Radon is a noble gas, unlike all the other elements in this decay sequence. Since there is no groundwater on the moon to move things around, the evolution of radon gas indicates the presence of Uranium.
"getting uranium to the moon isnt the most difficult part of nuclear power on the moon"
That depends on how much power you want to generate. If we really intend to colonize the moon, one would assume that we would want to use lunar resources to construct larger structures, spacecraft, etc. . . The apparent lack of coal or graphite on the moon means that it would be difficult to extract metals through traditional means. Electro-refining may be an alternative, but would require large amounts of electricity.
Uranium is very heavy (uranium is the most dense naturally occurring element in its pure form). Launching significant quantities of uranium to the moon would be expensive, and politically impossible due to the chance of accidental environmental releases. Also, uranium could make up a large portion of the weight of a Nuclear reactor on the moon, because of the reduced need for shielding and containment (no one lives on the moon, there are not air currents, nor is there any groundwater on the moon).
I'm not saying any of this is going to be practical or useful, but as long as we're going up there we should investigate this possibility. It's a lot less far fetched than using He3 for fusion power, and people are talking about that.
Maybe they should prospect for lunar uranium locations that have a lot of out-gassings. It wouldn't solve the water problem, but it would provide basically unlimited electrical or thermal power.
They sell it at different speeds, but I doubt they actually have separate implementations. A more plausible scenario is that everyone gets the same (fastest) implementation, and then they throttle it down in software. This is kind of like the way apple used to sell 4GB iPod minis and 6GB iPod minis that used the same hard drive (6GB).
I know this probably sounds crazy. Why would a company cripple user features this way, right?
Well, it turns out that some people are willing to pay more for internet than others, but you can't just sell it at the highest price, because then people who aren't willing to pay that much won't buy your service. You don't want to price it low, because then people will pay the low price, even though they were willing to pay more. So, what sellers do is they try to segment the market. You can see this everywhere (Do you think organic salad actually costs twice as much to grow as regular salad? Of course not, but you can charge twice as much for it. Does a Cadillac Escalade actually cost 80% more to manufacture than a GM Suburban, it's the same damn vehicle with a leather interior!) Of course it's a lore more obvious when you use software to achieve market segmentation (since nothing is physically different) but it's the same principle.
Since this is a statistical study, and does not have a control group, this proves correlation only. It may simply be that people who are prone to obesity like to hang out together (you don't have to be obese to be prone to obesity, but you may develop it later). In order to have control, you would have to select people's friends for them. You would have to take a random sample of the population and pare some with randomly selected individuals (this is your control group) and pair others with obese individuals (this is your test group). This is the ONLY way to prove causality.
Isn't is strange how the cost of 1GB of storage has has gone down orders of magnitude over the last decade, and yet a computer still costs about half of-what it did then? Sure, you can put more transistors on a piece of silicon, but it still costs the same to put all that silicon together into a computer and get that computer into someone's hands.
Here is an interesting point. Who is this kind of market manipulation unfair to? People in Europe and the US buy goods from China at "below market" prices. That means that the Chinese are getting shafted because they are exchanging goods of greater value for goods of lesser value. Sure, they are building up treasury bills that they can exchange with us for goods and services later, but those will be worth even less when they do get around to spending them than they would be if they spent them today (and today they are worth less than the goods they originally exchanged for them).
What is going on here? The Chinese government is selling labour at below market cost to increase its global influence and finance a rapid build up of industrial infrastructure. In the mean time, Chinese citizens are getting shafted by being forced to work more to gain less personal benefit than other people in the industrialized world. In other words, the government is accumulating power on the backs of Chinese citizens.
Of course, it is impossible for us to reform this situation, since only the Chinese may put a stop to it by telling their government they won't stand for it any longer. Refusing to trade with China will only slow their industrial progress and make the Chinese less willing and able to stand up to these blatant governmental abuses.
Could you please elaborate on this? What do you think is idiotic about our current view? How do you feel it should change? Why would it prevent Americans from supporting a Marshall Plan-style rebuilding effort, and why would Americans be willing to support such an effort if their view of terrorism did change?
Any electrical current will generate a magnetic field. I don't know why you think you need coils. Coils are used because the field overlaps on itself and there is an additive effect. But the article does not say how strong the field has to be, so there's no reason to believe that it will be necessary to use coils. It all depends on how strong the magnetic field needs to be.
"It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space"
There is no need to "contain" the magnetic field, since each pixel would be dominated the nearest magnet (magnetic fields dissipate rapidly with distance).
"It is inevitable that someone would use science in the same way to corrupt people into achieving their agenda."
I'm pretty sure I've already seen this happen. The scientists involved usually seem to be unconcerned with the corruption of scientific principles. I've spoken with a microbiologist who was unconcerned, and he said that it was important for the most intelligent people to make all the decisions. To this end, he reasoned that people who were easily swayed by flawed science were rightly manipulated by scientists who deliberately misrepresented their findings. His aim was to become a public policy maker.
The view that most people aren't smart enough to make the best decisions for themselves is very troubling to me. It is one that I have heard many people express to me when they felt I would be like minded. Based on my personal experiences, I have concluded that most people feel this way (including most scientists).
People should be careful not to delude themselves into thinking that religion causes this kind of mass manipulation. It is always caused by people thinking they are smart enough to make decisions for others.
"I'd think that turning a blind eye to patent violations in a country that wants to make cheap drugs to treat their huge number of AIDS patients who lack the funds to buy the licensed pharmaceuticals is exactly the kind of thing a good Christian would do."
Yes, this was the case. But then Thilad started issuing compulsary licenses for OTHER drugs, and our government got a little concerned.
P.S. Patent infrengment that hurts US pharmactical companies, hurts US citizens as well. So it's not like they're just protecting a few corporations.
That's bullshit. This is just an excuse people use to try evade guild and blame someone else. All the evidence that was presented was factually true, even if it was presented as being more compelling than it really was. It is up to the media, and private citizens to doubt what they are told and preform their own assessment, because no source is so impartial that it is beyond bias. People voted for the war because Sadam was a really bad buy, Iraq was a state sponsor of terror, and a lot of people here felt like we had unfinished business from the end of the first war. The WMDs were just an excuse to claim that their was an eminent threat that needed to be eliminated. That's why people did not scrutinize the evidence.
If you supported the war, you need to stop lying to yourself, and admit that you supported it. If you feel that was a mistake, you should take responsibility for your mistake, and resolve not to let it happen again. Saying "I was lied to" is no excuse, and passing the blame like that will not teach you to be smarter in the future.
The problem is not that rain will not fall. In fact, there should be more total precipitation world wide, since a higher fraction of the earths water will be in the atmosphere. Global warming will reduce snow pack world wide. Snow pack collects water as it falls, and slowly releases it throughout the year. Reduction of snow pack will mean more floods, and less water when it is not flooding. Dams can replicate the effect of snow pack, but they cost money, and use up land.
"Coastal floods means the enitre coast around the continent."
Do it doesn't. The UN report is referring primarily to flooding rivers in costal regions, since there will be fewer glaciers to act as water reservoirs and mediate the flow. The UN predicts only a slight increase in the ocean levels. Even if there were a drastic increase in ocean level, it would only be a problem in populated costal regions, which is hardly all of the coast around a continent. Furthermore, this kind of "mitigation" would still have to be undertaken if we stopped emitting greenhouse gasses tomorrow. That's because a large part of the problem is increased populations in cities in the poorer countries of the world.
"It would be better to start shutting down coal plants and put that money into developing an infrastructur for charging electric cars."
Shutting down coal plants will cost money, because they will need to be replaced with something else (like wind power) that's why I say it will cost $100 trillion to replace our existing power infrastructure. Since it would cost 10 times our GNP, it would take at LEAST 50 years to do it (since we still have to eat, live in houses, go to the doctor, etc. ..). Fortunately, the operating cost of a wind-mill is lower than that of fossil fuel power plant, so people are building them on their own. As for developing an infrastructure for charging cars, we already have power lines, and you could always just distribute charged batteries at "gas" stations.
"The quikest way is to put a dollar a gallon tax on all gas. That dollar goest to two places: Education and RnD for new power sources. It would eb a temporary boon and used with that in mind"
The problem with this approach is that it takes money from energy companies (which would spend the money developing new energy resources) and gives it to government programs which waste most of it paying people a lot of money to do very little work.
The government should instead determine the cost of mitigating the effects of global warming (world wide) and charge emitters an amount that roughly approximates what it will cost to clean up the mess when it becomes a problem. They should take the money and buy bonds from large stable companies, or loan it out to people with good credit (this is so they can be sure the money will still be there when they need it) They should not by treasury bonds, because that money needs to be paid back by taxpayers, and it would be easy for the government to run up a debt they can not repay. Then, when natural disasters, such as increased seasonal flooding or drought resulting from decreased snow-pack occur, they should pay out the funds to build appropriate dams, relocate individuals, and fund emergency response.
This approach is good because it sets a real reason for the price, and the price will be high. It should be relatively easy to determine the cost of mitigation. The UN report has already identified problem areas. Simply determine what would need to be built, and who would have to be relocated, and how much aid would need to be provided. Assume that all emissions will be phased out within the next 200 years, and that emissions will be at todays levels up to that date. Take the cost of mitigation and divide it by the amount of emissions you calculated would occur. This is the price of emitting greenhouse gasses.
This is what I meant when I said you have the balance the cost of emitting greenhouse gasses against the benefit of burning fossil fuels (I know I said it differently before, but it means the same thing).
So they say that global warming will impact the lives of billions of people, but how many would be impacted by regulating greenhouse gas emissions as they propose? Droughts are not as much as a problem as long as you can build reservoirs to store rainwater and to provide flood control (we did this in the US just to increase our agricultural output). Costal flooding can be alleviated by building dikes and dams, and by moving away from problem areas. But if we spend all our money reducing greenhouse gasses, how much will be left over for these other projects which will still be necessary no matter how much we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?
We need to establish how much the need for mitigation will be reduced by emission reductions, and balance it against the cost of mitigation that will still need to be undertaken.
Likewise, people need to consider how reducing greenhouse gas emissions will affect our efforts at rolling out zero emissions power technologies. The US could replace all of it's domestic power production with wind power for about 100 trillion dollars (which is ten times our annual GDP). It is likely that spending money to reduce greenhouse emissions by other methods will effect our ability to replace existing power infrastructure with these new technologies.
It's just carbon fibers and epoxy resin. The materials are no more expensive than a high quality fiberglass composite (which is actually fairly expensive compared to steel), but the manufacturing is. Fundamentally, it's just a bunch of hydrocarbons, so there's no reason to believe the resins couldn't be made more cheaply. Right now they are sold primarily in high-performance, low volume applications, but it would be a little cheaper with more widespread adoption. It doesn't help that environmental regulations practically prohibit the construction of new chemical production plants in this country.
I don't think this is a correct interpretation of the equal protection clause. The fourteenth amendment states that "no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It would only be fair to say that she was "playing favorites" if she was protecting some people from the endangered species act, while denying that protection to others. But I fail to see how giving out a draft report offers protection. Moreover, it seems that he helped anyone who appealed to her for help (this is what regulatory agencies should do), not just certain people.
Slashdot Mirror
Radon is a product of Uranium 238 decay:
238U (4.5 x 109 yr), 234Th (24.1 days), 234Pa (1.18 min), 234U (250,000 yr), 230Th (75,000 yr), 226Ra (1,600 yr), 222Rn (3.82 days), 218Po (3.1 min), 214Pb (26.8 min), 214Bi (19.7 min), 214Po (164 µs), 210Pb (22.3 yr), 210Bi (5.01 days), 210Po (138 days), 206Pb (stable)
Radon is a noble gas, unlike all the other elements in this decay sequence. Since there is no groundwater on the moon to move things around, the evolution of radon gas indicates the presence of Uranium.
"getting uranium to the moon isnt the most difficult part of nuclear power on the moon"
That depends on how much power you want to generate. If we really intend to colonize the moon, one would assume that we would want to use lunar resources to construct larger structures, spacecraft, etc. . . The apparent lack of coal or graphite on the moon means that it would be difficult to extract metals through traditional means. Electro-refining may be an alternative, but would require large amounts of electricity.
Uranium is very heavy (uranium is the most dense naturally occurring element in its pure form). Launching significant quantities of uranium to the moon would be expensive, and politically impossible due to the chance of accidental environmental releases. Also, uranium could make up a large portion of the weight of a Nuclear reactor on the moon, because of the reduced need for shielding and containment (no one lives on the moon, there are not air currents, nor is there any groundwater on the moon).
I'm not saying any of this is going to be practical or useful, but as long as we're going up there we should investigate this possibility. It's a lot less far fetched than using He3 for fusion power, and people are talking about that.
Maybe they should prospect for lunar uranium locations that have a lot of out-gassings. It wouldn't solve the water problem, but it would provide basically unlimited electrical or thermal power.
They sell it at different speeds, but I doubt they actually have separate implementations. A more plausible scenario is that everyone gets the same (fastest) implementation, and then they throttle it down in software. This is kind of like the way apple used to sell 4GB iPod minis and 6GB iPod minis that used the same hard drive (6GB).
I know this probably sounds crazy. Why would a company cripple user features this way, right?
Well, it turns out that some people are willing to pay more for internet than others, but you can't just sell it at the highest price, because then people who aren't willing to pay that much won't buy your service. You don't want to price it low, because then people will pay the low price, even though they were willing to pay more. So, what sellers do is they try to segment the market. You can see this everywhere (Do you think organic salad actually costs twice as much to grow as regular salad? Of course not, but you can charge twice as much for it. Does a Cadillac Escalade actually cost 80% more to manufacture than a GM Suburban, it's the same damn vehicle with a leather interior!) Of course it's a lore more obvious when you use software to achieve market segmentation (since nothing is physically different) but it's the same principle.
Since this is a statistical study, and does not have a control group, this proves correlation only. It may simply be that people who are prone to obesity like to hang out together (you don't have to be obese to be prone to obesity, but you may develop it later). In order to have control, you would have to select people's friends for them. You would have to take a random sample of the population and pare some with randomly selected individuals (this is your control group) and pair others with obese individuals (this is your test group). This is the ONLY way to prove causality.
Isn't is strange how the cost of 1GB of storage has has gone down orders of magnitude over the last decade, and yet a computer still costs about half of-what it did then? Sure, you can put more transistors on a piece of silicon, but it still costs the same to put all that silicon together into a computer and get that computer into someone's hands.
"You HAVE to sustain it or it DIES"
Obviously you have never heard of spores.
Here is an interesting point. Who is this kind of market manipulation unfair to? People in Europe and the US buy goods from China at "below market" prices. That means that the Chinese are getting shafted because they are exchanging goods of greater value for goods of lesser value. Sure, they are building up treasury bills that they can exchange with us for goods and services later, but those will be worth even less when they do get around to spending them than they would be if they spent them today (and today they are worth less than the goods they originally exchanged for them).
What is going on here? The Chinese government is selling labour at below market cost to increase its global influence and finance a rapid build up of industrial infrastructure. In the mean time, Chinese citizens are getting shafted by being forced to work more to gain less personal benefit than other people in the industrialized world. In other words, the government is accumulating power on the backs of Chinese citizens.
Of course, it is impossible for us to reform this situation, since only the Chinese may put a stop to it by telling their government they won't stand for it any longer. Refusing to trade with China will only slow their industrial progress and make the Chinese less willing and able to stand up to these blatant governmental abuses.
"our current (idiotic) view of terrorism"
Could you please elaborate on this? What do you think is idiotic about our current view? How do you feel it should change? Why would it prevent Americans from supporting a Marshall Plan-style rebuilding effort, and why would Americans be willing to support such an effort if their view of terrorism did change?
Any electrical current will generate a magnetic field. I don't know why you think you need coils. Coils are used because the field overlaps on itself and there is an additive effect. But the article does not say how strong the field has to be, so there's no reason to believe that it will be necessary to use coils. It all depends on how strong the magnetic field needs to be.
"It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space"
There is no need to "contain" the magnetic field, since each pixel would be dominated the nearest magnet (magnetic fields dissipate rapidly with distance).
"It is inevitable that someone would use science in the same way to corrupt people into achieving their agenda."
I'm pretty sure I've already seen this happen. The scientists involved usually seem to be unconcerned with the corruption of scientific principles. I've spoken with a microbiologist who was unconcerned, and he said that it was important for the most intelligent people to make all the decisions. To this end, he reasoned that people who were easily swayed by flawed science were rightly manipulated by scientists who deliberately misrepresented their findings. His aim was to become a public policy maker.
The view that most people aren't smart enough to make the best decisions for themselves is very troubling to me. It is one that I have heard many people express to me when they felt I would be like minded. Based on my personal experiences, I have concluded that most people feel this way (including most scientists).
People should be careful not to delude themselves into thinking that religion causes this kind of mass manipulation. It is always caused by people thinking they are smart enough to make decisions for others.
"Chemistry works the same way, regardless of which solar system you are in."
Prove it.
"I'd think that turning a blind eye to patent violations in a country that wants to make cheap drugs to treat their huge number of AIDS patients who lack the funds to buy the licensed pharmaceuticals is exactly the kind of thing a good Christian would do."
Yes, this was the case. But then Thilad started issuing compulsary licenses for OTHER drugs, and our government got a little concerned.
P.S. Patent infrengment that hurts US pharmactical companies, hurts US citizens as well. So it's not like they're just protecting a few corporations.
Who would have guessed it was a disease and not cell phones? I was so sure, I already threw mine away.
Remember, this is all for the benefit of the shareholders. They will be so much better off once he is gone.
"We've not found substances that cause cancer, just substances that have a statistical association with increased risk of cancer."
If you can't give a rat cancer by giving it a massively oversized dose of it, it probably doesn't cause cancer.
"Bush's voters were lied to"
That's bullshit. This is just an excuse people use to try evade guild and blame someone else. All the evidence that was presented was factually true, even if it was presented as being more compelling than it really was. It is up to the media, and private citizens to doubt what they are told and preform their own assessment, because no source is so impartial that it is beyond bias. People voted for the war because Sadam was a really bad buy, Iraq was a state sponsor of terror, and a lot of people here felt like we had unfinished business from the end of the first war. The WMDs were just an excuse to claim that their was an eminent threat that needed to be eliminated. That's why people did not scrutinize the evidence.
If you supported the war, you need to stop lying to yourself, and admit that you supported it. If you feel that was a mistake, you should take responsibility for your mistake, and resolve not to let it happen again. Saying "I was lied to" is no excuse, and passing the blame like that will not teach you to be smarter in the future.
"At least it's mostly Bush voters suffering in Iraq"
I don't think Iraqis can vote in US elections.
"a legal DVD of a current Hollywood DVD release costs about one month's average wage"
If you don't want to pay for it, don't watch it.
"based on customes(SIC) seizures"
Of course, not all countries take equal measures to counteract piracy, so that doesn't really mean anything.
The problem is not that rain will not fall. In fact, there should be more total precipitation world wide, since a higher fraction of the earths water will be in the atmosphere. Global warming will reduce snow pack world wide. Snow pack collects water as it falls, and slowly releases it throughout the year. Reduction of snow pack will mean more floods, and less water when it is not flooding. Dams can replicate the effect of snow pack, but they cost money, and use up land.
"Coastal floods means the enitre coast around the continent."
.). Fortunately, the operating cost of a wind-mill is lower than that of fossil fuel power plant, so people are building them on their own. As for developing an infrastructure for charging cars, we already have power lines, and you could always just distribute charged batteries at "gas" stations.
Do it doesn't. The UN report is referring primarily to flooding rivers in costal regions, since there will be fewer glaciers to act as water reservoirs and mediate the flow. The UN predicts only a slight increase in the ocean levels. Even if there were a drastic increase in ocean level, it would only be a problem in populated costal regions, which is hardly all of the coast around a continent. Furthermore, this kind of "mitigation" would still have to be undertaken if we stopped emitting greenhouse gasses tomorrow. That's because a large part of the problem is increased populations in cities in the poorer countries of the world.
"It would be better to start shutting down coal plants and put that money into developing an infrastructur for charging electric cars."
Shutting down coal plants will cost money, because they will need to be replaced with something else (like wind power) that's why I say it will cost $100 trillion to replace our existing power infrastructure. Since it would cost 10 times our GNP, it would take at LEAST 50 years to do it (since we still have to eat, live in houses, go to the doctor, etc. .
"The quikest way is to put a dollar a gallon tax on all gas. That dollar goest to two places:
Education and RnD for new power sources. It would eb a temporary boon and used with that in mind"
The problem with this approach is that it takes money from energy companies (which would spend the money developing new energy resources) and gives it to government programs which waste most of it paying people a lot of money to do very little work.
The government should instead determine the cost of mitigating the effects of global warming (world wide) and charge emitters an amount that roughly approximates what it will cost to clean up the mess when it becomes a problem. They should take the money and buy bonds from large stable companies, or loan it out to people with good credit (this is so they can be sure the money will still be there when they need it) They should not by treasury bonds, because that money needs to be paid back by taxpayers, and it would be easy for the government to run up a debt they can not repay. Then, when natural disasters, such as increased seasonal flooding or drought resulting from decreased snow-pack occur, they should pay out the funds to build appropriate dams, relocate individuals, and fund emergency response.
This approach is good because it sets a real reason for the price, and the price will be high. It should be relatively easy to determine the cost of mitigation. The UN report has already identified problem areas. Simply determine what would need to be built, and who would have to be relocated, and how much aid would need to be provided. Assume that all emissions will be phased out within the next 200 years, and that emissions will be at todays levels up to that date. Take the cost of mitigation and divide it by the amount of emissions you calculated would occur. This is the price of emitting greenhouse gasses.
This is what I meant when I said you have the balance the cost of emitting greenhouse gasses against the benefit of burning fossil fuels (I know I said it differently before, but it means the same thing).
So they say that global warming will impact the lives of billions of people, but how many would be impacted by regulating greenhouse gas emissions as they propose? Droughts are not as much as a problem as long as you can build reservoirs to store rainwater and to provide flood control (we did this in the US just to increase our agricultural output). Costal flooding can be alleviated by building dikes and dams, and by moving away from problem areas. But if we spend all our money reducing greenhouse gasses, how much will be left over for these other projects which will still be necessary no matter how much we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?
We need to establish how much the need for mitigation will be reduced by emission reductions, and balance it against the cost of mitigation that will still need to be undertaken.
Likewise, people need to consider how reducing greenhouse gas emissions will affect our efforts at rolling out zero emissions power technologies. The US could replace all of it's domestic power production with wind power for about 100 trillion dollars (which is ten times our annual GDP). It is likely that spending money to reduce greenhouse emissions by other methods will effect our ability to replace existing power infrastructure with these new technologies.
How is it you have all those devices that play music, but not one iPod? Don't you know that they're the best?
It's just carbon fibers and epoxy resin. The materials are no more expensive than a high quality fiberglass composite (which is actually fairly expensive compared to steel), but the manufacturing is. Fundamentally, it's just a bunch of hydrocarbons, so there's no reason to believe the resins couldn't be made more cheaply. Right now they are sold primarily in high-performance, low volume applications, but it would be a little cheaper with more widespread adoption. It doesn't help that environmental regulations practically prohibit the construction of new chemical production plants in this country.
I'd punch that asshole in the nose too.
I don't think this is a correct interpretation of the equal protection clause. The fourteenth amendment states that "no state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It would only be fair to say that she was "playing favorites" if she was protecting some people from the endangered species act, while denying that protection to others. But I fail to see how giving out a draft report offers protection. Moreover, it seems that he helped anyone who appealed to her for help (this is what regulatory agencies should do), not just certain people.