Would your brother perchance be Captain Clutz? Or perhaps Major Catastrophe? At least I hope that's the case. I'd rather not think that unbeknownst to most of us the humvee was the Ford Pinto of the modern military. But hey I bet most of them don't drive off mountains on their own.:)
If you've got issues with the timeline, please read my other post in this thread. The wars were not for entirely discrete reasons. Believe it or not, the past and context DID play a role in decision making.
Yes, in the past ignoring genocide and supporting genocidal dictators was acceptable. In the context of the Cold War and the rise of an Islamic Republic with ties to Russia, it was very realpolitik to let it go on. And by realpolitik, I mean pragmatically not giving a flying dicktwitter about the gassing of the Kurds as long as it didn't hurt them politically, which is why they kept it quiet.
But in the context of the War on Terror and a nation still reeling and frightened after being attacked, it was a perfect time to put some neo-con philosophy into practice. Iraq was their perfect stepping stone into the Middle East: weak, secular and thus ripe for democracy(they thought), and with some convenient excuses that they could play up to a terrified public. It is exactly because they were not a threat that they were chosen as the target. Notice in the Axis of Evil, the two actual threats are still untouched!
There was no good reason for this war, and invoking the name of twenty-year-old genocide that they never gave a shit about in the first place and still don't is simply bullshit. Using their invasion of Iran as a justification makes even less sense (which is why even the idiots in charge didn't use it). That's not even a hypothetical reason to invade! It justifies nothing. None of this comes close to being even a pretend justification for invading Iraq in 2003. Why did we have to punish Saddam for 20 year old crimes right then? How did that 20 year old crime make him an urgent threat? We all know it didn't.
So you're left saying that it's to "clean up" the mess from Gulf War 1... Because we didn't "finish the job" we have to go back, because... Well, that's interesting, because there's plenty of Cold War messes that we never have any intention of cleaning up, usually because trying will only make things worse. Which GHWB knew would be the case in Iraq. It's not that we didn't finish, it's that we were finished with what made sense. The invasion had nothing to do with cleaning up Cold War messes, the neo-cons don't care about that. They cared about trying out their theory that if you bombed a country into oblivion, Democracy would spring forth fully formed.
To the extent that it was still, hypothetically if not practically, the right thing to do, it was still the wrong time and the wrong people. Invading Iraq while Afghanistan was ongoing was retarded beyond belief, not having a post-invasion plan was equally stupid, hell the whole thing was idiotic. When/if we finish with Afghanistan and prove that we're capable of that "nation building" thing Rummy said he doesn't do, then was the time to start worrying about Iraq. Instead, we let Afghanistan backslide while our attention was turned. Idiocy!
That's a pretty interesting allegation. Where's the proof? I've never seen any.
Pfft. How about just about everyone who has left the administration saying so, from the Richard Clark to George Tenet to Colin Powel, the one who presented the evidence to the global community and regrets it? The administration wanted to invade, and finding a justification was more important than figuring out if it was the right or necessary thing to do, so they asked for cherry-picked evidence and ignored everything that didn't match what they already believed. Since the actual result matches this scenario in every way, what's so hard to believe?
Oh you mean you need documented proof? Well you might have to wait for a while until the documents can be received via FOIA request, like the proof that we knew Saddam was gassing Kurds and Ir
Yeah calling a Hummer an off roader is pretty funny.
It's nothing more than a marketing trick based on association with the military HMMWV, which worked brilliantly. The humvee is a vehicle to make its predecessor jeep proud. It has an angled independent suspension that puts the gear box, drive shaft and other parts well off the ground for huge clearance. It's a great off-road vehicle, reliable and rugged.
Civilian versions are nothing like that, since they're based off completely different chassis. But hey, they look pretty similar if and if you never take them off the road you probably won't even notice. So it's kinda like you own military hardware! How bad-ass!
Silly me thinking attacking two neighbors, genocide, religious persecution, utter failure to comply with terms of surrender, and last but not least intelligence claims of WMDs, etc had something to do with it. Fascinating.
Yeah, it is pretty silly to think we invaded Iraq in 2003 because...... they committed genocide against the Kurds in 1983which we knew about at the time and kept quiet about because we supported their war with Iran.... they went to war with Iran in 1980 and used chemical weapons against them, which we later supported and helped Iraq to fund because we wanted Iran contained.... they invaded Kuwait in 1990, initiating the Persian Gulf War.
I mean I can at least see how you could think WMD were a reason to invade... though when they come up with the reason first, and then demand the intelligence community support that reason, you should wonder...
But to think that one action that already resulted in us going to war, and two other actions which we supported at the time, warrant an invasion twenty years later is just nutty. I mean how can you watch a guy stand at a podium and tell you we need to invade Iraq because of genocide twenty years ago, when that same guy twenty years ago was shaking the murderer's hand while the U.S. government was aware of what he was doing, and nod your head and go "yup yup!"
There is no misrepresentation going on here, even if you had hoped that since you agreed with him on one thing that he would agree with you on another.
I wonder why it is that the only ones who seem to think Obama promised them everything under the sun and half of everything under ground are his detractors.
Why oh why would you ever want to change interests? That's my whole problem with this debate whenever it comes up.
Because those interests were formed in a society whose prejudices steered those interests away from certain fields they might otherwise have been interested in, that's why.
When a girl isn't interested in math/engineering because her father/mother/teachers/peers/crush tells her that she shouldn't be interested in those things, that is something that should be changed.
The real "solution" to this "problem" is to allow boys and girls to go into whatever field they so choose and encourage them no matter what.
You can't really think that this "solution" is what we'd have if we didn't have any women-in-science outreach, do you? Sitting here in this thread, where we have, as usual, men stating as fact that women simply aren't as interested in math and the gender gap is natural, you can't possibly believe that.
The whole problem here is the lack of encouragement for women going into math. More so, it's systematic societal discouragement. Which, understandably, changes the interests of many girls. And thus we must go out of our way to show that women are desired in these fields simply to counter that effect and come closer to the "solution" you desire. Until we eliminate the sexism that pervades these fields, the "problem" is real and your "solution" cannot exist.
I'm talking, of course, about the School of Nursing, where only 5% of the graduates are men.
Yep, which is why concerned parties conduct and learn from outreach programs designed to increase male enrollment in nursing.
Cue the hordes of free-thinkers irate that people would try to mess with the obvious natural balance resulting from a combination of men's general lack of interest in nursing (which of course has nothing to do with social stereotypes of nursing as "women's work") and not being as empathic as women and thus not as capable at the job. Really, we're just screwing ourselves by trying to give men a leg up against simple biology. The gender gap isn't sexism, it's trying to fix it that's sexism! Am I right, men?
*waits for hordes*
Hmm... No? No hordes? Huh.
Anyway, you may think it's obviously sexism, but this is yet another case of pure biology just happening to justify the transitional prejudices and stereotypes of a particular culture at a particular point in time.
The only sexism I've seen in academia is anti-male sexism.
Yeah, and the only racism you've ever seen is anti-white racism. That's because you're sheltered and oblivious.
Try opening your eyes and looking... at this very thread! Look at how many are blandly suggesting that women are inherently inferior at math and that the gender gap is the right and natural result of biology, that ignoring this obvious truth is just being PC for the sake of being PC. Now imagine that they're talking about your obvious inferiority, and these are supposed to be not just your peers, but also your educators and role models.
The boys get done with class, head to work to make money to pay tuition, then come home exhausted and try to figure out their homework before bed. The girls get done with class, have all evening to do the homework, and get their hands held through the hard problems by tutors whenever they have trouble.
That's clear, direct sexism.
WTF? No really, What The Fuck Are You Talking About?
All the boys are working too hard to get a tutor, and all the girls have a free ride? Are you really using the male-as-breadwinner stereotype to claim the existence of anti-male sexism? That's funny, because I had a free ride and my gf busts ass making the money to go to school full time and still racks up big piles of debt. And when I was teaching in grad school, plenty of boys had time to stop by and get some tutoring.
Yeah there are scholarships that are only available to women. Once the sexism that you don't see because it supports your preconceived notions is gone then scholarships that favor women can go away too. There are plenty available to men too, so who exactly is giving you the finger? Oh right, I forgot, this was blanket stereotyping and hyperbole day. But of course you don't do that, no no you don't support sexism. It's just those stupid girls who don't even have to work for their degrees who are at fault.
Here's a clue: If it weren't for people like you, none of the things that are so unfair to you would need to exist. So why don't you go fuck yourself.
Chemically, testosterone and estrogen have different, powerful effects on the brain and body. Be careful not to call people "bigots" because they celebrate this diversity and seek out the advantages it contains, or you must call yourself a bigot for your intolerance toward anyone who thinks that any notable differences are an evil that needs to be squashed.
That's not why they're called bigots. They're called bigots because they assume that demonstrable differences between sexes naturally and obviously cause whatever differences their society had already assumed to be true. For example, the idea that testosterone levels would directly inform mathematical ability. Is there any scientific basis for this connection? No, but men and women are different in this easily quantifiable way, therefore it's equally possible that our stereotype that women aren't as good at math as men is actually a biological reality!
It's hilarious (in that particular sad way) how over time people come up with justifications for how the prejudices of their particular time and place are actually biological fact, even as those prejudices change! So early in the 1900s, the US Army IQ testing "proved" what everyone already knew -- that Irish and Italian immigrants were inherently dumber. But now that's not true any more. What could have changed? Did the genetics of the Irish change so much in the last 100 years that they no longer suffer from inherent biological disadvantages? Or was it that the culture they were living in changed? Naw that couldn't be it. In the 1990s you wouldn't have even thought to suggest something as dumb as "the Irish are inherently dumb", but The Bell Curve could still "prove" that lingering prejudice against Africans wasn't prejudice at all, but rather a prescient insight into biological truth. I'm sure if they'd bothered to try to dress their prejudices up in the garb of science, the Romans could have "proved" that every barbarian was biologically incapable of the superior thoughts of a Roman citizen.
Show me a study that shows one group has a biological advantage over another that doesn't exactly match the pre-existing biases in the particular culture being studied, and I'll start to listen.
Which is why this study is so interesting. By looking around the world, it helps get around the issue of specific cultural biases. And unless you're going to suggest that South Korean women are genetically significantly different from American women with regard to math (I guess they produce more testosterone?) then you're going to have a hard time maintaining the position that the gender gap that exists in the U.S. is due to biology and not culture.
And here I am programmed to turn off lights when I leave the room. This being the case, I am more of an environmentalist for turning off my incandescent lights than I would be converting my whole house to CFL. With the exception of my living room, I am wasting money buying the CFLs. And they will be banned in the name of environmentalism.
Yes, because it's still better, even for you, doing what you already do.
Say you replace every light with CFLs, and continue to turn off the lights in most rooms after only a short period of time. These lights will last merely as long as incandescents, and use 1/4th the power while doing so. Since you're an environmentalist and recycle, the mercury in the bulbs is a non-issue and all that saved power is pure win.
You could be right that it would cost more, depending on energy costs at your location in space/time/marketing* the power savings won't offset the extra cost of the CFLs. So it's not necessarily an economic win, but it is an environmental win. Is it worth spending a little extra money to be environmentally friendly? Is it worth having the government mandate this extra cost? They've already done it for vehicle emissions, with measurable benefits to our environment.
* Of course the 5th dimension is market segmentation, aka the Marketing Dimension.
Would those be hippies who wear capes made out of hemp? Some henna body art, perhaps? Do they have powers, like creating a force-shield of stink?
No, man, they have the ability to find a hookup anywhere and making a bong out of anything. It's pretty amazing. The stink-field is a, like, downside to their awesome power.
He said Southerners, but he sounds like a Texan to me. There it might actually happen like that; they were the most "Yeah, State's Rights!" as opposed to "Yeah, State's Rights (because it lets us continue slavery)!" of the Confederates. And people of all races born there feel the same way. My only response to that then is: im in ur republic, yanking up your hideaway.
No, we should use CFLs to reduce energy consumption now while we work on replacing our coal plants.
Pragmatism, that's what motivated the G-whatever-P to say LEDs and nuclear power were the best solution. Well, having a much better solution than what we were using to fill the lengthy gap until the best solution is implemented is the pragmatic approach.
[NOTE: If you need to google KSR, CAFC and section 101 before you respond to this post, that's a good clue that you're fighting a battle you don't understand]
Ha, joke's on you! Thanks to Microsoft, I only had to Bing them! So with that out of the way, U R WRNG.
Anyway, I remember reading on/. about the case that raised the bar for obviousness... And ATT v MS where a Justice said out loud that the court had never held software to be patentable before... So I was very hopeful reading this headline. Thanks for more hope!
Very true and yet today, same as decades ago, most of our power is supplied by coal.
And thus the difference between hypothetical reality and pragmatic reality makes itself apparent.
"Works" is clearly not sufficient. As a matter of physical reality it would take decades before we could build enough nuclear plants to completely supplant coal, and once you account for political reality it will take even longer.
With nuclear power, we could use incandescent bulbs without polluting the environment until LED bulbs sufficiently come down in price to be viable for use in every home.
I consider myself a true environmentalist, like Hank Hill; I believe in finding pragmatic solutions to keep our environmental treasures available for the next generations, by reducing unnecessary waste.
Okay, pragmatically speaking, how long do you think it will be until enough of our power is produced by nuclear and not by coal for this argument to work? And remember, we're talking pragmatics, so you can't calculate how long from now assuming the entire nation agrees that this is what we should do. Even if we could, we'd be talking decades, but we can't, so it'll be even longer. By the time it happens, I'm betting we'll already be switching to LEDs anyway.
CFLs are a fantastically pragmatic solution for today. They immediately give an efficiency and pollution improvement in most common situations in America. They work in existing outlets. They work today and are only getting better (more efficient, better light, less mercury). If in the future, as in a couple decades from now, we transition to something newer and better, then what's the problem?
^^Citation needed. Please explain how using less energy causes more coal pollution.
Reading comprehension needed. The discussion was about using these "efficient" incandescents vs CFLs. These incandescents use more energy than CFLs. More than twice as much in fact.
So in your quest to avoid mercury pollution by using incandescent bulbs, you're actually causing MORE mercury pollution in the long term.
Considering that the average American's face contains more mercury than 100 CFLs (~0.5g per filling, ~0.4mg per CFL), and CFLs are recyclable anyway, this truly smacks of a red herring like the environmental costs of the battery packs in hybrids/EVs.
LOL and I screwed up the exponent for "femtosecond"! At least my title is still accurate, but it's really less than a millisecond that it would take to save the energy. I didn't mean to be that half-arsed!
Energy and Power are not the same. Specifically, Power is Energy divided by Time. W = E/t
Based on just the US, which for the sake of half-arsed napkin engineering on/. I will double to get total energy usage for North America in 2005, we're talking about 58000 TWh / 8760 h = 6.621 TW average power output.
Thus the laser pulse itself uses 6.621E12 W * 1E-12 J = 6.621 J.
The "efficient" lightbulb saves 40W. 6.621 J / 40 W = 0.165 s.
So it takes less than a second to recover the energy used by the laser. I'm sure the laser system itself uses more power than what is just in the beam, but the point is, ridiculous amounts of power in ridiculously short amounts of time results in quite rational and manageable power levels.
Bigger number! Woo-hoo! With the POWER of MATHS I can tell you...1366 over 775 = 76% better!
I'm certain the number is just the pin count which is a typical way to name sockets. More pins isn't necessarily better but since in this particular case the explosion in pin count is due to adding three DDR3 channels on-chip I'm willing to bet it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Would your brother perchance be Captain Clutz? Or perhaps Major Catastrophe? At least I hope that's the case. I'd rather not think that unbeknownst to most of us the humvee was the Ford Pinto of the modern military. But hey I bet most of them don't drive off mountains on their own. :)
If you've got issues with the timeline, please read my other post in this thread. The wars were not for entirely discrete reasons. Believe it or not, the past and context DID play a role in decision making.
Yes, in the past ignoring genocide and supporting genocidal dictators was acceptable. In the context of the Cold War and the rise of an Islamic Republic with ties to Russia, it was very realpolitik to let it go on. And by realpolitik, I mean pragmatically not giving a flying dicktwitter about the gassing of the Kurds as long as it didn't hurt them politically, which is why they kept it quiet.
But in the context of the War on Terror and a nation still reeling and frightened after being attacked, it was a perfect time to put some neo-con philosophy into practice. Iraq was their perfect stepping stone into the Middle East: weak, secular and thus ripe for democracy(they thought), and with some convenient excuses that they could play up to a terrified public. It is exactly because they were not a threat that they were chosen as the target. Notice in the Axis of Evil, the two actual threats are still untouched!
There was no good reason for this war, and invoking the name of twenty-year-old genocide that they never gave a shit about in the first place and still don't is simply bullshit. Using their invasion of Iran as a justification makes even less sense (which is why even the idiots in charge didn't use it). That's not even a hypothetical reason to invade! It justifies nothing. None of this comes close to being even a pretend justification for invading Iraq in 2003. Why did we have to punish Saddam for 20 year old crimes right then? How did that 20 year old crime make him an urgent threat? We all know it didn't.
So you're left saying that it's to "clean up" the mess from Gulf War 1... Because we didn't "finish the job" we have to go back, because... Well, that's interesting, because there's plenty of Cold War messes that we never have any intention of cleaning up, usually because trying will only make things worse. Which GHWB knew would be the case in Iraq. It's not that we didn't finish, it's that we were finished with what made sense. The invasion had nothing to do with cleaning up Cold War messes, the neo-cons don't care about that. They cared about trying out their theory that if you bombed a country into oblivion, Democracy would spring forth fully formed.
To the extent that it was still, hypothetically if not practically, the right thing to do, it was still the wrong time and the wrong people. Invading Iraq while Afghanistan was ongoing was retarded beyond belief, not having a post-invasion plan was equally stupid, hell the whole thing was idiotic. When/if we finish with Afghanistan and prove that we're capable of that "nation building" thing Rummy said he doesn't do, then was the time to start worrying about Iraq. Instead, we let Afghanistan backslide while our attention was turned. Idiocy!
That's a pretty interesting allegation. Where's the proof? I've never seen any.
Pfft. How about just about everyone who has left the administration saying so, from the Richard Clark to George Tenet to Colin Powel, the one who presented the evidence to the global community and regrets it? The administration wanted to invade, and finding a justification was more important than figuring out if it was the right or necessary thing to do, so they asked for cherry-picked evidence and ignored everything that didn't match what they already believed. Since the actual result matches this scenario in every way, what's so hard to believe?
Oh you mean you need documented proof? Well you might have to wait for a while until the documents can be received via FOIA request, like the proof that we knew Saddam was gassing Kurds and Ir
Yeah calling a Hummer an off roader is pretty funny.
It's nothing more than a marketing trick based on association with the military HMMWV, which worked brilliantly. The humvee is a vehicle to make its predecessor jeep proud. It has an angled independent suspension that puts the gear box, drive shaft and other parts well off the ground for huge clearance. It's a great off-road vehicle, reliable and rugged.
Civilian versions are nothing like that, since they're based off completely different chassis. But hey, they look pretty similar if and if you never take them off the road you probably won't even notice. So it's kinda like you own military hardware! How bad-ass!
Silly me thinking attacking two neighbors, genocide, religious persecution, utter failure to comply with terms of surrender, and last but not least intelligence claims of WMDs, etc had something to do with it. Fascinating.
Yeah, it is pretty silly to think we invaded Iraq in 2003 because... ... they committed genocide against the Kurds in 1983 which we knew about at the time and kept quiet about because we supported their war with Iran. ... they went to war with Iran in 1980 and used chemical weapons against them, which we later supported and helped Iraq to fund because we wanted Iran contained. ... they invaded Kuwait in 1990, initiating the Persian Gulf War.
I mean I can at least see how you could think WMD were a reason to invade... though when they come up with the reason first, and then demand the intelligence community support that reason, you should wonder...
But to think that one action that already resulted in us going to war, and two other actions which we supported at the time, warrant an invasion twenty years later is just nutty. I mean how can you watch a guy stand at a podium and tell you we need to invade Iraq because of genocide twenty years ago, when that same guy twenty years ago was shaking the murderer's hand while the U.S. government was aware of what he was doing, and nod your head and go "yup yup!"
There is no misrepresentation going on here, even if you had hoped that since you agreed with him on one thing that he would agree with you on another.
I wonder why it is that the only ones who seem to think Obama promised them everything under the sun and half of everything under ground are his detractors.
Giggety!
Why oh why would you ever want to change interests? That's my whole problem with this debate whenever it comes up.
Because those interests were formed in a society whose prejudices steered those interests away from certain fields they might otherwise have been interested in, that's why.
When a girl isn't interested in math/engineering because her father/mother/teachers/peers/crush tells her that she shouldn't be interested in those things, that is something that should be changed.
The real "solution" to this "problem" is to allow boys and girls to go into whatever field they so choose and encourage them no matter what.
You can't really think that this "solution" is what we'd have if we didn't have any women-in-science outreach, do you? Sitting here in this thread, where we have, as usual, men stating as fact that women simply aren't as interested in math and the gender gap is natural, you can't possibly believe that.
The whole problem here is the lack of encouragement for women going into math. More so, it's systematic societal discouragement. Which, understandably, changes the interests of many girls. And thus we must go out of our way to show that women are desired in these fields simply to counter that effect and come closer to the "solution" you desire. Until we eliminate the sexism that pervades these fields, the "problem" is real and your "solution" cannot exist.
I'm talking, of course, about the School of Nursing, where only 5% of the graduates are men.
Yep, which is why concerned parties conduct and learn from outreach programs designed to increase male enrollment in nursing.
Cue the hordes of free-thinkers irate that people would try to mess with the obvious natural balance resulting from a combination of men's general lack of interest in nursing (which of course has nothing to do with social stereotypes of nursing as "women's work") and not being as empathic as women and thus not as capable at the job. Really, we're just screwing ourselves by trying to give men a leg up against simple biology. The gender gap isn't sexism, it's trying to fix it that's sexism! Am I right, men?
*waits for hordes*
Hmm... No? No hordes? Huh.
Anyway, you may think it's obviously sexism, but this is yet another case of pure biology just happening to justify the transitional prejudices and stereotypes of a particular culture at a particular point in time.
The only sexism I've seen in academia is anti-male sexism.
Yeah, and the only racism you've ever seen is anti-white racism. That's because you're sheltered and oblivious.
Try opening your eyes and looking... at this very thread! Look at how many are blandly suggesting that women are inherently inferior at math and that the gender gap is the right and natural result of biology, that ignoring this obvious truth is just being PC for the sake of being PC. Now imagine that they're talking about your obvious inferiority, and these are supposed to be not just your peers, but also your educators and role models.
The boys get done with class, head to work to make money to pay tuition, then come home exhausted and try to figure out their homework before bed. The girls get done with class, have all evening to do the homework, and get their hands held through the hard problems by tutors whenever they have trouble.
That's clear, direct sexism.
WTF? No really, What The Fuck Are You Talking About?
All the boys are working too hard to get a tutor, and all the girls have a free ride? Are you really using the male-as-breadwinner stereotype to claim the existence of anti-male sexism? That's funny, because I had a free ride and my gf busts ass making the money to go to school full time and still racks up big piles of debt. And when I was teaching in grad school, plenty of boys had time to stop by and get some tutoring.
Yeah there are scholarships that are only available to women. Once the sexism that you don't see because it supports your preconceived notions is gone then scholarships that favor women can go away too. There are plenty available to men too, so who exactly is giving you the finger? Oh right, I forgot, this was blanket stereotyping and hyperbole day. But of course you don't do that, no no you don't support sexism. It's just those stupid girls who don't even have to work for their degrees who are at fault.
Here's a clue: If it weren't for people like you, none of the things that are so unfair to you would need to exist. So why don't you go fuck yourself.
Chemically, testosterone and estrogen have different, powerful effects on the brain and body. Be careful not to call people "bigots" because they celebrate this diversity and seek out the advantages it contains, or you must call yourself a bigot for your intolerance toward anyone who thinks that any notable differences are an evil that needs to be squashed.
That's not why they're called bigots. They're called bigots because they assume that demonstrable differences between sexes naturally and obviously cause whatever differences their society had already assumed to be true. For example, the idea that testosterone levels would directly inform mathematical ability. Is there any scientific basis for this connection? No, but men and women are different in this easily quantifiable way, therefore it's equally possible that our stereotype that women aren't as good at math as men is actually a biological reality!
It's hilarious (in that particular sad way) how over time people come up with justifications for how the prejudices of their particular time and place are actually biological fact, even as those prejudices change! So early in the 1900s, the US Army IQ testing "proved" what everyone already knew -- that Irish and Italian immigrants were inherently dumber. But now that's not true any more. What could have changed? Did the genetics of the Irish change so much in the last 100 years that they no longer suffer from inherent biological disadvantages? Or was it that the culture they were living in changed? Naw that couldn't be it. In the 1990s you wouldn't have even thought to suggest something as dumb as "the Irish are inherently dumb", but The Bell Curve could still "prove" that lingering prejudice against Africans wasn't prejudice at all, but rather a prescient insight into biological truth. I'm sure if they'd bothered to try to dress their prejudices up in the garb of science, the Romans could have "proved" that every barbarian was biologically incapable of the superior thoughts of a Roman citizen.
Show me a study that shows one group has a biological advantage over another that doesn't exactly match the pre-existing biases in the particular culture being studied, and I'll start to listen.
Which is why this study is so interesting. By looking around the world, it helps get around the issue of specific cultural biases. And unless you're going to suggest that South Korean women are genetically significantly different from American women with regard to math (I guess they produce more testosterone?) then you're going to have a hard time maintaining the position that the gender gap that exists in the U.S. is due to biology and not culture.
And here I am programmed to turn off lights when I leave the room. This being the case, I am more of an environmentalist for turning off my incandescent lights than I would be converting my whole house to CFL. With the exception of my living room, I am wasting money buying the CFLs. And they will be banned in the name of environmentalism.
Yes, because it's still better, even for you, doing what you already do.
Say you replace every light with CFLs, and continue to turn off the lights in most rooms after only a short period of time. These lights will last merely as long as incandescents, and use 1/4th the power while doing so. Since you're an environmentalist and recycle, the mercury in the bulbs is a non-issue and all that saved power is pure win.
You could be right that it would cost more, depending on energy costs at your location in space/time/marketing* the power savings won't offset the extra cost of the CFLs. So it's not necessarily an economic win, but it is an environmental win. Is it worth spending a little extra money to be environmentally friendly? Is it worth having the government mandate this extra cost? They've already done it for vehicle emissions, with measurable benefits to our environment.
* Of course the 5th dimension is market segmentation, aka the Marketing Dimension.
Would those be hippies who wear capes made out of hemp? Some henna body art, perhaps? Do they have powers, like creating a force-shield of stink?
No, man, they have the ability to find a hookup anywhere and making a bong out of anything. It's pretty amazing. The stink-field is a, like, downside to their awesome power.
He said Southerners, but he sounds like a Texan to me. There it might actually happen like that; they were the most "Yeah, State's Rights!" as opposed to "Yeah, State's Rights (because it lets us continue slavery)!" of the Confederates. And people of all races born there feel the same way. My only response to that then is: im in ur republic, yanking up your hideaway.
So we shouldn't even start?
*sigh*
No, we should use CFLs to reduce energy consumption now while we work on replacing our coal plants.
Pragmatism, that's what motivated the G-whatever-P to say LEDs and nuclear power were the best solution. Well, having a much better solution than what we were using to fill the lengthy gap until the best solution is implemented is the pragmatic approach.
[NOTE: If you need to google KSR, CAFC and section 101 before you respond to this post, that's a good clue that you're fighting a battle you don't understand]
Ha, joke's on you! Thanks to Microsoft, I only had to Bing them! So with that out of the way, U R WRNG.
Anyway, I remember reading on /. about the case that raised the bar for obviousness... And ATT v MS where a Justice said out loud that the court had never held software to be patentable before... So I was very hopeful reading this headline. Thanks for more hope!
Very true and yet today, same as decades ago, most of our power is supplied by coal.
And thus the difference between hypothetical reality and pragmatic reality makes itself apparent.
"Works" is clearly not sufficient. As a matter of physical reality it would take decades before we could build enough nuclear plants to completely supplant coal, and once you account for political reality it will take even longer.
As soon as my edits to the Scientology wiki article go through, we'll have already done it!
With nuclear power, we could use incandescent bulbs without polluting the environment until LED bulbs sufficiently come down in price to be viable for use in every home.
I consider myself a true environmentalist, like Hank Hill; I believe in finding pragmatic solutions to keep our environmental treasures available for the next generations, by reducing unnecessary waste.
Okay, pragmatically speaking, how long do you think it will be until enough of our power is produced by nuclear and not by coal for this argument to work? And remember, we're talking pragmatics, so you can't calculate how long from now assuming the entire nation agrees that this is what we should do. Even if we could, we'd be talking decades, but we can't, so it'll be even longer. By the time it happens, I'm betting we'll already be switching to LEDs anyway.
CFLs are a fantastically pragmatic solution for today. They immediately give an efficiency and pollution improvement in most common situations in America. They work in existing outlets. They work today and are only getting better (more efficient, better light, less mercury). If in the future, as in a couple decades from now, we transition to something newer and better, then what's the problem?
^^Citation needed. Please explain how using less energy causes more coal pollution.
Reading comprehension needed. The discussion was about using these "efficient" incandescents vs CFLs. These incandescents use more energy than CFLs. More than twice as much in fact.
So in your quest to avoid mercury pollution by using incandescent bulbs, you're actually causing MORE mercury pollution in the long term.
Considering that the average American's face contains more mercury than 100 CFLs (~0.5g per filling, ~0.4mg per CFL), and CFLs are recyclable anyway, this truly smacks of a red herring like the environmental costs of the battery packs in hybrids/EVs.
LOL and I screwed up the exponent for "femtosecond"! At least my title is still accurate, but it's really less than a millisecond that it would take to save the energy. I didn't mean to be that half-arsed!
6.621E12 W * 1E-12 s = 6.621 J.
oops.
Also, I said "power" instead of "energy" at the end of my post. Heh.
Energy and Power are not the same. Specifically, Power is Energy divided by Time. W = E/t
Based on just the US, which for the sake of half-arsed napkin engineering on /. I will double to get total energy usage for North America in 2005, we're talking about 58000 TWh / 8760 h = 6.621 TW average power output.
Thus the laser pulse itself uses 6.621E12 W * 1E-12 J = 6.621 J.
The "efficient" lightbulb saves 40W. 6.621 J / 40 W = 0.165 s.
So it takes less than a second to recover the energy used by the laser. I'm sure the laser system itself uses more power than what is just in the beam, but the point is, ridiculous amounts of power in ridiculously short amounts of time results in quite rational and manageable power levels.
I'm sure I'll be using it periodically for years, just to make jokes about how I'm using the search engine that goes 'Bing'.
Bigger number! Woo-hoo! With the POWER of MATHS I can tell you ...1366 over 775 = 76% better!
I'm certain the number is just the pin count which is a typical way to name sockets. More pins isn't necessarily better but since in this particular case the explosion in pin count is due to adding three DDR3 channels on-chip I'm willing to bet it is.