Look at California, Spain, Greece, and other places. They are turning into deserts.
I won't comment on "Spain, Greece, and other places", but much of California IS a desert, and always has been.
LA, San Diego, most of southern California can exist as they do because humans diverted virtually the entire Colorado river and the entire snowmelt in the southern Rockies to making it the environment you consider "normal".
Fact is, the real California climate is semi-arid at best until you get up toward the Bay area.
"Airships are slow and inefficient compared to ocean liners"... show me an ocean liner or container train that can do 250km/h, and I'll bow to your argument. Airships have a lot of drawbacks, but being slow (compared with land or sea transportation) isn't one of them.
Airships are slow compared to airplanes, and carry a miniscule cargo compared to ocean going ships. Come to that, their cargo isn't impressive compared to an airplane.
In other words, they don't have enough advantage over ship or plane to make them worth the bother except in very rare situations.
(what, you think you and your kids and your kids' kids won't be paying the 'bush war' tax the next few decades?)
And I'll be paying the "Obama" taxes far longer.
Note that Obama's own budget guys are expecting to run deficits in his first four years (excluding the Stimulus package and bailouts, mind you) that will be larger than the total deficits of Bush's eight years.
Yes, treason is overreaching, but the case can be made that it applies.
No, it can't.
If the password were passed to an enemy of the USA, then the person who did the passing could, conceivably, be charged with treason. But unless the person who passed it to an enemy was the person who sold it for $2000, then the person who sold it for $2000 couldn't be charged with anything more than "willful stupidity" (which, unfortunately, is still not a crime).
If someone developed a 99% efficient solar cell, would you really care what it cost?
Yes, I would. If it cost $1,000,000 for enough solar cells to generate 1 kilowatt at 99% efficiency, it would be essentially worthless for anyone but NASA.
What I'm looking for is something that costs $1,000 per kilowatt. That's cheap enough that I could actually make use of it.
To be fair, there is that little matter of paying for the invasion and occupation of a foreign country for political purposes.
After all, if you're going to spend a trillion dollars sending troops overseas to nation build, that does tend to put a crimp in the budgets of other projects.
To be even fairer, the President doesn't do the budget, Congress does.
And if you're spending a trillion dollars sending troops overseas to nation build, then an extra 0.3% is peanuts.
Anyone know what this is, and if it's anything more that a marketing superlative?
I can only speculate what they really mean, but the Thompson Center Contender is a single shot firearm designed to allow replacement of the barrel with a new barrel in pretty much any calibre from.17 on up. Which means that one of them, with a suitable pile of barrels (conveniently, T-C manufactures barrels too) can fire pretty much any rifle, pistol, or shotgun round in creation.
But I do think it will be used as a tool, in good faith (initialy), to track certain "people of interest". At first that may be a crime in process (stolen car? kidnapping?). Then later it may be suspected criminals. Then maybe its anybody on a list of known trouble makers. Who knows. Its the very fact that its NOT a conspiracy or any kind of organized nefariousness that scares me.
Just so.
No, the government doesn't want to spy on us for some nefarious purpose. Their purposes will inevitably be noble and well-intentioned. Nonetheless, once you give them a way to spy on you, they will, sooner or later, take advantage of that ability, and spy on us.
And they won't stop. Just because the Administration changes to some new guy who swears up and down that he'll "put a stop to these flagrant abuses of power" doesn't mean squat. Because they'll stop being "flagrant abuses of power" and turn into "necessary for the security of this Great Nation" as soon as it's his Party in control.
So be automagically suspicious of any proposed law that would make surveillance easier come the day when we have someone in power who can be convinced it's for our benefit that we by spied upon 24/7....
I agree, but a single payer has the ability, and incentive, to effect changes.
It certainly has the ability, though the ability to change it might be far more restricted than you'd expect, what with Congresscritters writing in mandates whenever they get a contribution from someone significant in their district.
I'm not so sure it has the incentives to effect changes. Again, there's the congresscritters who are going to be involved in the process.
Why did Jane Fonda movies about a meltdown burrowing to the center of the earth or movies about instant freezing ice storms have more impact on our Nuclear and environmental policies than sound science?
Especially when, in the Jane Fonda movie you're remembering, there was no melt-down....
If this is part of Discovery, then the requirement to turn over the code should be to the plaintiff's attorneys, not to the plaintiff. And the plaintiff doesn't actually get to see it themselves.
Nuclear plants are difficult to control. The reaction's dynamics are nonlinear and unstable, and you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10-second lag (and are controllable).
Oddly enough, nuclear power plants used by the US Navy work just fine when the power demand spikes (or is reduced suddenly) without becoming uncontrollable.
After he "won" a second term with a minority of the popular vote,
This might be significant if Clinton hadn't won BOTH of his terms with a minority of the popular vote.
However, it's not significant in either case. Both won elections by the rules in place, even if neither managed a majority of the vote (which isn't actually required anywhere but in the Electoral College).
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I won't comment on "Spain, Greece, and other places", but much of California IS a desert, and always has been.
LA, San Diego, most of southern California can exist as they do because humans diverted virtually the entire Colorado river and the entire snowmelt in the southern Rockies to making it the environment you consider "normal".
Fact is, the real California climate is semi-arid at best until you get up toward the Bay area.
Airships are slow compared to airplanes, and carry a miniscule cargo compared to ocean going ships. Come to that, their cargo isn't impressive compared to an airplane.
In other words, they don't have enough advantage over ship or plane to make them worth the bother except in very rare situations.
And I'll be paying the "Obama" taxes far longer.
Note that Obama's own budget guys are expecting to run deficits in his first four years (excluding the Stimulus package and bailouts, mind you) that will be larger than the total deficits of Bush's eight years.
Come now, sir! Everyone should know that the Quadium Bomb doesn't actually work....
Yes, there is.
My roof is rather larger than 1 square meter. It's enough larger that I can get 1kW per hour, 12 hours per day with 15% efficient panels.
So, if it costs more than about 7 times as much as conventional solar, it's worthless to me.
No, it can't.
If the password were passed to an enemy of the USA, then the person who did the passing could, conceivably, be charged with treason. But unless the person who passed it to an enemy was the person who sold it for $2000, then the person who sold it for $2000 couldn't be charged with anything more than "willful stupidity" (which, unfortunately, is still not a crime).
Yes, I would. If it cost $1,000,000 for enough solar cells to generate 1 kilowatt at 99% efficiency, it would be essentially worthless for anyone but NASA.
What I'm looking for is something that costs $1,000 per kilowatt. That's cheap enough that I could actually make use of it.
TFA says they have found all congruent numbers up to 1,000,000,000,000. It does NOT say that they found 1,000,000,000,000 congruent numbers.
The Constitution defines treason. And this isn't it, much as you'd like it to be.
The idea of Nuremberg is that the winners get to take revenge on the losers for trying (and failing) to win.
It doesn't even do that. Most people don't know or care what the "Threat Level" is, and wouldn't be terribly worried if they did happen to hear.
It's mostly for the benefit of Law Enforcement and Government anyway, not for private citizens.
To be even fairer, the President doesn't do the budget, Congress does.
And if you're spending a trillion dollars sending troops overseas to nation build, then an extra 0.3% is peanuts.
I can only speculate what they really mean, but the Thompson Center Contender is a single shot firearm designed to allow replacement of the barrel with a new barrel in pretty much any calibre from .17 on up. Which means that one of them, with a suitable pile of barrels (conveniently, T-C manufactures barrels too) can fire pretty much any rifle, pistol, or shotgun round in creation.
Would that be a vaguely technically sounding way of saying "heat"?
Just so.
No, the government doesn't want to spy on us for some nefarious purpose. Their purposes will inevitably be noble and well-intentioned. Nonetheless, once you give them a way to spy on you, they will, sooner or later, take advantage of that ability, and spy on us.
And they won't stop. Just because the Administration changes to some new guy who swears up and down that he'll "put a stop to these flagrant abuses of power" doesn't mean squat. Because they'll stop being "flagrant abuses of power" and turn into "necessary for the security of this Great Nation" as soon as it's his Party in control.
So be automagically suspicious of any proposed law that would make surveillance easier come the day when we have someone in power who can be convinced it's for our benefit that we by spied upon 24/7....
You are aware, aren't you, that Law Enforcement is a subset of Government?
From TFA, it looks like some of the sponsor's biggest campaign donors make the equipment that would be required to implement this tax.
Which pretty much means that the "beneficial" aspects are two:
1) The sponsor keeps getting big checks, and
2) The donors get a big pile of taxpayer dollars on a continuing basis.
Or did you mean "beneficial to the taxpayers"?
Note that this is not being discussed as a replacement for gas taxes, but as a supplement to them. In other words, you'll get both taxes.
Later on, when noone is using gasoline, they'll come up with a replacement for gas taxes. And the per mile tax will continue.
It certainly has the ability, though the ability to change it might be far more restricted than you'd expect, what with Congresscritters writing in mandates whenever they get a contribution from someone significant in their district.
I'm not so sure it has the incentives to effect changes. Again, there's the congresscritters who are going to be involved in the process.
Especially when, in the Jane Fonda movie you're remembering, there was no melt-down....
Falsified. Science can be tested and falsified.
If this is part of Discovery, then the requirement to turn over the code should be to the plaintiff's attorneys, not to the plaintiff. And the plaintiff doesn't actually get to see it themselves.
At least, that's how it worked in SCO vs IBM.
Oddly enough, nuclear power plants used by the US Navy work just fine when the power demand spikes (or is reduced suddenly) without becoming uncontrollable.
Proper design ftw.
And Grover Cleveland got fewer votes than the guy he beat. But he won where it counted, in the Electoral College.
This might be significant if Clinton hadn't won BOTH of his terms with a minority of the popular vote.
However, it's not significant in either case. Both won elections by the rules in place, even if neither managed a majority of the vote (which isn't actually required anywhere but in the Electoral College).