Campaign Finance Reform should come in the following solutions.
Only Real Persons who are "Qualified Electors" in the district of an election should be allowed to give to campaigns.
All Contrabutions of any size should be disclosed.
Citizens should be allowed to bring charges for violations and have them prosecuted.
Heavy fines for those giving and those knowingly receiving violations should occur. If in office, IMMEDIATE REMOVAL should also apply and the prosecution here should be totally by Civilian Effort.
The penalty for any foreign national giving to a US Election should be DEATH. In addition this should apply to any US candidate or office holder knowingly taking the money or to their assistant who knowingly takes the money from a foreign person or Corporation!
There is no substitute for Citizenship here either. No person should be a Qualified Elector unless they reside in the district of the election and are a taxpayer in the district. If you don't pay the bills you should not decide how the money is spent. It is beyond irresponsible to allow parties to vote who cannot or do not support the system.
Finally the USA Citizens had better take seriously the fact that they need to quit listening to slick media campaigns and choosing parties because "They can win." They need to support the parties who support and care about their country.
Remember Membership is India PAC or the India Caucus is TREASON. It would apply to any party elected to US office who sells his representation to another nation. These are our Benedict Arnold Congressmen and Senators.
I am not being trite when I say read the US Bill of Rights. This is not to say that the EU is not substantially improved from the past, nor to disrespect their current condition. It is also not ignorant of the Domestic Disregard given to the Bill of Rights.
To be painfully accurate there are some areas the EU may actually be paving the way and US Citizens should not be to arrogant. However; the USA has substantial advantages in the Ownership of Property, rights to political dissent and the rights to defend ones rights. These involve a vast improvement in the rights to relief from problems with the government via a court system that despite all its flaws is orders of magnitude more likely to answer to the interests of ordinary people when they dispute with the strong and powerful than in EU or elsewhere.
There is also a very substantial issue of FACT regards the stated government and the delivery. In the USA most people take for granted that the Police and Courts actually will deal with problems and redress without bribery. This is substantially flawed in its delivery even in the EU in comparison.
The American complaints against a progressively declining state of personal liberty are valid. The EU remarks on current progress are valid. The status of fact is a wide seperation in delivery vs expectations. EU types have been raised under a system where they delt with a thousand years of entrenched bureaucracy with its systematic and embedded corruption at a level beyond any American Imagination. They see some improvements in this and have imagined that they are equal or better than the USA which is clearly trending towards the EU condition. In individual cases they may actually be better but taken as a whole, the EU Condition is so intolerably worse than the US condition that Americans would meet it with Firearms if it were suddenly imposed on them.
Much of the current Economic troubles in the USA and Social Discord are the result of this trend towards EU solutions and methods.
You asked for a explanation. You got it! In synopsis, the EU is a Bureacratic Super State where Citizens have no particular rights except those granted by PERMIT. The Brussels system will further dominate the area by an Oligarchy and the delivery of individual freedom in the EU is questionable at best in FACT. The US System is degrading towards the EU model. Regards "social" issues the EU is a socialist mecca. Some personal demands they make in exchange for their rights include the loss of freedom to change jobs easily in exchange for the protection of employment, better severance pay, and a more assured retirement.
This is not to say that they are worse or better in these areas. This illustrates the complete NON-Parity of the comparison. Imagine you not being able to quit your job today unless you want to pay your employer. Imagine having 5 weeks of vacation paid a year vs none or just 2 weeks. Imagine your employer required to pay benefits such as Health Care. Some may read this as EU better and US worse. Some may see it US Better.
Pretty much an example that as soon as you beat the bad guys tech, they change it. Frankly the whole issue regards jammers is best illustrated by why are they protecting our President with it and NOT protecting our soldiers in Iraq with it. If you have someone in your family who is serving in Iraq, buy them a cell phone jammer. They are cheap and available over seas.
In the mean time roast the back side of your congress critter for not supplying this tech for our soldiers to be safe.
Sorry to disappoint some but the human stuff is at least in the USA very often used for methane production. Many municipal Sewerage Treament plants do this already. Decatur Alabama has done so for years and runs many city cars on it. Florence Alabama drilled their landfill and did same.
Finally somebody who gets it! Terrorism may be some threat, but a government saying "Boo" every day is a much bigger threat.
I live in the area of Huntsville, Alabama. This city besides being home to much of Uncle Sam's "Whizz Bang Gun" development and management is also home to a substantial part of the US Space Effort.
Huntsville, Alabama is the home to a monument that tells just how much a lie "Homeland Security" and all this secrecy stuff is. The monument one block east of Monroe and Green Street intersection is to the encampment of Andrew Jackson (US $20 Bill). There he camped on his way to Horseshoe Bend. There the followers of Manitu a extremist religious sect of American Indians doing exactly what happened with 9/11/2001 (except the aircraft) to US People were smashed by Andrew Jacksons small force and an 50,000 man Cherokee Army.
This war was so identical to the current one that it even had a mad one eyed prophet like Mullah Omar leading it and a charismatic leader like Osama Bin Ladin. The military defeats as important as the were were not the solution. The solution was not a CIA-FBI "connect a dot" either. It was the rise of an art falling into disrespect in the USA at this time. It was the rise of CITIZENSHIP.
The simple fact is that no level of secrets will protect the world from terrorists. The only thing that can protect from these awful people is the agressive deliberate pattern of watching out for and caring for your fellow man. Take the Madrid Train bombings for example. They would have been prevented by as simple an act as one person noting that another had dropped his bag and was leaving the train. The simple act of kindness of paying attention and saying "Excuse me you forgot your bag" would have made the whole situation much safer. The strange behavior of either picking it up and staying on the train or leaving it behind deliberately would have been the tip-off. This is Citizenship! Citizenship is also being armed and ready to oppose as well. But you see, that doesn't require shaking US Taxpayers down for a Trillion Dollars or make political leaders powerful does it?
The study is entirely correct. The data access is no problem. The problem is people not caring for each other.
Side Note: In Iraq the USA cannot win. It is impossible. ONLY IRAQ can win or lose in Iraq. If they do not develop the serious caring for each other and this art of Citizenship, they can only hope for destruction. The USA may defeat their terrorists and make the country momentarily "peaceful" but until Iraqi people develop "Citizenship" they are doomed. In developing Citizenship, the victory of the Iraqi's will also be a US Victory. Their failure will not represent a defeat of the USA. On the contrary it will represent a normal condition outside the USA and just a continuation of danger for the USA. In the History of Mankind this victory of Iraq is critical for the safety of mankind. These lessons from the back woods of Alabama and Indiana are PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT!
At least a fair question or two. The thermal efficiency of a standard car engine assuming you are actually using the torque it produces is about 18% or less. The current Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell is achieving 65%. There are still development problems but they are following a development curve that indicates that they should be quite practical very shortly. This development has been progressing quite well. Essentially the problem at this time is that the devices are "one off" prototypes rather than mass produced copies driving up the cost.
The advantage of a Hybred comes from storing up waste energy or operating the Primary Energy Converter at the peak of its power curve. There is no savings at high demand situations.
Contrary to all those claims of greater storage efficiencies, the losses and charge rates for batteries and life span issues are just awful. I pointed out in a higher post that the interest of the military was dual use. In their case they do lots of very low duty driving and in battle they bring the equal of 3 devices for the cost of one with a hybred. This issue just really isn't a very civilian set of issues. (Bringing a Generator and the fuel container and setting it up after driving ~ HEV does this in one shot)
The hydrogen in the Reformer set is cracked from the fuel directly. There are profound savings here. The vehicle has NO ENGINE, NO TRANSMISSION and NO BRAKES! It so alters the equation for vehicle development that people will hardly recognize them when this comes in. The Vehicle can weigh something like 40% less doing the same job and much more.
Regards your questions about electrical cracking for hydrogen they don't apply here. None the less electrical cracking for hydrogen is not as impractical as one might think. A very substantial part of electrial generation is lost keeping reserve in the net. Electrolysis cells can be switched so efficiently that they can load the grid just about 100% and be taken off line as demand appears allowing this lost power to be used.
A grid with solar or wind or geothermal or nuclear power as substantial sources or large facilities with long lead times on spin up finds these electrical losses very high and the more these exist the more Hydrogen as a fuel becomes a very attractive option.
Since my work is researching HEV's and I keep pretty well up to date on the tech, I might have a point or two.
HEV's are a passing technology an interim beast which really is already out of date. They never would have existed if the numbers had been balanced. HEV's in battery storage cannot be more than about 10% thermally efficient. That's pretty rotten considering that they must do that downside of the engine efficiency. They do have the advantage of allowing Electricity to charge them up when parked. The energy efficiency issues hit this too.
There is a far better technology coming right away. It is a Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell combo. It has all of the advantages of storing braking energy etc and none of the difficulties with batteries etc that correspond in scale to the Prius etc.
Military interest in Hybrids is related to dual use of the generator. There is also stealth.
I expect that a civilian buying a hybred thinking they are saving energy or getting a good deal is going to get stuck. The technology just isn't that good. There are exceptions to this. If you are a route driver like a mail currier you will win with a hybrid. If your commute is a lot of stop and go stuff with long periods of stop or very slow driving, it pays off. The more long high speed driving you do, the less value the hybrid is going to have.
The whole issue of taxing "Custom Software" makes the assumption that it is untaxed. It is quite taxed so long as it is made in the USA. The Labor of the Employees makes it's cost nearly 70% tax.
The whole issue on a duty on software from anywhere else has to do with the disparity of the tax situations. To be most brief the Citizens of the USA are consigned by Congress to pay pretty high taxes. The purposes for these taxes include care of the elderly, national armed forces, various national purposes, and of course the US National Debt.
The load for retirement in the USA will approach 30% of gross payrolls in just 17 years. To allow Americans to carry all of these burdens and then to compel them to live in the "World Market" is national suicide. This will compel the workers to face ruin or to abandon the support of the various US National efforts and costs.
The concept that the USA should have to compete head to head even inside their own market against this situation forms a "Classic Trade War" against US Citizens by their own government. Essentially all players here should have to pay here. In addition mechanisms (WTO has prevented these) need to be developed to allow the Americans to lower their taxation for export markets so that they can trade world wide.
If a tax on imports is NOT imposed the only solution here is to remove the INCOME TAXES entirely and replace them with a National Sales Tax. Check out the Fair tax This allows much of this to be achieved.
Judging by the other posts and etc, I would say it is a generated post, though I would doubt a computer generated it. Many "Gay" references indicate something else is going on.
Also this is a bit of historical CRAP. No doubt that the man may have done some important things, but Inventing the Idea of computers is not one of them. The invention of the computer as a concept is as old as the vision of a machine that can do something. Bluntly "Prior Art." His sesquipedalian obfuscation of articulation is simply that.
The history of the computer is more profoundly tied to Jaquard Lace and the US Census etc. I suppose that the code cracking efforts during the two world wars. R. Adm.Grace Hopper might have had some real influence here too. Ada might have entered the processes too!
The deliberate warping of history for various political and other purposes is also a "Prior Art." It doesn't make it any less of a curiousity or right though.
Just as a curious point, SAE standard bolts usually are stronger regards torque etc per same general dimensions. (approx) This is a product of the one fact that all of the pro-metric guys fail to recognize. While the math may be harder for some things, in space division the Imperial system is vastly superior. It was designed to provide for space division as naturally happens. This I am sure will engender some argument but is so.
Space Division provides for the agreement to natural dimensions of materials and division for spaces. This is vastly superior to an artificial system using superior math (decimal) abilities.
I have used both measuring systems in production of Millwork. Sorry but Imperial measures and Imperial threading is VASTLY superior for physical object handling. I will admit that computers like decimals.
The issue of distances and land measures is one which there is no good system. Miles or Kilometers it makes no difference in measuring land. The earth isn't flat! As such all systems are inaccurate. The USA system of division is so written into our land, that it would be impossible to remove it in a thousand years. Merely changing the units would make continual conversions last forever. As to Road Signs etc. Why change. It makes no difference except to arguments. The Cost of changing is profoundly expensive and hopelessly annoying. It serves no useful purpose.
The Issue of Linux on the other hand is being virally solved in the USA. The critical function work like missile defense and NASA work is rapidly going to Linux. Mission critical stuff is rapidly going Linux. This is the actual driver of the choice of OS. The rest will follow suit in time. It just isn't going to be some "Dramatic" thing.
The previous post is absolutely correct about Kyoto system of quotas being broken. This is for the fundamental reason that there are no quotas for most nations on the earth.
The flaws in Kyoto are deeper than this though. Kyoto refused to consider CO2 "Sinks." This is because the USA is a big CO2 Sink because of its vast agriculture and vast forrests, something that for all practical purposes other nations don't even have.
Another failing of Kyoto is the failure to consider "Final Product" efficiencies. A vast majority of US Consumption of Carbon Fuels is for the production of Agricultural Products which for the most part are consumed outside of the USA. In addition the USA buys massive amounts of Oil but it also sells the refined products of that oil in some considerable quantities. The list of these issues goes on and on.
The purpose of Kyoto is not environmental correction. Had it been so, measures to correct the environment of most of the world would not have been over looked or exempted. The Purpose of Kyoto is to HOBBLE the USA in the global Market. It is fundamentally a "Anti-American" document. The US Senate saw this and 100% of all voting members voted against the treaty on this account. Rest assured that there are plenty of Senators who, had it been over the Environment as is presented by some, they would have voted for the treaty even if all other features were questionable.
This treaty is so screwed up that NORWAY can produce most of the Natural Gas and much of the Oil for Europe, but It cannot burn it and sell the Electricity! They are denied the "Value Added" money from their product and in the end, the resulting emissions are actually up due to the freight to deliver the goods. Other nations can burn Norway product gas but Norway cannot burn it!
Yea! Like the USA should only look for prepackaged educated people from over seas as the solution. That's the problem. It makes sure that no kid from the USA can even seek work in the field. It leaves US Kids only PAYING for the HIRING of their foreign competition.
The US Government has destracted all research into the Drug Production and Military Areas. The methods for this destraction included taxing the people highly so that there is no real private money left for R&D of new things. It also makes sure that if you design a new product that the production of it must happen out of the country.
Generally this produced a disconnect between the people and the research business. Frankly they see no benefit to funding R&D or study in the sciences. The reasons are pretty simple. By Funding R&D you obsolete the current tech. This causes you if you do a productive job to have to reeducate yourself and to have to risk long periods of unemployment. It produces career instability. Thus the "Brainy" types are a threat not a benefit. Had the R&D money stayed in the private hands or been slanted towards making more jobs for working types with its results, it would not have been seen that way.
To be much more precise, Benedict Arnold Synonym for Traitor in the USA was General in the US Army who betrayed his command at West Point, New York. The proper and very precise analog to this in modern day American would not be a CEO though I suppose they too can be traitors to their country. The very precise analog is a UNITED STATES SENATOR, UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE or US PRESIDENT who betrays his countrymen by selling out his country. In this definition, let the chips fall where they may.
It is possible that Mr. Kerry might just fit this definition as most definitely Mr. Bush does. For the Mods etc: These men both have sold out the sovreignty of the USA to the WTO and have prosecuted a policy of trade war in the most classic way against the Citizens of the USA. This is what the whole trade fuss is about.
Definition of a Trade War is where a government selects parties to tax so heavily as to prohibit them access to a market. The US Citizens are taxed so relative to their own market which is flooded with foreign parties who do not pay such taxes that the US Workers are essentially prohibited from their own market and defacto from the World Market as well.
When members of the US House and US Senate are forming India Pac etc to represent the interests of India against those of the people who elected them in the USA (Hillary Clinton, Bill Frist and many others) and to take the money of these foreign interests the TREASON of their actions is open for all to see. No spies need be caught to find this out this time!
I will be most precise. The founding fathers of the United States of America were neither traitors to Britan nor were they tolerant of those who might be traitors to their nation. They were as they saw it merely English Citizens demanding their rights as Englishmen only to have War leveled against them by a CRAZY (Documented Medical Fact) king and by a Parliment who was more interested in screwing the Colonies even harder than what was already going on.
Don't give me that crap about England fairly laying taxes on the Colonies. That flies in the face of the definition of a colony. The colony was a corporate entity which operated for the profit of the home management in England. These people already paid most of their income to England as (Profits) a form of taxation. Laying heavy taxes on top of that merely threatened their ability to even do business at all.
The founders of the United States of America were so honest and decent that as they settled the peace, they even paid in gold the sum value of any goods taken in the course of the war such as guns and flints and powder taken at Ticonderoga. They were neither rebels nor thieves. Before and even for a period of nearly 18 months after hostilities had begun, they made valient efforts trying to settle matters and remain English. It was only at threat of their towns burned that they broke away. The United States did not SEEK independence, England Forced it! The US Declaration of Independence merely stated known facts!
Ben Franklin (US $100 Bill) and never a US President, was a PRO British representative sent by the Congress to try to settle the matter. It was only after being repeatedly abused that He turned to the US Independence Cause.
Also The US War for Independence was not as portayed in many locations today. It was an ATTACK by the Armed Forces of England on the established Government of the Region which was repelled at great cost. The Colonial Forces were the government here for 150 years prior to the War. They were being crushed by England. Their trade and their safety were attacked by the Colonial Masters who sought not only to take about 1/3 of their revenue (Gross) as Colonial Profits but another 1/3 or so in Taxes!
Time was that you could enter a store do business and leave without anyone knowing or tracking you. Now they will know everything you buy.
It will all be benign until some government type (Probably with Walmart pushing the issue behind the scenes) discovers he can grab the data, crunch it in the data base and extract everyone who violated the most recent public policy he wants to enforce and go after you for possession of the means to do something. The doing act implied of course may never have entered your mind.
Let a despot take office and they will sweep you up based upon the nearly infinite records of your life that such as RFID allowed.
But then I suppose that "Tin Foil" hat must be getting old by now. Surely many will discount the danger. Remember you don't have to see the danger for it to be real. It only has to happen to you.
This is rather like the current situation with debit cards. Your bank promices that fraud is no problem. Then your numbers get stolen and suddenly they forget that you were promiced anything and fall back on the law which says NO PROTECTION! Then you fall into the list of "Non Persons" wiped free of your credit and unable to complain because your money is gone.
RFID has a serious problem. You may be assessed by an automatic checkout device for items you never even handled. This could be the result of a clever person extracting the RFID tag from one item and putting it on something you bought. But you could be arrested for shoplifting or billed for the items you never bought.
RFID will become another way for Organized Crime to hide its activities by innocents getting stuck. RFID probably would be a great idea so long as it is seriously contained legally but it isn't.
There might be another reason that Sun is losing out. It might just be that they have pushed all that "Outsourcing" "H-1B" stuff to the limit. My understanding is they about wrote the book on the process and have several Indians in their board or high mgt. I have noticed that as soon as you see a company "Outsourcing" and pushing H-1B etc, they shortly are dying out.
Since I live near Athens Alabama where Frank and Jessie James were born (The Outlaws you refered to ) and near Huntsville where Frank and Jessie got started in their trouble making I also know a little bit about them. I know he died in Mo. (Jessie James bandit) I know that the brothers lived for some time in Nashville, Tn. I also know I bought carpet in 1985 from a "James Carpets" which was run by a "Jessie James" who was a relative of the famous guy and this Jessie had a brother named Frank.
His decendants have quite a liking for the family name and famous first names. The "Monster Garage" guy claims he is a decendant.
If I told you that I once did business with Huey, Dewy and Lewy Duck you would be sure I was lying... I am not! They are local characters too but not cartoon ones.
Regards the "Flatter Planet" I would not suggest that but rather that continents etc have moved up and down a fact for which we have an enormous abundance of evidence. (Like the Appallacian ridges being ocean bottom sediments etc.) However; having known several parties who attempted to find the Noah's Ark I can report a few curious things.
I always found these persons remarkably well motivated, extremely well intended and scrupulously honest and bluntly just awfully poor scientists and mountain climbers. There was one exception who was Neal Armstrong (Yes that one!) and he tried to mount a proper effort. It got hit by Kurdish Terrorists.
Years ago I was talking with some of them and I suggested to them that the use of photos from space or high altitude would help and they acted in awe at the concept. There actually is pretty good evidence for the Ark being there.
Up until about 850 years ago regular annual trips went up to the Ark with Many persons reporting on it. Too many of these occurred for this to have been fiction. On one of the modern expeditions (1980's) men brought back wood which appeared to match the ark specs which was taken from near the historically reported site. (Currently under ice) This wood is of a species not living today and similar to cypress which lives nowhere near the mountain now. It is of the proper carbon dated age range and has the proper machining marks to match. I have personnaly seen the article of wood. It isn't little!
I sincerely doubt that even if the ark is found and is substantially intact that it will change any hearts or minds. The Atheists will remain adamant that it is a fabrication. The Biblical scholars will argue as usual and the Islamic nuts will...
There is a large amount of other evidence supporting the Noah's ark story in the region. Recent expeditions found the anchor stones from it in the proper region for them to have been dropped.
One thing that should be abundantly clear to those of us not from the region is that the people there have an acute and long mememory of events including the keeping of relics and "holy" sites. The current Iraq war should have brought this home. The local people who have very accurate data on many thousands of years of events have no doubt of the Ark story. Archeology types haave spent a great deal of effort trying to deny bibilical stories as with many others from the region only to find that they confirm the stories and deny almost nothing. Frankly it would be a bad bet to bet against them on this one.
A classic in Archeology about how outsiders try hard to ignore the locals occurred in the research on Easter Island. (AKU AKU the secret of Easter Island is the book) The investigation went on for about 2 years and about the time they were going to leave, with many puzzles in mind, the head researcher asked the mayor of the Island if he knew anything about these statues etc. Then the story came out. The Mayor was a direct decendant of those who made the statues and he even knew how to make them, move them etc. He then showed them how! All over the world arrogant academics have tried to explain things any way but how the locals say and they end up finding out that the people know!
In answer to your question you are correct about the earth "being compressed" but you may have missed something. This concept says that things are "pushed" not attracted. As such the the thing itself would not have more "Gravity Pull" the area around it would be pressing harder.This is why the earth would be "Compressed." (Obvious I know but...) It appears the same just the cause is different. Actually I misstated in my previous post saying corresponds to a pressure, more precisely to a pressure differential like more on one side than another. The earth or any other body with "Gravity" is actually a low pressure area like a hurricane and the area around it is high pressure.
Of course the physics types will say I am totally wrong. So if you want to get along in Physics class don't admit you even read this post. Naturally the Physics types have died and become God anyway so I guess it is best to get along with the "Gods." They adhere to a "religion" who punishes its heritics more certainly than the most dedicated Islamic militant or other religious extremist. They have a dogma or writ more rigid than any such persons as well.
For a simple proof of the issue of it being an electromagnetic effect, all you have to do is look to a Hydro lake. The water in the lake falling out of the lake releases the energy of the "Higher Pressure" and generates electricity. If you return the water to the lake it is accomplished by adding EM energy equal to that corresponding to the altitude. (Equation balanced no Gravity just EM forces) Of course the Physics types have written into the system a "Potential Energy" concept rather than recognizing that it is merely an energy content issue.
Of course to believe in Gravity as a force you have to deny the laws of Motion (Equal and opposite reaction etc) but that never bothered the Physics types. They write their own laws any time they conflict with reality.
It is lots of fun to watch them spend billions hunting around for the latest "Quark" or "Charm" or "Strange" something trying to get a unified field when the answer lies in Electro-Optics and Quantum Mechanics
If you want to understand why they get so messed up take a long trip into the history of "Natural Philosopy" which evolved into their art and look at the Ideologies they took from verious religions and political Philosophies of the various times. It is funny and about as hopeless as a trip to an insane assylum. For short let us just say that they decided something was a fact and went about to frame the world that way rather than checking a hypothesis and throwing it out if it was wrong.
Chickens "pluck" themselves annually... its called a molt. They just cannot use their feathers for a while...
As to plucking chickens for meat purposes boiling hot water works great. Takes a few second and the rest is pretty much grabbing and pulling. (a bit tedious) Done this once or twice!
Being the proud(??) owner of some 47 of these adaptive wing things with highly adaptive wings for various flight conditions from hover to forward flight at full speed etc I have an opinion on this issue that might just be of value. (I own 47 chickens) Frankly if these guys want to adapt feathers why don't they try the first rather silly thought and COPY feathers?
While chickens suffer from a very heavy body largely due to the genetic minipulation by various means of human beings attempting to mess up their flight characteristics for other purposes, they actually are pretty able fliers at times. Feathers are pretty amazing things and frankly I would think that the guys with Composite structures would find their manufacturing process profoundly useful. Just as a hint for the curious, feathers are blown up like balloons and are not living at any stage in their development. They depend upon a protein similar to finger nails and it is emitted as a monomer solution which is blown up like a balloon and which dries like latex paint. The cracking of the drying and the particular mix of the content at various stages of development produces the feather structure.
Feathers could be built using some sort of graphite composite and a matrix such that they effectively functioned like natural feathers using the ratcheting action on the air. The extension structure for such an adaptive wing is already quite well designed in birds. It is pretty simple.
Since humans would not use such a wing to "Flap" (produce thrust) but only in glide states the operation of such a wing could be pretty simple. DARPA are you listening?
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Mod the Parent UP!
Campaign Finance Reform should come in the following solutions.
Only Real Persons who are "Qualified Electors" in the district of an election should be allowed to give to campaigns.
All Contrabutions of any size should be disclosed.
Citizens should be allowed to bring charges for violations and have them prosecuted.
Heavy fines for those giving and those knowingly receiving violations should occur. If in office, IMMEDIATE REMOVAL should also apply and the prosecution here should be totally by Civilian Effort.
The penalty for any foreign national giving to a US Election should be DEATH. In addition this should apply to any US candidate or office holder knowingly taking the money or to their assistant who knowingly takes the money from a foreign person or Corporation!
There is no substitute for Citizenship here either. No person should be a Qualified Elector unless they reside in the district of the election and are a taxpayer in the district. If you don't pay the bills you should not decide how the money is spent. It is beyond irresponsible to allow parties to vote who cannot or do not support the system.
Finally the USA Citizens had better take seriously the fact that they need to quit listening to slick media campaigns and choosing parties because "They can win." They need to support the parties who support and care about their country.
Remember Membership is India PAC or the India Caucus is TREASON. It would apply to any party elected to US office who sells his representation to another nation. These are our Benedict Arnold Congressmen and Senators.
I am not being trite when I say read the US Bill of Rights. This is not to say that the EU is not substantially improved from the past, nor to disrespect their current condition. It is also not ignorant of the Domestic Disregard given to the Bill of Rights.
To be painfully accurate there are some areas the EU may actually be paving the way and US Citizens should not be to arrogant. However; the USA has substantial advantages in the Ownership of Property, rights to political dissent and the rights to defend ones rights. These involve a vast improvement in the rights to relief from problems with the government via a court system that despite all its flaws is orders of magnitude more likely to answer to the interests of ordinary people when they dispute with the strong and powerful than in EU or elsewhere.
There is also a very substantial issue of FACT regards the stated government and the delivery. In the USA most people take for granted that the Police and Courts actually will deal with problems and redress without bribery. This is substantially flawed in its delivery even in the EU in comparison.
The American complaints against a progressively declining state of personal liberty are valid. The EU remarks on current progress are valid. The status of fact is a wide seperation in delivery vs expectations. EU types have been raised under a system where they delt with a thousand years of entrenched bureaucracy with its systematic and embedded corruption at a level beyond any American Imagination. They see some improvements in this and have imagined that they are equal or better than the USA which is clearly trending towards the EU condition. In individual cases they may actually be better but taken as a whole, the EU Condition is so intolerably worse than the US condition that Americans would meet it with Firearms if it were suddenly imposed on them.
Much of the current Economic troubles in the USA and Social Discord are the result of this trend towards EU solutions and methods.
You asked for a explanation. You got it! In synopsis, the EU is a Bureacratic Super State where Citizens have no particular rights except those granted by PERMIT. The Brussels system will further dominate the area by an Oligarchy and the delivery of individual freedom in the EU is questionable at best in FACT. The US System is degrading towards the EU model. Regards "social" issues the EU is a socialist mecca. Some personal demands they make in exchange for their rights include the loss of freedom to change jobs easily in exchange for the protection of employment, better severance pay, and a more assured retirement.
This is not to say that they are worse or better in these areas. This illustrates the complete NON-Parity of the comparison. Imagine you not being able to quit your job today unless you want to pay your employer. Imagine having 5 weeks of vacation paid a year vs none or just 2 weeks. Imagine your employer required to pay benefits such as Health Care. Some may read this as EU better and US worse. Some may see it US Better.
Pretty much an example that as soon as you beat the bad guys tech, they change it. Frankly the whole issue regards jammers is best illustrated by why are they protecting our President with it and NOT protecting our soldiers in Iraq with it. If you have someone in your family who is serving in Iraq, buy them a cell phone jammer. They are cheap and available over seas.
In the mean time roast the back side of your congress critter for not supplying this tech for our soldiers to be safe.
US Aircraft carriers of the currently used type don't use gasoline or Oil of any type for propulsion
Sorry to disappoint some but the human stuff is at least in the USA very often used for methane production. Many municipal Sewerage Treament plants do this already. Decatur Alabama has done so for years and runs many city cars on it. Florence Alabama drilled their landfill and did same.
Rumor has it that Congress is setting up in the business. Damn there goes the whole market!
Finally somebody who gets it! Terrorism may be some threat, but a government saying "Boo" every day is a much bigger threat.
I live in the area of Huntsville, Alabama. This city besides being home to much of Uncle Sam's "Whizz Bang Gun" development and management is also home to a substantial part of the US Space Effort.
Huntsville, Alabama is the home to a monument that tells just how much a lie "Homeland Security" and all this secrecy stuff is. The monument one block east of Monroe and Green Street intersection is to the encampment of Andrew Jackson (US $20 Bill). There he camped on his way to Horseshoe Bend. There the followers of Manitu a extremist religious sect of American Indians doing exactly what happened with 9/11/2001 (except the aircraft) to US People were smashed by Andrew Jacksons small force and an 50,000 man Cherokee Army.
This war was so identical to the current one that it even had a mad one eyed prophet like Mullah Omar leading it and a charismatic leader like Osama Bin Ladin. The military defeats as important as the were were not the solution. The solution was not a CIA-FBI "connect a dot" either. It was the rise of an art falling into disrespect in the USA at this time. It was the rise of CITIZENSHIP.
The simple fact is that no level of secrets will protect the world from terrorists. The only thing that can protect from these awful people is the agressive deliberate pattern of watching out for and caring for your fellow man. Take the Madrid Train bombings for example. They would have been prevented by as simple an act as one person noting that another had dropped his bag and was leaving the train. The simple act of kindness of paying attention and saying "Excuse me you forgot your bag" would have made the whole situation much safer. The strange behavior of either picking it up and staying on the train or leaving it behind deliberately would have been the tip-off. This is Citizenship! Citizenship is also being armed and ready to oppose as well. But you see, that doesn't require shaking US Taxpayers down for a Trillion Dollars or make political leaders powerful does it?
The study is entirely correct. The data access is no problem. The problem is people not caring for each other.
Side Note: In Iraq the USA cannot win. It is impossible. ONLY IRAQ can win or lose in Iraq. If they do not develop the serious caring for each other and this art of Citizenship, they can only hope for destruction. The USA may defeat their terrorists and make the country momentarily "peaceful" but until Iraqi people develop "Citizenship" they are doomed. In developing Citizenship, the victory of the Iraqi's will also be a US Victory. Their failure will not represent a defeat of the USA. On the contrary it will represent a normal condition outside the USA and just a continuation of danger for the USA. In the History of Mankind this victory of Iraq is critical for the safety of mankind. These lessons from the back woods of Alabama and Indiana are PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT!
At least a fair question or two. The thermal efficiency of a standard car engine assuming you are actually using the torque it produces is about 18% or less. The current Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell is achieving 65%. There are still development problems but they are following a development curve that indicates that they should be quite practical very shortly. This development has been progressing quite well. Essentially the problem at this time is that the devices are "one off" prototypes rather than mass produced copies driving up the cost.
The advantage of a Hybred comes from storing up waste energy or operating the Primary Energy Converter at the peak of its power curve. There is no savings at high demand situations.
Contrary to all those claims of greater storage efficiencies, the losses and charge rates for batteries and life span issues are just awful. I pointed out in a higher post that the interest of the military was dual use. In their case they do lots of very low duty driving and in battle they bring the equal of 3 devices for the cost of one with a hybred. This issue just really isn't a very civilian set of issues. (Bringing a Generator and the fuel container and setting it up after driving ~ HEV does this in one shot)
The hydrogen in the Reformer set is cracked from the fuel directly. There are profound savings here. The vehicle has NO ENGINE, NO TRANSMISSION and NO BRAKES! It so alters the equation for vehicle development that people will hardly recognize them when this comes in. The Vehicle can weigh something like 40% less doing the same job and much more.
Regards your questions about electrical cracking for hydrogen they don't apply here. None the less electrical cracking for hydrogen is not as impractical as one might think. A very substantial part of electrial generation is lost keeping reserve in the net. Electrolysis cells can be switched so efficiently that they can load the grid just about 100% and be taken off line as demand appears allowing this lost power to be used.
A grid with solar or wind or geothermal or nuclear power as substantial sources or large facilities with long lead times on spin up finds these electrical losses very high and the more these exist the more Hydrogen as a fuel becomes a very attractive option.
Since my work is researching HEV's and I keep pretty well up to date on the tech, I might have a point or two.
HEV's are a passing technology an interim beast which really is already out of date. They never would have existed if the numbers had been balanced. HEV's in battery storage cannot be more than about 10% thermally efficient. That's pretty rotten considering that they must do that downside of the engine efficiency. They do have the advantage of allowing Electricity to charge them up when parked. The energy efficiency issues hit this too.
There is a far better technology coming right away. It is a Fuel Reformer/Fuel Cell combo. It has all of the advantages of storing braking energy etc and none of the difficulties with batteries etc that correspond in scale to the Prius etc.
Military interest in Hybrids is related to dual use of the generator. There is also stealth.
I expect that a civilian buying a hybred thinking they are saving energy or getting a good deal is going to get stuck. The technology just isn't that good. There are exceptions to this. If you are a route driver like a mail currier you will win with a hybrid. If your commute is a lot of stop and go stuff with long periods of stop or very slow driving, it pays off. The more long high speed driving you do, the less value the hybrid is going to have.
The whole issue of taxing "Custom Software" makes the assumption that it is untaxed. It is quite taxed so long as it is made in the USA. The Labor of the Employees makes it's cost nearly 70% tax.
The whole issue on a duty on software from anywhere else has to do with the disparity of the tax situations. To be most brief the Citizens of the USA are consigned by Congress to pay pretty high taxes. The purposes for these taxes include care of the elderly, national armed forces, various national purposes, and of course the US National Debt.
The load for retirement in the USA will approach 30% of gross payrolls in just 17 years. To allow Americans to carry all of these burdens and then to compel them to live in the "World Market" is national suicide. This will compel the workers to face ruin or to abandon the support of the various US National efforts and costs.
The concept that the USA should have to compete head to head even inside their own market against this situation forms a "Classic Trade War" against US Citizens by their own government. Essentially all players here should have to pay here. In addition mechanisms (WTO has prevented these) need to be developed to allow the Americans to lower their taxation for export markets so that they can trade world wide.
If a tax on imports is NOT imposed the only solution here is to remove the INCOME TAXES entirely and replace them with a National Sales Tax. Check out the Fair tax This allows much of this to be achieved.
Judging by the other posts and etc, I would say it is a generated post, though I would doubt a computer generated it. Many "Gay" references indicate something else is going on.
Also this is a bit of historical CRAP. No doubt that the man may have done some important things, but Inventing the Idea of computers is not one of them. The invention of the computer as a concept is as old as the vision of a machine that can do something. Bluntly "Prior Art." His sesquipedalian obfuscation of articulation is simply that.
The history of the computer is more profoundly tied to Jaquard Lace and the US Census etc. I suppose that the code cracking efforts during the two world wars. R. Adm.Grace Hopper might have had some real influence here too. Ada might have entered the processes too!
The deliberate warping of history for various political and other purposes is also a "Prior Art." It doesn't make it any less of a curiousity or right though.
Just as a curious point, SAE standard bolts usually are stronger regards torque etc per same general dimensions. (approx) This is a product of the one fact that all of the pro-metric guys fail to recognize. While the math may be harder for some things, in space division the Imperial system is vastly superior. It was designed to provide for space division as naturally happens. This I am sure will engender some argument but is so.
Space Division provides for the agreement to natural dimensions of materials and division for spaces. This is vastly superior to an artificial system using superior math (decimal) abilities.
I have used both measuring systems in production of Millwork. Sorry but Imperial measures and Imperial threading is VASTLY superior for physical object handling. I will admit that computers like decimals.
The issue of distances and land measures is one which there is no good system. Miles or Kilometers it makes no difference in measuring land. The earth isn't flat! As such all systems are inaccurate. The USA system of division is so written into our land, that it would be impossible to remove it in a thousand years. Merely changing the units would make continual conversions last forever. As to Road Signs etc. Why change. It makes no difference except to arguments. The Cost of changing is profoundly expensive and hopelessly annoying. It serves no useful purpose.
The Issue of Linux on the other hand is being virally solved in the USA. The critical function work like missile defense and NASA work is rapidly going to Linux. Mission critical stuff is rapidly going Linux. This is the actual driver of the choice of OS. The rest will follow suit in time. It just isn't going to be some "Dramatic" thing.
The previous post is absolutely correct about Kyoto system of quotas being broken. This is for the fundamental reason that there are no quotas for most nations on the earth.
The flaws in Kyoto are deeper than this though. Kyoto refused to consider CO2 "Sinks." This is because the USA is a big CO2 Sink because of its vast agriculture and vast forrests, something that for all practical purposes other nations don't even have.
Another failing of Kyoto is the failure to consider "Final Product" efficiencies. A vast majority of US Consumption of Carbon Fuels is for the production of Agricultural Products which for the most part are consumed outside of the USA. In addition the USA buys massive amounts of Oil but it also sells the refined products of that oil in some considerable quantities. The list of these issues goes on and on.
The purpose of Kyoto is not environmental correction. Had it been so, measures to correct the environment of most of the world would not have been over looked or exempted. The Purpose of Kyoto is to HOBBLE the USA in the global Market. It is fundamentally a "Anti-American" document. The US Senate saw this and 100% of all voting members voted against the treaty on this account. Rest assured that there are plenty of Senators who, had it been over the Environment as is presented by some, they would have voted for the treaty even if all other features were questionable.
This treaty is so screwed up that NORWAY can produce most of the Natural Gas and much of the Oil for Europe, but It cannot burn it and sell the Electricity! They are denied the "Value Added" money from their product and in the end, the resulting emissions are actually up due to the freight to deliver the goods. Other nations can burn Norway product gas but Norway cannot burn it!
Yea! Like the USA should only look for prepackaged educated people from over seas as the solution. That's the problem. It makes sure that no kid from the USA can even seek work in the field. It leaves US Kids only PAYING for the HIRING of their foreign competition.
The US Government has destracted all research into the Drug Production and Military Areas. The methods for this destraction included taxing the people highly so that there is no real private money left for R&D of new things. It also makes sure that if you design a new product that the production of it must happen out of the country.
Generally this produced a disconnect between the people and the research business. Frankly they see no benefit to funding R&D or study in the sciences. The reasons are pretty simple. By Funding R&D you obsolete the current tech. This causes you if you do a productive job to have to reeducate yourself and to have to risk long periods of unemployment. It produces career instability. Thus the "Brainy" types are a threat not a benefit. Had the R&D money stayed in the private hands or been slanted towards making more jobs for working types with its results, it would not have been seen that way.
To be much more precise, Benedict Arnold Synonym for Traitor in the USA was General in the US Army who betrayed his command at West Point, New York. The proper and very precise analog to this in modern day American would not be a CEO though I suppose they too can be traitors to their country. The very precise analog is a UNITED STATES SENATOR, UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE or US PRESIDENT who betrays his countrymen by selling out his country. In this definition, let the chips fall where they may.
It is possible that Mr. Kerry might just fit this definition as most definitely Mr. Bush does. For the Mods etc: These men both have sold out the sovreignty of the USA to the WTO and have prosecuted a policy of trade war in the most classic way against the Citizens of the USA. This is what the whole trade fuss is about.
Definition of a Trade War is where a government selects parties to tax so heavily as to prohibit them access to a market. The US Citizens are taxed so relative to their own market which is flooded with foreign parties who do not pay such taxes that the US Workers are essentially prohibited from their own market and defacto from the World Market as well.
When members of the US House and US Senate are forming India Pac etc to represent the interests of India against those of the people who elected them in the USA (Hillary Clinton, Bill Frist and many others) and to take the money of these foreign interests the TREASON of their actions is open for all to see. No spies need be caught to find this out this time!
I will be most precise. The founding fathers of the United States of America were neither traitors to Britan nor were they tolerant of those who might be traitors to their nation. They were as they saw it merely English Citizens demanding their rights as Englishmen only to have War leveled against them by a CRAZY (Documented Medical Fact) king and by a Parliment who was more interested in screwing the Colonies even harder than what was already going on .
Don't give me that crap about England fairly laying taxes on the Colonies. That flies in the face of the definition of a colony. The colony was a corporate entity which operated for the profit of the home management in England. These people already paid most of their income to England as (Profits) a form of taxation. Laying heavy taxes on top of that merely threatened their ability to even do business at all.
The founders of the United States of America were so honest and decent that as they settled the peace, they even paid in gold the sum value of any goods taken in the course of the war such as guns and flints and powder taken at Ticonderoga. They were neither rebels nor thieves. Before and even for a period of nearly 18 months after hostilities had begun, they made valient efforts trying to settle matters and remain English. It was only at threat of their towns burned that they broke away. The United States did not SEEK independence, England Forced it! The US Declaration of Independence merely stated known facts!
Ben Franklin (US $100 Bill) and never a US President, was a PRO British representative sent by the Congress to try to settle the matter. It was only after being repeatedly abused that He turned to the US Independence Cause.
Also The US War for Independence was not as portayed in many locations today. It was an ATTACK by the Armed Forces of England on the established Government of the Region which was repelled at great cost. The Colonial Forces were the government here for 150 years prior to the War. They were being crushed by England. Their trade and their safety were attacked by the Colonial Masters who sought not only to take about 1/3 of their revenue (Gross) as Colonial Profits but another 1/3 or so in Taxes!
Time was that you could enter a store do business and leave without anyone knowing or tracking you. Now they will know everything you buy.
It will all be benign until some government type (Probably with Walmart pushing the issue behind the scenes) discovers he can grab the data, crunch it in the data base and extract everyone who violated the most recent public policy he wants to enforce and go after you for possession of the means to do something. The doing act implied of course may never have entered your mind.
Let a despot take office and they will sweep you up based upon the nearly infinite records of your life that such as RFID allowed.
But then I suppose that "Tin Foil" hat must be getting old by now. Surely many will discount the danger. Remember you don't have to see the danger for it to be real. It only has to happen to you.
This is rather like the current situation with debit cards. Your bank promices that fraud is no problem. Then your numbers get stolen and suddenly they forget that you were promiced anything and fall back on the law which says NO PROTECTION! Then you fall into the list of "Non Persons" wiped free of your credit and unable to complain because your money is gone.
RFID has a serious problem. You may be assessed by an automatic checkout device for items you never even handled. This could be the result of a clever person extracting the RFID tag from one item and putting it on something you bought. But you could be arrested for shoplifting or billed for the items you never bought.
RFID will become another way for Organized Crime to hide its activities by innocents getting stuck. RFID probably would be a great idea so long as it is seriously contained legally but it isn't.
There might be another reason that Sun is losing out. It might just be that they have pushed all that "Outsourcing" "H-1B" stuff to the limit. My understanding is they about wrote the book on the process and have several Indians in their board or high mgt. I have noticed that as soon as you see a company "Outsourcing" and pushing H-1B etc, they shortly are dying out.
Since I live near Athens Alabama where Frank and Jessie James were born (The Outlaws you refered to ) and near Huntsville where Frank and Jessie got started in their trouble making I also know a little bit about them. I know he died in Mo. (Jessie James bandit) I know that the brothers lived for some time in Nashville, Tn. I also know I bought carpet in 1985 from a "James Carpets" which was run by a "Jessie James" who was a relative of the famous guy and this Jessie had a brother named Frank.
His decendants have quite a liking for the family name and famous first names. The "Monster Garage" guy claims he is a decendant.
If I told you that I once did business with Huey, Dewy and Lewy Duck you would be sure I was lying ... I am not! They are local characters too but not cartoon ones.
Life is just funny thats all.
You got it! Mod this guy up!
Regards the "Flatter Planet" I would not suggest that but rather that continents etc have moved up and down a fact for which we have an enormous abundance of evidence. (Like the Appallacian ridges being ocean bottom sediments etc.) However; having known several parties who attempted to find the Noah's Ark I can report a few curious things.
I always found these persons remarkably well motivated, extremely well intended and scrupulously honest and bluntly just awfully poor scientists and mountain climbers. There was one exception who was Neal Armstrong (Yes that one!) and he tried to mount a proper effort. It got hit by Kurdish Terrorists.
Years ago I was talking with some of them and I suggested to them that the use of photos from space or high altitude would help and they acted in awe at the concept. There actually is pretty good evidence for the Ark being there.
Up until about 850 years ago regular annual trips went up to the Ark with Many persons reporting on it. Too many of these occurred for this to have been fiction. On one of the modern expeditions (1980's) men brought back wood which appeared to match the ark specs which was taken from near the historically reported site. (Currently under ice) This wood is of a species not living today and similar to cypress which lives nowhere near the mountain now. It is of the proper carbon dated age range and has the proper machining marks to match. I have personnaly seen the article of wood. It isn't little!
I sincerely doubt that even if the ark is found and is substantially intact that it will change any hearts or minds. The Atheists will remain adamant that it is a fabrication. The Biblical scholars will argue as usual and the Islamic nuts will...
There is a large amount of other evidence supporting the Noah's ark story in the region. Recent expeditions found the anchor stones from it in the proper region for them to have been dropped.
One thing that should be abundantly clear to those of us not from the region is that the people there have an acute and long mememory of events including the keeping of relics and "holy" sites. The current Iraq war should have brought this home. The local people who have very accurate data on many thousands of years of events have no doubt of the Ark story. Archeology types haave spent a great deal of effort trying to deny bibilical stories as with many others from the region only to find that they confirm the stories and deny almost nothing. Frankly it would be a bad bet to bet against them on this one.
A classic in Archeology about how outsiders try hard to ignore the locals occurred in the research on Easter Island. (AKU AKU the secret of Easter Island is the book) The investigation went on for about 2 years and about the time they were going to leave, with many puzzles in mind, the head researcher asked the mayor of the Island if he knew anything about these statues etc. Then the story came out. The Mayor was a direct decendant of those who made the statues and he even knew how to make them, move them etc. He then showed them how! All over the world arrogant academics have tried to explain things any way but how the locals say and they end up finding out that the people know!
In answer to your question you are correct about the earth "being compressed" but you may have missed something. This concept says that things are "pushed" not attracted. As such the the thing itself would not have more "Gravity Pull" the area around it would be pressing harder.This is why the earth would be "Compressed." (Obvious I know but...) It appears the same just the cause is different. Actually I misstated in my previous post saying corresponds to a pressure, more precisely to a pressure differential like more on one side than another. The earth or any other body with "Gravity" is actually a low pressure area like a hurricane and the area around it is high pressure.
Of course the physics types will say I am totally wrong. So if you want to get along in Physics class don't admit you even read this post. Naturally the Physics types have died and become God anyway so I guess it is best to get along with the "Gods." They adhere to a "religion" who punishes its heritics more certainly than the most dedicated Islamic militant or other religious extremist. They have a dogma or writ more rigid than any such persons as well.
For a simple proof of the issue of it being an electromagnetic effect, all you have to do is look to a Hydro lake. The water in the lake falling out of the lake releases the energy of the "Higher Pressure" and generates electricity. If you return the water to the lake it is accomplished by adding EM energy equal to that corresponding to the altitude. (Equation balanced no Gravity just EM forces) Of course the Physics types have written into the system a "Potential Energy" concept rather than recognizing that it is merely an energy content issue.
Of course to believe in Gravity as a force you have to deny the laws of Motion (Equal and opposite reaction etc) but that never bothered the Physics types. They write their own laws any time they conflict with reality.
It is lots of fun to watch them spend billions hunting around for the latest "Quark" or "Charm" or "Strange" something trying to get a unified field when the answer lies in Electro-Optics and Quantum Mechanics
If you want to understand why they get so messed up take a long trip into the history of "Natural Philosopy" which evolved into their art and look at the Ideologies they took from verious religions and political Philosophies of the various times. It is funny and about as hopeless as a trip to an insane assylum. For short let us just say that they decided something was a fact and went about to frame the world that way rather than checking a hypothesis and throwing it out if it was wrong.
Chickens "pluck" themselves annually... its called a molt. They just cannot use their feathers for a while...
As to plucking chickens for meat purposes boiling hot water works great. Takes a few second and the rest is pretty much grabbing and pulling. (a bit tedious) Done this once or twice!
Being the proud(??) owner of some 47 of these adaptive wing things with highly adaptive wings for various flight conditions from hover to forward flight at full speed etc I have an opinion on this issue that might just be of value. (I own 47 chickens) Frankly if these guys want to adapt feathers why don't they try the first rather silly thought and COPY feathers?
While chickens suffer from a very heavy body largely due to the genetic minipulation by various means of human beings attempting to mess up their flight characteristics for other purposes, they actually are pretty able fliers at times. Feathers are pretty amazing things and frankly I would think that the guys with Composite structures would find their manufacturing process profoundly useful. Just as a hint for the curious, feathers are blown up like balloons and are not living at any stage in their development. They depend upon a protein similar to finger nails and it is emitted as a monomer solution which is blown up like a balloon and which dries like latex paint. The cracking of the drying and the particular mix of the content at various stages of development produces the feather structure.
Feathers could be built using some sort of graphite composite and a matrix such that they effectively functioned like natural feathers using the ratcheting action on the air. The extension structure for such an adaptive wing is already quite well designed in birds. It is pretty simple.
Since humans would not use such a wing to "Flap" (produce thrust) but only in glide states the operation of such a wing could be pretty simple. DARPA are you listening?