Caliber *always* refers to the diameter of the bullet, unless you are talking shotguns.
The point Iggy was making is key: there are different cartridges that use the same diameter bullet with wildly different energies: 50 cal BMG is around 20,000 Joules of energy at muzzle exit vs. 50 cal Auto which is around 700 Joules of energy at muzzle exit.
The article said that he showed her a book that he test fired into, so yes, they did, but my guess is it wasn't the same book and/or the distance was different, or one of a million other variables was different (it could be as simple as how tightly the pages were compressed or the exact angle of the shot). The bottom line is teach your kids this simple axiom: DON'T SHOOT AT ANYTHING YOU DON'T INTEND TO KILL...
50 cal GI is hardly the most powerful cartridge at 700 Joules and 1000 FPS.
357 magnum: 1000 Joules and 1700 FPS
44 magnum (Dirty Harry's gun): 2000 Joules and 1400 FPS (or almost 3x more powerful than the 50 cal GI...) Nobody shoots it though because it kicks like a bastard and the guns weigh a ton (for a handgun). Anyone who owns one takes it to the range to film his buddies trying to shoot it while everyone else laughs their asses off.
Its actually easier to stop 45ACP or 50GI than 9mm, because the bullet cross section slows it down faster, and it's a slower round to begin with, which is actually good for home and self defense, as they deliver more energy to the target with less risk of "shoot through" to other things behind the target. 9mm tends to go right through with less damage (assuming standard JHP, frangible rounds are a different story) and often requires a fatal shot (head or heart) to stop an attacker, whereas 45 or 50 cal tend to inflict such damage that one shot drops them.
With 55,000 PSI chamber pressure: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... (farthest left cartridge). These bullets are typically FMJBT and travel 3000 FPS with around 18,000 Joules of energy... or about 20x more energy than the 50 cal GI handgun round which travel around 1000 FPS with ~ 700 Joules of energy
Note: its not the bullet diameter, it is the powder charge and thus chamber pressure behind it that gives it penetrating power...
Fools ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
Hitler signed the Weapons Law of 1938 followed shortly after by Jewish gun confiscation, and 7 million Jews were murdered.
Stalin presided over CPSU gun licensure followed shortly after by gun confiscation of all dissidents, and the USSR murdered 20-60 million people, unable to resist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mao presided over gun licensure followed shortly after by gun confiscation, and tens of millions were murdered by the Mao regime, unable to resist in any meaningful way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
All of the state sponsored mass murders of the last century took place after gun registration and subsequent confiscation. The total body count is over 100,000,000. That is a pretty fucking huge price to pay for giving up guns.
The first step in confiscation is knowing who owns guns. If you don't know who owns a gun, it is essentially impossible to confiscate them. Once you register the guns or "license" the owner, you have a list of who to arrest if they don't show up and surrender their guns when it is time to confiscate them. As gun ownership is a constitutional right, there is no reason to require licensure, although most states require that you obtain a license to concealed carry, which involves both a proficiency test as well as a written test regarding the laws and steps to take in a situation requiring the use of your concealed carry weapon. Those states, not coincidentally, have drastically lower crime/murder rates than the liberal bastions of Chicago, New Orleans etc. where the first amendment is abridged.
Unless you want to also require licenses for car batteries, wall AC voltage, bleach, knives, drain cleaner, gasoline, kerosene, pool acid, etc, you are making a specious argument. None of the items listed above (and car operation) are constitutional rights, whereas gun ownership is, but you can kill yourself with any of them quite easily. In a free society, you must exhibit responsibility or bad things happen.
Furthermore, there IS a federal background check to make sure you are who you say you are, and you don't have a criminal history, and you have to be an adult, but beyond that, it is your responsibility to learn about your gun. When you purchase a gun, they all come with a user manual if purchased new, with all kinds of common sense warnings, as well as how to clean and maintain your gun.
I learned as a child that guns aren't toys and to never aim, let a lone shoot at anything you didn't intend to kill. The fault here is likely with grossly incompetent/absent parents, as these kids went off the tracks long before this (19 years old with a 3 year old and another on the way, basic math says she probably got pregnant when she was 15).
This exactly. The DA is way overcharging this, and he should get bitch slapped by the judge when the case is dismissed at the preliminary hearing. This is akin to a movie stunt gone wrong. They did do a test fire and saw that the bullet was stopped. They were shooting a large caliber, slow round from a handgun, which can be rapidly slowed/stopped by something like a book. Now if they were firing a 5.56 or 308, that would be a different story.
People die every day from work accidents, and if he was a Youtube stuntman and that was his livelihood, I can't see how this is any different. If I were him, I would have hidden a 1/2" steel plate near the back of the book, just to be safe though... You can always retake a shoot sequence, but you only have one life.
As automation and AI take over more and more "work", we must push for, not an increase of minimum wage, which only accelerates the problem, but a decrease in the work week. Eliminate salary for all employees who are not C-level management. Reduce the work week to 6h for 4 days. You increase the value of something by making it more scarce. As AI and automation take over menial tasks like transportation of goods and people, the one two resources that are still uniquely human are empathy and creativity. AI can be programmed to emulate creativity (music etc.) but emulation is not the same as inherent creativity. When AI starts creating new things, not [derivative works, mixes, combinations etc of previous work], then we will have reached the Star Trek fiction where socialism will be implemented due to the elimination of any need for any human to actually do work. Hopefully we will have starships by then so we can go exploring instead... or neural interface VR so we can go indulge our dragon slaying/other fantasies. Alternatively, someone may invent the Drowd (a neural stimulator of the brain's pleasure centers, from Larry Niven's universe) and we may all pleasure ourselves into extinction.
The simple solution is to build a few large bore (2m diameter), high pressure pipes up into lakes in the rocky mountains. Drop them down to pumping stations with holding ponds. During the day when you have excessive solar, you pump water from your holding pond up into the lake at something like 3000 feet differential elevation. At night, when you need power, you let the water discharge down into your holding pond. Designed right this system will recover about 85% of the energy stored. If you are worried about evaporation, you can cover your ponds with ping pong balls (reduces evaporation by 90% plus.)
If you pump that water at 1m/sec up for 6 peak sunny hours per day, from the Bernoulli equation we know that the stored energy would be Volume rate * density * acceleration due to gravity * height of lift * time or:
3.14 m^3/sec * 1000 kg/m^3 * 9.81 m/s^2 * 1000 m * 6h * 3600 sec/h = 665 GigaJoules of stored energy or (*.85 efficiency) ~157MWh of recoverable electricity per day. You would need around 68,000 cubic meters of water to work with (about 6.8 Hectares) in a lake (or you could build 5 holding ponds at elevation that were 20m deep x 30m wide.)
Most natural gas power plants in California generate around this number. The main reason that 10 of these hydro lift systems aren't built post haste is all the environmental nuts that would lose their shit over human beings building pipelines in California and/or using a lake for anything other than squatting next to while meditating...
Melting down the actual fuel rods is only part, you also have to deal with the irradiated and often contaminated coolant, and you can't just melt down all of the spent fuel in one go and pour it into a lead container. Also, during the melt process, some small amounts of fuel will vaporize, and now you have a highly radioactive cloud of gas that you need to filter out and deal with.
That is "a" method of disposal, but not all that great. In 20 years those rounds will still be radioactive, and any tank battlefields will be more or less radioactive depending on the number of rounds fired, hits/misses and any cleanup.
Many sexual harassment claims are BS. Women want to be treated as equals in the work place, but when the going gets tough, a cross section of them trot out sexual harassment charges as their golden parachute, often getting a 5 to 6 figure payout because so and so looked at me wrong, or called me honey or sweetie or some other innocuous name that made me feel uncomfortable. I am convinced there is another cross section who use their sexuality as a weapon everywhere else, and the workplace is no different. They do all they can to seduce their boss and then if anything goes wrong, they selectively use emails and messages to get a payout.
Sexual harassment ignores the basic biology that women in a modern society have all the power. They can dress scantily, exposing their bodies with skin tight clothes, miniskirts, etc, clothing that 70 years ago would get a woman arrested for indecent exposure. All of this leads to an explosion of hormones in their male co-workers, making their lives difficult and distracting from work. A beautiful woman can dress provocatively, essentially sexually harassing every male that sees her, with no consequences, but one comment from a man can destroy his career. A beautiful woman can lure a powerful man, a CEO or even president, into risking his position, his family, his money, everything all because of the hormones she can stimulate in men. That does not happen in reverse.
We need to end this in the US, and the solution is possible: every company should require every employee fill out a form where they check a few boxes saying what level of interaction, what level of physical contact they are comfortable with (handshakes, hugs, etc.) and what, if any, kind of relationships they are interested in (professional only, friend outside work, romantic, or casual sex). This database is available to all employees, and if you select anything besides handshakes and strictly business relationships, you sign away your rights to claiming sexual harassment of any kind. Anyone who exceeds your relationship preferences can be reported to HR within 7 days as an internal matter, but, unless criminal laws are broken, life goes on... One of the key problems with sexual harassment these days is it is entirely subjective and no one knows what any one else expects.
But the USSR did not know how many we had and it only took 2 for Japan to surrender because they believed we could keep bombing them with nukes. It would have probably only taken one for the USSR to surrender, considering the shape they were in. War is rarely about annihilation, it is about destroying your enemies will to fight. Don't believe the revisionist bullshit.
The activity in the world by the US from the '50s to the '90s was with good intentions, if not always ideal results. The so called democratic governments that were overturned were brutal dictatorships or oligarchies who murdered millions of their own citizens. Only simpletons like you think that calling a government a "democratic republic" makes it so...
Korean war: Korea was being invaded by communist proxies from China and the USSR and was in the middle of a shooting war when the US got involved.
South Korea lives in comfort as a first world nation, North Korea is perpetually on the brink of starvation and a shooting war with the world as they sell nuclear weapons tech to rogue nations and develop ICBMs to try and threaten the world.
Vietnam: Vietnam was also invaded by communist proxies from China and the USSR before the US got involved. About 900,000 men, women and children were murdered by the communists "democratic republic" government of Vietnam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
US activities in south and central America were mostly to deal with drug cartels who had taken over entire countries, or rogue dictators who were massively violating the human rights of their citizens. If you don't know this, go read something that is actually historically accurate, not some pointy headed idiot on NPR or BBC who hates the US...
Iraq war 1 was in response to their invasion of an ally and strategic partner, Kuait. We told Saddam to leave and he gave us the finger, so we obliterated his military.
Afghanistan was actively helping Al Queda who murdered 3000 US civillians and, unlike Pakistan, was openly resisting our efforts to eliminate Al Queda. So we invaded Afghanistan.
Iraq war 2 was in response to Saddam's clams of biological, chemical (which he had used on the Iranians and the Kurds in the past) and nuclear weapons claims. Saddam was supporting terrorisim, paying money to homicide bombers families, and asserting that he had WMD and was willing to use them. He kicked out weapons inspectors, and 18 global intelligence agencies said he had WMD capacity. After the war, the US exported 550 TONS of uranium http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2554... from Iraq that Saddam had bought on the black market. We also found the equipment to manufacture nuclear bombs buried in Baghdad: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/... That he did not have a chance to use his chemical or biological weapons is a testament to US military air power effectiveness. That he didn't have a nuclear bomb yet was purely luck.
This is not about corporate rights, this is about national jurisdiction. Beyond that, corporations are made up of people, who do have rights. Further, they serve customers, who are also people who have rights. They are owned by stock holders, who are people, who also have rights.
So Canada tells Google to do something globally, violating, among others things, US sovereignty and US free speech rights. Unless Canada wan'ts to become a US territory with no autonomy at all, I suggest rethinking that position and sticking to your own jurisdiction, especially when it comes to US companies. Alternatively, Canada can work through the US state department and courts to try to get Google to do something globally, since Google is a US corporation.
While solar panels do pollute a little if not properly disposed of, as far as I know, lead, cadmium and chromium are all pretty easy to recover by melting down the panels. If you are stupid enough to burn plastic, you get what you get, but as a kid we burned plastic from time to time and we didn't suffer any ill effects.
The problem with these articles is they assume the worst case for the disposal of panels while assuming the best case for nuclear waste. It is relatively trivial to recycle lead, cadmium and chromium into new solar panels, and they require no more than respirators and proper gloves and ventilation/filtration to work with, whereas spent nuclear fuel is quite difficult and dangerous to work with and there is no real east way to recycle spent nuclear waste. Alternatively, you could bury the worlds entire supply of solar panels in a landfill and it would be pretty harmless, assuming the landfill was modern and properly lined and isolated from the ground water (the lead, cadmium and other heavy metals are usually laminated between layers of glass, so even breaking the panels only exposes a small fraction of the total heavy metal content).
As first world societies, if we are really concerned for the environment, we should slap a recycle fee onto every panel sold and then require that they be recycled in a first world country with felony prison time for exporting un-recycled e-waste to the third world (we already do this more or less for many other things that need to be recycled).
Utility poles are a sunk cost, meaning that money has already been spent, and the poles are good for 40 years or so. Once they start reaching end of life, the power poles can be replaced by much cheaper solutions, since the main reason for poles was that you don't want anyone getting near 440 or 880V (or whatever is running on the transmission lines; depends on the location).
I have a lot of solar and will be bringing my system up to 12KW soon, but battery storage is just infeasible. Unless and until there is some breakthrough (which by definition cannot be predicted), people will still grid tie because it is more economical and reliable. I don't wan to have to worry if my refrigerator will shut down and all my food spoil if I have 7 days straight cloudy days... It is cheaper for utility companies to keep solar people grid tied because it helps them lower peak demand, which is what costs the most to generate.
The only reason Sony gaming has been as good as it has is that is essentially US run at this point. It appears that Sony international accounting still leaves a lot to be desired as they have been incapable of taking peoples damn money in the UK... The Japan based Sony is a mess, they have been losing ground everywhere except for the PS4 and haven't had a real hit new product (think walkman etc.) since the introduction of the Bluray (2003), and they had to bribe the industry with arcane DRM that breaks every 20th movie you try to watch...
Obama confronted Putin: "Hey Putin, whats up with all the hacking? Please stop doing that..." Pretty sure that's how it went. Obama never had any balls in the first place (remember his red line in Syria; you can bet Putin remembered), he wasn't about to grow balls with 6 months left in his 2nd term.
What retaliation was made? AFAIK there was none. Spyware is not retaliation, a Stuxnet variant that crashed critical Russian military or government systems would be retaliation. All I saw was Russia hacking the NSA and dumping all of the US cyberweapons online for everyone to see under Obamas watch...
"Remember, they asked Republican controlled congress to investigate but they refused."
Congress doesn't investigate exigent national security threats, that is what the president, the FBI and the NSA are for (all exist in the EXECUTIVE branch, not congress). Congress can pass a resolution condemning something, or hold hearings after the fact, but their job is to pass laws, funding, have internal oversight and declare war, not defend the nation. Sorry you fell for someones bullshit there.
This is not the 1970s. Most people want reasonable accommodations to be made for disabled, and goodwill and public opinion is a powerful thing for businesses, but making allowances for disabled people is a drain on business and lawsuits especially can force businesses to shut down entirely, putting employees out of work. Is that right? Is your right to conveniently attend a movie theater more important than an movie employees job (or the owner's livelihood)? Hell, I don't even go to the movies any more because it's so much nicer to just watch in the comfort of my own home where I can pause, adjust the volume, and tell people to shut up if they are too noisy. But the ADA puts your convenience of going to the movies above the right of a citizen to run their business as they see fit or the employees right to their job because an ADA lawsuit (often frivolous/trivial) can crush a business and leave employees out of work.
There are unintended consequences to every law and the ADA has some really negative impacts on especially small businesses and their employees.
- Have you ever considered how many people your ADA accommodations have caused to be laid off because of additional operating expenses or lawsuits that had massive legal fees? - Have you ever researched how many people have been laid off when the small business that they worked at shut down due to massive ADA legal fees? - I wonder how many little kids have been hit and killed in the grocery store parking lot because a pregnant mother of 4 had to park 1/2 mile away because the first 20 spaces, 18 vacant, were marked handicap only? - I wonder how many non-disabled elderly have died from heart attacks while hiking across a parking lot because all the close spots were disabled? - Deaf firefighters are now putting their lives, the lives of their fellow firefighters and the public at large in danger because they are incapable of hearing danger or readily communicating with the general public...
The list goes on. No doubt that the ADA is good for the you as a disabled person, but at what cost? Disabled people do not have more inherent rights to special accommodation than any other citizen to their job or other inherent rights (I checked, it's not in the constitution). The ADA is a form of reverse discrimination, where healthy people are discriminated against in favor of the disabled. We passed the law originally to try and help the disabled, but at this point it is basically nothing more than a payout for ADA career lawyers who make their living suing businesses who have their toilet stall 3" too narrow or pull up bar 1" taller than code or BS like this suit against Uber. The reality is that having a fleet of disabled accessible vehicles is unreasonable on it's face because the fleet doesn't exist, and if it did it would be significantly more expensive than the standard Uber vehicle to own and operate (so the driver would need a larger fee for handicapped accommodation, also illegal per the ADA) and often disabled accessible vehicles are further modified to meet the disabled person's specific needs. I am surprised that the ADA scam lawyers haven't sued GM and Ford yet for not making all vehicles standard disabled accessible, but I guess that might be a bridge too far even for them.
We go a long way in our society to try and help out those less fortunate, including the disabled. But make no mistake, we are helping you out, it is not your right, so don't bite the hand that feeds you, and don't forget that you are benefiting from the charity of the rest of society, ADA law or not. There has been a lot of ungratefulness in the last 20 years by all the special interests towards the average, normal citizen who runs a business and works for a living, and many people are sick of it. (Don't believe me, check out the last election.)
Oh sure, because on the one hand you have the US who protects freedom and democracy as much as we can in this imperfect world (and gave Germany, Japan, Iraq and Afghanistan back their countries as democratic, free nations) and on the other you have the USSR who wanted to subjugate the world and murdered tens of millions of their own citizens, invaded and occupied other nations for generations and who would readily have started WW3 if they thought they could avoid nuclear annihilation...
Who wouldn't want to have the USSR equally powerful in military capacity to the freedom loving and peaceful USA. After all, if the USSR had ever had a decisive advantage (like the US exclusively having nuclear bombs immediately after WW2) they would have wiped out and/or ruled the world, rather than retiring quietly back to their own borders like the US did.
There is so much stupid in your statement it makes my head spin. Moral equivalence and ignorance of history are a special kind of evil.
Someone let Canada know that they are not a global power in a position to make rules for the rest of the world to live by... They have 35 million citizens (less than California or about 10% that of the US), their GDP is $1.5T (California is $2.5T for about the same population) and they are ranked 25th in military power (behind North Korea, Poland and Taiwan) http://www.globalfirepower.com...
Google is a US company doing business in Canada, and unless they want to get in a pissing match with the US they need to get a US court order if they want to reach beyond their national borders. Google needs to get the state department to inform Canada that they have no jurisdiction outside of Canada and Canada sure as hell can't censor a US company on it's own.
Honestly, FB is in a no-win situation and should go hardcore for the First Amendment (which exists specifically to protect unpopular and/or offensive speech) and just be hands off with user content unless there are threats of violence or encouragements of harming one'self or another or violating the laws in the US... The race card in general and hate speech specifically is subjective and the term is already abused routinely by the fascist progressives on a daily basis.
No, they are disabled, and as such have limitations, including, potentially, limitations in participating in society. That we as a society want to help them out and make their lives a little better only reflects our morality, not the rights of the disabled. In America you have equal opportunity, but what you make of it based on you ability is up to you... The ADA completely ignores this which is why it is a draconian piece of garbage that needs to be repealed.
ADA needs to be completely repealed. It is a massive drain on businesses and nothing but a lawsuit mine for lawyers. If a business doesn't serve you as a disabled person, go elsewhere or make a request to the business... Most businesses are happy to make reasonable accommodations but the ADA puts a gun to their heads about it and lets stupid stuff like this Uber suit run rampant...
Slashdot Mirror
Caliber *always* refers to the diameter of the bullet, unless you are talking shotguns.
The point Iggy was making is key: there are different cartridges that use the same diameter bullet with wildly different energies: 50 cal BMG is around 20,000 Joules of energy at muzzle exit vs. 50 cal Auto which is around 700 Joules of energy at muzzle exit.
The article said that he showed her a book that he test fired into, so yes, they did, but my guess is it wasn't the same book and/or the distance was different, or one of a million other variables was different (it could be as simple as how tightly the pages were compressed or the exact angle of the shot). The bottom line is teach your kids this simple axiom: DON'T SHOOT AT ANYTHING YOU DON'T INTEND TO KILL...
50 cal GI is hardly the most powerful cartridge at 700 Joules and 1000 FPS.
357 magnum: 1000 Joules and 1700 FPS
44 magnum (Dirty Harry's gun): 2000 Joules and 1400 FPS (or almost 3x more powerful than the 50 cal GI...) Nobody shoots it though because it kicks like a bastard and the guns weigh a ton (for a handgun). Anyone who owns one takes it to the range to film his buddies trying to shoot it while everyone else laughs their asses off.
Its actually easier to stop 45ACP or 50GI than 9mm, because the bullet cross section slows it down faster, and it's a slower round to begin with, which is actually good for home and self defense, as they deliver more energy to the target with less risk of "shoot through" to other things behind the target. 9mm tends to go right through with less damage (assuming standard JHP, frangible rounds are a different story) and often requires a fatal shot (head or heart) to stop an attacker, whereas 45 or 50 cal tend to inflict such damage that one shot drops them.
You are confusing 15,000 PSI chamber pressure here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
With 55,000 PSI chamber pressure: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... (farthest left cartridge). These bullets are typically FMJBT and travel 3000 FPS with around 18,000 Joules of energy... or about 20x more energy than the 50 cal GI handgun round which travel around 1000 FPS with ~ 700 Joules of energy
Note: its not the bullet diameter, it is the powder charge and thus chamber pressure behind it that gives it penetrating power...
Fools ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
Hitler signed the Weapons Law of 1938 followed shortly after by Jewish gun confiscation, and 7 million Jews were murdered.
Stalin presided over CPSU gun licensure followed shortly after by gun confiscation of all dissidents, and the USSR murdered 20-60 million people, unable to resist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mao presided over gun licensure followed shortly after by gun confiscation, and tens of millions were murdered by the Mao regime, unable to resist in any meaningful way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
All of the state sponsored mass murders of the last century took place after gun registration and subsequent confiscation. The total body count is over 100,000,000. That is a pretty fucking huge price to pay for giving up guns.
The first step in confiscation is knowing who owns guns. If you don't know who owns a gun, it is essentially impossible to confiscate them. Once you register the guns or "license" the owner, you have a list of who to arrest if they don't show up and surrender their guns when it is time to confiscate them. As gun ownership is a constitutional right, there is no reason to require licensure, although most states require that you obtain a license to concealed carry, which involves both a proficiency test as well as a written test regarding the laws and steps to take in a situation requiring the use of your concealed carry weapon. Those states, not coincidentally, have drastically lower crime/murder rates than the liberal bastions of Chicago, New Orleans etc. where the first amendment is abridged.
Unless you want to also require licenses for car batteries, wall AC voltage, bleach, knives, drain cleaner, gasoline, kerosene, pool acid, etc, you are making a specious argument. None of the items listed above (and car operation) are constitutional rights, whereas gun ownership is, but you can kill yourself with any of them quite easily. In a free society, you must exhibit responsibility or bad things happen.
Furthermore, there IS a federal background check to make sure you are who you say you are, and you don't have a criminal history, and you have to be an adult, but beyond that, it is your responsibility to learn about your gun. When you purchase a gun, they all come with a user manual if purchased new, with all kinds of common sense warnings, as well as how to clean and maintain your gun.
I learned as a child that guns aren't toys and to never aim, let a lone shoot at anything you didn't intend to kill. The fault here is likely with grossly incompetent/absent parents, as these kids went off the tracks long before this (19 years old with a 3 year old and another on the way, basic math says she probably got pregnant when she was 15).
This exactly. The DA is way overcharging this, and he should get bitch slapped by the judge when the case is dismissed at the preliminary hearing. This is akin to a movie stunt gone wrong. They did do a test fire and saw that the bullet was stopped. They were shooting a large caliber, slow round from a handgun, which can be rapidly slowed/stopped by something like a book. Now if they were firing a 5.56 or 308, that would be a different story.
People die every day from work accidents, and if he was a Youtube stuntman and that was his livelihood, I can't see how this is any different. If I were him, I would have hidden a 1/2" steel plate near the back of the book, just to be safe though... You can always retake a shoot sequence, but you only have one life.
As automation and AI take over more and more "work", we must push for, not an increase of minimum wage, which only accelerates the problem, but a decrease in the work week. Eliminate salary for all employees who are not C-level management. Reduce the work week to 6h for 4 days. You increase the value of something by making it more scarce. As AI and automation take over menial tasks like transportation of goods and people, the one two resources that are still uniquely human are empathy and creativity. AI can be programmed to emulate creativity (music etc.) but emulation is not the same as inherent creativity. When AI starts creating new things, not [derivative works, mixes, combinations etc of previous work], then we will have reached the Star Trek fiction where socialism will be implemented due to the elimination of any need for any human to actually do work. Hopefully we will have starships by then so we can go exploring instead... or neural interface VR so we can go indulge our dragon slaying/other fantasies. Alternatively, someone may invent the Drowd (a neural stimulator of the brain's pleasure centers, from Larry Niven's universe) and we may all pleasure ourselves into extinction.
The simple solution is to build a few large bore (2m diameter), high pressure pipes up into lakes in the rocky mountains. Drop them down to pumping stations with holding ponds. During the day when you have excessive solar, you pump water from your holding pond up into the lake at something like 3000 feet differential elevation. At night, when you need power, you let the water discharge down into your holding pond. Designed right this system will recover about 85% of the energy stored. If you are worried about evaporation, you can cover your ponds with ping pong balls (reduces evaporation by 90% plus.)
If you pump that water at 1m/sec up for 6 peak sunny hours per day, from the Bernoulli equation we know that the stored energy would be Volume rate * density * acceleration due to gravity * height of lift * time or:
3.14 m^3/sec * 1000 kg/m^3 * 9.81 m/s^2 * 1000 m * 6h * 3600 sec/h = 665 GigaJoules of stored energy or (*.85 efficiency) ~157MWh of recoverable electricity per day. You would need around 68,000 cubic meters of water to work with (about 6.8 Hectares) in a lake (or you could build 5 holding ponds at elevation that were 20m deep x 30m wide.)
Most natural gas power plants in California generate around this number. The main reason that 10 of these hydro lift systems aren't built post haste is all the environmental nuts that would lose their shit over human beings building pipelines in California and/or using a lake for anything other than squatting next to while meditating...
Melting down the actual fuel rods is only part, you also have to deal with the irradiated and often contaminated coolant, and you can't just melt down all of the spent fuel in one go and pour it into a lead container. Also, during the melt process, some small amounts of fuel will vaporize, and now you have a highly radioactive cloud of gas that you need to filter out and deal with.
That is "a" method of disposal, but not all that great. In 20 years those rounds will still be radioactive, and any tank battlefields will be more or less radioactive depending on the number of rounds fired, hits/misses and any cleanup.
Many sexual harassment claims are BS. Women want to be treated as equals in the work place, but when the going gets tough, a cross section of them trot out sexual harassment charges as their golden parachute, often getting a 5 to 6 figure payout because so and so looked at me wrong, or called me honey or sweetie or some other innocuous name that made me feel uncomfortable. I am convinced there is another cross section who use their sexuality as a weapon everywhere else, and the workplace is no different. They do all they can to seduce their boss and then if anything goes wrong, they selectively use emails and messages to get a payout.
Sexual harassment ignores the basic biology that women in a modern society have all the power. They can dress scantily, exposing their bodies with skin tight clothes, miniskirts, etc, clothing that 70 years ago would get a woman arrested for indecent exposure. All of this leads to an explosion of hormones in their male co-workers, making their lives difficult and distracting from work. A beautiful woman can dress provocatively, essentially sexually harassing every male that sees her, with no consequences, but one comment from a man can destroy his career. A beautiful woman can lure a powerful man, a CEO or even president, into risking his position, his family, his money, everything all because of the hormones she can stimulate in men. That does not happen in reverse.
We need to end this in the US, and the solution is possible: every company should require every employee fill out a form where they check a few boxes saying what level of interaction, what level of physical contact they are comfortable with (handshakes, hugs, etc.) and what, if any, kind of relationships they are interested in (professional only, friend outside work, romantic, or casual sex). This database is available to all employees, and if you select anything besides handshakes and strictly business relationships, you sign away your rights to claiming sexual harassment of any kind. Anyone who exceeds your relationship preferences can be reported to HR within 7 days as an internal matter, but, unless criminal laws are broken, life goes on... One of the key problems with sexual harassment these days is it is entirely subjective and no one knows what any one else expects.
But the USSR did not know how many we had and it only took 2 for Japan to surrender because they believed we could keep bombing them with nukes. It would have probably only taken one for the USSR to surrender, considering the shape they were in. War is rarely about annihilation, it is about destroying your enemies will to fight. Don't believe the revisionist bullshit.
The activity in the world by the US from the '50s to the '90s was with good intentions, if not always ideal results. The so called democratic governments that were overturned were brutal dictatorships or oligarchies who murdered millions of their own citizens. Only simpletons like you think that calling a government a "democratic republic" makes it so...
Korean war: Korea was being invaded by communist proxies from China and the USSR and was in the middle of a shooting war when the US got involved.
South Korea lives in comfort as a first world nation, North Korea is perpetually on the brink of starvation and a shooting war with the world as they sell nuclear weapons tech to rogue nations and develop ICBMs to try and threaten the world.
Vietnam: Vietnam was also invaded by communist proxies from China and the USSR before the US got involved. About 900,000 men, women and children were murdered by the communists "democratic republic" government of Vietnam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
US activities in south and central America were mostly to deal with drug cartels who had taken over entire countries, or rogue dictators who were massively violating the human rights of their citizens. If you don't know this, go read something that is actually historically accurate, not some pointy headed idiot on NPR or BBC who hates the US...
Iraq war 1 was in response to their invasion of an ally and strategic partner, Kuait. We told Saddam to leave and he gave us the finger, so we obliterated his military.
Afghanistan was actively helping Al Queda who murdered 3000 US civillians and, unlike Pakistan, was openly resisting our efforts to eliminate Al Queda. So we invaded Afghanistan.
Iraq war 2 was in response to Saddam's clams of biological, chemical (which he had used on the Iranians and the Kurds in the past) and nuclear weapons claims. Saddam was supporting terrorisim, paying money to homicide bombers families, and asserting that he had WMD and was willing to use them. He kicked out weapons inspectors, and 18 global intelligence agencies said he had WMD capacity. After the war, the US exported 550 TONS of uranium http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2554... from Iraq that Saddam had bought on the black market. We also found the equipment to manufacture nuclear bombs buried in Baghdad: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/... That he did not have a chance to use his chemical or biological weapons is a testament to US military air power effectiveness. That he didn't have a nuclear bomb yet was purely luck.
This is not about corporate rights, this is about national jurisdiction. Beyond that, corporations are made up of people, who do have rights. Further, they serve customers, who are also people who have rights. They are owned by stock holders, who are people, who also have rights.
So Canada tells Google to do something globally, violating, among others things, US sovereignty and US free speech rights. Unless Canada wan'ts to become a US territory with no autonomy at all, I suggest rethinking that position and sticking to your own jurisdiction, especially when it comes to US companies. Alternatively, Canada can work through the US state department and courts to try to get Google to do something globally, since Google is a US corporation.
While solar panels do pollute a little if not properly disposed of, as far as I know, lead, cadmium and chromium are all pretty easy to recover by melting down the panels. If you are stupid enough to burn plastic, you get what you get, but as a kid we burned plastic from time to time and we didn't suffer any ill effects.
The problem with these articles is they assume the worst case for the disposal of panels while assuming the best case for nuclear waste. It is relatively trivial to recycle lead, cadmium and chromium into new solar panels, and they require no more than respirators and proper gloves and ventilation/filtration to work with, whereas spent nuclear fuel is quite difficult and dangerous to work with and there is no real east way to recycle spent nuclear waste. Alternatively, you could bury the worlds entire supply of solar panels in a landfill and it would be pretty harmless, assuming the landfill was modern and properly lined and isolated from the ground water (the lead, cadmium and other heavy metals are usually laminated between layers of glass, so even breaking the panels only exposes a small fraction of the total heavy metal content).
As first world societies, if we are really concerned for the environment, we should slap a recycle fee onto every panel sold and then require that they be recycled in a first world country with felony prison time for exporting un-recycled e-waste to the third world (we already do this more or less for many other things that need to be recycled).
Utility poles are a sunk cost, meaning that money has already been spent, and the poles are good for 40 years or so. Once they start reaching end of life, the power poles can be replaced by much cheaper solutions, since the main reason for poles was that you don't want anyone getting near 440 or 880V (or whatever is running on the transmission lines; depends on the location).
I have a lot of solar and will be bringing my system up to 12KW soon, but battery storage is just infeasible. Unless and until there is some breakthrough (which by definition cannot be predicted), people will still grid tie because it is more economical and reliable. I don't wan to have to worry if my refrigerator will shut down and all my food spoil if I have 7 days straight cloudy days... It is cheaper for utility companies to keep solar people grid tied because it helps them lower peak demand, which is what costs the most to generate.
The only reason Sony gaming has been as good as it has is that is essentially US run at this point. It appears that Sony international accounting still leaves a lot to be desired as they have been incapable of taking peoples damn money in the UK... The Japan based Sony is a mess, they have been losing ground everywhere except for the PS4 and haven't had a real hit new product (think walkman etc.) since the introduction of the Bluray (2003), and they had to bribe the industry with arcane DRM that breaks every 20th movie you try to watch...
Obama confronted Putin: "Hey Putin, whats up with all the hacking? Please stop doing that..." Pretty sure that's how it went. Obama never had any balls in the first place (remember his red line in Syria; you can bet Putin remembered), he wasn't about to grow balls with 6 months left in his 2nd term.
What retaliation was made? AFAIK there was none. Spyware is not retaliation, a Stuxnet variant that crashed critical Russian military or government systems would be retaliation. All I saw was Russia hacking the NSA and dumping all of the US cyberweapons online for everyone to see under Obamas watch...
"Remember, they asked Republican controlled congress to investigate but they refused."
Congress doesn't investigate exigent national security threats, that is what the president, the FBI and the NSA are for (all exist in the EXECUTIVE branch, not congress). Congress can pass a resolution condemning something, or hold hearings after the fact, but their job is to pass laws, funding, have internal oversight and declare war, not defend the nation. Sorry you fell for someones bullshit there.
You may not like the facts, but they still stand.
This is not the 1970s. Most people want reasonable accommodations to be made for disabled, and goodwill and public opinion is a powerful thing for businesses, but making allowances for disabled people is a drain on business and lawsuits especially can force businesses to shut down entirely, putting employees out of work. Is that right? Is your right to conveniently attend a movie theater more important than an movie employees job (or the owner's livelihood)? Hell, I don't even go to the movies any more because it's so much nicer to just watch in the comfort of my own home where I can pause, adjust the volume, and tell people to shut up if they are too noisy. But the ADA puts your convenience of going to the movies above the right of a citizen to run their business as they see fit or the employees right to their job because an ADA lawsuit (often frivolous/trivial) can crush a business and leave employees out of work.
There are unintended consequences to every law and the ADA has some really negative impacts on especially small businesses and their employees.
- Have you ever considered how many people your ADA accommodations have caused to be laid off because of additional operating expenses or lawsuits that had massive legal fees?
- Have you ever researched how many people have been laid off when the small business that they worked at shut down due to massive ADA legal fees?
- I wonder how many little kids have been hit and killed in the grocery store parking lot because a pregnant mother of 4 had to park 1/2 mile away because the first 20 spaces, 18 vacant, were marked handicap only?
- I wonder how many non-disabled elderly have died from heart attacks while hiking across a parking lot because all the close spots were disabled?
- Deaf firefighters are now putting their lives, the lives of their fellow firefighters and the public at large in danger because they are incapable of hearing danger or readily communicating with the general public...
The list goes on. No doubt that the ADA is good for the you as a disabled person, but at what cost? Disabled people do not have more inherent rights to special accommodation than any other citizen to their job or other inherent rights (I checked, it's not in the constitution). The ADA is a form of reverse discrimination, where healthy people are discriminated against in favor of the disabled. We passed the law originally to try and help the disabled, but at this point it is basically nothing more than a payout for ADA career lawyers who make their living suing businesses who have their toilet stall 3" too narrow or pull up bar 1" taller than code or BS like this suit against Uber. The reality is that having a fleet of disabled accessible vehicles is unreasonable on it's face because the fleet doesn't exist, and if it did it would be significantly more expensive than the standard Uber vehicle to own and operate (so the driver would need a larger fee for handicapped accommodation, also illegal per the ADA) and often disabled accessible vehicles are further modified to meet the disabled person's specific needs. I am surprised that the ADA scam lawyers haven't sued GM and Ford yet for not making all vehicles standard disabled accessible, but I guess that might be a bridge too far even for them.
We go a long way in our society to try and help out those less fortunate, including the disabled. But make no mistake, we are helping you out, it is not your right, so don't bite the hand that feeds you, and don't forget that you are benefiting from the charity of the rest of society, ADA law or not. There has been a lot of ungratefulness in the last 20 years by all the special interests towards the average, normal citizen who runs a business and works for a living, and many people are sick of it. (Don't believe me, check out the last election.)
Oh sure, because on the one hand you have the US who protects freedom and democracy as much as we can in this imperfect world (and gave Germany, Japan, Iraq and Afghanistan back their countries as democratic, free nations) and on the other you have the USSR who wanted to subjugate the world and murdered tens of millions of their own citizens, invaded and occupied other nations for generations and who would readily have started WW3 if they thought they could avoid nuclear annihilation...
Who wouldn't want to have the USSR equally powerful in military capacity to the freedom loving and peaceful USA. After all, if the USSR had ever had a decisive advantage (like the US exclusively having nuclear bombs immediately after WW2) they would have wiped out and/or ruled the world, rather than retiring quietly back to their own borders like the US did.
There is so much stupid in your statement it makes my head spin. Moral equivalence and ignorance of history are a special kind of evil.
Someone let Canada know that they are not a global power in a position to make rules for the rest of the world to live by... They have 35 million citizens (less than California or about 10% that of the US), their GDP is $1.5T (California is $2.5T for about the same population) and they are ranked 25th in military power (behind North Korea, Poland and Taiwan) http://www.globalfirepower.com...
Google is a US company doing business in Canada, and unless they want to get in a pissing match with the US they need to get a US court order if they want to reach beyond their national borders. Google needs to get the state department to inform Canada that they have no jurisdiction outside of Canada and Canada sure as hell can't censor a US company on it's own.
Honestly, FB is in a no-win situation and should go hardcore for the First Amendment (which exists specifically to protect unpopular and/or offensive speech) and just be hands off with user content unless there are threats of violence or encouragements of harming one'self or another or violating the laws in the US... The race card in general and hate speech specifically is subjective and the term is already abused routinely by the fascist progressives on a daily basis.
No, they are disabled, and as such have limitations, including, potentially, limitations in participating in society. That we as a society want to help them out and make their lives a little better only reflects our morality, not the rights of the disabled. In America you have equal opportunity, but what you make of it based on you ability is up to you... The ADA completely ignores this which is why it is a draconian piece of garbage that needs to be repealed.
ADA needs to be completely repealed. It is a massive drain on businesses and nothing but a lawsuit mine for lawyers. If a business doesn't serve you as a disabled person, go elsewhere or make a request to the business... Most businesses are happy to make reasonable accommodations but the ADA puts a gun to their heads about it and lets stupid stuff like this Uber suit run rampant...