I admit to a slight amount of bias, since I was born in the magic period when draft registration was never required. But my little brother, who wasn't so lucky, never registered for the draft, and it was never an issue.
I suspect that your problem was that you were talking to the Feds regularly. Your average American citizen hardly ever encounters, much less has to deal with, a Federal agent/officer.
Are people living in the Chernobyl area? No? THAT is my point.
Yes, actually a few are.
Illegally mind you, but so what? The only real problem with living there is the law against it and a slightly increased chance of thyroid cancer (for values of "slightly increased" that are smaller than your chances of increased lung cancer deaths living near a coal-fired plant)
Kuwait also. Had to go there once upon a time (ten or eleven years back), they took my passport on arrival, and gave it back when they were ready to let me leave.
Needless to say, I haven't been back, and have no intentions of ever going back.
So, tell me about the number of fatalities associated with coal power. Include coal-mining deaths, since that's the only reason for them.
I note that there was a coal-mining accident in Ukraine the other day. It killed 30 people. Just that one accident.
Chernobyl killed about 60. Over the period since the accident, since that includes thyroid cancer deaths that are estimated to have happened due to the accident.
Oh, and since Chernobyl, the USA alone has suffered in excess of 830 coal mining deaths (in excess because I don't want to find a breakdown of 1986 coal mining deaths by month/day to allow a more exact number. But 1987 to 2014 add up to more than 830 by themselves).
So, coal is definitely safer. It pollutes, it does the CO2 thing, and it kills more people in normal operations that the worst nuclear disaster in history. Yeah, definitely safer...
Oh, and did you know that wildlife in the Chernobyl area is in much better shape than outside the exclusion zone?
WTF did they put those plants so close to the water? What would it have cost to build the very same plants only fifty feet higher, just a little further inland?
If I were guessing (and I am), I'd guess that the Japanese didn't want the plant anywhere near where people actually lived, so they put it as far away as feasible. Which happened to be on the coast.
Note that a quick check of maps shows that the plant was about as far from the surrounding towns as it was possible to be - inland would have put it closer to several towns.
Yes, sometimes fear of a thing can cause more problems than the thing itself....
Apparently, the "scientfiically verifiable theory of morals" (exact phrase from the book) proves that the way to keep society from collapsing is through corporal punishment in schools and public flogging, just like there is NO way to housetrain a puppy without hitting it.
No, what it attempts to prove is that an arbitrary transition based on age from "slap on the wrist" as punishment for a particular crime to "execution" for the same crime is insane.
Do try to keep in mind when the book was written, and how society behaved then....
Simple solution to coal killing humans. Stop burning coal, replace coal plants with nuclear plants. Even if you include Chernobyl deaths in the nuclear statistics, the death rate is an order of magnitude or three better for nukes than for coal....
Especially when the reduction comes not from the wind turbines but from the power line to the mainland that lets the locals buy power from the mainland power company.
The really one remaining significant difference between the parties is that public shaming is still a career-ender in the Democratic party.
Not that being a "career-ender" actually matters to either Dems or Reps - if you're worth millions, who cares if you don't have a job?
And Bill Clinton, like Barack Obama, came into the office basically upper-middle to lower-upper class, and left or will leave as multimillionaires (Clinton is worth double-digit millions, Obama is approaching a billion).
I'm curious as to whether the "official" State Department email was encrypted by design, and whether her private email was encrypted at all. Seems to me that a lot of State Department secrets might be laying around in various places if her emails weren't encrypted.
I'm also curious as to how she proposes to PROVE that she's turned over all of her official emails to the State Department. After all, it might behoove her to "overlook" certain emails that portray her or the Administration in an unflattering light....
Unless the number of each of those "billions" is only 2, then that's just about the entire human species.
If 90% of humans were killed in a nuclear exchange (or any other mass death event), we'd still have a population considerably higher than it was 2000 years ago.
If 99% of humanity were killed, we'd still have a population considerably higher than it was 3000 years ago....
England have about 16.000 miles (kilometers? I don't remember) of coast. The proposed generators will take about 30 miles. There will be plenty of coast left to all marine species. It's not a full perimeter siege, it's just a few barricades here and there.
The USA has thousands of miles of coastline too. Alas, salmon were only interested in a tiny fraction of those thousands, and the dams built on that tiny fraction were a major problem for salmon.
So, what's going to be the problem fish/crustacean/whatever for these installations?
it may not be continuous 24/7 but you get it between 4pm and 10pm
Some days you do, some you don't. Tides happen at about 12 hour and 40 minute intervals. So the period that you have tidal power drifts around the clock over a lunar month....
During the peak production hours of the tidal generators, the coal and oil plants can be shut down, decreasing pollution and cutting production costs.
Hmm, 14 hour uptime per 24 hours and change. Which means up for seven hours, down for 5.3 (or so) hours, up for seven hours, down for 5.3 (or so) hours.
First off, you can't shut down a coal power plant and restart it in only five hours. And it will operate at considerably (for values of "considerably" that vary from 10% to 30%) reduced efficiency for some hours after startup
Secondly, pollution from coal plants are 30%-50% (or so, depending on type of pollutant) higher during the 24 (or so) hours immediately after startup.
Which means that you're basically reducing efficiency of your coal plant in exchange for getting more pollution out of it.
I've never noticed that non-religious types were less prone to hypocrisy than the religious variety, actually.
As to the nine-year-old thing, "accepted customs of our tribe" actually covers that - it WAS perfectly normal to marry females approaching puberty there and then. Now, not so much (though I have read the marriage of 13-15 year old girls wasn't uncommon as recently as 200 years ago).
though there were idiots like Columbus who were convinced the world was much smaller then the generally accepted size.
There is a certain amount of evidence that Columbus lied about how big he thought the world was, in order to convince the Spanish crown to finance his expedition.
It's not like the New World was completely unknown in Europe before Columbus - FLemish fishermen were drying fish in Newfoundland before Columbus was born. And it's quite possible that Columbus knew that.
If so, and in light of Spain's interest in breaking the Portugese monopoly on trade with the Far East, a little "creative interpretation" of the world's size might have been sufficient to convince the Spanish Crown that a trip west was a worthwhile investment....
In the developed world, population growth is negative absent immigration. Currently, this applies to China, the EU, and the USA. Last I bothered to check, the projections were for continued global population growth up to the 10-15 billion range, followed be a decline to a stable population in the 5-9 billion range.
Note that that "stable population" presupposes that the entire world is "developed" by that time.
If owning robot overlords can assure you all you ever need without working, it's obvious everybody will want these, but only the most fortunate will afford it, leaving the rest of us in misery.
If we don't have robots making our shit, then we'll still be making it the old-fashioned way, which sort of implies we'll be working for a living.
At least until we can set up robot factories of our own, of course.
Look at it this way - if the robots can make enough stuff for everyone to have everything they want, then everyone will be "rich". Of course, the real problem in that case is that we'll stop measuring "wealth" in "things we own"....
Also note that even if the (currently) wealthy types make just enough stuff for themselves and leave the rest of us to rot, there's nothing actually stopping the rest of us from building our own robots to make shit for us....
Weren't people saying the same sort of things when the "assembly line" was first invented? After all, the main purpose of the "assembly line" was to make the same amount of stuff with fa fewer workers than had been needed previously.
Oddly, we seem to have managed to get past the introduction of the assembly line without the sort of problems you're predicting - humanity is still here, its population is still growing, and technology is still advancing.
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Don Quixote. Or possibly Don Quichotte, if you're an opera fan.
Or were you referring to Donald Quichote? If so, my bad....
I suspect that your problem was that you were talking to the Feds regularly. Your average American citizen hardly ever encounters, much less has to deal with, a Federal agent/officer.
Noone gets prosecuted for failing to register for the draft, since it's impossible to prove that they knew they were required to do so.
Until and unless we actually start conscription up again (WW3, maybe?) it won't be an issue.
Yes, actually a few are.
Illegally mind you, but so what? The only real problem with living there is the law against it and a slightly increased chance of thyroid cancer (for values of "slightly increased" that are smaller than your chances of increased lung cancer deaths living near a coal-fired plant)
Kuwait also. Had to go there once upon a time (ten or eleven years back), they took my passport on arrival, and gave it back when they were ready to let me leave.
Needless to say, I haven't been back, and have no intentions of ever going back.
So, tell me about the number of fatalities associated with coal power. Include coal-mining deaths, since that's the only reason for them.
I note that there was a coal-mining accident in Ukraine the other day. It killed 30 people. Just that one accident.
Chernobyl killed about 60. Over the period since the accident, since that includes thyroid cancer deaths that are estimated to have happened due to the accident.
Oh, and since Chernobyl, the USA alone has suffered in excess of 830 coal mining deaths (in excess because I don't want to find a breakdown of 1986 coal mining deaths by month/day to allow a more exact number. But 1987 to 2014 add up to more than 830 by themselves).
So, coal is definitely safer. It pollutes, it does the CO2 thing, and it kills more people in normal operations that the worst nuclear disaster in history. Yeah, definitely safer...
Oh, and did you know that wildlife in the Chernobyl area is in much better shape than outside the exclusion zone?
If I were guessing (and I am), I'd guess that the Japanese didn't want the plant anywhere near where people actually lived, so they put it as far away as feasible. Which happened to be on the coast.
Note that a quick check of maps shows that the plant was about as far from the surrounding towns as it was possible to be - inland would have put it closer to several towns.
Yes, sometimes fear of a thing can cause more problems than the thing itself....
This statement makes me curious - what DO you think spy agencies are supposed to do?
Do you think they're a form of welfare (providing jobs to people to do nothing)?
No, what it attempts to prove is that an arbitrary transition based on age from "slap on the wrist" as punishment for a particular crime to "execution" for the same crime is insane.
Do try to keep in mind when the book was written, and how society behaved then....
Simple solution to coal killing humans. Stop burning coal, replace coal plants with nuclear plants. Even if you include Chernobyl deaths in the nuclear statistics, the death rate is an order of magnitude or three better for nukes than for coal....
Especially when the reduction comes not from the wind turbines but from the power line to the mainland that lets the locals buy power from the mainland power company.
Not that being a "career-ender" actually matters to either Dems or Reps - if you're worth millions, who cares if you don't have a job?
And Bill Clinton, like Barack Obama, came into the office basically upper-middle to lower-upper class, and left or will leave as multimillionaires (Clinton is worth double-digit millions, Obama is approaching a billion).
I'm curious as to whether the "official" State Department email was encrypted by design, and whether her private email was encrypted at all. Seems to me that a lot of State Department secrets might be laying around in various places if her emails weren't encrypted.
I'm also curious as to how she proposes to PROVE that she's turned over all of her official emails to the State Department. After all, it might behoove her to "overlook" certain emails that portray her or the Administration in an unflattering light....
If 90% of humans were killed in a nuclear exchange (or any other mass death event), we'd still have a population considerably higher than it was 2000 years ago.
If 99% of humanity were killed, we'd still have a population considerably higher than it was 3000 years ago....
The USA has thousands of miles of coastline too. Alas, salmon were only interested in a tiny fraction of those thousands, and the dams built on that tiny fraction were a major problem for salmon.
So, what's going to be the problem fish/crustacean/whatever for these installations?
Some days you do, some you don't. Tides happen at about 12 hour and 40 minute intervals. So the period that you have tidal power drifts around the clock over a lunar month....
Hmm, 14 hour uptime per 24 hours and change. Which means up for seven hours, down for 5.3 (or so) hours, up for seven hours, down for 5.3 (or so) hours.
First off, you can't shut down a coal power plant and restart it in only five hours. And it will operate at considerably (for values of "considerably" that vary from 10% to 30%) reduced efficiency for some hours after startup
Secondly, pollution from coal plants are 30%-50% (or so, depending on type of pollutant) higher during the 24 (or so) hours immediately after startup.
Which means that you're basically reducing efficiency of your coal plant in exchange for getting more pollution out of it.
In other words, that won't work.
And here I thought the Punisher wore a skull symbol on his chest. The Red Skull was the guy with a skull for a face.
Note that both points in your quote are quite true.
The North Vietnamese never beat the US on the battlefield and lost the war with the US.
Alas, once the US went home, there was a SECOND Vietnam War, with the sides being USSR+North Vietnam vs South Vietnam. The North won that one.
It's one of the things that can happen when you decide to quit fighting unilaterally.
I've never noticed that non-religious types were less prone to hypocrisy than the religious variety, actually.
As to the nine-year-old thing, "accepted customs of our tribe" actually covers that - it WAS perfectly normal to marry females approaching puberty there and then. Now, not so much (though I have read the marriage of 13-15 year old girls wasn't uncommon as recently as 200 years ago).
There is a certain amount of evidence that Columbus lied about how big he thought the world was, in order to convince the Spanish crown to finance his expedition.
It's not like the New World was completely unknown in Europe before Columbus - FLemish fishermen were drying fish in Newfoundland before Columbus was born. And it's quite possible that Columbus knew that.
If so, and in light of Spain's interest in breaking the Portugese monopoly on trade with the Far East, a little "creative interpretation" of the world's size might have been sufficient to convince the Spanish Crown that a trip west was a worthwhile investment....
Not quite.
In the developed world, population growth is negative absent immigration. Currently, this applies to China, the EU, and the USA. Last I bothered to check, the projections were for continued global population growth up to the 10-15 billion range, followed be a decline to a stable population in the 5-9 billion range.
Note that that "stable population" presupposes that the entire world is "developed" by that time.
If we don't have robots making our shit, then we'll still be making it the old-fashioned way, which sort of implies we'll be working for a living.
At least until we can set up robot factories of our own, of course.
Look at it this way - if the robots can make enough stuff for everyone to have everything they want, then everyone will be "rich". Of course, the real problem in that case is that we'll stop measuring "wealth" in "things we own"....
Also note that even if the (currently) wealthy types make just enough stuff for themselves and leave the rest of us to rot, there's nothing actually stopping the rest of us from building our own robots to make shit for us....
And how, pray tell, will the rentiers make even more money if noone can afford to buy what they make because they're unemployed?
Oddly, we seem to have managed to get past the introduction of the assembly line without the sort of problems you're predicting - humanity is still here, its population is still growing, and technology is still advancing.
Harebrained.
Brains don't have hairs, but hares have brains....