Yep. And 40% is a bad number; the cells that have that efficiency rating are a long way from production. 15% is pretty similar to what most solar cells on the market get today.
This one isn't even 15% efficiency...That's what they think they could get up to. That's competitive with most commonly produced cells...the 40% ones you're talking about are far too expensive to be produced outside of a lab environment, so while they're more efficient, it's more practical to just put down more of the cheap ones.
The thing that's cool about this is the conversion efficiency; converting water to hydrogen and oxygen using traditional methods isn't itself all that efficient. If they could get this method running at 15%, it'd be the most efficient way to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, since electrolysis itself only runs between 50 and 70% efficiency.
The car runs on hydrocarbons, but instead of burning them it pulls the hydrogen out and burns that, leaving carbon-rich goop. If the hydrocarbon was, for example, methane (CH4) this would seem to be pretty cool, because it would allow us to burn it without any CO or CO2 being fed off into the atmosphere.
They're probably not thinking methane though, because methane is annoying to transport, same as Hydrogen.
As you move down the scale toward bigger, more likely to be liquid molecules, however, you move toward the stuff that most of us put in our cars already, which makes it a little weird. You could run Octane through this sort of process, but...why?
That would require both parties being fair-minded and open to criticism, so it will never ever happen.
I don't think this is a particularly bad solution. They added a couple of other things as well, like a "waiting period" to leave feedback at all, to reduce the instant turnaround.
Of course it is, to the people. But it shouldn't be to the candidates. To look at the returns from the South Carolina primary and see that Obama dominated among white people younger than 30, but in the 30+ demographics, Edwards came out of nowhere to catch a suspicious majority of the votes...Well, that makes you think. A lot.
I like Edwards, and I certainly don't think that everyone who voted for him is racist (I voted for him myself, the last time around, and I'd like to see him as someone's VP) but I think he caught a serious boost from Bubbas who couldn't handle a woman or a black man as president. In that 30-40 demographic, somewhere, there is a year where racism lost the upper hand, and as a Southerner (and South Carolina native) that makes me pretty happy.
So yea, clearly an issue for people. But to have the candidates pulling the race/sex card? That's intolerable, because they're playing to prejudices that damn well do exist, and if they're willing to do that to win, then they're scum. We've seen enough of that shit.
Please, a black man running for president and it has nothing to do with race? Don't be naive. Of course it's an issue. But saying that the only reason he's anything is because he's black? That's pretty racist; I'm from the South, I know racist when I hear it. I think the way it is in this country, especially on a national level, a black candidate still has to be "better" than an equivalent white candidate to be elected to national office.
I voted for him because I think his experience is interesting, I think he's a smart guy, and I find his message compelling. I think he's a uniter not a divider, and I think he has good intentions and good ideas. I sure as hell didn't vote for him because of his race, because that doesn't mean anything to me. This'll be the 4th presidential election for me, and the first time I've ever had the opportunity to vote (even if only in a primary) for someone I honestly believed would do a good job, and not just a slightly less bad job.
Clinton? I used to live in New York. Do you know what it takes to get elected as a New York politician? They play the game with the best up there. I am damn tired of the game. Her whole campaign has been about the game. Screw that.
Honestly? I think Clinton already cut a deal with Edwards in the hopes that she can win outright, and bring him in as VP...With Edwards splitting up the EC votes, that would have been impossible; she'd never have managed to score a majority. If she manages to score one now, then she can choose whoever she wants.
I think the only way they'll be a team is if its really too close to call, and it gets brokered.
It's a really liberal state, so the conservative nomination is bound to be something of a toss up, and the state liked him enough at one point to make him governor, so it can't be that surprising.
Seriously, you should win your own state as a given. If Hillary had lost New York, she might as well have conceeded on the spot, and if Al Gore had won Tennessee we'd be arguing about what repub would be running against Lieberman...God, preisdent lieberman...I just threw up a little.
I think if it comes down to it, that might be the best ticket, but at this point it's hard to see how they could campaign together.
Still, they'd do a hell of a job splitting up the votes...Obama with the southern, male, black, and youth vote, Clinton with the northern, female, latino, and old people vote...Their support is clear cut and wildly divergent...If all those groups were pulling together?
Screw that. Their heath plans are practically identical, and neither one of them has a chance in hell of being passed "as is" by even a Dem congress.
As for Hillary being the "best" candidate, she wouldn't even be in the running if her last name wasn't Clinton, and I for one am sick to death of nothing but goddamn clintons and bushes. She represents nothing but special interests and a half-assed political status quo.
What Obama has, above and beyond his "magical blackness" (which is some nice racism there, since he's got nothing more or less than Bill Clinton had on the way into office, but that wasn't a big deal apparently) is the ability to actually undo some of the goddamn partisan hackery that has dominated our political process for the last 30 years or more. Another Clinton can only make that worse, if that's even possible.
I see that AGAIN, no one bothered to report on Ron Paul's stunning 3rd place finish in Alaska, solidifying his popularity in all of the coldest states. WHY ARE YOU ALL SO PREJUDICED?
The "speaking babble" is interesting. There is the normal "blah-blah-blah-blah" and then there are those bursts of chatter that really sound like they're meaningful even though you can't decipher any actual words there.
Very interesting. I studied a ton of philosophy of language, back in the day, and I've been hauling out my old books and re-reading them. There is some cool stuff going on there.
It's low enough on the dash that a good smear of dirt would obscure it beyond anything machine readable. It's probably smart enough to "identify" the make and model of the car, though I'd be interested in seeing what it made of some of the mangled cars you see on the roads sometimes.
That's not the problem. It's not like these reporters just magically end up in the address bar; they end up there because big companies are required to have a certain amount of communication with the press.
I work for a media company, and this kind of crap happens all the time, and it's not just email. You get a pile of documents, and in the middle of the pile there is that one sweet document that you were never EVER supposed to have.
Or the email where you make it on to the CC list after something juicy has been said farther down the email.
Secrets are kept by people. There will always be mistakes.
No question of that...Mine was a talker, and never said "Ma-Ma" but always "mamamamamamamamamamamama." Not that a lot of my relatives didn't think it should count anyway.
It is interesting to see them pick things up; you spend all day trying to teach them to say a word like "apple" and then you say something like, "Can you bring me the apple?" and they grab the right thing, and do the right action.
I think its interesting how far actual vocalization lags behind the conceptual development, though I suppose that's no different from people who can read a foreign language and not speak it.
Yea, the group I played with hated that aspect of the game so much we made up a separate set of rules for magic that basically threw all the spell levels away, and allowed for casters who could cast massive numbers of low level spells, or very few high level spells, basically at will, through a kind of mana pool, that casters tracked same as with hitpoints.
This was in second edition.
It was pretty popular, and we used it for years until we finally diverged from D&D all together into systems of our own design. No one is making you play by their rules. As long as you're capable of balancing it, there is no reason why you can't do whatever you'd like.
If it were GURPS I'd agree with you, or if the D&D system were more friendly to dual classing, in the sense that you wouldn't be looked at as a little weird if you were a multi-class fighter-priest calling yourself a Paladin.
D&D is more built around there being an exact class for every archetype. There are some hilariously useless classes out there that are only fractionally different versions of the same thing, but have a lot of "roleplaying" built in. TSR made a mint out of sourcebooks by doing that stuff...Hell, I've probably got 500 bucks worth in my garage, just the crap sourcebooks.
Remember, they used to have the cavalier class, which was basically a fighter with an honor code. I mean, damn. They've always made money spoonfeeding you your role.
Yea, as a sibling post noted (and I agree with) Druids and Clerics rock the house in edition 3+, and even Fighters, with their obscene bonus feats, beat out Rangers and Paladins. Weapon specialization at freaking level 3? Fighters start running out of things to spend their feats on before Paladins even get started.
In edition 3, paladins get crap spells, and the special abilities don't make up for it. They're all "once a day" crap. What use is that? I can heal a handful of hit points once a day? I have one slightly-higher-damage-than-normal attack, once a day? Contrast that with a Cleric who can self-buff themselves to a higher level of combat in the early levels, and does a hell of a lot more healing as well. Pick the right spheres and you end up with crap like Stoneskin...as a priest.
I used to love the paladin class, but they really stripped out a lot of its coolness in 3rd edition. 4th Edition looks even worse; I can sympathize with wanting to simplify your classes, but I can't sympathize with blatant WoW pandering. Fricking Warlocks? A tank class? Jesus Christ.
McCain is still mainstream, as far as economics are concerned...Low taxes, balanced budgets, small government.
Paul wants to dismantle the federal reserve, and move back toward the gold standard. It's definitely conservative, though a more accurate description might be "hide bound." Frankly, Paul's economics are the scariest thing about him.
The problem with a gold standard, or any other commodity based currency, is that it is absolutely limited to your supply of the commodity, so you're essentially doomed to DEflation, and your goods and services are always going to be "cheaper" in actual dollars, but much more expensive in a relative sense. It's also dependent on the value of the commodity you choose to base your economy on, so if someone discovers a goldmine the entire currency loses value as the commodity price drops.
Basically, it's all fiat money. Just some people feel better when they attach that money to something they can touch.
Anecdotal evidence is always faulty, but yea, savings rates are in the toilet right now. People are overspending. People ask me why I drive the same crappy car I've been driving for 12 years, and I just smile, because tax, title, tags and insurance costs me less for a year than most of them pay on their cars in a month. That culture of consumption will bite you in the ass, especially in recession times.
Another thing that always makes me laugh, is people who equate wealth with big spenders...It's like the people who win 100 million in the lottery, then manage to go broke. Most of the richest people I've known were terrible cheapskates.
That's actually not so much what "velocity" means. In economic terms the "Velocity of money" is basically the gdp / the amount of money.
It's a measure of spending; a stagnant economy would be one with a very low velocity, which is to say that the amount of money in the money supply is pretty much equal to all the transactions. An extremely fast economy is one where the velocity is very high, where basically all money is burning a hole in your pocket at all times. Obviously this isn't a great state to be in either, because a tiny hiccup could send the whole thing into ruin.
I'm not terribly in favor of our current concentration of wealth either, but to a degree its a symptom of the volatile tech economy.
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Yep. And 40% is a bad number; the cells that have that efficiency rating are a long way from production. 15% is pretty similar to what most solar cells on the market get today.
This one isn't even 15% efficiency...That's what they think they could get up to. That's competitive with most commonly produced cells...the 40% ones you're talking about are far too expensive to be produced outside of a lab environment, so while they're more efficient, it's more practical to just put down more of the cheap ones.
The thing that's cool about this is the conversion efficiency; converting water to hydrogen and oxygen using traditional methods isn't itself all that efficient. If they could get this method running at 15%, it'd be the most efficient way to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen, since electrolysis itself only runs between 50 and 70% efficiency.
The summary = the article.
The original article was on Science Daily a few days back.
The car runs on hydrocarbons, but instead of burning them it pulls the hydrogen out and burns that, leaving carbon-rich goop. If the hydrocarbon was, for example, methane (CH4) this would seem to be pretty cool, because it would allow us to burn it without any CO or CO2 being fed off into the atmosphere.
They're probably not thinking methane though, because methane is annoying to transport, same as Hydrogen.
As you move down the scale toward bigger, more likely to be liquid molecules, however, you move toward the stuff that most of us put in our cars already, which makes it a little weird. You could run Octane through this sort of process, but...why?
That would require both parties being fair-minded and open to criticism, so it will never ever happen.
I don't think this is a particularly bad solution. They added a couple of other things as well, like a "waiting period" to leave feedback at all, to reduce the instant turnaround.
Of course it is, to the people. But it shouldn't be to the candidates. To look at the returns from the South Carolina primary and see that Obama dominated among white people younger than 30, but in the 30+ demographics, Edwards came out of nowhere to catch a suspicious majority of the votes...Well, that makes you think. A lot.
I like Edwards, and I certainly don't think that everyone who voted for him is racist (I voted for him myself, the last time around, and I'd like to see him as someone's VP) but I think he caught a serious boost from Bubbas who couldn't handle a woman or a black man as president. In that 30-40 demographic, somewhere, there is a year where racism lost the upper hand, and as a Southerner (and South Carolina native) that makes me pretty happy.
So yea, clearly an issue for people. But to have the candidates pulling the race/sex card? That's intolerable, because they're playing to prejudices that damn well do exist, and if they're willing to do that to win, then they're scum. We've seen enough of that shit.
Please, a black man running for president and it has nothing to do with race? Don't be naive. Of course it's an issue. But saying that the only reason he's anything is because he's black? That's pretty racist; I'm from the South, I know racist when I hear it. I think the way it is in this country, especially on a national level, a black candidate still has to be "better" than an equivalent white candidate to be elected to national office.
I voted for him because I think his experience is interesting, I think he's a smart guy, and I find his message compelling. I think he's a uniter not a divider, and I think he has good intentions and good ideas. I sure as hell didn't vote for him because of his race, because that doesn't mean anything to me. This'll be the 4th presidential election for me, and the first time I've ever had the opportunity to vote (even if only in a primary) for someone I honestly believed would do a good job, and not just a slightly less bad job.
Clinton? I used to live in New York. Do you know what it takes to get elected as a New York politician? They play the game with the best up there. I am damn tired of the game. Her whole campaign has been about the game. Screw that.
Meh. I was just making a joke. The damn Paulites take themselves way too seriously.
Honestly? I think Clinton already cut a deal with Edwards in the hopes that she can win outright, and bring him in as VP...With Edwards splitting up the EC votes, that would have been impossible; she'd never have managed to score a majority. If she manages to score one now, then she can choose whoever she wants.
I think the only way they'll be a team is if its really too close to call, and it gets brokered.
It's a really liberal state, so the conservative nomination is bound to be something of a toss up, and the state liked him enough at one point to make him governor, so it can't be that surprising.
Seriously, you should win your own state as a given. If Hillary had lost New York, she might as well have conceeded on the spot, and if Al Gore had won Tennessee we'd be arguing about what repub would be running against Lieberman...God, preisdent lieberman...I just threw up a little.
I think if it comes down to it, that might be the best ticket, but at this point it's hard to see how they could campaign together.
Still, they'd do a hell of a job splitting up the votes...Obama with the southern, male, black, and youth vote, Clinton with the northern, female, latino, and old people vote...Their support is clear cut and wildly divergent...If all those groups were pulling together?
Screw that. Their heath plans are practically identical, and neither one of them has a chance in hell of being passed "as is" by even a Dem congress.
As for Hillary being the "best" candidate, she wouldn't even be in the running if her last name wasn't Clinton, and I for one am sick to death of nothing but goddamn clintons and bushes. She represents nothing but special interests and a half-assed political status quo.
What Obama has, above and beyond his "magical blackness" (which is some nice racism there, since he's got nothing more or less than Bill Clinton had on the way into office, but that wasn't a big deal apparently) is the ability to actually undo some of the goddamn partisan hackery that has dominated our political process for the last 30 years or more. Another Clinton can only make that worse, if that's even possible.
I see that AGAIN, no one bothered to report on Ron Paul's stunning 3rd place finish in Alaska, solidifying his popularity in all of the coldest states. WHY ARE YOU ALL SO PREJUDICED?
The "speaking babble" is interesting. There is the normal "blah-blah-blah-blah" and then there are those bursts of chatter that really sound like they're meaningful even though you can't decipher any actual words there.
Very interesting. I studied a ton of philosophy of language, back in the day, and I've been hauling out my old books and re-reading them. There is some cool stuff going on there.
It(1) = Bar code and It(2) = the gas robot.
sorry 'bout that.
It's low enough on the dash that a good smear of dirt would obscure it beyond anything machine readable. It's probably smart enough to "identify" the make and model of the car, though I'd be interested in seeing what it made of some of the mangled cars you see on the roads sometimes.
That's not the problem. It's not like these reporters just magically end up in the address bar; they end up there because big companies are required to have a certain amount of communication with the press.
I work for a media company, and this kind of crap happens all the time, and it's not just email. You get a pile of documents, and in the middle of the pile there is that one sweet document that you were never EVER supposed to have.
Or the email where you make it on to the CC list after something juicy has been said farther down the email.
Secrets are kept by people. There will always be mistakes.
No question of that...Mine was a talker, and never said "Ma-Ma" but always "mamamamamamamamamamamama." Not that a lot of my relatives didn't think it should count anyway.
It is interesting to see them pick things up; you spend all day trying to teach them to say a word like "apple" and then you say something like, "Can you bring me the apple?" and they grab the right thing, and do the right action.
I think its interesting how far actual vocalization lags behind the conceptual development, though I suppose that's no different from people who can read a foreign language and not speak it.
Yea, the group I played with hated that aspect of the game so much we made up a separate set of rules for magic that basically threw all the spell levels away, and allowed for casters who could cast massive numbers of low level spells, or very few high level spells, basically at will, through a kind of mana pool, that casters tracked same as with hitpoints.
This was in second edition.
It was pretty popular, and we used it for years until we finally diverged from D&D all together into systems of our own design. No one is making you play by their rules. As long as you're capable of balancing it, there is no reason why you can't do whatever you'd like.
If it were GURPS I'd agree with you, or if the D&D system were more friendly to dual classing, in the sense that you wouldn't be looked at as a little weird if you were a multi-class fighter-priest calling yourself a Paladin.
D&D is more built around there being an exact class for every archetype. There are some hilariously useless classes out there that are only fractionally different versions of the same thing, but have a lot of "roleplaying" built in. TSR made a mint out of sourcebooks by doing that stuff...Hell, I've probably got 500 bucks worth in my garage, just the crap sourcebooks.
Remember, they used to have the cavalier class, which was basically a fighter with an honor code. I mean, damn. They've always made money spoonfeeding you your role.
Yea, as a sibling post noted (and I agree with) Druids and Clerics rock the house in edition 3+, and even Fighters, with their obscene bonus feats, beat out Rangers and Paladins. Weapon specialization at freaking level 3? Fighters start running out of things to spend their feats on before Paladins even get started.
In edition 3, paladins get crap spells, and the special abilities don't make up for it. They're all "once a day" crap. What use is that? I can heal a handful of hit points once a day? I have one slightly-higher-damage-than-normal attack, once a day? Contrast that with a Cleric who can self-buff themselves to a higher level of combat in the early levels, and does a hell of a lot more healing as well. Pick the right spheres and you end up with crap like Stoneskin...as a priest.
I used to love the paladin class, but they really stripped out a lot of its coolness in 3rd edition. 4th Edition looks even worse; I can sympathize with wanting to simplify your classes, but I can't sympathize with blatant WoW pandering. Fricking Warlocks? A tank class? Jesus Christ.
McCain is still mainstream, as far as economics are concerned...Low taxes, balanced budgets, small government.
Paul wants to dismantle the federal reserve, and move back toward the gold standard. It's definitely conservative, though a more accurate description might be "hide bound." Frankly, Paul's economics are the scariest thing about him.
The problem with a gold standard, or any other commodity based currency, is that it is absolutely limited to your supply of the commodity, so you're essentially doomed to DEflation, and your goods and services are always going to be "cheaper" in actual dollars, but much more expensive in a relative sense. It's also dependent on the value of the commodity you choose to base your economy on, so if someone discovers a goldmine the entire currency loses value as the commodity price drops.
Basically, it's all fiat money. Just some people feel better when they attach that money to something they can touch.
Anecdotal evidence is always faulty, but yea, savings rates are in the toilet right now. People are overspending. People ask me why I drive the same crappy car I've been driving for 12 years, and I just smile, because tax, title, tags and insurance costs me less for a year than most of them pay on their cars in a month. That culture of consumption will bite you in the ass, especially in recession times.
Another thing that always makes me laugh, is people who equate wealth with big spenders...It's like the people who win 100 million in the lottery, then manage to go broke. Most of the richest people I've known were terrible cheapskates.
That's actually not so much what "velocity" means. In economic terms the "Velocity of money" is basically the gdp / the amount of money.
It's a measure of spending; a stagnant economy would be one with a very low velocity, which is to say that the amount of money in the money supply is pretty much equal to all the transactions. An extremely fast economy is one where the velocity is very high, where basically all money is burning a hole in your pocket at all times. Obviously this isn't a great state to be in either, because a tiny hiccup could send the whole thing into ruin.
I'm not terribly in favor of our current concentration of wealth either, but to a degree its a symptom of the volatile tech economy.