using all that nuclear generated electricity that has become so plentiful.
Not quite. Uranium is still a limited resource; the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is (like a lot of pro-fission thinking) is a product of Gernsbackian imagination.
While you're at it, change your house over to electric heat from oil.
Electric heat, no; very inefficient. Ground source heat-pumps, yes.
If we need tissue samples to get a full analysis, then why not just kill one of them?
Because apes possess many of the characteristics that we consider morally important, and should be extended some basic legal and ethical rights, like not being arbitrarily killed.
Geez. Jump right to killing one, not even considering a tranquilizer dart and a blood sample?
But at what point does it cease to be disposable parts of my wife and me and start being a separate human?
Certainly there's no meaningful human prior to there being a functioning human brain - brainwaves start in the third trimester, IIRC, right about when the fetus is viable.
Probably there's not a meaningful human until some point after the brain has started to receive and correlate input, that is some point well after birth.
"as soon as it's a zygote (a DNA pattern separate from the mother's and the father's) it's a person"?
DNA has nothing to do with it. Are identical twins, or clones, not separate people? Hell, a tumor caused by a genetic mutation has a distinct DNA pattern.
It's all about the brain. A complex nervous system (human or non-human) means a sentient being worthy of rights.
Oh? Which of the large media corporations are liberal? Are the folks at Disney (ABC) or GE (NBC) a bunch of socialists?
The notion of a liberal media bias is certainly one of the right's greatest propaganda triumphs - indeed, the right's very success in spreading this meme through the media, argues against the meme's truth.
BASIC (at least from my day) is not a great learning language...There are only subroutines, no procedures or functions. There are no proper control structures, only IF THEN GOTO.
That's exactly what makes it a great learning language. Write a medium-sized BASIC program and you learn why exactly more complex control structures and subroutines are desirable. It's one thing to talk about spaghetti code, it's another to have to try to untangle it.
(A GOSUB is a type of procedure, BTW, and BASIC also has the FOR...NEXT loop.)
A system running Seti uses more power than the same system being idle.
Sure, but this is lost in the noise. Using this tiny amount of extra power consumption as a rationale for firing someone is like firing someone who takes a ball-point pen or two home from work.
No. Murder is, in legal terms, the unlawful killing of a human being; in moral terms, it is the killing of a human being (or perhaps other sentient creature) without just cause.
The problem with the debate is people do not deal with the crux of the issue, the one that every ones arguments will stand or fall on, is the baby/fetuse (use what ever term you want) alive?
No, that's not the crux of the issue. An E. coli bacterium is alive; that doesn't mean that it has moral or legal rights.
As George Carlin once observed, life doesn't start at conception - life is an continous process that's been going on for billions of years.
You can hear the liberal slashdotters' heads asplode...
Um, no. A true liberal beleives in free speech for everyone, even those he or she disagrees with. Thus you find the ACLU defending the free speech rights of the KKK and neo-Nazi groups.
However, it's worth noting that this parody seems to have directly copied the CNN content, including the logo, genuine CNN headlines, and even a CNN copyright notice. There are some valid issue heres - but they could be easily remidied by the parodiest (by making up their own close-but-obviously-bogus logo, removing the copyright notice that attiributes the content to CNN, etcetera.)
So: the parody itself, 100% free-speech. (Stupid, but free speech.) The stuff surrounding the parody on the page, though, CNN has genuine copyright and trademark claims about.
Doesn't it make sense to just run a small electric motor with, wich would make the vehicle weigh much less.
It wouldn't be a "small" motor...
And the reason to convert electricity to hydrogen is to store power...you charge when your're not driving. Also, this is a flexible fuel vehicle that can run on hydrogen or gasoline.
In my opinion, the connection is not solid enough. I may give a large campaign contribution because I know you already follow my thinking in areas of importance.
IMHO the only way to remove bribery from large donations would be a way for donations to be masked or semi-anonymous by routing them all through a trusted neutral third party, and making sure the candidates never knew who these benefactors are. I'm not sure if that can be reliably done.
I'm pretty sure libterians would have no problem with any *citizen* non-voters giving any amount of money they choose to any politician they wish. Its a voluntary transaction between two individuals
So's bribery. Which is exactly what large campaign contributions are - I give you this money with the understanding that I will "have your ear" later on.
Asimi, a silicon refiner outside my hometown, would need 40,000 at night. Thats just one company.
Of course large industrial consumers aren't going to use the same technologies are residential ones. Much of the power consumption for industrial applications is for heat, so they'd be well served by directly burning (biomass) fuels rather than generating electricity to run furnaces.
And a decentralized model can still have a grid - except instead of a few large producers and many consumers, we can have everyone being both producer and consumer at different times. Of course this takes a smarter grid.
About 20 years ago, Solarex built a PV-powered solar panel manufacturing plant, but I don't know if they were grid-tied or if they used some storage system.
Fourth, it's possible, even probable, that at some future point most cars will run on renewable biomass fuels, or hydrogen. Biomass fuels and hydrogen obtained by electrolysis from renewable-source electric are other methods of storing solar power. (I think that flexible-fuel hybrids that can run on gasoline or biomass alcohol, or diesel hybrids that can run on conventional or bio-diesel, are going to be the next big step in moving toward greener cars.)
Please tell me that I am confused at your suggestion.
Apparently so. Your asseration was that "solar power cannot be the only energy generator for an area.". My point was simply that there are areas - single homes - that are counterexamples to this.
For example, what do you do when the day is cloudy and your solar cells are not putting out as much output (or night). Again, unless you have some massive means of energy storage, solar power cannot be the only energy generator for an area.
Whether we're choosing to use it for one Watt or one million Watts doesn't really matter.
Actually it does. If you only need a few watts, it's already practical to produce all your own energy from renewables (mostly photovolatic and wind) in a de-centalized system.
There are also upper bounds on how much area can reasonably be covered with photovolatics or with wind tubines - or on how fast coal or uranium can reasonably be mined, or how quickly waste products can be disposed of.
Total power needs affect both what sort of sources, and disribution methods, are practical.
That's certainly a big problem with it. The whole utter lack of due process is another. If you've got real evidence that someone is a terrorist, you don't put them on a no-fly or no-hire list, you put them on the most-wanted list and arrest and prosecute them.
Try this one on for size: who denied her the choice to have or not have intercourse in the first place?
Sorry, is there a point in there somewhere?
Yes, pregnancy is a risk of certain choices. So is a broken leg or heart disease. Are you suggesting we deny people who eat bad diets and clog their arteries, or ride mototcycles and fracture their femurs, the right to make choices about those medical conditions?
The real problem with society right now is that no one wants to take responsibility for their actions.
The fact that people make choices that you don't agree with, doesn't mean that they are not taking responsibility for their actions.
"Fusion is no solution - the supply of Uranium is limited...."
D'oh! (slaps forehead):-) Open mouth, insert foot.
Obviously my fingers are not to be trusted to work the keyboard. Of course I meant "Fission is no solution..."
Fusion isn't a solution either, seeing as how we don't have the means to sustain it in a way that nets an energy output. It might be someday, though it still has issues with radioactive waste (reactor vessels getting bombarded with neutrons result in interesting secondary reactions).
Meanwhile we have a large fusion reactor running 24/7 just 93 million miles away, we ought to take better advantage of it.
In one paragraph he harps on racism and in the next the need for a true democracy. (Care to take a true democratic vote on civil rights in 1860 America?)
What, like a true democratic vote would have been worse?
While Cobb's answer can be picked apart on technicalities on the meaning of "democracy", it's clear from the platform that they beleive minority rights need to be protected, as provided in the Constitution. (I think most people think of "democracy" as "constitutional democracy".)
He think that conservation can substitute for Nuclear power. (Do the math; not unless you're willing to watch everyone's standard of living plummet).
Fusion is no solution - the supply of uranium is limited, and a tremendous amount of fossil fuel energy is used to mine it. That's not even counting the environmental costs of mining and of waste disposal.
If we as a nation live sustainably, would some people's standard of living go down? Probably, for while until smarter tech catches up. Excuse me while a shed a tear for those forced to downsize their SUV, or turn their AC up a few degrees.
It's just like personal fiscal discipline; you can live high on the hog for a while if you run up your credit cards, but you can't do it forever. We've been running on ecological credit since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Fission would be a balance transfer, not a turn towards responsbile spending.
Which is sad, because so many Native American Tribes support many of the goals of the Green Party
Um, yes. Why do you seem to be construing his comments as anti-Native American? Why is his observation that Native Americans (or American Indian, choose your PC term) aren't "immigrants or the children of immigrants" somehow sad? (It is perhaps inaccurate, in that the distant ancestors of Native peoples did come here from somewhere else.)
No. Conservation will never work; our power needs will continue to increase, and I have no problem with that.
If our power needs continue to increase forever, eventually we run out. (Even a Dyson sphere is, after all, an energy source with limits.) So conservation - a more intelligent use of energy - becomes necessary at some point.
He's just another anti-science nut.
Beleiving that resources are infinite, that's anti-science nuttery.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite. Uranium is still a limited resource; the idea of "electricity too cheap to meter" is (like a lot of pro-fission thinking) is a product of Gernsbackian imagination.
Electric heat, no; very inefficient. Ground source heat-pumps, yes.
Because apes possess many of the characteristics that we consider morally important, and should be extended some basic legal and ethical rights, like not being arbitrarily killed.
Geez. Jump right to killing one, not even considering a tranquilizer dart and a blood sample?
Certainly there's no meaningful human prior to there being a functioning human brain - brainwaves start in the third trimester, IIRC, right about when the fetus is viable.
Probably there's not a meaningful human until some point after the brain has started to receive and correlate input, that is some point well after birth.
DNA has nothing to do with it. Are identical twins, or clones, not separate people? Hell, a tumor caused by a genetic mutation has a distinct DNA pattern.
It's all about the brain. A complex nervous system (human or non-human) means a sentient being worthy of rights.
Oh? Which of the large media corporations are liberal? Are the folks at Disney (ABC) or GE (NBC) a bunch of socialists?
The notion of a liberal media bias is certainly one of the right's greatest propaganda triumphs - indeed, the right's very success in spreading this meme through the media, argues against the meme's truth.
In fact, journalists themseves tend to center-right.
That's exactly what makes it a great learning language. Write a medium-sized BASIC program and you learn why exactly more complex control structures and subroutines are desirable. It's one thing to talk about spaghetti code, it's another to have to try to untangle it.
(A GOSUB is a type of procedure, BTW, and BASIC also has the FOR...NEXT loop.)
Sure, but this is lost in the noise. Using this tiny amount of extra power consumption as a rationale for firing someone is like firing someone who takes a ball-point pen or two home from work.
No. Murder is, in legal terms, the unlawful killing of a human being; in moral terms, it is the killing of a human being (or perhaps other sentient creature) without just cause.
No, that's not the crux of the issue. An E. coli bacterium is alive; that doesn't mean that it has moral or legal rights.
As George Carlin once observed, life doesn't start at conception - life is an continous process that's been going on for billions of years.
Um, no. A true liberal beleives in free speech for everyone, even those he or she disagrees with. Thus you find the ACLU defending the free speech rights of the KKK and neo-Nazi groups.
However, it's worth noting that this parody seems to have directly copied the CNN content, including the logo, genuine CNN headlines, and even a CNN copyright notice. There are some valid issue heres - but they could be easily remidied by the parodiest (by making up their own close-but-obviously-bogus logo, removing the copyright notice that attiributes the content to CNN, etcetera.)
So: the parody itself, 100% free-speech. (Stupid, but free speech.) The stuff surrounding the parody on the page, though, CNN has genuine copyright and trademark claims about.
It wouldn't be a "small" motor...
And the reason to convert electricity to hydrogen is to store power...you charge when your're not driving. Also, this is a flexible fuel vehicle that can run on hydrogen or gasoline.
The connection is business as usual in modern politics.
IMHO the only way to remove bribery from large donations would be a way for donations to be masked or semi-anonymous by routing them all through a trusted neutral third party, and making sure the candidates never knew who these benefactors are. I'm not sure if that can be reliably done.
So's bribery. Which is exactly what large campaign contributions are - I give you this money with the understanding that I will "have your ear" later on.
Of course large industrial consumers aren't going to use the same technologies are residential ones. Much of the power consumption for industrial applications is for heat, so they'd be well served by directly burning (biomass) fuels rather than generating electricity to run furnaces.
And a decentralized model can still have a grid - except instead of a few large producers and many consumers, we can have everyone being both producer and consumer at different times. Of course this takes a smarter grid.
About 20 years ago, Solarex built a PV-powered solar panel manufacturing plant, but I don't know if they were grid-tied or if they used some storage system.
Just FYI, the batteries used for solar systes are more powerful deep-cycle type; these hold 120 amp-hours - over five million joules.
First, "typical cars" are horrendously inefficient.
Secondly, they don't run on electricity, so really aren't relevant to the discussion of the trade-offs of of nuclear, coal, or renewable sources.
Third, since you bring them up, there already exist electric vehicles that are practical for many applications, and some people do charge them with renewable electricity.
Fourth, it's possible, even probable, that at some future point most cars will run on renewable biomass fuels, or hydrogen. Biomass fuels and hydrogen obtained by electrolysis from renewable-source electric are other methods of storing solar power. (I think that flexible-fuel hybrids that can run on gasoline or biomass alcohol, or diesel hybrids that can run on conventional or bio-diesel, are going to be the next big step in moving toward greener cars.)
Apparently so. Your asseration was that "solar power cannot be the only energy generator for an area.". My point was simply that there are areas - single homes - that are counterexamples to this.
They're called "batteries". People are already living off-the-grid with photovoltaic, wind, or a combination, as their only electric source.
Actually it does. If you only need a few watts, it's already practical to produce all your own energy from renewables (mostly photovolatic and wind) in a de-centalized system.
There are also upper bounds on how much area can reasonably be covered with photovolatics or with wind tubines - or on how fast coal or uranium can reasonably be mined, or how quickly waste products can be disposed of.
Total power needs affect both what sort of sources, and disribution methods, are practical.
That's certainly a big problem with it. The whole utter lack of due process is another. If you've got real evidence that someone is a terrorist, you don't put them on a no-fly or no-hire list, you put them on the most-wanted list and arrest and prosecute them.
Artists often don't get paid when I buy a CD anyway...if I buy used, or from a record club, and certainly if there're dead.
Even if they do get paid, they'd often get more if I mailed them a dollar bill direct than what the parasites of the RIAA would give them.
Sorry, is there a point in there somewhere?
Yes, pregnancy is a risk of certain choices. So is a broken leg or heart disease. Are you suggesting we deny people who eat bad diets and clog their arteries, or ride mototcycles and fracture their femurs, the right to make choices about those medical conditions?
The fact that people make choices that you don't agree with, doesn't mean that they are not taking responsibility for their actions.
Sure.
No, it's as stupid as the "no-fly" list.
"Lessee, John Fluxx? There's a John Flucks on the list. Sorry, we can't hire you."
"But that's not me!"
"Sorry, too close. As far as we're concerned your name's on list. Take it up with Homeland Security. Good luck, heh heh."
Meanwhile, you're banned from transacting any business in the U.S..
Uh, no. Most on the pro-choice side would consider pregnancy a medical condition, best handled by a woman and her doctor.
Now, if a woman is denied choices about her body by political or religious zealots, that might be considered something close to a form a slavery, yes.
D'oh! (slaps forehead) :-) Open mouth, insert foot.
Obviously my fingers are not to be trusted to work the keyboard. Of course I meant "Fission is no solution..."
Fusion isn't a solution either, seeing as how we don't have the means to sustain it in a way that nets an energy output. It might be someday, though it still has issues with radioactive waste (reactor vessels getting bombarded with neutrons result in interesting secondary reactions).
Meanwhile we have a large fusion reactor running 24/7 just 93 million miles away, we ought to take better advantage of it.
What, like a true democratic vote would have been worse?
While Cobb's answer can be picked apart on technicalities on the meaning of "democracy", it's clear from the platform that they beleive minority rights need to be protected, as provided in the Constitution. (I think most people think of "democracy" as "constitutional democracy".)
(Interestingly, In Mississippi and South Carolina, slaves outnumbered whites. In Louisiana, whites had only a 1/2% edge, so a few pro-civil-rights whites could have tipped the balance. So yes, a state-by-state full democratic vote on civil rights in the 1860s would have resulted in a better situation.)
Fusion is no solution - the supply of uranium is limited, and a tremendous amount of fossil fuel energy is used to mine it. That's not even counting the environmental costs of mining and of waste disposal.
If we as a nation live sustainably, would some people's standard of living go down? Probably, for while until smarter tech catches up. Excuse me while a shed a tear for those forced to downsize their SUV, or turn their AC up a few degrees.
It's just like personal fiscal discipline; you can live high on the hog for a while if you run up your credit cards, but you can't do it forever. We've been running on ecological credit since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Fission would be a balance transfer, not a turn towards responsbile spending.
Um, yes. Why do you seem to be construing his comments as anti-Native American? Why is his observation that Native Americans (or American Indian, choose your PC term) aren't "immigrants or the children of immigrants" somehow sad? (It is perhaps inaccurate, in that the distant ancestors of Native peoples did come here from somewhere else.)
If our power needs continue to increase forever, eventually we run out. (Even a Dyson sphere is, after all, an energy source with limits.) So conservation - a more intelligent use of energy - becomes necessary at some point.
Beleiving that resources are infinite, that's anti-science nuttery.