You are both wrong. Petroleum-based diesel fuel (#2) contains about 15% more energy than gas, while biodiesel contains about 10-12% more than gasoline. In winter the energy content of petroleum diesel goes down a few percent because it is winterized with low-energy kerosene (#1 diesel), while the energy content of biodiesel goes up because it is winterized with petro-diesel.
Diesels get most of their fuel efficiency from that 15%, and very little from their increased compression. The increased compression does result in more torque, allowing the engine to operate at lower RPM with the same power, this increases mileage only slightly. It is a small saving compared to the mileage gained from the greater energy value of the fuel.
This is easy to prove. If high compression were the major reason for better diesel mileage then there would be almost no difference in mileage between petro-diesel and biodiesel because the compression of the engine is the same for both fuels. However, cars usually get about 3-5% worse mileage with biodiesel than with petro-diesel, which is about the same as the difference in energy content of the two fuels.
"From the limited and flawed sample I have, it seems to me like there are more neo-nazis, white-supremacists and the like per capita in the USA where it's not forbidden."
I dispute this. I spent two months in Berlin a few years ago and indications of the neo-nazi movement were everywhere. They were subtle (small swastikas painted on benches in colors just a little different than the bench color, German phrases about "Juden" written on backs of signs, etc). They are illegal and more obvious messages would be erased by the authorities - but they were very common. If you learn where to look they are EVERYWHERE. It's clearly a large underground community. I heard "Juden" muttered under the breath about me, even though I'm not even Jewish, just from New York. Jack-booted skin-heads are also very common and very scary. The've even created a new swastika-like symbol that is clearly recognizable, but does not technically violate German law.
The racist Aryan signs and symbols become very common and more obvious once you get away from the tourist areas into the working class areas of Berlin, particularly in what was the Eastern sector of the city. Racism is a big problem in Germany. I do not believe that white-supremacists are more common in the US than in Germany. No way.
WAAA, HAAA, HAAA! This is that Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine weirdo group. Only a moron would believe anything they say. You'll notice that there is no way to verify ANY of that long scrolling list of names they post.
And that Bjorn Lomborg dude... he isn't even a scientist. He has no credentials and has never published a scientific paper on any topic (but he writes a mean web page that LOOKS like a scientific paper).
The reality is that all co2 that is stored in oil comes from the athmosphere. Therefore even if we burned all of the oil in all of the earth's crust right now, we'd only recreate the athmospheric situation of the age of the dinosaurs,
You clearly know absolutely nothing about this topic. The carbon stored in oil was collected from atmospheric CO2 over millions of years. When we burn the oil we release all that carbon dioxide immediately into the atmosphere.
Let me give you a simple analogy to your logic. You've put $100 a month into your savings account over 40 years. You go to withdraw it when you retire and the banker says, "Ok, here's your $100."
Technically it is, but it is a greenhouse gas that is in equilibrium. If we add water droplets to the air to form clouds the excess water vapor drops out as rain and the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere remains the same.
The "water vapor is a greenhouse gas" is one of the arguments of the organizations that employ pseudo-science to deny global warming.
On the other hand, this idea of cloud-ships has a few issues. I can imagine a few cloud-ships off the horn of Africa starting storms that develop into hurricanes. Its an interesting concept that America could come under attack from hurricane -lobbing storm ships.
I'm fully aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences, so while things could go wrong with this plan it has one over-riding positive that would address all your concerns... they can simply be turned off if we don't like what is happening.
You seem to have a problem with the concept of linear time.
Palin had several interviews before she announced her candidacy? That's absurd logic.
Just as silly is your argument that she has been interviewed by the press *in the future*.
Unfortunately, your response is typical of conservative spin - you distort even clear simple facts into some sort of weird alternate-reality where everything Republican is perfect. "It's bad that she hasn't talked to the press - so let's just SAY she has."
Most people do not realize that "Healthy debate", "More Study", and "All information is good information" are creationist code words. When creationists say these things what they really mean is they want to get their religious curriculum accorded equal standing in public schools. Making their goals _sound_ reasonable and moderate is part of the strategy to eventually replace science with theology in schools.
Palin won't even talk to the press. What does that say about your "not ready" logic?
Re:Good analysis. MOD PARENT UP.
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What are you talking about. I installed chrome and it had ad blocking turned on by default. I added to it by telling it not to even show a notification of a blocked ad.
Secret warrants may be shady and sleazy, but they're perfectly in line with the 4th amendment. The 1st amendment also has security restrictions on it by court precedent, thus I think they'll have a hard time arguing that they have a first amendment right to tell their customers about a NSL.
But these aren't warrants, secret or otherwise. They're simply 200,000 letters from the FBI demanding information. THAT'S the point, not that they are secret.
First, the industrial revolution was not an invention, and anyway much of its impetus was to meet the supply demands of the military. Interchangeable musket parts were the first application of mass-production. Neither is steam power an invention (the steam engine is the invention).
How do you know that the first bit of writing was not performed in response to an territoty-encroaching tribe (a pictogram of Og and Ug at the top of a cliff throwing rocks, with Eg and Ig in the pass with spears)?
The first customer of the Wright Flyer was the US Army. Most advancements in powered flight have come directly from military applications. (rotary engines, aelerons, monoplanes, metal skins, pressurized cockpits, jets, radar, etc)
Maybe not the WWW, but the internet and packet-switching was DARPA conceived as a way to insure communications in case of nuclear attack.
So no, the military's effect on technological advancement is not hogwash.
Don't forget, the Democrats (and Republicans) in the House and Senate are just as complacent in whatever damage has been done, by allowing it to continue and contributing their own malfeasance.
If the Ds really didn't want a war in Iraq, they shouldn't have given Bush the piece of paper authorizing military action.
GWB isn't any more evil than Pelosi and crew! The whole bunch is corrupt! So until you stop voting for the Republicrats, you get what you deserve.
First, it's complicit, not complacent.
Second, third and fourth: the Republicans had a rubber-stamp majority in Congress until 18 months ago so the Democrats could do little to check Bush's activities; Democrats were even prevented from holding hearings about issues with the administration; the Democrats were lied to about the force of evidence against Iraq and even then voted to authorize the use of force as a last resort - Bush went to war four days later. Since the Democrats gained a slim majority in Congress the Republicans have fillibustered action more than 80 times, and numerous Bush aides have refused to testify when subpoenaed by Congress.
The Republicans are in a very bad way when they start blaming the Democrats for their own failed and/or illegal policies.
The DOJ has received all the attention but there is an open question if the same program was being practiced in some or all of the other departments and agencies under control of the Executive Branch. If it was there may be an army of entrenched Republican ideologue civil servants who will frustrate future President they don't agree with for decades to come.
It isn't an open question anymore. A Justice Department report listed many of these illegal political activities. The White House directed the heads of federal agencies to hire people "loyal to Bush". Karl Rove also directed agency heads to make policy decisions based on the administration's political agenda (clearly illegal). The Republican head of HUD told staff to favor companies friendly to Bush when awarding contracts (also illegal).
I'm surprised I've never heard it mentioned in the press, but the actions of the Bush administration to insert political control and approval, even to altering scientific papers to fit with political ideology, is the exact same political commisar system installed by the Soviets.
The good patriotic Republicans installed a Soviet-style political command and control system in the US government. How's that for ironic.
"Spanking Neal Stephenson and his editors for the length of the Baroque Cycle is to utterly, completely miss the point of that piece of work (and indeed of Stephenson's purpose for writing it and his choice of style)."
Gee, it sure SEEMS like you called Stephenson's lengthiness a style.
If he was literally filling pages for the sake of doing so, then the information, characters, and concepts that he builds up and has fun with wouldn't actually be meaningful to the plot or the subject...
Couldn't agree more. Tell me how five pages of parking lot description (including the height of the curbs) in Cryptnomicon was meaningful to the plot. Seems to me you just made my point that he is filling pages just to fill pages.
Incidentally, he writes out his manuscripts by hand.
Ok, maybe an intern doesn't transcribe it, but I still bet he uses a voice recorder to get all that excruciating detail on curb height that is apparently so necessary to the plot (at least to people who confuse words with plot).
Ii>Currently we only think of 4 digit years, but the guy thinks out the box and has foreseen that one day, sooner or later, probably in a few millenniums, we will have 5 digit years, and that then just like we already put a bunch of zeros for years before the year 1000 we will one day put zeros for years before the year 10000!
No, it's just arrogant, not visionary, and what's more it's fourth-grader "out-of-the-box" thinking. Our current calendar is less than 2000 years old and is based on a date of religious significance. It is culturally arrogant to think that there will not be some other ascendant religion or religious date, or that our political order will not be superceded by some super-dictator with a penchant for re-doing the date thing.
Remember, no one has ever thought THEIR god was going to go out of style.
I'll tell you what is going on, and it isn't literature. Stephenson's books cost a lot to buy simply because they are huge. They are huge because they have fill, fill, and more fill. They have fill, fill, and more fill because they give the publisher and Stephenson more profit per volume sold.
Stephenson's books are the equivalent of buying books by the yard.
I would bet money that 50% of any Stephenson book is typed in by some intern transcribing from the voice recorder Neal had on his latest trip to the mall.
You are exactly right - words, words, words. Pages-long descriptions of mundane objects like door-frames, parking lots and watches. He does have good story ideas, but he isn't a good enough writer to turn them into anything readable.
No, this Stephenson detractor thinks he is a lousy writer. His main technique to fill pages with words is to walk around in everyday places with a voice recorder describing everything in painful, stupefying detail, which he then transcribes verbatim into page after page of useless stupefying fill in his books.
In the only book of his I tried to read, after FIVE PAGES of description of a parking lot that had absolutely nothing to do with the storyline I promised myself if he stooped to describing the height of the curbs I would throw the book away and never read another word by this hack. Guess what?
I don't think it would take much more energy to get supplies to an ISS orbiting the moon. The supply ships are automated and they could take months to get to the moon as long as they arrived regularly. 99% of the energy is just getting to orbit - it wouldn't take much more to shove it toward the moon. Add to this that the supply ships themselves could be used as raw material for a lunar base and it begins to make more sense.
The biggest problem I see is that the ISS crew have literlly had one foot in the door of the emergency escape capsule many times. There have been life support problems, a fire, and one ISS crew member actually crashed a supply rocket into the ISS. If they were at the moon there is no quick trip home. There would almost have to be two ISS's at the moon - one spare that could support life for months. Still, the solutions are fairly simple engineering problems not even requiring new technology.
It would not make much sense to place it there if the ISS were all there was at the moon, but if human visitation is going to increase in the next two decades (for a Mars mission or whatever) it makes a lot of sense to put it there and would not require (terribly) larger expense.
Just becaue you need something doesn't mean it's safe. Your body also needs selenium in trace amounts but that does not mean its safe to eat selenium.
You are making the common mistake of confusing "safe" with "acceptable risk".
Let me put it this way: just because you may have to crawl along a narrow ledge to get food and water to survive does not mean the ledge is safe. In the same way, no ionizing radiation is safe.
Radiation is extremly safe and it does cure many disease that have no alternative treatment. We are bathed in radiation at every second of every day with no ill effects but just like oxygen and water, in excess it will kill you very quickly. Just because it COULD kill you doesn't mean it is dangerous.
Actually this is untrue. No amount of ionizing raditaion is "safe". This isn't merely my opinion, the scientific and medical communities recognizes this. It ALL causes damage to living organisms. Even sunlight causes genetic damage but DNA has repair mechanisms that have evolved to deal with it, but those mechanisms cannot repair all random mutations caused by radiation. Since even one stray ionozing particle that hits exactly the right spot in a single cell can cause cancer you are basically playing Russian Roulette whenever you expose yourself to any unnecessary radiation. Sure, there are levels of radiation where the risk is deemed acceptable (i.e. cancer treatment, x-rays, trans-continental flights), but low risk does not equal safe.
Well no, the angle doesn't change the amount of energy hitting the panel.
Not true. One square foot of light hitting a surface perpendicularly imparts its energy to one square foot of surface. If you increase the angle of incidence the square foot of light spreads its energy out over a larger area and the original square foot of surface area now receives much less energy. It's the reason we have seasons.
You had a very long post, but after that first sentence I didn't bother to read the rest of it - I guess first impressions ARE important.
Even in an inner city, assuming you have to pay for parking at one end and work pays at the other, a car won't cost more than 250 a month in maintenance, parking, and fuel. And that may be overestimating- it really depends on fuel costs, I get to and from on 1 gallon/day and own my spot, so the difference is about 50 bucks.
I have to laugh that you think you are overestimating the cost of car ownership in a city at $250/month. You are way underestimating it. When I lived in Manhattan I paid $300/month just to PARK my car. When I realized I had not driven it in three months I sold it. The reason I had not driven it was that it was so much easier and more convenient to use subways and taxis.
Of course you also left out the actual cost of the car in addition to license, taxes, fuel, parking tickets, maintenance, parking and other costs. Incuding payments, I was easily throwing $800/month away on a car I never drove.
I live in the burbs now and own a car, but after living without one for ten years in NYC, I hate having it. It is a huge money pit and does in no way make up for the "freedom" it gives you. In fact, it's like an anchor. I'm traveling to NY from NC later this month and guess what - I'm leaving the damned car in the driveway and taking the train to Penn Station. It's cheaper AND more convenient. Just imagine what it would be like if we had really good public transportation.
And BTW, in ten years of subway riding in NYC, I never had to sit next to a stinky dirty person. You watch too much television.
It doesn't always work that way. In New York I left my Amex card at a Radio Shack and $1,200 of charges showed up within a couple of days at the mid-town Bloomingdales and Diesel stores. The NYPD investigated, interviewed the staff at the Radio Shack store (I knew I had left it there), reviewed the security cameras during the times the card was illegaly used and recognized both a Radio Shack employee and her manager using my card. Arrested them both. The moral of the story is that if you can provide enough information to really identify the thieves the police will act.
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You are both wrong. Petroleum-based diesel fuel (#2) contains about 15% more energy than gas, while biodiesel contains about 10-12% more than gasoline. In winter the energy content of petroleum diesel goes down a few percent because it is winterized with low-energy kerosene (#1 diesel), while the energy content of biodiesel goes up because it is winterized with petro-diesel.
Diesels get most of their fuel efficiency from that 15%, and very little from their increased compression. The increased compression does result in more torque, allowing the engine to operate at lower RPM with the same power, this increases mileage only slightly. It is a small saving compared to the mileage gained from the greater energy value of the fuel.
This is easy to prove. If high compression were the major reason for better diesel mileage then there would be almost no difference in mileage between petro-diesel and biodiesel because the compression of the engine is the same for both fuels. However, cars usually get about 3-5% worse mileage with biodiesel than with petro-diesel, which is about the same as the difference in energy content of the two fuels.
"From the limited and flawed sample I have, it seems to me like there are more neo-nazis, white-supremacists and the like per capita in the USA where it's not forbidden."
I dispute this. I spent two months in Berlin a few years ago and indications of the neo-nazi movement were everywhere. They were subtle (small swastikas painted on benches in colors just a little different than the bench color, German phrases about "Juden" written on backs of signs, etc). They are illegal and more obvious messages would be erased by the authorities - but they were very common. If you learn where to look they are EVERYWHERE. It's clearly a large underground community. I heard "Juden" muttered under the breath about me, even though I'm not even Jewish, just from New York. Jack-booted skin-heads are also very common and very scary. The've even created a new swastika-like symbol that is clearly recognizable, but does not technically violate German law.
The racist Aryan signs and symbols become very common and more obvious once you get away from the tourist areas into the working class areas of Berlin, particularly in what was the Eastern sector of the city. Racism is a big problem in Germany. I do not believe that white-supremacists are more common in the US than in Germany. No way.
WAAA, HAAA, HAAA! This is that Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine weirdo group. Only a moron would believe anything they say. You'll notice that there is no way to verify ANY of that long scrolling list of names they post.
And that Bjorn Lomborg dude... he isn't even a scientist. He has no credentials and has never published a scientific paper on any topic (but he writes a mean web page that LOOKS like a scientific paper).
The reality is that all co2 that is stored in oil comes from the athmosphere. Therefore even if we burned all of the oil in all of the earth's crust right now, we'd only recreate the athmospheric situation of the age of the dinosaurs,
You clearly know absolutely nothing about this topic. The carbon stored in oil was collected from atmospheric CO2 over millions of years. When we burn the oil we release all that carbon dioxide immediately into the atmosphere.
Let me give you a simple analogy to your logic. You've put $100 a month into your savings account over 40 years. You go to withdraw it when you retire and the banker says, "Ok, here's your $100."
Technically it is, but it is a greenhouse gas that is in equilibrium. If we add water droplets to the air to form clouds the excess water vapor drops out as rain and the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere remains the same.
The "water vapor is a greenhouse gas" is one of the arguments of the organizations that employ pseudo-science to deny global warming.
On the other hand, this idea of cloud-ships has a few issues. I can imagine a few cloud-ships off the horn of Africa starting storms that develop into hurricanes. Its an interesting concept that America could come under attack from hurricane -lobbing storm ships.
I'm fully aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences, so while things could go wrong with this plan it has one over-riding positive that would address all your concerns... they can simply be turned off if we don't like what is happening.
You seem to have a problem with the concept of linear time.
Palin had several interviews before she announced her candidacy? That's absurd logic.
Just as silly is your argument that she has been interviewed by the press *in the future*.
Unfortunately, your response is typical of conservative spin - you distort even clear simple facts into some sort of weird alternate-reality where everything Republican is perfect. "It's bad that she hasn't talked to the press - so let's just SAY she has."
Most people do not realize that "Healthy debate", "More Study", and "All information is good information" are creationist code words. When creationists say these things what they really mean is they want to get their religious curriculum accorded equal standing in public schools. Making their goals _sound_ reasonable and moderate is part of the strategy to eventually replace science with theology in schools.
Palin won't even talk to the press. What does that say about your "not ready" logic?
What are you talking about. I installed chrome and it had ad blocking turned on by default. I added to it by telling it not to even show a notification of a blocked ad.
Why do you make this stuff up?
Secret warrants may be shady and sleazy, but they're perfectly in line with the 4th amendment. The 1st amendment also has security restrictions on it by court precedent, thus I think they'll have a hard time arguing that they have a first amendment right to tell their customers about a NSL.
But these aren't warrants, secret or otherwise. They're simply 200,000 letters from the FBI demanding information. THAT'S the point, not that they are secret.
First, the industrial revolution was not an invention, and anyway much of its impetus was to meet the supply demands of the military. Interchangeable musket parts were the first application of mass-production. Neither is steam power an invention (the steam engine is the invention).
How do you know that the first bit of writing was not performed in response to an territoty-encroaching tribe (a pictogram of Og and Ug at the top of a cliff throwing rocks, with Eg and Ig in the pass with spears)?
The first customer of the Wright Flyer was the US Army. Most advancements in powered flight have come directly from military applications. (rotary engines, aelerons, monoplanes, metal skins, pressurized cockpits, jets, radar, etc)
Maybe not the WWW, but the internet and packet-switching was DARPA conceived as a way to insure communications in case of nuclear attack.
So no, the military's effect on technological advancement is not hogwash.
Don't forget, the Democrats (and Republicans) in the House and Senate are just as complacent in whatever damage has been done, by allowing it to continue and contributing their own malfeasance.
If the Ds really didn't want a war in Iraq, they shouldn't have given Bush the piece of paper authorizing military action.
GWB isn't any more evil than Pelosi and crew! The whole bunch is corrupt! So until you stop voting for the Republicrats, you get what you deserve.
First, it's complicit, not complacent.
Second, third and fourth: the Republicans had a rubber-stamp majority in Congress until 18 months ago so the Democrats could do little to check Bush's activities; Democrats were even prevented from holding hearings about issues with the administration; the Democrats were lied to about the force of evidence against Iraq and even then voted to authorize the use of force as a last resort - Bush went to war four days later. Since the Democrats gained a slim majority in Congress the Republicans have fillibustered action more than 80 times, and numerous Bush aides have refused to testify when subpoenaed by Congress.
The Republicans are in a very bad way when they start blaming the Democrats for their own failed and/or illegal policies.
The DOJ has received all the attention but there is an open question if the same program was being practiced in some or all of the other departments and agencies under control of the Executive Branch. If it was there may be an army of entrenched Republican ideologue civil servants who will frustrate future President they don't agree with for decades to come.
It isn't an open question anymore. A Justice Department report listed many of these illegal political activities. The White House directed the heads of federal agencies to hire people "loyal to Bush". Karl Rove also directed agency heads to make policy decisions based on the administration's political agenda (clearly illegal). The Republican head of HUD told staff to favor companies friendly to Bush when awarding contracts (also illegal).
I'm surprised I've never heard it mentioned in the press, but the actions of the Bush administration to insert political control and approval, even to altering scientific papers to fit with political ideology, is the exact same political commisar system installed by the Soviets.
The good patriotic Republicans installed a Soviet-style political command and control system in the US government. How's that for ironic.
"Spanking Neal Stephenson and his editors for the length of the Baroque Cycle is to utterly, completely miss the point of that piece of work (and indeed of Stephenson's purpose for writing it and his choice of style)."
Gee, it sure SEEMS like you called Stephenson's lengthiness a style.
If he was literally filling pages for the sake of doing so, then the information, characters, and concepts that he builds up and has fun with wouldn't actually be meaningful to the plot or the subject...
Couldn't agree more. Tell me how five pages of parking lot description (including the height of the curbs) in Cryptnomicon was meaningful to the plot. Seems to me you just made my point that he is filling pages just to fill pages.
Incidentally, he writes out his manuscripts by hand.
Ok, maybe an intern doesn't transcribe it, but I still bet he uses a voice recorder to get all that excruciating detail on curb height that is apparently so necessary to the plot (at least to people who confuse words with plot).
Ii>Currently we only think of 4 digit years, but the guy thinks out the box and has foreseen that one day, sooner or later, probably in a few millenniums, we will have 5 digit years, and that then just like we already put a bunch of zeros for years before the year 1000 we will one day put zeros for years before the year 10000!
No, it's just arrogant, not visionary, and what's more it's fourth-grader "out-of-the-box" thinking. Our current calendar is less than 2000 years old and is based on a date of religious significance. It is culturally arrogant to think that there will not be some other ascendant religion or religious date, or that our political order will not be superceded by some super-dictator with a penchant for re-doing the date thing.
Remember, no one has ever thought THEIR god was going to go out of style.
Length is not a style.
I'll tell you what is going on, and it isn't literature. Stephenson's books cost a lot to buy simply because they are huge. They are huge because they have fill, fill, and more fill. They have fill, fill, and more fill because they give the publisher and Stephenson more profit per volume sold.
Stephenson's books are the equivalent of buying books by the yard.
I would bet money that 50% of any Stephenson book is typed in by some intern transcribing from the voice recorder Neal had on his latest trip to the mall.
You are exactly right - words, words, words. Pages-long descriptions of mundane objects like door-frames, parking lots and watches. He does have good story ideas, but he isn't a good enough writer to turn them into anything readable.
No, this Stephenson detractor thinks he is a lousy writer. His main technique to fill pages with words is to walk around in everyday places with a voice recorder describing everything in painful, stupefying detail, which he then transcribes verbatim into page after page of useless stupefying fill in his books.
In the only book of his I tried to read, after FIVE PAGES of description of a parking lot that had absolutely nothing to do with the storyline I promised myself if he stooped to describing the height of the curbs I would throw the book away and never read another word by this hack. Guess what?
I don't think it would take much more energy to get supplies to an ISS orbiting the moon. The supply ships are automated and they could take months to get to the moon as long as they arrived regularly. 99% of the energy is just getting to orbit - it wouldn't take much more to shove it toward the moon. Add to this that the supply ships themselves could be used as raw material for a lunar base and it begins to make more sense.
The biggest problem I see is that the ISS crew have literlly had one foot in the door of the emergency escape capsule many times. There have been life support problems, a fire, and one ISS crew member actually crashed a supply rocket into the ISS. If they were at the moon there is no quick trip home. There would almost have to be two ISS's at the moon - one spare that could support life for months. Still, the solutions are fairly simple engineering problems not even requiring new technology.
It would not make much sense to place it there if the ISS were all there was at the moon, but if human visitation is going to increase in the next two decades (for a Mars mission or whatever) it makes a lot of sense to put it there and would not require (terribly) larger expense.
Just becaue you need something doesn't mean it's safe. Your body also needs selenium in trace amounts but that does not mean its safe to eat selenium.
You are making the common mistake of confusing "safe" with "acceptable risk".
Let me put it this way: just because you may have to crawl along a narrow ledge to get food and water to survive does not mean the ledge is safe. In the same way, no ionizing radiation is safe.
Radiation is extremly safe and it does cure many disease that have no alternative treatment. We are bathed in radiation at every second of every day with no ill effects but just like oxygen and water, in excess it will kill you very quickly. Just because it COULD kill you doesn't mean it is dangerous.
Actually this is untrue. No amount of ionizing raditaion is "safe". This isn't merely my opinion, the scientific and medical communities recognizes this. It ALL causes damage to living organisms. Even sunlight causes genetic damage but DNA has repair mechanisms that have evolved to deal with it, but those mechanisms cannot repair all random mutations caused by radiation. Since even one stray ionozing particle that hits exactly the right spot in a single cell can cause cancer you are basically playing Russian Roulette whenever you expose yourself to any unnecessary radiation. Sure, there are levels of radiation where the risk is deemed acceptable (i.e. cancer treatment, x-rays, trans-continental flights), but low risk does not equal safe.
Well no, the angle doesn't change the amount of energy hitting the panel.
Not true. One square foot of light hitting a surface perpendicularly imparts its energy to one square foot of surface. If you increase the angle of incidence the square foot of light spreads its energy out over a larger area and the original square foot of surface area now receives much less energy. It's the reason we have seasons.
You had a very long post, but after that first sentence I didn't bother to read the rest of it - I guess first impressions ARE important.
Even in an inner city, assuming you have to pay for parking at one end and work pays at the other, a car won't cost more than 250 a month in maintenance, parking, and fuel. And that may be overestimating- it really depends on fuel costs, I get to and from on 1 gallon/day and own my spot, so the difference is about 50 bucks.
I have to laugh that you think you are overestimating the cost of car ownership in a city at $250/month. You are way underestimating it. When I lived in Manhattan I paid $300/month just to PARK my car. When I realized I had not driven it in three months I sold it. The reason I had not driven it was that it was so much easier and more convenient to use subways and taxis.
Of course you also left out the actual cost of the car in addition to license, taxes, fuel, parking tickets, maintenance, parking and other costs. Incuding payments, I was easily throwing $800/month away on a car I never drove.
I live in the burbs now and own a car, but after living without one for ten years in NYC, I hate having it. It is a huge money pit and does in no way make up for the "freedom" it gives you. In fact, it's like an anchor. I'm traveling to NY from NC later this month and guess what - I'm leaving the damned car in the driveway and taking the train to Penn Station. It's cheaper AND more convenient. Just imagine what it would be like if we had really good public transportation.
And BTW, in ten years of subway riding in NYC, I never had to sit next to a stinky dirty person. You watch too much television.
It doesn't always work that way. In New York I left my Amex card at a Radio Shack and $1,200 of charges showed up within a couple of days at the mid-town Bloomingdales and Diesel stores. The NYPD investigated, interviewed the staff at the Radio Shack store (I knew I had left it there), reviewed the security cameras during the times the card was illegaly used and recognized both a Radio Shack employee and her manager using my card. Arrested them both. The moral of the story is that if you can provide enough information to really identify the thieves the police will act.