Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over,
So, we can feed, clothe, and educate everyone on the planet for one hundred dollars each every year?
I'm guessing that either he's fucking weird (certainly possible considering his parents) or all children love to watch shit. While he gets excited when I come home from work, it's nothing like he gets when he's watching my parents on Google Video Chat. If he's going to feel excited via a particular medium then I say I'm all for it--especially if it helps one particular child learn better than others.
He's not weird. Or no weirder than normal.
He likes to look at things, check. He's still learning to see, so any NEW thing will be interesting to him.
He's more interested in watching your parents on GVC, check. You're one of the two most important things in his universe. But you're old news compared to this little picture that talks and looks like Granma and Grampa. Though frankly he'd be just as interested in total strangers - he's after NEW.
The only problem with TV will come when you decide to use it as a babysitter. At that point, it becomes bad. Until then, it's just more novelty for the wee lad.
While he has some attention for books, especially ones where my mother recorded herself reading them and we play it for him while he listens
He's too young for books, other than as more NEW stuff.
That said, mother reading to him is better than mother recording things for him to listen to later.
Starting in about two years, you'll have your chance to start him on a lifetime of reading. There's pretty much one simple way to do that - read. Not necessarily to him, though that certainly helps. But if he sees you and his mother sitting down to an evening of reading most every night, he'll want to do it too. And once he starts, he'll never stop....
Would the carbon be more offset if he bought the offsets from someone else?
I just don't understand your problem.
Didn't say I had a problem with it, actually.
Though I do think that I have issues with a guy who spends his time talking about the horrors of emitting carbon, while reminding you that if you just give him money, the horror will go away.
Sounds a bit like a televangelist, frankly, and while I may not have less respect for that sort than you do, I'm pretty sure I don't have more respect for that sort than you do...
If Al Gore really wanted people to take him seriously about his carbon-offset company, it would have been set up as a non-profit. As is, the fact that he's shilling for an idea that'll make him a lot of money if we buy into it taints the idea, just a little.
wouldnt the energy given off by the thrust in a nuclear reactor be radioactive?
Basically, no.
In somewhat more detail, slightly. Reactor coolant tends to get radioactive after a while. But a nuclear rocket doesn't have any particular part of the coolant present for "a while", since it goes in one end and out the other without any potentially embarrassing recirc.
So, in general, if you used H2 as the reaction mass for your reactor, you could expect some non-radioactive deuterium moderately (which is a joke, in case you didn't get it) regularly, and an atom or so of tritium now and then.
If you used water, the same plus some O-17 and less often O-18.
Note that the amount of radioactive H@ (and O2) will be dependent on the reactor design. Some neutrons are easier to capture than others....
If government spending bothers you, you might want to look into downsizing the US's preposterously large military. It's possible that the best place to cut expenses is the place where the money is being squandered.
Just fyi, the US military budget is just about 1/2 the DEFICIT for 2010.
In other words, reduce the military budget to zero, and you still have an annual deficit of over $500 billion
Note that mandatory spending plus the State Department, Health and Human Services, and Transportation Department budgets just about use up the entire tax revenue of this fiscal year.
Note further that an across the board doubling of income taxes (assuming that such a thing didn't have any real effect on people's behaviour) would not quite do away with our current deficit.
Your logic assumes that all of the oil tankers sunk in WWII were fully loaded. This is not true. The oil tankers that were sunk were in various states between being fully loaded and completely empty.
Yep. Because it's actually the way to bet. We didn't send oil tankers to the UK empty, or only partly loaded. And while ships returning from the UK were hit now and then, the primary targets for the various anti-shipping campaigns in that war were the ships going toward the UK, not the empties returning.
sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean
Another bad logic assumption. Most oil tankers had their cargo burnt when torpedoed. A number sank but remained intact - not releasing oil. As the steel has corroded over the last 60 years they have begun to leak the oil, which is a problem. Case in point: the USS Mississinewa lay on the ocean floor for 57 years before being discovered, and was found to have 2 million gallons of recoverable oil still onboard. Only a smaller number of tankers would have released oil when under attack, not had this oil ignite and burn, and go on to be released into the ocean.
Good point. However, if TWO oil tankers released the majority of their cargoes into the ocean upon being sunk, then they represent more oil dumped into the ocean than this incident is expected to release this month. If FOUR oil tankers did same, then they represent more oil than this incident is expected to release.
Note, for reference, that Exxon Valdez released about 250,000 barrels of crude oil into the oceans (two WW2 tanker-equivalents). That's 50 days worth at the rate of the current incident.
The oceans' ecosystems didn't collapse then either.
Again, this is going to suck for the gulf coast (where I live). It's not going to be a worldwide problem, no matter how the panic-mongers spin it.
I have to ask you, how many millimeters of oil in your drinking water is acceptable for you to drink?
How many millimeters of crude oil would you like in your fried salt-water fish?
How many millimeters are required to affect cancer rates?
In answer to all of these, you probably meant mg per litre, not millimeter...
Assuming we drank out of the Gulf here (we don't, we have the Mississippi River for that), and that the next three years worth of this little problem were crowded into 1000 km^3 (it won't be) of the water supply we use, then the total contamination levels would be rather less then 0.001 mg/L oil in the water.
Now, one must remember that the EPA doesn't actually control for crude oil in the water supply. But of the chemicals they do control for, about four non-radioactive ones have safe limits lower than 0.001 mg/L. And, since the EPA controls for those four chemicals, if any of them (one of the four might be present in crude oil. Maybe. It's a byproduct of refining oil and I don't know whether it's waste from the process or something created in the process) are present at that level, the local water treatment plant will reduce the level below the legal limit before it's put into the drinking water system.
In other words, this is a non-issue in the USA. It could conceivably be an issue elsewhere, if you can find a place where people drink salt water without purifying it first, I concede. Good luck with that.
All that aside, as I said, I'm from the gulf coast. It is going to royally suck down here unless this is dealt with promptly. But it's not going to be the end of life as we know it in the oceans, or much of anywhere else.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
--William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy
So, Dave McGowan says that William Colby said this? Is there any other evidence that Colby actually said it?
Not, mind you, that I'd be terribly surprised to find out that the CIA "owns everyone of any significance in the major media", but the history of the USA doesn't seem to support it - if the CIA had that much control of the media, why is the media so busy tattling on the government?
Increasing it by 2% every year for the next 5 years would be a $1.87 billion increase, not a $6 billion increase. $6 billion over 5 years would be a 6.4% increase per year, which, although small, is higher than inflation.
You missed the fine print. It didn't say $6 billion per year, it said $6 billion over five years.
I assumed that it wasn't going to be a $1.2 billion increase this year followed by no increases the other four years to get my figures. If you'd rather assume things your way, go ahead, but note that your way includes an increase this year only, and no increases for the following years, where I assumed an increase compared to the previous year every year of the five years.
An individual tanker isn't all that large, at least in WW2. There is a reason we call modern tankers: super-tankers.
Typical tanker capacity in WW2 was about 140,000 barrels per tanker.
This particular problem has been dumping oil out at a rate of about 5000 (not 50,000) barrels per day (so far).
So, sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean as this is expected to dump per month.
148 oil tankers were sunk during WW2. There was no ecological collapse as a result.
You do the math....
Note, for reference, that one barrel of oil is about 0.16 m^3. This particular incident (not sure whether explosion was cause or effect, and if cause, what cause of explosion was) translates to about 800 m^3 per day into the oceans. Or an oil slick 0.8 mm (yes, millimeter) thick over 1 square km of ocean per day.
If this goes on at this rate for two years, we're talking about a circle about 30km across having 0.8 mm (yes, millimeter) thick oil slick on it.
In other words, while this pretty much sucks for the Gulf Coast (where I live), the chances of this causing a worldwide collapse of ocean ecosystems is about ZERO.
Canceling Constellation != "draining the lifeblood out of every avenue of manned exploration", and in fact, Obama is increasing NASA's budget!
NASA's budget now is $18.7 billion per year.
Assuming he's going to increase it every year for the next five years, he's planning on increasing it at about 2% per year.
Which is rather lower than last year's inflation rate. So the inflation adjusted budget will be lower each year, not higher...
Note, for reference, that the State Department got a 40% increase in budget this past year....
Re:Why Mars and not the Moon?
on
Gardening On Mars
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I don't quite understand why it is we're (ostensibly) pushing for Mars now,
We're not actually pushing for Mars now. We're talking about pushing for Mars...
Nor did Obama say as much. What he said is that he expects to see humans go to Mars by the 2030's. He didn't actually go as far as saying that he's going to direct NASA to move in that direction, or provide them any money for R&D leading in that direction....
$1 Million dollar budget? It's a nice gesture, but it seems pretty small for the responsibilities they're claiming this center to have. Seems more like a 'token' gesture made to *look* like they're doing something than taking real action to make things happen.
Sounds like someone's nephew needed a job that didn't require him to actually do much other than pick up his paycheck.
$1 million will about cover office space & equipment and salaries for someone's nephew, his secretary, and the office manager for the two of them....
So, your statements above seem to reduce to "if you won't choose to live in a fashion I find acceptable, then we need to change the laws so that you're forced to live in a fashion that I find acceptable".
Problem with this particular notion is that key question is "who gets to decide what's "acceptable"?" Entirely too many people seem to think that they are the ones who should get to decide.
Personally, I go for the "absolute minimum laws required" theory of government. Which, of course, just moves the debate to "what is the "absolute minimum required"?"....
They should be. SCO has to have the dumbest management of all times. They are just clueless and wasting more and more money in a law suit that never had any hope of success.
It should be pointed out that the management is still getting paid, unlike the creditors. With OPM (Other People's Money), at that.
So it doesn't look like the management is dumb, so much as utterly amoral.
Do you think I should have to justify to Uncle Sam the large pizza that I'm going to order on my way home?
Just a guess, but I suspect he doesn't think it should even be possible to buy that large pizza that you plan to order on the way home.
Alas, once people reach the point of believing that they should be allowed to define what's good for you, there's no stopping it - they'll continue to micromanage other people's lives till the end of time (note, as an example, your average religion).
Oddly enough, both Mississippi and Louisiana seem to have legal casinos. And most, if not all, States have a legal lottery. And...
Perhaps what you meant was that the Federal government doesn't do legalized gambling. True enough, but since that's not really one of the enumerated powers of the feds, that's an example of "working as intended".
It sounds like this physicist thinks the film Independence Day may come true. What could we possibly have in our young solar system that would make it worth the bother for a nomadic civilization of harvesting aliens to visit?
If they came here sublight, it's likely that they left without much clue at all as to what was here other than the layout of the major planets. In which case, they came here to find out what was here that was worth bothering with.
And once here, why not just strip-mine the place to prepare for the trip to the next place of interest?
Slashdot Mirror
So, we can feed, clothe, and educate everyone on the planet for one hundred dollars each every year?
Somehow, I doubt it....
He's not weird. Or no weirder than normal.
He likes to look at things, check. He's still learning to see, so any NEW thing will be interesting to him.
He's more interested in watching your parents on GVC, check. You're one of the two most important things in his universe. But you're old news compared to this little picture that talks and looks like Granma and Grampa. Though frankly he'd be just as interested in total strangers - he's after NEW.
The only problem with TV will come when you decide to use it as a babysitter. At that point, it becomes bad. Until then, it's just more novelty for the wee lad.
He's too young for books, other than as more NEW stuff.
That said, mother reading to him is better than mother recording things for him to listen to later.
Starting in about two years, you'll have your chance to start him on a lifetime of reading. There's pretty much one simple way to do that - read. Not necessarily to him, though that certainly helps. But if he sees you and his mother sitting down to an evening of reading most every night, he'll want to do it too. And once he starts, he'll never stop....
Didn't say I had a problem with it, actually.
Though I do think that I have issues with a guy who spends his time talking about the horrors of emitting carbon, while reminding you that if you just give him money, the horror will go away.
Sounds a bit like a televangelist, frankly, and while I may not have less respect for that sort than you do, I'm pretty sure I don't have more respect for that sort than you do...
If Al Gore really wanted people to take him seriously about his carbon-offset company, it would have been set up as a non-profit. As is, the fact that he's shilling for an idea that'll make him a lot of money if we buy into it taints the idea, just a little.
Some people have problems with the idea of paying yourself to take care of a problem that you caused.
Not sure why, mind you, but there it is....
Basically, no.
In somewhat more detail, slightly. Reactor coolant tends to get radioactive after a while. But a nuclear rocket doesn't have any particular part of the coolant present for "a while", since it goes in one end and out the other without any potentially embarrassing recirc.
So, in general, if you used H2 as the reaction mass for your reactor, you could expect some non-radioactive deuterium moderately (which is a joke, in case you didn't get it) regularly, and an atom or so of tritium now and then.
If you used water, the same plus some O-17 and less often O-18.
Note that the amount of radioactive H@ (and O2) will be dependent on the reactor design. Some neutrons are easier to capture than others....
Just fyi, the US military budget is just about 1/2 the DEFICIT for 2010.
In other words, reduce the military budget to zero, and you still have an annual deficit of over $500 billion
Note that mandatory spending plus the State Department, Health and Human Services, and Transportation Department budgets just about use up the entire tax revenue of this fiscal year.
Note further that an across the board doubling of income taxes (assuming that such a thing didn't have any real effect on people's behaviour) would not quite do away with our current deficit.
If the entire Belt were diverted to Mars, it would increase Mars' mass by about 1%.
In other words, "your idea is silly"....
In general, mine are both fine, even though I'm still paying bills for my cancer treatments.
And both are heavily regulated at State and/or Local levels. Your point was?
Sure. Go right ahead. Wouldn't bother me at all.
Yep. Because it's actually the way to bet. We didn't send oil tankers to the UK empty, or only partly loaded. And while ships returning from the UK were hit now and then, the primary targets for the various anti-shipping campaigns in that war were the ships going toward the UK, not the empties returning.
Good point. However, if TWO oil tankers released the majority of their cargoes into the ocean upon being sunk, then they represent more oil dumped into the ocean than this incident is expected to release this month. If FOUR oil tankers did same, then they represent more oil than this incident is expected to release.
Note, for reference, that Exxon Valdez released about 250,000 barrels of crude oil into the oceans (two WW2 tanker-equivalents). That's 50 days worth at the rate of the current incident.
The oceans' ecosystems didn't collapse then either.
Again, this is going to suck for the gulf coast (where I live). It's not going to be a worldwide problem, no matter how the panic-mongers spin it.
In answer to all of these, you probably meant mg per litre, not millimeter...
Assuming we drank out of the Gulf here (we don't, we have the Mississippi River for that), and that the next three years worth of this little problem were crowded into 1000 km^3 (it won't be) of the water supply we use, then the total contamination levels would be rather less then 0.001 mg/L oil in the water.
Now, one must remember that the EPA doesn't actually control for crude oil in the water supply. But of the chemicals they do control for, about four non-radioactive ones have safe limits lower than 0.001 mg/L. And, since the EPA controls for those four chemicals, if any of them (one of the four might be present in crude oil. Maybe. It's a byproduct of refining oil and I don't know whether it's waste from the process or something created in the process) are present at that level, the local water treatment plant will reduce the level below the legal limit before it's put into the drinking water system.
In other words, this is a non-issue in the USA. It could conceivably be an issue elsewhere, if you can find a place where people drink salt water without purifying it first, I concede. Good luck with that.
All that aside, as I said, I'm from the gulf coast. It is going to royally suck down here unless this is dealt with promptly. But it's not going to be the end of life as we know it in the oceans, or much of anywhere else.
So, Dave McGowan says that William Colby said this? Is there any other evidence that Colby actually said it?
Not, mind you, that I'd be terribly surprised to find out that the CIA "owns everyone of any significance in the major media", but the history of the USA doesn't seem to support it - if the CIA had that much control of the media, why is the media so busy tattling on the government?
You missed the fine print. It didn't say $6 billion per year, it said $6 billion over five years.
I assumed that it wasn't going to be a $1.2 billion increase this year followed by no increases the other four years to get my figures. If you'd rather assume things your way, go ahead, but note that your way includes an increase this year only, and no increases for the following years, where I assumed an increase compared to the previous year every year of the five years.
Typical tanker capacity in WW2 was about 140,000 barrels per tanker.
This particular problem has been dumping oil out at a rate of about 5000 (not 50,000) barrels per day (so far).
So, sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean as this is expected to dump per month.
148 oil tankers were sunk during WW2. There was no ecological collapse as a result.
You do the math....
Note, for reference, that one barrel of oil is about 0.16 m^3. This particular incident (not sure whether explosion was cause or effect, and if cause, what cause of explosion was) translates to about 800 m^3 per day into the oceans. Or an oil slick 0.8 mm (yes, millimeter) thick over 1 square km of ocean per day.
If this goes on at this rate for two years, we're talking about a circle about 30km across having 0.8 mm (yes, millimeter) thick oil slick on it.
In other words, while this pretty much sucks for the Gulf Coast (where I live), the chances of this causing a worldwide collapse of ocean ecosystems is about ZERO.
NASA's budget now is $18.7 billion per year.
Assuming he's going to increase it every year for the next five years, he's planning on increasing it at about 2% per year.
Which is rather lower than last year's inflation rate. So the inflation adjusted budget will be lower each year, not higher...
Note, for reference, that the State Department got a 40% increase in budget this past year....
We're not actually pushing for Mars now. We're talking about pushing for Mars...
Nor did Obama say as much. What he said is that he expects to see humans go to Mars by the 2030's. He didn't actually go as far as saying that he's going to direct NASA to move in that direction, or provide them any money for R&D leading in that direction....
Sounds like someone's nephew needed a job that didn't require him to actually do much other than pick up his paycheck.
$1 million will about cover office space & equipment and salaries for someone's nephew, his secretary, and the office manager for the two of them....
So, your statements above seem to reduce to "if you won't choose to live in a fashion I find acceptable, then we need to change the laws so that you're forced to live in a fashion that I find acceptable".
Problem with this particular notion is that key question is "who gets to decide what's "acceptable"?" Entirely too many people seem to think that they are the ones who should get to decide.
Personally, I go for the "absolute minimum laws required" theory of government. Which, of course, just moves the debate to "what is the "absolute minimum required"?"....
It should be pointed out that the management is still getting paid, unlike the creditors. With OPM (Other People's Money), at that.
So it doesn't look like the management is dumb, so much as utterly amoral.
Just a guess, but I suspect he doesn't think it should even be possible to buy that large pizza that you plan to order on the way home.
Alas, once people reach the point of believing that they should be allowed to define what's good for you, there's no stopping it - they'll continue to micromanage other people's lives till the end of time (note, as an example, your average religion).
Actually, we don't have any battleships anymore. And they haven't been a part of a Carrier Group since WW2.
Get sued, I trust you really meant? Since it doesn't rise to the level of a criminal offense....
Oddly enough, both Mississippi and Louisiana seem to have legal casinos. And most, if not all, States have a legal lottery. And...
Perhaps what you meant was that the Federal government doesn't do legalized gambling. True enough, but since that's not really one of the enumerated powers of the feds, that's an example of "working as intended".
You swapped two digits. 2847 has that prime factorization.
2874 has 2 * 3 * 479.
If they came here sublight, it's likely that they left without much clue at all as to what was here other than the layout of the major planets. In which case, they came here to find out what was here that was worth bothering with.
And once here, why not just strip-mine the place to prepare for the trip to the next place of interest?