Somewhere I remember hearing that if we wanted to build the Golden Gate Bridge today, we couldn't. So I guess you can add "Bridge building" to the list.
I don't think this is true. A new (smaller) suspension bridge is opening in the SF Bay Area in three weeks. Here's a link.
Also, construction is starting on a new eastern span for the SF Bay Bridge, which is a project of comparable difficulty (and a partial suspension bridge design).
... and that definitely contributes to more pollution being in the air which will definitely have an effect on temperatures.. I don't know what's being "discovered" here..
Then you're remarkably uncurious or ignorant. What's the mechanism? Why is it different in coastal cities than inland ones? This is an interesting and localized (both in time and in space) effect of human activity. I don't really have a good guess as to what is causing it. You can't just say air pollution without examing the mechanism. It could be something really off the wall like change in averge absorptivity of the ground because all the parking lots are full.
From the CIA World Factbook entry for the United States:-
Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.
So, it seems to be a good idea to make sure you're in the top 20%, specifically, to have a household income above $81,960/year. I'd bet that's probably under the median around here
In all seriousness though, the real gains in income were in the top couple of percent of earners, so working slobs who toil for 50-60 K per year (remember, this is household, not individual income, so a 60k earner and a 30k earner would qualify in the top 20%) really haven't benefited that much.
What do people do with all this money? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'd really like to know what these people intend to do with such fortunes. I assume part of it is really stocks, and so it's company worth rather than personal worth, but still, I can't see ever needing more than, say, $2-3 million over the course of my entire life.
You obviously don't live in the San Francisco Bay Area. A nice (but not extravagant) house in a good neighaborhood will set you back $1 million and it you'd be supprised how easy it is to go through a couple hundred grand per year, which is more than your 1-2 million (after the house) would generate in interest.
Depleted uranium is not radioactive, but it is toxic. If you think it's a great idea to spray the environment with these bullets, then by all means, please allow me to dump a box of spent ammo into your water supply.
Actually, it is a little radioactive, but not enough to wory about. In terms of toxicity, its a heavy metal. I'd rather have it around than mercury, but would probably perfer lead. That being said, the reason it is used is that it is denser and thus makes a more effective bullet, thus requiring fewer bullets and less lead.
As a side note, I have lived places where hunting was allowed in the lakes and rivers that acted as a water supply, and lead contamination wasn't a serious problem. A much more serious problem was the mercury in the sediment left over from gold mining that happened 150 years ago.
You don't use flouride to kill bacteria in water. It is added as a form of mass medication to prevent tooth decay. Bacteria and other nasties in tap water are usually killed by chlorine or ozone (although there are other ways it can be done, such as using UV). Over chlorination is usually avoided because it makes the water taste bad, is hazardous if you REALLY overdo it, and because it is a waste of money. Too much ozone is hard on pipes. Too much flouride kills people with weak kidneys (well, actually if you get the levels high enough, it will kill anyone, but that's way above the level used in municipal water systems).
I don't think you're right about regular light bulbs consuming fewer resources. We have a handy measure of the resources consumed to make something. It's called cost. That is, the total value of the resources used to make something. The price you pay for something that is traded as competitively as light bulbs is very close to the cost of the resources consumed making it (human and physical)
With compact florescent bulbs, the initial cost is higher ($8.00 vs. $0.20), but the lifetime cost is lower due to lower energy use and longer life. Incandescant lights are cheaper to make and better for the environment in low duty cycle applications (say in a closet), but are worse when the light is on continously
Umm, last time I was in the area a few months ago, given the amount of pollution and traffic in the Bay area and north of the Bay area, I am not surprised the redwoods are dying off.
Except that redwoods are really tolerant (they are a common landscaping tree, for just this reason) of that kind of pollution and the die-offs are happening in the LEAST polluted areas. Also, it isn't as simple as saying pollution. What kind of pollution? How does it affect the trees? If you don't answer these questions, anything you do could make the problem worse.
Recently there have been alot of odd problems in the coastal forests of California. The worst of them (IMHO) is sudden oak death. Large stands of century old (and older) oaks have been dying due to a pathogen that is similar to the one that caused the irish potato famine. It is also killing bays, madrones and some redwoods. No one really understands why this is happening. If it is due to human action, it is indirectly so, because there are dead stands of trees that are far away from any population centers.
Don't those little Toyota Priuses tend to tear up the roads less than those Lincoln Navigators? Doesn't it make sense to have a gas tax? Maybe these lawmakers are tired of being gouged at the pumps when they fill up their Ford Expeditions and feel envy at those little Honda Civic drivers that get by without paying nearly as much in tax?
Weight only matters above a certian axle load. Below it, you just don't do significant damage to pavement. Heavy trucks cause a problem, cars and light trucks don't. However, an Insight or Prius will consume just as much road space as a lincoln navigator or H1, and it's building and maintaining road space that's expensive.
It's the Ezra core that has a 1/3 speed coprocessor. The newer core doesn't have this feature. Besides, if you aren't running CAD or playing 3D games, you don't use the math co that much.
"Clean Diesel" isn't very clean. While very fuel efficient compared to a spark ignition engine, the so-called celan diesel engines have severe NOX emissions problems. This is important, because it is NOX (or actually the resulting ground level ozone), NOT CO2 that has an effect on human health.
Hybirds, which you mention, on the other hand are an important development. They allow an ICE (gas or diesel or turbine for that matter) They allow the engine to run much closer to its peak efficiency (by averaging the load using the battery), which saves fuel and reduces emissions.
One of the big differences between American and European air quality policy is that American regulators in the U.S. have chosen to trade fuel efficency for improved public health, while europeans would rather have people suffer from lung disease to fend off the spectre of global warming
Here's a couple of links to cool historic planning maps for San
Francisco and Los Angeles. The will to do these things didn't last long enough to finish though.
Another interesting "roads of future past" link is interregional
highways, which shows what the interstate system was meant to look like in 1944, before it was called the interstate system.
It's one of the main componants of summer smog and is usually the most harmful (CO and particulates are more harmful in winter). It irritates lungs and eyes.
Widespread use of ozone for pest control would probably cause more severe air quality problems in places like California's Central Valley, which already has a bad smog problem, due to its topology as well as a combination of unregulated agricultural equipment, pollution blowing in from the coastal cities (especially significant in the Sacramento Valley) and from the usual pollution that comes from any city.
The other problems with this analogy are that the commons can be increased, without limit (theoretically), albeit at cost and time; and that if the commons are overgrazed, demand will die off from lack of availability without actually killing anyone off. (who wants to play quake 2 on the net when the lag is several minutes?)
The same is true of grazing land. In both cases the asset becomes significantly less valuable because of a poor pricing structure
Here's a quote from the original 1968 paper that used the term
The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.
1. The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly + 1.
2. The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decisionmaking herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.
Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
There are two common solutions to this kind of problem. Regulate use of the common resource or sell it. Because of the structure of the internet, it is hard to fairly price bandwidth and no good regulatory scheme has developed, so I don't see any other answer than living with it.
We already have a mechanism to do this its called price. At least for products where multiple manufacturers make the same product, or where several similar substitutes exist, the price is very close to the total of the inputs required to make a product.
This mechanism can break down in several circumstances. The most important is that there isn't a good pricing mechanism for a shared resource (such as air, water, grazing land or highway capacity). Working to ensure that common resources are paid for would do more to help the environment than requiring silly lablels (which in themselves carry a significant cost).
.ogg is the extension for ogg-vorbis media files. IIRC, this is set of standards for audio and video files. Right now, only the compressed audio files exist..ogg music files offer slightly better quality than.mp3's and don't have the liscencing issues that the mp3 format has (the content may have liscence issues, but the format doesn't). The drawbacks of the music format is that it isn't widely supported and is more computationally expensive.
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Somewhere I remember hearing that if we wanted to build the Golden Gate Bridge today, we couldn't. So I guess you can add "Bridge building" to the list.
I don't think this is true. A new (smaller) suspension bridge is opening in the SF Bay Area in three weeks. Here's a link. Also, construction is starting on a new eastern span for the SF Bay Bridge, which is a project of comparable difficulty (and a partial suspension bridge design).
How long till someone hacks it
Well, since it was supposed to be a Pepsi billboard, I'd say not long at all
ha, ha me make funny
Then you're remarkably uncurious or ignorant. What's the mechanism? Why is it different in coastal cities than inland ones? This is an interesting and localized (both in time and in space) effect of human activity. I don't really have a good guess as to what is causing it. You can't just say air pollution without examing the mechanism. It could be something really off the wall like change in averge absorptivity of the ground because all the parking lots are full.
From the CIA World Factbook entry for the United States:-
Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.
So, it seems to be a good idea to make sure you're in the top 20%, specifically, to have a household income above $81,960/year. I'd bet that's probably under the median around here
In all seriousness though, the real gains in income were in the top couple of percent of earners, so working slobs who toil for 50-60 K per year (remember, this is household, not individual income, so a 60k earner and a 30k earner would qualify in the top 20%) really haven't benefited that much.
What do people do with all this money? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'd really like to know what these people intend to do with such fortunes. I assume part of it is really stocks, and so it's company worth rather than personal worth, but still, I can't see ever needing more than, say, $2-3 million over the course of my entire life.
You obviously don't live in the San Francisco Bay Area. A nice (but not extravagant) house in a good neighaborhood will set you back $1 million and it you'd be supprised how easy it is to go through a couple hundred grand per year, which is more than your 1-2 million (after the house) would generate in interest.
Depleted uranium is not radioactive, but it is toxic. If you think it's a great idea to spray the environment with these bullets, then by all means, please allow me to dump a box of spent ammo into your water supply.
Actually, it is a little radioactive, but not enough to wory about. In terms of toxicity, its a heavy metal. I'd rather have it around than mercury, but would probably perfer lead. That being said, the reason it is used is that it is denser and thus makes a more effective bullet, thus requiring fewer bullets and less lead.
As a side note, I have lived places where hunting was allowed in the lakes and rivers that acted as a water supply, and lead contamination wasn't a serious problem. A much more serious problem was the mercury in the sediment left over from gold mining that happened 150 years ago.
You may think in metric and do unit conversions in your head, but you don't know how much a ton is.
1 long ton = 2240 lb = 1016.047 kg
1 metric ton = 2204 lb = 1000 kg
1 short ton = 2000 lb = 907.19 kg
1 register ton = 100 ft^3 = 2.81 m^3
You don't use flouride to kill bacteria in water. It is added as a form of mass medication to prevent tooth decay. Bacteria and other nasties in tap water are usually killed by chlorine or ozone (although there are other ways it can be done, such as using UV). Over chlorination is usually avoided because it makes the water taste bad, is hazardous if you REALLY overdo it, and because it is a waste of money. Too much ozone is hard on pipes. Too much flouride kills people with weak kidneys (well, actually if you get the levels high enough, it will kill anyone, but that's way above the level used in municipal water systems).
I don't think you're right about regular light bulbs consuming fewer resources. We have a handy measure of the resources consumed to make something. It's called cost. That is, the total value of the resources used to make something. The price you pay for something that is traded as competitively as light bulbs is very close to the cost of the resources consumed making it (human and physical)
With compact florescent bulbs, the initial cost is higher ($8.00 vs. $0.20), but the lifetime cost is lower due to lower energy use and longer life. Incandescant lights are cheaper to make and better for the environment in low duty cycle applications (say in a closet), but are worse when the light is on continouslyUmm, last time I was in the area a few months ago, given the amount of pollution and traffic in the Bay area and north of the Bay area, I am not surprised the redwoods are dying off.
Except that redwoods are really tolerant (they are a common landscaping tree, for just this reason) of that kind of pollution and the die-offs are happening in the LEAST polluted areas. Also, it isn't as simple as saying pollution. What kind of pollution? How does it affect the trees? If you don't answer these questions, anything you do could make the problem worse.
Recently there have been alot of odd problems in the coastal forests of California. The worst of them (IMHO) is sudden oak death. Large stands of century old (and older) oaks have been dying due to a pathogen that is similar to the one that caused the irish potato famine. It is also killing bays, madrones and some redwoods. No one really understands why this is happening. If it is due to human action, it is indirectly so, because there are dead stands of trees that are far away from any population centers.
Los Angeles county has nearly 10 million residents and 92,714 employees who serve them, so, yeah, 65,534 IP addresses seems reasonable.
Don't those little Toyota Priuses tend to tear up the roads less than those Lincoln Navigators? Doesn't it make sense to have a gas tax? Maybe these lawmakers are tired of being gouged at the pumps when they fill up their Ford Expeditions and feel envy at those little Honda Civic drivers that get by without paying nearly as much in tax?
Weight only matters above a certian axle load. Below it, you just don't do significant damage to pavement. Heavy trucks cause a problem, cars and light trucks don't. However, an Insight or Prius will consume just as much road space as a lincoln navigator or H1, and it's building and maintaining road space that's expensive.
mmmm.... explosive gases and fissile material in close proximity.
All the fun of blowing up a nuclear power plant with the explosives already provided. I really don't want to see hydrogen gas anywhere near a reactor.
A slashdot reader having sex with a hot girl????????
Either the poster's definition of hot, girl or sex is seriously out of whack.
It's the Ezra core that has a 1/3 speed coprocessor. The newer core doesn't have this feature. Besides, if you aren't running CAD or playing 3D games, you don't use the math co that much.
"Clean Diesel" isn't very clean. While very fuel efficient compared to a spark ignition engine, the so-called celan diesel engines have severe NOX emissions problems. This is important, because it is NOX (or actually the resulting ground level ozone), NOT CO2 that has an effect on human health.
Hybirds, which you mention, on the other hand are an important development. They allow an ICE (gas or diesel or turbine for that matter) They allow the engine to run much closer to its peak efficiency (by averaging the load using the battery), which saves fuel and reduces emissions.
One of the big differences between American and European air quality policy is that American regulators in the U.S. have chosen to trade fuel efficency for improved public health, while europeans would rather have people suffer from lung disease to fend off the spectre of global warming
Here's a couple of links to cool historic planning maps for San Francisco and Los Angeles. The will to do these things didn't last long enough to finish though.
Another interesting "roads of future past" link is interregional highways, which shows what the interstate system was meant to look like in 1944, before it was called the interstate system.
It's one of the main componants of summer smog and is usually the most harmful (CO and particulates are more harmful in winter). It irritates lungs and eyes.
Widespread use of ozone for pest control would probably cause more severe air quality problems in places like California's Central Valley, which already has a bad smog problem, due to its topology as well as a combination of unregulated agricultural equipment, pollution blowing in from the coastal cities (especially significant in the Sacramento Valley) and from the usual pollution that comes from any city.
If we can now mix oil and water, can geeks and hot women be far behind?
(ducking)
The other problems with this analogy are that the commons can be increased, without limit (theoretically), albeit at cost and time; and that if the commons are overgrazed, demand will die off from lack of availability without actually killing anyone off. (who wants to play quake 2 on the net when the lag is several minutes?)
The same is true of grazing land. In both cases the asset becomes significantly less valuable because of a poor pricing structure
This is essentially a pricing problem.
Here's a quote from the original 1968 paper that used the term
There are two common solutions to this kind of problem. Regulate use of the common resource or sell it. Because of the structure of the internet, it is hard to fairly price bandwidth and no good regulatory scheme has developed, so I don't see any other answer than living with it.
I just hope when I get a PDA implanted in my brain that it isn't running windows.
We already have a mechanism to do this its called price. At least for products where multiple manufacturers make the same product, or where several similar substitutes exist, the price is very close to the total of the inputs required to make a product.
This mechanism can break down in several circumstances. The most important is that there isn't a good pricing mechanism for a shared resource (such as air, water, grazing land or highway capacity). Working to ensure that common resources are paid for would do more to help the environment than requiring silly lablels (which in themselves carry a significant cost).
Although not the one ring to rule them all there is this handy-dandy origami ring: http://members.tripod.com/cecilia_liu/ring.htm
.ogg is the extension for ogg-vorbis media files. IIRC, this is set of standards for audio and video files. .ogg music files offer slightly better quality than .mp3's and don't have the liscencing issues that the mp3 format has (the content may have liscence issues, but the format doesn't). The drawbacks of the music format is that it isn't widely supported and is more computationally expensive.
Right now, only the compressed audio files exist.