...perhaps the Yellowstone Caldera is the perfect place to bleed off excess heat energy. As *much as possible* in fact.... just a thought.....
I'm with you on the solar. (beyond spirit, I own some myself) Also geothermal on the small scale, ground loop heat pumps should be about mandatory in most areas for new home construction, or encouraged with full tax credits I should say.
The only evidence I have of background checks is what I have a read and from a lady I used to date told me. she is a Phd mathematician, was a professor at a local university in Atlanta and got a job at JPL, full background checks according to what she told me.
If the ESA doesn't require full and extensive background checks I would be surprised.
If you want to help weed out assumptions from data, provide some. I am *guessing* ESA requires extensive checks, you asserted because they weren't american or some such like that that they didn't, and this is the whole point of the thread, background checks. And we don't know the level of covert checks at all, neither do the scientists involved unless someone else blabs.
I still stand by my overall statement, your original reply to me was just bashing & flaming, no data of note. If you want to provide some, go for it. Personally my thoughts on it they were doing a similar level of checks covertly, and added some overtly just to rattle cages, and once it went overt..we got what was in the article. And that is *pure* speculation on my part, I am thinking they wanted to see who would spook or jump, then use that to see "why?". Whether that is useful and practical or not is immaterial at this point, it has happened. the general speculation then was that american scientists would abandon ship and go work for some country agency whatever elsewhere, where allegedly there wouldn't be these sorts of checks. I speculated that was about as an absurd assmption as possible, still waiting for some proof that no deep level checks are made on scientists at -your country of choice there. AFAIK, all places who hire high tech employees do good background checks, government, academia, private employer. If you know of any that don't, post their names here, perhaps these annoyed jpl scientists can go there and apply. I do not know of any.
Now that doesn't let the administration off the hook for being generally obnoxious asses and mostly bumbling boobs, because they obviously are, that point I think is not disputed by anyone, american or otherwise. Even their "true believer" supporters are holding their noses at this point. I live in the heart of "shrub country", I am not hearing much praise for anything they do at this point, that's just evaporated over the past year or so. Not even seeing the supportive-styled bumper stickers any more.
I am fully aware Europe is a not a single nation, although the EU is approaching that type of organized political structure rapidly. Besides that, oh well, you hate Americans, or give a good appearance of that, despite there being every sort of American out there.. I don't hate Europeans for the record and have never bashed them anyplace. I also would be willing to wager that there are similar background checks run on most scientists everywhere. Not exact, but similar, both that the employee is aware of, and probably some they are not. As to analyzing Martian dust and etc, all high tech gear can be used for multiple purposes usually, but that is an irrelevant side issue, and I was generally speaking obviously, there is a lot of "dual use" with tech gear, even to just the plebeian point that it is usually expensive and might be worth something on the black market say. In other words, it is quite common for employers and governments to run background checks on people, for security/intel purposes and for loss prevention and so on. Quite common in fact. I think it would be a rare company or academic institution or government agency that would just hire someone for some high tech position based purely on their verbal assurance they are who they say they are along with the other particulars.
Anyway, to get back to your rant, if you can *prove* that no other nation in Europe doesn't run routine and extensive background checks on high tech scientific researchers,which I was guessing-"believing" they do, go for it, I'll check out your references. Overt and covert. You'll have to prove your bonafides here though, in public, that you have access to such information, for every nation in Europe, so your allusions can be verified. You must be extraordinarily high ranking to have access to such information, but you claim this is so, by refuting my guess, so let's see the proof. The difference is, I was *guessing*, you are stating/claiming because...no idea, your post is rather more or less just an anti American rant, but you seem to be inferring that because you are not an oppressed American, that somehow what I was guessing at just couldn't possibly be true or something. It's rather a..drunk..sounding ramble (sorry, if you were an American I'd call it sounding like a jingoistic dumbass redneck indulging in a little petty flaming, but you not being an american, and obviously quite cultured and refined and genteel and just oozing ultra pure freedom in all directions, you'll have to help this poor person here-me-with the appropriate sort of descriptive phrase (dumbass redneck and etc) translated into the European language of your origin, because I do not know the correct term for you to fit your European continentalality. All for sport and so on.
But.... to each their own. So go ahead, if you would be so kind as to prove your statements, or should I say *allusions by neglect*. If that is too hard..perhaps this from your post "Every single ESA project is automatically by definition an international project."..Well, besides "huh...so what?", foreign nationals are fully involved in a host of US high technology projects, so what does this mean or are you implying ALL the research is completely open in the ESA, anyone can look at it? Or what?? Everything done in the ESA sphere is unclassified and open because it isn't American, or...? Really? And none of the workers go through extensive background checks, because it is by definition an international project? Or what? Perhaps this what makes this just so hard for me to get, because a rambling non responsive rant that says nothing is by definition hard to understand. So, if you would clarify some please. Thanks.
Either way,if you can answer any of those questions or not,to help clear up matters more,feel free, and besides that, have a nice free life! I certainly do my best over here in American oppressed land!
...are going to have less overt/covert background checks for people they hire to work on the highest tech rocketry and satellite stuff?
I'm not defending these obtrusive new background checks, but having a hard time believing other large nations wouldn't have quite similar policies.
Near as I can tell, nearly all high tech R&D is "dual use", or has the potential. And espionage is just as much for economic gain as it is to maintain military advantage, the two are completely interlocked now. War is business and business is war, hot, cold, or otherwise.
Really, I am not blowing smoke here, the national water infrastructure is severely stretched right now, google is your friend there,all over the nation really, along with the bridges and a lot of the normal roads. I could provide a lot more links to prove this point, but just run your own keyword searches there. Estimates for just reppairing what we have now to fix fall betweeen the OMG! and How many zeroes??!! levels. Want just a tiny example of how weird it is getting? Just in the past few months over 90,000 horses have been literally abandoned in the southeast US as people who have them no longer have the grass nor the water to keep them. I am contemplating getting a couple myself, but still not sure if we have adequate needs right now for our small cow herd (I live in north georgia on a big farm, but the drought over all has been bad here, although we did get 1.5 inches of rain this last weekend so that is welcome)(we only harvested 20% of our normal average haycrop this year), going to see how it goes the next month before making a decision. Long range weather is looking bad with la nina, real bad. And look at the mess going on with atlants water supply and water needs further downstream for power plants and to keep some fisheries going in florida. they are goping to run out! they are *mining* water now, it is not being replensihed at anywhere's near the rate it needs to be, and even with emergency restrictions there is a good chance that sucker is going down. There just isn't enough, and we needed a thousand(whatever, bignum there) more huge reservoirs built ten years ago all over the country. And they want billions to build a high speed maglev train to move plutocrats and gamblers around?? And my other point of the dismal state of national broadband still stands as well, we are way down the list on every ranking index I have seen and dropping yearly.
As to getting better cars out there, I agree, totally. They need to drastically increase cafe standards beyond a joke level and shake detroit to its very roots to get them to pay attention, and offer something like eliminating ad valorem and sales tax for plugin hybrids that achieve 60 mpg or better, or pure electrics, and stuff like that. I am also in favor of a national 100% tax credit for installation of active alternative energy solutions for homeowners and small business, to get a lot more points of production out there, and to keep it in place for at least a decade. a manhattan project or moonrace project effort, something of that scale, massive and *now*, right now, pass the damn bill as an emergency measure. If we wait for the economy to collapse further and oil get closer to two hundred a barrel than one hundred like now...well..we just won't be able to do it. The second (or third) worlding of the US will follow.
In other words, we don't need any more dumb fixes, we need smart fixes, cheap fixes, and multi billion wasted dollar magleve trains aren't even a fix, they are just rich peoples toys.
In the 21st century, do we really need something this expensive when we lack a national scale urban and rural modern broadband infrastructure, and our water and sewer and normal highway bridge infrastructure is falling apart? Where is the US now, a notch above Zimbabwe or something with broadband? Should they be considering moving electrons and data for government office workers instead of humans? Let us face reality, this would be used in the northeast corridor, moving office workers/bureaucrats/lobbiests-bribers around primarily. 100 million per mile? And in the article. to haul gamblers to Vegas faster? WTF? This is a national priority that untold billions should be spent on?
Cool tech and all, really, quite impressive, but not seeing any huge need for it, an expensive solution looking for a problem. Let's fix what is broken first across the entire nation before adding in new gee-whizz tech that will only be used for a very limited subset of the population. I mean, look at the economy now with the mortgage meltdown, and know that next year those numbers are set to go up sixfold. Think about it... we need to start conserving cash and be thinking about cheaper ways to do stuff, not more expensive.
As to rails, I like trains, but people need to know they have been going way out of their way the past..years, I forget how many.. ripping out track all over. Miles and miles and miles of it. They could have just maintained the normal track and made better "normal" trains, had them go more places, for a much smaller amount of cash by far. As to travel in general, how about getting motor vehicles that actually get good mileage out there,combined with smarter traffic light systems? Why is it you can get fantastic mileage autos every place in the world *except* the US? It's only lately that we have a very limited selection of conventional hybrid cars on the dealers lots, where are the cleaner diesel hybrid electric plug in cars, and the all electric vehicles? With average commute being 33 miles, conventional and relatively cheap battery tech is "good enough" right now for that, no need for 100 grand lithium ion battery packs and cars only the most wealthy could afford, NiMH and AGM lead acid are perfectly fine for that purpose and loads cheaper, many home builders/gear heads have examples of this that are being driven daily. But what makes the headlines? "Hydrogen economy" cars that cost a million bucks apiece and would require a trillion dollars (some huge number) in infrastructure additions just to fuel them up and require scrapping every single vehicle out there to be replaced with some fuel cell thing that would get contaminated anyway in a short time frame and be undriveable. Nuts. We need cheap and efficient fixes and upgrades, and spread out all over for all the citizens, not this boondoggle stuff that only goes to a very few rich people.
.."Solar panels are bad for then environment because they put out more crap when they're made than they'll ever save by producing "clean" energy during their useful lifetime."..hasn't been true for around 20 years now or so. Manufacturing payback is now around 2 years with lot cleaner fabs and manufacturing facilities, owners payback is around 7 at average US kwh rates, estimated lifetime of most modern PV panels is at 30 years (warranties to this effect) and still have 80% rated output. As to battery tech, heck, jay leno owns a baker electric that is 100 years old, he drives it a lot, and it still has the original alkaline batteries in it (yes, they made them back then). My own personal normal flooded lead acid batteries on my small solar rig are 9 years old now and still work perfectly fine, modern desulphators hooked to the battery bank help keep the plates really clean, and you can buy deep cycle flooded lead acid with very long warranties now, rolls-surrette have ten years for example, and telco batteries are still out there now decades old being used after purchase used from the telcos on any number of peoples home solar rigs.
Now, wind power. Very efficient, people are making money with it *now*, around a 2 year payback, after that, making money.
And both of the above you can own outright as joe homeowner. And you get a fixed upfront price good for decades. Until the local power company can give you a fixed price 20 year contract for power, you have no idea what they will charge you, nuclear or whatever. It might be ten times higher per kwh in 20 years, you just don't know so it is hard to cost compare right now.
The other reason people want electrics or hybrids is because major urban areas are heat and pollution islands "clean engines" or not, it all gets concentrated there and causes a lot of health problems. the more that the energy can be outsourced out of the cities where it can be made cleaner on an efficient big scale the better. They are also quite nice in stop and go and creep urban traffic, much better than any direct drive ICE only vehicle.
I'm just a long standing alternative energy enthusiast, since the 60s actually, and I frequently chime in here on slashdot if the subject comes up. For a short time I worked in the business, but now I just do farming. And I *did* work in the business way back then because I was convinced how effective it was, true believer fanboy in other words. Sort of like FOSS developers who actually get paid for what they do, they know it is a good idea overall, and getting paid for work is nice too. I tell you on the superinsulation deal, it works so well even the folks who get it freak out. Had one lady we did her house, couple days later or so she calls up (this is in the summer), asking if we "broke" her air conditioning, it "wasn't coming on as much as before" by a big margin. I said to her "Is your house still cool enough ma'am?" she goes "well...yes.." "It's working then, you are saving energy and on the electric bill!" I first got hip to it when I just took a job with some guy who was stuck with fuel oil bills higher than his monthly house note. We did the sub-non load bearing wall deal, added a loty more insulation, took out some of the larger single pane windows replaced with smaller triple paned gas filled, did the leaks around doorframes, etc. What a diff, he wound up paying just a small fraction of his old bill. Later on then I got into making solar space heaters, helping with windcharger projects, experimented with biofuels, got into solar PV and so on. I have 5 panels now and recently grabbed a small cheap diesel pickup that I will eventually be running off of some sort of biodiesel, I'm still rebuilding the truck, haven't finished it, mostly a junker when I got it.
And stuff like that. We lived as caretakers before this job on an estate that was almost totally solar PV powered and I maintained that system, it got me even more enthusiastic about it how well it works, how clean the power is, etc.
Tax credits work remarkably well for some things, in essence, instead of your x-dollars going to pay income tax, it goes directly for whatever the credit is marked for. It's beyond a "deduction" it is a direct dollar for dollar tradeoff (could be, usually it is), without filtering it through the government bureaucracy where a lot of it disappears. A lot of states have partial credits right now in fact for like active solar PV systems, etc, because they realize it is in their citizens long term best interest, good for balancing out energy needs, decentralizing power production, good for the environment, etc.
A tax credit? That's just keeping that sum of money and staying out of the tax collection scheme. That isn't them giving you a thing, just you getting to keep it as long as it is directed towards the reason for the credit. We had it before back in the late 70s to early 80s and it worked fairly well as long as it was running.
As to income taxes in general, that's another subject entirely, basically I am opposed to them because the US currently uses a non asset based fiat money system, with the money "injected" at the top of the economic food chain pyramid, to the already extremely wealthy folks. It is loaned with demanded interest into existence, it isn't there sitting in some vault, it is poof created out of thin air. If you want to complain about "free money" look to the huge banks for the corporate welfare angle. Right now we do have taxes, they are used as a carrot and stck on the population for pure social engineering purposes, so as long as that is the status quo, yes, I am in favor of tax credits for alternative energy and insulation upgrades leading to national energy independence.
I've already written an alternative assets-based currency outline manifesto a few places, if you'd like I might attempt to find it later this evening and hit ya with another reply on this side issue.
..there's a decent use for the law system, this might be one of those times. They would vett the ads better once they lost a big class action lawsuit, along with all the bad publicity.
There are two more technologies that are here and now and if implemented on very large scales would do more than a lot of the other alternatives, and those are geothermal and superinsulation techniques. Ground loop geothermal *works*, and works well, as does superinsulation. I've worked on several superinsulation projects and the results are quite simply fantastic. It's not sexy or gee whizz new tech, just using old tech smarter, it doesn't produce any more energy, but dollar for dollar it has everything else out there beat, hands down. You can spend the big bucks producing more power just to waste it, or small to medium bucks and save a bundle..forever, the life of the building. If building codes and mortgage approvals were altered to reflect that, for new construction and for title transfers, we could drop demand every year for a long time.
Besides that I agree with you, the solution is "all of the above as fast as possible" right now. I think the US could do good by making with the 100% tax credits for alternative energy and insulation projects for at least the next decade, and not wait for 150 to 200 buck a barrel oil to think about that. Not partial credits or deductions, 100%, with multi year carry-overs. The increase in practical and useful non burger flipping jobs and industries on one side will offset the tax in one place and replace it in another, so the net would be a wash dollar wise, but we'd all wind up with a ton of "free stuff", good energy and conservation measures, great for the nation, great for your personal wallet, so what's not to like? Energy independence is a good goal. Drop demand the same time you increase and diversify production, eventually you hit that magic sweet spot of independence, from there on out it's gravy. But ya, we can't keep farting around studying it and waiting for the mysterious mr. fusion to arrive, that's just silly, we can go with what we have now just fine, it is plenty good enough. There are millions of roofs out there facing south doing nothing more than rotting shingles. Plenty of backyards could get the ditchwitch action and have the groundloops installed. and etc. Solar thermal air heating and water heating are old tech now, work just fine and are cheap really.
The computers ten years from now will be much better, but they are still good enough now to use them and not wait ten years to get one. Same deal really. The future got here, it is the 21st century, time to start acting like it.
For some examples of the complete self powered homes plus car, look to the latest solar decathlon winners for some ideas.
...to do some more! He is much better at it than I am, so we are in agreement here. I'd thought I'd give it a whack though..why don't you try one, just for fun?
...some funny stuff, man! yada yada "The brakes and handling suck." BWAHAHAHA! Love those market speak translations, you should do them for more cars and more products. soap powder "Gets your whites whiter than white!" translation "We got ahold of some industrial toxic waste free for hauling it off that makes cloth very white and fall apart after three washings-the kickbacks from the cotton lobby are great!"
Yep, done that with fire ants as well. I usually do a fast few shovelfuls out in the middle of the mound, dump in the pot of scalding water, then shovel the dirt back in and stomp it down flat, something to keep the heat in. I have had *marginal* success with that, not perfect, but at least it is a bit of revenge!
..and that's digital. Think about it, code is a combination of engineered schematics morphed with prose, it is text based robotics, text that "does stuff" and can run unattended. One of the main goals of a server is to get it set up so much you never hardly have to touch it, but it will keep chugging along, adapting itself to loads and demands, etc, text based robotic "service". And code can be sold or leased or rented temporarily or given away, same as a tangible. So we have the double precedent, biological entities as temps, and digital entities. We have cars for hire, taxis, buses, rental cars, that are temporary. We have temporary lodging, hotels, motels, RVs that are mobile. Temporary quartermaster services, restaurants and prepared take out food to go.
So..eventually we'll have rentabot! (outside of IRC and the rooshian mafiyeh)
I bet rentabrothelbot comes first, judging by human nature and all...
Sure is a wonderful experience. It's not the same only going out for a short time, you have to be in there for awhile for your brain to really adjust, to stop being civilized human and become just another animal living there, albeit higher on the brain scale. And yes again, what our ancestors did with primitive tech was pretty cool. I tell you something I found though that is *really* far out, you can take it as a believe or not deal. I ran across sign that there were other feral humans out there. Never say anyone, but saw the evidence. I know they were aware of *me* though. Your normal hunters and campers, etc, saw them a lot, although I stayed hidden, these other guys though, as far from me as I was from a lifelong manhattan resident in that environment. I found the basic rule of thumb is the quarter mile barrier, get much past a quarter mile from where you can drive a jeep or atv, you hardly ever see folks.
Your brain just switches after a few seasons, in particular you start unconsciously using your nose a lot more. I remember just this epiphany one day, walking by some bushes, thinking, "smell grouse", then it dawned on me, smelling grouse in the bushes is really far out! I had switched to using my nose and hadn't really realized it. Now though, lost a lot of that, still better than most guys at fieldcraft, but no way close to what was happening back then. I still have that minute movement sense, use it all the time around here on the farm, can see tiny critters really far off, stuff like that, or notice the very subtle changes in the plants and trees, beyond just "ya, that's a yada yada bush or a whatever tree". It's really kinda neat and ya I miss those days too, glad I did that extended hike. Ate pretty good most of the time too probably the most organic and healthy eating there is eating all wild foods.
Doing the hunter/gatherer thing. What started out as a nice camping trip and hike just kept expanding for a few years. It was a megahoot! I think of it as my hands on nature/biology/primitive engineering education. About like that part in Forest Gump where he goes running and just keeps going. At times it was hard, but for the most part I had a lot of free time. Winters obviously were the hardest, but not bad once you got the techniques down, shivering is a great inducement for getting creative with the local materials for shelter. What I got from it is immense, but if I had to pick the top idea, it was that our modern civilization takes clean water for granted, and it is the most important thing out there. Lack of clean potable water would be what collapses a civilization more than anything else I think. Droughts and aquifer pollution are big problems and should be a top priority for we humans in this century to "fix", to work out good methods for maintaining good supplies universally.
Seems like a business opportunity for the robot makers, have temp robots. Like you pointed out, not worth it if it isn't being used all year, but if they could have robots that were capable of learning a few different businesses and trucked to site/easily moved for several different clients.
Thanks, appreciate the gardening link. I'm gonna investigate the hotwater weed killer thing I found off that site. I already have a propane flame weed burner, but a large part of the year it is too dangerous to use from fire hazard, so a continuous hot steam applicator would actually work better.
Weight is the big issue and how many batteries you want to throw at it. Those are the primary ways you'll get range, lighter weight, more batteries. For this kind of money, I'd suggest you contact those guys at ACPropulsion and kick some models around, maybe something lightweight you might find like an older lancia scorpion? About as lightweight as you might find over there cheap and used. Actually, for my loot (I have no where's close to being able to do this, I am rebuilding a datsun diesel pickup for my high mileage vehicle), doing a retrofit makes more sense, you aren't limited to the body styles the electric car company has, you can get anything you want, then put enough batteries in it to give it the range you want. How about an old xke convertible? (cost more than a house most likely) probably too heavy...hmm, saab sonnet? They were lightweight and sporty looking. I am more or less a truck and tractor guy myself, so my taste in cars would be at the low end a minicooper or classic bug/beetle to medium a detroit muscle/pony car (my favs were always studebaker avantis), or for the high end, a for sure street screamer,a full winged mopar, a superbird or a daytona. But if I had one of them I just...couldn't..make it electric. Have to be a gas hog. I just don't know enough about foreign cars to know what might work well or not, but I bet porsche conversions are probably the most popular, or maybe look for an old ferrari or maserati or lamborghini junker to start with.
Anyway, shoot them an email or call them, ask their opinion on it. I'd be interested to hear back if you decide to do it and how it goes, you can post the process at technocrat if you want under the DIY section, it would be most interesting, especially with pics! My *next* project vehicle after the little truck will be an electric something, I was thinking of cutting my teeth on a small lawn and garden tractor first,(a real one with attachments, not just a lawnmower), then do a road vehicle.
You can get an advanced propulsion system from AcPropulsion. Get a used sportscar over there and pay someone to do a retrofit for you. Do your homework on the best vehicle to do a retrofit with you can get there and start a business! These guys even came up with the range solution, a small trailer with a generator. Around town, battery only, want to go on a trip, attach the trailer, plug it into the car, fire up the generator, poof, same range as any other vehicle.
Well, ya, but they obviously don't go everywhere either and they have other limitations as well. They are good for huge bulk cargoes going to and from very limited areas, after that, delivery is still by road in most cases, that's the focus here. Very few homes or businesses are on a direct rail terminal. There's no perfect solution when it comes to getting people or goods from point A to B, we need the whole mix of technologies that you see now to accomplish this. And besides that, this discussion and thread and Darpa challenge event from the article is about automating road transport, not the railroads, not airplanes, not ships, the roads and road vehicles, ie, cars and trucks, a very important part of our total transportation stack. I was just pointing out that off road at least, the tech exists for automatic hands-off steering following very precise tracks and is already in fairly widespread use and is expanding greatly as we speak. I then speculated that a dedicated normal roadway or dedicated lane might be useful sometime soon to use this tech, because it's here already, with some limitations, but based on the darpa entrants advances, I expect this to get pretty good soon, not enough for stop and go city driving in non warfare situations, but perhaps for semis on the freeway in some places. Maybe. Most likely it is possible now, GPS has really opened this up a lot. Not saying it is a good idea, but engineering wise it seems pretty close to doable. Combine it with lane maintaining proximity radar-on some luxury cars now last I knew, or developed anyway, and it fits pretty close to all that is required outside of a few more emergency oriented safety tweaks, the road hazard avoidance issues and so on I mentioned.
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I'm with you on the solar. (beyond spirit, I own some myself) Also geothermal on the small scale, ground loop heat pumps should be about mandatory in most areas for new home construction, or encouraged with full tax credits I should say.
The only evidence I have of background checks is what I have a read and from a lady I used to date told me. she is a Phd mathematician, was a professor at a local university in Atlanta and got a job at JPL, full background checks according to what she told me.
If the ESA doesn't require full and extensive background checks I would be surprised.
If you want to help weed out assumptions from data, provide some. I am *guessing* ESA requires extensive checks, you asserted because they weren't american or some such like that that they didn't, and this is the whole point of the thread, background checks. And we don't know the level of covert checks at all, neither do the scientists involved unless someone else blabs.
I still stand by my overall statement, your original reply to me was just bashing & flaming, no data of note. If you want to provide some, go for it. Personally my thoughts on it they were doing a similar level of checks covertly, and added some overtly just to rattle cages, and once it went overt..we got what was in the article. And that is *pure* speculation on my part, I am thinking they wanted to see who would spook or jump, then use that to see "why?". Whether that is useful and practical or not is immaterial at this point, it has happened. the general speculation then was that american scientists would abandon ship and go work for some country agency whatever elsewhere, where allegedly there wouldn't be these sorts of checks. I speculated that was about as an absurd assmption as possible, still waiting for some proof that no deep level checks are made on scientists at -your country of choice there. AFAIK, all places who hire high tech employees do good background checks, government, academia, private employer. If you know of any that don't, post their names here, perhaps these annoyed jpl scientists can go there and apply. I do not know of any.
Now that doesn't let the administration off the hook for being generally obnoxious asses and mostly bumbling boobs, because they obviously are, that point I think is not disputed by anyone, american or otherwise. Even their "true believer" supporters are holding their noses at this point. I live in the heart of "shrub country", I am not hearing much praise for anything they do at this point, that's just evaporated over the past year or so. Not even seeing the supportive-styled bumper stickers any more.
I am fully aware Europe is a not a single nation, although the EU is approaching that type of organized political structure rapidly. Besides that, oh well, you hate Americans, or give a good appearance of that, despite there being every sort of American out there.. I don't hate Europeans for the record and have never bashed them anyplace. I also would be willing to wager that there are similar background checks run on most scientists everywhere. Not exact, but similar, both that the employee is aware of, and probably some they are not. As to analyzing Martian dust and etc, all high tech gear can be used for multiple purposes usually, but that is an irrelevant side issue, and I was generally speaking obviously, there is a lot of "dual use" with tech gear, even to just the plebeian point that it is usually expensive and might be worth something on the black market say. In other words, it is quite common for employers and governments to run background checks on people, for security/intel purposes and for loss prevention and so on. Quite common in fact. I think it would be a rare company or academic institution or government agency that would just hire someone for some high tech position based purely on their verbal assurance they are who they say they are along with the other particulars.
..drunk ..sounding ramble (sorry, if you were an American I'd call it sounding like a jingoistic dumbass redneck indulging in a little petty flaming, but you not being an american, and obviously quite cultured and refined and genteel and just oozing ultra pure freedom in all directions, you'll have to help this poor person here-me-with the appropriate sort of descriptive phrase (dumbass redneck and etc) translated into the European language of your origin, because I do not know the correct term for you to fit your European continentalality. All for sport and so on.
Anyway, to get back to your rant, if you can *prove* that no other nation in Europe doesn't run routine and extensive background checks on high tech scientific researchers,which I was guessing-"believing" they do, go for it, I'll check out your references. Overt and covert. You'll have to prove your bonafides here though, in public, that you have access to such information, for every nation in Europe, so your allusions can be verified. You must be extraordinarily high ranking to have access to such information, but you claim this is so, by refuting my guess, so let's see the proof. The difference is, I was *guessing*, you are stating/claiming because...no idea, your post is rather more or less just an anti American rant, but you seem to be inferring that because you are not an oppressed American, that somehow what I was guessing at just couldn't possibly be true or something. It's rather a
But.... to each their own. So go ahead, if you would be so kind as to prove your statements, or should I say *allusions by neglect*. If that is too hard..perhaps this from your post "Every single ESA project is automatically by definition an international project."..Well, besides "huh...so what?", foreign nationals are fully involved in a host of US high technology projects, so what does this mean or are you implying ALL the research is completely open in the ESA, anyone can look at it? Or what?? Everything done in the ESA sphere is unclassified and open because it isn't American, or...? Really? And none of the workers go through extensive background checks, because it is by definition an international project? Or what? Perhaps this what makes this just so hard for me to get, because a rambling non responsive rant that says nothing is by definition hard to understand. So, if you would clarify some please. Thanks.
Either way,if you can answer any of those questions or not,to help clear up matters more,feel free, and besides that, have a nice free life! I certainly do my best over here in American oppressed land!
...are going to have less overt/covert background checks for people they hire to work on the highest tech rocketry and satellite stuff?
I'm not defending these obtrusive new background checks, but having a hard time believing other large nations wouldn't have quite similar policies.
Near as I can tell, nearly all high tech R&D is "dual use", or has the potential. And espionage is just as much for economic gain as it is to maintain military advantage, the two are completely interlocked now. War is business and business is war, hot, cold, or otherwise.
You probably missed the news then, because congress just had the very first override of a presidential veto over a big water infrastructure bill, said bill being so important the bulk of the nations governors and senators and reps are mostly for it and it isn't because the water system is in great shape and they want to just polish the chrome faucet handles. And you probably have been missing the news of the huge droughts all over and how we don't have good enough storage capacity, and how the big everglades reclamation effort(the Florida water sponge) is stalled dead in the tracks from lack of funding, even with the new bill passed.
Really, I am not blowing smoke here, the national water infrastructure is severely stretched right now, google is your friend there,all over the nation really, along with the bridges and a lot of the normal roads. I could provide a lot more links to prove this point, but just run your own keyword searches there. Estimates for just reppairing what we have now to fix fall betweeen the OMG! and How many zeroes??!! levels. Want just a tiny example of how weird it is getting? Just in the past few months over 90,000 horses have been literally abandoned in the southeast US as people who have them no longer have the grass nor the water to keep them. I am contemplating getting a couple myself, but still not sure if we have adequate needs right now for our small cow herd (I live in north georgia on a big farm, but the drought over all has been bad here, although we did get 1.5 inches of rain this last weekend so that is welcome)(we only harvested 20% of our normal average haycrop this year), going to see how it goes the next month before making a decision. Long range weather is looking bad with la nina, real bad. And look at the mess going on with atlants water supply and water needs further downstream for power plants and to keep some fisheries going in florida. they are goping to run out! they are *mining* water now, it is not being replensihed at anywhere's near the rate it needs to be, and even with emergency restrictions there is a good chance that sucker is going down. There just isn't enough, and we needed a thousand(whatever, bignum there) more huge reservoirs built ten years ago all over the country. And they want billions to build a high speed maglev train to move plutocrats and gamblers around?? And my other point of the dismal state of national broadband still stands as well, we are way down the list on every ranking index I have seen and dropping yearly.
As to getting better cars out there, I agree, totally. They need to drastically increase cafe standards beyond a joke level and shake detroit to its very roots to get them to pay attention, and offer something like eliminating ad valorem and sales tax for plugin hybrids that achieve 60 mpg or better, or pure electrics, and stuff like that. I am also in favor of a national 100% tax credit for installation of active alternative energy solutions for homeowners and small business, to get a lot more points of production out there, and to keep it in place for at least a decade. a manhattan project or moonrace project effort, something of that scale, massive and *now*, right now, pass the damn bill as an emergency measure. If we wait for the economy to collapse further and oil get closer to two hundred a barrel than one hundred like now...well..we just won't be able to do it. The second (or third) worlding of the US will follow.
In other words, we don't need any more dumb fixes, we need smart fixes, cheap fixes, and multi billion wasted dollar magleve trains aren't even a fix, they are just rich peoples toys.
In the 21st century, do we really need something this expensive when we lack a national scale urban and rural modern broadband infrastructure, and our water and sewer and normal highway bridge infrastructure is falling apart? Where is the US now, a notch above Zimbabwe or something with broadband? Should they be considering moving electrons and data for government office workers instead of humans? Let us face reality, this would be used in the northeast corridor, moving office workers/bureaucrats/lobbiests-bribers around primarily. 100 million per mile? And in the article. to haul gamblers to Vegas faster? WTF? This is a national priority that untold billions should be spent on?
Cool tech and all, really, quite impressive, but not seeing any huge need for it, an expensive solution looking for a problem. Let's fix what is broken first across the entire nation before adding in new gee-whizz tech that will only be used for a very limited subset of the population. I mean, look at the economy now with the mortgage meltdown, and know that next year those numbers are set to go up sixfold. Think about it... we need to start conserving cash and be thinking about cheaper ways to do stuff, not more expensive.
As to rails, I like trains, but people need to know they have been going way out of their way the past..years, I forget how many.. ripping out track all over. Miles and miles and miles of it. They could have just maintained the normal track and made better "normal" trains, had them go more places, for a much smaller amount of cash by far. As to travel in general, how about getting motor vehicles that actually get good mileage out there,combined with smarter traffic light systems? Why is it you can get fantastic mileage autos every place in the world *except* the US? It's only lately that we have a very limited selection of conventional hybrid cars on the dealers lots, where are the cleaner diesel hybrid electric plug in cars, and the all electric vehicles? With average commute being 33 miles, conventional and relatively cheap battery tech is "good enough" right now for that, no need for 100 grand lithium ion battery packs and cars only the most wealthy could afford, NiMH and AGM lead acid are perfectly fine for that purpose and loads cheaper, many home builders/gear heads have examples of this that are being driven daily. But what makes the headlines? "Hydrogen economy" cars that cost a million bucks apiece and would require a trillion dollars (some huge number) in infrastructure additions just to fuel them up and require scrapping every single vehicle out there to be replaced with some fuel cell thing that would get contaminated anyway in a short time frame and be undriveable. Nuts. We need cheap and efficient fixes and upgrades, and spread out all over for all the citizens, not this boondoggle stuff that only goes to a very few rich people.
We did ours stuffed with oranges and basted with some good ole georgia peach cider. The gravy comes out pretty interesting.
.."Solar panels are bad for then environment because they put out more crap when they're made than they'll ever save by producing "clean" energy during their useful lifetime."..hasn't been true for around 20 years now or so. Manufacturing payback is now around 2 years with lot cleaner fabs and manufacturing facilities, owners payback is around 7 at average US kwh rates, estimated lifetime of most modern PV panels is at 30 years (warranties to this effect) and still have 80% rated output. As to battery tech, heck, jay leno owns a baker electric that is 100 years old, he drives it a lot, and it still has the original alkaline batteries in it (yes, they made them back then). My own personal normal flooded lead acid batteries on my small solar rig are 9 years old now and still work perfectly fine, modern desulphators hooked to the battery bank help keep the plates really clean, and you can buy deep cycle flooded lead acid with very long warranties now, rolls-surrette have ten years for example, and telco batteries are still out there now decades old being used after purchase used from the telcos on any number of peoples home solar rigs.
Now, wind power. Very efficient, people are making money with it *now*, around a 2 year payback, after that, making money.
And both of the above you can own outright as joe homeowner. And you get a fixed upfront price good for decades. Until the local power company can give you a fixed price 20 year contract for power, you have no idea what they will charge you, nuclear or whatever. It might be ten times higher per kwh in 20 years, you just don't know so it is hard to cost compare right now.
The other reason people want electrics or hybrids is because major urban areas are heat and pollution islands "clean engines" or not, it all gets concentrated there and causes a lot of health problems. the more that the energy can be outsourced out of the cities where it can be made cleaner on an efficient big scale the better. They are also quite nice in stop and go and creep urban traffic, much better than any direct drive ICE only vehicle.
I'm just a long standing alternative energy enthusiast, since the 60s actually, and I frequently chime in here on slashdot if the subject comes up. For a short time I worked in the business, but now I just do farming. And I *did* work in the business way back then because I was convinced how effective it was, true believer fanboy in other words. Sort of like FOSS developers who actually get paid for what they do, they know it is a good idea overall, and getting paid for work is nice too. I tell you on the superinsulation deal, it works so well even the folks who get it freak out. Had one lady we did her house, couple days later or so she calls up (this is in the summer), asking if we "broke" her air conditioning, it "wasn't coming on as much as before" by a big margin. I said to her "Is your house still cool enough ma'am?" she goes "well...yes.." "It's working then, you are saving energy and on the electric bill!" I first got hip to it when I just took a job with some guy who was stuck with fuel oil bills higher than his monthly house note. We did the sub-non load bearing wall deal, added a loty more insulation, took out some of the larger single pane windows replaced with smaller triple paned gas filled, did the leaks around doorframes, etc. What a diff, he wound up paying just a small fraction of his old bill. Later on then I got into making solar space heaters, helping with windcharger projects, experimented with biofuels, got into solar PV and so on. I have 5 panels now and recently grabbed a small cheap diesel pickup that I will eventually be running off of some sort of biodiesel, I'm still rebuilding the truck, haven't finished it, mostly a junker when I got it.
And stuff like that. We lived as caretakers before this job on an estate that was almost totally solar PV powered and I maintained that system, it got me even more enthusiastic about it how well it works, how clean the power is, etc.
Tax credits work remarkably well for some things, in essence, instead of your x-dollars going to pay income tax, it goes directly for whatever the credit is marked for. It's beyond a "deduction" it is a direct dollar for dollar tradeoff (could be, usually it is), without filtering it through the government bureaucracy where a lot of it disappears. A lot of states have partial credits right now in fact for like active solar PV systems, etc, because they realize it is in their citizens long term best interest, good for balancing out energy needs, decentralizing power production, good for the environment, etc.
HTH, anytime
A tax credit? That's just keeping that sum of money and staying out of the tax collection scheme. That isn't them giving you a thing, just you getting to keep it as long as it is directed towards the reason for the credit. We had it before back in the late 70s to early 80s and it worked fairly well as long as it was running.
As to income taxes in general, that's another subject entirely, basically I am opposed to them because the US currently uses a non asset based fiat money system, with the money "injected" at the top of the economic food chain pyramid, to the already extremely wealthy folks. It is loaned with demanded interest into existence, it isn't there sitting in some vault, it is poof created out of thin air. If you want to complain about "free money" look to the huge banks for the corporate welfare angle. Right now we do have taxes, they are used as a carrot and stck on the population for pure social engineering purposes, so as long as that is the status quo, yes, I am in favor of tax credits for alternative energy and insulation upgrades leading to national energy independence.
I've already written an alternative assets-based currency outline manifesto a few places, if you'd like I might attempt to find it later this evening and hit ya with another reply on this side issue.
..there's a decent use for the law system, this might be one of those times. They would vett the ads better once they lost a big class action lawsuit, along with all the bad publicity.
There are two more technologies that are here and now and if implemented on very large scales would do more than a lot of the other alternatives, and those are geothermal and superinsulation techniques. Ground loop geothermal *works*, and works well, as does superinsulation. I've worked on several superinsulation projects and the results are quite simply fantastic. It's not sexy or gee whizz new tech, just using old tech smarter, it doesn't produce any more energy, but dollar for dollar it has everything else out there beat, hands down. You can spend the big bucks producing more power just to waste it, or small to medium bucks and save a bundle..forever, the life of the building. If building codes and mortgage approvals were altered to reflect that, for new construction and for title transfers, we could drop demand every year for a long time.
Besides that I agree with you, the solution is "all of the above as fast as possible" right now. I think the US could do good by making with the 100% tax credits for alternative energy and insulation projects for at least the next decade, and not wait for 150 to 200 buck a barrel oil to think about that. Not partial credits or deductions, 100%, with multi year carry-overs. The increase in practical and useful non burger flipping jobs and industries on one side will offset the tax in one place and replace it in another, so the net would be a wash dollar wise, but we'd all wind up with a ton of "free stuff", good energy and conservation measures, great for the nation, great for your personal wallet, so what's not to like? Energy independence is a good goal. Drop demand the same time you increase and diversify production, eventually you hit that magic sweet spot of independence, from there on out it's gravy. But ya, we can't keep farting around studying it and waiting for the mysterious mr. fusion to arrive, that's just silly, we can go with what we have now just fine, it is plenty good enough. There are millions of roofs out there facing south doing nothing more than rotting shingles. Plenty of backyards could get the ditchwitch action and have the groundloops installed. and etc. Solar thermal air heating and water heating are old tech now, work just fine and are cheap really.
The computers ten years from now will be much better, but they are still good enough now to use them and not wait ten years to get one. Same deal really. The future got here, it is the 21st century, time to start acting like it.
For some examples of the complete self powered homes plus car, look to the latest solar decathlon winners for some ideas.
400 clams gets you into the now running OLPC buy one, some kid gets one deal, and they are "ebooks" as part of the function.
...to do some more! He is much better at it than I am, so we are in agreement here. I'd thought I'd give it a whack though..why don't you try one, just for fun?
...some funny stuff, man! yada yada "The brakes and handling suck." BWAHAHAHA! Love those market speak translations, you should do them for more cars and more products. soap powder "Gets your whites whiter than white!" translation "We got ahold of some industrial toxic waste free for hauling it off that makes cloth very white and fall apart after three washings-the kickbacks from the cotton lobby are great!"
stuff like that
Link at wiki the P's Kryptos
Yep, done that with fire ants as well. I usually do a fast few shovelfuls out in the middle of the mound, dump in the pot of scalding water, then shovel the dirt back in and stomp it down flat, something to keep the heat in. I have had *marginal* success with that, not perfect, but at least it is a bit of revenge!
..and that's digital. Think about it, code is a combination of engineered schematics morphed with prose, it is text based robotics, text that "does stuff" and can run unattended. One of the main goals of a server is to get it set up so much you never hardly have to touch it, but it will keep chugging along, adapting itself to loads and demands, etc, text based robotic "service". And code can be sold or leased or rented temporarily or given away, same as a tangible. So we have the double precedent, biological entities as temps, and digital entities. We have cars for hire, taxis, buses, rental cars, that are temporary. We have temporary lodging, hotels, motels, RVs that are mobile. Temporary quartermaster services, restaurants and prepared take out food to go.
So..eventually we'll have rentabot! (outside of IRC and the rooshian mafiyeh)
I bet rentabrothelbot comes first, judging by human nature and all...
Sure is a wonderful experience. It's not the same only going out for a short time, you have to be in there for awhile for your brain to really adjust, to stop being civilized human and become just another animal living there, albeit higher on the brain scale. And yes again, what our ancestors did with primitive tech was pretty cool. I tell you something I found though that is *really* far out, you can take it as a believe or not deal. I ran across sign that there were other feral humans out there. Never say anyone, but saw the evidence. I know they were aware of *me* though. Your normal hunters and campers, etc, saw them a lot, although I stayed hidden, these other guys though, as far from me as I was from a lifelong manhattan resident in that environment. I found the basic rule of thumb is the quarter mile barrier, get much past a quarter mile from where you can drive a jeep or atv, you hardly ever see folks.
Your brain just switches after a few seasons, in particular you start unconsciously using your nose a lot more. I remember just this epiphany one day, walking by some bushes, thinking, "smell grouse", then it dawned on me, smelling grouse in the bushes is really far out! I had switched to using my nose and hadn't really realized it. Now though, lost a lot of that, still better than most guys at fieldcraft, but no way close to what was happening back then. I still have that minute movement sense, use it all the time around here on the farm, can see tiny critters really far off, stuff like that, or notice the very subtle changes in the plants and trees, beyond just "ya, that's a yada yada bush or a whatever tree". It's really kinda neat and ya I miss those days too, glad I did that extended hike. Ate pretty good most of the time too probably the most organic and healthy eating there is eating all wild foods.
Doing the hunter/gatherer thing. What started out as a nice camping trip and hike just kept expanding for a few years. It was a megahoot! I think of it as my hands on nature/biology/primitive engineering education. About like that part in Forest Gump where he goes running and just keeps going. At times it was hard, but for the most part I had a lot of free time. Winters obviously were the hardest, but not bad once you got the techniques down, shivering is a great inducement for getting creative with the local materials for shelter. What I got from it is immense, but if I had to pick the top idea, it was that our modern civilization takes clean water for granted, and it is the most important thing out there. Lack of clean potable water would be what collapses a civilization more than anything else I think. Droughts and aquifer pollution are big problems and should be a top priority for we humans in this century to "fix", to work out good methods for maintaining good supplies universally.
Seems like a business opportunity for the robot makers, have temp robots. Like you pointed out, not worth it if it isn't being used all year, but if they could have robots that were capable of learning a few different businesses and trucked to site/easily moved for several different clients.
Thanks, appreciate the gardening link. I'm gonna investigate the hotwater weed killer thing I found off that site. I already have a propane flame weed burner, but a large part of the year it is too dangerous to use from fire hazard, so a continuous hot steam applicator would actually work better.
Weight is the big issue and how many batteries you want to throw at it. Those are the primary ways you'll get range, lighter weight, more batteries. For this kind of money, I'd suggest you contact those guys at ACPropulsion and kick some models around, maybe something lightweight you might find like an older lancia scorpion? About as lightweight as you might find over there cheap and used. Actually, for my loot (I have no where's close to being able to do this, I am rebuilding a datsun diesel pickup for my high mileage vehicle), doing a retrofit makes more sense, you aren't limited to the body styles the electric car company has, you can get anything you want, then put enough batteries in it to give it the range you want. How about an old xke convertible? (cost more than a house most likely) probably too heavy...hmm, saab sonnet? They were lightweight and sporty looking. I am more or less a truck and tractor guy myself, so my taste in cars would be at the low end a minicooper or classic bug/beetle to medium a detroit muscle/pony car (my favs were always studebaker avantis), or for the high end, a for sure street screamer,a full winged mopar, a superbird or a daytona. But if I had one of them I just...couldn't..make it electric. Have to be a gas hog. I just don't know enough about foreign cars to know what might work well or not, but I bet porsche conversions are probably the most popular, or maybe look for an old ferrari or maserati or lamborghini junker to start with.
Anyway, shoot them an email or call them, ask their opinion on it. I'd be interested to hear back if you decide to do it and how it goes, you can post the process at technocrat if you want under the DIY section, it would be most interesting, especially with pics! My *next* project vehicle after the little truck will be an electric something, I was thinking of cutting my teeth on a small lawn and garden tractor first,(a real one with attachments, not just a lawnmower), then do a road vehicle.
You can get an advanced propulsion system from AcPropulsion. Get a used sportscar over there and pay someone to do a retrofit for you. Do your homework on the best vehicle to do a retrofit with you can get there and start a business! These guys even came up with the range solution, a small trailer with a generator. Around town, battery only, want to go on a trip, attach the trailer, plug it into the car, fire up the generator, poof, same range as any other vehicle.
Well, ya, but they obviously don't go everywhere either and they have other limitations as well. They are good for huge bulk cargoes going to and from very limited areas, after that, delivery is still by road in most cases, that's the focus here. Very few homes or businesses are on a direct rail terminal. There's no perfect solution when it comes to getting people or goods from point A to B, we need the whole mix of technologies that you see now to accomplish this. And besides that, this discussion and thread and Darpa challenge event from the article is about automating road transport, not the railroads, not airplanes, not ships, the roads and road vehicles, ie, cars and trucks, a very important part of our total transportation stack. I was just pointing out that off road at least, the tech exists for automatic hands-off steering following very precise tracks and is already in fairly widespread use and is expanding greatly as we speak. I then speculated that a dedicated normal roadway or dedicated lane might be useful sometime soon to use this tech, because it's here already, with some limitations, but based on the darpa entrants advances, I expect this to get pretty good soon, not enough for stop and go city driving in non warfare situations, but perhaps for semis on the freeway in some places. Maybe. Most likely it is possible now, GPS has really opened this up a lot. Not saying it is a good idea, but engineering wise it seems pretty close to doable. Combine it with lane maintaining proximity radar-on some luxury cars now last I knew, or developed anyway, and it fits pretty close to all that is required outside of a few more emergency oriented safety tweaks, the road hazard avoidance issues and so on I mentioned.