Re:Gas, oil & the U.S. military
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 1
Yes. It's not true.
The military uses a lot of diesel, of course, and would use a tremendous amount in a serious war, but it is trivial compared to the day to day usage in the USA.
Note that we had gas rationing in WW2 to remind people we were at war, NOT because the military needed all the fuel we could produce.
Re:What about alcohol?
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Any idea how much grain it takes to make a gallon of "white lightning"? I don't, but I imagine that assuming 40 pounds per gallon would give a good ballpark figure. If you live ~15 miles from work, you'll use a gallon or two per day (depending on whether you can use highways, or are forced to rely onsurface streets for your commute). So, optimistically, 40# per day for each of 100,000,000 drivers in the US - 50,000,000 tons per year of grain for normal commutes. The US eats on the order of 100,000,000 tons of grain per year (just the people, mind - the cows eat more than we do), so you're talking about doubling our grain production for the alcohol you want to use. Not even counting the energy cost to distill the stuff....
Never said they'd succeed in fixing it. Just suggested that they might have done it on purpose, with the INTENTION of fixing it. Personally, I'm indifferent to the show - I watched the first half dozen episodes, then stopped when I cancelled my cable (wasn't worth paying for cable for an hour a week of TV I actually watched)
Just curious, but what should the USA do with the ~$16B it puts into NASA instead? People seem to believe that the NASA budget is bigger than the DoD budget, the way they talk about stripping it from NASA to "use here on Earth".
Fact of the matter is that NASA's budget is a pittance. It's hardly enough to maintain four stinking Shuttles, much less develop a follow-on vehicle. The ISS is International because the government wouldn't fund NASA to the point of being able to build it ourselves.
And unmanned missions aren't worth the trouble. If we aren't going to go there ourselves, why bother? So we learn that Mars had water once? Whoop-de-do! Doesn't matter a hill of beans what there is to be learned in space if men aren't going to go there. If the manned space program dies, then the rest of it might as well die as well - since we'll be deciding to sit back and play video games till the next asteroid smacks us.
The way people look at space these days is getting to me....
No, they aren't. They export food. This isn't the sixties, people....
Or did you mean the North Koreans were starving? And this is relevant how? North Korea != China. Don't make the mistake of assuming that all Asians are the same. It annoys the Asians, and makes you look foolish.
"temporal cold war" in it, well.... other production companies have been doing much better with much less for much longer- without shitting all over their own continuities.
Has it occurred to anyone that the continuity glitches might be intentional? After all, it's always possible that the Change War might fix some of these doxie-glitches in passing as we proceed down the years....
The problem comes in the conclusions that people try to derive from them ("eat fish on fridays"
Well, no. The "fish on Friday" thing is not divinely ordained, and never was. It was a rule invented by a Pope in the Dark Ages, ostensibly for the purpose of stretching the food supply during an extended food shortage.
In fact, the original rule was "Fast on Friday". By the time people got through splitting hairs about the meaning of "fast", it had reduced to "don't eat meat on Friday"
Note, by the way, that "Meat" didn't mean the same thing then as it does now - compare a modern Bible to a King James Bible for changes in the use of the word "meat" over the last 400 years.
The "fish" thing came about because fish wasn't meat! Therefore, it was perfectly acceptable to eat it on Friday, and obey the Papal Decree at the same time. A couple of centuries of tradition piled up, and before you know it, people (like yourself) assumed that "Eat fish on Friday" was a Divine Directive (AKA Commandment), when it was, in fact, an attempt to deal with a purely temporary, local, problem.
As to "Gay marriage", you should look to the purposes of marriage in cultures throughout history. Please note that "have sanctioned sex" was never one of them (adultery isn't about what unmarried people do in their bedrooms - it's about what married people do when their spouse isn't around). Historically, marriage has served political purposes, as well as social ones, as the primary method of insuring that children were properly taken care of (easy to prove who the mother is, harder to prove who the father is, and hard to convince a man to work to take care of someone else's child).
"Gay marriage" today isn't even nominally about "having sanctioned sex" - it's about survivor's benefits and such. It is considered desirable so as to allow people who would be considered "common law" spice (to use the neutral plural of spouse) to work around government regulations forbidding certain things to someone who is "not family".
So, "gay marriage" is something that serves no purpose from the historical perspective of marriage. On the other hand, as a Lutheran, I understand that "marriage" is NOT a religious activity, but a gevernment function (read Martin Luther's discussions on the subject if you doubt me), and thus it is up to the government, such as it is, to define "marriage" to suit itself. If the government decides that two people of the same sex can marry, then that is its prerogative, just as it is if the goverment decides that two people of the same sex canNOT marry.
What I want to know is, how long will it be till polygamy is legal again? After all, the same arguments that are used to support "gay marriage" can be used to support "plural marriage". I expect that if the US Supremes are ever required to rule on the Constitutionality of the subject, that some Mormons are going to push polygamy back into legality on the same grounds. Should be fun to watch the screaming and crying then. By both sides.
I would love to see Bill Clinton announce at the Democratic Convention this summer that he is running for President again. He would win in a landslide.
Well, no. 22nd Amendment, remember? "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" is the relevant part.
I'm all for space travel, but seeing as our forays into space so far have been rubbish,
Obviously, you don't live anyplace that hurricanes come ashore.
and no, it isn't necessrily "ridiculously laborious and expensive" to move things around the solar system. Just rather more expensive than the pittance NASA (and other space agencies) have had to work with. Which, in the big picture, isn't much. Let's see, NASA's budget this year is ~$16B - that means my family's share is ~$160. Which is less than I spend at the movies in a given year. And less than I spend eating out in a given month.
And "billions of people around the world starving"??? Where? China exports food to the USA. So does India. Leaving those two and Europe out (I don't think anyone believes the Europeans are starving), "billions" would imply more than half the people left over. Where are these billions of starving people? Africa? There aren't even ONE billion in Africa. South America? Not a billion there either. Nor are most of the people in either place starving.
and the problem of being shot at while trying to get some water isn't one that can be solved by throwing money at it. You'd have to do something like invade the country, take control of it, and stop people from shooting at each other over water. And, that, as we see in Iraq, isn't a trivial exercise.
Now, it can be argued that there are better things to do with NASA's money. Fund Rutan, for one. I expect if we REALLY wanted to get to Mars, give a billion a year to Rutan with the instructions to get to Mars with a crew of six within 20 years, we'd be doing the smartest thing regarding space travel that's ever been done....
The space shuttle uses solid fuel, which is a lot harder to handle/replace
Well, no. Solid Fuel is much easier to handle and replace than crygenic fuels.
And SS1 is a hybrid, so it may require replacement of the solid fuel portion of its engine. It is designed for quick replacement though, so I don't imagine that it will be much of an issue.
Biggest difference between the two (not counting size) is that SS1 will never approach the nearly 8000 m/s required to put a Shuttle into orbit. Which dramatically reduces wear and tear on SS1. Or increases it on the shuttle, depending on perspective.
and how many places do you need a password that will let ~200,000 failed attempts take place without setting off alarms somewhere?
Yes, the reduction is well over 80%, but not likely to be practical. Yet.
Unless, of course, the sound of a given keypress is similar to those near it on the keyboard. Then you could reduce the error to perhaps the nine adjacent keys for any search - cuts the problem down to 4000 or so combinations.
Assuming a ten character password, which is unlikely for most people. Six is a better bet, which reduces to 1200 or so combinations...
No, the USA backed off on spies because they're not terribly reliable, and they have been increasingly restricted by rules as to what is allowable for spies.
And we are no doubt going back in the direction of more spies being used. But it takes a long time to infiltrate a paranoid organization. Especially when the other lads aren't restricted to proving your spy is a spy - suspicion is enough to get him dumped into a shallow grave somewhere.
So, what do we do in the meantime?
PS. Security through obscurity: as recently as WW2, that was a useful technique. One of the contributing factors to the failure of the German invasion of the USSR was the lack of adequate maps of the USSR. Specifically, the available maps showed a highway leading into Moscow from the west that was integral to the German logisitics effort. Turns out the highway wasn't actually there.
We tend to look at a world where all information can be ferreted out easily, one way or another. Spy satellites and such help to foster that image, as does the US tendency to make everything publically available. But it is not always true that the other fellows can find out something you wish to conceal by obscurity.
And the internet security model is not terribly useful as an analogy. Consider the standard technique of restricting privileges so as to limit the bad guys capabilities once they penetrate your system. Would you consider a similar technique in the real world? For instance, limiting the rights of everyone not part of the military/government during the period of the threat? The number of people here who (rightly) are opposed to such is legion, and I don't think you're an unusual subset of the US population.
If you wish to model real world security with the internet model, consider an internet model where EVERYONE has admin privileges everywhere. Or at least poweruser privileges (for the windows types out there). THEN you can come up with a security model that might mirror the real world (tm)....
What fascinates me about all this (Euro-shuttle, replacement American shuttle, Chinese efforts, etc.) is how long these things are taking.
Once upon a time, the USA managed to get to the moon in less than a decade. Less than 30 years from the flight of the first large liquid-fueled rocket, that was.
So why have we reached the point where a new vehicle takes in excess of a decade to develop? Are we (not just the US, everyone) getting too timid to take a chance on something that isn't a sure thing?
and budget deficits [kowaldesign.com] in account with that
Interesting that if you look at these charts, you see a budget surplus in the late 90's. You also see the National Debt increasing at the same time, just slower than it had been before (and after).
However, society (our parents, grandparents, shops, businesses) were all still dogmatically sticking to Imperial measurements (almost identical to the US "English" system - anyone know why they diverged?).
They diverged because we (Americans) didn't want to use your (British) system, and you (British) didn't want to use our (American) system.
In other words, just to be different.
Seriously, there were no doubt good and sufficient reasons AT THE TIME for the changes. And no doubt they would look pretty silly now, if we bothered to find out what they were.
Personally, having grown up in both Europe and America, I am comfortable with both systems, and can use either when appropriate. And I don't see anything intrinsically superior about the Metric system, except for the mass/weight thing, which was not even recognized as a meaningful distinction when the older systems were put into use, so I can forgive the English/Imperial systems for being confused about mass/weight.
Let me drop in a reference here to Baen's Webscriptions and the Baen Free Library. "Works fine, lasts long time, fails safe, drains to the bilge." Still no DRM, or at least, none as of the last time I purchased anything there.
own... oh, wait. The DMCA... one step closer to 1984... well done Bu$h:(
Umm, the DMCA was Clinton's. 1998, remember? Bush didn't become President till 2001.
The electoral college is the well-meant Constitutional equivalent of "No state left behind".
The Electoral College was meant to make sure that the President was elected by the States, as opposed to by the People. Quite deliberately, I might add. Remember that "United States" was a plural back then, and did not become singular till 1865.
It also served the useful purpose of convincing the smaller states to ratify the Constitution, without which this would all be moot. Smaller states had a quite reasonable fear that a popularly elected president would allow Virginia and New York to effectively control the country (yes, once upon a time, Virginia was an IMPORTANT state)
"Too bad for the US. I can't be the only one that feels that, come November, we will have a president that once again did not get a majority vote."
Presidents who didn't get a majority of the popular vote:
George W Bush (2000) {debatable, depending on your beliefs about the diverse recounts, including the ones that didn't make the news)
William J Clinton (1996)
William J Clinton (1992)
Gerald Ford (unelected) (our only president who was never elected to either presidency or vice-presidency)
Richard M Nixon (1968)
Woodrow Wilson (1912)
Grover Cleveland (1892)
Benjamin Harrison (1888) (not only did Harrison have less than a majority of the popular vote, he had considerably fewer popular votes than his opponent, Grover Cleveland)
Abraham Lincoln (1860)
I got bored of removing pop-unders when I got to Lincoln, and stopped looking. As can be seen, more than a few (at least 8 of 43) presidents did not win the popular vote. Some of our best presidents (Lincoln is widely considered to be in the top 2), as well as some of our worst (Richard Nixon comes to mind), as well as some eminently forgettable presidents (Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two non-sequential terms) were so elected. The Republic managed to survive quite nicely, thank you.
Are you just trolling? Why don't you RTFA. That's not what they said at all:
On the basis of its review of expert reports, submissions received and other relevant information to date, the Commission finds that it is not in a position to recommend with the requisite degree of confidence the use of the chosen system at elections in Ireland in June 2004. The Commission wishes to emphasise that its conclusion is not based on any finding that the system will not work, but on the finding that it has not been proven at this time to the satisfaction of the Commission that it will work.
They just haven't had enough time to do rigorous testing in time for the next elections, but they do think it's accurate from what they've seen so far.
perhaps you should read more carefully. They did NOT say that it was accurate, as far as they could see. They said that they don't know enough to know one way or the other. In other words, might be accurate, might not, but we're not sure either way.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. It's not true.
The military uses a lot of diesel, of course, and would use a tremendous amount in a serious war, but it is trivial compared to the day to day usage in the USA.
Note that we had gas rationing in WW2 to remind people we were at war, NOT because the military needed all the fuel we could produce.
Any idea how much grain it takes to make a gallon of "white lightning"? I don't, but I imagine that assuming 40 pounds per gallon would give a good ballpark figure. If you live ~15 miles from work, you'll use a gallon or two per day (depending on whether you can use highways, or are forced to rely onsurface streets for your commute). So, optimistically, 40# per day for each of 100,000,000 drivers in the US - 50,000,000 tons per year of grain for normal commutes. The US eats on the order of 100,000,000 tons of grain per year (just the people, mind - the cows eat more than we do), so you're talking about doubling our grain production for the alcohol you want to use. Not even counting the energy cost to distill the stuff....
Price Increase != Inflation.
Never said they'd succeed in fixing it. Just suggested that they might have done it on purpose, with the INTENTION of fixing it. Personally, I'm indifferent to the show - I watched the first half dozen episodes, then stopped when I cancelled my cable (wasn't worth paying for cable for an hour a week of TV I actually watched)
Fact of the matter is that NASA's budget is a pittance. It's hardly enough to maintain four stinking Shuttles, much less develop a follow-on vehicle. The ISS is International because the government wouldn't fund NASA to the point of being able to build it ourselves.
And unmanned missions aren't worth the trouble. If we aren't going to go there ourselves, why bother? So we learn that Mars had water once? Whoop-de-do! Doesn't matter a hill of beans what there is to be learned in space if men aren't going to go there. If the manned space program dies, then the rest of it might as well die as well - since we'll be deciding to sit back and play video games till the next asteroid smacks us.
The way people look at space these days is getting to me....
No, they aren't. They export food. This isn't the sixties, people....
Or did you mean the North Koreans were starving? And this is relevant how? North Korea != China. Don't make the mistake of assuming that all Asians are the same. It annoys the Asians, and makes you look foolish.
Has it occurred to anyone that the continuity glitches might be intentional? After all, it's always possible that the Change War might fix some of these doxie-glitches in passing as we proceed down the years....
If they paint houses for a living, they probably can.
Well, no. The "fish on Friday" thing is not divinely ordained, and never was. It was a rule invented by a Pope in the Dark Ages, ostensibly for the purpose of stretching the food supply during an extended food shortage.
In fact, the original rule was "Fast on Friday". By the time people got through splitting hairs about the meaning of "fast", it had reduced to "don't eat meat on Friday"
Note, by the way, that "Meat" didn't mean the same thing then as it does now - compare a modern Bible to a King James Bible for changes in the use of the word "meat" over the last 400 years.
The "fish" thing came about because fish wasn't meat! Therefore, it was perfectly acceptable to eat it on Friday, and obey the Papal Decree at the same time. A couple of centuries of tradition piled up, and before you know it, people (like yourself) assumed that "Eat fish on Friday" was a Divine Directive (AKA Commandment), when it was, in fact, an attempt to deal with a purely temporary, local, problem.
As to "Gay marriage", you should look to the purposes of marriage in cultures throughout history. Please note that "have sanctioned sex" was never one of them (adultery isn't about what unmarried people do in their bedrooms - it's about what married people do when their spouse isn't around). Historically, marriage has served political purposes, as well as social ones, as the primary method of insuring that children were properly taken care of (easy to prove who the mother is, harder to prove who the father is, and hard to convince a man to work to take care of someone else's child).
"Gay marriage" today isn't even nominally about "having sanctioned sex" - it's about survivor's benefits and such. It is considered desirable so as to allow people who would be considered "common law" spice (to use the neutral plural of spouse) to work around government regulations forbidding certain things to someone who is "not family".
So, "gay marriage" is something that serves no purpose from the historical perspective of marriage. On the other hand, as a Lutheran, I understand that "marriage" is NOT a religious activity, but a gevernment function (read Martin Luther's discussions on the subject if you doubt me), and thus it is up to the government, such as it is, to define "marriage" to suit itself. If the government decides that two people of the same sex can marry, then that is its prerogative, just as it is if the goverment decides that two people of the same sex canNOT marry.
What I want to know is, how long will it be till polygamy is legal again? After all, the same arguments that are used to support "gay marriage" can be used to support "plural marriage". I expect that if the US Supremes are ever required to rule on the Constitutionality of the subject, that some Mormons are going to push polygamy back into legality on the same grounds. Should be fun to watch the screaming and crying then. By both sides.
Well, no. 22nd Amendment, remember? "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice" is the relevant part.
Obviously, you don't live anyplace that hurricanes come ashore.
and no, it isn't necessrily "ridiculously laborious and expensive" to move things around the solar system. Just rather more expensive than the pittance NASA (and other space agencies) have had to work with. Which, in the big picture, isn't much. Let's see, NASA's budget this year is ~$16B - that means my family's share is ~$160. Which is less than I spend at the movies in a given year. And less than I spend eating out in a given month.
And "billions of people around the world starving"??? Where? China exports food to the USA. So does India. Leaving those two and Europe out (I don't think anyone believes the Europeans are starving), "billions" would imply more than half the people left over. Where are these billions of starving people? Africa? There aren't even ONE billion in Africa. South America? Not a billion there either. Nor are most of the people in either place starving.
and the problem of being shot at while trying to get some water isn't one that can be solved by throwing money at it. You'd have to do something like invade the country, take control of it, and stop people from shooting at each other over water. And, that, as we see in Iraq, isn't a trivial exercise.
Now, it can be argued that there are better things to do with NASA's money. Fund Rutan, for one. I expect if we REALLY wanted to get to Mars, give a billion a year to Rutan with the instructions to get to Mars with a crew of six within 20 years, we'd be doing the smartest thing regarding space travel that's ever been done....
Well, no. Solid Fuel is much easier to handle and replace than crygenic fuels.
And SS1 is a hybrid, so it may require replacement of the solid fuel portion of its engine. It is designed for quick replacement though, so I don't imagine that it will be much of an issue.
Biggest difference between the two (not counting size) is that SS1 will never approach the nearly 8000 m/s required to put a Shuttle into orbit. Which dramatically reduces wear and tear on SS1. Or increases it on the shuttle, depending on perspective.
Yes, the reduction is well over 80%, but not likely to be practical. Yet.
Unless, of course, the sound of a given keypress is similar to those near it on the keyboard. Then you could reduce the error to perhaps the nine adjacent keys for any search - cuts the problem down to 4000 or so combinations.
Assuming a ten character password, which is unlikely for most people. Six is a better bet, which reduces to 1200 or so combinations...
And we are no doubt going back in the direction of more spies being used. But it takes a long time to infiltrate a paranoid organization. Especially when the other lads aren't restricted to proving your spy is a spy - suspicion is enough to get him dumped into a shallow grave somewhere.
So, what do we do in the meantime?
PS. Security through obscurity: as recently as WW2, that was a useful technique. One of the contributing factors to the failure of the German invasion of the USSR was the lack of adequate maps of the USSR. Specifically, the available maps showed a highway leading into Moscow from the west that was integral to the German logisitics effort. Turns out the highway wasn't actually there.
We tend to look at a world where all information can be ferreted out easily, one way or another. Spy satellites and such help to foster that image, as does the US tendency to make everything publically available. But it is not always true that the other fellows can find out something you wish to conceal by obscurity.
And the internet security model is not terribly useful as an analogy. Consider the standard technique of restricting privileges so as to limit the bad guys capabilities once they penetrate your system. Would you consider a similar technique in the real world? For instance, limiting the rights of everyone not part of the military/government during the period of the threat? The number of people here who (rightly) are opposed to such is legion, and I don't think you're an unusual subset of the US population.
If you wish to model real world security with the internet model, consider an internet model where EVERYONE has admin privileges everywhere. Or at least poweruser privileges (for the windows types out there). THEN you can come up with a security model that might mirror the real world (tm)....
Once upon a time, the USA managed to get to the moon in less than a decade. Less than 30 years from the flight of the first large liquid-fueled rocket, that was.
So why have we reached the point where a new vehicle takes in excess of a decade to develop? Are we (not just the US, everyone) getting too timid to take a chance on something that isn't a sure thing?
If so, that's just sad....
The dog's name? the wife's name? whatever is printed on the scrap of paper taped to the monitor?
that should cover most passwords. if it doesn't, try the kids' names, or "Passwordx", where x is any digit from 0-9.
Interesting that if you look at these charts, you see a budget surplus in the late 90's. You also see the National Debt increasing at the same time, just slower than it had been before (and after).
They diverged because we (Americans) didn't want to use your (British) system, and you (British) didn't want to use our (American) system.
In other words, just to be different.
Seriously, there were no doubt good and sufficient reasons AT THE TIME for the changes. And no doubt they would look pretty silly now, if we bothered to find out what they were.
Personally, having grown up in both Europe and America, I am comfortable with both systems, and can use either when appropriate. And I don't see anything intrinsically superior about the Metric system, except for the mass/weight thing, which was not even recognized as a meaningful distinction when the older systems were put into use, so I can forgive the English/Imperial systems for being confused about mass/weight.
phone's answer was ~1200km electrified, which 1200km is 60-65% of the total track.
Google's answer was 499km electified, of 1202km total track.
Note that 499 is less than ~1200.
Let me drop in a reference here to Baen's Webscriptions and the Baen Free Library. "Works fine, lasts long time, fails safe, drains to the bilge." Still no DRM, or at least, none as of the last time I purchased anything there.
right! you really don't want to load the chambe under the hammer, so the "six-shooter" will normally have only five chambers loaded.
own ... oh, wait. The DMCA ... one step closer to 1984 ... well done Bu$h :(
Umm, the DMCA was Clinton's. 1998, remember? Bush didn't become President till 2001.
The Electoral College was meant to make sure that the President was elected by the States, as opposed to by the People. Quite deliberately, I might add. Remember that "United States" was a plural back then, and did not become singular till 1865.
It also served the useful purpose of convincing the smaller states to ratify the Constitution, without which this would all be moot. Smaller states had a quite reasonable fear that a popularly elected president would allow Virginia and New York to effectively control the country (yes, once upon a time, Virginia was an IMPORTANT state)
Presidents who didn't get a majority of the popular vote:
George W Bush (2000) {debatable, depending on your beliefs about the diverse recounts, including the ones that didn't make the news)
William J Clinton (1996)
William J Clinton (1992)
Gerald Ford (unelected) (our only president who was never elected to either presidency or vice-presidency)
Richard M Nixon (1968)
Woodrow Wilson (1912)
Grover Cleveland (1892)
Benjamin Harrison (1888) (not only did Harrison have less than a majority of the popular vote, he had considerably fewer popular votes than his opponent, Grover Cleveland)
Abraham Lincoln (1860)
I got bored of removing pop-unders when I got to Lincoln, and stopped looking. As can be seen, more than a few (at least 8 of 43) presidents did not win the popular vote. Some of our best presidents (Lincoln is widely considered to be in the top 2), as well as some of our worst (Richard Nixon comes to mind), as well as some eminently forgettable presidents (Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two non-sequential terms) were so elected. The Republic managed to survive quite nicely, thank you.
perhaps you should read more carefully. They did NOT say that it was accurate, as far as they could see. They said that they don't know enough to know one way or the other. In other words, might be accurate, might not, but we're not sure either way.