The volume of fuel is considerably smaller, for starters. True, but so is the yield. Uranium ore produces in the order of a few pounds of pure uranium per ton of ore whileas coal is presumably closer to a 1:1 ratio.
And coal mines are inherently dangerous; methane tends to be found in and around coal deposits, which is both flammable and tends to displace oxygen. There are some concerns around the chemical and physical processes around the processing of uranium ore. This involves rather unsavory chemicals and/or the production of radioactive dust after crushing the ore, both of which can presumably affect the health of the miners. This won't cause immediate fatalities though, but rather induce disease over the course of several years.
I don't know how this compares to coal mining deaths, hence my question.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, for getting the capitalization right on this Act! To really bring the point home, I would have thought that "P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act" would be even better. It makes it seem more like what it is: a villain from a "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." episode:-)
But last year - one year alone - 47 coal miners were killed in the United States. Is there reason to believe that uranium mines will be considerably safer than this in the event that all the effort is shifted to nuclear?
This isn't because there's "not enough water to cool them", . .. Actually, it is. The point is that since the water starts out warmer than it used to, you will need more of it to achieve the same effect. However, since the water flow in the river is the same as always (or perhaps because your piping wasn't scaled to take this into account), this extra water isn't available. Ergo, there's not enough water to cool them. As you point out, this isn't because there's less water now than what there used to be, but because more water is needed now than what used to be the case.
They must include the expenses for keeping nuclear waste in safety from leaks, terrorism and international crime Why would terrorists and criminals be interested in your nuclear plants? I would be a lot more worried about all the chemical plants dotted around the nation - a well planned attack on one of those (and they tend to not be guarded much if at all) could make the Bhopal disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster) look like a nice stroll in the park in comparison.
the expenses to cure people when depleted uranium is dumped into the environment during wars Depleted uranium will be used by the military whether nuclear plants are in widespread use or not so this really is irrelevant.
The rest of your post, I will ascribe to an overly keen interest in The Catcher in the Rye:-)
The problem is that, after they discovered that he did not have WMD, they still tried to pin something on him. Why can't they just admit that they were mistaken and let it go? They need to save face.
How is it important? It is important because the whole point of modern democracy is to have a form of government that gets its legitimacy from a majority of the people. Once this is gone (e.g. the shots are called by only 20%) then the entire basis of the system is falling apart. It doesn't matter if the 50% no-shows are lazy, or disillusioned, or disenfranchised, or whatever. What matters is that the government isn't representative of the population. A government that isn't representative of the population quite simply isn't a democratic one.
If you don't vote, you kind of voluntarily opting out of the game. But this is largely irrelevant. Throwing blame around isn't solving the problem. By mentally "punishing" the no-shows in this manner you really are punishing yourself by throwing democracy out the window.
If you don't put enough stock in your opinion to do something about it, it can't be too important. Even if one voter doesn't hold his opinions of much value, they still are of inestimable value to the democratic system. One single vote might be argued to be unimportant in the big picture, but in aggregate that single vote is of vital importance.
As an (abstract) example, consider that there exists a demographic of 30% of the population that holds some opinion or set of opinions that they find important but which they do not care to defend by voting. They stay at home. Over the course of a series of presidential periods, laws are written that gradually make it more difficult to hold those opinions. This happens because the 30% who would otherwise oppose this have opted out of the democratic process. Eventually, conditions become untenable for the 30% because the laws are now very firmly set against them. "Now", you say, "that's what they get for being lazy gits". At this point, however, they finally rally and consider that their best course of action is armed rebellion in order to restore a political climate that is friendly to them. In the ensuing civil war,/you/ will suffer hardship and most likely the loss of loved ones and even if you may still go around saying "bah, the lazy bastards, they had it coming" those words will probably leave a sour taste. This is the sort of situation a democratic system is supposed to counteract by giving the 30% a way of continually participating in policy-making but since they/do not/, democracy didn't work.
This is why a government with only 20% public support at election day is a very very bad thing and a serious threat to democracy.
40%? The approval rating for Congress right now is about 25-30%! That's worse than the President's! I'm not referring to current polls but rather to election results. It's an intended consequence of the system we have that we only sample the public opinion every couple of years.
Of course, even if you look at actual election results I'm probably being overly optimistic. Not having the time to actually look up the exact numbers, let's assume that congressional elections have 50% turnout (this is a bit high?) and that you need a 67% supermajority to change the Constitution (there are probably complications I'm not aware of here). Also assume that representation in Congress is actually an accurate reflection of the votes cast (probably overly naïve). This means that it only takes 33% of Americans to make such a thing happen - less if you also adjust for the disenfranchised. Even less if you adjust for my still somewhat optimistic assumptions. This seems to me to be a democratic problem and I don't think we're doing ourselves any favours when we hide this by saying "80% of us voted for . .." instead of the more truthful "40% of us voted for . .."
Well they clearly don't care so why would anyone else care what they think? True, true. Why should anyone care about a demographic that in 1996 was only a majority of US voters. Democracy is just sooo 20th century:-)
What I am trying to get at is that whenever I see assertions of the kind "80% of Americans voted for . .." it just screams out at me because the/truth/ is "80% of the Americans/that voted/ voted for . .." and the difference is really very important.
As an example, the current president is probably lucky if he can/actually/ boast more than 20% public support back on election day if you take voter turnout and the disenfranchised into account (this isn't an attempt at Bush-bashing btw, previous presidents suffered from the same). Everything else is just spin. This fact needs to be taken into account whenever a president's (or other elected official's) legitimacy is to be considered. Is a president with only 20% of/actual/ Americans behind him really to be allowed to go to war on behalf of his country? Is a Congress faction with less than 40% of/actual/ Americans behind it really to be allowed to amend the Constitution?
Stop complaining, you voted for it. 99% of Americans voted for high tax parties. Does this include the ~45% of Americans that didn't actually bother to vote?
more consistent, as another comment pointed out. It's only consistent to you because you're used to it. To me, it's incredibly inconsistent that someone should be referring to 10^9 as a billion when everyone knows it's actually called a milliard.
More useful: how often do you need to refer to a million million of anything? I find it somewhat interesting that Norway, a country of 4.5 million, has words that cover bigger numbers than what they have over in the US. Indeed, the true billion (i.e. 10^12) would be most useful for covering the bigger numbers of the US national economy. Trillion should be reserved for things that are/truly/ enormous.
Is this how things got so big in the US in the first place? They just redefined the scale?:-)
economists didn't see the sub prime morgage bust coming either Actually they did, but many investors chose to take the risk for much the same reason that many people bet on horses. The best of them (whether "they" are to be considered economists or gamblers is left as an exercise for the reader) probably made a killing and got out of the game before it went bust.
Oh, and don't get me started on the retarded crap that the iPod I have can only be "synced" to one specific computer. This surprises me. It was amazingly easy to rip CDs with it, and I see in iTunes that you can configure it to share your music across your network so it seems strange that they suddenly go all clampdown as soon as an iPod enters the picture. Is there an official reason for this?
I have found ways around this, but it is anything but "user friendly" or the "it just works" mantra. "It works, but only just"?:-)
Let me see if I understand correctly. That makes you 3 parts smug and 2 parts evil? No, no, no. You clearly do not understand the times we are in. I am a victim, of course.:-)
Maybe I'm one of the very few in your definition (...) Seeing that you're posting on slashdot, this seems rather likely:-)
Moreover, the people who might otherwise have pointed out that "yeah, he's right, I tried learning computers at college and I failed miserably" aren't likely to be around these parts of the net.
Installation can be streamlined... For windows, you put the DVD in, boot the machine, and when windows comes up you put your Dell/whoever's drivers CD in the drive and click "install". That should be easy enough for anyone. I don't think I'm the only who wants a new computer to just instantly work out of the box (at least, not when I buy it in one single box - it's a lot more fun to buy it in a dozen boxes or so but let's leave that aside for now). I don't want to have to wait 30 minutes or whatever for an OS to install, I want to/use/ my new shiny toy/now/.
I would still like to be able to choose between something more than just four flavours of Windows though, and pay some reasonable fee to have the vendor install all the software I'm buying.
And somehow, I wonder why this doesn't apply to computers, why people keep putzing around "under their hood" without having a clue what they're doing. I expect that this is because the computer market is a lot less mature than the automobile market is. You buy a car, and it just works. Not only that, but you can operate it in well-understood ways that have been standardized now for decades. Computers are much more difficult to use and they break down a whole lot more often - prompting the user to try and "fix" or "improve" things.
In a recent WW2 documentary, they said that when the US fielded tanks into the war, they didn't have to specifically assign mechanics to the tank units because most of the boys were accomplished mechanics already, from tinkering around with their cars at home. Pretty much everybody did it at the time. We're a bit past that point wrt computers today (that may have been the early nineties), but not by a whole lot.
I'm curious about all the Apple bashing? Apparantly, Apple customers come across as smug bastards and, in a twist of irony, Linux users seem to really really dislike smug bastards. Or perhaps it's just smug bastards from a different camp they dislike, it's a bit unclear. Anyway, this tends to transfer over into any discussion involving Apple regardless of the underlying facts of the matter. The only thing that is holding Slashdot together at the seams is the unsurprising coincident that both smugh Mac-owners and smug Linux-users both harbour an overpowering dislike for Microsoft (which isn't smug, just evil). So long as this tenuous alliance is kept alive with the odd Microsoft-bashing article every now and then, our little community shall prevail!:-)
For the record: I own two Windows boxes, two Linux boxes and one OSX box. I use most of them on a regular basis, for various purposes.
You mean the company's first priority is to make money? Say its not so! All this time I thought Apple was around to make people feel all warm and happy inside. It appears to me that Apple is trying to make money, by making people feel all warm and happy inside:-)
BS. It's not legal under international law, specifically the Berne Convention. And Sweden is a signatory. Ohh really?! Even leaving aside the fact that the Pirate Bay only hosts trackers, perhaps you can explain why the Canadians pay a fee on blank media, for copying of music? Let me assure you that downloading music (and even uploading if it is not distribution), are completely and utterly legal in Canada. Perhaps you'd like to check how that is possible when Canada is a signatory to the Berne convention. I think there exists a group of people who suffer from the delusion that the Berne convention is identical with US copyright law. Incidentally, many of these people appear to work for media companies.
What's 'wrong' with the death penalty? It certainly sounds a lot better than sitting in a cell for 40-60 years and making people waste millions of dollars on you during that period. Capital punishment turns out to be more expensive than incarceration, in large part due to higher costs in investigating, prosecuting and appealing the case.
How is poisoning someone different from making them miserable for decades? If they eventually turn out to have been innocent, you can free someone in prison but you cannot un-poison someone who is dead.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know how this compares to coal mining deaths, hence my question.
The rest of your post, I will ascribe to an overly keen interest in The Catcher in the Rye
As an (abstract) example, consider that there exists a demographic of 30% of the population that holds some opinion or set of opinions that they find important but which they do not care to defend by voting. They stay at home. Over the course of a series of presidential periods, laws are written that gradually make it more difficult to hold those opinions. This happens because the 30% who would otherwise oppose this have opted out of the democratic process. Eventually, conditions become untenable for the 30% because the laws are now very firmly set against them. "Now", you say, "that's what they get for being lazy gits". At this point, however, they finally rally and consider that their best course of action is armed rebellion in order to restore a political climate that is friendly to them. In the ensuing civil war,
This is why a government with only 20% public support at election day is a very very bad thing and a serious threat to democracy.
Of course, even if you look at actual election results I'm probably being overly optimistic. Not having the time to actually look up the exact numbers, let's assume that congressional elections have 50% turnout (this is a bit high?) and that you need a 67% supermajority to change the Constitution (there are probably complications I'm not aware of here). Also assume that representation in Congress is actually an accurate reflection of the votes cast (probably overly naïve). This means that it only takes 33% of Americans to make such a thing happen - less if you also adjust for the disenfranchised. Even less if you adjust for my still somewhat optimistic assumptions. This seems to me to be a democratic problem and I don't think we're doing ourselves any favours when we hide this by saying "80% of us voted for . .
What I am trying to get at is that whenever I see assertions of the kind "80% of Americans voted for . .
As an example, the current president is probably lucky if he can
Is this how things got so big in the US in the first place? They just redefined the scale?
Moreover, the people who might otherwise have pointed out that "yeah, he's right, I tried learning computers at college and I failed miserably" aren't likely to be around these parts of the net.
I would still like to be able to choose between something more than just four flavours of Windows though, and pay some reasonable fee to have the vendor install all the software I'm buying.
In a recent WW2 documentary, they said that when the US fielded tanks into the war, they didn't have to specifically assign mechanics to the tank units because most of the boys were accomplished mechanics already, from tinkering around with their cars at home. Pretty much everybody did it at the time. We're a bit past that point wrt computers today (that may have been the early nineties), but not by a whole lot.
For the record: I own two Windows boxes, two Linux boxes and one OSX box. I use most of them on a regular basis, for various purposes.
We should get this into WTO treaties - then we could have a minimum minimum minimum wage . . .
Heh.
"This software has been signed by Microsoft. Are you sure you want to install?"
(yes)
"This software has been signed by Microsoft. Are you sure you want to install?"
(yes)
"Proceeding will void your warranty. Are you sure?"
(yes)
"Well, it's your funeral. Please wait."