Speaking as someone who worked in a federal bureaucracy and was frustrated by management, I can tell you that the temptation to goof off is tremendous. My solution was to quit, however these people were a bit more clever I think.
1800 sites in two weeks, a hard drive full of porn and dvd's burned with not but porn??? A dollar to a dime this was done in protest. Think of the irony: an agency full of naked people where they are cloaked from above.
I think corporations are mainly interested in restrictions on govt's for cost reasons. I don't think that corporations are going to want to devote the same amount of resources to intelligence gathering that a bankrupt and shrinking govt. would want them to. I'm more concerned with the following statement FTA:
It took the better part of a decade for the White House to side with privacy interests over law enforcement.
My guess is that the reason that it took govt. so long to come around to attempting to strengthen privacy regulations is that they have managed to figure out how to circumvent any such restrictions that they impose upon themselves without too much cost. One could always employ foreign governments to spy on one's own citizens. There would be issues with regard to legal admissability of evidence obtained thusly, but I imagine that wouldn't be too difficult for a national intelligence agency to work around.
IMHO, personal privacy is largely a myth and will remain as much.
operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network.
as I indicated earlier -- it will pose a series of detailed questions on how the Internet openness principles should apply to mobile broadband.
The chairmanis in the process of determining what princples the FCC will be enforcing, and is questioning the extent to which mobile providers will be regulated. What I'm wondering is wether or not vendors (who also provide internet services, like ATT) will be required to open the phone market up by eliminating exclusive arrangemnets with phone manufacturers to sell locked phones.
I currently have an unlocked Nokia phone, but in order to get the access plan I wan't (pay as you go), I have to use one of a small collection of phones that ATT offers. My phone is technically capable of accessing the internet through ATT's network, so I should be able to buy any plan I want for my "non-harmful" device to access the internet.
Of course gravity is a force. F=mA, or, a force causes a certain mass to accelerate by a certain amount. IIRC, the gravitational model Einstein developed was something like a sheet being streched out across space. Objects (like those that make up our planetary solar system) rest on this 'sheet' and create 'wells'. Thus, objects that are close enough to each other will slide down the well, experiencing higher attractive, "pulling", force. However, such traditionally observed gravitational forces are not predominate on all scales. In other words, gravity seems to behave differently depending on what scale you are looking at.
It was once assumed that the universe was contracting towards some central 'big bang' point because it was assumed that this model held universally. However, we know that at the atomic level, there are grvitational forces that repel particals. Towards the opposite end of the scale, because the universe is expanding, we know that there is a point at which gravity changes from an attractive to a repulsive force as well. Thus, one could say that we exist in a 'sheet' of gravitation law.
In fact, the recent discoveries that show the universe is expanding is where the concept of "dark matter" producing "dark energy" comes from. We dont exactly know how the laws of gravity apply on different scales.
Traditionally speaking, I would think the existance of gravitational waves to be easily verifiable. I suspect that the experiments described in this article are designed to probe the limits of what we know in order to determine exactly how gravity behaves on previously unobserved scales.
I noticed the same thing with my '91 nissan sentra. The car had a computer that produced trouble codes, but if I wanted to use them to diagnose problems, I needed to buy a separate computer to plug in to a proprietary data port to read the data. The computer was expensive, for a consumer, but IIRC, at least I could have bought it from nissan had I wanted to.
I would think that information should be easily available to the consumer. Allowing companies to claim it as proprietary data seems anti-competitive, and it should be illegal. People should ask their legislators to require automakers to provide clear and open diagnostic info; not just for the sake of independent auto repair shops, but the the benefit of the general consumer.
Stationary water = prone to problems. I was taught as a youngster to turn on the faucet and wait 15 seconds before drinking. Nowadays, I drink mostly bottled water. Local and eviro-friendly packaging if possible/affordable.
I thought the phrases were used conjuctively. Waxing refering to a preservative action to something diminishing. Like waxing a dead body, or waxing poetic.
Yup, sure, he gave away these nice expensive seeds for humanitarian reasons. Problem is, many people in these countries don't want GM seed. So how many people are stepping up to the plate to donate free organic seed to those who want it?
I also question whether or not the seeds he made actually produced food that was better for the people. That was the claim for his work, but recent studies done regarding GM seed in the US have shown that organic is actually better for you, even if there is little difference in traditionally measured nutrients.
I find it interesting to hear people talking about how every "developed nation" in the world currently has the capability to produce not only enough food to feed their own populations, but excess as well. I find myself wondering how it is that we have to convert these people to a GM seed base now. Do we expect to get the additional 3 billion people in the world (in the next 50 years) through undeveloped nations that haven't the capability to grow their own food without GM products because of climate change?
Have you tried X3? I too was looking for a follow on to elite, and in manyt ways, found that X3 was a suitable replacement. The early releases were quite buggy, so the game didn't become very popular. However, the game is now very mature with various mods for it having been developed by the community. It's an old single player only game, but the online community for it is very much active.
Why not just drill a large hole into a subduction zone and drop it off in there.
Expense? Difficulty of securing the waste byproducts? LWR waste can be reprocessed into material used for building nuclear weapons. Right now, FBR's can't be built in the US, and probably won't be buildable in the near future. Early attempts at FBR's were problematic and the tech is still in development. All the new reactors planned to be built in the US are still just advancements on current LWR tech. So we need to figure out what to do with the waste ensuring that it won't be a problem to the environment thousands to millions of years down the road, or simply wait until we develop the tech to ensure that waste wont be a problem. The pol's want to close yukka, which means that the govt will be doling out money to nuke plant operators to keep the waste stored locally at the plants.
Then again I also never understood why if nuclear waste is still putting off energy, why not just use the waste as an energy source? Storing the waste in pools that have to be constantly chilled just seems so backasswards.
My guess is that they probably re-use the water used to cool spent rods to pre-heat the liquid they use to run the generator turbines, so it's not a complete waste. However, existing designs are decades old and many plants were not planning on storing waste locally since the govt. was supposed to have their storage facility operational at least a decade ago, so they may not have been designed to make full use of what they now have, if they do that at all.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares end up tilling the ground for others. It has never not been that way. Why would it be any different now?
Really, you have no idea. It's a rather simple matter to convince people to take up arms against 'the enemy'. Allied sanctions against Germany as a result of WW1, which itself was a result of... were used as a pretext to convince the people that 'the west' (true or not) needed to be thrown off forcibly.
If you want to go off and rip up someone else's soil for the sake of 'the motherland' or whatever the pol of day drems up to achieve whatever goal they have in mind, then I won't stop you. As for me, I follow a different lead, One that tells me that the use of evil means to achieve good ends is itself evil.
Regardless of people may think, military service is a part of the death industry. The same people that ask for you to serve "your country" are often responsible for creating the problem to begin with. If you're a Christian, you should know better.
A truely scientific study would measure the amount of brain damage a person had prior to entering the military and figure out how to discount brain damage accrued as a result of non-combat related factors associated with being in the military.
Of course, I can imagine a different approach to the ice problem. Instead of melting all the ice over the entire road, they could melt paths in the ice instead, breaking it into smaller chunks which are easier to deal with and melt faster. Also, I'm wondering if there would be a significant difference between the amount of energy necessary to actually melt that layer of ice, and the amount of energy necessary to prevent it from forming in the first place.
I was thinking along those lines as well. It seems to me that since most roadways are already lined with power lines, batteries would only be used to store power in the winter to be used to melt snow and ice. Instead of using electricity, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to hollow out tubular sheets in the glass where the tires are prone to travel over maybe with a highly reflective undercoating. You could run some kind of thermally absorbing liquid through the tubes and superheat it. In the summer you could probably use the liquid to power a generator, in the winter it would keep snow and ice from accumulating.
If you made the surface with a friction, it would reduce it's ability to absorb light.
I'm not so sure about that, smooth surfaces tend to be more reflective than matted ones, and in any case, it is likely that any surface used would roughen over time regardless.
I get nervous crossing metal grated bridges. My car sways as it grabs traction on the not quite straight lines in the road. What's going to happen when it becomes impossible to stop, accelerate, or turn (lane change). It's a pending disaster. A little rain, and it's a disaster for safe driving.
You're bringing up situations that arise because the tires your car uses to grip the road weren't designed to perform well on those surfaces, they were designed to perform on asphalt. Correspondingly, there would probably some tire design changes necessary, but I'm guessing it probably wouldn't be too drastic, as I would imagine that roughened surfaces (probably some form of plexiglass) would be necessary to deal with the elements as well.
It's obvious where trucks frequent an area, the ditches created by their weight, even in asphault, would destroy the panels.
If the panels were silicon based, perhaps they would be damaged, depending on how thick the covering is. My guess is they will employ some form of thin film solar PV technology -- the article did mention the collectors were only 15% efficient, and TF is a better performer in terms of cost efficiency. Actually, they could probably use piezoelectric backing material as well, which might be why doing this on roadways is pereferrable to medians.
I'll be happy to stick with the current internet system that is out there. I like the idea that I can hook a computer on it, and instantly become a peer with any other computer out there, no matter if it is a farm kid on dial up, or a massive corporation's data center.
The reason you can do that now is because the internet 'grew up' protected by govt regulation that required net neutrality. That situation no longer exists, and the corprate masters you talk about are now in the process of testing the waters to see if they can get away with changing the paradigm to the benefit of their own pocket books at even greater expense to the consumer.
The situation the person in the topic article decribed was created by those corprate masters. A previous administration/govt deregulated the industry and gave the telco's a lot of taxpayer money to upgrade infrastructure and services, and industry for the most part hasn't responded. So now we are in a situation where we need to ensure that net neutrality continues; so giving a federal agency the mandate with the requisite responsibility, resources, and authority seems to me a good idea. Along with authority comes accountability; we haven't seen industry act responsibilty, so we really have little to lose, and much to gain.
but in the end it comes down to efficiency: Plants capture at best 1-2% of incident solar radiation, and we already have MUCH better collectors.
Not just efficiency, but also cost. There are about 85000 TW of total insolation on the surface of the earth. If we used only vegetation to generate all the worlds power, we would need 25% of the world's vegetation to provide enough power to meet current world demand. We also have land to use which we could grow, or un-used land with vegetation we could use for power generation here in the US. In fact, according to the US's current energy secretary, biofuels represent the future in US energy production in the next 10-20 years.
Of course it is, and it is utterly dominated by coal (roughly 50% in the USA), and potentially dominated by nuclear. All of the wind+solar+biofuel sources combined do not add up to 1% of our electrical generation, and their present growth rates will not make them significant for decades.
Roughly two decades, which is about the amount of time current nuke plants have left before they are decommissioned (some are already being decommissioned). Nuclear is not a big growth area (at least in the US); wind, solar, and biofuels are. Dr. Chu, while not opposed to nuclear, explains why we need to look elsewhere for future energy production.
Additionally, solar has fair correlation with daily peak loads, but neither wind nor solar are good base load candidates in any but the most theoretical deployments.
That's one of the reasons that the govt has allocated stimulus funds to energy infrastructure development. However, advancements in solar PV will enable more people to install PV panels where they live. Infrastructure enhancements and the electrification of the transportation sector have the potential of solving this problem as well.
If you want to have a public debate with me, don't be a jackass and deliberately misinterpret what I wrote. If you do it again, I won't reply.
Deliberately misinterpret? Isn't that being a little presumptive? My appologies if it seemed like I was patronizing you. My point is that wind and solar are currently being constructed, and in increasing rates. Solar and bio offer the most in terms of potential as well. Nuclear on the other hand, is still in limbo.
Neither wind nor solar is positioned to replace base load plants, though, and my reality beats your theory, here. If you disagree, please post a link to the number of coal and/or nuclear plants scheduled to be shut down now that you have all that wind and solar deployed.
Your reality? If the problem of GW and the solution in the form of clean energy production is left to industry (driven solely by the bottom line) to solve, then indeed, it may never happen -- we need, the political will to force change, and to force it before we reap the consequences of continuing the status quo.
Current nuclear plants will likely be replaced by new plants; however, there will not be significant growth in nuclear in the current environment. They should have worked out the waste disposal problem before they even started building nuclear plants. However, the only approved facility for storing the nation's waste is still about a decade away from accepting material.
Keep in mind that most of the nation's 110 nuclear plants were built in the sixties and seventies, and those plants were only supposed to be in operation for about 40-50 years. In fact some are already operating on extension permits. There have not been any nuclear plants that have been built in the last 20 years, and only 10 are scheduled to recieve approval for construction in the comming decade.
The valuation of incidentals not previously considered (because they didn't factor in to someone's bottom line calculations) will likely be incorporated into the cost of carbon imposed in the new carbon tax
None of the alternatives you mention are within an order of magnitude of replacing coal or nuclear. Biofuels? Are you serious?
Absolutely serious. In fact, there is a pilot plant currently operating in Brazil using bio-engineered organisms that process sugar to make biofuel that is projected to be cost competitive to existing traditional Brazilian biofuel even without govt. subsidies. Furthermore, similar organisms can be designed to convert any waste material in fuel, so they can be adapted for use in other economies.
It's not coal vs. natural gas. NG might scale, but even if you believe there's an adequate supply, it's several times more expensive.
It's not coal vs. anything, or nuclear vs anything. Today's energy economy is a mixture of many sources of energy. However, coal has costs beyond what is accounted for in you pay for in your electric bill, and nuclear is politically untenable thus far, and will continue to be so long as the waste issue remains unresolved.
It's not coal vs. natural gas. NG might scale, but even if you believe there's an adequate supply, it's several times more expensive.
Were that the case, one would expect that there would be more power generated today by nuclear than NG, but that is not the case.
I'm all for wind and solar power (we should be building out as fast as we can) but pretending they're somehow comparable to coal and nuclear is nuts.
Then you need to hurry up and inform the people in states like mine that the new wind and solar plants that they are building don't make economic sense.
Luther, amongst many others, pointed to the papal system as the antichrist (literally meaning "in the stead of Christ").
And thus could be considered as one of the founding fathers of protestantism. The 'doctrine' of the apocalypse is not a Catholic teaching, and misconceptions regarding Revelation are just as common today as they were in the time of the early church through to Luther, Calvin, and any number of churches that branched away from the Catholic church starting at about 500 years ago (about the time the bible started to be circulated in print). Until that time, the Christian church was largely one: the Roman Catholic church; the Eastern Orthodox church was the result of a split between the bishops about 500 years after Christ, but from then to about 1500AD, they were the only other recognized Christian church in existance.
Mark of the beast (on the right hand and forehead) is interpreted to symbolise a certain way of thinking and acting - indoctrination that salvation is attained through "the church" and not through Christ, with all the accompanying abuses of power.
Not exactly. Christ did establish a Church, just not a walled church. More generally speaking, the mark of the beast is a reference to sin. Anyone who accepts sin, can be called an anti-Christ. Usually, you will find them in churches, professing Christ (though quite poorly). Though sometimes, you find them in discussion forums and comboxes too.
Persecution of christians under the Roman empire pales in comparison to persecution under the Roman church.
Are you referring to the persectution faced by members of the Catholic church in nations with repressive rulers and secular governments? The US isn't that bad, not yet at least. In such cases however, with regard to persecution of religious persons, Christian churches in general tend to be persecuted just as much as those in the Catholic church. Note that I'm Catholic, so I'm not trying to imply that Catholic's are not Christians.
Single currency? Not sure, never heard of that one.
You probably haven't. It is most like most misunderstood as a goal along the lines of "novus ordo seculorum". That's not saying that it won't happen... indeed, satan has a history of attempting to pervert the understanding of Revelation through secular organizations as well as established churches; a history that extends back to the beginings of the Church, in the Roman empire.
The rest of the world stores the byproducts safely on site, and there's no reason we can't do the same.
In one year your typical US nuclear power plant produces about 20 metric tons of nuclear waste. They typically store this on site already, however once they run out of capacity to store the waste, they either have to shut down, or ship it out to some storage facility. Since there is currently not enough room to store all the waste that is generated, some plants have had to shut down prematurely.
There is a storage facility that in yucca mountain that has been in legal/political limbo for decades that was supposed to be used to store nuclear waste from civil power plants. Since the government entered into contracts with plant operators to store waste there, and cannot, the taxpayer is now, in addition to paying for the storage facility which is not being used, paying nuclear plant operators to hold on to their waste. Furthermore, because the facility isn't projected to be accepting waste for at least another ten years, waste will become an even bigger problem than it is now.
Individual plant operators are going to be responsible for storing and dispoing of their waste. Because of past bottom line oriented behavior demonstrated by some power companies, watchdog groups are concerned that the power companies will not honor their responsibilities to safely decommission the plants. Power companies aren't allowed to reprocess any of their nuclear waste either, for fear that byproducts might be sold to terrorists.
Don't get to thinking that the new reactor designs are going to save us either. Breeder reactor's aren't really used in the US because of problems encountered when they were initially run, and because they are viewed by nuclear power providers as being too expensive in comparision to traditional PWR reactors. If you look at the reactors that GE wants to build with stimulus funds, you'll find they are mearly improvements on existing tech.
Burning coal (the only practical alternative to nuclear)...
That's BS. There are a number of practical alternatives emerging in the marketplace, including natural gas, biofuels, and wind and solar (depending on where you live). Even burning coal doesn't have to be dirty.
I have no idea what ISP services a subscriber base as large as your numbers suggest and has that kind of BW requirement to meet. I can tell you about my experience with internet access service.
I have a dial-up account that provides (advertises) service at $12/month. Assuming my ISP uses an OC-3 to connect me to the internet, then they have the ability to guarranty about 2700 customers a minimum BW of 56kbps. 2700 customers paying $12/mo means they can afford to lease an OC-3 at about $33,000/mo. There is no reason whatsoever then for my ISP to throttle my 56k connection by half, and yet they do, and have done so for months on end. If ISP's have blown this problem out of proportion in the broadband market, then they have oversold their capacity -- I don't care what it costs.
There are already laws against false advertising. It appears as though they are not enforced.
I don't think I like the idea of making the FCC the sole agency responsible for investigating violations against net neutrality laws either. I imagine this legislation is going to cost a lot and I don't know that the FCC is going to be able to devote the resources necessary to ensure sufficient enforcement. Congress could easily pass this bill while axing it at the same time, simply by cutting the FCC's budget, and appointing an industry friendly FCC commissioner.
The bill doesn't prevent ISP's from establishing teired service levels, or employing BW caps as part 'reasonable network management' practice. It simply prevents them from discriminating based upon source, method, or content type.
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Speaking as someone who worked in a federal bureaucracy and was frustrated by management, I can tell you that the temptation to goof off is tremendous. My solution was to quit, however these people were a bit more clever I think. 1800 sites in two weeks, a hard drive full of porn and dvd's burned with not but porn??? A dollar to a dime this was done in protest. Think of the irony: an agency full of naked people where they are cloaked from above.
It took the better part of a decade for the White House to side with privacy interests over law enforcement.
My guess is that the reason that it took govt. so long to come around to attempting to strengthen privacy regulations is that they have managed to figure out how to circumvent any such restrictions that they impose upon themselves without too much cost. One could always employ foreign governments to spy on one's own citizens. There would be issues with regard to legal admissability of evidence obtained thusly, but I imagine that wouldn't be too difficult for a national intelligence agency to work around.
IMHO, personal privacy is largely a myth and will remain as much.
operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network.
as I indicated earlier -- it will pose a series of detailed questions on how the Internet openness principles should apply to mobile broadband.
The chairmanis in the process of determining what princples the FCC will be enforcing, and is questioning the extent to which mobile providers will be regulated. What I'm wondering is wether or not vendors (who also provide internet services, like ATT) will be required to open the phone market up by eliminating exclusive arrangemnets with phone manufacturers to sell locked phones.
I currently have an unlocked Nokia phone, but in order to get the access plan I wan't (pay as you go), I have to use one of a small collection of phones that ATT offers. My phone is technically capable of accessing the internet through ATT's network, so I should be able to buy any plan I want for my "non-harmful" device to access the internet.
Of course gravity is a force. F=mA, or, a force causes a certain mass to accelerate by a certain amount. IIRC, the gravitational model Einstein developed was something like a sheet being streched out across space. Objects (like those that make up our planetary solar system) rest on this 'sheet' and create 'wells'. Thus, objects that are close enough to each other will slide down the well, experiencing higher attractive, "pulling", force. However, such traditionally observed gravitational forces are not predominate on all scales. In other words, gravity seems to behave differently depending on what scale you are looking at.
It was once assumed that the universe was contracting towards some central 'big bang' point because it was assumed that this model held universally. However, we know that at the atomic level, there are grvitational forces that repel particals. Towards the opposite end of the scale, because the universe is expanding, we know that there is a point at which gravity changes from an attractive to a repulsive force as well. Thus, one could say that we exist in a 'sheet' of gravitation law.
In fact, the recent discoveries that show the universe is expanding is where the concept of "dark matter" producing "dark energy" comes from. We dont exactly know how the laws of gravity apply on different scales.
Traditionally speaking, I would think the existance of gravitational waves to be easily verifiable. I suspect that the experiments described in this article are designed to probe the limits of what we know in order to determine exactly how gravity behaves on previously unobserved scales.
I noticed the same thing with my '91 nissan sentra. The car had a computer that produced trouble codes, but if I wanted to use them to diagnose problems, I needed to buy a separate computer to plug in to a proprietary data port to read the data. The computer was expensive, for a consumer, but IIRC, at least I could have bought it from nissan had I wanted to.
I would think that information should be easily available to the consumer. Allowing companies to claim it as proprietary data seems anti-competitive, and it should be illegal. People should ask their legislators to require automakers to provide clear and open diagnostic info; not just for the sake of independent auto repair shops, but the the benefit of the general consumer.
Stationary water = prone to problems. I was taught as a youngster to turn on the faucet and wait 15 seconds before drinking. Nowadays, I drink mostly bottled water. Local and eviro-friendly packaging if possible/affordable.
I thought the phrases were used conjuctively. Waxing refering to a preservative action to something diminishing. Like waxing a dead body, or waxing poetic.
Yup, sure, he gave away these nice expensive seeds for humanitarian reasons. Problem is, many people in these countries don't want GM seed. So how many people are stepping up to the plate to donate free organic seed to those who want it?
I also question whether or not the seeds he made actually produced food that was better for the people. That was the claim for his work, but recent studies done regarding GM seed in the US have shown that organic is actually better for you, even if there is little difference in traditionally measured nutrients.
I find it interesting to hear people talking about how every "developed nation" in the world currently has the capability to produce not only enough food to feed their own populations, but excess as well. I find myself wondering how it is that we have to convert these people to a GM seed base now. Do we expect to get the additional 3 billion people in the world (in the next 50 years) through undeveloped nations that haven't the capability to grow their own food without GM products because of climate change?
Have you tried X3? I too was looking for a follow on to elite, and in manyt ways, found that X3 was a suitable replacement. The early releases were quite buggy, so the game didn't become very popular. However, the game is now very mature with various mods for it having been developed by the community. It's an old single player only game, but the online community for it is very much active.
The report indicated that support is growing, not waxing.
Why not just drill a large hole into a subduction zone and drop it off in there.
Expense? Difficulty of securing the waste byproducts? LWR waste can be reprocessed into material used for building nuclear weapons. Right now, FBR's can't be built in the US, and probably won't be buildable in the near future. Early attempts at FBR's were problematic and the tech is still in development. All the new reactors planned to be built in the US are still just advancements on current LWR tech. So we need to figure out what to do with the waste ensuring that it won't be a problem to the environment thousands to millions of years down the road, or simply wait until we develop the tech to ensure that waste wont be a problem. The pol's want to close yukka, which means that the govt will be doling out money to nuke plant operators to keep the waste stored locally at the plants.
Then again I also never understood why if nuclear waste is still putting off energy, why not just use the waste as an energy source? Storing the waste in pools that have to be constantly chilled just seems so backasswards.
My guess is that they probably re-use the water used to cool spent rods to pre-heat the liquid they use to run the generator turbines, so it's not a complete waste. However, existing designs are decades old and many plants were not planning on storing waste locally since the govt. was supposed to have their storage facility operational at least a decade ago, so they may not have been designed to make full use of what they now have, if they do that at all.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares end up tilling the ground for others. It has never not been that way. Why would it be any different now?
Really, you have no idea. It's a rather simple matter to convince people to take up arms against 'the enemy'. Allied sanctions against Germany as a result of WW1, which itself was a result of... were used as a pretext to convince the people that 'the west' (true or not) needed to be thrown off forcibly.
If you want to go off and rip up someone else's soil for the sake of 'the motherland' or whatever the pol of day drems up to achieve whatever goal they have in mind, then I won't stop you. As for me, I follow a different lead, One that tells me that the use of evil means to achieve good ends is itself evil.
Regardless of people may think, military service is a part of the death industry. The same people that ask for you to serve "your country" are often responsible for creating the problem to begin with. If you're a Christian, you should know better.
A truely scientific study would measure the amount of brain damage a person had prior to entering the military and figure out how to discount brain damage accrued as a result of non-combat related factors associated with being in the military.
Of course, I can imagine a different approach to the ice problem. Instead of melting all the ice over the entire road, they could melt paths in the ice instead, breaking it into smaller chunks which are easier to deal with and melt faster. Also, I'm wondering if there would be a significant difference between the amount of energy necessary to actually melt that layer of ice, and the amount of energy necessary to prevent it from forming in the first place.
I was thinking along those lines as well. It seems to me that since most roadways are already lined with power lines, batteries would only be used to store power in the winter to be used to melt snow and ice. Instead of using electricity, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to hollow out tubular sheets in the glass where the tires are prone to travel over maybe with a highly reflective undercoating. You could run some kind of thermally absorbing liquid through the tubes and superheat it. In the summer you could probably use the liquid to power a generator, in the winter it would keep snow and ice from accumulating.
And why not? Sun = 1000W/m^2
The global average figure for insolation is actually closer to 1370W/m^2. I'm guessing that in the US, it's pretty close to that.
If you made the surface with a friction, it would reduce it's ability to absorb light.
I'm not so sure about that, smooth surfaces tend to be more reflective than matted ones, and in any case, it is likely that any surface used would roughen over time regardless.
I get nervous crossing metal grated bridges. My car sways as it grabs traction on the not quite straight lines in the road. What's going to happen when it becomes impossible to stop, accelerate, or turn (lane change). It's a pending disaster. A little rain, and it's a disaster for safe driving.
You're bringing up situations that arise because the tires your car uses to grip the road weren't designed to perform well on those surfaces, they were designed to perform on asphalt. Correspondingly, there would probably some tire design changes necessary, but I'm guessing it probably wouldn't be too drastic, as I would imagine that roughened surfaces (probably some form of plexiglass) would be necessary to deal with the elements as well.
It's obvious where trucks frequent an area, the ditches created by their weight, even in asphault, would destroy the panels.
If the panels were silicon based, perhaps they would be damaged, depending on how thick the covering is. My guess is they will employ some form of thin film solar PV technology -- the article did mention the collectors were only 15% efficient, and TF is a better performer in terms of cost efficiency. Actually, they could probably use piezoelectric backing material as well, which might be why doing this on roadways is pereferrable to medians.
I'll be happy to stick with the current internet system that is out there. I like the idea that I can hook a computer on it, and instantly become a peer with any other computer out there, no matter if it is a farm kid on dial up, or a massive corporation's data center.
The reason you can do that now is because the internet 'grew up' protected by govt regulation that required net neutrality. That situation no longer exists, and the corprate masters you talk about are now in the process of testing the waters to see if they can get away with changing the paradigm to the benefit of their own pocket books at even greater expense to the consumer.
The situation the person in the topic article decribed was created by those corprate masters. A previous administration/govt deregulated the industry and gave the telco's a lot of taxpayer money to upgrade infrastructure and services, and industry for the most part hasn't responded. So now we are in a situation where we need to ensure that net neutrality continues; so giving a federal agency the mandate with the requisite responsibility, resources, and authority seems to me a good idea. Along with authority comes accountability; we haven't seen industry act responsibilty, so we really have little to lose, and much to gain.
but in the end it comes down to efficiency: Plants capture at best 1-2% of incident solar radiation, and we already have MUCH better collectors.
Not just efficiency, but also cost. There are about 85000 TW of total insolation on the surface of the earth. If we used only vegetation to generate all the worlds power, we would need 25% of the world's vegetation to provide enough power to meet current world demand. We also have land to use which we could grow, or un-used land with vegetation we could use for power generation here in the US. In fact, according to the US's current energy secretary, biofuels represent the future in US energy production in the next 10-20 years.
Of course it is, and it is utterly dominated by coal (roughly 50% in the USA), and potentially dominated by nuclear. All of the wind+solar+biofuel sources combined do not add up to 1% of our electrical generation, and their present growth rates will not make them significant for decades.
Roughly two decades, which is about the amount of time current nuke plants have left before they are decommissioned (some are already being decommissioned). Nuclear is not a big growth area (at least in the US); wind, solar, and biofuels are. Dr. Chu, while not opposed to nuclear, explains why we need to look elsewhere for future energy production.
Additionally, solar has fair correlation with daily peak loads, but neither wind nor solar are good base load candidates in any but the most theoretical deployments.
That's one of the reasons that the govt has allocated stimulus funds to energy infrastructure development. However, advancements in solar PV will enable more people to install PV panels where they live. Infrastructure enhancements and the electrification of the transportation sector have the potential of solving this problem as well.
If you want to have a public debate with me, don't be a jackass and deliberately misinterpret what I wrote. If you do it again, I won't reply.
Deliberately misinterpret? Isn't that being a little presumptive? My appologies if it seemed like I was patronizing you. My point is that wind and solar are currently being constructed, and in increasing rates. Solar and bio offer the most in terms of potential as well. Nuclear on the other hand, is still in limbo.
Neither wind nor solar is positioned to replace base load plants, though, and my reality beats your theory, here. If you disagree, please post a link to the number of coal and/or nuclear plants scheduled to be shut down now that you have all that wind and solar deployed.
Your reality? If the problem of GW and the solution in the form of clean energy production is left to industry (driven solely by the bottom line) to solve, then indeed, it may never happen -- we need, the political will to force change, and to force it before we reap the consequences of continuing the status quo.
Current nuclear plants will likely be replaced by new plants; however, there will not be significant growth in nuclear in the current environment. They should have worked out the waste disposal problem before they even started building nuclear plants. However, the only approved facility for storing the nation's waste is still about a decade away from accepting material.
Keep in mind that most of the nation's 110 nuclear plants were built in the sixties and seventies, and those plants were only supposed to be in operation for about 40-50 years. In fact some are already operating on extension permits. There have not been any nuclear plants that have been built in the last 20 years, and only 10 are scheduled to recieve approval for construction in the comming decade.
The valuation of incidentals not previously considered (because they didn't factor in to someone's bottom line calculations) will likely be incorporated into the cost of carbon imposed in the new carbon tax
None of the alternatives you mention are within an order of magnitude of replacing coal or nuclear. Biofuels? Are you serious?
Absolutely serious. In fact, there is a pilot plant currently operating in Brazil using bio-engineered organisms that process sugar to make biofuel that is projected to be cost competitive to existing traditional Brazilian biofuel even without govt. subsidies. Furthermore, similar organisms can be designed to convert any waste material in fuel, so they can be adapted for use in other economies.
It's not coal vs. natural gas. NG might scale, but even if you believe there's an adequate supply, it's several times more expensive.
It's not coal vs. anything, or nuclear vs anything. Today's energy economy is a mixture of many sources of energy. However, coal has costs beyond what is accounted for in you pay for in your electric bill, and nuclear is politically untenable thus far, and will continue to be so long as the waste issue remains unresolved.
It's not coal vs. natural gas. NG might scale, but even if you believe there's an adequate supply, it's several times more expensive.
Were that the case, one would expect that there would be more power generated today by nuclear than NG, but that is not the case.
I'm all for wind and solar power (we should be building out as fast as we can) but pretending they're somehow comparable to coal and nuclear is nuts.
Then you need to hurry up and inform the people in states like mine that the new wind and solar plants that they are building don't make economic sense.
Luther, amongst many others, pointed to the papal system as the antichrist (literally meaning "in the stead of Christ").
And thus could be considered as one of the founding fathers of protestantism. The 'doctrine' of the apocalypse is not a Catholic teaching, and misconceptions regarding Revelation are just as common today as they were in the time of the early church through to Luther, Calvin, and any number of churches that branched away from the Catholic church starting at about 500 years ago (about the time the bible started to be circulated in print). Until that time, the Christian church was largely one: the Roman Catholic church; the Eastern Orthodox church was the result of a split between the bishops about 500 years after Christ, but from then to about 1500AD, they were the only other recognized Christian church in existance.
Mark of the beast (on the right hand and forehead) is interpreted to symbolise a certain way of thinking and acting - indoctrination that salvation is attained through "the church" and not through Christ, with all the accompanying abuses of power.
Not exactly. Christ did establish a Church, just not a walled church. More generally speaking, the mark of the beast is a reference to sin. Anyone who accepts sin, can be called an anti-Christ. Usually, you will find them in churches, professing Christ (though quite poorly). Though sometimes, you find them in discussion forums and comboxes too.
Persecution of christians under the Roman empire pales in comparison to persecution under the Roman church.
Are you referring to the persectution faced by members of the Catholic church in nations with repressive rulers and secular governments? The US isn't that bad, not yet at least. In such cases however, with regard to persecution of religious persons, Christian churches in general tend to be persecuted just as much as those in the Catholic church. Note that I'm Catholic, so I'm not trying to imply that Catholic's are not Christians.
Single currency? Not sure, never heard of that one.
You probably haven't. It is most like most misunderstood as a goal along the lines of "novus ordo seculorum". That's not saying that it won't happen... indeed, satan has a history of attempting to pervert the understanding of Revelation through secular organizations as well as established churches; a history that extends back to the beginings of the Church, in the Roman empire.
The rest of the world stores the byproducts safely on site, and there's no reason we can't do the same.
In one year your typical US nuclear power plant produces about 20 metric tons of nuclear waste. They typically store this on site already, however once they run out of capacity to store the waste, they either have to shut down, or ship it out to some storage facility. Since there is currently not enough room to store all the waste that is generated, some plants have had to shut down prematurely.
There is a storage facility that in yucca mountain that has been in legal/political limbo for decades that was supposed to be used to store nuclear waste from civil power plants. Since the government entered into contracts with plant operators to store waste there, and cannot, the taxpayer is now, in addition to paying for the storage facility which is not being used, paying nuclear plant operators to hold on to their waste. Furthermore, because the facility isn't projected to be accepting waste for at least another ten years, waste will become an even bigger problem than it is now.
Individual plant operators are going to be responsible for storing and dispoing of their waste. Because of past bottom line oriented behavior demonstrated by some power companies, watchdog groups are concerned that the power companies will not honor their responsibilities to safely decommission the plants. Power companies aren't allowed to reprocess any of their nuclear waste either, for fear that byproducts might be sold to terrorists.
Don't get to thinking that the new reactor designs are going to save us either. Breeder reactor's aren't really used in the US because of problems encountered when they were initially run, and because they are viewed by nuclear power providers as being too expensive in comparision to traditional PWR reactors. If you look at the reactors that GE wants to build with stimulus funds, you'll find they are mearly improvements on existing tech.
Burning coal (the only practical alternative to nuclear)...
That's BS. There are a number of practical alternatives emerging in the marketplace, including natural gas, biofuels, and wind and solar (depending on where you live). Even burning coal doesn't have to be dirty.
I have no idea what ISP services a subscriber base as large as your numbers suggest and has that kind of BW requirement to meet. I can tell you about my experience with internet access service.
I have a dial-up account that provides (advertises) service at $12/month. Assuming my ISP uses an OC-3 to connect me to the internet, then they have the ability to guarranty about 2700 customers a minimum BW of 56kbps. 2700 customers paying $12/mo means they can afford to lease an OC-3 at about $33,000/mo. There is no reason whatsoever then for my ISP to throttle my 56k connection by half, and yet they do, and have done so for months on end. If ISP's have blown this problem out of proportion in the broadband market, then they have oversold their capacity -- I don't care what it costs.
There are already laws against false advertising. It appears as though they are not enforced. I don't think I like the idea of making the FCC the sole agency responsible for investigating violations against net neutrality laws either. I imagine this legislation is going to cost a lot and I don't know that the FCC is going to be able to devote the resources necessary to ensure sufficient enforcement. Congress could easily pass this bill while axing it at the same time, simply by cutting the FCC's budget, and appointing an industry friendly FCC commissioner.
The bill doesn't prevent ISP's from establishing teired service levels, or employing BW caps as part 'reasonable network management' practice. It simply prevents them from discriminating based upon source, method, or content type.