The only reason I ever saw "Downfall" was having seen parodies of this scene on YouTube, then thinking "Damn, that movie looks good!", then adding it to my Netflix queue. I'm very pleased that I saw the movie (it's excellent!), and I never would have if not for these ridiculous parodies.
Let's assume that wind, wave, solar, and even cold fusion will be able to provide all our energy needs - in fifty year's time. (I personally don't think that will be the case, but - hey.)
How should we generate electricity until that happens? Let's assume that energy demand will not decline any time soon, but rather will continue to rise.
Coal?
Oil?
Natural gas?
Nuclear?
My vote is this.
Outlaw construction of new electrical plants that aren't based on renewable energy, except possibly to replace nonrenewable plants that have been decommissioned. Let electricity prices rise to whatever level they have to under those circumstances. With electricity at 15c/kwh, renewable energy looks really attractive. If you absolutely must build a plant, build a nuclear plant.
The first rule of holes is, when you're in one, stop digging. Every natural gas or coal fired plant that's built from now on just contributes to the clusterfark we're going to have later when those things aren't available anymore. Better get used to it now.
Yes.
If I can hear your IPod on the train, it's too loud and is probably damaging your hearing.
Particularly if I have my own IPod on at the same time.
I agree. I've always felt that hydrogen is just too much of a pain in the ass to make it into wide scale commercial production. It might be useful in niche markets and for niche uses, but as something that's going to stave off Peak Oil I'd say forget it. Biofuels are a much better "drop in replacement".
"Cause the bot always wins. You play long enough, never change the stakes, the bot takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the bot." - Danny Ocean
I'm granting the validity of the premise here (I don't think it is arguable that you can't travel in time, I don't think the premise is provable one way or the other)
One way to prove it is to actually travel in time. Then it would be proven "one way", now wouldn't it?
My buddy and I made over 80% profit shorting SCO. We shorted back when their stock was at about $14, then again when it went higher. We were living in fear of margin calls when the price flirted with $21, but sure enough it crashed to under $5.
That was an example of the greatest and most rare investments ever: the 100%-sure gold mine. Thanks Darl!
The 3 Laws of Thermodynamics
1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't quit the game.
Also (for those of us who like analogies):
1) There's no such thing as a free lunch.
2) There's no such thing as a lunch that's even worth what you paid for it.
3) You must have lunch.
Re:Statistical Lies...
on
Newsy Numbers
·
· Score: 1
I remember when the Administration jackasses (I think Ari) were claiming about some tax cut or other that the "average" taxpayer would receive a $1000 tax cut!
So what does the median taxpayer receive? Of course the press never asked them, not that I'm sure most of the press knows the difference.
Hey thanks, man. Lots of interesting info on that site.
The major problem I've been having is the fact that we apparently can't get by without fossil fuels. We *might* be able to cobble together some kind of car, but trucks? Airplanes? Try an electric or hydrogen airplane: it'll never work. Not to mention our need for plastics, fertilizer feedstocks, and all the rest. No, an electric or hydrogen economy strikes me as something that would never work.
If we can find some kind of global system in which we recycle carbon into hydrocarbons and (obviously) back again at some kind of quasi-economical cost, then our energy problems would be much reduced.
Anyway, very interesting info on your site and I think I needed the quasi-optimistic boost:)
...but what I want to know (maybe some knowledgeable person can answer) is whether it's possible to directly manufacture hydrocarbons with some kind of reaction as follows:
sunlight/electricity + water + CO2 = CxHx
This is basically a photosynthetic reaction: is there any reason why we can't do this with some kind of biological organism? I've read about biodiesel, but the problem it appears to be is that you still need a feedstock like vegetable oil or something.
That's a problem, because most of our vegetables are grown in fields fertilized by... (take a guess here...) fossil fuel derived fertilizers. But if you could directly photosynthetically produce large hydrocarbon chains, you wouldn't have the same energy-balance problem.
This is ridiculous.
When we analyze the results of any policy, we look at the NET GAINS.
The war in Iraq was a failure because the collateral casualties and damage to international law far outweigh the nonexistent "increases" in opportunity the Iraqis have.
The tax breaks are an unmitigated negative to anyone except the rich (and they even hurt the rich, too). There is zero benefit to middle-class people, since the dollar's recent fall due primarily to the cuts (and the war) far outweighs the piddling benefit the middle class got from their tax cuts.
The whole point is that when you analyze any particular item, you analyze the aggregate positives versus the aggregate negatives. Otherwise you end up with "well, at least I got my $800 tax break even though I lost my $60,000/year job as a result".
I think the main issue here between the "Apocalypse Tomorrow" crowd and the "Market Will Fix Everything" crowd is the speed of the decline of the oil sources.
If the rate of increase in oil prices is slow, we will have adequate time for markets to react to the oil shortages and come up with a solution (solar, nuclear, zero-point energy, something).
If the rate of increase in oil prices is fast or is artificially low until sparked higher by some crisis or other, then we are screwed. Global catastrophies will ensue, many will die, all kinds of terrible things will happen.
I think we need to do three things.
(1) Commission a study to figure out the real likely rate of increase in prices. Hire whoever we need to, give them whatever resources they want, just get it done.
(2) Immediately transition as much of our energy economy as possible to existing proven renewable or longer-term energy technologies and conserve the gas we have. Build lots of windmills, put solar panels wherever we can, make cars a hell of a lot more gas efficient, etc. Again, cost is a secondary factor here, just get it done. Complaining people are also pretty much non-factors. SUV drivers, NIMBY people, etc. Build stuff far away from people if possible, just build it.
(3) Do a Manhatten-project style search for a renewable replacement to gasoline products, both for transportation and power generation. Solar, nuclear, wind, hydrogen, whatever. Spend a trillion dollars if we have to. Plunge ourselves into debt or recession if need be (though this shouldn't be necessary). Just do it, and do it now. This is this generation's sacrifice. I'm 24. My grandparents had World War II. My parents had Vietnam. This is our sacrifice. And the bonus to us is that we don't even need a war to do it. Just get it done: if we do not then the consequences may be too terrible to consider. We will need to do this sooner or later: might as well be now.
This is easy. The moniker "Bush" generally has two meanings.
The first use of the word is to denote the human being called "George W. Bush". That particular person is obviously very stupid, incurious, what have you. Although his scripted speaking has improved somewhat since he "took" office, his unscripted speaking is where one can see his utter shallowness, inability to think, and generally sophomoric and imbecilic character. So in this sense, we are talking about the person George Bush.
The second use of the word "Bush" is a shorthand for any combination of the dozen or so people that actually comprise the top level of the "hive-mind" of the Bush administration. By "Bush" in this sense we mean any of Cheney, Rove, Card, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Libby, Hughes, etc etc or any combination of these people. Since you can't always know who exactly pushed the button on a given idea, it's easier to say "Bush" than to try to identify who specifically is responsible for the latest mendacity to come out of the White House. When Bush expresses support for something, it's probably Rove that actually is responsible, etc.
I made about $3000 from AllAdvantage during the year or so they operated. It damn near financed my sophomore year: books, entertainment, pizza, etc.
No one believed me at first when I tried to sign them up: they all figured it was a pyramid scheme simply because the organizational structure looked something like a pyramid. (Things that are actually a scam aren't usually free).
The minute I heard about the program, I immediately signed up 30 of my closest friends under my user id (my upstream was happy about that). My friends, being the motivated engineering chaps they were, all signed up *their* friends, etc. At the height of the "boom", I was making over $300 a month in AllAdvantage payments!
In Soviet Dot-Com-Era, the pyramid scheme pays YOU!
My major argument with movie physics doesn't really have anything to do with wrong physics per se. What I care about is that the film/book/etc is internally consistent and doesn't violate its own rules. Movies that do that send me into a seething rage.
My thought is that basically, the filmmaker and the audience "agree" to suspend reality with regard to some parts of the "physics" of the world they are in, but the idea is that in other respects the world they live in is the same as ours. For example, most of the main characters in Star Wars are humans that act like humans who just happen to be able to fly through space.
Once one sets out those rules though, they should be inviolable so that the range of possible occurrences, actions by the characters, etc should be readily apparent to the audience. "Back to the Future" is a fantasy, but the filmmakers suspended reality only to the extent that in that universe (a) time travel is possible and (b) it works a particular way. So, it's not really legitimate to complain that in any "real" time travel scenario, modern physics says that our paths would probably be fixed and you couldn't change anything. It's a given that you can change things in the BTTF universe and that pictures/newspapers/etc will alter to match it.
However, audience members would have been rightly furious if Doc had decided to fly down from the clock tower to connect that other line for the DeLorean instead of sliding down that metal cable, for example. You could claim that "well, it's a fantasy, so we've left the bonds of reality behind", but that undermines the entire concept of the movie: what would real people do if they had control of a time machine?
Even Back to the Future falls prey to this problem in the third movie. Doc spends all movie fretting about how taking a woman to the future who would have been killed anyway falling off a cliff will disrupt the timeline. But he has no problem hijacking a train filled with people who will now no longer get to their destinations! How much will that disrupt the timeline? Doc just violated all his own precepts!
Good authors, filmmakers, etc have a knack for defining what is permissible in their fantasy worlds and what is not. Part of the thrill of the movie is to see how characters solve their problems in the constraints they are given. The "deus ex machina" ending has been used too many times in Hollywood, and in my opinion filmmakers ignore their own constraints to their peril.
Making the nanobots solar powered would be a power source that's not susceptible to running out in the manner you're describing. Since the things are tiny, each would require a ridiculously small amount of power to operate, and a small molecular photovoltaic array doesn't seem that hard to make (we can make them now, fer crying out loud). I mean a tree manages to power most of its functions with only sunlight, so I wouldn't think powering a nanobot would be that hard. Worse yet would be a nanobot with a photoarray with some high-charge capacitor/battery device hooked up to it so it could survive outside the sun for $time.
The technology to do this is something we *have now*: the power supply is probably easier than the generic nanobot design.
Slashdot Mirror
The only reason I ever saw "Downfall" was having seen parodies of this scene on YouTube, then thinking "Damn, that movie looks good!", then adding it to my Netflix queue. I'm very pleased that I saw the movie (it's excellent!), and I never would have if not for these ridiculous parodies.
It has to start someplace. It has to start somehow. What better place than here. What better time than now.
Let's assume that wind, wave, solar, and even cold fusion will be able to provide all our energy needs - in fifty year's time. (I personally don't think that will be the case, but - hey.) How should we generate electricity until that happens? Let's assume that energy demand will not decline any time soon, but rather will continue to rise. Coal? Oil? Natural gas? Nuclear? My vote is this. Outlaw construction of new electrical plants that aren't based on renewable energy, except possibly to replace nonrenewable plants that have been decommissioned. Let electricity prices rise to whatever level they have to under those circumstances. With electricity at 15c/kwh, renewable energy looks really attractive. If you absolutely must build a plant, build a nuclear plant. The first rule of holes is, when you're in one, stop digging. Every natural gas or coal fired plant that's built from now on just contributes to the clusterfark we're going to have later when those things aren't available anymore. Better get used to it now.
Yes. If I can hear your IPod on the train, it's too loud and is probably damaging your hearing. Particularly if I have my own IPod on at the same time.
I agree. I've always felt that hydrogen is just too much of a pain in the ass to make it into wide scale commercial production. It might be useful in niche markets and for niche uses, but as something that's going to stave off Peak Oil I'd say forget it. Biofuels are a much better "drop in replacement".
Is there such a thing as "+1 pwn3d"?
"Cause the bot always wins. You play long enough, never change the stakes, the bot takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the bot." - Danny Ocean
I'm granting the validity of the premise here (I don't think it is arguable that you can't travel in time, I don't think the premise is provable one way or the other) One way to prove it is to actually travel in time. Then it would be proven "one way", now wouldn't it?
My buddy and I made over 80% profit shorting SCO. We shorted back when their stock was at about $14, then again when it went higher. We were living in fear of margin calls when the price flirted with $21, but sure enough it crashed to under $5. That was an example of the greatest and most rare investments ever: the 100%-sure gold mine. Thanks Darl!
The 3 Laws of Thermodynamics 1) You can't win. 2) You can't break even. 3) You can't quit the game. Also (for those of us who like analogies): 1) There's no such thing as a free lunch. 2) There's no such thing as a lunch that's even worth what you paid for it. 3) You must have lunch.
I remember when the Administration jackasses (I think Ari) were claiming about some tax cut or other that the "average" taxpayer would receive a $1000 tax cut! So what does the median taxpayer receive? Of course the press never asked them, not that I'm sure most of the press knows the difference.
The major problem I've been having is the fact that we apparently can't get by without fossil fuels. We *might* be able to cobble together some kind of car, but trucks? Airplanes? Try an electric or hydrogen airplane: it'll never work. Not to mention our need for plastics, fertilizer feedstocks, and all the rest. No, an electric or hydrogen economy strikes me as something that would never work.
If we can find some kind of global system in which we recycle carbon into hydrocarbons and (obviously) back again at some kind of quasi-economical cost, then our energy problems would be much reduced.
Anyway, very interesting info on your site and I think I needed the quasi-optimistic boost :)
...but what I want to know (maybe some knowledgeable person can answer) is whether it's possible to directly manufacture hydrocarbons with some kind of reaction as follows: sunlight/electricity + water + CO2 = CxHx This is basically a photosynthetic reaction: is there any reason why we can't do this with some kind of biological organism? I've read about biodiesel, but the problem it appears to be is that you still need a feedstock like vegetable oil or something. That's a problem, because most of our vegetables are grown in fields fertilized by... (take a guess here...) fossil fuel derived fertilizers. But if you could directly photosynthetically produce large hydrocarbon chains, you wouldn't have the same energy-balance problem.
This is ridiculous. When we analyze the results of any policy, we look at the NET GAINS. The war in Iraq was a failure because the collateral casualties and damage to international law far outweigh the nonexistent "increases" in opportunity the Iraqis have. The tax breaks are an unmitigated negative to anyone except the rich (and they even hurt the rich, too). There is zero benefit to middle-class people, since the dollar's recent fall due primarily to the cuts (and the war) far outweighs the piddling benefit the middle class got from their tax cuts. The whole point is that when you analyze any particular item, you analyze the aggregate positives versus the aggregate negatives. Otherwise you end up with "well, at least I got my $800 tax break even though I lost my $60,000/year job as a result".
If the rate of increase in oil prices is slow, we will have adequate time for markets to react to the oil shortages and come up with a solution (solar, nuclear, zero-point energy, something).
If the rate of increase in oil prices is fast or is artificially low until sparked higher by some crisis or other, then we are screwed. Global catastrophies will ensue, many will die, all kinds of terrible things will happen.
I think we need to do three things.
(1) Commission a study to figure out the real likely rate of increase in prices. Hire whoever we need to, give them whatever resources they want, just get it done.
(2) Immediately transition as much of our energy economy as possible to existing proven renewable or longer-term energy technologies and conserve the gas we have. Build lots of windmills, put solar panels wherever we can, make cars a hell of a lot more gas efficient, etc. Again, cost is a secondary factor here, just get it done. Complaining people are also pretty much non-factors. SUV drivers, NIMBY people, etc. Build stuff far away from people if possible, just build it.
(3) Do a Manhatten-project style search for a renewable replacement to gasoline products, both for transportation and power generation. Solar, nuclear, wind, hydrogen, whatever. Spend a trillion dollars if we have to. Plunge ourselves into debt or recession if need be (though this shouldn't be necessary). Just do it, and do it now. This is this generation's sacrifice. I'm 24. My grandparents had World War II. My parents had Vietnam. This is our sacrifice. And the bonus to us is that we don't even need a war to do it. Just get it done: if we do not then the consequences may be too terrible to consider. We will need to do this sooner or later: might as well be now.
The first use of the word is to denote the human being called "George W. Bush". That particular person is obviously very stupid, incurious, what have you. Although his scripted speaking has improved somewhat since he "took" office, his unscripted speaking is where one can see his utter shallowness, inability to think, and generally sophomoric and imbecilic character. So in this sense, we are talking about the person George Bush.
The second use of the word "Bush" is a shorthand for any combination of the dozen or so people that actually comprise the top level of the "hive-mind" of the Bush administration. By "Bush" in this sense we mean any of Cheney, Rove, Card, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Libby, Hughes, etc etc or any combination of these people. Since you can't always know who exactly pushed the button on a given idea, it's easier to say "Bush" than to try to identify who specifically is responsible for the latest mendacity to come out of the White House. When Bush expresses support for something, it's probably Rove that actually is responsible, etc.
The minute I heard about the program, I immediately signed up 30 of my closest friends under my user id (my upstream was happy about that). My friends, being the motivated engineering chaps they were, all signed up *their* friends, etc. At the height of the "boom", I was making over $300 a month in AllAdvantage payments!
In Soviet Dot-Com-Era, the pyramid scheme pays YOU!
My major argument with movie physics doesn't really have anything to do with wrong physics per se. What I care about is that the film/book/etc is internally consistent and doesn't violate its own rules. Movies that do that send me into a seething rage.
My thought is that basically, the filmmaker and the audience "agree" to suspend reality with regard to some parts of the "physics" of the world they are in, but the idea is that in other respects the world they live in is the same as ours. For example, most of the main characters in Star Wars are humans that act like humans who just happen to be able to fly through space.
Once one sets out those rules though, they should be inviolable so that the range of possible occurrences, actions by the characters, etc should be readily apparent to the audience. "Back to the Future" is a fantasy, but the filmmakers suspended reality only to the extent that in that universe (a) time travel is possible and (b) it works a particular way. So, it's not really legitimate to complain that in any "real" time travel scenario, modern physics says that our paths would probably be fixed and you couldn't change anything. It's a given that you can change things in the BTTF universe and that pictures/newspapers/etc will alter to match it.
However, audience members would have been rightly furious if Doc had decided to fly down from the clock tower to connect that other line for the DeLorean instead of sliding down that metal cable, for example. You could claim that "well, it's a fantasy, so we've left the bonds of reality behind", but that undermines the entire concept of the movie: what would real people do if they had control of a time machine?
Even Back to the Future falls prey to this problem in the third movie. Doc spends all movie fretting about how taking a woman to the future who would have been killed anyway falling off a cliff will disrupt the timeline. But he has no problem hijacking a train filled with people who will now no longer get to their destinations! How much will that disrupt the timeline? Doc just violated all his own precepts!
Good authors, filmmakers, etc have a knack for defining what is permissible in their fantasy worlds and what is not. Part of the thrill of the movie is to see how characters solve their problems in the constraints they are given. The "deus ex machina" ending has been used too many times in Hollywood, and in my opinion filmmakers ignore their own constraints to their peril.
Yeah, too bad someone already posted a similar joke earlier without me noticing :)
On Soviet Mars... ...life searches out *you*.
Making the nanobots solar powered would be a power source that's not susceptible to running out in the manner you're describing. Since the things are tiny, each would require a ridiculously small amount of power to operate, and a small molecular photovoltaic array doesn't seem that hard to make (we can make them now, fer crying out loud). I mean a tree manages to power most of its functions with only sunlight, so I wouldn't think powering a nanobot would be that hard. Worse yet would be a nanobot with a photoarray with some high-charge capacitor/battery device hooked up to it so it could survive outside the sun for $time.
The technology to do this is something we *have now*: the power supply is probably easier than the generic nanobot design.