Building solar cells requires the use of toxic chemicals and the production of toxic chemical waste. Just like your computer.
There are other forms of solar energy available, one of which is solar towers.
Sandia doesn't mention how many toxic chemicals are used in its creation (if any) and I think that failure to disclose each and every source of possible ecological contamination is a problem (assuming that there's more here than meets the eye).
Another form is solar water heating, used extensively in Barbados for example. (That link is outdated and a tad too financially "comforting" for my tastes. Nonetheless...)
What follows isn't in response to your post, just my views in general on the topic of sustainable living.
I can't and won't defend the financial viability of non-sustainable living because in the end, I value the long-term health and well being of myself and the ones I care for over the amount of money they make. I know health and money have become almost inextricably bound in the capitalist psyche, but the true cost of cleaner sources of energy are of inestimable value to me.
I thought that the main problem with nuclear power was the inability to safely dispose of the radioactive waste. Generally, I'm suspicious of any energy source that doesn't recycle completely. But, ignorance is the enemy, so if anyone knows otherwise, please tell us.
My views may be seen as radical, since I don't yet know to what end humanity is going towards with all of this so-called industrialized "progress". Since I don't think I'm likely to be able to work out why we're on this planet within my lifetime, I think it's only fair to give my descendants a chance to experience this incredible planet in most of its natural beauty. If I could be convinced that we (humanity) are using all of vital resources to find an answer to that question, then maybe I'd defend the right to put money first and people second.
The systems we have for supporting massive populations that don't know how to grow their own food are impractically artificial. I suspect they will collapse, though not necessarily before I die. These systems were not put in place by some magical force. Individuals made decisions. Individuals often faced massive pressures to conform to the status quo and still they decided, for better or worse, not to.
These choices are still ours to make. If no-one ever made a move that wasn't likely to result in monetary profit, I think we'd have destroyed far more planets than we have available to us. The point is, competition for money places too much importance on immediate gain at the expense of long-term benefit. My computer shouldn't be a toxic nightmare to produce and dispose of. If it took another thirty years to create it cleanly, it would've been worth the wait. What's the big rush? Sociopolitical pressures, probably.
Slowing down and doing it right the first time aren't options. Admitting errors early on before irreparable damage can be done aren't options. Creating jobs by creating problems to be solved sounds like the ultimate goal of "progress".
A lot of it seems to boil down to humans trying to "keep up with the Joneses", having more children, building bigger houses etc. in pursuit of some variant of "The American Dream". A dream supported largely by a marketing industry which in turn creates the demand for rampant production of superfluous items and on and on. Reminds me of the beginning neanderthal scenes of "2001": A Space Odyssey". "That's just the way it is" is not an excuse for defending these downward-spiralling infrastructures.
I realise that there's a huge morass of human motives behind these bad decisions, including nationalism, religion, sexism, crime and mental illness, to name a few. Fully deconstructing the human condition isn't the aim of this tex
Had the leader of the fifth invader force directed his commander in chief's attention to/. articles, you can bet they wouldn't have been vascillating over how to proceed.
"Any useful elements at least?"
"Well, a couple million tonnes of nice nickel near the core."
"Eh, slag it, store it and let's get out of here. This was altogether too weird an experience."
My main issue with the 1.5 version of Mozilla is the tab behaviour. Now all of a sudden, loading a group of tabs REPLACES all of the previous tabs that were loaded, removing however much information had been gathered previously.
What appears to happen is, the removed group of tabs is relegated to the back button of the newly loaded tabs. I suppose that someone using a bradband connection might not be concerned about having to reload the entire group of tabs again, not to mention losing the ability to have all of the tabs loaded in a single window, but it's unfortunate that this seems to be the assumption made for every user.
Doubtless, there must be some logical explanation for this change, but I'm at a loss to understand what that might be. I'd seen some discussion in the BugZilla forums about the conflict between loading tabs to the left or to the right of the current tab. I think it should be to the right, but that's a side issue.
Make it configurable please, even if I have to edit about:config or somesuch. Let the user choose their preferred method.
"If you serve people crap all day there is no reason for a competitor to serve them steak when they know you will eat crap. Microsoft has proven that people will eat crap." -- HOM from #macobserver
"We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft. (Editor's note: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997.)"
Wow. I'd never thought of it like that. So according to him, Apple is to MS what Lexus is to Toyota?
Are those voting shares?
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Very well put. More concise and to the point than I was able to get across.
I'd like to also add re: competition. Much of this competition today is competing for the approval of external agents such as one's peers, and ironically, one's customers.
Hence the major fault of most marketing (and in essence the capitalist infrastructure). The best marketing is the one that wins the most customers. Period. Almost without regard to ethics.
Witness for example, a Communication Arts article indicating the amount of creative effort that goes into a "successful" ad campaign.
What I'd like to know is if the people responsible for fulfilling their individual, essential, niche roles in that juggernaut of slick promotion ever ask themselves whether their valuable time and amazing creative energies couldn't be better spent actually helping needy people live better lives.
I posted while/. was emailing me a new password:-) (yeah, I forgot it. Tried to join/. on a bad day months before. Never saw the PW I was ahem SUPPOSED to receive.)
Slashdot Mirror
Building solar cells requires the use of toxic chemicals and the production of toxic chemical waste. Just like your computer.
There are other forms of solar energy available, one of which is solar towers.
Sandia doesn't mention how many toxic chemicals are used in its creation (if any) and I think that failure to disclose each and every source of possible ecological contamination is a problem (assuming that there's more here than meets the eye).
Another form is solar water heating, used extensively in Barbados for example. (That link is outdated and a tad too financially "comforting" for my tastes. Nonetheless...)
What follows isn't in response to your post, just my views in general on the topic of sustainable living.
I can't and won't defend the financial viability of non-sustainable living because in the end, I value the long-term health and well being of myself and the ones I care for over the amount of money they make. I know health and money have become almost inextricably bound in the capitalist psyche, but the true cost of cleaner sources of energy are of inestimable value to me.
I thought that the main problem with nuclear power was the inability to safely dispose of the radioactive waste. Generally, I'm suspicious of any energy source that doesn't recycle completely. But, ignorance is the enemy, so if anyone knows otherwise, please tell us.
My views may be seen as radical, since I don't yet know to what end humanity is going towards with all of this so-called industrialized "progress". Since I don't think I'm likely to be able to work out why we're on this planet within my lifetime, I think it's only fair to give my descendants a chance to experience this incredible planet in most of its natural beauty. If I could be convinced that we (humanity) are using all of vital resources to find an answer to that question, then maybe I'd defend the right to put money first and people second.
The systems we have for supporting massive populations that don't know how to grow their own food are impractically artificial. I suspect they will collapse, though not necessarily before I die. These systems were not put in place by some magical force. Individuals made decisions. Individuals often faced massive pressures to conform to the status quo and still they decided, for better or worse, not to.
These choices are still ours to make. If no-one ever made a move that wasn't likely to result in monetary profit, I think we'd have destroyed far more planets than we have available to us. The point is, competition for money places too much importance on immediate gain at the expense of long-term benefit. My computer shouldn't be a toxic nightmare to produce and dispose of. If it took another thirty years to create it cleanly, it would've been worth the wait. What's the big rush? Sociopolitical pressures, probably.
Slowing down and doing it right the first time aren't options. Admitting errors early on before irreparable damage can be done aren't options. Creating jobs by creating problems to be solved sounds like the ultimate goal of "progress".
A lot of it seems to boil down to humans trying to "keep up with the Joneses", having more children, building bigger houses etc. in pursuit of some variant of "The American Dream". A dream supported largely by a marketing industry which in turn creates the demand for rampant production of superfluous items and on and on. Reminds me of the beginning neanderthal scenes of "2001": A Space Odyssey". "That's just the way it is" is not an excuse for defending these downward-spiralling infrastructures.
I realise that there's a huge morass of human motives behind these bad decisions, including nationalism, religion, sexism, crime and mental illness, to name a few. Fully deconstructing the human condition isn't the aim of this tex
Can you please provide a link to something explaining the connection between solar energy and toxins?
I wasn't aware that such a problem existed.
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I fully agree. See adbusters for example.
That's one way of trying to alert people to the possibility of living in a world not based on deceit.
More power to them.
slide
Whoa, Ethel. I think this here's one o' them there potty-mouthed malcontents that there Bobby feller was goin' on about. Cover yer eyes, honey.
My main issue with the 1.5 version of Mozilla is the tab behaviour. Now all of a sudden, loading a group of tabs REPLACES all of the previous tabs that were loaded, removing however much information had been gathered previously.
What appears to happen is, the removed group of tabs is relegated to the back button of the newly loaded tabs. I suppose that someone using a bradband connection might not be concerned about having to reload the entire group of tabs again, not to mention losing the ability to have all of the tabs loaded in a single window, but it's unfortunate that this seems to be the assumption made for every user.
Doubtless, there must be some logical explanation for this change, but I'm at a loss to understand what that might be. I'd seen some discussion in the BugZilla forums about the conflict between loading tabs to the left or to the right of the current tab. I think it should be to the right, but that's a side issue.
Make it configurable please, even if I have to edit about:config or somesuch. Let the user choose their preferred method.
"If you serve people crap all day there is no reason for a competitor to serve them steak when they know you will eat crap. Microsoft has proven that people will eat crap." -- HOM from #macobserver
slide
"We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft. (Editor's note: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997.)" Wow. I'd never thought of it like that. So according to him, Apple is to MS what Lexus is to Toyota? Are those voting shares? slide
Xerox assimilated Tektronix. Resistance was futile.
Very well put. More concise and to the point than I was able to get across.
:-).
I'd like to also add re: competition. Much of this competition today is competing for the approval of external agents such as one's peers, and ironically, one's customers.
Hence the major fault of most marketing (and in essence the capitalist infrastructure). The best marketing is the one that wins the most customers. Period. Almost without regard to ethics.
Witness for example, a Communication Arts article indicating the amount of creative effort that goes into a "successful" ad campaign.
What I'd like to know is if the people responsible for fulfilling their individual, essential, niche roles in that juggernaut of slick promotion ever ask themselves whether their valuable time and amazing creative energies couldn't be better spent actually helping needy people live better lives.
Yeah, I read Adbusters (among other things
And yeah, I used to work for an ad agency.
I'm going to go outside soon, I'm losing focus.
Conclusion. I look forward to a period of personal accountability in human affairs. A period where decisions are made honestly and individually.
Sure it'll take more time and effort, but then again...
What's the rush?
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I posted while /. was emailing me a new password :-) (yeah, I forgot it. Tried to join /. on a bad day months before. Never saw the PW I was ahem SUPPOSED to receive.)
Now I'm all legit.
Thanks for the encouragement.
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