I've read that passports were introduced into the U.S. by public demand, because U.S. citicens had problems in other countries that demanded passports.
'..having judicial oversight that follows the strict letter of the law, and not its "intent", is a much more democratic system.'
Actually, it's much more predictable, and thus much more just. Trying to read undocumented "intent" into a law is a dangerous invitation to arbitrary enforcement, a hallmark of tyranny. Reading in "intent" makes law more subject to popular whim, which is more democratic: not a good thing.
How about the one about not making graven images? Completely ignored by everyone, even dropped from the Roman Catholic version, weasel-worded by the few who pay attention.
But to attack your exact claim, "Thou shalt not murder" is more commonly translated as "Thou shalt not kill", a much broader prohibition.
There's lots of disagreement about what the ten commandments mean, and even more about whether or not they're actually good. Hardly the result of clear and careful thought in their construction.
The idea of destroying the environment displays a lack of understanding of the words being used. The environment is not like a piece of lumber which is gone if you burn it. The environment is what is around us. Shave the world bald as a cue ball and there's still an environment; it hasn't been destroyed, it's just been severely degraded for human purposes. And human purposes are all that matter.
I've read that the people who are most successful - at least in the commercial sense of getting rich or being the head of a large company - tend to be well above average in intelligence but not the most intelligent. The reasoning behind this observation is that those in the second tier feel they have something to prove, and are driven to succeed. Those in the first tier do what they like, which tends to be academic or scientific pursuits. In this they are satisfied, and they are not driven toward financial supremacy.
Whale oil was NOT a significant power source; it was not economically viable for that use. It was used for lighting and as a lubricant; other whale parts were used for clothing, food, and toiletries. Coal and wood were far more economical power sources, and also petroleum starting about 1900. Think about the huge amount of labor that goes into catching and processing a whale, compare that to cutting down a tree or mining coal.
Social security is driven by political pandering. Health care costs are driven by advancing medical technology (which is expensive) and detaching medical service payments from medical service reception (employer-paid insurance, which has been caused in part by the tax code). In short, malicious and stupid politicians combined with a malicious and stupid electorate are responsible for most of those two problems.
The political approach to pollution has had an effect, possibly but not certainly a net good effect. The hypothesis that global warming is mostly man-made, and that global warming is a bad thing, is unproved. The media and pseudo-environmentalists are stirring up a storm against supposed human causes of global warming, with the predictable result that gullible people and political panderers are paying attention and starting to cause damage to business through the political system.
The idea that "Commercia [sic] interests are too powerful to care about Global Warming" is silly. Persons who qualify as "commercial intersts" are as affected by global warming as anyone; power has nothing to do with it. They are far more likely to be rational about a problem because they lose money if they're wrong. Being wrong seldom affects politicians, they just have to be popular.
Well, this is stretching things a bit, but light is radiant heat, electricity is the movement of electrons, and movement is closely related to heat.
More to the point, the laws of thermodynamics properly extended to include potential energy in its various forms, does not apply only to heat engines. Perhaps you are thinking of the limits of the Carnot cycle.
Rights are NOT arbitrary. In fact, one synonym of arbitrary is despotic.
Rights, properly defined, all derive from each person's ownership of his own life. Not owning someone else's life, you do not have the right to remove his ability to support his own life, which support is achieved in part through property. He has the right to attempt to support his own life, so long as he does not violate the rights of others, thus he has the right to own property. This, properly fleshed out to fill all the holes, is the justification of private ownership of property from first principles.
"However, in order to labor on a piece of land and thus call it your own, you need to keep others off it, and this happens before you have the justification for doing so."
Most land is not today acquired by homesteading, but if it were, you would first file a claim on the land, paying a filing fee to some part of the government. Having filed the claim and paid the fee, you have improved the property and that improvement is the start of your justification for excluding others from the property and calling it your own. You then continue to work on the land, building fences or posting "No Trespassing" signs, and doing whatever else is required to add much more value to the land. But most land today is not acquired by homesteading; it already has an owner who has improved it (even if only by having paid taxes on it or having it surveyed), and the current owner has already established his right to the property. That right may be transfered by purchase.
And so it goes. Rights do not blow away because you array straw men against them, or because you fail to make a reasonable attempt to establish their validity.
I am aware of only three people in the offices of President and vice-President that earn the classification of "traitor". Aaron Burr, F.D.Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton. F.D.R. had a plausible excuse, he allowed Pearl Harbor because he thought it was necessary to get into WWII. Burr and Clinton have no excuse; there is no criticism of them so vile that they don't deserve worse.
Worries about so-called torture are a prime example of context-dropping.
If the United States had collapsed, instead of the Soviet Union, in the unlikely event you were still alive you wouldn't be free to write such codswallop.
The left is very good at lying. You have to read about actual events and understand the natures of the societies to avoid being a dupe.
Think of the large windows in most schools and the shock wave from a nuclear blast maybe 50 miles away. Your jacket, or hiding under your desk, could save you from blindness or bleeding to death. Just because flimsy protection won't save everyone doesn't mean it won't save some.
You think it's unlikely that Soviet nuclear weapons have been sold off? I've read about them being unable to find all their nukes. I'd be greatly surprised if Russia and the other states formerly a part of the U.S.S.R. still have 95% of their former nuclear arsenal.
"The easily accessible natural mineral resources have been used up."
That common claim is one of the funniest I have ever read. These "easily accesible resources", formerly in the ground fairly near the surface, are now on the surface in the form of junkyards, buildings, factories, automobiles and so forth. The only exception is energy resources, which get used up. However, we would still have vast open stip coal mines, capable of continued operation with even the most primitive technologies.
Our most valuable possession after life itself is in libraries worldwide. It is extremely unlikely that they would all be destroyed in any disaster in which any humans still lived. It's the knowledge that's important, and if enough people survive to physically rebuild civilization rapidly, there's no good reason (barring further conflict or the development of another anti-technology religion) that technology wouldn't be back to today's standards in far less than 100 years. Remember, 100 years ago automobiles were fairly new, and the triode vacuum tube was invented in 1906.
A giant boon to redeveloping civilization would be the survival of modern disease resistant high yield crops, so that only a comparatively small portion of the populace would need to be farmers, compared to 1906.
A large portion of the size of the switch is insulation and safety margin; the same goes for the plug. Any switch in the car is likely to be electronic, and does not have the same size constraints as a mechanical switch. Cannon/ITT sells a 1kV, 950 amp connector that's 2" in diameter (that's for one wire.) It's only good for 500 mating cycles, so it would have to be beefed up substantially for service station use. Figure two connectors each 3" in diameter. Also figure extraordinary efforts to keep those connectors clean and dry.
Most of the wear on roads comes from heavy vehicles, not passenger cars or even SUVs. A tax based on the actual cost of road maintenance would really hammer trucks.
"but other types of capacitors can hold their charge indefinately."
Not true. Manufacturers of traditional capacitors, if they specify leakage rates at all, won't guarantee more than a few minutes hold time. Typicals are much better, but still aren't something you can depend upon for energy storage. On the other hand, you can't depend upon them not to hold a charge either, a mistake which can be fatal.
To answer your questions, for 4000 amperes you need to parallel about 12 "0000 gauge" wires and allow room for air circulation between them. If you are only going to use them for 5 minutes at a time, you can probably reduce that a little because it takes time to heat up the wires. You can't get 4000 amp breakers at Home Depot because HD isn't seeing any demand for them.
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I've read that passports were introduced into the U.S. by public demand, because U.S. citicens had problems in other countries that demanded passports.
Actually, it's much more predictable, and thus much more just. Trying to read undocumented "intent" into a law is a dangerous invitation to arbitrary enforcement, a hallmark of tyranny. Reading in "intent" makes law more subject to popular whim, which is more democratic: not a good thing.
The claim was "clearly and expertly drafted." Another several hundred years of experience added considerably to the expertise.
But to attack your exact claim, "Thou shalt not murder" is more commonly translated as "Thou shalt not kill", a much broader prohibition.
There's lots of disagreement about what the ten commandments mean, and even more about whether or not they're actually good. Hardly the result of clear and careful thought in their construction.
The idea of destroying the environment displays a lack of understanding of the words being used. The environment is not like a piece of lumber which is gone if you burn it. The environment is what is around us. Shave the world bald as a cue ball and there's still an environment; it hasn't been destroyed, it's just been severely degraded for human purposes. And human purposes are all that matter.
In the title, "Imagine Earth Without People".
Most straight men want to see naked women, and do not want to see naked men. Q.E.D.
The word you are looking for is "wise". Wisdom and intelligence are not the same; lack of wisdom regularly causes immense harm.
I've read that the people who are most successful - at least in the commercial sense of getting rich or being the head of a large company - tend to be well above average in intelligence but not the most intelligent. The reasoning behind this observation is that those in the second tier feel they have something to prove, and are driven to succeed. Those in the first tier do what they like, which tends to be academic or scientific pursuits. In this they are satisfied, and they are not driven toward financial supremacy.
Whale oil was NOT a significant power source; it was not economically viable for that use. It was used for lighting and as a lubricant; other whale parts were used for clothing, food, and toiletries. Coal and wood were far more economical power sources, and also petroleum starting about 1900. Think about the huge amount of labor that goes into catching and processing a whale, compare that to cutting down a tree or mining coal.
The political approach to pollution has had an effect, possibly but not certainly a net good effect. The hypothesis that global warming is mostly man-made, and that global warming is a bad thing, is unproved. The media and pseudo-environmentalists are stirring up a storm against supposed human causes of global warming, with the predictable result that gullible people and political panderers are paying attention and starting to cause damage to business through the political system.
The idea that "Commercia [sic] interests are too powerful to care about Global Warming" is silly. Persons who qualify as "commercial intersts" are as affected by global warming as anyone; power has nothing to do with it. They are far more likely to be rational about a problem because they lose money if they're wrong. Being wrong seldom affects politicians, they just have to be popular.
More to the point, the laws of thermodynamics properly extended to include potential energy in its various forms, does not apply only to heat engines. Perhaps you are thinking of the limits of the Carnot cycle.
Rights, properly defined, all derive from each person's ownership of his own life. Not owning someone else's life, you do not have the right to remove his ability to support his own life, which support is achieved in part through property. He has the right to attempt to support his own life, so long as he does not violate the rights of others, thus he has the right to own property. This, properly fleshed out to fill all the holes, is the justification of private ownership of property from first principles.
"However, in order to labor on a piece of land and thus call it your own, you need to keep others off it, and this happens before you have the justification for doing so."
Most land is not today acquired by homesteading, but if it were, you would first file a claim on the land, paying a filing fee to some part of the government. Having filed the claim and paid the fee, you have improved the property and that improvement is the start of your justification for excluding others from the property and calling it your own. You then continue to work on the land, building fences or posting "No Trespassing" signs, and doing whatever else is required to add much more value to the land. But most land today is not acquired by homesteading; it already has an owner who has improved it (even if only by having paid taxes on it or having it surveyed), and the current owner has already established his right to the property. That right may be transfered by purchase.
And so it goes. Rights do not blow away because you array straw men against them, or because you fail to make a reasonable attempt to establish their validity.
A college building was bombed by the S.D.S. in 1970+/-2years. That seems pretty turbulent to me.
Worries about so-called torture are a prime example of context-dropping.
The left is very good at lying. You have to read about actual events and understand the natures of the societies to avoid being a dupe.
If you think Europe, particularly western Europe, is gaining on the U.S.A., you haven't been reading the financial pages in the last 10 years.
Think of the large windows in most schools and the shock wave from a nuclear blast maybe 50 miles away. Your jacket, or hiding under your desk, could save you from blindness or bleeding to death. Just because flimsy protection won't save everyone doesn't mean it won't save some.
You think it's unlikely that Soviet nuclear weapons have been sold off? I've read about them being unable to find all their nukes. I'd be greatly surprised if Russia and the other states formerly a part of the U.S.S.R. still have 95% of their former nuclear arsenal.
"The easily accessible natural mineral resources have been used up."
That common claim is one of the funniest I have ever read. These "easily accesible resources", formerly in the ground fairly near the surface, are now on the surface in the form of junkyards, buildings, factories, automobiles and so forth. The only exception is energy resources, which get used up. However, we would still have vast open stip coal mines, capable of continued operation with even the most primitive technologies.
Our most valuable possession after life itself is in libraries worldwide. It is extremely unlikely that they would all be destroyed in any disaster in which any humans still lived. It's the knowledge that's important, and if enough people survive to physically rebuild civilization rapidly, there's no good reason (barring further conflict or the development of another anti-technology religion) that technology wouldn't be back to today's standards in far less than 100 years. Remember, 100 years ago automobiles were fairly new, and the triode vacuum tube was invented in 1906.
A giant boon to redeveloping civilization would be the survival of modern disease resistant high yield crops, so that only a comparatively small portion of the populace would need to be farmers, compared to 1906.
A large portion of the size of the switch is insulation and safety margin; the same goes for the plug. Any switch in the car is likely to be electronic, and does not have the same size constraints as a mechanical switch. Cannon/ITT sells a 1kV, 950 amp connector that's 2" in diameter (that's for one wire.) It's only good for 500 mating cycles, so it would have to be beefed up substantially for service station use. Figure two connectors each 3" in diameter. Also figure extraordinary efforts to keep those connectors clean and dry.
This is why some NiCad batteries have a built-in fuse. Expect the same from high power ultracaps.
Most of the wear on roads comes from heavy vehicles, not passenger cars or even SUVs. A tax based on the actual cost of road maintenance would really hammer trucks.
Not true. Manufacturers of traditional capacitors, if they specify leakage rates at all, won't guarantee more than a few minutes hold time. Typicals are much better, but still aren't something you can depend upon for energy storage. On the other hand, you can't depend upon them not to hold a charge either, a mistake which can be fatal.
To answer your questions, for 4000 amperes you need to parallel about 12 "0000 gauge" wires and allow room for air circulation between them. If you are only going to use them for 5 minutes at a time, you can probably reduce that a little because it takes time to heat up the wires. You can't get 4000 amp breakers at Home Depot because HD isn't seeing any demand for them.