You could make a good argument for other countries like Canada or Australia or Japan, but the U.S. is certainly ahead of places like India. Bribery in India is the normal course of events.
"Poor people are easy to buy", or rather inequality causes corruption. It's one of the classical 19th century arguments against introducing universal suffrage.
Countries are most vulnerable to corruption if most of the GDP is generated by a small elite. This happens if the internal economy is relatively small compared to the income from trade between this productive elite and abroad.
This productivity of the elite may consist simply of the fact that they control some resource (oil, gold) that other, richer countries want, as is the case in many countries in the Middle East and Africa. This can seriously mess up a country: in countries like Congo the only ambition most people seem to have is to be among the conquerers of a gold field and receive regular kickbacks from foreigners. Crime pays better there than here.
Some countries/areas already outlaw certain knives while allowing other, potentially just as deadly knives (chef's knives) to be carried around.
Don't know about other countries that criminalize knives, but here in the Netherlands it depends on the length of the blade, where you carry it, and whether it is ready for use. You can take your chef's knife wherever you want, as long as is it packaged. You can also take swords and bows in the same way.
You are allowed to carry a blade ready for use not longer than the width of your hand in public space (except public transport infrastructure), and a significant percentage of the male population does. Carrying a screwdriver in your pocket in the wrong place is on the other hand prohibited.
Slashing and stabbing weapons are used in 32% of lethal incidents here. Knifes do require a lot more skill than firearms: victims of stabbings usually survive.
Views on legitimate use do depend a lot on context: in many European countries there is so little nature that claiming hunting is a legitimate reason to allow people to have firearms sounds a bit ridiculous. And then when you have already banned firearms, people start carrying knives...
You are right. I formulated that too strongly. There should be in current practice some biological basis, however weak, for the distinction on the species level in Zoology, but the biological identity is not enough to establish the existence of a species.
We are only interested in non-interbreeding pairs of creatures if there are also clear ecological and phenetic identity criteria to separate them. If there are no such criteria, the existence of the non-interbreeding pairs cannot be generalized to the existence of separate species. Testing the hypothesis that there are two biological taxa is only relevant because there is an existing phenetic/ecological distinction. If there are two different biological taxa, but there is also a group able to interbreed, then the latter group will be assigned to species based on phenetic and ecological criteria. The existence of a (sterile?) living hybrid proves nothing. Lions and Tigers were never re-classified because of Ligers and Tigons. Two grizzlies producing a polar is more convincing.
Zoologists can move phenetic/ecological distinctions to the subspecies level on biological grounds, but the classification itself is phenetic/ecological and should remain so to be relevant to the outside world. Since the species/subspecies partitions are demonstrably to poor an instrument for biological classification ("ring" species), one would have expected Zoology to develop a separate lattice for biological classification to map to phenetic/ecological traits instead of messing around with an existing phenetic taxonomy. Identifying animals only on biological grounds is similar to claiming there can be people who appear intelligent only on an IQ test. It defines away the things you are supposed to explain.
Dog breeds are (now) almost purely phenetic categories, even to the extent of only being recognized as purebred if they meet phenetic criteria. They all live in our houses (same habitat) and can interbreed (if we allow them). Why are wolves and jackals considered different species? Surely some jackal species are also able to interbreed with dogs and wolves, even if they normally don't?
Same with people: there is now a strong presumption in favour of them being one (sub)species because we shipped around dozens of millions of them, and they all appear to be tolerant of a wide variety of habitats and interbreed voluntarily and without problems. When different phenetic types were still closely linked to different habitats we intuitively classified them as different. This was never done before with for instance blue and brown eyes or hair colour, because this was always conceived of as natural phenetic variety in the same population in the same habitat. The pretension that strict adherence to a biological species concept somehow sheds light on racism is superficial: nobody questions the biological basis of sex, but this does not prove the scientific credibility of sexism.
But what if a red-tailed hawk, due to a mutation, doesn't have a red tail? Is it suddenly a different species? Or what, for that matter, if due to that mutation it suddenly is unable to breed with most other red-tailed hawks?
If, due to some event, two of them get separated from the rest and start their own population and there is no or limited interbreeding? As long as the mutation occasionally occurs inside a red-tailed hawk population they will merely be counterexamples to the idea that nature lets us perfectly partition it into distinct species with both phenetic and biological identity criteria.
Compare brown eyes-blue eyes versus black skin-white skin. Only the second distinction led to racism because it is reinforced by the superficial ecological difference of occurring on different continents with different climate conditions. In this case there is of course no expectation of finding biological taxa, because we expect the vast majority of human beings are able to interbreed.
We are only interested in non-interbreeding pairs of creatures if there are also ecological and phenetic identity criteria to separate them. If there are no such criteria, the existence of the non-interbreeding pairs cannot be generalized to the existence of separate species.
Indeed. The point of interbreeding is to test and exploit the uncanny predictability of the genotype-phenotype map, not to define the common sense ecological and phenetic classification away. If, according to your criteria, Polar Bears and Grizzly Bears really belong to the same species, then you are using the wrong criteria since they clearly have a different colour and ecological niche.
"Being able to produce fertile ofspring" is the definition of "being the same species". Ring species just prove that "being the same species" is not a transitive relationship.
This is not entirely satisfactory. With this definition you can (in principle) establish for any pair of creatures whether they do or do not belong to the same species, but you cannot make a partitioning classification of species that assigns only one species to any creature. Besides that, it is an extremely impractical method for establishing the species a creature belongs to.
Besides this so-called "biological" species concept, there is also the ecological, cladistic, phenetic, and recognition species concept. Traditionally mankind mostly uses the ecological concept (e.g. fowl = bird used as food, chicken hawk = several species of small birds of prey known to prey on fowl), and location (Guineafowl) and phenetic traits (e.g. Red-tailed Hawk) for finer distinctions. This makes much for sense for anyone but breeders.
To be fair, one of the teams (boats), for some reason seems to make this comparison. I doubt there are many places where what they say is feasable. I don't care how effecient solar boats are - I can't drive one to work and I bet very very very few people in the whole freaking world can (of course, there are some - but then I bet alot of them do so to avoid traffic. It's no big deal to hit 60-70 in a boat and no traffic, not to mention the "fun" factor. I know I would do so in a heart beat).
Amsterdam with its canals is one of those places where the shortest route to work is often by water. Commuting with a boat is possible but the speed limit is so low that bicycling is considerably faster. There is just one public transport "flying" catamaran ferry connection for commuters to another town and a second one starts next month.
The narrow roads on the canal banks are completely unsuitable for trucks (both in terms of size and weight), and were originally primarily intended for loading and unloading ships and not transport. Nowadays the shops are supplied with trucks, which is really stupid, especially when you consider that the goods are usually first transferred from a big truck to a smaller truck before they go into town. Solution: open up the canals that were closed to accomodate car traffic again and start supplying shops with small boats operating directly from the harbour.
The river barge also still seems to be losing ground to trucks even though it is and always was the most fuel efficient and environmentally friendly way to transport bulk commodities. In the past you had regular horse-drawn barge services between towns: just one horsepower, that could be easily replaced by solar power.
The biggest problem is simply lack of awareness: wherever cars and boats meet, the cars usually get the right of way in infrastructure development with the result that boats are becoming less and less efficient (with bridges opening only a few times a day) and there are lots of places that can no longer be reached by water. There was a time when road and rail outcompeted the barge, but it ended when everybody started using cars. In densely populated wet lowland areas the use of boats definitely should be reconsidered.
Especially given the plane can fly a fairly straight line (even with air space restrictions) compared to the boat. As to which will be made first - my bet is the boat. If the motor fails you still get to float, a plane loosing power is deadly.
I only see the plane working in very sparsely populated areas. Where am I supposed to land the thing near work? Besides that, planes are a very inefficient waste of energy. I don't see them building a solar-powered "family plane". Even WWI planes used 100-200hp engines. There is a limit to what better aerodynamics can do.
The comparisons here usually compare LPG, diesel, and petrol relative to amount of kilometers per year. Vehicle and road tax for LPG is much higher (the 'risk premium'), but the marginal price difference between LPG and petrol will eventually tend to 1:2 per kilometer.
Per litre it is 1:3, as LPG is normally roughly E0.50 compared to E1.50 for petrol.
The rule of thumb is that you use petrol (cheapest cars) if your car stands still most of the time, diesel if you drive regularly, and LPG if you are on the road most of the time.
If that (power output is lower) is the case, it's only because of improper engine design.
To prove your point: the Saab Aero 9-5 BioPower engine (designed for Sweden where E85 is common) is 310hp on ethanol and 260hp on petrol. Torque is also 25% higher on ethanol.
LPG is still in its infancy and so I wouldn't expect it to be a money-saver other than via subsidy or tax breaks.
LPG has been used commercially - without any subsidies - as a car fuel for some 60 years at about 50% of the price of petrol, and is available at gas stations in a number of countries in Europe. Many European and Japanese car engines can be retrofitted for LPG.
Here in the Netherlands it used to have a market share of 12% 20 years ago but it dropped to 4% over the last years because of rumours that the government will prohibit selling LPG at gas stations. The reason is that the LPG tanks at gas stations are theoretically very dangerous if a customer mishandles the pressurized LPG nozzle and someone nearby is illegally smoking. No accidents with LPG of this kind ever happened, but it is fashionable for governments nowadays to treat its citizens like complete morons just in case.
Don't forget you're dealing with stoners when any talk of hemp for fuel or clothing comes up. Naturally in their state of being continually high they'll believe any bullshit they read. Hemp also cures cancer in case you haven't checked lately.
Does the qualification 'stoner' include Henry Ford and Rudolph Diesel? The diesel engine was built with hemp seed oil in mind, and only later adapted to use crude-based 'Diesel #2', and Ford used hemp seed oil for fuel, engine oil, and lubricant before WWII.
Hemp was the most obvious source of oil in Europe before crude oil was discovered, and the most traded commodity in the world up to the 1830s. Its best qualities are biomass per acre and that it will grow everywhere and is extremely drought-resistant. Besides that it is also great for making paper (and grows a lot faster than trees).
Sensible farmers in the Midwest will immediately switch back from corn to hemp if the US government allows it. The American and Russian plains are perfect for hemp (and very little else).
Smoking industrial hemp grown in a moderate climate is an extremely inefficient way to get high.
It is reasonable to be suspicious, but the US wouldn't have allowed Iran to do it in the open either. The whole charade in the UN about the lying is less important than the fact we consider Iran an ideological enemy anyway. Ahmadinejad's remarks about the Holocaust and stuff like that only illustrate that. Ahmadinejad only says what hundreds of millions of muslims seriously believe. Indignation isn't going to solve a serious education issue. Europe is in fact behaving very suspiciously from an external perspective when it comes to providing evidence for the Holocaust.
The problem with Iran is the current leadership. First they did lie to the IAEA. Second their current president speaks such insane jibberish. Ranging from saying the holocaust is propoganda made up by the United States. Saying the US and Canada should take all the Israeli people and move them into US/Canada borders. And then saying that Israel and (i think) the US should be wiped from the face of the earth.
Any country may get a scary leader, unfortunately, including democracies. This shouldn't be the rule deciding who gets to enrich uranium.
Enriching uranium is the only thing that makes nuclear power feasible in the long run. If we don't continually enrich and recycle uranium, the world's easily accessible supply of uranium will run out in a few decades. If Iran wants to invest in a replacement of oil for the future while they still have the means and power to do so, they need uranium enrichment. This means they will depend on Russia or Europe for enrichment, instead of Europeans depending on them. This is a scary prospect for Iran.
Nobody has a right to nuclear weapons, unfortunately, a bunch of countries have a whole lot of them (including the US). It does not make the situation better by saying "well because you have it i should have it". Two wrongs don't make a right.
I agree with the first part: nobody should have nuclear weapons. But there is no such principle as 'two wrongs not making a right' in deontic logic. Nobody should have an army, but if your scary neighbour does have one, it is your moral duty to arm yourself in order to prevent rewarding aggression. From Iran's point of view making nuclear weapons is a perfectly reasonable policy. It is surrounded (Iraq, Afghanistan) by a scary neighbour - the US - and nuclear weapons are a good insurance policy against involuntary regime change.
Giving in to UN demands doesn't buy Iran security since the world doesn't like it very much anyway and sovereignty isn't what it used to be anymore. The countries that retain the capability but don't make nuclear weapons 'as a matter of principle' are in a much more comfortable geopolitical situation and can be counted on one hand.
You sure give up fast. Only a few years in one country and you've concluded that freedom can't prevail in Iraq nor anywhere else we might try. Even if we fail in Iraq (and we're not done yet) it's just one case, and therefore doesn't prove that its not possible to liberate a country. In fact you seem to be ignoring that we were successfull in getting Japan and Germany fairly well liberated. There was violent resistance in Germany after WWII also. We were there longer than we've been in Iraq so far. We may have to stay in Iraq for decades. If we succeed it will be worth it. Even if we fail in Iraq, the great cost was still worth it to give the people a chance.
Your example involves a fight to the end, killing a significant percentage of men of fighting age and completely ruining the economy. Precursor to it is 1914-1918, which was also very bloody but didn't involve and actual invasion, and ended with the US imposing democracy on Austria and Germany. This is the obvious counter-example, as we all know what happened with the Weimar Republic; To quote Winston Churchill: "This war would never have come unless, under American and modernising pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones. No doubt these views are very unfashionable...."
If there is anything to be learned from that episode, it is that you have more chance of success if a greater part of the population is killed. When the Nazis finally capitulated, Germany was really completely defeated. Iraq still has plenty fighting spirit left. Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union are actually good examples of how totalitarian states sometimes are capable of performing very well in war, despite the obvious unattractiveness of their government.
A good example of a bloodless invasion by a (smaller) foreign power that was cheered by the majority of the population and worked out well is the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Napoleonic era is a good example of a number of invasions by a major power in smaller neighbouring countries that were often initially welcomed by a significant part of the population, but ended with almost everyone hating the French.
In most successful examples there is an already existing tradition of freedom and democracy, temporarily threatened by incompetent tyranny. Germany and Japan obviously already had constitutional democracy.
Somehow I don't believe that the treatment of women in Iran is as rosey as you say. Are they not still forced to wear headscarves, forced to marry, have less access to jobs?
Emancipation of women in Iran compares favourably to US allies in the Arabic world like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, etc. I am sure working women without headscarves are not thrilled about the new conservative president, but that is hardly a reason to question the legitimacy of Iran's government. It is easy for the media to find dissenters in Iran, but this is equally true of the US or any European country.
From the perspective of Iran it, as a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has the right to enrich uranium, but it is damned for doing so regardless of whether it does it openly or secretly because the West simply doesn't accept Iran. It is hypocritical to base the case against Iran on its lying: we wouldn't have accepted the truth either. Countries like Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands are trusted not to use their uranium enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons, and Iran is not.
The odds in a war on Iran depend on the goals you adopt. The US is obviously able to take out its nuclear facilities (if it knows where they are) or any other location it wants, and obviously unable to occupy and pacify the whole of Iran (unless if somehow gains massive support from the population). Question is what happens if Iran takes the war to Iraq.
This one has less national coverage. You also have local ones like Diks.
You are responsible for small repairs (up to a fixed amount, rest is insured) if you are the last driver, and you are supposed to report any damage you see. I once walked to a car I booked to discover it was total loss. Hit by someone else.
You also have to park it in the reserved parking place. Problem is that after 23:00 it may be taken by someone else, because the police don't do parking tickets and towing after 23:00 and many people know that. In that case you must park it in the same parking zone (for which it is licensed) and report the location by phone. I once drove around for 45 minutes to find a parking place. With my own car I just used to put it in another zone away from night life close to a tram connection to my home.
but you have to subscribe to this service? which implies, to me, that you pay a fee (monthly/yearly). even if you don't use it. I like to just pay when I do use something.
The other disadvantage is that you pay a fee per hour for using the car, so it isn't really convenient for going into the country for a few days.
The cars also aren't really fun to drive too. This is to discourage racing, I suppose.
In my house we have one car for two people, and we both have a subscription to this service.
The one in the Netherlands is called Greenwheels and has complete neighbourhood coverage in the major 40 cities. It works by the same principles, since 1995. I used to have nine in walking distance from my home when I still lived in Amsterdam. One of the most convenient features of the system is that you can decide to use it from everywhere. Suddenly need a car at work? Want to take the train to some city, and then a car to get to some village? I'm still subscribed to it.
We have this in the Netherlands since 1995. I've used it for years. You make reservations through the Internet or phone, and enter the car with your swipe card.
The Americans today are not the Americans of the late 18th century.
People will learn to deal with the government they have to live with. Most of the world population is more suspicious of government than the US, and therefore less likely to like this technology. Americans do have much more influence on whether it is used. Not just because of the reason you stated but also because the US is the number one superpower and tells a lot of its allies what identification technology to use to monitor its citizens before they are going to be allowed into the US.
100% of those 10% surveyed are probably not accustomed to the normal daily freedoms we have as Americans. If you survey 10% of people in China who are used to being oppressed by their government I'm more than certain they'll be more accepting to this idea than 10% of Americans.
On the contrary. For people who lived in totalitarian societies freedom means turning a blind eye to the indiscretions of others, hiding your own from strangers, and generally doing everything you can to make bureaucracy ineffective and win favours from people in civil service etc. who may be able to help you some day. They may not protest in the streets, but they will do their best to ensure biometric identification can be defeated when needed.
Americans, on the other hand, are totally naive when it comes to avoiding the attention of big brother.
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You could make a good argument for other countries like Canada or Australia or Japan, but the U.S. is certainly ahead of places like India. Bribery in India is the normal course of events.
"Poor people are easy to buy", or rather inequality causes corruption. It's one of the classical 19th century arguments against introducing universal suffrage.
Countries are most vulnerable to corruption if most of the GDP is generated by a small elite. This happens if the internal economy is relatively small compared to the income from trade between this productive elite and abroad.
This productivity of the elite may consist simply of the fact that they control some resource (oil, gold) that other, richer countries want, as is the case in many countries in the Middle East and Africa. This can seriously mess up a country: in countries like Congo the only ambition most people seem to have is to be among the conquerers of a gold field and receive regular kickbacks from foreigners. Crime pays better there than here.
Some countries/areas already outlaw certain knives while allowing other, potentially just as deadly knives (chef's knives) to be carried around.
Don't know about other countries that criminalize knives, but here in the Netherlands it depends on the length of the blade, where you carry it, and whether it is ready for use. You can take your chef's knife wherever you want, as long as is it packaged. You can also take swords and bows in the same way.
You are allowed to carry a blade ready for use not longer than the width of your hand in public space (except public transport infrastructure), and a significant percentage of the male population does. Carrying a screwdriver in your pocket in the wrong place is on the other hand prohibited.
Slashing and stabbing weapons are used in 32% of lethal incidents here. Knifes do require a lot more skill than firearms: victims of stabbings usually survive.
Views on legitimate use do depend a lot on context: in many European countries there is so little nature that claiming hunting is a legitimate reason to allow people to have firearms sounds a bit ridiculous. And then when you have already banned firearms, people start carrying knives...
You are right. I formulated that too strongly. There should be in current practice some biological basis, however weak, for the distinction on the species level in Zoology, but the biological identity is not enough to establish the existence of a species.
We are only interested in non-interbreeding pairs of creatures if there are also clear ecological and phenetic identity criteria to separate them. If there are no such criteria, the existence of the non-interbreeding pairs cannot be generalized to the existence of separate species. Testing the hypothesis that there are two biological taxa is only relevant because there is an existing phenetic/ecological distinction. If there are two different biological taxa, but there is also a group able to interbreed, then the latter group will be assigned to species based on phenetic and ecological criteria. The existence of a (sterile?) living hybrid proves nothing. Lions and Tigers were never re-classified because of Ligers and Tigons. Two grizzlies producing a polar is more convincing.
Zoologists can move phenetic/ecological distinctions to the subspecies level on biological grounds, but the classification itself is phenetic/ecological and should remain so to be relevant to the outside world. Since the species/subspecies partitions are demonstrably to poor an instrument for biological classification ("ring" species), one would have expected Zoology to develop a separate lattice for biological classification to map to phenetic/ecological traits instead of messing around with an existing phenetic taxonomy. Identifying animals only on biological grounds is similar to claiming there can be people who appear intelligent only on an IQ test. It defines away the things you are supposed to explain.
Dog breeds are (now) almost purely phenetic categories, even to the extent of only being recognized as purebred if they meet phenetic criteria. They all live in our houses (same habitat) and can interbreed (if we allow them). Why are wolves and jackals considered different species? Surely some jackal species are also able to interbreed with dogs and wolves, even if they normally don't?
Same with people: there is now a strong presumption in favour of them being one (sub)species because we shipped around dozens of millions of them, and they all appear to be tolerant of a wide variety of habitats and interbreed voluntarily and without problems. When different phenetic types were still closely linked to different habitats we intuitively classified them as different. This was never done before with for instance blue and brown eyes or hair colour, because this was always conceived of as natural phenetic variety in the same population in the same habitat. The pretension that strict adherence to a biological species concept somehow sheds light on racism is superficial: nobody questions the biological basis of sex, but this does not prove the scientific credibility of sexism.
But what if a red-tailed hawk, due to a mutation, doesn't have a red tail? Is it suddenly a different species? Or what, for that matter, if due to that mutation it suddenly is unable to breed with most other red-tailed hawks?
If, due to some event, two of them get separated from the rest and start their own population and there is no or limited interbreeding? As long as the mutation occasionally occurs inside a red-tailed hawk population they will merely be counterexamples to the idea that nature lets us perfectly partition it into distinct species with both phenetic and biological identity criteria.
Compare brown eyes-blue eyes versus black skin-white skin. Only the second distinction led to racism because it is reinforced by the superficial ecological difference of occurring on different continents with different climate conditions. In this case there is of course no expectation of finding biological taxa, because we expect the vast majority of human beings are able to interbreed.
We are only interested in non-interbreeding pairs of creatures if there are also ecological and phenetic identity criteria to separate them. If there are no such criteria, the existence of the non-interbreeding pairs cannot be generalized to the existence of separate species.
Indeed. The point of interbreeding is to test and exploit the uncanny predictability of the genotype-phenotype map, not to define the common sense ecological and phenetic classification away. If, according to your criteria, Polar Bears and Grizzly Bears really belong to the same species, then you are using the wrong criteria since they clearly have a different colour and ecological niche.
"Being able to produce fertile ofspring" is the definition of "being the same species". Ring species just prove that "being the same species" is not a transitive relationship.
This is not entirely satisfactory. With this definition you can (in principle) establish for any pair of creatures whether they do or do not belong to the same species, but you cannot make a partitioning classification of species that assigns only one species to any creature. Besides that, it is an extremely impractical method for establishing the species a creature belongs to.
Besides this so-called "biological" species concept, there is also the ecological, cladistic, phenetic, and recognition species concept. Traditionally mankind mostly uses the ecological concept (e.g. fowl = bird used as food, chicken hawk = several species of small birds of prey known to prey on fowl), and location (Guineafowl) and phenetic traits (e.g. Red-tailed Hawk) for finer distinctions. This makes much for sense for anyone but breeders.
Wouldn't it be cheaper, faster, and more efficent to just use a sailboat instead of a solar-powered craft?
Sure, but oars are even better. I'll use Americans as oarsmen and let them pay for it. Anyone interested in a weight loss and fitness vacation on sea?
To be fair, one of the teams (boats), for some reason seems to make this comparison. I doubt there are many places where what they say is feasable. I don't care how effecient solar boats are - I can't drive one to work and I bet very very very few people in the whole freaking world can (of course, there are some - but then I bet alot of them do so to avoid traffic. It's no big deal to hit 60-70 in a boat and no traffic, not to mention the "fun" factor. I know I would do so in a heart beat).
Amsterdam with its canals is one of those places where the shortest route to work is often by water. Commuting with a boat is possible but the speed limit is so low that bicycling is considerably faster. There is just one public transport "flying" catamaran ferry connection for commuters to another town and a second one starts next month.
The narrow roads on the canal banks are completely unsuitable for trucks (both in terms of size and weight), and were originally primarily intended for loading and unloading ships and not transport. Nowadays the shops are supplied with trucks, which is really stupid, especially when you consider that the goods are usually first transferred from a big truck to a smaller truck before they go into town. Solution: open up the canals that were closed to accomodate car traffic again and start supplying shops with small boats operating directly from the harbour.
The river barge also still seems to be losing ground to trucks even though it is and always was the most fuel efficient and environmentally friendly way to transport bulk commodities. In the past you had regular horse-drawn barge services between towns: just one horsepower, that could be easily replaced by solar power.
The biggest problem is simply lack of awareness: wherever cars and boats meet, the cars usually get the right of way in infrastructure development with the result that boats are becoming less and less efficient (with bridges opening only a few times a day) and there are lots of places that can no longer be reached by water. There was a time when road and rail outcompeted the barge, but it ended when everybody started using cars. In densely populated wet lowland areas the use of boats definitely should be reconsidered.
Especially given the plane can fly a fairly straight line (even with air space restrictions) compared to the boat. As to which will be made first - my bet is the boat. If the motor fails you still get to float, a plane loosing power is deadly.
I only see the plane working in very sparsely populated areas. Where am I supposed to land the thing near work? Besides that, planes are a very inefficient waste of energy. I don't see them building a solar-powered "family plane". Even WWI planes used 100-200hp engines. There is a limit to what better aerodynamics can do.
Biodiesel is PEOPLE!
What do you think fossil fuels are made of?
The comparisons here usually compare LPG, diesel, and petrol relative to amount of kilometers per year. Vehicle and road tax for LPG is much higher (the 'risk premium'), but the marginal price difference between LPG and petrol will eventually tend to 1:2 per kilometer.
Per litre it is 1:3, as LPG is normally roughly E0.50 compared to E1.50 for petrol.
The rule of thumb is that you use petrol (cheapest cars) if your car stands still most of the time, diesel if you drive regularly, and LPG if you are on the road most of the time.
If that (power output is lower) is the case, it's only because of improper engine design.
To prove your point: the Saab Aero 9-5 BioPower engine (designed for Sweden where E85 is common) is 310hp on ethanol and 260hp on petrol. Torque is also 25% higher on ethanol.
(from the leftover peels and skin of the fruit)
What will they use as 'real fruit' in yoghurt then?
LPG is still in its infancy and so I wouldn't expect it to be a money-saver other than via subsidy or tax breaks.
LPG has been used commercially - without any subsidies - as a car fuel for some 60 years at about 50% of the price of petrol, and is available at gas stations in a number of countries in Europe. Many European and Japanese car engines can be retrofitted for LPG.
Here in the Netherlands it used to have a market share of 12% 20 years ago but it dropped to 4% over the last years because of rumours that the government will prohibit selling LPG at gas stations. The reason is that the LPG tanks at gas stations are theoretically very dangerous if a customer mishandles the pressurized LPG nozzle and someone nearby is illegally smoking. No accidents with LPG of this kind ever happened, but it is fashionable for governments nowadays to treat its citizens like complete morons just in case.
Don't forget you're dealing with stoners when any talk of hemp for fuel or clothing comes up. Naturally in their state of being continually high they'll believe any bullshit they read. Hemp also cures cancer in case you haven't checked lately.
Does the qualification 'stoner' include Henry Ford and Rudolph Diesel? The diesel engine was built with hemp seed oil in mind, and only later adapted to use crude-based 'Diesel #2', and Ford used hemp seed oil for fuel, engine oil, and lubricant before WWII.
Hemp was the most obvious source of oil in Europe before crude oil was discovered, and the most traded commodity in the world up to the 1830s. Its best qualities are biomass per acre and that it will grow everywhere and is extremely drought-resistant. Besides that it is also great for making paper (and grows a lot faster than trees).
Sensible farmers in the Midwest will immediately switch back from corn to hemp if the US government allows it. The American and Russian plains are perfect for hemp (and very little else).
Smoking industrial hemp grown in a moderate climate is an extremely inefficient way to get high.
It is reasonable to be suspicious, but the US wouldn't have allowed Iran to do it in the open either. The whole charade in the UN about the lying is less important than the fact we consider Iran an ideological enemy anyway. Ahmadinejad's remarks about the Holocaust and stuff like that only illustrate that. Ahmadinejad only says what hundreds of millions of muslims seriously believe. Indignation isn't going to solve a serious education issue. Europe is in fact behaving very suspiciously from an external perspective when it comes to providing evidence for the Holocaust.
The problem with Iran is the current leadership. First they did lie to the IAEA. Second their current president speaks such insane jibberish. Ranging from saying the holocaust is propoganda made up by the United States. Saying the US and Canada should take all the Israeli people and move them into US/Canada borders. And then saying that Israel and (i think) the US should be wiped from the face of the earth.
Any country may get a scary leader, unfortunately, including democracies. This shouldn't be the rule deciding who gets to enrich uranium.
Enriching uranium is the only thing that makes nuclear power feasible in the long run. If we don't continually enrich and recycle uranium, the world's easily accessible supply of uranium will run out in a few decades. If Iran wants to invest in a replacement of oil for the future while they still have the means and power to do so, they need uranium enrichment. This means they will depend on Russia or Europe for enrichment, instead of Europeans depending on them. This is a scary prospect for Iran.
Nobody has a right to nuclear weapons, unfortunately, a bunch of countries have a whole lot of them (including the US). It does not make the situation better by saying "well because you have it i should have it". Two wrongs don't make a right.
I agree with the first part: nobody should have nuclear weapons. But there is no such principle as 'two wrongs not making a right' in deontic logic. Nobody should have an army, but if your scary neighbour does have one, it is your moral duty to arm yourself in order to prevent rewarding aggression. From Iran's point of view making nuclear weapons is a perfectly reasonable policy. It is surrounded (Iraq, Afghanistan) by a scary neighbour - the US - and nuclear weapons are a good insurance policy against involuntary regime change.
Giving in to UN demands doesn't buy Iran security since the world doesn't like it very much anyway and sovereignty isn't what it used to be anymore. The countries that retain the capability but don't make nuclear weapons 'as a matter of principle' are in a much more comfortable geopolitical situation and can be counted on one hand.
You sure give up fast. Only a few years in one country and you've concluded that freedom can't prevail in Iraq nor anywhere else we might try. Even if we fail in Iraq (and we're not done yet) it's just one case, and therefore doesn't prove that its not possible to liberate a country. In fact you seem to be ignoring that we were successfull in getting Japan and Germany fairly well liberated. There was violent resistance in Germany after WWII also. We were there longer than we've been in Iraq so far. We may have to stay in Iraq for decades. If we succeed it will be worth it. Even if we fail in Iraq, the great cost was still worth it to give the people a chance.
Your example involves a fight to the end, killing a significant percentage of men of fighting age and completely ruining the economy. Precursor to it is 1914-1918, which was also very bloody but didn't involve and actual invasion, and ended with the US imposing democracy on Austria and Germany. This is the obvious counter-example, as we all know what happened with the Weimar Republic; To quote Winston Churchill: "This war would never have come unless, under American and modernising pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones. No doubt these views are very unfashionable...."
If there is anything to be learned from that episode, it is that you have more chance of success if a greater part of the population is killed. When the Nazis finally capitulated, Germany was really completely defeated. Iraq still has plenty fighting spirit left. Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union are actually good examples of how totalitarian states sometimes are capable of performing very well in war, despite the obvious unattractiveness of their government.
A good example of a bloodless invasion by a (smaller) foreign power that was cheered by the majority of the population and worked out well is the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Napoleonic era is a good example of a number of invasions by a major power in smaller neighbouring countries that were often initially welcomed by a significant part of the population, but ended with almost everyone hating the French.
In most successful examples there is an already existing tradition of freedom and democracy, temporarily threatened by incompetent tyranny. Germany and Japan obviously already had constitutional democracy.
Somehow I don't believe that the treatment of women in Iran is as rosey as you say. Are they not still forced to wear headscarves, forced to marry, have less access to jobs?
Emancipation of women in Iran compares favourably to US allies in the Arabic world like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Morocco, etc. I am sure working women without headscarves are not thrilled about the new conservative president, but that is hardly a reason to question the legitimacy of Iran's government. It is easy for the media to find dissenters in Iran, but this is equally true of the US or any European country.
From the perspective of Iran it, as a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, has the right to enrich uranium, but it is damned for doing so regardless of whether it does it openly or secretly because the West simply doesn't accept Iran. It is hypocritical to base the case against Iran on its lying: we wouldn't have accepted the truth either. Countries like Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands are trusted not to use their uranium enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons, and Iran is not.
The odds in a war on Iran depend on the goals you adopt. The US is obviously able to take out its nuclear facilities (if it knows where they are) or any other location it wants, and obviously unable to occupy and pacify the whole of Iran (unless if somehow gains massive support from the population). Question is what happens if Iran takes the war to Iraq.
This one has less national coverage. You also have local ones like Diks.
You are responsible for small repairs (up to a fixed amount, rest is insured) if you are the last driver, and you are supposed to report any damage you see. I once walked to a car I booked to discover it was total loss. Hit by someone else.
You also have to park it in the reserved parking place. Problem is that after 23:00 it may be taken by someone else, because the police don't do parking tickets and towing after 23:00 and many people know that. In that case you must park it in the same parking zone (for which it is licensed) and report the location by phone. I once drove around for 45 minutes to find a parking place. With my own car I just used to put it in another zone away from night life close to a tram connection to my home.
but you have to subscribe to this service? which implies, to me, that you pay a fee (monthly/yearly). even if you don't use it. I like to just pay when I do use something.
The other disadvantage is that you pay a fee per hour for using the car, so it isn't really convenient for going into the country for a few days.
The cars also aren't really fun to drive too. This is to discourage racing, I suppose.
In my house we have one car for two people, and we both have a subscription to this service.
The one in the Netherlands is called Greenwheels and has complete neighbourhood coverage in the major 40 cities. It works by the same principles, since 1995. I used to have nine in walking distance from my home when I still lived in Amsterdam. One of the most convenient features of the system is that you can decide to use it from everywhere. Suddenly need a car at work? Want to take the train to some city, and then a car to get to some village? I'm still subscribed to it.
We have this in the Netherlands since 1995. I've used it for years. You make reservations through the Internet or phone, and enter the car with your swipe card.
The Americans today are not the Americans of the late 18th century.
People will learn to deal with the government they have to live with. Most of the world population is more suspicious of government than the US, and therefore less likely to like this technology. Americans do have much more influence on whether it is used. Not just because of the reason you stated but also because the US is the number one superpower and tells a lot of its allies what identification technology to use to monitor its citizens before they are going to be allowed into the US.
100% of those 10% surveyed are probably not accustomed to the normal daily freedoms we have as Americans. If you survey 10% of people in China who are used to being oppressed by their government I'm more than certain they'll be more accepting to this idea than 10% of Americans.
On the contrary. For people who lived in totalitarian societies freedom means turning a blind eye to the indiscretions of others, hiding your own from strangers, and generally doing everything you can to make bureaucracy ineffective and win favours from people in civil service etc. who may be able to help you some day. They may not protest in the streets, but they will do their best to ensure biometric identification can be defeated when needed.
Americans, on the other hand, are totally naive when it comes to avoiding the attention of big brother.