I care about energy usage for one reason...battery life. A laptop consumes about the same amount of energy as a 60w light bulb. So does it really matter in the larger scheme of things? And I'd think that manufacturers are already trying to make their operations as energy efficient as possible, because it affects their bottom line.
The reason why I use compact florescent bulbs instead of conventional light bulbs is because if you replace EVERY SINGLE BULB in my entire house, the energy savings add up. But I've only got ONE laptop, so I really don't care if it's using 60w or 50w or 40w or whatever.
I've had that argument drilled into me as a kid. But it doesn't hold water anymore. To me, that argument that "1 day == unknown amount of time" seems like a desperate attempt to reconcile what is clearly written in Genesis. It's no different that the "Bible Code" folks who pick and choose parts of the bible to come up with a seemingly coherent argument.
It comes down to this...if the Earth wasn't made in 6 days, why did God say "6 days"? Why couldn't he just come out and say how long it really took? Did he not realize that many of his followers would take that literally? He didn't even bother putting in a footnote there in Genesis saying something to the effect of "I don't REALLY mean a day here.".
And another thing....the quote "A day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day" comes from 2nd Peter. That was written almost 1500 years after Genesis. How were people supposed to correctly interpret Genesis during those 1500 years without the benefit of the context provided by Peter? Did God not care if those people had no way of correctly interpreting his words?
Sorry...but there are just WAY too many holes in your theory. And I also don't buy the argument that humans were too "simple" to understand the meaning of 4 billion years. Even the dumbest people alive today can grasp the concept of a "really big number". Do you think those ancient's heads were going to explode if God told them the Earth was 4 billion years old?
I think the governor is already aware of this fact. But the facts don't matter. The fact is that the state needs money to pay for Medicaid. And she's a Republican, which means she can't increase revenue by appearing to raise taxes. So the only politically viable way to fix the problem is to find a scapegoat. And what better scapegoat is there than blaming all your problems on lazy people? And for many Americans, fat == lazy. For a Republican governor, it's a win-win situation. You're discreetly raising taxes and simultaneously taking on the "lazy liberals" while giving the hard-working "real" Americans a break.
If the 2012 movie taught me anything, it's that any disaster can be prepared for....except for maybe a movie with a really horrible plot line. There's nothing really to prepare you for that.
A bigger question is where in SPACE are these particles going to appear (assuming it comes back at the same point in space it left)? If the particle moves back in time 1 second, the LHC will be 250km away from where it's going to be when the particle disappears (assuming speed relative to the center of our galaxy, but choose your own frame of reference). How would this ever be possible to test?
A tsunami might not be as high as one of these waves, but it contains a far larger mass of water, with far greater momentum. The effects of a significant tsunami making landfall, pretty well demonstrated in the footage of today's, tend to resemble a very fast, very high and very powerful tide.
Perhaps they should call it something more descriptive then, like a "tidal wave" or something like that.
bureaucracy is the primary focus of public schools.
In a word....BULLCRAP!
Nobody goes into teaching because they enjoy bureaucracy. Stupid comments like that are nothing more than Republican talking points meant to demonize public schools so that for-profit schools look good in comparison.
This is what really scares me about the Republican push for charter schools in this country at the expense of public schools (I live in Raleigh where the Chamber of Commerce is heavily involved with the push for for-profit charter schools). Public schools can be pretty bad in places, but at least education is the primary focus of the school. For-profit colleges and charter schools are primary interested in profit, not education.
Sure, you can make the argument that charter schools won't be profitable if the kids don't get educated. However, there are LOTS of opportunities for charter schools to game the system (e.g. only accepting students likely to make their graduation rates and test scores look good compared to public schools) and put profit ahead of a well-rounded education for all kids.
I simply don't TRUST for-profit schools, and they would have to be heavily regulated before I do.
Also, it should be noted that the majority of the viewers of sci fi are geeks. And the geek audience demographic is declining in importance for TV execs because geeks have found other options. For example, if you want to see a show like Firefly, are you really going to watch a commercial-laden episode of it on SyFy? Or are you going to bring it up in NetFlix with your Roku player where you can watch the entire series back-to-back commercial free for as long as you wish? Why would SyFy even bother showing Firefly?
It's unfortunate for us geeks, but the fact that we're smart enough to find other options out there makes us less valuable in the eyes of Hollywood. It's simply more lucrative to target the ECW crowd who haven't figured it out yet.
Totally agree. If you actually look at Earth, it has several things going against it. For example, it has a relatively thin atmosphere, so the temperatures drop quickly at night (a thicker atmosphere, or a faster spin would be better). And it has a tilted axis causing extreme cold and heat at different times of the year (a smaller tilt or tidally-locked planet would have less changeable temperatures on the surface making life easier to cope). Because of periodic changes in its orbit, it's prone to long periods of extreme cold (i.e. ice ages). etc, etc...
We all know the reason why ISPs are against net neutrality is so that the Time Warner Cables and Comcasts of the world can kill off the competition like Netflix and Vonage. And the Netflixes of the world are pretty much powerless to do anything about it. What are they going to do? A boycott from a single content provider is not going to be noticed my many.
However, if the proponents of net neutrality (i.e. Google, Vonage, Yahoo, Microsoft) formed a NATO-like pact, they could ALL boycott any ISP found to be breaking net neutrality against any one of them.
There are always exceptions, but for regular Brick & Mortar retailers, asking for ID is not inside the regs.
I acknowledge, they are often ignored. here is the link-- the quote is from page 428
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-international-operating-regulations-main.pdf
Supplemental Identification - U.S. Region
A U.S. Acquirer must not, as a regular practice, require a Merchant, and a Merchant must not require a
Cardholder, to provide any supplementary Cardholder information as a condition for honoring a Visa
Card or Visa Electron Card, unless it is required or permitted elsewhere in the U.S. Regional
Operating Regulations. Such supplementary Cardholder information includes, but is not limited to:
Social Security Number (or any part thereof)
Fingerprint
Home or business address or telephone number
Driver's license number
Photocopy of a driver's license
Photocopy of the Visa Card or Visa Electron Card
Other credit cards
The way I read this description is that a merchant is free to ask for a driver's license to verify identity as long as they don't photocopy it or record the number.
I don't really understand why the Saudi's would lie about how much oil they have. If everyone knew that world oil reserves were lower, then oil prices would be even higher than they are today, and the Saudi's would be making more money on the oil they do have. What incentive do they have to mislead people that overrides the profit they're missing out on? If anything, oil-producing countries have an incentive to make oil seem more scarce than it actually is. Perhaps that's the real reason why we keep hearing these 'rumors'?
Eventually we'll have a president with a realistic understanding of the proper mix and growth ratio of renewable power and traditional power, and we'll start to make use of natural assets again.
Sheesh....been watching the anti-Obama propaganda on Fox a little bit too much?
In your opinion, in what way does Obama not have a realistic understanding of a proper mix of traditional and renewable power? He did recently just open up significant new sections on the continental shelf for drilling. Is it that you think he's promoting renewable power more than traditional power? Isn't that what he SHOULD be doing? After all, traditional power doesn't NEED any help. It's already mature and highly profitable. Obama's not stopping anyone from using these new drilling techniques if they indeed are for real. However, renewable power is new and not profitable yet. It needs help in terms of money for research if it has any hope of BECOMING mature and profitable and self-sufficient. Therefore, all emphasis SHOULD be placed on renewable energy, since traditional energy is doing just fine on it's own.
I'm not a big fan of Obama for lots of reasons, but not having a "realistic understanding of the proper mix of renewable and traditional power" is not one of those reasons.
No...that's incorrect. The fake users didn't enter 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Bing search bar. That would have initially returned zero results, and therefore nothing to 'click'.
Instead, they entered 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Google search page in a browser that happened to have the Bing search bar installed. The Bing search bar code then harvested the search term and any links clicked.
Sorry, but that's copying, and fundamentally no different than having Microsoft employees doing Google searches all day and feeding the results into the Bing database. It's just that MS figured out a way to get end-users to do the copying for them.
That will get demand to outstrip capacity, and automakers will adjust production to compensate. Leave diesel off the tax for now so the trucking industry won't be destroyed in the process. Presto, lots of new electric cars on the roads. If that doesn't happen, the highway trust fund will be flush enough with cash to take care of just about any road infrastructure need.
If we're serious about Middle East dependencies and carbon footprint, then we need to act serious.
While I agree with your point in principle, the downside to higher gas taxes is that it 'fuels' (pardon the pun) the tea-party and drill-baby-drill political movements. And having those folks in power sort of negates all of the benefits of having electric cars in the first place.
The author of the linked study appears not to have considered that a universe more dense with galaxies would be a universe with many more planet-sterilizing gamma ray bursts, which would not be terribly conducive to life.
...and a lot more matter to block those gamma rays too.
How is this even a testable prediction? Even if the temperature does decrease by.1 or.2 C over the next decade, that doesn't mean the long-term trend isn't still up. And if you read the article, he also argues that the methods for measurement are not reliable. So even if the temperature DOES rise over the next decade, he'll just argue that it's because the methodology for measuring it was wrong.
And this guy's arguments are bizarre. He claims that the climate is a stable system that resists change, and has a steady-state equilibrium. Excuse me...ever heard of ice ages? We had one not too long ago. We've also had recent periods where it's been much warmer than it is today (Younger Dryas for example). If anything, that shows that climate is HIGHLY susceptible to change.
If he had simply put a tax increase in the bill to
pay for it, it would be totally constitutional. That
was not possible from a political PoV, so they came
up with the individual mandate.
IMHO, the fatal flaw with the bill is that it doesn't
(as a first step) try the low-cost solutions to fixing
our system:
1. Abolish the anti-trust exemptions for health
insurers. Yes. You heard me. I bet you didn't even
know that so-called "progressives" are so ready, willing
and able to ignore one of the key ideas of the original
Progressive Era, circa 1900.
2. Price transparency. In most states you can't
even check to see if you're being ripped off because
price lists are secret!
3. Eliminate provider networks. All insurers must
pay the same rates from all providers, and must accept
claims from any licensed practitioner.
4. Uniform, standard billing codes.
2, 3 and 4 would combine to reveal the regime in ways
heretofore unseen, a veritable Wikileak of our current
healthcare insanity. It would also help to eliminate
over-billing of our current government programs.
None of these very low cost alternatives got on the
table. Instead, not only were the inneficient inscos not
punished, they were actually rewarded with the individual
mandate! It's just another example of how powerful
interests have bought government.
Wow....absolutely great post!
I'll add to #2. IMHO, one of the reasons why healthcare costs so much is because the costs are hidden. Doctors should be required to tell you how much something is going to cost BEFORE ordering a test, prescribing something, etc... They should even be required to tell you how much a doctor's visit is going to cost when you make your appointment. Make the costs as visible as possible, and let us decide if it's worth it. If a cancer treatment costs $100,000 per year, and only has a slim chance of extending our life, tell us that and let us decide. There should be none of this "well figure out how to bill you later". And you get multiple bills in the mail, so you're never even sure you've paid the entire balance because something else could come next week. No other industry operates like this. Imagine if every time you took your car to be fixed, you weren't told how much it was going to cost. Instead, you'd only find out how much it cost after the bills for the service stopped coming in the mail at some point in the future.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they "draining power" from the eel through induction, not unlike the way you can steel power from high-voltage power lines? That power has to come from somewhere. Does the eel have to speed up it's metabolism to compensate?
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
Sure it does. It means that even if life on the surface gets extinguished in flames, life will continue just fine deep inside the earth. So we have nothing to worry about!
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I care about energy usage for one reason...battery life. A laptop consumes about the same amount of energy as a 60w light bulb. So does it really matter in the larger scheme of things? And I'd think that manufacturers are already trying to make their operations as energy efficient as possible, because it affects their bottom line.
The reason why I use compact florescent bulbs instead of conventional light bulbs is because if you replace EVERY SINGLE BULB in my entire house, the energy savings add up. But I've only got ONE laptop, so I really don't care if it's using 60w or 50w or 40w or whatever.
I've had that argument drilled into me as a kid. But it doesn't hold water anymore. To me, that argument that "1 day == unknown amount of time" seems like a desperate attempt to reconcile what is clearly written in Genesis. It's no different that the "Bible Code" folks who pick and choose parts of the bible to come up with a seemingly coherent argument.
It comes down to this...if the Earth wasn't made in 6 days, why did God say "6 days"? Why couldn't he just come out and say how long it really took? Did he not realize that many of his followers would take that literally? He didn't even bother putting in a footnote there in Genesis saying something to the effect of "I don't REALLY mean a day here.".
And another thing....the quote "A day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day" comes from 2nd Peter. That was written almost 1500 years after Genesis. How were people supposed to correctly interpret Genesis during those 1500 years without the benefit of the context provided by Peter? Did God not care if those people had no way of correctly interpreting his words?
Sorry...but there are just WAY too many holes in your theory. And I also don't buy the argument that humans were too "simple" to understand the meaning of 4 billion years. Even the dumbest people alive today can grasp the concept of a "really big number". Do you think those ancient's heads were going to explode if God told them the Earth was 4 billion years old?
I think the governor is already aware of this fact. But the facts don't matter. The fact is that the state needs money to pay for Medicaid. And she's a Republican, which means she can't increase revenue by appearing to raise taxes. So the only politically viable way to fix the problem is to find a scapegoat. And what better scapegoat is there than blaming all your problems on lazy people? And for many Americans, fat == lazy. For a Republican governor, it's a win-win situation. You're discreetly raising taxes and simultaneously taking on the "lazy liberals" while giving the hard-working "real" Americans a break.
See how that works now?
Good one guys, but I saw that coming from a mile away! Oh wait...it's March 31st.
If the 2012 movie taught me anything, it's that any disaster can be prepared for....except for maybe a movie with a really horrible plot line. There's nothing really to prepare you for that.
A bigger question is where in SPACE are these particles going to appear (assuming it comes back at the same point in space it left)? If the particle moves back in time 1 second, the LHC will be 250km away from where it's going to be when the particle disappears (assuming speed relative to the center of our galaxy, but choose your own frame of reference). How would this ever be possible to test?
Never a miscommunication.
Anyone else read this article yesterday?
http://www.space.com/11084-supermoon-earthquake-storm-natural-disasters.html
Not that I believe in astrology, but that's quite a coincidence.
A tsunami might not be as high as one of these waves, but it contains a far larger mass of water, with far greater momentum. The effects of a significant tsunami making landfall, pretty well demonstrated in the footage of today's, tend to resemble a very fast, very high and very powerful tide.
Perhaps they should call it something more descriptive then, like a "tidal wave" or something like that.
bureaucracy is the primary focus of public schools.
In a word....BULLCRAP!
Nobody goes into teaching because they enjoy bureaucracy. Stupid comments like that are nothing more than Republican talking points meant to demonize public schools so that for-profit schools look good in comparison.
Nice try Glenn Beck.
Slightly off topic, but...
This is what really scares me about the Republican push for charter schools in this country at the expense of public schools (I live in Raleigh where the Chamber of Commerce is heavily involved with the push for for-profit charter schools). Public schools can be pretty bad in places, but at least education is the primary focus of the school. For-profit colleges and charter schools are primary interested in profit, not education.
Sure, you can make the argument that charter schools won't be profitable if the kids don't get educated. However, there are LOTS of opportunities for charter schools to game the system (e.g. only accepting students likely to make their graduation rates and test scores look good compared to public schools) and put profit ahead of a well-rounded education for all kids.
I simply don't TRUST for-profit schools, and they would have to be heavily regulated before I do.
Also, it should be noted that the majority of the viewers of sci fi are geeks. And the geek audience demographic is declining in importance for TV execs because geeks have found other options. For example, if you want to see a show like Firefly, are you really going to watch a commercial-laden episode of it on SyFy? Or are you going to bring it up in NetFlix with your Roku player where you can watch the entire series back-to-back commercial free for as long as you wish? Why would SyFy even bother showing Firefly?
It's unfortunate for us geeks, but the fact that we're smart enough to find other options out there makes us less valuable in the eyes of Hollywood. It's simply more lucrative to target the ECW crowd who haven't figured it out yet.
Totally agree. If you actually look at Earth, it has several things going against it. For example, it has a relatively thin atmosphere, so the temperatures drop quickly at night (a thicker atmosphere, or a faster spin would be better). And it has a tilted axis causing extreme cold and heat at different times of the year (a smaller tilt or tidally-locked planet would have less changeable temperatures on the surface making life easier to cope). Because of periodic changes in its orbit, it's prone to long periods of extreme cold (i.e. ice ages). etc, etc...
Intelligently designed it most certainly is not.
Yes....when calling someone stupid, you have to be extra careful and be grammatically correct. Otherwise, you come off looking like a moran.
We all know the reason why ISPs are against net neutrality is so that the Time Warner Cables and Comcasts of the world can kill off the competition like Netflix and Vonage. And the Netflixes of the world are pretty much powerless to do anything about it. What are they going to do? A boycott from a single content provider is not going to be noticed my many.
However, if the proponents of net neutrality (i.e. Google, Vonage, Yahoo, Microsoft) formed a NATO-like pact, they could ALL boycott any ISP found to be breaking net neutrality against any one of them.
There are always exceptions, but for regular Brick & Mortar retailers, asking for ID is not inside the regs. I acknowledge, they are often ignored. here is the link-- the quote is from page 428
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-international-operating-regulations-main.pdf Supplemental Identification - U.S. Region A U.S. Acquirer must not, as a regular practice, require a Merchant, and a Merchant must not require a Cardholder, to provide any supplementary Cardholder information as a condition for honoring a Visa Card or Visa Electron Card, unless it is required or permitted elsewhere in the U.S. Regional Operating Regulations. Such supplementary Cardholder information includes, but is not limited to: Social Security Number (or any part thereof) Fingerprint Home or business address or telephone number Driver's license number Photocopy of a driver's license Photocopy of the Visa Card or Visa Electron Card Other credit cards
The way I read this description is that a merchant is free to ask for a driver's license to verify identity as long as they don't photocopy it or record the number.
I don't really understand why the Saudi's would lie about how much oil they have. If everyone knew that world oil reserves were lower, then oil prices would be even higher than they are today, and the Saudi's would be making more money on the oil they do have. What incentive do they have to mislead people that overrides the profit they're missing out on? If anything, oil-producing countries have an incentive to make oil seem more scarce than it actually is. Perhaps that's the real reason why we keep hearing these 'rumors'?
For balance:
New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US.
Eventually we'll have a president with a realistic understanding of the proper mix and growth ratio of renewable power and traditional power, and we'll start to make use of natural assets again.
Sheesh....been watching the anti-Obama propaganda on Fox a little bit too much?
In your opinion, in what way does Obama not have a realistic understanding of a proper mix of traditional and renewable power? He did recently just open up significant new sections on the continental shelf for drilling. Is it that you think he's promoting renewable power more than traditional power? Isn't that what he SHOULD be doing? After all, traditional power doesn't NEED any help. It's already mature and highly profitable. Obama's not stopping anyone from using these new drilling techniques if they indeed are for real. However, renewable power is new and not profitable yet. It needs help in terms of money for research if it has any hope of BECOMING mature and profitable and self-sufficient. Therefore, all emphasis SHOULD be placed on renewable energy, since traditional energy is doing just fine on it's own.
I'm not a big fan of Obama for lots of reasons, but not having a "realistic understanding of the proper mix of renewable and traditional power" is not one of those reasons.
No...that's incorrect. The fake users didn't enter 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Bing search bar. That would have initially returned zero results, and therefore nothing to 'click'.
Instead, they entered 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Google search page in a browser that happened to have the Bing search bar installed. The Bing search bar code then harvested the search term and any links clicked.
Sorry, but that's copying, and fundamentally no different than having Microsoft employees doing Google searches all day and feeding the results into the Bing database. It's just that MS figured out a way to get end-users to do the copying for them.
That will get demand to outstrip capacity, and automakers will adjust production to compensate. Leave diesel off the tax for now so the trucking industry won't be destroyed in the process. Presto, lots of new electric cars on the roads. If that doesn't happen, the highway trust fund will be flush enough with cash to take care of just about any road infrastructure need.
If we're serious about Middle East dependencies and carbon footprint, then we need to act serious.
While I agree with your point in principle, the downside to higher gas taxes is that it 'fuels' (pardon the pun) the tea-party and drill-baby-drill political movements. And having those folks in power sort of negates all of the benefits of having electric cars in the first place.
The author of the linked study appears not to have considered that a universe more dense with galaxies would be a universe with many more planet-sterilizing gamma ray bursts, which would not be terribly conducive to life.
...and a lot more matter to block those gamma rays too.
How is this even a testable prediction? Even if the temperature does decrease by .1 or .2 C over the next decade, that doesn't mean the long-term trend isn't still up. And if you read the article, he also argues that the methods for measurement are not reliable. So even if the temperature DOES rise over the next decade, he'll just argue that it's because the methodology for measuring it was wrong.
And this guy's arguments are bizarre. He claims that the climate is a stable system that resists change, and has a steady-state equilibrium. Excuse me...ever heard of ice ages? We had one not too long ago. We've also had recent periods where it's been much warmer than it is today (Younger Dryas for example). If anything, that shows that climate is HIGHLY susceptible to change.
If he had simply put a tax increase in the bill to pay for it, it would be totally constitutional. That was not possible from a political PoV, so they came up with the individual mandate.
IMHO, the fatal flaw with the bill is that it doesn't (as a first step) try the low-cost solutions to fixing our system:
1. Abolish the anti-trust exemptions for health insurers. Yes. You heard me. I bet you didn't even know that so-called "progressives" are so ready, willing and able to ignore one of the key ideas of the original Progressive Era, circa 1900.
2. Price transparency. In most states you can't even check to see if you're being ripped off because price lists are secret!
3. Eliminate provider networks. All insurers must pay the same rates from all providers, and must accept claims from any licensed practitioner.
4. Uniform, standard billing codes.
2, 3 and 4 would combine to reveal the regime in ways heretofore unseen, a veritable Wikileak of our current healthcare insanity. It would also help to eliminate over-billing of our current government programs.
None of these very low cost alternatives got on the table. Instead, not only were the inneficient inscos not punished, they were actually rewarded with the individual mandate! It's just another example of how powerful interests have bought government.
Wow....absolutely great post!
I'll add to #2. IMHO, one of the reasons why healthcare costs so much is because the costs are hidden. Doctors should be required to tell you how much something is going to cost BEFORE ordering a test, prescribing something, etc... They should even be required to tell you how much a doctor's visit is going to cost when you make your appointment. Make the costs as visible as possible, and let us decide if it's worth it. If a cancer treatment costs $100,000 per year, and only has a slim chance of extending our life, tell us that and let us decide. There should be none of this "well figure out how to bill you later". And you get multiple bills in the mail, so you're never even sure you've paid the entire balance because something else could come next week. No other industry operates like this. Imagine if every time you took your car to be fixed, you weren't told how much it was going to cost. Instead, you'd only find out how much it cost after the bills for the service stopped coming in the mail at some point in the future.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they "draining power" from the eel through induction, not unlike the way you can steel power from high-voltage power lines? That power has to come from somewhere. Does the eel have to speed up it's metabolism to compensate?
That doesn't do anything about global warming, though.
Sure it does. It means that even if life on the surface gets extinguished in flames, life will continue just fine deep inside the earth. So we have nothing to worry about!