At first I thought, whoa, the google phone company, then I broke down and RTFA....You still need a "plan" of some sort from a carrier unless you are using this google phone at some free leeched wifi spot or at home on your network. If you are at home..no need for a special phone, just use your headset and the software like you are now.
If this takes off and people drop voice and go to data only plans, the carriers will just restrict the heck out of them, maybe even dropping the caps from five gigs to one gig, then a hundred bucks a gig after that, whatever they say, or stop offering data only plans, etc. In other words, they aren't going to get "cut out", you will still be horking over ca$h to attverizonsprint whatever.
I am digging on much better quality phones though..eventually I think the mobile phone will more or less be your computer, and at home you'll just have a wireless connected screen and keyboard and mouse, etc with some NAS action.
They were set up to become an open source Apple if they wanted to be, and expand their offerings outside enterprise/business, just as an addition. Hardware and open solaris. They just needed some electronic gadgets to get consumer awareness going.
"World leaders" are puppets of their various central banksters and traders. I think this is beyond obvious now, not even debatable. Now those guys *want* carbon credits trading, it is a way for them to make huge sums gambling without doing any actual work themselves, and being bankrolled by everyone else who *are* working, (about the same as now, just a new direction and game to play).. They tell the "world leaders" the tradeoff for getting them this new lucrative game is they get a slew more laws to pass to use over the heads of their serfs and subjects.
So, to answer your question "And how are world leaders likely to respond if the temperature drops during the 2010s?"..they will ignore it if this happens, say it is just a temporary condition, etc. Because they want and are getting those credits for the new market, plus they want even more centralized power.
note: the above has nothing to do with any scientific reality of ratio from naturally occurring co2 or "man made", etc, or the climate, I'm not making this a stance one way or the other on the subject, just saying what will happen with the world leaders. Climate change is irrelevant to the two top new things they-"they" being the puppets and their puppet masters- *always* want, more money and more power.
Look at all those cute little innocent poutes they slaughter every year with their poute sticks (oh ya, they claim this is a sport) for their national dish!
These are designed to remove the *concentration* of exhaust gases from fuel burning from crowded urban areas. It isn't really that there are that much less overall emissions, just relocate where the emissions occur (although something can be said for having emissions controls at the generating plant). There's a lot of stop and go traffic, etc, most vehicles today sit at idle or run at some lower less efficient speed in city traffic. Air cars and electric cars shut completely off at "idle" and aren't wasting fuel sitting there in some traffic jam or at the stop light doing nothing as regards moving from point A to B.
That's the primary advantage here for short range urban vehicles as regards the environment. If you primarily do long trips, get a well tuned/ well built modern diesel for best mileage/less fuel burnt.
Nice graphic on this page that shows where the fuel goes with a regular car, idling accounts for almost 1/5th energy wastage today, with extra pollution concentrated then for no real reason.
To the "Turn over to the Chinese all the minerals in Africa" act. They'll take them, and they do not care one bit about which local regime is in charge today. They go out of their way all the time to state they have no desire to interfere in local politics, they just want the business/raw materials.
Oh, by the way, how about they ban petroleum products, fuels and plastics? Or do they want to claim petroleum doesn't come in huge part from regimes where human rights are routinely abused, where murders rapes torture and so on are common?
Thanks for more info about Finland. For some reason I thought hunting and fishing would be more relaxed there.
As to cooking with wood, heck ya, it's great. We just have a woodheater now but I used to own a wood cookstove, had the water tank on the side and everything. I still cook some stews on top of the heater we have now though in the winter sometimes. I have another place to stick a woodstove in, and if I ever get a deal on a cookstove again I'll get one. Brand new though pricey, and used now they go for antique prices. I can remember way back when they were cheap, basically what they were worth as scrap iron. Man I wish I had bought a warehouse full then, some of those older ones go for way over a thousand bucks now.
Oh didn't know that about the cars. ya winter cycling can get cold, I lived about five years in the state of Maine (and some more new england states) and rode a lot in the winter - pretty nippy sometimes! I was in the bicycle business then so I was a fanatic. The lowest I know for a fact (saw it on a bank outsides thermometer) when I rode was -13 F (-25 C), although it gets much colder there than that, I've seen it hit 32 below (-35 C) one night..trees with a lot of sap still in them crack open and near explode at those temps, sounds like gunshots going on all over the woods. Had one, one night go off and crack/bust open right next to where I was sitting (full moon, real pretty out, so went for a walk)..went home, decided it was just too cold out then.
When I was much younger I was pretty nuts..waitaminnit..still am! hahahaha!
The car is interesting but one car for all those people doesn't make any sense. They should have a one apartment/one e-bike instead. Then everyone can ride. I imagine the electricity use would be similar to just one car, and the purchase costs similar as well. Maybe you could bring that up as an alternative? I've seen those things going for less than US $1,000, and just wheel motor swaps for less than that.
Although I must say, as an outdoorsman and farmer, if I lived in Finland I'd want a nice cabin out in the sticks someplace where I could have some cows and good hunting/fishing and wood heat, etc. I consider firewood to be "stored solar". We use it here as our primary and I am going on my third winter now (at this place, I have used it before elsewhere) with zero propane use.
Anyway, a cool project, and yes, I think solar panels on roofs *everywhere* there is some sun is a dandy idea. I wish we had a national goal of reopening a lot of our closed rust belt factories to make solar stuff and windchargers on MASS scale so it got cheaper faster.
I've never used it, but wouldn't it be possible to have a "gimp lite" for more casual users? Like Firefox spun off from Netscape communicator suite? Just the basics, then add on what you want later? Or something like a check box, as we see in a number of other applications, pick one, beginner, intermediate, advanced/all the features.
There is a proper method, requiring 2/3rds of the states, they can call for a constitutional convention then do whatever they want, up to and including a complete dissolution of the existing federal government (and by that I mean firing them top to bottom, that is just one way to do it, closing agencies, pink slips all around, current elected/hired/appointed people all told to go find new jobs..whatever..there are no limits as long as the procedures are held correctly,(outside of they cannot abrogate our "bill of rights", as they are inherently born with inalienable rights), doing it as an amendment. There is no limit or restriction as to what the amendment may say. It might be as simple as the further reaffirmation of state's rights, and an imposition of severely limited federal powers, basically telling them they just went too far and there's no further need to give them time to reform, then a new set of elections. We did this once already in our earliest history, went from a national federation to a constitutional republic.
Or, the could just as easily decide to rework the design and create regional governments with new borders, or keep all the states intact and go further in limiting the federal government's power. Such a proposal then requires a 3/4ths vote of the states. This legal method wasn't used during the civil war.
At the time, and this is still contentious, because there is no provision written to "opt out", the confederacy decided to test it, and well, lost, but that still doesn't mean the union/feds had absolute carved in stone legal authority, they just seized it by force of arms. It has never been really challenged in a peaceful way.
But that still leaves the constitutional convention method.
And you have to remember, our form of government is *completely* different from any other form, as all the powers start with a default individual's rights to be his own sovereign, then the states get some limited rights (and duties), then the feds get a further set of limited "rights"(and duties).
Of course, we have the precedent of exactly what you mentioned, just a limited set of states saying "no" and withdrawing, and offering force of arms if they are prevented from doing so. Although technically still in limbo, the planet earth is rather complete with previous precedents, establishing bona fides as to casus belli, or threats thereof. In other words, victors get to make the rules.
Because this is potentially such a wildcard, I really couldn't say one way or the other how such an event would turn out. I would not be near as sanguine over a federal victory in a second match, if it legitimately got to the point that several states where willing to chance it again. I *think* the Feds would backoff, as it would be a zero sum game to prosecute those sorts of campaigns today given the nature of modern armaments and because of their wide dispersal across the states.
If there was a situation-just a real wild ass scenario-where several states said "fuck off" to the feds, and they retained all their military assets inside their borders, including fighters or missiles perhaps....the feds would backoff. MAD works quite well actually to keep the peace.
And any way it happens..I hope it does. This government is way too far gone into stupid crook ville. Just like those bogus "too big to fail" banks which should have been allowed to fail and drag all those derivative bets with them.
There's an old truthism that still applies "throwing good money after bad". Trying to "fix' the federal government now is political masochism at the very best, it just will not work. There is no practical fix for this level of combined stupidity, greed, incompetence and malfeasance.
People convicted here (varies by state, etc, just generally speaking now) can have all or most of their lost rights, including voting or holding office, restored, after completion of parole and if they petition for them and the appropriate judge or whatever grants them back and so on. There's no one size fits every situation though, some states automatic, others some hoop jumping, some others never allow it. Small writeup on wikipedia about this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression#Ex-Felon_disenfranchisement One thing to always remember about the USA that I think is lost to a lot of people. It is thoeretically set up to be the united States, with that being the default, not the United states. We really do have at least in theory if not in practice 50 independent nations with a lot of different laws, in a federation.
Now, this practice is in hot dispute all the time what with our federal government being on a mad power grab the last few decades, but in theory we have all these different "nations". States and nations were the same way back in term usage.
Me, I would prefer a LOT more "states" rights, as this would give the people here better choice on where they wanted to live, we'd have a lot more differences to help make that decision. The federal government has usurped so many things it really has no legal justification for that we are losing freedoms and rights all the time, IMO. For example, the federal government is only really supposed to regulate interstate commerce, NOT intra-state commerce, but they keep insisting they can just declare any commerce to be interstate, so they seize jurisdiction. It really sucks, too.
This whole scene is now being addressed, at least peacefully so far, by a lot of states re-declaring their sovereignty on what is legally theirs by our Constitution. This is known as the tenth amendment movement and is getting a lot of traction, several states legislatures have issued statements to that effect now, something like around 21 so far or pending.
And technically, if enough states decide to do it, they can assemble completely outside the federal government and just dissolve the whole thing, then go it alone or whatever is decided at that point, a new alliance or alliances. And it just might get to that point if conditions keep worsening in the US. And I hope it does, IMO, the federal government is way too far gone in abuse of power and not being able to run the economy in the black, or stay out of wars, etc, to have any justification for existence at this point, it is unfixable as it stands. Bloat, corruption, "feature creep", it's a big fat mess. They can't even run their own little area -DC- effectively. If they stuck to what is really the role of the federal government it wouldn't be near as bad as it is today, but they don't, and have gone off the deep end into power grabbing.
Yes, exactly what I was talking about, decentralization and energy independence. Do you guys have a website with pictures and tech specs and so on for what you have? And what electric vehicle are you sharing? And is the building built to passive house or superinsulation standards?
Ya, read about that, sort of a giant pie in the sky boondoggle. The people there, Africa in general, should get the power anyway.
That and other reasons are why I am way more in favor of individuals (and small co-ops) doing it themselves and owning the means of production and routing around obscene middle man costs and the vagaries of geopolitical reality that can impact your delivery. Europe has already gone through that with Russian natgas, and man boy howdy do I remember the OPEC embargo and the tanker war shortages. Then just last year we had the fast rise of gasoline and diesel from those dogpuke investment banker wallstreet speculators, who nailed both food commodities and energy *at the same time*.
If you make your own power onsite..electricity and transportation fuel, whether that is electricity as well or some liquid biofuels (or maybe hydrogen in the future from water) you won't be boycotting yourself or charging yourself an extra fat skim.
DE-centralization and the open-sourcing of energy producing tech should be the next great step for people. The collective "we", all the people on the planet, been held in perpetual economic bondage and gross physical peril by centralized and politicized energy supply and delivery. The cost in money is too great, the cost in lives and misery and health is much much worse. the cost of future conflicts going really bad becvause of nuke tech is..insane, just crazy.
There are no "solar proliferation" issues really, not like nukes, and as we see, there is no safe way to have nuke power without having weapons potential, so it will always be contentious. And we already know people fight over oil, heck, japan attacked the US in ww2 over access to oil, we finally ended the war with nukes. Just that should have been enough to tell humanity we had really screwed up and we should have been looking for alternatives right back then, not still floundering around like we are today "thinking" about it.
If we run superinsulation at our home and business energy needs one way, then run onsite made power at it from the other direction..eventually those two things cross, poof, energy independence, a *sweet thing indeed*.
And the really cool part is, it IS possible today, with no new tech having to be invented or produced, so those who want to..can already. Yes, it is still "early adopter" phase, but it got good enough awhile back, it is doable today.
There are numerous ways to make PV cells, including the much cheaper dye based, and they keep coming up with new ones all the time, and we just won't run out* of materials to make solar thermal collectors, which among other uses (direct hot water use, direct hot air use, direct pure fresh water production, cooking, food drying and storage, etc) can be used in concentrator arrays to drive steam plants, or anything else you might need a source of "wicked freekin hot" for.
*if we did run out of normal materials, that means we have run out of most everything then, you won't be building nuthin', so the point would be moot.
You can make solar thermal from such a wide variety of stuff it ain't funny. Example, here's a simple do it in one weekend project, just from junk our landfills are full of or you can go scrounge someplace, an old refrigerator, a sheet of glass (like some used store glass), an old hot water tank and some plumbing fixtures will make you a hot water heater.
I like solar the most out of all the energy choices we have now (generally speaking) because it scales so well, and can be configured to do so many things, from DIY made out of scraps like I outlined above, all the way to large scale commercial uses. It is our only practical fusion power, and will probably *be* our only practical fusion power for a LONG time.(and biofuels are solar fusion power as well so I include them) It is also the one that lends itself best to decentralization of energy production and allows the energy consumer to actually have a power source paid off, and not be stuck renting the infrastructure and then paying for the fuel and their never ending need for profit from bigelectrico or bigliquidfuelsco forever and ever and ever.
The other reason I like it so well..and this is really important...no stupid hideous wars will be fought over solar tech. Which is something I just *wish* the all pro nuke and pro oil crowd would acknowledge is a really major "cost" of their pet methods today.
Uranium tech and petroleum tech..wars in the past, wars today and threats of even larger and nastier wars in the future over access to supplies and who gets someone else's "permission" to use this tech or access supplies/raw materials.
The sooner we get away from those two war creating sources (and coal) the better, IMO, for the safety and security of the human species (and all the other species).
I'll add his to your list as well, because I have to do a variety of off road travel all the time for work. Tracks would have been better option. When wheeled stuff gets stuck around here (and it happens a few times a year), it's the tracked vehicles that get them out. The rovers are designed for real slow, careful and deliberate progress, so I wouldn't worry about them throwing a track either.
Ya, I know, tracks are heavier and so on. Doesn't matter, the whole point of these Martian buggies, hence their name, is to be "rovers" not "stuck in place now almost useless wheeled" vehicles. If you want the thing to move over random terrain, there is a method of choice that works. Wheels are for going fast and being cheap, not for maximum traction. You look at the most expensive largest tractors now..tracked because they get you plus whatever you got hooked up from point A to B, regardless of terrain, short of massive 10 foot deep mud, etc or like really exotic rock crawlers with long travel suspension, which the rovers were never designed to do anyway, just drive around big rocks.
I bet the full ramifications aren't public yet (and never will be, on purpose).
I am thinking there was a lot of money laundering going on with all those "investors". Some were legit and stupid, thinking their boy had the magic touch and could consistently beat the market for huge percentages, but it couldn't have been all of them. There are probably cons mixed with cons mixed with even further cons and crimes inside that story and it goes way beyond Madoff. Regulators were aware of him, lower level ones were told to sit down and shutup and we are supposed to swallow their fairy tale bilge "they couldn't find anything" for years and years, despite numerous attempts. I just slap ain't believing that. I don't believe there was an "intelligence failure" with iraq and WMD, some other events as well, including madoff's currency transfer and evaporation service.
The old adage of "follow the money" still works, in his case, you have to start with him in the *middle* and look and follow BOTH ways, not just use him for a starting point and look upstream only. That's what they WANT you to think, but I don't believe their official story that the crimes all started exactly with him, I'm just too naturally skeptical now from watching government and big business over the years. My default is "they are always corrupt until proven otherwise" on any big money or big power subject. The *best* you will ever get out of them publicly is a rough surface level/convenient facade view of reality. I just do not believe in the "few bad apples" in the barrel excuse they always use. It's a default rotten apple barrel, with a few good apples who get shafted by their corrupt superiors.
And because those are the market cops who allowed this to go on and on and on and on, I have to therefore assume there was (and still remains) massive crossover corruption at the highest levels.
And that's it, this. People in the future are going to want their cellphone to be a major part of the computing experience, and when they get home, toss the thing on the desk and it just reopens on the monitor there. The focus should be on making that transition really smooth and consistent.
Right now it is backwards, try to force a desktop OS on the phone or synch it, etc, nuts. The phone os will be more important, the phone hardware will be powerful enough to do most tasks, and the monitor and keyboard on the desk will just be an extension of that primarily, and where your big storage lives. It will *have* to focus on being functional on the phone, then be able to scale up smoothly to a larger screen, and fast.
The next generation practical GUI/desktop therefore should start focusing on that next big step. Whomever gets their first with functionality and smooth transitions and synching wins. Android might be it, but one of the phone OSes will be it for sure, for most people, it won't be gnome or KDE at this point.
Between pirating and DRMed adware delivery. How about these digital content guys try to sell their stuff at some low price that reflects the reality that making digital copies is incredibly cheap, that we have had bona fide tech advances that make this possible, rather than sticking to now ancient history "per unit" pricing models? Instead of a buck for a song, how about a buck for a download movie and five cents for a song? Something like that. Figure out what bandwith costs them, double that, and offer their stuff legitimately at that price.
People really started pirating about the same time it became apparent to just about everyone that any legitimate way to get content was blatant price gouging. People looked at plastic disks and went "hey, how come I can make a copy with my home equipment for 25 cents, yet these big places with even better equipment, who can do it cheaper at wholesale rates, want 25 bucks for a copy"? And when it comes to pure downloads, it was worse than that.
What these big content guys kept trying was "digital prohibition", if I can use this analogy, just like the government tried with booze and failed at, and that is just never going to work. The black market moonshiner rates and "home brewed" and "bath tub gin" methods just routed around obvious market inefficiencies and stupid laws.
The ad method won't work for them in the long run, people will figure out how to skip the ads, or just ignore them. Just offer the product way cheap with at least some profit in there (that's why I like a clean "double the bandwith costs and no more" method, easy to figure out and still a cheap price), and try volume sales instead. There are potentially six BILLION customers out there who ARE willing to buy things if the price is right and not blatant price gouging.
Speculation had a major impact on the last fast oil price rise last year. Your points on energy in to get energy out are correct of course, but you need to research on the other topics of the economic costs.
As to published figures, they are *highly* suspect, from anyplace, the saudis for example always seem to have near the same amount in alleged reserves... for the last few decades. And shell got busted over estimating their reserves in order to keep their stock market valuation high.
Spend a few evenings perusing a lot of the back posts at some place like the oildrum, plenty of good info out there on this subject. The consensus is more "we don't really know" about reserves because all the majors lie about it for various reasons, and that is also the point of the article and the leak.
In addition, now we will be contending with the scam/skim carbon market, as various governments will start insisting on additional stealth taxes on carbon emissions to further enrich the too big to fail boys, etc,(the real reason for cap and trade) so we really don't know yet what the costs will be in the future, other than "much higher than now".
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At first I thought, whoa, the google phone company, then I broke down and RTFA....You still need a "plan" of some sort from a carrier unless you are using this google phone at some free leeched wifi spot or at home on your network. If you are at home..no need for a special phone, just use your headset and the software like you are now.
If this takes off and people drop voice and go to data only plans, the carriers will just restrict the heck out of them, maybe even dropping the caps from five gigs to one gig, then a hundred bucks a gig after that, whatever they say, or stop offering data only plans, etc. In other words, they aren't going to get "cut out", you will still be horking over ca$h to attverizonsprint whatever.
I am digging on much better quality phones though..eventually I think the mobile phone will more or less be your computer, and at home you'll just have a wireless connected screen and keyboard and mouse, etc with some NAS action.
They were set up to become an open source Apple if they wanted to be, and expand their offerings outside enterprise/business, just as an addition. Hardware and open solaris. They just needed some electronic gadgets to get consumer awareness going.
..there was back orifice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_orifice
"World leaders" are puppets of their various central banksters and traders. I think this is beyond obvious now, not even debatable. Now those guys *want* carbon credits trading, it is a way for them to make huge sums gambling without doing any actual work themselves, and being bankrolled by everyone else who *are* working, (about the same as now, just a new direction and game to play).. They tell the "world leaders" the tradeoff for getting them this new lucrative game is they get a slew more laws to pass to use over the heads of their serfs and subjects.
So, to answer your question "And how are world leaders likely to respond if the temperature drops during the 2010s?"..they will ignore it if this happens, say it is just a temporary condition, etc. Because they want and are getting those credits for the new market, plus they want even more centralized power.
note: the above has nothing to do with any scientific reality of ratio from naturally occurring co2 or "man made", etc, or the climate, I'm not making this a stance one way or the other on the subject, just saying what will happen with the world leaders. Climate change is irrelevant to the two top new things they-"they" being the puppets and their puppet masters- *always* want, more money and more power.
Look at all those cute little innocent poutes they slaughter every year with their poute sticks (oh ya, they claim this is a sport) for their national dish!
These are designed to remove the *concentration* of exhaust gases from fuel burning from crowded urban areas. It isn't really that there are that much less overall emissions, just relocate where the emissions occur (although something can be said for having emissions controls at the generating plant). There's a lot of stop and go traffic, etc, most vehicles today sit at idle or run at some lower less efficient speed in city traffic. Air cars and electric cars shut completely off at "idle" and aren't wasting fuel sitting there in some traffic jam or at the stop light doing nothing as regards moving from point A to B.
That's the primary advantage here for short range urban vehicles as regards the environment. If you primarily do long trips, get a well tuned/ well built modern diesel for best mileage/less fuel burnt.
Nice graphic on this page that shows where the fuel goes with a regular car, idling accounts for almost 1/5th energy wastage today, with extra pollution concentrated then for no real reason.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/atv.shtml
To the "Turn over to the Chinese all the minerals in Africa" act. They'll take them, and they do not care one bit about which local regime is in charge today. They go out of their way all the time to state they have no desire to interfere in local politics, they just want the business/raw materials.
Oh, by the way, how about they ban petroleum products, fuels and plastics? Or do they want to claim petroleum doesn't come in huge part from regimes where human rights are routinely abused, where murders rapes torture and so on are common?
so, pick *one* model to recommend, based on least amount of repairs noticed/most reliable, etc
Thanks for more info about Finland. For some reason I thought hunting and fishing would be more relaxed there.
As to cooking with wood, heck ya, it's great. We just have a woodheater now but I used to own a wood cookstove, had the water tank on the side and everything. I still cook some stews on top of the heater we have now though in the winter sometimes. I have another place to stick a woodstove in, and if I ever get a deal on a cookstove again I'll get one. Brand new though pricey, and used now they go for antique prices. I can remember way back when they were cheap, basically what they were worth as scrap iron. Man I wish I had bought a warehouse full then, some of those older ones go for way over a thousand bucks now.
Oh didn't know that about the cars.
ya winter cycling can get cold, I lived about five years in the state of Maine (and some more new england states) and rode a lot in the winter - pretty nippy sometimes! I was in the bicycle business then so I was a fanatic. The lowest I know for a fact (saw it on a bank outsides thermometer) when I rode was -13 F (-25 C), although it gets much colder there than that, I've seen it hit 32 below (-35 C) one night..trees with a lot of sap still in them crack open and near explode at those temps, sounds like gunshots going on all over the woods. Had one, one night go off and crack/bust open right next to where I was sitting (full moon, real pretty out, so went for a walk)..went home, decided it was just too cold out then.
When I was much younger I was pretty nuts..waitaminnit..still am! hahahaha!
The car is interesting but one car for all those people doesn't make any sense. They should have a one apartment/one e-bike instead. Then everyone can ride. I imagine the electricity use would be similar to just one car, and the purchase costs similar as well. Maybe you could bring that up as an alternative? I've seen those things going for less than US $1,000, and just wheel motor swaps for less than that.
Although I must say, as an outdoorsman and farmer, if I lived in Finland I'd want a nice cabin out in the sticks someplace where I could have some cows and good hunting/fishing and wood heat, etc. I consider firewood to be "stored solar". We use it here as our primary and I am going on my third winter now (at this place, I have used it before elsewhere) with zero propane use.
Anyway, a cool project, and yes, I think solar panels on roofs *everywhere* there is some sun is a dandy idea. I wish we had a national goal of reopening a lot of our closed rust belt factories to make solar stuff and windchargers on MASS scale so it got cheaper faster.
I've never used it, but wouldn't it be possible to have a "gimp lite" for more casual users? Like Firefox spun off from Netscape communicator suite? Just the basics, then add on what you want later? Or something like a check box, as we see in a number of other applications, pick one, beginner, intermediate, advanced/all the features.
There is a proper method, requiring 2/3rds of the states, they can call for a constitutional convention then do whatever they want, up to and including a complete dissolution of the existing federal government (and by that I mean firing them top to bottom, that is just one way to do it, closing agencies, pink slips all around, current elected/hired/appointed people all told to go find new jobs..whatever..there are no limits as long as the procedures are held correctly,(outside of they cannot abrogate our "bill of rights", as they are inherently born with inalienable rights), doing it as an amendment. There is no limit or restriction as to what the amendment may say. It might be as simple as the further reaffirmation of state's rights, and an imposition of severely limited federal powers, basically telling them they just went too far and there's no further need to give them time to reform, then a new set of elections. We did this once already in our earliest history, went from a national federation to a constitutional republic.
Or, the could just as easily decide to rework the design and create regional governments with new borders, or keep all the states intact and go further in limiting the federal government's power. Such a proposal then requires a 3/4ths vote of the states. This legal method wasn't used during the civil war.
At the time, and this is still contentious, because there is no provision written to "opt out", the confederacy decided to test it, and well, lost, but that still doesn't mean the union/feds had absolute carved in stone legal authority, they just seized it by force of arms. It has never been really challenged in a peaceful way.
But that still leaves the constitutional convention method.
And you have to remember, our form of government is *completely* different from any other form, as all the powers start with a default individual's rights to be his own sovereign, then the states get some limited rights (and duties), then the feds get a further set of limited "rights"(and duties).
Of course, we have the precedent of exactly what you mentioned, just a limited set of states saying "no" and withdrawing, and offering force of arms if they are prevented from doing so. Although technically still in limbo, the planet earth is rather complete with previous precedents, establishing bona fides as to casus belli, or threats thereof. In other words, victors get to make the rules.
Because this is potentially such a wildcard, I really couldn't say one way or the other how such an event would turn out. I would not be near as sanguine over a federal victory in a second match, if it legitimately got to the point that several states where willing to chance it again. I *think* the Feds would backoff, as it would be a zero sum game to prosecute those sorts of campaigns today given the nature of modern armaments and because of their wide dispersal across the states.
If there was a situation-just a real wild ass scenario-where several states said "fuck off" to the feds, and they retained all their military assets inside their borders, including fighters or missiles perhaps....the feds would backoff. MAD works quite well actually to keep the peace.
And any way it happens..I hope it does. This government is way too far gone into stupid crook ville. Just like those bogus "too big to fail" banks which should have been allowed to fail and drag all those derivative bets with them.
There's an old truthism that still applies "throwing good money after bad". Trying to "fix' the federal government now is political masochism at the very best, it just will not work. There is no practical fix for this level of combined stupidity, greed, incompetence and malfeasance.
People convicted here (varies by state, etc, just generally speaking now) can have all or most of their lost rights, including voting or holding office, restored, after completion of parole and if they petition for them and the appropriate judge or whatever grants them back and so on. There's no one size fits every situation though, some states automatic, others some hoop jumping, some others never allow it. Small writeup on wikipedia about this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression#Ex-Felon_disenfranchisement
One thing to always remember about the USA that I think is lost to a lot of people. It is thoeretically set up to be the united States, with that being the default, not the United states. We really do have at least in theory if not in practice 50 independent nations with a lot of different laws, in a federation.
Now, this practice is in hot dispute all the time what with our federal government being on a mad power grab the last few decades, but in theory we have all these different "nations". States and nations were the same way back in term usage.
Me, I would prefer a LOT more "states" rights, as this would give the people here better choice on where they wanted to live, we'd have a lot more differences to help make that decision. The federal government has usurped so many things it really has no legal justification for that we are losing freedoms and rights all the time, IMO. For example, the federal government is only really supposed to regulate interstate commerce, NOT intra-state commerce, but they keep insisting they can just declare any commerce to be interstate, so they seize jurisdiction. It really sucks, too.
This whole scene is now being addressed, at least peacefully so far, by a lot of states re-declaring their sovereignty on what is legally theirs by our Constitution. This is known as the tenth amendment movement and is getting a lot of traction, several states legislatures have issued statements to that effect now, something like around 21 so far or pending.
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/the-10th-amendment-movement/
And technically, if enough states decide to do it, they can assemble completely outside the federal government and just dissolve the whole thing, then go it alone or whatever is decided at that point, a new alliance or alliances. And it just might get to that point if conditions keep worsening in the US. And I hope it does, IMO, the federal government is way too far gone in abuse of power and not being able to run the economy in the black, or stay out of wars, etc, to have any justification for existence at this point, it is unfixable as it stands. Bloat, corruption, "feature creep", it's a big fat mess. They can't even run their own little area -DC- effectively. If they stuck to what is really the role of the federal government it wouldn't be near as bad as it is today, but they don't, and have gone off the deep end into power grabbing.
Yes, exactly what I was talking about, decentralization and energy independence. Do you guys have a website with pictures and tech specs and so on for what you have? And what electric vehicle are you sharing? And is the building built to passive house or superinsulation standards?
The testers didn't like opera mini, but on non smart phones it rocks, internet browsing becomes mostly doable.
Ya, read about that, sort of a giant pie in the sky boondoggle. The people there, Africa in general, should get the power anyway.
That and other reasons are why I am way more in favor of individuals (and small co-ops) doing it themselves and owning the means of production and routing around obscene middle man costs and the vagaries of geopolitical reality that can impact your delivery. Europe has already gone through that with Russian natgas, and man boy howdy do I remember the OPEC embargo and the tanker war shortages. Then just last year we had the fast rise of gasoline and diesel from those dogpuke investment banker wallstreet speculators, who nailed both food commodities and energy *at the same time*.
If you make your own power onsite..electricity and transportation fuel, whether that is electricity as well or some liquid biofuels (or maybe hydrogen in the future from water) you won't be boycotting yourself or charging yourself an extra fat skim.
DE-centralization and the open-sourcing of energy producing tech should be the next great step for people. The collective "we", all the people on the planet, been held in perpetual economic bondage and gross physical peril by centralized and politicized energy supply and delivery. The cost in money is too great, the cost in lives and misery and health is much much worse. the cost of future conflicts going really bad becvause of nuke tech is..insane, just crazy.
There are no "solar proliferation" issues really, not like nukes, and as we see, there is no safe way to have nuke power without having weapons potential, so it will always be contentious. And we already know people fight over oil, heck, japan attacked the US in ww2 over access to oil, we finally ended the war with nukes. Just that should have been enough to tell humanity we had really screwed up and we should have been looking for alternatives right back then, not still floundering around like we are today "thinking" about it.
If we run superinsulation at our home and business energy needs one way, then run onsite made power at it from the other direction..eventually those two things cross, poof, energy independence, a *sweet thing indeed*.
And the really cool part is, it IS possible today, with no new tech having to be invented or produced, so those who want to..can already. Yes, it is still "early adopter" phase, but it got good enough awhile back, it is doable today.
There are numerous ways to make PV cells, including the much cheaper dye based, and they keep coming up with new ones all the time, and we just won't run out* of materials to make solar thermal collectors, which among other uses (direct hot water use, direct hot air use, direct pure fresh water production, cooking, food drying and storage, etc) can be used in concentrator arrays to drive steam plants, or anything else you might need a source of "wicked freekin hot" for.
*if we did run out of normal materials, that means we have run out of most everything then, you won't be building nuthin', so the point would be moot.
You can make solar thermal from such a wide variety of stuff it ain't funny. Example, here's a simple do it in one weekend project, just from junk our landfills are full of or you can go scrounge someplace, an old refrigerator, a sheet of glass (like some used store glass), an old hot water tank and some plumbing fixtures will make you a hot water heater.
I like solar the most out of all the energy choices we have now (generally speaking) because it scales so well, and can be configured to do so many things, from DIY made out of scraps like I outlined above, all the way to large scale commercial uses. It is our only practical fusion power, and will probably *be* our only practical fusion power for a LONG time.(and biofuels are solar fusion power as well so I include them) It is also the one that lends itself best to decentralization of energy production and allows the energy consumer to actually have a power source paid off, and not be stuck renting the infrastructure and then paying for the fuel and their never ending need for profit from bigelectrico or bigliquidfuelsco forever and ever and ever.
The other reason I like it so well..and this is really important...no stupid hideous wars will be fought over solar tech. Which is something I just *wish* the all pro nuke and pro oil crowd would acknowledge is a really major "cost" of their pet methods today.
Uranium tech and petroleum tech..wars in the past, wars today and threats of even larger and nastier wars in the future over access to supplies and who gets someone else's "permission" to use this tech or access supplies/raw materials.
The sooner we get away from those two war creating sources (and coal) the better, IMO, for the safety and security of the human species (and all the other species).
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I'll add his to your list as well, because I have to do a variety of off road travel all the time for work. Tracks would have been better option. When wheeled stuff gets stuck around here (and it happens a few times a year), it's the tracked vehicles that get them out. The rovers are designed for real slow, careful and deliberate progress, so I wouldn't worry about them throwing a track either.
Ya, I know, tracks are heavier and so on. Doesn't matter, the whole point of these Martian buggies, hence their name, is to be "rovers" not "stuck in place now almost useless wheeled" vehicles. If you want the thing to move over random terrain, there is a method of choice that works. Wheels are for going fast and being cheap, not for maximum traction. You look at the most expensive largest tractors now..tracked because they get you plus whatever you got hooked up from point A to B, regardless of terrain, short of massive 10 foot deep mud, etc or like really exotic rock crawlers with long travel suspension, which the rovers were never designed to do anyway, just drive around big rocks.
I bet the full ramifications aren't public yet (and never will be, on purpose).
I am thinking there was a lot of money laundering going on with all those "investors". Some were legit and stupid, thinking their boy had the magic touch and could consistently beat the market for huge percentages, but it couldn't have been all of them. There are probably cons mixed with cons mixed with even further cons and crimes inside that story and it goes way beyond Madoff. Regulators were aware of him, lower level ones were told to sit down and shutup and we are supposed to swallow their fairy tale bilge "they couldn't find anything" for years and years, despite numerous attempts. I just slap ain't believing that. I don't believe there was an "intelligence failure" with iraq and WMD, some other events as well, including madoff's currency transfer and evaporation service.
The old adage of "follow the money" still works, in his case, you have to start with him in the *middle* and look and follow BOTH ways, not just use him for a starting point and look upstream only. That's what they WANT you to think, but I don't believe their official story that the crimes all started exactly with him, I'm just too naturally skeptical now from watching government and big business over the years. My default is "they are always corrupt until proven otherwise" on any big money or big power subject. The *best* you will ever get out of them publicly is a rough surface level/convenient facade view of reality. I just do not believe in the "few bad apples" in the barrel excuse they always use. It's a default rotten apple barrel, with a few good apples who get shafted by their corrupt superiors.
And because those are the market cops who allowed this to go on and on and on and on, I have to therefore assume there was (and still remains) massive crossover corruption at the highest levels.
And that's it, this. People in the future are going to want their cellphone to be a major part of the computing experience, and when they get home, toss the thing on the desk and it just reopens on the monitor there. The focus should be on making that transition really smooth and consistent.
Right now it is backwards, try to force a desktop OS on the phone or synch it, etc, nuts. The phone os will be more important, the phone hardware will be powerful enough to do most tasks, and the monitor and keyboard on the desk will just be an extension of that primarily, and where your big storage lives. It will *have* to focus on being functional on the phone, then be able to scale up smoothly to a larger screen, and fast.
The next generation practical GUI/desktop therefore should start focusing on that next big step. Whomever gets their first with functionality and smooth transitions and synching wins. Android might be it, but one of the phone OSes will be it for sure, for most people, it won't be gnome or KDE at this point.
Between pirating and DRMed adware delivery. How about these digital content guys try to sell their stuff at some low price that reflects the reality that making digital copies is incredibly cheap, that we have had bona fide tech advances that make this possible, rather than sticking to now ancient history "per unit" pricing models? Instead of a buck for a song, how about a buck for a download movie and five cents for a song? Something like that. Figure out what bandwith costs them, double that, and offer their stuff legitimately at that price.
People really started pirating about the same time it became apparent to just about everyone that any legitimate way to get content was blatant price gouging. People looked at plastic disks and went "hey, how come I can make a copy with my home equipment for 25 cents, yet these big places with even better equipment, who can do it cheaper at wholesale rates, want 25 bucks for a copy"? And when it comes to pure downloads, it was worse than that.
What these big content guys kept trying was "digital prohibition", if I can use this analogy, just like the government tried with booze and failed at, and that is just never going to work. The black market moonshiner rates and "home brewed" and "bath tub gin" methods just routed around obvious market inefficiencies and stupid laws.
The ad method won't work for them in the long run, people will figure out how to skip the ads, or just ignore them. Just offer the product way cheap with at least some profit in there (that's why I like a clean "double the bandwith costs and no more" method, easy to figure out and still a cheap price), and try volume sales instead. There are potentially six BILLION customers out there who ARE willing to buy things if the price is right and not blatant price gouging.
That makes sense as well, thanks for your reply.
Speculation had a major impact on the last fast oil price rise last year. Your points on energy in to get energy out are correct of course, but you need to research on the other topics of the economic costs.
As to published figures, they are *highly* suspect, from anyplace, the saudis for example always seem to have near the same amount in alleged reserves... for the last few decades. And shell got busted over estimating their reserves in order to keep their stock market valuation high.
Spend a few evenings perusing a lot of the back posts at some place like the oildrum, plenty of good info out there on this subject. The consensus is more "we don't really know" about reserves because all the majors lie about it for various reasons, and that is also the point of the article and the leak.
In addition, now we will be contending with the scam/skim carbon market, as various governments will start insisting on additional stealth taxes on carbon emissions to further enrich the too big to fail boys, etc,(the real reason for cap and trade) so we really don't know yet what the costs will be in the future, other than "much higher than now".