I just got a Prius a couple of months ago. I've been doing city and mountain driving, including driving up Pikes Peak, and still average 47-50 mpg. Out in the flatlands on the highway I would get even better mileage.
It is larger than my old Saab 900 and still gets significantly better mileage (the Saab got 25-28 mpg in similar driving conditions). I typically got 270 miles per tank on the Saab (10 gallons) and now get 500 miles per tank on the Prius. How the heck is that insignificant??
True, but only because the governments of Western nations impose all sorts of enviromental regulations making it too cost prohibited to manufacture locally.
Also not true. Labor in China is a heck of a lot cheaper than in Western countries. Factory line workers often only get $3 per day. Where the heck can you get labor that cheap in the West?
Even if we had no enforced environmental regulations (like in China) the companies still couldn't compete with labor that cheap.
the only reason wealthy Western countries are relatively cleaner is because they outsource most dirty manufacturing to China.
That's not true. Western countries actually have environmental regulations and generally enforce them whereas China does not. China is extremely pro-business, even unable to force large businesses to pay their taxes (at least according to the recent Koppel documentary).
Western countries force businesses to be more environmentally friendly. They also force energy plants to be cleaner. Coal power plants in the West are much cleaner than China ones (employing scrubbers to get most smog-forming particles out of the soot before being released to the atmosphere).
Until China solves its huge problems with corruption and is able to control large businesses nothing will change over there.
That would be bad for several reasons. One, the astronauts would repeatedly go through the Van Allen Belt getting exposed to higher radiation. Two, it doesn't help reduce the energy requirements to get to the space station. Just because it's closer doesn't mean it takes less energy -- it would simply be in an elliptical orbit and travel at a higher velocity at the closest approach. You would still need to get an object to a matching orbit in order to dock with it. The only thing it would gain you is it would take less travel time to get to/from the station when it passes the earth.
One huge deal-breaker problem with sending the ISS to the moon is that the escape vehicle isn't designed to support 3 people in it for the several days it would take to get back from the moon. In addition to not having adequate life support facilities, it probably doesn't have enough fuel capacity to do the two burns needed to make the orbit change (one to head to the Earth and another to re-enter the atmosphere when it gets closer). They absolutely will not consider sending the ISS to a location where immediate evacuation is not possible.
I'm not outraged because the amount of money being spent is nothing compared to other things that I'm much more opposed to. They are not, I repeat not, increasing the budget of NASA back to Apollo era amounts.
Heck, the US could stand to get some of its old prestige back so I'm actually for them trying to work on this project. And if you think the Apollo program didn't have much affect on the US reputation around the world think again.
Here's a better source. Pegatron (a Chinese company) will be making the drives for the 360. As my friend said, they will be available this fall (third quarter).
A friend of mine that works for Best Buy told me that there will be an external blue ray player for the 360 this fall. I'm willing to wait till then to find out since it's not like I'm dying to get a next-gen HD player.
I think we're talking past each other. I'm not trying to debate the 2nd amendment outright. I'm just saying it isn't clear as day obvious how to interpret it and thus isn't blatantly unconstitutional to take one stand or the other.
And the very previous piece is, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, ". The only well regulated militia in the modern US I know of is the military -- it's not a coincidence that both words have the same root. Each state is free to allow more freedom as they see fit and many have done so -- that is, they have specifically made it clear in their constitution that the right to bear arms is an individual right. Even if at the federal level an ammendment was made that only guaranteed this right as a military one states could still give additional freedom to its own citizens; there's nothing in the US Constitution that would stop them from doing so.
what's wrong with trying to go through the amendment process instead of using laws to slowly erode chip away at parts of the Constitution that we don't agree with?
That misses my original response, which was "Rather than leaving it to the Supreme Court to clarify this I agree that it would be best to just add an amendment to define what 'the right to bear arms' means nowadays." The main thing I disagreed with was that one would view a ban of handguns as 'blatantly unconstitutional' when this is a rather murky part of the Constitution.
The amendment says what it says, there's only one way a reasonable person who knows the English language can read it. If you want to argue that the amendment doesn't mean what it says, then fix the wording. The constitution provides a mechanism to do this.
From 'The Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent' published by Duke University:
In late-eighteenth-century parlance, bearing arms was a term of art with an obvious military and legal connotation.... As a review of the Library of Congress's data base of congressional proceedings in the revolutionary and early national periods reveals, the thirty uses of 'bear arms' and 'bearing arms' in bills, statutes, and debates of the Continental, Confederation, and United States' Congresses between 1774 and 1821 invariably occur in a context exclusively focused on the army or the militia.
The Constitution is first and foremost a legal document and legal definitions apply. Given the way the term was used during the period in which it was written I think the intent of the amendment is pretty clear but historically courts have ruled differently on this issue, at times interpreting it as a personal right and at others interpreting it as a right of militias. If nothing else it shows that it is a gray area (given the contrary court rulings) and is not as blatantly obvious as you claim.
but what Kucinich is doing there is drafting blatantly unconstitutional legislation
No, banning handguns is not blatently uncostitutional. The only way I can conceive of it seeming blatent to you is if you don't know anything about the history and context during which the 2nd ammendment was written (see here for details).
It certainly is debatable whether the intent of the founders was to allow individuals the right to guns vs. a militia right. Rather than leaving it to the Supreme Court to clarify this I agree that it would be best to just add an amendment to define what 'the right to bear arms' means nowadays (at the time it was written it was a term used exclusively in military situations). This is a gray area and has been a gray area within the Constitution for quite some time and to just say it's blatant to hold one particular opinion about it seems to ignore the valid arguments of the other side.
I'll do something most won't, I'll name both a Republican and a Democrat. On the Republican side the guy I most respect right now is Arlen Specter. I don't agree with him on much but I think he's a principled guy and is respectful to the other side and represents his constituents well.
On the Democrat side, I would either pick Chris Dodd or Joe Biden for standouts (both voted against FISA and I think would have voted against it even if they were still in the presidential race). You may not agree with them but they both know the Constitution extremely well (Biden teaches a course at a university on it) and are very well versed on global affairs and actually give intelligent interviews on shows like Charlie Rose and Meet the Press (unlike some other congressmen I could name).
I don't think just because you renege on a promise you are ethically challenged. For example, Bush Sr promised not to raise taxes but was forced to when needing to increase funds to pay for a war. It was a stupid promise but I think he was right to change his position when circumstances changed. Bush Jr, on the other hand, promised to cut taxes and stayed with that pledge no matter what. I think he was given every reason to legitimately change his position on this (the supposed trifecta) but never did. In this case I think the latter is much more ethically challenged than his father.
However, in Obama's case I can't think of a good reason why he should have changed his vote and almost certainly was just doing political pandering.
Since it's required that the government provide emergency treatment for everyone here there's no way to 'opt out' except to move to another country (where it's probably the same as here so unless you move to some third-world country that can't provide emergency treatment to everyone you can't really opt out of it regardless).
Doing anything you want with your own body seems like you're not hurting anyone but yourself but that's only true up until you start having to get emergency treatments at hospitals at which point you're burdening all the other taxpayers needlessly.
why the hell should the Government be regulating what I do with my body?
That's easy. When the government starts paying for your health care it should care what you do with your body that makes it disproportionately expensive to keep you in decent health vs people with healthier lifestyles.
I agree. In addition, as far as I know most travel agencies send e-mail to their customers from time to time with their current offers (usually with the blessing of their customers). While it is border-line unsolicited it usually isn't a nuisance so long as they don't send such e-mail often (just once very month or two) and serves its purpose of informing their customers of the latest options available or if a spot opened up on one of their packages.
AAA doesn't do this though, at least not AAA Colorado.
While that would make it obvious to him how much spam sucks (and it really would suck since personal e-mails written by the slashdot crowd would not be filterable), it would also likely get this guy fired.
I generally can't stand code that was written by a male That's a bummer since the great majority of open-source code is written by guys. Why that is, I'm not sure. I would guess that it's because guys tend to like to tinker in their off-time whereas girls usually want to do other things. Note I didn't say all girls or all guys, just commented on the trends.
I'd like to point out that your quote from the article references the same straight-dope article you originally linked to. It's true that a candle in a zero-g environment doesn't necessarily maintain combustion but convection does naturally occur, just at a slower rate. However, it would be trivial to add a fan to mitigate this so one way or another they are certainly using convection to cool the electronics.
I did not miss the point. There are three primary types of heat transfer: radiation, convection and conduction. In space the only method of heat transfer is radiation. Conduction works within solids. However for fluids and gases convection works well with or without gravity. The convection rate will be different depending on the type of fluid and can depend on whether gravity is present, but for a low power device it should be similar with or without gravity.
2nd law of thermodynamics. The entropy of a closed not in equilibrium will increase until it reaches a maximum value. You simply can't keep hot fluids separate from cold fluids, there will be heat transfer and the label we call this type of heat transfer is convection. The problem with the candle is that the rate of oxygen replenishment is too low to maintain combustion. That is not the same as zero convection. A flame has a very high rate of convection and needs a substantial flow of oxygen to maintain the combustion process. Without gravity the convection process is too low for optimal combustion. Comparing that to the passive convection of an electronic device is not a good approach. For more information on convection you should read the wikipedia article about it.
Sure it convects, it just doesn't move upward. It does move from hot to cold though and form thermal currents. All you need for convection is a gas with sufficient density or a liquid. You don't need gravity.
That's true but probably misleading. They almost certainly have the router in an accessible area so it is exposed to air so it can use convection to cool itself. Ultimately the space station can only get rid of excess heat via radiation but this particular component doesn't need to be designed differently because of thermal issues.
Well, this is a tricky thing to talk about (the importance of your religion or lack thereof and its affect on your life). I'm not going to talk exhaustively about this but make a few comments based on observing both a previous very religious former roommate (a Creationist aerospace engineer no less) and my current roommate (an aethiest that's a physics and math major).
In day to day behavior they actually would make the same decision very often. Probably the most profound difference is how you would raise your kids. If you don't have any, I'm not sure how big a difference it really makes 99% of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I just got a Prius a couple of months ago. I've been doing city and mountain driving, including driving up Pikes Peak, and still average 47-50 mpg. Out in the flatlands on the highway I would get even better mileage.
It is larger than my old Saab 900 and still gets significantly better mileage (the Saab got 25-28 mpg in similar driving conditions). I typically got 270 miles per tank on the Saab (10 gallons) and now get 500 miles per tank on the Prius. How the heck is that insignificant??
True, but only because the governments of Western nations impose all sorts of enviromental regulations making it too cost prohibited to manufacture locally.
Also not true. Labor in China is a heck of a lot cheaper than in Western countries. Factory line workers often only get $3 per day. Where the heck can you get labor that cheap in the West?
Even if we had no enforced environmental regulations (like in China) the companies still couldn't compete with labor that cheap.
the only reason wealthy Western countries are relatively cleaner is because they outsource most dirty manufacturing to China.
That's not true. Western countries actually have environmental regulations and generally enforce them whereas China does not. China is extremely pro-business, even unable to force large businesses to pay their taxes (at least according to the recent Koppel documentary).
Western countries force businesses to be more environmentally friendly. They also force energy plants to be cleaner. Coal power plants in the West are much cleaner than China ones (employing scrubbers to get most smog-forming particles out of the soot before being released to the atmosphere).
Until China solves its huge problems with corruption and is able to control large businesses nothing will change over there.
That would be bad for several reasons. One, the astronauts would repeatedly go through the Van Allen Belt getting exposed to higher radiation. Two, it doesn't help reduce the energy requirements to get to the space station. Just because it's closer doesn't mean it takes less energy -- it would simply be in an elliptical orbit and travel at a higher velocity at the closest approach. You would still need to get an object to a matching orbit in order to dock with it. The only thing it would gain you is it would take less travel time to get to/from the station when it passes the earth.
One huge deal-breaker problem with sending the ISS to the moon is that the escape vehicle isn't designed to support 3 people in it for the several days it would take to get back from the moon. In addition to not having adequate life support facilities, it probably doesn't have enough fuel capacity to do the two burns needed to make the orbit change (one to head to the Earth and another to re-enter the atmosphere when it gets closer). They absolutely will not consider sending the ISS to a location where immediate evacuation is not possible.
I'm not outraged because the amount of money being spent is nothing compared to other things that I'm much more opposed to. They are not, I repeat not, increasing the budget of NASA back to Apollo era amounts.
Heck, the US could stand to get some of its old prestige back so I'm actually for them trying to work on this project. And if you think the Apollo program didn't have much affect on the US reputation around the world think again.
Here's a better source. Pegatron (a Chinese company) will be making the drives for the 360. As my friend said, they will be available this fall (third quarter).
A friend of mine that works for Best Buy told me that there will be an external blue ray player for the 360 this fall. I'm willing to wait till then to find out since it's not like I'm dying to get a next-gen HD player.
I think we're talking past each other. I'm not trying to debate the 2nd amendment outright. I'm just saying it isn't clear as day obvious how to interpret it and thus isn't blatantly unconstitutional to take one stand or the other.
And the very previous piece is, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, ". The only well regulated militia in the modern US I know of is the military -- it's not a coincidence that both words have the same root. Each state is free to allow more freedom as they see fit and many have done so -- that is, they have specifically made it clear in their constitution that the right to bear arms is an individual right. Even if at the federal level an ammendment was made that only guaranteed this right as a military one states could still give additional freedom to its own citizens; there's nothing in the US Constitution that would stop them from doing so.
what's wrong with trying to go through the amendment process instead of using laws to slowly erode chip away at parts of the Constitution that we don't agree with?
That misses my original response, which was "Rather than leaving it to the Supreme Court to clarify this I agree that it would be best to just add an amendment to define what 'the right to bear arms' means nowadays." The main thing I disagreed with was that one would view a ban of handguns as 'blatantly unconstitutional' when this is a rather murky part of the Constitution.
The amendment says what it says, there's only one way a reasonable person who knows the English language can read it. If you want to argue that the amendment doesn't mean what it says, then fix the wording. The constitution provides a mechanism to do this.
From 'The Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent' published by Duke University:
In late-eighteenth-century parlance, bearing arms was a term of art with an obvious military and legal connotation. ... As a review of the Library of Congress's data base of congressional proceedings in the revolutionary and early national periods reveals, the thirty uses of 'bear arms' and 'bearing arms' in bills, statutes, and debates of the Continental, Confederation, and United States' Congresses between 1774 and 1821 invariably occur in a context exclusively focused on the army or the militia.
The Constitution is first and foremost a legal document and legal definitions apply. Given the way the term was used during the period in which it was written I think the intent of the amendment is pretty clear but historically courts have ruled differently on this issue, at times interpreting it as a personal right and at others interpreting it as a right of militias. If nothing else it shows that it is a gray area (given the contrary court rulings) and is not as blatantly obvious as you claim.
but what Kucinich is doing there is drafting blatantly unconstitutional legislation
No, banning handguns is not blatently uncostitutional. The only way I can conceive of it seeming blatent to you is if you don't know anything about the history and context during which the 2nd ammendment was written (see here for details).
It certainly is debatable whether the intent of the founders was to allow individuals the right to guns vs. a militia right. Rather than leaving it to the Supreme Court to clarify this I agree that it would be best to just add an amendment to define what 'the right to bear arms' means nowadays (at the time it was written it was a term used exclusively in military situations). This is a gray area and has been a gray area within the Constitution for quite some time and to just say it's blatant to hold one particular opinion about it seems to ignore the valid arguments of the other side.
I'll do something most won't, I'll name both a Republican and a Democrat. On the Republican side the guy I most respect right now is Arlen Specter. I don't agree with him on much but I think he's a principled guy and is respectful to the other side and represents his constituents well.
On the Democrat side, I would either pick Chris Dodd or Joe Biden for standouts (both voted against FISA and I think would have voted against it even if they were still in the presidential race). You may not agree with them but they both know the Constitution extremely well (Biden teaches a course at a university on it) and are very well versed on global affairs and actually give intelligent interviews on shows like Charlie Rose and Meet the Press (unlike some other congressmen I could name).
I don't think just because you renege on a promise you are ethically challenged. For example, Bush Sr promised not to raise taxes but was forced to when needing to increase funds to pay for a war. It was a stupid promise but I think he was right to change his position when circumstances changed. Bush Jr, on the other hand, promised to cut taxes and stayed with that pledge no matter what. I think he was given every reason to legitimately change his position on this (the supposed trifecta) but never did. In this case I think the latter is much more ethically challenged than his father.
However, in Obama's case I can't think of a good reason why he should have changed his vote and almost certainly was just doing political pandering.
Since it's required that the government provide emergency treatment for everyone here there's no way to 'opt out' except to move to another country (where it's probably the same as here so unless you move to some third-world country that can't provide emergency treatment to everyone you can't really opt out of it regardless).
Doing anything you want with your own body seems like you're not hurting anyone but yourself but that's only true up until you start having to get emergency treatments at hospitals at which point you're burdening all the other taxpayers needlessly.
why the hell should the Government be regulating what I do with my body?
That's easy. When the government starts paying for your health care it should care what you do with your body that makes it disproportionately expensive to keep you in decent health vs people with healthier lifestyles.I agree. In addition, as far as I know most travel agencies send e-mail to their customers from time to time with their current offers (usually with the blessing of their customers). While it is border-line unsolicited it usually isn't a nuisance so long as they don't send such e-mail often (just once very month or two) and serves its purpose of informing their customers of the latest options available or if a spot opened up on one of their packages.
AAA doesn't do this though, at least not AAA Colorado.
While that would make it obvious to him how much spam sucks (and it really would suck since personal e-mails written by the slashdot crowd would not be filterable), it would also likely get this guy fired.
So fun in theory, lousy in practice.
Yep!
I'd like to point out that your quote from the article references the same straight-dope article you originally linked to. It's true that a candle in a zero-g environment doesn't necessarily maintain combustion but convection does naturally occur, just at a slower rate. However, it would be trivial to add a fan to mitigate this so one way or another they are certainly using convection to cool the electronics.
I did not miss the point. There are three primary types of heat transfer: radiation, convection and conduction. In space the only method of heat transfer is radiation. Conduction works within solids. However for fluids and gases convection works well with or without gravity. The convection rate will be different depending on the type of fluid and can depend on whether gravity is present, but for a low power device it should be similar with or without gravity.
2nd law of thermodynamics. The entropy of a closed not in equilibrium will increase until it reaches a maximum value. You simply can't keep hot fluids separate from cold fluids, there will be heat transfer and the label we call this type of heat transfer is convection. The problem with the candle is that the rate of oxygen replenishment is too low to maintain combustion. That is not the same as zero convection. A flame has a very high rate of convection and needs a substantial flow of oxygen to maintain the combustion process. Without gravity the convection process is too low for optimal combustion. Comparing that to the passive convection of an electronic device is not a good approach. For more information on convection you should read the wikipedia article about it.
Sure it convects, it just doesn't move upward. It does move from hot to cold though and form thermal currents. All you need for convection is a gas with sufficient density or a liquid. You don't need gravity.
That's true but probably misleading. They almost certainly have the router in an accessible area so it is exposed to air so it can use convection to cool itself. Ultimately the space station can only get rid of excess heat via radiation but this particular component doesn't need to be designed differently because of thermal issues.
Well, this is a tricky thing to talk about (the importance of your religion or lack thereof and its affect on your life). I'm not going to talk exhaustively about this but make a few comments based on observing both a previous very religious former roommate (a Creationist aerospace engineer no less) and my current roommate (an aethiest that's a physics and math major).
In day to day behavior they actually would make the same decision very often. Probably the most profound difference is how you would raise your kids. If you don't have any, I'm not sure how big a difference it really makes 99% of the time.