I think that the entire blade is 11 m long, making the radius 5.5 m, thus 25 mph (41.5 kph).
I suspect that the real reason for a low rate of fish kills is that, unlike hydro turbines, there is no suction produced by these systems. Thus, fish won't be sucked into them. At 20 rpm, the blades make one revolution every 3 seconds, leaving about a 1.5 second window for a fish that happens to swim into the path of the blade to get out of the way.
No, that's not what I was referring to. There were several episodes where our man Steve had to battle a robotic Soviet Venus probe that had been built for the harsh Venutian environment, crashed to Earth during a flyby or something, then started rampaging through the countryside attempting to "sample" the local populace.
This is just one of the many true-to-life stories explored on that fine program.
Did you also forget that the Russians sent probes to the moon that retrieved samples and brought them back? Yup, the Americans were not the only ones with moon rocks.
AFAIK, the Soviet lunar probes did not start on a murderous Six Million Dollar Man-style rampage upon returning to earth.
To send people to Mars? People are heavy, expensive to maintain, and don't hold up well in low-gravity environments. I've seen Robert Zubrin (author of The Case for Mars) speak. I've also read arguments against a human Mars mission (e.g. in Robert Parks' Voodoo Science). While sending people to Mars would be cool, I don't think we are at a point yet where it's worthwhile. Maybe we will be someday, or maybe we won't. Unlike some, I don't believe that human expansion beyond the earth is necessarily feasible (or desirable). Again, maybe someday, but I'm not holding my breath.
Look at what happened to Columbia, what happened a few years back to a probe that was the result of not using metric.
To be fair, that was basically an isolated bug. One constant somewhere in the code used for landing the vehicle was in the wrong units. Unfortunately, it apparently was a rather critical constant.
Don't forget, the French had to blow up their first Ariane 5 rocket when it went off course due to a float-to-integer conversion overflow. They had used Ariane 4 code ("It's tested!") without feeding it simulated Ariane 5 data. Turned out that the Ariane 5 data had larger numbers, causing the overflow. So, the USA is not the only country to have experienced a mission failure due to poor software engineering.
Ummm... no. The mechanism here is isostatic rebound (take away the glaciers, and the crust adjusts to compensate). This is a well-known phenomenon in northern Europe. This article just describes some of the latest measurements.
Errm, you might want to know what you are talking about before you post something like this. I don't know what fad du jour you think this supports, but the residents of southern England have noticed encroachment of the sea (caused by the tilting described in this article) for several centuries now.
You are also absolutely wrong that GPS cannot be used to measure the rate of continental drift. The North American and European plates are separating at a rate of a few (3-5) cm/yr. I'm not sure what "feet per eon" means (5 cm/yr is 1 foot in 6 years, which seems short for an eon). But, as other posters have noted, GPS has been used since the 80s to make very precise geodetic measurements. I'm in geophysics; while I've not done this work myself, I am familiar with it. It's definitely good science.
Previous to GPS, the measurements were carried out using very careful surveying techniques. Much more time consuming and more prone to error than good GPS measurements.
Gravity measurements may have had a role as well, as a piece of crust out of isostatic equilibrium will show gravitational anomalies.
Current models of isostatic compensation are based on theories developed by Airy in the 19th century to explain data collected by British surveys of the Himalayas.
Agreed. I am not a lawyer (patent or otherwise), but it seems to be a patent for allowing one to "fast forward" through customized lists of VOD programs. I'm not sure if it's really worth a patent, but I doubt it's a particular MS ploy to get huge licensing revenues, put anyone out of business, etc. Just another marginal patent of the sort that many businesses get.
Another poster has already mentioned that you didn't provide any examples of shoddy scholarship in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Do you have any examples? Or can you provide a source (e.g., a site with a detailed review of the book and its shortcomings)?
I think you missed the point. They didn't have a working knowledge of soil erosion because they didn't need to have this knowledge in Norway. I'll bet that a society which developed agricultural practices in an area with erosive soil would understand something about erosion.
Interestingly, European settlers did a similar thing in the US. They removed the native grasses and covered the Great Plains with farms in the late 19th and early 20th century. Then, when drought occured, the topsoil blew away without grass to hold it. We are still trying to farm that land, now using a non-replenishing aquifer as a water source. Once that water is gone, it's Dust Bowl II. Unless maybe we try to start replanting some native grasses where now we have wheat fields.
There are a number of sources of geothermal energy on earth. You don't have to be smack-dab on top of a spreading center. Yellowstone is a source of tremendous geothermal energy. The US has (rightly, IMHO) decided that preservation of the unique surface features is more important than mining the heat. If they tried to extract any energy from that system, the geysers would disappear (as has happened at locations in Iceland, for example).
As other people have mentioned in other parts of this thread, you put water in and eventually you get water back when the hydrogen is burned. No net change in water. Water vapor is already a major product of hydrocarbon production, and I'll bet hydrogen combustion is more efficient. I suspect, all in all, H2 combustion would be basically neutral in regards to atmospheric water vapor.
Except, one of the principles of scientific research in general is that results should be made as widely available as possible so that others may verify, apply, and extend the results. It's through having your work well-known that academic careers are made. The terms of the agreements through which research is funded often dictate how the results are disseminated, and the terms may allow the university to commercialize the results. Not good terms, IMHO. Universities are not commercial enterprises, nor should they be.
There's already a couple of posts to the effect of "don't post anything on the net that you don't want traced back to you." But, that's not an argument against having anonymous publishing forums. Security agencies want to eliminate anonymity as a route to engaging in criminal activity or, more ominously, as a route to expressing dissent. In some countries, the suppression of dissent is explicit. In others, it's implicit. If these countries allow access to the Mixmaster remailer, and individuals use tools to which security agents don't have access, then "nym" weblogs could be a way of publishing information that governments (and other organizations) wish to suppress. The worst they could say is "you sent an encrypted email to someone" (which is bad enough in some places).
Saying "it's pointless to hide your tracks, so don't even try" is giving in to those who wish to be able to track down every dissenter, and I'm not sure we should do that quite yet.
They are also going after IBM for alleged improper use of IP resulting from Project Monterrey (which involved SCO and IBM). SCO claims IBM terminated Monterrey, then started pushing Linux instead. To make the leap that therefore IBM was putting SCO-derived Monterrey code into Linux seems a bit of a stretch.
And, I've seen AIX headers (from 4.x); I think they still had some Unix copyrights in them. But, I seem to remember that the AIX kernel is not at all derived from AT&T/USL/SCO code.
It's not your 30 spams a day that are the problem... its the 30 x 150 million (or whatever) spams that clog up mail servers around the world. The incremental cost is tiny, but multiply a very small number by a large enough number, and you still end up with a pretty big number.
If you want to reduce the amount of snail spam, you're going to need to start charging something approaching the true cost of first-class mail, as bulk mail currently subsidizes first-class in the USA. Apparently, sending a regular letter would cost almost as much as sending something FederalExpress. Good if you're running an online bill-pay service, I guess!
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Perhaps this is the first shipborne CT scanner? I wouldn't know if being on a ship would be any different that, say, being mounted in a trailer.
I suspect that the real reason for a low rate of fish kills is that, unlike hydro turbines, there is no suction produced by these systems. Thus, fish won't be sucked into them. At 20 rpm, the blades make one revolution every 3 seconds, leaving about a 1.5 second window for a fish that happens to swim into the path of the blade to get out of the way.
Old news. Wonder Woman had an invisible plane for decades. Apparently, she can fly on her own now, though, and therefore has no need for the plane.
This is just one of the many true-to-life stories explored on that fine program.
AFAIK, the Soviet lunar probes did not start on a murderous Six Million Dollar Man-style rampage upon returning to earth.
To send people to Mars? People are heavy, expensive to maintain, and don't hold up well in low-gravity environments. I've seen Robert Zubrin (author of The Case for Mars) speak. I've also read arguments against a human Mars mission (e.g. in Robert Parks' Voodoo Science). While sending people to Mars would be cool, I don't think we are at a point yet where it's worthwhile. Maybe we will be someday, or maybe we won't. Unlike some, I don't believe that human expansion beyond the earth is necessarily feasible (or desirable). Again, maybe someday, but I'm not holding my breath.
To be fair, that was basically an isolated bug. One constant somewhere in the code used for landing the vehicle was in the wrong units. Unfortunately, it apparently was a rather critical constant.
Don't forget, the French had to blow up their first Ariane 5 rocket when it went off course due to a float-to-integer conversion overflow. They had used Ariane 4 code ("It's tested!") without feeding it simulated Ariane 5 data. Turned out that the Ariane 5 data had larger numbers, causing the overflow. So, the USA is not the only country to have experienced a mission failure due to poor software engineering.
Ummm... no. The mechanism here is isostatic rebound (take away the glaciers, and the crust adjusts to compensate). This is a well-known phenomenon in northern Europe. This article just describes some of the latest measurements.
You are also absolutely wrong that GPS cannot be used to measure the rate of continental drift. The North American and European plates are separating at a rate of a few (3-5) cm/yr. I'm not sure what "feet per eon" means (5 cm/yr is 1 foot in 6 years, which seems short for an eon). But, as other posters have noted, GPS has been used since the 80s to make very precise geodetic measurements. I'm in geophysics; while I've not done this work myself, I am familiar with it. It's definitely good science.
Gravity measurements may have had a role as well, as a piece of crust out of isostatic equilibrium will show gravitational anomalies.
Current models of isostatic compensation are based on theories developed by Airy in the 19th century to explain data collected by British surveys of the Himalayas.
Agreed. I am not a lawyer (patent or otherwise), but it seems to be a patent for allowing one to "fast forward" through customized lists of VOD programs. I'm not sure if it's really worth a patent, but I doubt it's a particular MS ploy to get huge licensing revenues, put anyone out of business, etc. Just another marginal patent of the sort that many businesses get.
Another poster has already mentioned that you didn't provide any examples of shoddy scholarship in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Do you have any examples? Or can you provide a source (e.g., a site with a detailed review of the book and its shortcomings)?
Interestingly, European settlers did a similar thing in the US. They removed the native grasses and covered the Great Plains with farms in the late 19th and early 20th century. Then, when drought occured, the topsoil blew away without grass to hold it. We are still trying to farm that land, now using a non-replenishing aquifer as a water source. Once that water is gone, it's Dust Bowl II. Unless maybe we try to start replanting some native grasses where now we have wheat fields.
There are a number of sources of geothermal energy on earth. You don't have to be smack-dab on top of a spreading center. Yellowstone is a source of tremendous geothermal energy. The US has (rightly, IMHO) decided that preservation of the unique surface features is more important than mining the heat. If they tried to extract any energy from that system, the geysers would disappear (as has happened at locations in Iceland, for example).
As other people have mentioned in other parts of this thread, you put water in and eventually you get water back when the hydrogen is burned. No net change in water. Water vapor is already a major product of hydrocarbon production, and I'll bet hydrogen combustion is more efficient. I suspect, all in all, H2 combustion would be basically neutral in regards to atmospheric water vapor.
Yes, very true. That's the motivation behind Publius .
Except, one of the principles of scientific research in general is that results should be made as widely available as possible so that others may verify, apply, and extend the results. It's through having your work well-known that academic careers are made. The terms of the agreements through which research is funded often dictate how the results are disseminated, and the terms may allow the university to commercialize the results. Not good terms, IMHO. Universities are not commercial enterprises, nor should they be.
There's already a couple of posts to the effect of "don't post anything on the net that you don't want traced back to you." But, that's not an argument against having anonymous publishing forums. Security agencies want to eliminate anonymity as a route to engaging in criminal activity or, more ominously, as a route to expressing dissent. In some countries, the suppression of dissent is explicit. In others, it's implicit. If these countries allow access to the Mixmaster remailer, and individuals use tools to which security agents don't have access, then "nym" weblogs could be a way of publishing information that governments (and other organizations) wish to suppress. The worst they could say is "you sent an encrypted email to someone" (which is bad enough in some places).
Saying "it's pointless to hide your tracks, so don't even try" is giving in to those who wish to be able to track down every dissenter, and I'm not sure we should do that quite yet.
They are also going after IBM for alleged improper use of IP resulting from Project Monterrey (which involved SCO and IBM). SCO claims IBM terminated Monterrey, then started pushing Linux instead. To make the leap that therefore IBM was putting SCO-derived Monterrey code into Linux seems a bit of a stretch.
And, I've seen AIX headers (from 4.x); I think they still had some Unix copyrights in them. But, I seem to remember that the AIX kernel is not at all derived from AT&T/USL/SCO code.
It's not your 30 spams a day that are the problem... its the 30 x 150 million (or whatever) spams that clog up mail servers around the world. The incremental cost is tiny, but multiply a very small number by a large enough number, and you still end up with a pretty big number.
If you want to reduce the amount of snail spam, you're going to need to start charging something approaching the true cost of first-class mail, as bulk mail currently subsidizes first-class in the USA. Apparently, sending a regular letter would cost almost as much as sending something FederalExpress. Good if you're running an online bill-pay service, I guess!