but if you have a read of TFA, it says that along with the downloaded material, was a letter from a "24 year old man" (Asim Kauser is now 25),
So, since he's been in jail for two years, he wrote this note while in jail, and smuggled it out to an accomplice who then stole his flash drive from the evidence locker and put the file on it?
Is there any evidence this letter was actually mailed to anyone? emailed? anything?
Even assuming the letter was real, and the bozo had some intention of mailing it, wouldn't it have made more sense for the cops to have waited till it had been sent (monitoring the bozo all the while), responded to, and then they'd have one more potential problem that could be dealt with (since, after all, sending this letter to anyone seriously would sort of implicate the receiver in the plot, and perhaps even lead to more criminal-types) once and for all....
Otherwise, you sign up for Google and they can treat you however they like, they know none of the other companies will take you off their hands, so why pay you more?
Well, no.
From TFA, all that the various companies seem to have been doing is refraining from calling up workers at competing companies to see if they could get them to switch companies.
Said nothing at all about them restricting themselves from job-hunters who happened to be working for the other guys.
So if you don't like working for Google, and want to get a job with Microsoft (or whoever), what has been going on would have had no effect on you whatsoever.
On the other hand, if you worked for Google, and were happy there, you didn't have to listen to people trying to convince you to come to work for Microsoft calling you up weekly to see if you were interested in switching.
USA can live with 10 aircraft carriers, or perhaps 9
The savings from not having to maintain 1 (or 2) navy armada (aka carrier group) can easily be channeled to build a permanent American moon base
Unlikely. Several carriers are in the yards at any given time.
So, 9 or 10 carriers means six to eight available at any given moment. One in the Med, one in the Indian Ocean, a couple in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic is about minimum.
And that assumes that the operational carriers are at sea basically 100% of the time. With no time for transit to duty stations.
So unless you're good with the notion that the carrier battle group in the western pacific or the med or the Indian Ocean NEVER gets to come home, and the sailors on same never get to see families for their entire enlistment, it won't happen.
That said, there is NO chance of a moon base by 2020. Even if Gingrich got behind for real (promising space activity in Florida campaign speeches is normal - every President since Kennedy has done it, including Obama), there isn't time to develop the heavy-lift capability, much less actually move hardware to the moon - we're actually behind where we were in 1962 right now, in that we're not even in working on a heavy lift vehicle yet....
Conservatism is about stopping the advancement of progressiveness and liberty, or in extreme cases, to roll it back.
You had me up to "liberty". Conservatism seems to like the idea of "liberty". They're not so big on "liberal" or "libertine", which are similar sounding, but mean different things.
The police state is the ultimate conservative institution. And the Patriot Act is one of the police states most powerful weapons.
Wasn't most of the crap in the Patriot Act dealing with data written by John Kerry, a liberal democrat (who was, admittedly, also an ex-prosecutor who was trying to make other prosecutors' jobs easier)?
What if it has a "go find a remote parking site and come back and pick me up at (insert time here)" feature?
Even better would be the "go pick my kids up from school(s) and bring them home" button. I'd have loved to have that capability back when the daughter was young enough to need picking up.
My, how times have changed. I remember when suggesting a compulsory national ID card would have sent conservatives running for their firearms.
Alas, I'm not a conservative.
Nor are we talking about a national ID card. Driver's Licenses, which qualify in every State considering the notion, aren't national. And even if you don't need a driver's license, the DMV will issue you a picture ID in every State I've ever lived in.
Plus there's the University ID, which counts. Military ID. Lots of ways to come up with ID that don't involve a compulsory national ID.
That said, note that I wasn't arguing in favour of ID cards to vote. I was just pointing out that requiring the same sort of identification that many countries (Canada, as an example) already require is considered "racist" here.
Oddly, it's not considered "racist" by the Canadians....
Is there a voting system that isn't vulnerable? Having people show up in person to vote has shown ineffective at keeping the dead from casting a ballot.
Well, you could probably require some sort of picture ID before allowing someone to vote.
But that idea has been deemed to be reactionary and evil, so I guess the dead will continue to vote at the usual rate (which really isn't all that high).
I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling those numbers are for deaths from acute radiation exposure--massive several-hunded rem doses that cause radiation sickness and death in a short time. It would be interesting (if impossible to find out) how many deaths were indirectly related (i.e., cancer caused b y cumulative exposure, etc).
Three of them were definitely cancer or other long term effects of acute radiation exposure (they died within ten years of exposure, but not immediately). The remainder were the death within minutes/days of exposure sort - as I recall, the guy at the fuel rod plant dropped dead within a couple minutes, the SL-1 guys within seconds (and note that one of them may not have died of cancer - he was also impaled by a fuel rod).
Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to pin a cancer death down to cumulative radiation exposure.
I've got cancer. I was exposed, in my lifetime (excluding the CT scans I've gotten since I got cancer) to maybe 10 mrem (sorry, that's the unit the Navy used).
My father-in-law died of cancer. Never exposed to radiation other than what you get from CT scans after you get cancer.
Ditto my mother's father.
My father has cancer (fortunately, in his case it's just skin cancer - he has bits of his skin cut away every once in a while, and otherwise stands to outlive me). Never exposed to radiation.
Even the Chernobyl cases are just guesses based on the assumption that they'd be no more likely to get cancer than anyone else, and are getting cancer a bit more often.
I might also note, having just checked, that there have been ten NFL players who have died as a result of their career choice in the last 65 years.
Given that there are fewer NFL players than nuclear plant workers, looks like working in nuclear power is probably safer than playing football....
That said, you didn't actually contradict GP. Whose main point was that there's not much reason to still be in hospital this long after a radiation exposure - by now you're either dead or fine (for certain values of fine) until you contract cancer. Or get run over by a beer truck.
If a huge company fucks up and causes a $50 billion mess, they might be on the hook for $50 billion, but if a smaller contractor does, they declare bankruptcy, their $500 million in assets get seized, and someone else is responsible for sorting out the remaining $49.5 billion of the mess.
No. At least not in Louisiana.
Don't know about elsewhere, but down here, your employer is liable for anything that happens at his plant that is work-related. So a contractor (employed by a small company) doing work on one of Entergy's nuclear reactors ten miles south-west of here screws up, causes massive meltdown and total loss of New Orleans makes ENTERGY liable (their plant, their (indirect) employee) for billions and billions.
At least in the USA, the number of deaths from exposure to radiation is roughly four in the last 50 years. Those three Navy guys killed when they screwed up SL-1 maintenance, and one guy who died at a fuel rod manufacturing plant.
Before that, of course, there were deaths in Los Alamos due to radiation exposure in several accidents post-WW2 and pre-1960. Half a dozen or so.
Manhattan Project deaths are still classified, I think.
So, ten or so in the last 65 years? Sounds safer than driving to the grocery store....
Let's file that one in the "You don't say!" category. It's like that throughout the entire processing industry. Need to hot tap onto a gas pipeline? Get a contractor. Need to go in a vessel that has an inert atmosphere? Too dangerous, get a contractor.
Once upon a time, on a tour of New Orleans shortly after I moved down here, the tour guide told us that that practice goes back a very long way. Back in the 18th and 19th century, there were jobs that were considered too hazardous for slaves. So they brought in Irishmen to do the work....
The claim is that they falsify the numbers. Not the employer, not the plant, not the government. The worker.
Falsify which numbers? Their SSN? Easily doable, I suppose.
Or were you talking about their dose? Pretty much can't do that, since the dosimeters aren't read by the workers - you turn them in, they get read by a technician elsewhere, the numbers are entered in a database.
Of course, they could just quietly leave their dosimeter outside the work area, but they'll get their asses fired very quickly if discovered. And someone will notice pretty quickly if John Doe consistently gets a lower dosage than the rest of the guys working where he does. And he'll get fired pretty quickly.
Nonsense! Get two more left-wing Supremes onto the Court, and the D.C. vs Heller decision would be overturned in a minute.
And most of the Dems in both the Senate and House would be delighted to pass gun ban/registration/confiscation laws once they were sure the Supremes would be on their side.
benjamin franklin had the habit of stripping naked, throwing a stool in the middle of the corridor that ran through his mansion in the upper floors, open all windows on both sides of the mansion and sit there naked in the wind.
Well, no. It's inside his mansion, on an upper floor, not even in a room with a window (though I've no doubt he could be seen through one or two windows if you made an effort).
Hell, I walk around my upper floor naked from time to time, usually just out of the shower or bed. And occasionally the windows are open (not often - air-conditioning season is nine+ months long here (hell, I needed my AC on yesterday)). Haven't been arrested yet.
Remember when Nixon was investigated? What about when Clinton got some booty on the side? Big investigations DO happen and they have to start somewhere.
It should, perhaps, be noted that in both of the cases mentioned, the person being investigated was from the political party that was in the minority at the time.
If, as is commonly asserted (and I don't doubt), both Parties are taking bribes from the MPAA, then it's unlikely that either really wants an investigation. And Obama certainly doesn't, since he's been in bed with Hollywood since he was a Senator running for his current job.
Or use the British system. Have a "Register of Members' Interests" in which they must publicly list any payment, donation or gift received, and which bars them for the remainder of their term from voting on any related issue, to avoid claims of bias.
Now this would be a useful addition to US politics.
Much better than all the "make campaigns public financed only" crap which usually translates as "we don't need no steenkeeng First Amendment"...
Don't forget the part about reminding us that the White House is not the Justice Department, and that they are therefore the wrong branch of the Government to be concerned with prosecutions of any political figures. Only the Justice Department has the authority to perform an investigation, and forgetting of course that little fact about any Justice Department officials being appointed to office.
Note that the Justice Department is NOT, as commonly believed, part of the Judiciary. It is a department of the Executive Branch, led by the Attorney General.
And currently includes at least one senior official who has announced that if Congress wants him to testify about the Fast and the Furious, he'll take the Fifth. Which says a lot about the current Justice Department right there.
When I read the post you were responding to, it was at the
bottom of my screen (had to page down to see your response), but my first thought was "What kind of chucklehead drinks brandy on the rocks? I'm going to have to post something in response".
Thank you for saying everything I was planning on saying, even if you did leave out the chucklehead part....
Although an orbiting moon base makes for a quicker return to earth vicinity
No, actually it doesn't. transfer orbit for LLO to Earth takes just about as long as a transfer orbit from Luna surface to Earth.
The major problem of a moon base, or simply visiting the moon, is the problem of fuel expenditures for lift off. For all the Buck Rogers si-fi we've written, we still can't carry enough fuel to get out of sight. Any system we have for getting off of the surface amounts to a zero-backup, Hail Mary. There is no plan B.
Umm, no.
One possibility is to use that lunar water to manufacture LH2/LOX + O2 for use by the base (LH2/LOX mixtures typically don't include enough LOX to burn all the LH2). So, LH2/LOX fuel, Isp 450 more or less, depending on engine design. Assume 420 to allow for generous margin of error.
DeltaV required from Lunar surface to enter an orbit that'll drop you into the upper atmosphere is ~2.4 km/s.
Allow for 80% extra fuel, which should be sufficient for an abort anytime up till you actually enter lunar orbit - 4.4 km/s.
A 420 Isp for 4.4 km/s deltaV requires a mass ratio of less than 3.0. Two kg of fuel for every kg of spacecraft/cargo. Which is pretty easy to achieve, actually.
Alternately, you use Al/LOX. O2 is easier to come by on Luna than H2, since you can find oxygen in the compounds making up the rocks. Ditto Aluminum. Isp is crap, but fuel density is much greater, so you need much smaller fuel tanks. Higher mass ratio, of course.
Which would be the best course is a matter for professionals, of course. But either option is doable, and either vehicle could be developed before we could get a base on the moon to deliver it to.
Of course, if you're really looking for exotic solutions, there's always an escape speed mass driver on the moon. Gives the loonies something to bombard Earth with later, also...right, Mike?
Most likely you'd be shipping tanks of hydrogen and oxygen and mixing them on the Moon. You don't get any savings in terms of mass, but you get a huge savings in space.
Umm, no.
H2O density is 1.0 kg/l.
LH2/LOX density, in the ratio required to make water (8 kg LOX per kg LH2) is about 0.42 kg/l.
So you use over twice as much space, as opposed to getting "a huge savings".
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So, since he's been in jail for two years, he wrote this note while in jail, and smuggled it out to an accomplice who then stole his flash drive from the evidence locker and put the file on it?
Is there any evidence this letter was actually mailed to anyone? emailed? anything?
Even assuming the letter was real, and the bozo had some intention of mailing it, wouldn't it have made more sense for the cops to have waited till it had been sent (monitoring the bozo all the while), responded to, and then they'd have one more potential problem that could be dealt with (since, after all, sending this letter to anyone seriously would sort of implicate the receiver in the plot, and perhaps even lead to more criminal-types) once and for all....
Well, no.
From TFA, all that the various companies seem to have been doing is refraining from calling up workers at competing companies to see if they could get them to switch companies.
Said nothing at all about them restricting themselves from job-hunters who happened to be working for the other guys.
So if you don't like working for Google, and want to get a job with Microsoft (or whoever), what has been going on would have had no effect on you whatsoever.
On the other hand, if you worked for Google, and were happy there, you didn't have to listen to people trying to convince you to come to work for Microsoft calling you up weekly to see if you were interested in switching.
Unlikely. Several carriers are in the yards at any given time.
So, 9 or 10 carriers means six to eight available at any given moment. One in the Med, one in the Indian Ocean, a couple in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic is about minimum.
And that assumes that the operational carriers are at sea basically 100% of the time. With no time for transit to duty stations.
So unless you're good with the notion that the carrier battle group in the western pacific or the med or the Indian Ocean NEVER gets to come home, and the sailors on same never get to see families for their entire enlistment, it won't happen.
That said, there is NO chance of a moon base by 2020. Even if Gingrich got behind for real (promising space activity in Florida campaign speeches is normal - every President since Kennedy has done it, including Obama), there isn't time to develop the heavy-lift capability, much less actually move hardware to the moon - we're actually behind where we were in 1962 right now, in that we're not even in working on a heavy lift vehicle yet....
You had me up to "liberty". Conservatism seems to like the idea of "liberty". They're not so big on "liberal" or "libertine", which are similar sounding, but mean different things.
Wasn't most of the crap in the Patriot Act dealing with data written by John Kerry, a liberal democrat (who was, admittedly, also an ex-prosecutor who was trying to make other prosecutors' jobs easier)?
Even better would be the "go pick my kids up from school(s) and bring them home" button. I'd have loved to have that capability back when the daughter was young enough to need picking up.
Alas, I'm not a conservative.
Nor are we talking about a national ID card. Driver's Licenses, which qualify in every State considering the notion, aren't national. And even if you don't need a driver's license, the DMV will issue you a picture ID in every State I've ever lived in.
Plus there's the University ID, which counts. Military ID. Lots of ways to come up with ID that don't involve a compulsory national ID.
That said, note that I wasn't arguing in favour of ID cards to vote. I was just pointing out that requiring the same sort of identification that many countries (Canada, as an example) already require is considered "racist" here.
Oddly, it's not considered "racist" by the Canadians....
Alas, in the USA, requiring that sort of thing is considered "racist", and therefore reactionary and evil.
Every State that has proposed such laws has been sued to prevent implementation of same.
Well, you could probably require some sort of picture ID before allowing someone to vote.
But that idea has been deemed to be reactionary and evil, so I guess the dead will continue to vote at the usual rate (which really isn't all that high).
Oops! that was supposed to be REM, not MREM.
Three of them were definitely cancer or other long term effects of acute radiation exposure (they died within ten years of exposure, but not immediately). The remainder were the death within minutes/days of exposure sort - as I recall, the guy at the fuel rod plant dropped dead within a couple minutes, the SL-1 guys within seconds (and note that one of them may not have died of cancer - he was also impaled by a fuel rod).
Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to pin a cancer death down to cumulative radiation exposure.
I've got cancer. I was exposed, in my lifetime (excluding the CT scans I've gotten since I got cancer) to maybe 10 mrem (sorry, that's the unit the Navy used).
My father-in-law died of cancer. Never exposed to radiation other than what you get from CT scans after you get cancer.
Ditto my mother's father.
My father has cancer (fortunately, in his case it's just skin cancer - he has bits of his skin cut away every once in a while, and otherwise stands to outlive me). Never exposed to radiation.
Even the Chernobyl cases are just guesses based on the assumption that they'd be no more likely to get cancer than anyone else, and are getting cancer a bit more often.
I might also note, having just checked, that there have been ten NFL players who have died as a result of their career choice in the last 65 years.
Given that there are fewer NFL players than nuclear plant workers, looks like working in nuclear power is probably safer than playing football....
All your points are correct.
That said, you didn't actually contradict GP. Whose main point was that there's not much reason to still be in hospital this long after a radiation exposure - by now you're either dead or fine (for certain values of fine) until you contract cancer. Or get run over by a beer truck.
No. At least not in Louisiana.
Don't know about elsewhere, but down here, your employer is liable for anything that happens at his plant that is work-related. So a contractor (employed by a small company) doing work on one of Entergy's nuclear reactors ten miles south-west of here screws up, causes massive meltdown and total loss of New Orleans makes ENTERGY liable (their plant, their (indirect) employee) for billions and billions.
At least in the USA, the number of deaths from exposure to radiation is roughly four in the last 50 years. Those three Navy guys killed when they screwed up SL-1 maintenance, and one guy who died at a fuel rod manufacturing plant.
Before that, of course, there were deaths in Los Alamos due to radiation exposure in several accidents post-WW2 and pre-1960. Half a dozen or so.
Manhattan Project deaths are still classified, I think.
So, ten or so in the last 65 years? Sounds safer than driving to the grocery store....
Once upon a time, on a tour of New Orleans shortly after I moved down here, the tour guide told us that that practice goes back a very long way. Back in the 18th and 19th century, there were jobs that were considered too hazardous for slaves. So they brought in Irishmen to do the work....
Falsify which numbers? Their SSN? Easily doable, I suppose.
Or were you talking about their dose? Pretty much can't do that, since the dosimeters aren't read by the workers - you turn them in, they get read by a technician elsewhere, the numbers are entered in a database.
Of course, they could just quietly leave their dosimeter outside the work area, but they'll get their asses fired very quickly if discovered. And someone will notice pretty quickly if John Doe consistently gets a lower dosage than the rest of the guys working where he does. And he'll get fired pretty quickly.
That's the key phrase here.
So, harmful? Yeah, financially punishing companies is harmful.
Illegal? Haven't seen any real evidence of that...
Yet.
Until you do, it's not a conspiracy either.
Nonsense! Get two more left-wing Supremes onto the Court, and the D.C. vs Heller decision would be overturned in a minute.
And most of the Dems in both the Senate and House would be delighted to pass gun ban/registration/confiscation laws once they were sure the Supremes would be on their side.
Well, no. It's inside his mansion, on an upper floor, not even in a room with a window (though I've no doubt he could be seen through one or two windows if you made an effort).
Hell, I walk around my upper floor naked from time to time, usually just out of the shower or bed. And occasionally the windows are open (not often - air-conditioning season is nine+ months long here (hell, I needed my AC on yesterday)). Haven't been arrested yet.
Well, a quick google of "Fast and furious fifth amendment" should get you a good selection of the articles.
But this one seems to summarize it nicely:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/20/federal-prosecutor-cites-fifth-fast-furious-probe/
It should, perhaps, be noted that in both of the cases mentioned, the person being investigated was from the political party that was in the minority at the time.
If, as is commonly asserted (and I don't doubt), both Parties are taking bribes from the MPAA, then it's unlikely that either really wants an investigation. And Obama certainly doesn't, since he's been in bed with Hollywood since he was a Senator running for his current job.
Now this would be a useful addition to US politics.
Much better than all the "make campaigns public financed only" crap which usually translates as "we don't need no steenkeeng First Amendment"...
Note that the Justice Department is NOT, as commonly believed, part of the Judiciary. It is a department of the Executive Branch, led by the Attorney General.
And currently includes at least one senior official who has announced that if Congress wants him to testify about the Fast and the Furious, he'll take the Fifth. Which says a lot about the current Justice Department right there.
bottom of my screen (had to page down to see your response), but my first thought was "What kind of chucklehead drinks brandy on the rocks? I'm going to have to post something in response".
Thank you for saying everything I was planning on saying, even if you did leave out the chucklehead part....
No, actually it doesn't. transfer orbit for LLO to Earth takes just about as long as a transfer orbit from Luna surface to Earth.
Umm, no.
One possibility is to use that lunar water to manufacture LH2/LOX + O2 for use by the base (LH2/LOX mixtures typically don't include enough LOX to burn all the LH2). So, LH2/LOX fuel, Isp 450 more or less, depending on engine design. Assume 420 to allow for generous margin of error.
DeltaV required from Lunar surface to enter an orbit that'll drop you into the upper atmosphere is ~2.4 km/s.
Allow for 80% extra fuel, which should be sufficient for an abort anytime up till you actually enter lunar orbit - 4.4 km/s.
A 420 Isp for 4.4 km/s deltaV requires a mass ratio of less than 3.0. Two kg of fuel for every kg of spacecraft/cargo. Which is pretty easy to achieve, actually.
Alternately, you use Al/LOX. O2 is easier to come by on Luna than H2, since you can find oxygen in the compounds making up the rocks. Ditto Aluminum. Isp is crap, but fuel density is much greater, so you need much smaller fuel tanks. Higher mass ratio, of course.
Which would be the best course is a matter for professionals, of course. But either option is doable, and either vehicle could be developed before we could get a base on the moon to deliver it to.
Of course, if you're really looking for exotic solutions, there's always an escape speed mass driver on the moon. Gives the loonies something to bombard Earth with later, also...right, Mike?
Umm, no.
H2O density is 1.0 kg/l.
LH2/LOX density, in the ratio required to make water (8 kg LOX per kg LH2) is about 0.42 kg/l.
So you use over twice as much space, as opposed to getting "a huge savings".