I'm not really sure why we use AC inside the home any more. It make sense for transmission, but why not just convert at the neighborhood or house level?
If there are standards for household DC wiring, I'd love for you to point them out.
One time this happened I was able to explain that didn't exist, heaters turn electricity into heat at 100% efficiency, and at least one other time I was never able to get that concept across.
Perhaps some people don't understand the difference between an electric heater and a heat pump, for which efficiency really is an issue.
I rent and thus must pick a place which has been set up. And I looked around a lot.
Well, there's your problem: most landlords go for bottom-dollar shit. If you want better, you have to look for the places labeled "luxury apartments."
Also, I think the reason you had such a hard time finding "vitroceramic" cooktops is that nobody knew WTF you were talking about because we just call them "glass" around here!
FWIW, my washer is an efficient front-loader and my range is gas (but it'll be replaced with an induction cooktop and convection oven once I finally renovate my kitchen).
Then how come you can't understand that ISPs are a natural monopoly (or so government has decreed), thereby limiting the People's choices to cable or telco?
I can understand that. You're the one who's trying to argue that we have some sort of non-imaginary choice here.
There's nothing wrong with having a natural monopoly, as long as you recognize it for what it is and regulate it appropriately. But the problem here is that some people, such as yourself, want us to pretend there's real competition and let the telcos and cablecos do whatever the fuck they want!
As for the common carrier deal, it's not that simple. Phone companies are common carriers and yet still have the right to limit services whenever they feel like it.
But they absolutely don't have the right to decide things like who you are or are not allowed to call or what you want to talk about, which is what the ISPs want to be able to do.
How is satellite not broadband? Is it wider than the 4 kilohertz width of a phone line or 5 kilohertz AM station (aka narrowband)?
I assumed we were talking about "broadband" in the networking sense, not in the RF sense. The relevant meaning of "broadband" is something more like "at least 1MBps and reasonable latency for both download and upload" -- a standard which satellite didn't meet, last time I checked (have they moved beyond dialup upload by now?)
You are the typical Libertarian: You have ideals (free market gives the power of Choice to the people) but fail to see when your ideals don't fit into the real world - like the electric, natural gas, and phone monopolies (aka natural monopolies) - and do not adjust your thinking to fit the real world limitations.
First of all, what did I say that had anything to do with being libertarian?
Second of all, I'm not (big-L) Libertarian. I'm anti-authoritarian, if that's what you mean, but then again, so are most Americans who aren't too distracted by "left vs. right" bullshit to think about it.
Unlike these strawman Libertarians you're talking about, I understand the tragedy of the commons and natural monopolies.
Personally, I think the real solution is for the government to declare ISPs as Common Carriers (which implies net neutrality) and be done with it.
The single cable company and the single phone company will likely collude to offer exactly the same restrictions (just like how they offer exactly the same speeds and prices now).
Satellite doesn't count; it's not broadband.
3G is too slow and the 4G provider got bought by the cable company (and will therefore suffer the same restrictions).
There are no independent broadband ISPs.
Finally, doing without is not an option. Things necessary to functioning in society, such as government services, are increasingly offered only over the Internet. Not having a decent connection makes you a second-class citizen.
The assholes at Comcast are using their digital switch* as an excuse to force cable boxes on their customers. Sure, they could just send unencrypted QAM like all digital TVs are designed to receive, but why do that when the FCC and FTC are too spineless to stop them from encrypting everything and charging $5 per TV for boxes?
*Note: Comcast's switch to digital is not the same as the broadcast TV switch and is not mandated by the government, even though Comcast representatives will consistently and blatantly lie by telling you that it is.
It's best to do energy audits when the difference between inside and outside temperatures is biggest, either summer or winter (but not spring or fall). The leaks show up better that way.
Suddenly, the freedom guy seems less cuddly and kind.
Freedom isn't supposed to be cuddly or kind.
But [alcohol's] manufacture and sale is still heavily regulated. Is this an imposition of ego?
Regulation is reasonable to the extent that free markets depend on everyone being well-informed. For example, it's reasonable to require brewers to (accurately) disclose the proof of their product. In contrast, it's not reasonable to restrict sales of it on a particular day of the week because some religion objects to it.
Where we have deregulated the extent to which advantage can be taken of the weak, we end up harming everyone: the subprime mortgage hiccough is an obvious contemporary example.
Some people argue that the subprime mortgage fiasco was caused by overregulation, not deregulation: government programs forced lenders to approve mortgages for people they would have considered too risky otherwise.
But the authoritarian would stop the salesman selling the mortgage to the unemployed black in in Alabama.
The libertarian wouldn't have bailed the salesman out when he went broke due to stupidity.
- The humans on Pandora were from a corporation with some hired ex-military mercenaries. Even if earth has developed stronger energy weapons, it's very possible such "WMDs" are limited to the government military, I don't see GM and Ford running around with nuclear bombs so I don't see why a corporation of the future would have free access to the latest and greatest weapons we have developed.
I tend to equate the corporation in the movie more with the likes of Halliburton, De Beers, or the [Dutch|Britsh|whatever] East India Company.
What's really surprising is that the Na'vi learned English, but never bothered to try to understand what the humans wanted in all the time they'd been there.
How could that possibly surprise anyone? Every real native culture in history -- Africans, Indians, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines -- reacted to their European colonial conquerors in exactly the same way!
That's something that really didn't sit right with me. The Na'vi understood about hunting; the idea that a predator kills to survive. Could they not recognise the humans as predators, the Unobtanium as prey, and themselves as "in the way"? Could they not respond in one of the obvious ways - compromise, negotiation?
Well, consider that the big Unobtanium deposit had the Tree of Souls growing on top of it. Since the Tree of Souls is basically the Na'vis' god, telling a Na'vi you want to mine the Unobtanium is kind of like telling a human you want to bulldoze Heaven -- not only does the idea not make (spiritual) sense, but even if it did it would be unthinkable blasphemy.
the director's cuts of the LOTR movies added something good
I haven't seen them, but I suspect that the added stuff was good because it was in the books to begin with. In other words, it wasn't added after the fact, but rather was there from the beginning and just cut from the theatrical release.
Apparently everyone, except the scientists with Avatars, is blood thirsty and 100% willing to commit genocide. That portion was way too over the top for my liking.
Really? I found that aspect to be completely and easily believable -- the most so of any aspect of the movie. Not only has it happened many times in real life (both historically and currently), but the circumstances in the movie show the environment most conducive to it: the humans depicted weren't a cross-section of society; they were mostly ex-military (i.e., trained to perform distasteful or morally-iffy tasks without question) and working for a company devoted to exploiting the planet's resources. Once the natives started getting in the way of that, it's easy to see how they became pests to be exterminated in (most of) the humans' eyes.
That's the important thing, by the way: the humans weren't really genocidal in the sense that they wanted to destroy the natives on purpose out of malice; they just lacked empathy and saw the natives as beasts rather than people. Except for the military villain guy: the natives (and the protagonist) pissed him off enough that they went from "obstacle" to "enemy" for him.
The casual genocide depicted in Avatar is no different than has happened throughout history, from the Roman legions to the East India Company to Halliburton.
Avatar is a movie that, after you let it sink in and you've thought about it for a while, brings you to the harsh realization that it pretty much sucked.
I had that sort of reaction more to the new Star Trek than to Avatar. I think it's because with Avatar, I didn't have any expectation of deep meaning to begin with. (Plus, I thought the telepathy aspect was interesting.)
In contrast, with Star Trek I went in with some hope (not much, since I'd seen the trailers, but some) that I'd get some social commentary or a cautionary tale or something other than plot holes, sex & violence, and gratuitous random Corvette destruction.
There are good sci-fi movies, that after you've had a while to let them sink in, don't suck, like District 9.
District 9 was excellent sci-fi, but could have been a much better movie if they'd toned down the gore and gross-out scenes. So the guy's mutating into an alien and it's a gritty, messy biological process -- fine. But I don't need to watch him pulling off his fingernails!
...if I keep remembering that I'm watching a movie while I'm in the theater then there's something wrong with it.
Did you watch it in 3D? It's supposed to be more immersive, but sometime it backfires (especially when movies do something blatant like shoot something straight at the audience).
Obviously it could have been the content by itself too, but I think the 3D had some contribution.
Of course, fight choreography in animation is hard, so that sort of comes with being (mostly) an animated film.
They were using motion-capture for everything though (well, except for the fights with non-bipedal creatures, I guess). I don't see why the fight choreography should have been harder than in, say, The Matrix (or some other heavily computer-enhanced movie).
"...advance movie technology further in the wrong direction."
There's nothing wrong with advancing movie technology towards better CG; the only thing wrong is using it without discretion. Using Auto Tune as an analogy, Avatar is the CG equivalent of T-Pain.
First of all, I'm glad to see that "stop sprawl" is at the top of your list. Most people are hypocritical about that, though (even me: I choose to live in a single-family house, albeit a small one on a compact urban lot, instead of a more-efficient townhouse or condo).
2) R.R.Recycle!
You're emphasizing the wrong "R." "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is always listed in that particular order for a reason: reducing is better than reusing, which is in turn better than recycling. You should only move to the next option in the list after exhausting all the possibilities of the previous one.
4) Wind! / GeoThermal Exchange!! / Solar
What about "Insulation! / Passive heating & cooling! / Site-appropriate design! / Minimizing living space! / Simply turning unused shit off!!!" -- you know, all the relatively cheap & easy stuff that you ought to have done already by the time you start thinking about wind, geothermal, and solar?
I completely agree with you that the "greenest" option is the cheapest option... if you account for all the externalities.
But the basic problems of heating, cooling, etc. have been basically solved even in the hottest of climates.
I also completely agree that building in traditional climate-specific ways is often better than using some of the new complicated technologies (of course, quite a few "new" green technologies are really just old ideas with different terminology: "passive solar," "stack-effect cooling," "thermal mass," etc.
One problem, though: we've solved living in hot dry climates, but what about hot humid ones (such as the Deep South)? Cooling techniques designed for the desert (e.g. thermal mass, evaporative cooling) don't work there and there aren't any clever native solutions to learn from -- before air conditioning, everyone up to and including the indians just had to resign themselves to being constantly hot and sweaty 6 months of the year.
Portland cement is very energy-intensive to make. Even using only "a little bit" of it, I'm not sure it's actually greener than the traditional method. Also, what about using alternative Pozzolanous materials, such as fly ash, instead?
Ok, so I had an insightful chat with my wife the other day. She's "green conscious". A recycling nazi, buys CFLs, wants an electric or hybrid car, buys organic*, even bought me an electric mower (thanks honey), but still bought a biggish house, wants a big TV, and is getting fancy furniture.
Regarding cars: She should consider used conventional economy cars. In particular, she should consider (in order of increasing "greenness") the '96-2000 Honda Civic HX coupe, '92-'95 Civic VX hatchback, '88-'91 Honda CRX HF or '89-'94 Geo Metro LFi. The latter two got over 50 MPG 20 years ago, and didn't need any fancy batteries to do it!
Or, if she's bent on a new (or late-model) car, she should consider VW diesels (Jetta or Golf) if her driving patters tend more towards highway than stop-and-go city trips.
Regarding TVs: The most efficient big TVs right now are LED-backlit LCDs. Not only do they use less energy than CCFL-backlit LCDs (and much less than plasma screens), but they won't wear out (i.e., get dim) nearly as fast.
Regarding furniture: antique furniture is often considered fancy and desirable, and is green because it's long since been built -- especially if you refurbish something that would have otherwise been thrown away. Also, some new furniture features stuff like FSC-certified wood, no-formaldehyde glue, etc. these days.
It all pales in comparison to living in a Bangladeshi slum, of course, (not to mention offing yourself...!) but every little bit helps...
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If there are standards for household DC wiring, I'd love for you to point them out.
Perhaps some people don't understand the difference between an electric heater and a heat pump, for which efficiency really is an issue.
The nazis were socialists; "nazi" was derived from "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" (National Socialist German Workers' Party).
Well, there's your problem: most landlords go for bottom-dollar shit. If you want better, you have to look for the places labeled "luxury apartments."
Also, I think the reason you had such a hard time finding "vitroceramic" cooktops is that nobody knew WTF you were talking about because we just call them "glass" around here!
FWIW, my washer is an efficient front-loader and my range is gas (but it'll be replaced with an induction cooktop and convection oven once I finally renovate my kitchen).
What about bulbs hooked to dimmer switches? I use CFLs just about everywhere else, but dimmable CFLs are still freaking expensive!
I can understand that. You're the one who's trying to argue that we have some sort of non-imaginary choice here.
There's nothing wrong with having a natural monopoly, as long as you recognize it for what it is and regulate it appropriately. But the problem here is that some people, such as yourself, want us to pretend there's real competition and let the telcos and cablecos do whatever the fuck they want!
But they absolutely don't have the right to decide things like who you are or are not allowed to call or what you want to talk about, which is what the ISPs want to be able to do.
I assumed we were talking about "broadband" in the networking sense, not in the RF sense. The relevant meaning of "broadband" is something more like "at least 1MBps and reasonable latency for both download and upload" -- a standard which satellite didn't meet, last time I checked (have they moved beyond dialup upload by now?)
First of all, what did I say that had anything to do with being libertarian?
Second of all, I'm not (big-L) Libertarian. I'm anti-authoritarian, if that's what you mean, but then again, so are most Americans who aren't too distracted by "left vs. right" bullshit to think about it.
Unlike these strawman Libertarians you're talking about, I understand the tragedy of the commons and natural monopolies.
Personally, I think the real solution is for the government to declare ISPs as Common Carriers (which implies net neutrality) and be done with it.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Consider a major city, such as Atlanta.
The assholes at Comcast are using their digital switch* as an excuse to force cable boxes on their customers. Sure, they could just send unencrypted QAM like all digital TVs are designed to receive, but why do that when the FCC and FTC are too spineless to stop them from encrypting everything and charging $5 per TV for boxes?
*Note: Comcast's switch to digital is not the same as the broadcast TV switch and is not mandated by the government, even though Comcast representatives will consistently and blatantly lie by telling you that it is.
It's best to do energy audits when the difference between inside and outside temperatures is biggest, either summer or winter (but not spring or fall). The leaks show up better that way.
Have you done an energy audit? Not only do those people tend to have infrared cameras, they'll tell you how best to insulate your crawlspace too!
Freedom isn't supposed to be cuddly or kind.
Regulation is reasonable to the extent that free markets depend on everyone being well-informed. For example, it's reasonable to require brewers to (accurately) disclose the proof of their product. In contrast, it's not reasonable to restrict sales of it on a particular day of the week because some religion objects to it.
Some people argue that the subprime mortgage fiasco was caused by overregulation, not deregulation: government programs forced lenders to approve mortgages for people they would have considered too risky otherwise.
The libertarian wouldn't have bailed the salesman out when he went broke due to stupidity.
I tend to equate the corporation in the movie more with the likes of Halliburton, De Beers, or the [Dutch|Britsh|whatever] East India Company.
How could that possibly surprise anyone? Every real native culture in history -- Africans, Indians, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines -- reacted to their European colonial conquerors in exactly the same way!
Well, consider that the big Unobtanium deposit had the Tree of Souls growing on top of it. Since the Tree of Souls is basically the Na'vis' god, telling a Na'vi you want to mine the Unobtanium is kind of like telling a human you want to bulldoze Heaven -- not only does the idea not make (spiritual) sense, but even if it did it would be unthinkable blasphemy.
I haven't seen them, but I suspect that the added stuff was good because it was in the books to begin with. In other words, it wasn't added after the fact, but rather was there from the beginning and just cut from the theatrical release.
Really? I found that aspect to be completely and easily believable -- the most so of any aspect of the movie. Not only has it happened many times in real life (both historically and currently), but the circumstances in the movie show the environment most conducive to it: the humans depicted weren't a cross-section of society; they were mostly ex-military (i.e., trained to perform distasteful or morally-iffy tasks without question) and working for a company devoted to exploiting the planet's resources. Once the natives started getting in the way of that, it's easy to see how they became pests to be exterminated in (most of) the humans' eyes.
That's the important thing, by the way: the humans weren't really genocidal in the sense that they wanted to destroy the natives on purpose out of malice; they just lacked empathy and saw the natives as beasts rather than people. Except for the military villain guy: the natives (and the protagonist) pissed him off enough that they went from "obstacle" to "enemy" for him.
The casual genocide depicted in Avatar is no different than has happened throughout history, from the Roman legions to the East India Company to Halliburton.
I had that sort of reaction more to the new Star Trek than to Avatar. I think it's because with Avatar, I didn't have any expectation of deep meaning to begin with. (Plus, I thought the telepathy aspect was interesting.)
In contrast, with Star Trek I went in with some hope (not much, since I'd seen the trailers, but some) that I'd get some social commentary or a cautionary tale or something other than plot holes, sex & violence, and gratuitous random Corvette destruction.
District 9 was excellent sci-fi, but could have been a much better movie if they'd toned down the gore and gross-out scenes. So the guy's mutating into an alien and it's a gritty, messy biological process -- fine. But I don't need to watch him pulling off his fingernails!
Did you watch it in 3D? It's supposed to be more immersive, but sometime it backfires (especially when movies do something blatant like shoot something straight at the audience).
Obviously it could have been the content by itself too, but I think the 3D had some contribution.
They were using motion-capture for everything though (well, except for the fights with non-bipedal creatures, I guess). I don't see why the fight choreography should have been harder than in, say, The Matrix (or some other heavily computer-enhanced movie).
There's nothing wrong with advancing movie technology towards better CG; the only thing wrong is using it without discretion. Using Auto Tune as an analogy, Avatar is the CG equivalent of T-Pain.
Wouldn't it make more sense for your advice to be "don't screw up the calculations?"
First of all, I'm glad to see that "stop sprawl" is at the top of your list. Most people are hypocritical about that, though (even me: I choose to live in a single-family house, albeit a small one on a compact urban lot, instead of a more-efficient townhouse or condo).
You're emphasizing the wrong "R." "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is always listed in that particular order for a reason: reducing is better than reusing, which is in turn better than recycling. You should only move to the next option in the list after exhausting all the possibilities of the previous one.
What about "Insulation! / Passive heating & cooling! / Site-appropriate design! / Minimizing living space! / Simply turning unused shit off!!!" -- you know, all the relatively cheap & easy stuff that you ought to have done already by the time you start thinking about wind, geothermal, and solar?
I completely agree with you that the "greenest" option is the cheapest option... if you account for all the externalities.
I also completely agree that building in traditional climate-specific ways is often better than using some of the new complicated technologies (of course, quite a few "new" green technologies are really just old ideas with different terminology: "passive solar," "stack-effect cooling," "thermal mass," etc.
One problem, though: we've solved living in hot dry climates, but what about hot humid ones (such as the Deep South)? Cooling techniques designed for the desert (e.g. thermal mass, evaporative cooling) don't work there and there aren't any clever native solutions to learn from -- before air conditioning, everyone up to and including the indians just had to resign themselves to being constantly hot and sweaty 6 months of the year.
Portland cement is very energy-intensive to make. Even using only "a little bit" of it, I'm not sure it's actually greener than the traditional method. Also, what about using alternative Pozzolanous materials, such as fly ash, instead?
It all pales in comparison to living in a Bangladeshi slum, of course, (not to mention offing yourself...!) but every little bit helps...