The 90-99 eMPG ratings of the LEAF and the Volt are highly misleading. Electricity is not generated at anything close to 100 percent conversion of chemical energy in fuels, so the 30+ kWHr equivalent to a gallon of gas doesn't help in comparisons.
The lead-acid battery GM EV-1 was supposed to get 100 miles on a 10 kWHr charge (yeah, yeah, YMMV). The folks I knew "in the business" of EV's at the time considered 10 kWHr as a rough equivalent to a gallon of gas and told people that that EV-1 was essentially a 100 MPG car from an energy consumption perspective. The EV-1 would get 300 eMPG on the new EPA rating.
By this reckoning, the Tesla Roadster is 50 MPG and the LEAF and Volt are in the mid 30's. Heck, I used to drive a Toyolet (GM-Toyota joint venture car) that got in the low 30's in town and mid 40's on the road.
Besides, I thought everything equal, the electric car was supposed to cut out the energy drain of idling the gas engine and regen braking was supposed to recapture energy lost in stopping. Why are the new cars such energy hogs? Is it a cost/benefit relation that making another true 100 eMPG car like the EV1 requires more efficient and expensive motors and motor controllers?
OK, OK, garbage collection and portable byte code.
uh, the JIT, yes, the JIT
Well alright, garbage collection, portable byte code, the JIT . . .
. . . and libraries. Lots and lots of libraries. And exception handling and stack traces tied to source-code line numbers. Used to be you had a runtime exception and you had to be up all night. We get to go home at night now.
My understanding is that the moons of Jupiter are not human-habitable with any current technology on account of fierce charged particle radiation from the strong magnetic fields. Do I have this right, or does this only apply to Io, which is in one of the radiation belts?
Combination of faster burn rate and direct fuel injection into the cylinder right before ignition.
Fast burn has been around for some time -- how do you think they got compression ratios up to around 10.5:1 from the power-anemic 8.5:1, all on 87 octane no-lead gas.
Direct injection has also been around for some time -- it has been a question of cost and that you could run gas engines at 10.5:1, heretofore premium-leaded-gas '60's muscle car territory.
My Uncle Laszlo at Ford Motor who had worked on fast-burn and direct injection going back to the 1960's was of the opinion that an "optimal" compression ratio was 13:1 -- higher than that and you started boosting engine friction. The pre-chamber auto engines ran something like 22:1 (early VW Rabbit Diesel), but they needed that for starting, but the newer direct-injection (DI and TDI) Diesels run much lower.
At the time of the first oil crisis in 1973, there was a big Federal demonstration project involving active solar-thermal home heating. The idea is that you had pretty much a conventional house, but you tacked on this system with big rooftop solar collectors, anti-freeze coolant loops, pumps, heat exchangers, thermal storage, backup heat system, etc. etc. High-tech solution, big up front costs, big maintenance costs.
Thing is that there has been a massive increase in energy efficiency in people's houses since that time -- this is one of the success stories regarding being green -- but active solar systems are rare. People just put in more insulation, tightened air leaks, developed new construction methods and building codes -- pretty low tech.
Given that you need backup heat in a solar home, the low-tech increased insulation route was much more cost effective for the same savings as the 1970's active solar homes. Yeah, yeah, you could do both solar and insulation and save even more. But I am comparing what people thought you should do in 1974 vs what actually took place.
There is just so much opportunity for electric energy savings in houses that simply throwing on a PV panel is your high-tech waste of money. For example, people who need to air condition in Florida are putting up these 5 kW peak PV panels. If they simply followed the low-tech route of efficienct air conditioning recommended by the Florida Solar Energy Research Center, their electric bills after the mods would be the same, with 1/5 the money spent.
Yeah, yeah, you could do the mods and do solar too. But that is not what people are doing. There is simply gobs of subsidy thrown at the PV panels, the green wienies hire some pirates to throw up the panels, they call it a day, and sit back and think how they are saving the planet.
But I think the important thing is that the John Galt character is not autobiographical of the author Ayn Rand. The biographical material suggests that "self important rich, privileged . . . " is the sort of Mr. Right (excuse the pun) Ms. Rand was looking for, perhaps along the lines of some manner of sado-masochistic fantasy "exploit me! Please, please, exploit me!"
As every school child knows, the way you make an H-bomb is that you set an A-bomb next to a bunch of deuterium, and when the A-bomb goes off, the intense heat and radiation fuses the deuterium. I think there was an old Mission Impossible episode where the bad guys built an H-bomb on this principle, where when you see the Mission Impossible folks make their getaway at the end, the H-bomb was kept inside the Caltech Millikan Library.
Actually, Teller thought for the longest time you could make an H-bomb this way, kind of like making a big high-explosive bomb by putting some dynamite next to a bunch of fertilizer or some such thing. It was known as the Classical Super (bomb). One of the contributions of the early generation computers was showing that the Classical Super would never work, that is, unless you fortified it with gobs of tritium, making it completely impractical. That you could get tritium to fuse with deuterium had already been demonstrated, by boosted A-bombs in the US, by the Layer Cake, known as Sakharaov's First Idea in Russia, but this was hardly what people had in mind for a Super bomb.
The details of what both the US, Russia, and maybe Britain, France, and China got to work as a staged nuclear bomb are somewhat sketchy, and whether this is truly a fusion bomb or a monster fusion-boosted fission bomb is a matter of controversy, but the actual H-bomb is believed to be out-of-the box thinking from the Classical Super.
Some engineering intuition tells me the Tokamak is the Classical Super of controlled fusion -- something that will work if you throw enough tritium at it, but the tritium requirement making the Tokamak impractical -- think breeding time and EROEI -- much as the Classical Super was ultimately impractical as a bomb.
I am not finding it, but I swear there was an SCTV sketch of a Swedish detective "Klaag", not armed with a gun but with a signature heel-less shoe, taking his adversary out by conking him on the head. Of course the "promo" for the TV series shows SCTV actor Joe Flaherty kicking, such shoe flying through the air, and then the would-be criminal on the ground, holding his head in pain.
In my opinion, having two pilots (used to be three -- flight engineer) is a matter of dealing with the workload, so a single pilot does not get "behind the airplane" when things get busy, either in normal or emergency situations.
Can you imagine the US Air flight that ditched into the Hudson River operating on one pilot? You need the "other guy" to run checklists.
Was that a recurrent, annoying joke of the late John Candy on the SCTV comedy show, where he was constantly thrusting his hands towards the camera to highlight the 3D effect? The parent post is reality imitating art.
To compromise a dude with a fine-looking chick is a tool of spycraft as old as the hills, and certainly one practiced in WW-II (look up "Cynthia") as well as the Cold War.
See the thing is, one of the two babes works for CIA, and the other one (yes, the one with the crooked teeth) works for MI-5, and this dustup is the result of a turf war between the two agencies.
So what happens when the dude gets married to the virtual girl friend, who maxes out all of your joint virtual credit cards, and then you get a virtual divorce where you are taken to the virtual cleaners?
And the worst part is, when all is done, you are left with virtually nothing.
Only a 37 percent reduction in DWI recidivism? What kind of quiche-eating level of effectiveness is that?
I mean, how hard is it to hack these interlocks. If not with having a kid (with no choice in the matter) to "blow for Daddy", how hard is it to have an air pump blow into one of these things? Does the thing measure for breath temperature and humidity? How hard is it to fake that?
I am not suggesting that people violate the law and circumvent these devices. It is just that the concept is so lame, it invites circumvention by the remaining 63 percent of the users of these things.
I am saying that the only reason Feynman scored that low is that he brought his smart-alec attitude into the test. Kinda like the guy who fails the eye test because the letters he is reading are from the fine-print company address below the last line on the chart.
Because in the words of John Rowe, CEO of electric power generation company Exelon and a "believer" in the need to reduce carbon emissions, "Wind is a natural gas play."
Owing to the intermittent nature of wind, the need for 100% backup of generating capacity, and the ability to provide at most 20% of total electricity, wind is a way to in effect get an extra increment in efficiency in a natural-gas based electric power generation economy. As such, you can ascribe to wind power all of the evils you ascribe to natural gas production, only, about 20% less.
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The lead-acid battery GM EV-1 was supposed to get 100 miles on a 10 kWHr charge (yeah, yeah, YMMV). The folks I knew "in the business" of EV's at the time considered 10 kWHr as a rough equivalent to a gallon of gas and told people that that EV-1 was essentially a 100 MPG car from an energy consumption perspective. The EV-1 would get 300 eMPG on the new EPA rating.
By this reckoning, the Tesla Roadster is 50 MPG and the LEAF and Volt are in the mid 30's. Heck, I used to drive a Toyolet (GM-Toyota joint venture car) that got in the low 30's in town and mid 40's on the road.
Besides, I thought everything equal, the electric car was supposed to cut out the energy drain of idling the gas engine and regen braking was supposed to recapture energy lost in stopping. Why are the new cars such energy hogs? Is it a cost/benefit relation that making another true 100 eMPG car like the EV1 requires more efficient and expensive motors and motor controllers?
country represents . . . you!
Ok, garbage collection.
. . . and portable byte code . . .
OK, OK, garbage collection and portable byte code.
uh, the JIT, yes, the JIT
Well alright, garbage collection, portable byte code, the JIT . . .
. . . and libraries. Lots and lots of libraries. And exception handling and stack traces tied to source-code line numbers. Used to be you had a runtime exception and you had to be up all night. We get to go home at night now.
The publicity photo reminds me of Monty Python's Trim Jeans sketch, somehow.
You ever seen a Russkie drinking water, Mandrake?
My understanding is that the moons of Jupiter are not human-habitable with any current technology on account of fierce charged particle radiation from the strong magnetic fields. Do I have this right, or does this only apply to Io, which is in one of the radiation belts?
Fast burn has been around for some time -- how do you think they got compression ratios up to around 10.5:1 from the power-anemic 8.5:1, all on 87 octane no-lead gas.
Direct injection has also been around for some time -- it has been a question of cost and that you could run gas engines at 10.5:1, heretofore premium-leaded-gas '60's muscle car territory.
My Uncle Laszlo at Ford Motor who had worked on fast-burn and direct injection going back to the 1960's was of the opinion that an "optimal" compression ratio was 13:1 -- higher than that and you started boosting engine friction. The pre-chamber auto engines ran something like 22:1 (early VW Rabbit Diesel), but they needed that for starting, but the newer direct-injection (DI and TDI) Diesels run much lower.
The obligatory "I'ts GNU/Linux that is dead on the desktop!"
Thing is that there has been a massive increase in energy efficiency in people's houses since that time -- this is one of the success stories regarding being green -- but active solar systems are rare. People just put in more insulation, tightened air leaks, developed new construction methods and building codes -- pretty low tech.
Given that you need backup heat in a solar home, the low-tech increased insulation route was much more cost effective for the same savings as the 1970's active solar homes. Yeah, yeah, you could do both solar and insulation and save even more. But I am comparing what people thought you should do in 1974 vs what actually took place.
There is just so much opportunity for electric energy savings in houses that simply throwing on a PV panel is your high-tech waste of money. For example, people who need to air condition in Florida are putting up these 5 kW peak PV panels. If they simply followed the low-tech route of efficienct air conditioning recommended by the Florida Solar Energy Research Center, their electric bills after the mods would be the same, with 1/5 the money spent.
Yeah, yeah, you could do the mods and do solar too. But that is not what people are doing. There is simply gobs of subsidy thrown at the PV panels, the green wienies hire some pirates to throw up the panels, they call it a day, and sit back and think how they are saving the planet.
Feh, the next thing you are going to tell me is that Linux won't work with 48 or more cores!
But I think the important thing is that the John Galt character is not autobiographical of the author Ayn Rand. The biographical material suggests that "self important rich, privileged . . . " is the sort of Mr. Right (excuse the pun) Ms. Rand was looking for, perhaps along the lines of some manner of sado-masochistic fantasy "exploit me! Please, please, exploit me!"
Share and enjoy!
Actually, Teller thought for the longest time you could make an H-bomb this way, kind of like making a big high-explosive bomb by putting some dynamite next to a bunch of fertilizer or some such thing. It was known as the Classical Super (bomb). One of the contributions of the early generation computers was showing that the Classical Super would never work, that is, unless you fortified it with gobs of tritium, making it completely impractical. That you could get tritium to fuse with deuterium had already been demonstrated, by boosted A-bombs in the US, by the Layer Cake, known as Sakharaov's First Idea in Russia, but this was hardly what people had in mind for a Super bomb.
The details of what both the US, Russia, and maybe Britain, France, and China got to work as a staged nuclear bomb are somewhat sketchy, and whether this is truly a fusion bomb or a monster fusion-boosted fission bomb is a matter of controversy, but the actual H-bomb is believed to be out-of-the box thinking from the Classical Super.
Some engineering intuition tells me the Tokamak is the Classical Super of controlled fusion -- something that will work if you throw enough tritium at it, but the tritium requirement making the Tokamak impractical -- think breeding time and EROEI -- much as the Classical Super was ultimately impractical as a bomb.
I am not finding it, but I swear there was an SCTV sketch of a Swedish detective "Klaag", not armed with a gun but with a signature heel-less shoe, taking his adversary out by conking him on the head. Of course the "promo" for the TV series shows SCTV actor Joe Flaherty kicking, such shoe flying through the air, and then the would-be criminal on the ground, holding his head in pain.
And Al Gore the least sexy?
Can you imagine the US Air flight that ditched into the Hudson River operating on one pilot? You need the "other guy" to run checklists.
Was that a recurrent, annoying joke of the late John Candy on the SCTV comedy show, where he was constantly thrusting his hands towards the camera to highlight the 3D effect? The parent post is reality imitating art.
See the thing is, one of the two babes works for CIA, and the other one (yes, the one with the crooked teeth) works for MI-5, and this dustup is the result of a turf war between the two agencies.
And the worst part is, when all is done, you are left with virtually nothing.
I mean, how hard is it to hack these interlocks. If not with having a kid (with no choice in the matter) to "blow for Daddy", how hard is it to have an air pump blow into one of these things? Does the thing measure for breath temperature and humidity? How hard is it to fake that?
I am not suggesting that people violate the law and circumvent these devices. It is just that the concept is so lame, it invites circumvention by the remaining 63 percent of the users of these things.
welcome our new cephalapod overlords!
Are you telling me that Esperanto (Estperanton == object form?) is like Latin, Russian, Greek, Farsi, and Sanskrit in using freakin' noun declensions?
I am saying that the only reason Feynman scored that low is that he brought his smart-alec attitude into the test. Kinda like the guy who fails the eye test because the letters he is reading are from the fine-print company address below the last line on the chart.
"I have your mother on the phone. I am ordering you to tell her who you are. Good. Now you cannot be blackmailed."
Owing to the intermittent nature of wind, the need for 100% backup of generating capacity, and the ability to provide at most 20% of total electricity, wind is a way to in effect get an extra increment in efficiency in a natural-gas based electric power generation economy. As such, you can ascribe to wind power all of the evils you ascribe to natural gas production, only, about 20% less.