Forests soak up a lot of carbon, but then drop a lot of leaves. When the leaves rot they give off CO2 and methane. Methane is far worse as a green house gas than CO2 - by a factor of over 20.
The "think tanks" generate many documents and plans, many of which never see daylight. This is part of the normal "what if" analysis or things that might happen and how to deal with them. It is no more suprising that they have a plan ready to drop in place after 9/11 than if they had a plan to drop in to place to quell riots or handle a gas shortage or any other scenario. Apart from disaster management, these plans also have political agendas.
One major political function of these plans is to have PR: look like you can command decisively and keep the population confident in your abilities. Another is to be able to turn these disasters into an opportunity to pass legislation/budget that the people would normally choke on. GWB played both these cards really well.
With a HAL you still need to recompile the code. With something like a Java Virtual Machine you can. Likely MS would be pushing their own byte code VMs.
"\"Designers\" who can't code have absolutely no business \"working\" in software."
I'd say it's the other way around: coders who can't design have absolutely no business working in software.
Design, including the GUI, is an important part of making software successful and coders, who think they are the real heroes, are far too quick to discount it.
By just about any measure, USA is far from 'most free'. For example, look at: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8247 where USA ranks 31 below , most of Europe and many others. Sure, it might beat China or Zimbabwe, but you'd hope that USA would try to compare itself with people nearer the top of the list.
I think the scientists are really being self obsessed here.
Why the hell should anyone care if there is water on Mars or not? A few scientists get their thrills about this, but why should they think that the rest of the people should get excited and spend money on this when there are far more meaningful and useful things to be spending money on and getting excited about. NASA has been spending huge amounts of money for 50 years now and we really have nothing useful to show for space research. Sure we have satellite technology but that's hardly the result of sending people to the moon or sending probes to Mars.
Even if Mars is shown to have bacteria and dinosaur fossils... so what. You can prove that life existed on Mars and that still does not change what is important on earth.
For example, we don't know much about our own oceans and those are far more important to us as a source of food, minerals etc.
For the most part, official policies are just there to protect the organisation from prosecution.
Policies might tell staff to shred customer documents, but are shredders made available? Probably not. Instead the docs are put in boxes for shredding and recycling and get lost during transit to the bulk shredding service across town.
Policies on passwords and data locking? Yup they are there, but are they effectively implemented? Are staff trained? Are there automated procedures to force frequent password changes?
We need lower $/W. Who cares if you have to tile your house with the stuff?
Far too much R&D is going into chasing high efficiency stuff that is on the road to a dead end. Far too little is going into researching non-silicon alternatives.
I don't think parent was suggesting that everyone homeschools.
Unlike regular school (where kids are just downloaded with info), homeschooling tends to be more about downloading an attitude to education.
Almost all cities will have some sort of homeschooling support groups where parents can access information/people that will be able to help their kids learn.
But I don't think that parent was pushing homeschooling as an all or nothing proposition. I know I don't. Homeschooling does not work for all families and many are better off in a regular school.
The unfortunate thing about regular school is that it is designed to achieve minimal levels. It does not provide an environment that supports creative and critical thought or enable many to flourish.
We don't need everyone to be critical thinkers and scientists, only enough to make society work.
As a home schooler, I must agree with most of that
on
How Do You Fix Education?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
We unschool our kids. They are encouraged to think critically; look things up in many places and realise that there are many contradictions and try to figure out the truth from the mess.
Learning, of any kind, needs to be a life long passion or it won't be successful. That won't happen if kids are forced to learn stuff when they don't want to. Forcing kids to learn to read too early and you teach them that reading is a drag. My one son was self motivated to learn to read at age 5 and the other at age 9. Both are now avid readers, reading far more than the average school kid.
Science is all about hypothesizing and critical thinking: something that is severely lacking in society in general and is definitely missing in schools. Instead the kids are encouraged to just "get with the program", be politically correct and make the least work for the teachers.
My kids love to experiment with stuff. Experiments often don't work which triggers thinking and learning. School "science" experiments on the other hand are canned activities which are generally guaranteed to work with no thinking required. Where's the science in that?
The Russian robomissions brought back samples and photos too. The only real difference is that the human missions also played zero-g golf and some poster boys to divert a nation's attention from Vietnam.
Robotic missions are getting better as designers are learning from their mistakes.
is because the unwashed masses, those 90% that vote in stupid polls, are not capable of making decisions like these.
With current technology it is impossible to convert to PV in any meaningful timescale mostly because PV has so much embodied energy.
PV's energy payback time is something like 10 years. That means that if we set a goal to make 20% of electricity from PV, you'd have to find 2 years worth of spare electricity to make the PV.... and where's that going to come from? This problem marginalises current PV into only ever being a bit player in the energy world. Or, to turn it around, if we can find 10% of spare electrical capacity to channel into making PV then that will limit the PV conversion rate to 1% per year. Or if it is only 5% spare then that makes a 0.5% conversion rate - not even enough to cover increasing demand.
PV will only be practical for mass generation when it comes from vastly different technology.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It is an administration, run by administrators for the benefit of administrators. The boss is appointed by the president.
So why does anyone get surprised when NASA changes its tune in accordance with political whim, be that on the use of nukes or on global warming?
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Forests soak up a lot of carbon, but then drop a lot of leaves. When the leaves rot they give off CO2 and methane. Methane is far worse as a green house gas than CO2 - by a factor of over 20.
These days you can get an ARM micro for less than a buck, perhaps 25c more than the 8-bit equivalent. http://www.luminarymicro.com/
One major political function of these plans is to have PR: look like you can command decisively and keep the population confident in your abilities. Another is to be able to turn these disasters into an opportunity to pass legislation/budget that the people would normally choke on. GWB played both these cards really well.
Since every 10 metres of depth gives you one atmosphere of pressure, the pressures at depth are very high and so are boiling points.
Someone dumped their Honda Magna with a full tank of gas and it is still burning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Magna
Most likely this is a reaction from the system programmers. They've found a way to strike back at the state for years of mismanagement.
but don't try to use it.
Perchlorates are a normal part of decomposing electronic devices.
Keeping it in the atmosphere is quite another and is largely a function of gravity.
240l of Kindles is approx 65 gallons.
With a HAL you still need to recompile the code. With something like a Java Virtual Machine you can. Likely MS would be pushing their own byte code VMs.
Yeah right. Who cares what color the dinosaurs were? They are all dead now. Will this cause you to change what breakfast cereal you eat?
Besides, the thought of a convention floor packed with 500 segways all crashing into each other paints quite a picture.
I'd say it's the other way around: coders who can't design have absolutely no business working in software.
Design, including the GUI, is an important part of making software successful and coders, who think they are the real heroes, are far too quick to discount it.
By just about any measure, USA is far from 'most free'. For example, look at: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8247 where USA ranks 31 below , most of Europe and many others. Sure, it might beat China or Zimbabwe, but you'd hope that USA would try to compare itself with people nearer the top of the list.
Why the hell should anyone care if there is water on Mars or not? A few scientists get their thrills about this, but why should they think that the rest of the people should get excited and spend money on this when there are far more meaningful and useful things to be spending money on and getting excited about. NASA has been spending huge amounts of money for 50 years now and we really have nothing useful to show for space research. Sure we have satellite technology but that's hardly the result of sending people to the moon or sending probes to Mars.
Even if Mars is shown to have bacteria and dinosaur fossils... so what. You can prove that life existed on Mars and that still does not change what is important on earth.
For example, we don't know much about our own oceans and those are far more important to us as a source of food, minerals etc.
Policies might tell staff to shred customer documents, but are shredders made available? Probably not. Instead the docs are put in boxes for shredding and recycling and get lost during transit to the bulk shredding service across town.
Policies on passwords and data locking? Yup they are there, but are they effectively implemented? Are staff trained? Are there automated procedures to force frequent password changes?
Far too much R&D is going into chasing high efficiency stuff that is on the road to a dead end. Far too little is going into researching non-silicon alternatives.
Unlike regular school (where kids are just downloaded with info), homeschooling tends to be more about downloading an attitude to education.
Almost all cities will have some sort of homeschooling support groups where parents can access information/people that will be able to help their kids learn.
But I don't think that parent was pushing homeschooling as an all or nothing proposition. I know I don't. Homeschooling does not work for all families and many are better off in a regular school.
The unfortunate thing about regular school is that it is designed to achieve minimal levels. It does not provide an environment that supports creative and critical thought or enable many to flourish.
We don't need everyone to be critical thinkers and scientists, only enough to make society work.
Learning, of any kind, needs to be a life long passion or it won't be successful. That won't happen if kids are forced to learn stuff when they don't want to. Forcing kids to learn to read too early and you teach them that reading is a drag. My one son was self motivated to learn to read at age 5 and the other at age 9. Both are now avid readers, reading far more than the average school kid.
Science is all about hypothesizing and critical thinking: something that is severely lacking in society in general and is definitely missing in schools. Instead the kids are encouraged to just "get with the program", be politically correct and make the least work for the teachers.
My kids love to experiment with stuff. Experiments often don't work which triggers thinking and learning. School "science" experiments on the other hand are canned activities which are generally guaranteed to work with no thinking required. Where's the science in that?
Robotic missions are getting better as designers are learning from their mistakes.
With current technology it is impossible to convert to PV in any meaningful timescale mostly because PV has so much embodied energy.
PV's energy payback time is something like 10 years. That means that if we set a goal to make 20% of electricity from PV, you'd have to find 2 years worth of spare electricity to make the PV.... and where's that going to come from? This problem marginalises current PV into only ever being a bit player in the energy world. Or, to turn it around, if we can find 10% of spare electrical capacity to channel into making PV then that will limit the PV conversion rate to 1% per year. Or if it is only 5% spare then that makes a 0.5% conversion rate - not even enough to cover increasing demand.
PV will only be practical for mass generation when it comes from vastly different technology.
Wind is more viable, in some areas.
He would not have survived the trip or the landing.
Because they are relatively cheap you can screw up plenty and still do the work for less cost than a manned mission.
So why does anyone get surprised when NASA changes its tune in accordance with political whim, be that on the use of nukes or on global warming?