Making a single bar of soap, using lye from the best hardwood, requires 17 pounds of wood. A decent woodlot should yield 2500 lb / acre per year (1 cord). A typical backyard would be less, maybe 1000 lb / acre / year. So a quarter acre backyard could make you approx. 15 bars of soap per year.
Nothing made the bailouts necessary. You want to whine about "greed", and then justify handing bankers trillions of dollars stolen through a regressive inflation tax. Don't call me "disingenuous".
It is fraud. But it was just as much motivated by stupidity and recklessness and structural flaws (such as inflation), as by greed. Besides, the creation of efficient air conditioners is also motivated by greed, as are a million other beneficial aspects of a functional economy. Greed is not the problem. It is just a leftist talking-point.
I've never purchased any gold. I'm a couple of steps beyond the gold bugs, actually.
The point is that you've just replaced paper with water and soap. Without large-scale chemical processes, manufacturing soap has almost exactly the same inputs as manufacturing paper -- lye derived from wood. Do you have a woodlot?
See, here's where you're wrong. No one was forced to invest in mortgage backed securities. Anyone who did obviously deserved to lose their asses. And regulators who colluded with Wall St. or were asleep at the wheel deserve blowback as well. No doubt.
But we were forced to bail them out. And it wasn't through the US government. TARP was political theatre, a few hundred billion dollars that was immediately paid back with new money, 16 trillion dollars freshly printed by the Federal Reserve using their ability to inflate the currency.
So, while it was complicated and designed to confuse you, please try to understand how things really work and stop with this trite "greed is bad" leftist horseshit. The only reason people are on the streets is because the heat was turned up and they're getting boiled a little faster than usual.
What obstacles are stopping us from permanently having a space-station that's completely cut off from the Earth?
Probably just eventual damage due to micrometeorite impacts. Water can be recycled. ISS could be mostly self-sufficient if only it were at a higher orbit and hadn't been designed to come crashing back down to Earth.
an empowered UN authority to oversee spaceflight and extraterrestrial resource extraction, and shares the fruits of the exploration in a just and justifiable manner to encourage participation.
Yeah, that's what we need, space communism. I'm sure that will spur investment.
their parents' generation milked American credit for all it was worth and now they've been told to go fix it
I just got done watching a video of Lyndon Larouche drone on about his brilliant plan to fix the economy by creating a "national credit" system. I wanted to punch him through the internet.
That may still be true. I'm not entirely convinced it is. Regardless, we are rapidly approaching the point at which centralization of production and the efficiencies of scale that come along with it are solely responsible for supporting a majority of the world's population. Given the fragility of some of these systems and risks associated with it, this should be a frightening prospect for humanity.
For instance, feel free to explain how to obtain something as basic as toilet paper without corporations.
Oil represents only around 1% of electricity production in the US. Solar is also around 1%. Most peaking is done with natural gas, which costs half as much. Like I said, the price of oil and solar electricity are at least similar. However, the better solar technologies are cheaper than oil, which is the reason solar is growing and oil usage is declining.
They're the same crowd -- a bunch of genetic defectives who probably realize it and consequently equate resource scarcity, conflict, overpopulation and eugenics with "progress".
Frankly I'm sick of them. If they haven't evolved rational decision-making ability by now, then they're a dead end. It's time to just wipe them off the face of the planet before they further threaten the rest of us.
Speculation is a good thing. Speculators help to save scarce resources so that they will be available for future consumption.
It's the reason that oil production has been flat since 2005, as rising prices have spurred the development of beneficial alternatives instead of just more wasteful SUVs.
I for one am glad that speculators are ensuring oil will be available in 20 years so that humanity can continue to have useful things like paint, and polycarbonate lenses and PVC pipes rather than burning that oil moving around pointlessly inefficient vehicles.
It's cheapest and most convenient primarily because we're subsidizing it heavily.
Oil subsidies are a political distraction. You have no idea of the scale of the global oil industry. It's cheapest because it represents vast amounts of energy that can be obtained with relatively little capital investment.
Also, gas and oil are not easily stored and not easiest handled.
"President" Obama today announced increased "defense" spending in the "war" on "terror", while also praising a "bipartisan" "plan" to "reduce" the deficit with increased "carbon" "taxes" and to increase availability of "job" "training" "incentives" for "small" "businesses".
A single CD-R could feasibly contain a thousand copies of some expensive custom embedded control code. That's easily a million dollars per CD.
Or, what is the value of some of the better HFT algorithms? They're basically propping up the big investment banks, so like 10 billion dollars? That could probably fit on a single CD-R.
You've got to think bigger than farmers growing popcorn. Sheesh, amateurs...
Can we realistically hope to achieve better efficiency in storing energy in carbon based structures than with the technique that nature provides us?
Why not? We already have more efficient ways of using that energy. We can get rid of the parts of the plant we don't need, like self-replication and support structures. We can convert the energy more directly into a form that is more useful to us. We can create larger, more efficient storage structures than a single plant ever could.
A plant is limited in all sorts of ways that we don't have to be. It is limited to a certain size, because it can only grow that large within a single season or within it's lifetime. It creates energy in small quantities and in a very mild form, because if that energy is lost, the plant dies and it's game over. We, on the other hand, can stand to lose the energy of hundreds of plants without much effect.
Basically, we can take on more risk than a single plant. We can divide the functions of a plant, improve them, re-combine them, increase the scale and as long as we manage that risk effectively, reap the benefits.
It's not more efficient and it doesn't matter. The point is that by integrating the process, perhaps it can be made more cheaply. Cost is all that matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Making a single bar of soap, using lye from the best hardwood, requires 17 pounds of wood. A decent woodlot should yield 2500 lb / acre per year (1 cord). A typical backyard would be less, maybe 1000 lb / acre / year. So a quarter acre backyard could make you approx. 15 bars of soap per year.
Nothing made the bailouts necessary. You want to whine about "greed", and then justify handing bankers trillions of dollars stolen through a regressive inflation tax. Don't call me "disingenuous".
It is fraud. But it was just as much motivated by stupidity and recklessness and structural flaws (such as inflation), as by greed. Besides, the creation of efficient air conditioners is also motivated by greed, as are a million other beneficial aspects of a functional economy. Greed is not the problem. It is just a leftist talking-point.
I've never purchased any gold. I'm a couple of steps beyond the gold bugs, actually.
The point is that you've just replaced paper with water and soap. Without large-scale chemical processes, manufacturing soap has almost exactly the same inputs as manufacturing paper -- lye derived from wood. Do you have a woodlot?
foisted upon us
See, here's where you're wrong. No one was forced to invest in mortgage backed securities. Anyone who did obviously deserved to lose their asses. And regulators who colluded with Wall St. or were asleep at the wheel deserve blowback as well. No doubt.
But we were forced to bail them out. And it wasn't through the US government. TARP was political theatre, a few hundred billion dollars that was immediately paid back with new money, 16 trillion dollars freshly printed by the Federal Reserve using their ability to inflate the currency.
So, while it was complicated and designed to confuse you, please try to understand how things really work and stop with this trite "greed is bad" leftist horseshit. The only reason people are on the streets is because the heat was turned up and they're getting boiled a little faster than usual.
What obstacles are stopping us from permanently having a space-station that's completely cut off from the Earth?
Probably just eventual damage due to micrometeorite impacts. Water can be recycled. ISS could be mostly self-sufficient if only it were at a higher orbit and hadn't been designed to come crashing back down to Earth.
Listen, buddy. You're either with us or you're with the aliens.
A fully robotic factory is currently a pipdream
LOL wrong.
an empowered UN authority to oversee spaceflight and extraterrestrial resource extraction, and shares the fruits of the exploration in a just and justifiable manner to encourage participation.
Yeah, that's what we need, space communism. I'm sure that will spur investment.
their parents' generation milked American credit for all it was worth and now they've been told to go fix it
I just got done watching a video of Lyndon Larouche drone on about his brilliant plan to fix the economy by creating a "national credit" system. I wanted to punch him through the internet.
By all means, feel free to enlighten us...
That's a good point. But remember that the current system wasn't built overnight. It was built through 2% inflation over the span of a hundred years.
That may still be true. I'm not entirely convinced it is. Regardless, we are rapidly approaching the point at which centralization of production and the efficiencies of scale that come along with it are solely responsible for supporting a majority of the world's population. Given the fragility of some of these systems and risks associated with it, this should be a frightening prospect for humanity.
For instance, feel free to explain how to obtain something as basic as toilet paper without corporations.
Oil represents only around 1% of electricity production in the US. Solar is also around 1%. Most peaking is done with natural gas, which costs half as much. Like I said, the price of oil and solar electricity are at least similar. However, the better solar technologies are cheaper than oil, which is the reason solar is growing and oil usage is declining.
Same with the 'keep breeding' crowd.
They're the same crowd -- a bunch of genetic defectives who probably realize it and consequently equate resource scarcity, conflict, overpopulation and eugenics with "progress".
Frankly I'm sick of them. If they haven't evolved rational decision-making ability by now, then they're a dead end. It's time to just wipe them off the face of the planet before they further threaten the rest of us.
Speculation is a good thing. Speculators help to save scarce resources so that they will be available for future consumption.
It's the reason that oil production has been flat since 2005, as rising prices have spurred the development of beneficial alternatives instead of just more wasteful SUVs.
I for one am glad that speculators are ensuring oil will be available in 20 years so that humanity can continue to have useful things like paint, and polycarbonate lenses and PVC pipes rather than burning that oil moving around pointlessly inefficient vehicles.
It's at least similarly priced. And it can be a lot cheaper, eg. FirstSolar, concentrating solar, etc.
Also, please take some time to do a little research and stop filling this thread with nonsense.
It's cheapest and most convenient primarily because we're subsidizing it heavily.
Oil subsidies are a political distraction. You have no idea of the scale of the global oil industry. It's cheapest because it represents vast amounts of energy that can be obtained with relatively little capital investment.
Also, gas and oil are not easily stored and not easiest handled.
LOL wrong.
This is quite possibly the most idiotic thing I have ever seen on slashdot.
Literally every sentence in your post is complete, utter bullshit.
We are all dumber for having read it. I award you no points. And may god have mercy on your soul.
It should have been called the HimPhone.
"President" Obama today announced increased "defense" spending in the "war" on "terror", while also praising a "bipartisan" "plan" to "reduce" the deficit with increased "carbon" "taxes" and to increase availability of "job" "training" "incentives" for "small" "businesses".
A single CD-R could feasibly contain a thousand copies of some expensive custom embedded control code. That's easily a million dollars per CD.
Or, what is the value of some of the better HFT algorithms? They're basically propping up the big investment banks, so like 10 billion dollars? That could probably fit on a single CD-R.
You've got to think bigger than farmers growing popcorn. Sheesh, amateurs...
lesser oil consumption on my part
More oil consumption for the war machine.
lesser burden on the national insurance system because I'm healthier
Making it easier for the insurance companies to leverage up before they ultimately implode and destroy the global economy.
Can we realistically hope to achieve better efficiency in storing energy in carbon based structures than with the technique that nature provides us?
Why not? We already have more efficient ways of using that energy. We can get rid of the parts of the plant we don't need, like self-replication and support structures. We can convert the energy more directly into a form that is more useful to us. We can create larger, more efficient storage structures than a single plant ever could.
A plant is limited in all sorts of ways that we don't have to be. It is limited to a certain size, because it can only grow that large within a single season or within it's lifetime. It creates energy in small quantities and in a very mild form, because if that energy is lost, the plant dies and it's game over. We, on the other hand, can stand to lose the energy of hundreds of plants without much effect.
Basically, we can take on more risk than a single plant. We can divide the functions of a plant, improve them, re-combine them, increase the scale and as long as we manage that risk effectively, reap the benefits.
It's not more efficient and it doesn't matter. The point is that by integrating the process, perhaps it can be made more cheaply. Cost is all that matters.