Bone Marrow Transplant for me. From the time the decision was made to do it till they were pouring poison into me to kill my own bone marrow was a month or six weeks.
"George" (my new bone marrow - yes, my blood has different DNA than the rest of me, so it deserves its own name) and I have gotten along extremely well since then....
Current projections don't ever reach 20B people. Population peaks somewhere between 9B and 15B (depending on your assumptions), then declines to lower than current population.
Note that those assumptions all include everyone attaining a "Western" standard of living. The "West", for all its issues, seems to have found the answer to population growth - enough prosperity that raising kids isn't the be-all and end-all of existance..
Two kids from two parents is just population replacement, not growth.
It's not even that. 2.1 kids is ZPG. Because accidents happen.
Two kids per two parents is fine, as long as every one of those kids grows up to have two kids. If one is run over by a milk truck on the way to his wedding....
We don't need a next gen bomber, we have murdering human beings down pat. There is no need for improvement on that front anymore.
Yes, we do. Bombers get old. And we no longer have the capability of building B-52's. The assembly line is long since gone to wherever old assembly lines go when they stop making something.
Since the B-52 is pre-interwebs and mostly pre-computer, recreating the ability to manufacture B-52's is likely to be even more expensive than designing a new bomber from scratch, even ignoring that we want stealth and other fun things in a new bomber.
Note that the B-1 and B-2 suffer some of the same problems - not making them anymore means recreating the ability to make them with modern machine tools may be as hard as or harder than starting a new bomber from scratch.
The other way around. Simpler is more reliable. Suppose that each year, 1 door of 1,000 fails. Your car has two doors, so the odds you'll have a door failure are 2/1000, or 1/500. My car has four doors, so the odds that one of mine will fail is 4/1,000, or 1/250.
Pedant Mode...ON.
More properly, the failure rate of two doors in your example would be 1 - (999/1000)^2. For four doors, it would be 1 - (999/1000)^4.
Which gives you numbers pretty close to the 1/500 and 1/250 you mentioned. The divergence increases as the number of doors increases....
Using his logic, we'd get HONEST estimates of time and budget before deciding to do things. Then we'd make our decisions.
As opposed to faking up a budget/time estimate that will be palatable to the voters even though pure fantasy otherwise, then letting every session of the legislature between the first vote and completion have a veto over the whole project (but not over the money already spent)....
There's not enough nuclear fuel to do that. We have enough uranium for 200 years at CURRENT consumption rates.
Can you say "breeder reactor"? Sure you can.
That 200 year limit ignores breeder reactors, which allow us to make nuclear fuel from U238. And there is a metric fuckton of U238 out there. With breeder reactors, we're talking tens of thousands of year of nuclear fuel.
Plus there's the whole "reprocess the spent fuel rods" thing - there's still a lot of fissionables in a spent fuel rod. But it's illegal to reprocess those rods to recover the still-usable fissionables....
You can't refute the observable results of actual choice paralysis experiments by saying "nah".
So, your argument is that experiments have shown that people get nervous when presented with a lot of choices, therefore we should eliminate as many unnecessary choices as possible?
So, only one model of car should be made in the world? And all houses should be just alike? And mustn't forget "All restaurants are Taco Bell" - we wouldn't want people to have to be put through unnecessary choices, now, would we?
My wife, by the way, has anxiety issues. Not quite to the point of a mental disorder (or maybe just the far side of "not quite"), but she has problems making decisions (she calls it decidophobia). She also tells me it's well known that people with that sort of mental issues exist, but that trying to treat everyone as if they have that sort of issue is a bad idea....
then the smart soldiers will just bring their own Glocks to work.
No. They won't.
The really wonderful thing about a military-issue sidearm is that if it breaks, you can turn it in to the armory and they'll hand you a new one. Won't work so well if you're using a non-issue weapon....
The main reason I suppose it has not been adopted is cost as it was specially designed for special forces and not cheap.
You suppose wrong. The military's budget is effectively infinite compared to any possible pistol price (unless we're talking a delameter, of course;-)).
The main reason the USP wasn't universally adopted by the military is that the Special Forces types use different procurement rules, which don't require multi-year studies and Congressional action to approve new weapons. Unlike the rest of the military.
And what does your combat soldier say when they run out rounds in their primary? They switch to their sidearm?
It should, perhaps, be noted that your infantryman doesn't actually carry a sidearm - just the rifle. And grenades. Maybe an antitank rocket.
M9's are for officers, MP's, and SOME crew-served weapon guys. And no, they're not taken seriously as a combat weapon - that's what rifles, machineguns, and mortars are for.
No we don't. We get worked up because of the collective U.S. guilt over the use of nuclear weapons to end WW II has resulted in an immediate knee-jerk response in the negative, particularly among the majority of the population, who can't even correctly pronounce the word "nuclear".
Umm, no. We get worked up as a result of a propaganda campaign by the USSR that backfired, badly.
This occurred at the height of the Cold War, and was intended to push the USA in the direction of nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately, it worked rather better (or worse, depending on perspective) than intended, and pushed the USA against nuclear power (with no real effect on our attitude toward nuclear weapons), while at the same time pushing the USSR against nuclear power (with no real effect on their attitude toward nuclear weapons) at a time when the Soviets were trying to pull themselves into the 20th Century with nuclear power.
And then there was Chernobyl, where a test intended to find out how much power could be extracted from a nuclear power plant in meltdown to fight the meltdown went horrendously awry - they disabled all the interlocks meant to prevent the plant from melting down, then pushed the plant as far toward meltdown as they could to simulate a meltdown....
Even the Shuttle, in its technological glory and areodynamic flight, does not look like the early prototypes of a spaceplane as envisioned by artists and dreamers.
Note that Shuttle looked that way, not because we couldn't make one that matched artist's conceptions, but because we were unwilling to pay the pricetag required for a fully reusable launch vehicle.
Plutonium converts to Americium via a beta decay, which causes a neutron to turn into a proton.
After a couple neutrons are captured. Am-241 is the most common isotope (half life of 400-odd years). Pu-239 captures two neutrons (rarely), then undergoes beta decay to become Am-241.
Since this normally requires a specially designed reactor to produce, the amount produced casually by four bombs will have been minuscule.
Which is not to say it shouldn't be cleaned up. Just that the urgency of the cleanup is pretty much consistent with taking 50 years to get around to it.
Note the amount of material being discussed (50000 m^3 of dirt). Cleanup can be done with one of those big earth movers used when strip mining in a few months, tops....
Slashdot Mirror
Bone Marrow Transplant for me. From the time the decision was made to do it till they were pouring poison into me to kill my own bone marrow was a month or six weeks.
"George" (my new bone marrow - yes, my blood has different DNA than the rest of me, so it deserves its own name) and I have gotten along extremely well since then....
That being exactly his point.
Current projections don't ever reach 20B people. Population peaks somewhere between 9B and 15B (depending on your assumptions), then declines to lower than current population.
Note that those assumptions all include everyone attaining a "Western" standard of living. The "West", for all its issues, seems to have found the answer to population growth - enough prosperity that raising kids isn't the be-all and end-all of existance..
It's not even that. 2.1 kids is ZPG. Because accidents happen.
Two kids per two parents is fine, as long as every one of those kids grows up to have two kids. If one is run over by a milk truck on the way to his wedding....
In Iceland. In winter. Yeah, that sounds like fun to me....
So, you can rent a car for as little as $5/hour (and presumably, rent your own car for a similar amount), and you can earn $10k/year renting your car?
Which suggests you are renting your car out for 2000 hours a year (~6 hours a day)...
Somehow, I don't think so.
Also, there is the question of insurance (remember, the same problem people who hate Uber insist is a deal-killer?).
Yes, we do. Bombers get old. And we no longer have the capability of building B-52's. The assembly line is long since gone to wherever old assembly lines go when they stop making something.
Since the B-52 is pre-interwebs and mostly pre-computer, recreating the ability to manufacture B-52's is likely to be even more expensive than designing a new bomber from scratch, even ignoring that we want stealth and other fun things in a new bomber.
Note that the B-1 and B-2 suffer some of the same problems - not making them anymore means recreating the ability to make them with modern machine tools may be as hard as or harder than starting a new bomber from scratch.
You would guess wrong, then.
Hint: birdshot is MUCH faster than any bird.
Pedant Mode...ON.
More properly, the failure rate of two doors in your example would be 1 - (999/1000)^2. For four doors, it would be 1 - (999/1000)^4.
Which gives you numbers pretty close to the 1/500 and 1/250 you mentioned. The divergence increases as the number of doors increases....
Using his logic, we'd get HONEST estimates of time and budget before deciding to do things. Then we'd make our decisions.
As opposed to faking up a budget/time estimate that will be palatable to the voters even though pure fantasy otherwise, then letting every session of the legislature between the first vote and completion have a veto over the whole project (but not over the money already spent)....
Y'know, people were saying this when my daughter was a kid 20 years ago.
And they were saying this when I was a kid 40 years ago.
Hell, from what my Dad has told me, they were saying it when HE was a kid too....
I'm curious - are you as offended about your electric bill as your data plan? After all, electricity is metered, and you pay more if you use more.
And natural gas in the places that use it. Metered.
And in some places, the water bill is metered as well. Wow, those evil water suppliers!
Damn, we're just surrounded by evil companies that charge us by the pound (or equivalent).!!!
Have you ever considered the possibility that you have no sense of humour? Because the comment you're responding to looked like a joke to me....
Can you say "breeder reactor"? Sure you can.
That 200 year limit ignores breeder reactors, which allow us to make nuclear fuel from U238. And there is a metric fuckton of U238 out there. With breeder reactors, we're talking tens of thousands of year of nuclear fuel.
Plus there's the whole "reprocess the spent fuel rods" thing - there's still a lot of fissionables in a spent fuel rod. But it's illegal to reprocess those rods to recover the still-usable fissionables....
So, your argument is that experiments have shown that people get nervous when presented with a lot of choices, therefore we should eliminate as many unnecessary choices as possible?
So, only one model of car should be made in the world? And all houses should be just alike? And mustn't forget "All restaurants are Taco Bell" - we wouldn't want people to have to be put through unnecessary choices, now, would we?
My wife, by the way, has anxiety issues. Not quite to the point of a mental disorder (or maybe just the far side of "not quite"), but she has problems making decisions (she calls it decidophobia). She also tells me it's well known that people with that sort of mental issues exist, but that trying to treat everyone as if they have that sort of issue is a bad idea....
Personally, I can get by just fine with three choices in jam.
Most everyone I know can manage with three to four choices in jam.
But they're not the SAME three to four choices!
So by the time your grocery is stocking everyone's three to four choices, it has 100 or so different things on the shelf.
Ditto bread, meat, veggies, soap, shampoo, etc.
IOW, a large number of choices isn't a bad thing. Unless you're just too stupid to be allowed to make choices in the first place....
No. They won't.
The really wonderful thing about a military-issue sidearm is that if it breaks, you can turn it in to the armory and they'll hand you a new one. Won't work so well if you're using a non-issue weapon....
You suppose wrong. The military's budget is effectively infinite compared to any possible pistol price (unless we're talking a delameter, of course ;-)).
The main reason the USP wasn't universally adopted by the military is that the Special Forces types use different procurement rules, which don't require multi-year studies and Congressional action to approve new weapons. Unlike the rest of the military.
It should, perhaps, be noted that your infantryman doesn't actually carry a sidearm - just the rifle. And grenades. Maybe an antitank rocket.
M9's are for officers, MP's, and SOME crew-served weapon guys. And no, they're not taken seriously as a combat weapon - that's what rifles, machineguns, and mortars are for.
Umm, no. We get worked up as a result of a propaganda campaign by the USSR that backfired, badly.
This occurred at the height of the Cold War, and was intended to push the USA in the direction of nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately, it worked rather better (or worse, depending on perspective) than intended, and pushed the USA against nuclear power (with no real effect on our attitude toward nuclear weapons), while at the same time pushing the USSR against nuclear power (with no real effect on their attitude toward nuclear weapons) at a time when the Soviets were trying to pull themselves into the 20th Century with nuclear power.
And then there was Chernobyl, where a test intended to find out how much power could be extracted from a nuclear power plant in meltdown to fight the meltdown went horrendously awry - they disabled all the interlocks meant to prevent the plant from melting down, then pushed the plant as far toward meltdown as they could to simulate a meltdown....
Why? We're not sharing our cellphones.
After reading TFA, I noticed that there were 424 signatures on the "Get thee hence, thou Evil Datacenter" petition.
Nice to know how few people can kill a business in France. It'll do wonders helping companies decide whether to set up in France or elsewhere....
Note that Shuttle looked that way, not because we couldn't make one that matched artist's conceptions, but because we were unwilling to pay the pricetag required for a fully reusable launch vehicle.
Perhaps you're thinking "3600 miles cubed" instead of "3600 cubic miles". They're not the same thing.
After a couple neutrons are captured. Am-241 is the most common isotope (half life of 400-odd years). Pu-239 captures two neutrons (rarely), then undergoes beta decay to become Am-241.
Since this normally requires a specially designed reactor to produce, the amount produced casually by four bombs will have been minuscule.
Which is not to say it shouldn't be cleaned up. Just that the urgency of the cleanup is pretty much consistent with taking 50 years to get around to it.
Note the amount of material being discussed (50000 m^3 of dirt). Cleanup can be done with one of those big earth movers used when strip mining in a few months, tops....