I used to have the same complaints about iTunes. Unfortunately, if you want to play AAC-encoded music, you're pretty much stuck. So I finally gave up trying to find an alternative and now just use software such as Synergy to give me system-wide hotkeys, a little transparent info window, and a bunch of other stuff like control buttons in the menubar. It's pretty nifty all by itself, but there's no shortage of cool little shareware and freeware apps to get more bang for your buck with iTunes. Just look around MacUpdate a bit, you'll find something you like.
I've never had anybody try and confiscate my credit card because of the 'check id', though. Then again I'm willing to bet that the most minimum wage drones aren't trained/didn't read the merchant agreement/couldn't give two shits anyway.
The amount of a shit given is probably proportional to the size of the transaction. If we're talking about $8.95, I'd put that at roughly.13 shits. On the other hand, if something like $250 is crossing the counter, that's worth almost 4 shits.
Agreed. It's like checking credit card IDs in retail - the credit card companies have the idea that if the card doesn't match the ID, the guy at the counter is supposed to confiscate the card. Sorry, but I can't think of anyone willing to get into a fistfight with a customer over their minimum wage retail cashiering job.
That said, I don't think a consumer blacklist is really that bad of an idea, provided it wasn't abused (big caveat, I know). There are people who complain about everything. They're the ones who say their food is too cold so they can get a free meal, bend a bookcover and then point it out to get a discount on a book, say a customer service rep was too slow so they get a free consultation... whatever. These people exist, and I've had to deal with them. Quite frankly, they aren't worth the time and effort I've had to put into them, and I wish I had a way of saying nope, I'm sorry, but you have a long history of being a jackass and I'm not going to help you.
That's just a fantasy of mine, though... I can't think of any good way to regulate or maintain a list like this. I'm sure that smarter people than I are trying to figure it out, but they haven't seemed to either (not yet, anyway).
The thing with civil unions is that a lot of people don't see a big difference between them and "separate but equal." The only gay people that this really appeases are those who see it as but a step along the way to true equal rights.
As a straight guy this doesn't affect me much, but I hope this shows his hardcore religious following just how strong his beliefs are. Like any other politician he's just doing what he thinks will get him elected, and that's what he always has been doing. Flip-flop is not a term exclusive to Kerry, it applies to anyone trying to get the most amount of votes they can.
Personally I use Quicksilver. It's not so much a keyword searcher as a "type in a couple letters at any time from any app after hitting a key combo and it presents you with a list of everything on your computer containing those letters, organized by relevancy (help files don't get placed higher than the app they are for, for example), and once you select something it remembers those letters so the next time you type them it presents the app/document/bookmark/etc you chose as the first choice."
that was a mouthful. But seriously, if you're on OS X, and you don't check out Quicksilver, you're only hurting yourself. No matter what you're doing you are only a keystroke away from being able to open anything on your keyboard.
Did I mention it's free and has source docs and specs on its website? It even has an option in the prefs to turn on (or off) superfluous visual effects. In short, it's fricken awesome.
"Polyakov told Interfax reporters that the 500 Days experiment will not include female volunteers." This will fail.
Because we all know that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were actually female. That's the real lunar landing government coverup - they all had sexchange operations in transit to ensure the mission's success.
yup, 10MB max attachment size. the help page for attachments also mentions that the encoding is so bloated that attachments of 6MB might hit the size limit, too (alright, they didn't use the word "bloated" but it seems a little absurd to me).
I have 6 to throw away... stopped asking if anyone wanted one months and months and months ago after everyone i knew had one/was sick of hearing about them, so these invites have just been sitting there for a looong time.
If someone out there wants one, send me an email at wiberwachi - - at - - earthlink.net (god I love throwaway emails, I haven't had to worry about spam in years).
As far as I can tell, Bush is a democrat who is pro life.
I tried to come up with something witty to respond to this, like saying Nader is a republican who is pro environment, but nothing is really that funny because the idea of Bush being is a democrat is just so absurd. If that were even slightly true this country wouldn't be anywhere near as polarized as it is now.
Got to say I agree very much with your second point. A lot of bad shit is going to happen over the next four years, regardless of who's in office. That said, I'd rather have the person I want taking care of problems than the person who has gone in the opposite direction of what I wanted almost every single time.
And does it really help the kid's self esteem when they need to go see a psychiatrist?
My family is filled with social workers, and while I'm not one of them I have payed my share of visits to shrinks. If you're implying that taking advantage of people who's entire profession is centered on helping you is somehow a bad thing, then you have completely missed the point.
Sure, sometimes people don't need the help and it pisses them off when it's forced on them. But more often than not the people need the help, whether they're willing to admit it or not.
But Bush said that greenhouse effect was nonsense!
Even the Bush administration has issued reports saying that global temperatures should rise about 4 degrees over the next century (independent studies say it's more like 10). Global warming is technically a theory, but it's one of the best supported and widely believed in the scientific community. Whether or not humans have played a part in it is up for debate, though. Quick side note: since the last ice age, 1 degree/100 year increase is generally regarded as a fast temperature increase.
Back on topic, any rapid change in climate is going to have some major natural disasters, be it hurricanes or undue rain or even prolonged drought, depending on the area. It's not going to be like that movie where everything happens at once and tidal waves are suddenly racing through manhattan, but florida isn't the only place in for a rough time.
You're absolutely right. The system is too far gone, so let's never try to fix anything or make any sort difference and just sit down and cry. That has a long history of being politically effective.
Hey, I'm a snowboarder, and I'm not cool! Hell, I'm on/.
Back when I lived in Colorado and was actually pretty good at it (didn't quite make it through qualifiers for boardercross to compete in the x games every time I tried), I had some top of the line Oakley goggles that were absolutely incredible. On cold days I pulled my neck gator up over my face and tucked it in under the bottom of the goggles, this kept my face really warm but unfortunately all of my hot breath would drift up into the goggles and fog them to the point where I couldn't see a damn thing and would have to take them off. My oaklies were the only goggles I ever owned that didn't fog. Everyone else I knew wore Oaklies for similar reasons - the simple fact was you couldn't get anything better without offering your firstborn to get some extremely specialized stuff.
So I guess my point here is that among the good snowboarders, being "too cool" has absolutely nothing to do with the equipment used. If two things are equally good and one is far cooler, of course we spring for the cooler item - but that's just like the rest of the world. The only people who buy stuff like this, or the hats with holes in them so they fill up with air and look like a windsock when you go fast, are people who only occasionally get to the mountain and have a lot of $$ to burn.
Yes, Kryptonite makes the New York Lock. Regardless of the flaws in some of their other locks, including ones like the New York Chain and NY Noose, the New York Lock is a specific product that is something of a legend when it comes to making sure something stays where you put it. I believe it when through some pretty serious tests of being put in high-theft areas of NYC for multiple days, and at the end of the test all that would be left were the badly-scarred but still strong lock and whatever piece of the frame it happened to be attached to.
I'm picking up hints of grave seriousness and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm from your post. I really have no idea if you mean what you said or not. But just in case you are serious, calm down, smoke some pot, and remember that the UN hardly has the power to police itself within its own facilities.
Re:Right to keep and bear arms....
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 2, Funny
how am I going to kick the ass of a foreign army, marauding zombies, or invading aliens if I don't have a handy, insanely large supply of firepower?
Not with an Uzi, that's for sure. Everyone knows that nothing beats the good ol' American-ness of a shotgun blasting everything that moves. Especially zombies.
A good point, but I don't think terrorists have shopped for their rifles at the local sporting goods store in a long time. And as for being a reasonable preventative measure, for a fairly reasonable price I could get a submachine gun within 3 days, regardless of the ban. Keep in mind that I'm little more than a humble computer geek. If you know the right people, laws cease to be a preventative measure and are only good for punishing people who get caught. But a criminal never intends to get caught, so really the law becomes fairly irrelevant.
That said, I'm a pretty law-abiding guy and it just seems like common sense that the more hurdles you have between a criminal and a gun designed to kill large numbers of people in a small amount of time, the better.
marginalized some groups like the Christian Right that were detrimental to them. (Criticisms that the Republicans are controlled by them are now out of date.)
You are aware that Bush is president, right? He may not get into heaven, but he sure knows how to preach to those that try.
Moving beyond that, your argument is full of holes. What exactly is the left trying to do that's "loony"? You didn't actually mention anything, other than a qualifier that impossibly stubborn people are loony. Are you making the case that a majority of the democratic party is impossibly stubborn? Pains me to admit it, but as I remember it the patriot act and going to war with iraq didn't have much trouble getting through congress. Stupid I'll agree with, but that doesn't seem terribly stubborn. Oh, or do you mean loony as in saying that there are weapons of mass destruction, despite a complete lack of supporting evidence and a healthy supply of evidence to the contrary, as a basis for going and re-fucking a part of the world that has historically hated us because we never stop fucking them?
And just because your post is trying so hard to be intelligent but is really just a bunch of pretty words wrapped around nothing, I'll get nitpicky. The Republican Party is not a third party. It was a third party, at least until the civil war or so. You do remember the civil war, don't you? That's back when the Republican party had people like Lincoln, and fought to abolish slavery. I'm not calling them slave owners now, but I would say their morals and ideals have significantly shifted over time. And for choosing to disagree with their insane international policies, tanked economy, and disregard for even basic environmental concerns, I get people like you up on their high horse calling me a loony. The Bush administration itself has stated that a 4-6 degree global temperature increase over the next 100 years is highly probable. Independent scientists say it's more like 10. Do you know what's considered a fast rate of change since the last ice age? 1 degree in 100 years. We're working on quadrupling that, using the most conservative of estimates. Just like I'm not saying Bush is a slave owner I'm not saying he's the one causing global warming (which is I understand it is a culmination of completely natural processes and CFCs). That said, Bush is not only ignoring means of attempting to control these problems (I didn't get a chance to fit it in, but the sea level is rising at a rapidly accelerating rate as well), but more importantly is ignoring the consequences. You know all of those hurricanes hitting Florida one after another? That's no accident, that's a symptom of a rapidly shifting climate. Again, Bush isn't in the cloud huffing and puffing, but that man is seriously not helping.
I swear I'm moving to some hill in the Yukon the first chance I get. Hopefully we haven't bombed the fuck out of them by the time I get there. I despise Kerry, think the Libertarian agenda means well but is full of holes, and wouldn't leave my child alone with Bush for fear of decapitation. As much as I love living here, I really hate this county. Fucking Americans.
[/rant disclaimer=I'm american, I'm an independent, and don't make me post links to backup my assertions. Obviously me assuring you now that they're true means nothing, but you've got google, do some fact finding for yourself. maybe you'll find something new and interesting.]
Cherynobl, killed a total of 3,000 people. That includes long term deaths attributed to radiation poisoning and increased cancer rates.
Bullshit. Chernobyl has been attributed to over 42,000 deaths - the number 3000 is of people who died very quickly. And remember that 42,000 is the number of people that have been traced to Chernobyl - just think of all the people who have suffered or died from Chernobyl's effects but don't actually have the disaster tied to them on a stat sheet.
As for the nuclear waste generated aftewards there are a number of clever idea's about how to deal with it including one which disposes of it in the giant fusion reaction that is our Sun.
Genius! I mean, rockets never explode, right? There's not even the slightest chance that one little mistake could spread radioactive waste throughout the stratosphere, filtering down over a much wider area than a simple explosion at Chernobyl could do underneath an inversion layer.
Wait, maybe that's not such a good idea.
I agree with you that the day to day operation of a nuclear plant isn't much cause for alarm, and I also agree that coal sucks. I'm really not a fan of coal, and I'm not trying to defend it. But even if we pretend that a standard nuclear reactor (I'm not talking about a breeder or anything fancy) is 100% safe from anything bad ever causing a massive release of radioactive materials that will contaminate its region for thousands of years, there is no good way to get rid of the waste. Clever ways, yes. But still no good ways.
Let's look at a few of the ways we do it or might do it:
Shoot it into the sun. I already covered the risk that a Challenger-like explosion holds, but there's also the issue of cost.
Bury it under ice sheets/caps at the poles. Well, it's against international law for one thing, but we really don't know much about the stability of ice sheets and the heat emitted from waste could cause some significant problems. Assuming it did cause a problem, retrieving the waste would be insanely expensive, if not impossible.
Put it into descending subduction zones in the ocean. One of the better ideas IMHO, except that waste might be spewed out somewhere else by volcanic activity, containers might leak before they are far enough beneath the surface, the risks of transportation are significantly increased when you have to factor in the general dangerousness of the ocean and the high pressure while sinking it to the ocean floor, and retrieval would be pretty much impossible if something went wrong. Assuming something went wrong (which you always should), large amounts of waste would be directly deposited into ocean currents, spreading around the world. We know less about the oceans than we do about space, so I think not fucking with it is prudent. And remember I think this is one of the better ideas.
Skip the subduction zones and just bury it in stable areas of the ocean floor. Some parts of the ocean have thick deposits of mud and have been stable for many millions of years, so putting waste there gets rid of some of the unpredictability of subduction zones. Unfortunately the containers would eventually corrode, releasing their contents into the ocean. This is also illegal under international law.
Bury it underground. This the best we have. Bury it 3000 feet deep in clay storage facilities designed to prevent groundwater from getting in or out. However, the EPA's stance is that all landfills will eventually leak, with the best of them only lasting several decades. Being way underground helps, but it still gets out.
Convert the waste into harmless isotopes. Oh, wait, we don't know how to do that.
I'm all for finding an alternative to coal, just like you are. But nuclear doesn't strike me as being it.
Paying for a service, rather than the equipment, is far more sustainable for everyone. I'm no fan of getting locked into one company, and I like the idea of owning everything I have so I can do what I want with it, but you can't deny how successful selling services rather than equipment has been for companies like xerox. Successful for xerox and for the customers.
It's a different way of doing things that will take some getting used to, but my bet is on a gradual transition to a service-based economy in more areas than just copying machines.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to have the same complaints about iTunes. Unfortunately, if you want to play AAC-encoded music, you're pretty much stuck. So I finally gave up trying to find an alternative and now just use software such as Synergy to give me system-wide hotkeys, a little transparent info window, and a bunch of other stuff like control buttons in the menubar. It's pretty nifty all by itself, but there's no shortage of cool little shareware and freeware apps to get more bang for your buck with iTunes. Just look around MacUpdate a bit, you'll find something you like.
I've never had anybody try and confiscate my credit card because of the 'check id', though. Then again I'm willing to bet that the most minimum wage drones aren't trained/didn't read the merchant agreement/couldn't give two shits anyway.
.13 shits. On the other hand, if something like $250 is crossing the counter, that's worth almost 4 shits.
The amount of a shit given is probably proportional to the size of the transaction. If we're talking about $8.95, I'd put that at roughly
Agreed. It's like checking credit card IDs in retail - the credit card companies have the idea that if the card doesn't match the ID, the guy at the counter is supposed to confiscate the card. Sorry, but I can't think of anyone willing to get into a fistfight with a customer over their minimum wage retail cashiering job.
That said, I don't think a consumer blacklist is really that bad of an idea, provided it wasn't abused (big caveat, I know). There are people who complain about everything. They're the ones who say their food is too cold so they can get a free meal, bend a bookcover and then point it out to get a discount on a book, say a customer service rep was too slow so they get a free consultation... whatever. These people exist, and I've had to deal with them. Quite frankly, they aren't worth the time and effort I've had to put into them, and I wish I had a way of saying nope, I'm sorry, but you have a long history of being a jackass and I'm not going to help you.
That's just a fantasy of mine, though... I can't think of any good way to regulate or maintain a list like this. I'm sure that smarter people than I are trying to figure it out, but they haven't seemed to either (not yet, anyway).
The thing with civil unions is that a lot of people don't see a big difference between them and "separate but equal." The only gay people that this really appeases are those who see it as but a step along the way to true equal rights.
As a straight guy this doesn't affect me much, but I hope this shows his hardcore religious following just how strong his beliefs are. Like any other politician he's just doing what he thinks will get him elected, and that's what he always has been doing. Flip-flop is not a term exclusive to Kerry, it applies to anyone trying to get the most amount of votes they can.
Personally I use Quicksilver. It's not so much a keyword searcher as a "type in a couple letters at any time from any app after hitting a key combo and it presents you with a list of everything on your computer containing those letters, organized by relevancy (help files don't get placed higher than the app they are for, for example), and once you select something it remembers those letters so the next time you type them it presents the app/document/bookmark/etc you chose as the first choice."
that was a mouthful. But seriously, if you're on OS X, and you don't check out Quicksilver, you're only hurting yourself. No matter what you're doing you are only a keystroke away from being able to open anything on your keyboard.
Did I mention it's free and has source docs and specs on its website? It even has an option in the prefs to turn on (or off) superfluous visual effects. In short, it's fricken awesome.
"Polyakov told Interfax reporters that the 500 Days experiment will not include female volunteers." This will fail.
Because we all know that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were actually female. That's the real lunar landing government coverup - they all had sexchange operations in transit to ensure the mission's success.
those went by quick :). sorry folks, no more invitations from me available.
good to know, i was under the impression that it generally did not increase file size by that much. learn something new every day, I guess.
yup, 10MB max attachment size. the help page for attachments also mentions that the encoding is so bloated that attachments of 6MB might hit the size limit, too (alright, they didn't use the word "bloated" but it seems a little absurd to me).
I have 6 to throw away... stopped asking if anyone wanted one months and months and months ago after everyone i knew had one/was sick of hearing about them, so these invites have just been sitting there for a looong time.
If someone out there wants one, send me an email at wiberwachi - - at - - earthlink.net (god I love throwaway emails, I haven't had to worry about spam in years).
As far as I can tell, Bush is a democrat who is pro life.
I tried to come up with something witty to respond to this, like saying Nader is a republican who is pro environment, but nothing is really that funny because the idea of Bush being is a democrat is just so absurd. If that were even slightly true this country wouldn't be anywhere near as polarized as it is now.
Got to say I agree very much with your second point. A lot of bad shit is going to happen over the next four years, regardless of who's in office. That said, I'd rather have the person I want taking care of problems than the person who has gone in the opposite direction of what I wanted almost every single time.
And does it really help the kid's self esteem when they need to go see a psychiatrist?
My family is filled with social workers, and while I'm not one of them I have payed my share of visits to shrinks. If you're implying that taking advantage of people who's entire profession is centered on helping you is somehow a bad thing, then you have completely missed the point.
Sure, sometimes people don't need the help and it pisses them off when it's forced on them. But more often than not the people need the help, whether they're willing to admit it or not.
But Bush said that greenhouse effect was nonsense!
Even the Bush administration has issued reports saying that global temperatures should rise about 4 degrees over the next century (independent studies say it's more like 10). Global warming is technically a theory, but it's one of the best supported and widely believed in the scientific community. Whether or not humans have played a part in it is up for debate, though. Quick side note: since the last ice age, 1 degree/100 year increase is generally regarded as a fast temperature increase.
Back on topic, any rapid change in climate is going to have some major natural disasters, be it hurricanes or undue rain or even prolonged drought, depending on the area. It's not going to be like that movie where everything happens at once and tidal waves are suddenly racing through manhattan, but florida isn't the only place in for a rough time.
You're absolutely right. The system is too far gone, so let's never try to fix anything or make any sort difference and just sit down and cry. That has a long history of being politically effective.
Hey, I'm a snowboarder, and I'm not cool! Hell, I'm on /.
Back when I lived in Colorado and was actually pretty good at it (didn't quite make it through qualifiers for boardercross to compete in the x games every time I tried), I had some top of the line Oakley goggles that were absolutely incredible. On cold days I pulled my neck gator up over my face and tucked it in under the bottom of the goggles, this kept my face really warm but unfortunately all of my hot breath would drift up into the goggles and fog them to the point where I couldn't see a damn thing and would have to take them off. My oaklies were the only goggles I ever owned that didn't fog. Everyone else I knew wore Oaklies for similar reasons - the simple fact was you couldn't get anything better without offering your firstborn to get some extremely specialized stuff.
So I guess my point here is that among the good snowboarders, being "too cool" has absolutely nothing to do with the equipment used. If two things are equally good and one is far cooler, of course we spring for the cooler item - but that's just like the rest of the world. The only people who buy stuff like this, or the hats with holes in them so they fill up with air and look like a windsock when you go fast, are people who only occasionally get to the mountain and have a lot of $$ to burn.
Yes, Kryptonite makes the New York Lock. Regardless of the flaws in some of their other locks, including ones like the New York Chain and NY Noose, the New York Lock is a specific product that is something of a legend when it comes to making sure something stays where you put it. I believe it when through some pretty serious tests of being put in high-theft areas of NYC for multiple days, and at the end of the test all that would be left were the badly-scarred but still strong lock and whatever piece of the frame it happened to be attached to.
I'm picking up hints of grave seriousness and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm from your post. I really have no idea if you mean what you said or not. But just in case you are serious, calm down, smoke some pot, and remember that the UN hardly has the power to police itself within its own facilities.
how am I going to kick the ass of a foreign army, marauding zombies, or invading aliens if I don't have a handy, insanely large supply of firepower?
Not with an Uzi, that's for sure. Everyone knows that nothing beats the good ol' American-ness of a shotgun blasting everything that moves. Especially zombies.
A good point, but I don't think terrorists have shopped for their rifles at the local sporting goods store in a long time. And as for being a reasonable preventative measure, for a fairly reasonable price I could get a submachine gun within 3 days, regardless of the ban. Keep in mind that I'm little more than a humble computer geek. If you know the right people, laws cease to be a preventative measure and are only good for punishing people who get caught. But a criminal never intends to get caught, so really the law becomes fairly irrelevant.
That said, I'm a pretty law-abiding guy and it just seems like common sense that the more hurdles you have between a criminal and a gun designed to kill large numbers of people in a small amount of time, the better.
marginalized some groups like the Christian Right that were detrimental to them. (Criticisms that the Republicans are controlled by them are now out of date.)
You are aware that Bush is president, right? He may not get into heaven, but he sure knows how to preach to those that try.
Moving beyond that, your argument is full of holes. What exactly is the left trying to do that's "loony"? You didn't actually mention anything, other than a qualifier that impossibly stubborn people are loony. Are you making the case that a majority of the democratic party is impossibly stubborn? Pains me to admit it, but as I remember it the patriot act and going to war with iraq didn't have much trouble getting through congress. Stupid I'll agree with, but that doesn't seem terribly stubborn. Oh, or do you mean loony as in saying that there are weapons of mass destruction, despite a complete lack of supporting evidence and a healthy supply of evidence to the contrary, as a basis for going and re-fucking a part of the world that has historically hated us because we never stop fucking them?
And just because your post is trying so hard to be intelligent but is really just a bunch of pretty words wrapped around nothing, I'll get nitpicky. The Republican Party is not a third party. It was a third party, at least until the civil war or so. You do remember the civil war, don't you? That's back when the Republican party had people like Lincoln, and fought to abolish slavery. I'm not calling them slave owners now, but I would say their morals and ideals have significantly shifted over time. And for choosing to disagree with their insane international policies, tanked economy, and disregard for even basic environmental concerns, I get people like you up on their high horse calling me a loony. The Bush administration itself has stated that a 4-6 degree global temperature increase over the next 100 years is highly probable. Independent scientists say it's more like 10. Do you know what's considered a fast rate of change since the last ice age? 1 degree in 100 years. We're working on quadrupling that, using the most conservative of estimates. Just like I'm not saying Bush is a slave owner I'm not saying he's the one causing global warming (which is I understand it is a culmination of completely natural processes and CFCs). That said, Bush is not only ignoring means of attempting to control these problems (I didn't get a chance to fit it in, but the sea level is rising at a rapidly accelerating rate as well), but more importantly is ignoring the consequences. You know all of those hurricanes hitting Florida one after another? That's no accident, that's a symptom of a rapidly shifting climate. Again, Bush isn't in the cloud huffing and puffing, but that man is seriously not helping.
I swear I'm moving to some hill in the Yukon the first chance I get. Hopefully we haven't bombed the fuck out of them by the time I get there. I despise Kerry, think the Libertarian agenda means well but is full of holes, and wouldn't leave my child alone with Bush for fear of decapitation. As much as I love living here, I really hate this county. Fucking Americans.
[/rant disclaimer=I'm american, I'm an independent, and don't make me post links to backup my assertions. Obviously me assuring you now that they're true means nothing, but you've got google, do some fact finding for yourself. maybe you'll find something new and interesting.]
Cherynobl, killed a total of 3,000 people. That includes long term deaths attributed to radiation poisoning and increased cancer rates.
Bullshit. Chernobyl has been attributed to over 42,000 deaths - the number 3000 is of people who died very quickly. And remember that 42,000 is the number of people that have been traced to Chernobyl - just think of all the people who have suffered or died from Chernobyl's effects but don't actually have the disaster tied to them on a stat sheet.
As for the nuclear waste generated aftewards there are a number of clever idea's about how to deal with it including one which disposes of it in the giant fusion reaction that is our Sun.
Genius! I mean, rockets never explode, right? There's not even the slightest chance that one little mistake could spread radioactive waste throughout the stratosphere, filtering down over a much wider area than a simple explosion at Chernobyl could do underneath an inversion layer.
Wait, maybe that's not such a good idea.
I agree with you that the day to day operation of a nuclear plant isn't much cause for alarm, and I also agree that coal sucks. I'm really not a fan of coal, and I'm not trying to defend it. But even if we pretend that a standard nuclear reactor (I'm not talking about a breeder or anything fancy) is 100% safe from anything bad ever causing a massive release of radioactive materials that will contaminate its region for thousands of years, there is no good way to get rid of the waste. Clever ways, yes. But still no good ways.
Let's look at a few of the ways we do it or might do it:
Shoot it into the sun. I already covered the risk that a Challenger-like explosion holds, but there's also the issue of cost.
Bury it under ice sheets/caps at the poles. Well, it's against international law for one thing, but we really don't know much about the stability of ice sheets and the heat emitted from waste could cause some significant problems. Assuming it did cause a problem, retrieving the waste would be insanely expensive, if not impossible.
Put it into descending subduction zones in the ocean. One of the better ideas IMHO, except that waste might be spewed out somewhere else by volcanic activity, containers might leak before they are far enough beneath the surface, the risks of transportation are significantly increased when you have to factor in the general dangerousness of the ocean and the high pressure while sinking it to the ocean floor, and retrieval would be pretty much impossible if something went wrong. Assuming something went wrong (which you always should), large amounts of waste would be directly deposited into ocean currents, spreading around the world. We know less about the oceans than we do about space, so I think not fucking with it is prudent. And remember I think this is one of the better ideas.
Skip the subduction zones and just bury it in stable areas of the ocean floor. Some parts of the ocean have thick deposits of mud and have been stable for many millions of years, so putting waste there gets rid of some of the unpredictability of subduction zones. Unfortunately the containers would eventually corrode, releasing their contents into the ocean. This is also illegal under international law.
Bury it underground. This the best we have. Bury it 3000 feet deep in clay storage facilities designed to prevent groundwater from getting in or out. However, the EPA's stance is that all landfills will eventually leak, with the best of them only lasting several decades. Being way underground helps, but it still gets out.
Convert the waste into harmless isotopes. Oh, wait, we don't know how to do that.
I'm all for finding an alternative to coal, just like you are. But nuclear doesn't strike me as being it.
Paying for a service, rather than the equipment, is far more sustainable for everyone. I'm no fan of getting locked into one company, and I like the idea of owning everything I have so I can do what I want with it, but you can't deny how successful selling services rather than equipment has been for companies like xerox. Successful for xerox and for the customers.
It's a different way of doing things that will take some getting used to, but my bet is on a gradual transition to a service-based economy in more areas than just copying machines.
Supposing that J. Doe turns out to be a very wealthy and outspoken proponent of fair use
Those exist?
It goes in the menubar, and it's called Gmail Status. It's not perfect, but it does a fine job and doesn't require any open web browsers or whatnot.