiffy. [time passes] Texas: HELP! now we're overrun with rattlesnakes!! Arizona: Armadillos eat rattlesnakes. We can spare a few...
"And funnily enough, the watchers often aren't comfortable with the idea of being watched themselves...."
As I said above about the afternoon-TV-trash element...
But you gave me this thought: what if, as part of the "subscriber agreement" to receive CCTV on your telly, you must agree that YOUR property is ALSO wired so the rest of the CCTV network can see it. Make it fully reciprocal and see how many people like it then!!:)
On RTFA'ing, it occurred to me that this is just taking the current plague of "reality shows" to its logical extreme. Thanks to said shows, the public is already well-trained to believe that such large-scale voyeurism is normal and desirable.
I also had the thought that this may trigger an increase in "nyah nyah, you can see me but you can't catch me" crime by street gangs, and that "owning" a local CC network may well displace grafitti as the territory-tagging method of choice.
I had the further thought that people with lives don't have the time or the need to spend hours peering and prying, so the majority of Crime TV, er, Neighbourhood Watch TV viewers will be the very trash (the unemployables who spend their afternoons watcbing Jerry Springer) that commit the sort of petty crimes such CCTV theoretically prevents. And it's a short hop from there to knowing exactly which houses are "safe" to pillage, which routes are covered or not, and when you must be careful to disguise your appearance. All in all, it's likely only to select for a new class of smarter criminals. Meanwhile the real victims (the people who believe CCTV is keeping them safe) will experience an increase in new crimes, and will clamor for more police protection, which will include more surveillance... and [feels squeeze from new tinfoil hat] won't end until every home is required by law to be wired for CCTV.
Indeed... anything they can't poke with a stick, they're afraid of.
And any time one of the OTHER sheep might get picked for slaughter, everyone keeps their head down and tries to avoid notice. Nothing pleases the wolf more than not having to work for his dinner.
Take airline hijackings... It always amazes me that a couple guys with box cutters could intimidate a planeful of grown men with fists, and women with slugger-grade purses (not to mention the deck'em value of a high-heel spike in the temple). -- IMO the only in-air threat that is worth possibly "respecting" is a bomb large enough to do more than knock out a few portholes, and then *only* when equipped with a deadman trigger (ie. if the guy lets go, the bomb automatically detonates). Anything else -- well, half a dozen strapping lads can pile on and take down the perp before they can do any real damage, and given how everything with a decent blade or projectile capacity is nixed at the gate, the worst that can happen is a couple of the strapping lads get superficial cuts. If the gang-tackle happens before the perps get completely set up, even less chance of anyone getting hurt.
But people in "civilized" countries are so trained to wait for the cops rather than protect themselves on the spot, that they'd rather put their heads down and wait to be slaughtered.
Personally, I'm not a prey animal. Time to trot out my story about how people behave in live "killer games" again...
Charles Forbin also leapt first to mind here... because I read this article headline immediately after the one entitled "Americans Not Bothered by NSA Spying":/
And originally it was a book (rather, a set of three books) by D.F. Jones.
"The truly liberal mind is by definition uncertain; it admits it may be wrong, but once set and the decision made the wavering stops, and no sort of hell can sway it." -- D.F. Jones, The Fall of Colossus
On a further-out side note, lymevac for dogs has been out for several years now.... however, a study in Minnesota (the heart of deer tick country) found that about 70% of UNvaccinated dogs *and* humans already had active lyme antibodies WITHOUT ever having had symptoms, implying that only specimens with abnormal immune systems exhibit symptoms.
"How about a fucking law that says I get to be informed every single time my personal information is accessed by the government?"
Hear bloody freakin' hear!! if we had such a law, it just might frighten some sense into the average citizen, and get them to realise that in Soviet Russia, they were no more spied upon than we are -- by our own respective governments.
Someone once said that the true definition of totalitarianism is that your every move is tracked in SOME way, however trivial or seemingly innocuous -- your credit card use, your check writing habits, your travel patterns (often easy to track via credit card trails), your discount card purchases, etc, etc, all sum up to a profile that means you have NO freedom from the gov't, because it can ALWAYS find you. If not by its own efforts, then by co-opting the tracking efforts of private entities.
That's a scary thought... and altogether too likely, given the current political climate. After all, who would be more likely to both create a data breach (in the course of an "investigation") AND not want the breached party to tell average citizens about it??
One begins to wonder just exactly who actually authored this bill...
Now look what you've done -- now I've got to get my tinfoil hat refitted!!
Some dogs grok mirrors, well enough to recognise that an object is behind them rather than "in" the mirror. Tho I've only seen one cat that figured this out. And human babies often don't understand mirrors when they first encounter them.
I suspect it relies on having some ability to grok abstractions.
I'm a professional dog trainer with 36 years and some 1600 dogs worth of experience (plus lots of cats and misc. other critters). In my observation, it's not a matter of "how much" intelligence, but rather, the point at which it *stops developing*. For most dogs, that's somewhere in the same range as the average 4 to 6 year old human child, rarely to about the same level as an 8YO (and the dog will, if talked to the same way as you would your kid, develop a pretty good vocabulary and understanding -- the notion that only identical intonations and commands are understood is quite bogus). For cats, it's in the 2 to 3 YO range, very rarely more. With horses, about like a 2YO human at best, usually a bit less. Etc.
In short, intelligence and reasoning ability are a sliding scale, where humans generally take longer to stop developing, so wind up with more useful reasoning power than other animals. Also, the more reasoning power, the less instinct-driven the animal.
I used to have a bunch of chickens that were the random descendants of fighting cocks... slightly smarter than the average chicken, for what little that's worth.
When they thought I was being slow with breakfast, they'd try to spike me. The hens would always sneak up behind me so were hard to catch (hardwired female behaviour there) but the roosters would run right up to me... One day I caught one of the roosters as he was about to try to spike me, picked him up, gave him a good shake, put him back down... A few days later he ran up to me, started to jump up in spiking mode, wound up standing on one foot, looked at me like "Uh-oh", put his foot back down, and walked off. And he never tried it again.
BTW see above where I wrote about my sister's parrot, who similarly interacts with their dog...
My sister's African Grey will call their dog by name, tell the dog "Sit" which he obligingly does, then the parrot yells "BAD DOG!!" -- What's really unusual about this is that the dog is almost never "bad" so the humans very rarely say "bad dog".... so it's not =purely= imitative behaviour by the parrot. At a guess, the parrot is jealous (since the dog gets more attention), and is trying to "punish" the dog.
Said parrot also will answer a human-to-human inquiry in the "expected" voice. If the phone rings and my sister answers it, then yells for her husband, the parrot will answer appropriately and in the husband's voice (and v.v.) Then you've got to go check to see who actually responded.:)
As to dolphins, one suspects that individuals have a signature "voice" much as humans and other higher animals do, and with time and repeated use, individuals learn who equals which noise -- very like how little kids do. Probably this relates to how well-developed is the critter's sense of self as an individual.
[puts on professional dog trainer hat] Dogs often get as far as distinguishing other dogs' voices, and understanding that a name refers to an absent 3rd party (grokking "go find Molly" even tho Molly is in another room, etc.) I've seen one cat that did so, but he was a freak; most cats have enough trouble with their own name, let alone anyone else's.
Sounds like what would be most efficient in total, is a whole bunch of small plants to process corn, sugar beets, or whatever, and one large, centrally-located plant to process all the waste cellulose (and whatever else) from the smaller plants.
But I was thinking of something a bit more "crude" -- compressed pellets of waste cellulose, to replace coal, wood pellets (such as for home-heating pellet stoves), etc. Easy to ship, no storage requirements other than keeping it dry, growing market.
My truck (Ford 302 V-8) can scrape by on our 87 regular, but would rather not... pings under load, doesn't want to go up hills, etc. It's much happier with 91 or even higher (used to be able to get 96, it loved that). You can really tell the difference every time it comes to a hill, especially when hauling a load.
Unfortunately, at SoCal gas prices, we make do with 87 octane, and resign ourselves to going up hills at 45mph.
I can taste the difference between beet sugar, cane sugar, regular corn syrup, "high fructose" corn syrup, and sucralose... in descending order of preference. (Actually, I can't eat sucralose at all, it tastes *too* odd.)
Cane and beet sugar, while the sugar itself is chemically identical, taste different due to beet sugar usually having certain impurities.
Ever notice that Hershey's Chocolate Syrup in the *metal can* is thicker and tastes better than the stuff in the plastic squeeze bottle? The canned variety uses regular corn syrup; the squeeze-bottle type uses high-fructose corn syrup.
A couple years ago, Nestle's sweetened instant tea mix switched from sugar to high-fructose corn syrup (and then to sucralose). I noticed the diff with the first swallow... ick, what'd they do to this? [reads label] no wonder! I called the company and complained, but their attitude was... tough shit.
Sugar probably costs more, and most people can't taste any difference. Or aren't sufficiently offended to switch to another product. Not me, I demanded a refund, then went back to Lipton (still has real sugar, tho the tea fraction isn't as good).
You can always tell people who have never had to haul or tow a real load, they think any vehicle can do it:)
I've got both a full-size pickup with a V-8 and tow-package, and a somewhat more-efficient car. As it turns out, I need the truck's cargo and towing capacity regularly, and it is not cost-effective to maintain and insure the car as well, even with its better fuel-efficiency.
The car is presently non-op'd, saving me $700/yr in tags, insurance, and maintenance, vs. about $200/yr it could save me in gas (at $3/gal.) for those trips when I could do without the truck. (No, I don't drive much, less than 4000 miles per year.)
IOW, using ONLY the less-fuel-efficient truck saves me $500/yr out of pocket.
As I asked up above... might there be a market for "bricked" waste material (beet pulp etc.) as fuel? ISTM it could at least partially replace coal, and likely would burn cleaner. Might also be useful for pellet stoves for home heating.
As to bio-oil, if it were all that cheap to produce, it wouldn't be $3.50 to $5 per gallon at wholesale. (Likely to go up since most of those tractors and combines run on diesel...)
You can't just switch from one crop to another without changing your harvesting, storage, and shipping machinery and arrangements. And farm machinery is hideously expensive.
I'd guess farmers grow corn because of 1) historical subsidy arrangements and markets, 2) they've already invested in the infrastructure, it's paid for, and they're not inclined to cough up half a million bucks for a new combine for some other type of crop when the old machinery, designed for corn, still works just fine. Show 'em how they can profit with the new crop, and they'll listen, but it's not so simple as "now we're going to grow beets instead of corn".
Okay, let's say we grow sugar beets and produce 2 energy units of ethanol for every one unit of energy cost. Sugar beets have an advantage that they do well in areas with a short growing season, so can be produced anywhere in the upper midwest.
After extracting the sugar/ethanol, we've got a big pile of beet pulp, normally used as mulch and animal fodder. Probably more beet pulp than we need for such purposes.
But it's mainly cellulose. What kind of processing is needed to *efficiently* convert this biomass into energy units?? could it be "bricked" (compressed) and used to replace coal in coal-fired generators? I'd think at the least, it would burn cleaner than coal.
And according to TFA (or one linked from it, I forget), sugar cane produces 7 units of energy for every unit used in production. That's a helluva lot more efficient even than sugar beets.
The advantage of sugar beets is that they do well in areas with short growing seasons and long winters -- North Dakota and Minnesota both produce a lot of sugar beets, and are close to markets for the principle waste product (beet pulp, useful as mulch and livestock fodder).
The only downside I can think of is that you don't want to live downwind of the sugar plant, cuz man, do "used" sugar beets ever stink!
The U.S. used to grow a lot of sugar cane (mainly along the Mississippi delta) and there's probably no reason we can't return to that, especially since a good deal of what used to be cane fields 200 years ago is now... er, no longer urbanized, thanks to certain hurricanes. Sugar cane used to be very labour-intensive, but I understand there are now harvesting machines for that job.
Yeah, someone else pointed out that by "hand" he probably meant "mouse cursor". But still...
His comments about jiggering resolution don't wash either. In fact the further I RTFA'd, the more bullshit indicators lit up.
As to all the claims about UFOs, free energy, and the like... I agree with those who point out that 1) the U.S. is not the only country with satellite imaging and a space program, 2) if such stuff was available, why isn't someone using it -- if not the U.S., then one of our rivals?? If some snot-nosed kid can break into a gov't facility's network with so little effort, you can bet *professional* hackers employed by enemy gov'ts are way ahead of him.
I'm reminded of an episode of Under Cover ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101229/ ) in which a green but rather too full of himself young agent believes he's found satellite views of hitherto-unknown Soviet missile silos. The old hands let him make a thorough ass of himself, then reveal that the satellite images he's so excited about aren't satellite views at all, but rather the product of a small camera in the back room, pointed at a printout of a genuine view of Russia.... with several still-rolled-up condoms strategically placed. Gee, it's amazing how much a condom's ridge looks like the dirt around the mouth of a missile silo, don't you agree?;)
[This was, as the single review says, one of the best TV series ever, but got no audience attention because it was done so low-key. John Rhys-Davies was at his best.]
You can hit the PRINTSCREEN key and paste the result into Paint, or any other image editing app, and not risk losing an image you may have trouble retrieving otherwise. Works fine, and I do it all the time with "uncapturable" images. I find it hard to believe someone at all versed in hacking doesn't know this simple trick.
Secondly, I want to know how he "saw someone's hand moving across the screen"... what, there was a webcam focused on the remote computer??
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot to mention that the perps will also be able to see when you've left your house... so much less tedious to burgle the place when there's no owner present to be outraged...
The problem is, a lot of things genuinely done in the name of reducing crime (ie. "for your own good") actually increase it.
Disarming honest citizens is a good example. As I recall, since this was done in Britain small-scale crime has skyrocketed. So now we need cameras to keep up with crime that didn't exist when the average would-be perp was at least somewhat discouraged by the risk of getting shot in the act.
I'm reminded of this old (and reputedly true) tale:
Texas: We're overrun with armadillos! What do you have that can help us reduce their population??
Arizona: Coyotes. Here, we have extras, we'll send you some.
[time passes]
Texas: Help! We're overrun with coyotes!!
Arizona: No problem, here's some rattlesnakes. They'll reduce your coyote problem in a jiffy.
[time passes]
Texas: HELP! now we're overrun with rattlesnakes!!
Arizona: Armadillos eat rattlesnakes. We can spare a few...
"And funnily enough, the watchers often aren't comfortable with the idea of being watched themselves ...."
:)
As I said above about the afternoon-TV-trash element...
But you gave me this thought: what if, as part of the "subscriber agreement" to receive CCTV on your telly, you must agree that YOUR property is ALSO wired so the rest of the CCTV network can see it. Make it fully reciprocal and see how many people like it then!!
On RTFA'ing, it occurred to me that this is just taking the current plague of "reality shows" to its logical extreme. Thanks to said shows, the public is already well-trained to believe that such large-scale voyeurism is normal and desirable.
I also had the thought that this may trigger an increase in "nyah nyah, you can see me but you can't catch me" crime by street gangs, and that "owning" a local CC network may well displace grafitti as the territory-tagging method of choice.
I had the further thought that people with lives don't have the time or the need to spend hours peering and prying, so the majority of Crime TV, er, Neighbourhood Watch TV viewers will be the very trash (the unemployables who spend their afternoons watcbing Jerry Springer) that commit the sort of petty crimes such CCTV theoretically prevents. And it's a short hop from there to knowing exactly which houses are "safe" to pillage, which routes are covered or not, and when you must be careful to disguise your appearance.
All in all, it's likely only to select for a new class of smarter criminals. Meanwhile the real victims (the people who believe CCTV is keeping them safe) will experience an increase in new crimes, and will clamor for more police protection, which will include more surveillance... and [feels squeeze from new tinfoil hat] won't end until every home is required by law to be wired for CCTV.
Indeed... anything they can't poke with a stick, they're afraid of.
And any time one of the OTHER sheep might get picked for slaughter, everyone keeps their head down and tries to avoid notice. Nothing pleases the wolf more than not having to work for his dinner.
Take airline hijackings... It always amazes me that a couple guys with box cutters could intimidate a planeful of grown men with fists, and women with slugger-grade purses (not to mention the deck'em value of a high-heel spike in the temple). -- IMO the only in-air threat that is worth possibly "respecting" is a bomb large enough to do more than knock out a few portholes, and then *only* when equipped with a deadman trigger (ie. if the guy lets go, the bomb automatically detonates). Anything else -- well, half a dozen strapping lads can pile on and take down the perp before they can do any real damage, and given how everything with a decent blade or projectile capacity is nixed at the gate, the worst that can happen is a couple of the strapping lads get superficial cuts. If the gang-tackle happens before the perps get completely set up, even less chance of anyone getting hurt.
But people in "civilized" countries are so trained to wait for the cops rather than protect themselves on the spot, that they'd rather put their heads down and wait to be slaughtered.
Personally, I'm not a prey animal. Time to trot out my story about how people behave in live "killer games" again...
Charles Forbin also leapt first to mind here... because I read this article headline immediately after the one entitled "Americans Not Bothered by NSA Spying" :/
And originally it was a book (rather, a set of three books) by D.F. Jones.
"The truly liberal mind is by definition uncertain; it admits it may be wrong, but once set and the decision made the wavering stops, and no sort of hell can sway it." -- D.F. Jones, The Fall of Colossus
On a further-out side note, lymevac for dogs has been out for several years now.... however, a study in Minnesota (the heart of deer tick country) found that about 70% of UNvaccinated dogs *and* humans already had active lyme antibodies WITHOUT ever having had symptoms, implying that only specimens with abnormal immune systems exhibit symptoms.
We're still paying tribute to pirates... have you noticed the price of oil lately?!!
"How about a fucking law that says I get to be informed every single time my personal information is accessed by the government?"
Hear bloody freakin' hear!! if we had such a law, it just might frighten some sense into the average citizen, and get them to realise that in Soviet Russia, they were no more spied upon than we are -- by our own respective governments.
Someone once said that the true definition of totalitarianism is that your every move is tracked in SOME way, however trivial or seemingly innocuous -- your credit card use, your check writing habits, your travel patterns (often easy to track via credit card trails), your discount card purchases, etc, etc, all sum up to a profile that means you have NO freedom from the gov't, because it can ALWAYS find you. If not by its own efforts, then by co-opting the tracking efforts of private entities.
That's a scary thought... and altogether too likely, given the current political climate. After all, who would be more likely to both create a data breach (in the course of an "investigation") AND not want the breached party to tell average citizens about it??
One begins to wonder just exactly who actually authored this bill...
Now look what you've done -- now I've got to get my tinfoil hat refitted!!
Some dogs grok mirrors, well enough to recognise that an object is behind them rather than "in" the mirror. Tho I've only seen one cat that figured this out. And human babies often don't understand mirrors when they first encounter them.
I suspect it relies on having some ability to grok abstractions.
"...you can call a cat not by it's name, but "Hey stuuuuupid!" in the right emotional tone and they'll still come."
Which applies equally well to most humans.
I'm a professional dog trainer with 36 years and some 1600 dogs worth of experience (plus lots of cats and misc. other critters). In my observation, it's not a matter of "how much" intelligence, but rather, the point at which it *stops developing*. For most dogs, that's somewhere in the same range as the average 4 to 6 year old human child, rarely to about the same level as an 8YO (and the dog will, if talked to the same way as you would your kid, develop a pretty good vocabulary and understanding -- the notion that only identical intonations and commands are understood is quite bogus). For cats, it's in the 2 to 3 YO range, very rarely more. With horses, about like a 2YO human at best, usually a bit less. Etc.
In short, intelligence and reasoning ability are a sliding scale, where humans generally take longer to stop developing, so wind up with more useful reasoning power than other animals. Also, the more reasoning power, the less instinct-driven the animal.
I used to have a bunch of chickens that were the random descendants of fighting cocks... slightly smarter than the average chicken, for what little that's worth.
When they thought I was being slow with breakfast, they'd try to spike me. The hens would always sneak up behind me so were hard to catch (hardwired female behaviour there) but the roosters would run right up to me... One day I caught one of the roosters as he was about to try to spike me, picked him up, gave him a good shake, put him back down... A few days later he ran up to me, started to jump up in spiking mode, wound up standing on one foot, looked at me like "Uh-oh", put his foot back down, and walked off. And he never tried it again.
BTW see above where I wrote about my sister's parrot, who similarly interacts with their dog...
My sister's African Grey will call their dog by name, tell the dog "Sit" which he obligingly does, then the parrot yells "BAD DOG!!" -- What's really unusual about this is that the dog is almost never "bad" so the humans very rarely say "bad dog".... so it's not =purely= imitative behaviour by the parrot. At a guess, the parrot is jealous (since the dog gets more attention), and is trying to "punish" the dog.
:)
Said parrot also will answer a human-to-human inquiry in the "expected" voice. If the phone rings and my sister answers it, then yells for her husband, the parrot will answer appropriately and in the husband's voice (and v.v.) Then you've got to go check to see who actually responded.
As to dolphins, one suspects that individuals have a signature "voice" much as humans and other higher animals do, and with time and repeated use, individuals learn who equals which noise -- very like how little kids do. Probably this relates to how well-developed is the critter's sense of self as an individual.
[puts on professional dog trainer hat] Dogs often get as far as distinguishing other dogs' voices, and understanding that a name refers to an absent 3rd party (grokking "go find Molly" even tho Molly is in another room, etc.) I've seen one cat that did so, but he was a freak; most cats have enough trouble with their own name, let alone anyone else's.
Sounds like what would be most efficient in total, is a whole bunch of small plants to process corn, sugar beets, or whatever, and one large, centrally-located plant to process all the waste cellulose (and whatever else) from the smaller plants.
But I was thinking of something a bit more "crude" -- compressed pellets of waste cellulose, to replace coal, wood pellets (such as for home-heating pellet stoves), etc. Easy to ship, no storage requirements other than keeping it dry, growing market.
My truck (Ford 302 V-8) can scrape by on our 87 regular, but would rather not... pings under load, doesn't want to go up hills, etc. It's much happier with 91 or even higher (used to be able to get 96, it loved that). You can really tell the difference every time it comes to a hill, especially when hauling a load.
Unfortunately, at SoCal gas prices, we make do with 87 octane, and resign ourselves to going up hills at 45mph.
I can taste the difference between beet sugar, cane sugar, regular corn syrup, "high fructose" corn syrup, and sucralose... in descending order of preference. (Actually, I can't eat sucralose at all, it tastes *too* odd.)
Cane and beet sugar, while the sugar itself is chemically identical, taste different due to beet sugar usually having certain impurities.
Ever notice that Hershey's Chocolate Syrup in the *metal can* is thicker and tastes better than the stuff in the plastic squeeze bottle? The canned variety uses regular corn syrup; the squeeze-bottle type uses high-fructose corn syrup.
A couple years ago, Nestle's sweetened instant tea mix switched from sugar to high-fructose corn syrup (and then to sucralose). I noticed the diff with the first swallow... ick, what'd they do to this? [reads label] no wonder! I called the company and complained, but their attitude was... tough shit.
Sugar probably costs more, and most people can't taste any difference. Or aren't sufficiently offended to switch to another product. Not me, I demanded a refund, then went back to Lipton (still has real sugar, tho the tea fraction isn't as good).
You can always tell people who have never had to haul or tow a real load, they think any vehicle can do it :)
I've got both a full-size pickup with a V-8 and tow-package, and a somewhat more-efficient car. As it turns out, I need the truck's cargo and towing capacity regularly, and it is not cost-effective to maintain and insure the car as well, even with its better fuel-efficiency.
The car is presently non-op'd, saving me $700/yr in tags, insurance, and maintenance, vs. about $200/yr it could save me in gas (at $3/gal.) for those trips when I could do without the truck. (No, I don't drive much, less than 4000 miles per year.)
IOW, using ONLY the less-fuel-efficient truck saves me $500/yr out of pocket.
As I asked up above... might there be a market for "bricked" waste material (beet pulp etc.) as fuel? ISTM it could at least partially replace coal, and likely would burn cleaner. Might also be useful for pellet stoves for home heating.
As to bio-oil, if it were all that cheap to produce, it wouldn't be $3.50 to $5 per gallon at wholesale. (Likely to go up since most of those tractors and combines run on diesel...)
You can't just switch from one crop to another without changing your harvesting, storage, and shipping machinery and arrangements. And farm machinery is hideously expensive.
I'd guess farmers grow corn because of 1) historical subsidy arrangements and markets, 2) they've already invested in the infrastructure, it's paid for, and they're not inclined to cough up half a million bucks for a new combine for some other type of crop when the old machinery, designed for corn, still works just fine. Show 'em how they can profit with the new crop, and they'll listen, but it's not so simple as "now we're going to grow beets instead of corn".
Occurs to me to wonder....
Okay, let's say we grow sugar beets and produce 2 energy units of ethanol for every one unit of energy cost. Sugar beets have an advantage that they do well in areas with a short growing season, so can be produced anywhere in the upper midwest.
After extracting the sugar/ethanol, we've got a big pile of beet pulp, normally used as mulch and animal fodder. Probably more beet pulp than we need for such purposes.
But it's mainly cellulose. What kind of processing is needed to *efficiently* convert this biomass into energy units?? could it be "bricked" (compressed) and used to replace coal in coal-fired generators? I'd think at the least, it would burn cleaner than coal.
And according to TFA (or one linked from it, I forget), sugar cane produces 7 units of energy for every unit used in production. That's a helluva lot more efficient even than sugar beets.
The advantage of sugar beets is that they do well in areas with short growing seasons and long winters -- North Dakota and Minnesota both produce a lot of sugar beets, and are close to markets for the principle waste product (beet pulp, useful as mulch and livestock fodder).
The only downside I can think of is that you don't want to live downwind of the sugar plant, cuz man, do "used" sugar beets ever stink!
The U.S. used to grow a lot of sugar cane (mainly along the Mississippi delta) and there's probably no reason we can't return to that, especially since a good deal of what used to be cane fields 200 years ago is now... er, no longer urbanized, thanks to certain hurricanes. Sugar cane used to be very labour-intensive, but I understand there are now harvesting machines for that job.
Yeah, someone else pointed out that by "hand" he probably meant "mouse cursor". But still...
;)
His comments about jiggering resolution don't wash either. In fact the further I RTFA'd, the more bullshit indicators lit up.
As to all the claims about UFOs, free energy, and the like... I agree with those who point out that 1) the U.S. is not the only country with satellite imaging and a space program, 2) if such stuff was available, why isn't someone using it -- if not the U.S., then one of our rivals?? If some snot-nosed kid can break into a gov't facility's network with so little effort, you can bet *professional* hackers employed by enemy gov'ts are way ahead of him.
I'm reminded of an episode of Under Cover ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101229/ ) in which a green but rather too full of himself young agent believes he's found satellite views of hitherto-unknown Soviet missile silos. The old hands let him make a thorough ass of himself, then reveal that the satellite images he's so excited about aren't satellite views at all, but rather the product of a small camera in the back room, pointed at a printout of a genuine view of Russia.... with several still-rolled-up condoms strategically placed. Gee, it's amazing how much a condom's ridge looks like the dirt around the mouth of a missile silo, don't you agree?
[This was, as the single review says, one of the best TV series ever, but got no audience attention because it was done so low-key. John Rhys-Davies was at his best.]
You can hit the PRINTSCREEN key and paste the result into Paint, or any other image editing app, and not risk losing an image you may have trouble retrieving otherwise. Works fine, and I do it all the time with "uncapturable" images. I find it hard to believe someone at all versed in hacking doesn't know this simple trick.
Secondly, I want to know how he "saw someone's hand moving across the screen"... what, there was a webcam focused on the remote computer??