It'd be nice to see some new kind of counterbalance-based system built into this new canal, though. Boat lifts are presumably out of the question on this scale, but if they could run pairs of docks simultaneously they could run a culvert between the pairs so that half the volume of water in any locking is not released downstream. OK, it wouldn't be a full 50% water saving (as they're never going to get a perfect match of 1-boat-up-for-each-boat-down), but it could save a hell of a lot of water with no need for upstream pumping.
Nono, it was a PR trick to get the US to buy the canal off the collapsed French group instead of building the Nicaragua Canal, which would have been much better for the US, given that it would have been much closer to the US.
how many soldiers could you hide in a 250,000 tonne ship?
Lots, but killing them is like shooting fish in a barrel -- the ship has no evasive capacity and is difficult to evacuate in the event of an attack. It's also pretty hard to land anywhere. You will be restricted to only invading the world's 10 largest ports.
20cm over hundreds of miles is not significant. You'd have more run down from surrounding hills adding to the water level than the inflow of one of the oceans.
It's not a one dimensional measure though. The surface area of an ocean is unfeasably massive. 20cm of height * surface area of ocean = a fair tonnage of water, all seeking to go through the nearest possible channel to level things out. Have a look at naturally occuring tidal races, such as where the Baltic Sea flows into and out from the North Sea. The surface area of the entire Baltic is similar to the Carribean Sea, but the Carribean Sea has the Atlantic beside it. On the other side, we have the Pacific, which takes up a third of the world's surface area.
If the water was that keen to level out, wouldn't it have already piled round the open flank between Patagonia and Antarctica, i.e. round whichever cape it is?
It does precisely that, twice daily. The massive tidal forces make it one of the most dangerous stretches of water on Earth. Allowing that amount of force to be exerted through a channel the depth of one tanker and as wide as two would create a maelstrom on both ends so powerful that no ship would be able to enter of leave the canal without being torn apart.
Lake Nicaragua is west of the watershed and empties into the Pacific at Tipitapa. The largest waterway west of the lake is Rio San Juan, which flows into Lake Nigaragua, having originated in the mountains of Costa Rica....
As fustakrakich says, no pumps needed. Need more water in the lock, get it from the higher water level side. Need less, give it to the lower water level side.
This means that you're constantly draining the reservoir. I remember one summer on the Caledonian canal having to wait an hour for another group of boats because Loch Oich was unusually low and they weren't willing to run the lock more than 3 or 4 times that day.
Now imagine you're operating the world's biggest and busiest shipping channel....
1. Mountains
2. Water to operate the locks to get over those mountains.
Panama and Nicaragua both have relatively low hills/mountains, and large lakes at sufficient altitude to supply water for the locks.
Costa Rica and Colombia do not.
Low mountains are only a problem if you want to go over them. With high mountains, you can go under This would overcome the need for any reservoirs to feed the locks, as you'd be taking in sea water at both ends. Which isn't to say you aren't going to need lock gates at all -- you are, because otherwise you'd set up the world's fastest tidal race as 50% of the Atlantic tries to reach the Pacific, eroding the walls of the canal within a week.
The other advantage of this alternative would be the ability to harvest epic amounts of renewable energy by setting up the world's most powerful tidal electricity generator, capturing the massive output of the emptying locks. (Heck, you could probably use the tidal drop as a source of motive force and fire ships through the tunnel at speeds unimaginable under motor power alone....)
Even if that 15 foot difference is 15 feet above notional sea level, that's less than 5 meters, and would still be below the lowest point on the bed of Lake Nicaragua.
Well as far as the Atlantic coast's concerned, DC's about as close to Lake Erie as you can get in US territory, and it hardly seems a good idea to go via Lake Ontario and mess up the tourist trade at Niagara. But that leaves a huge expanse of dry land to cross between Lake Superior and Seattle.
How about instead we suggest to the ultraneocons that a canal along the Mexican border, would provide an easily defended barrier against illegal immigration.
Then we'd all get to laugh when it was revealed that the contractors raking it in on the public purse were cutting corners and employing illegal immigrant labour....
Money, for starters. You'll want to read back on the fact that this costs billions of dollars to make, which Costa Rica doesn't have.
Neither does Nicaragua and neither did Panama, which is why the canal is to be built using foreign money in exchange for a long-term contract on the canal itself, as happened in Panama.
"Thankfully, all it takes is for one to blow the whistle" you write. I think it is worth turning that question around. If thousands of people are engaged in this enterprise, all of them also acting earnestly and also possessing eyes and consciences, what gives Edward Snowden the right to presume his moral judgements are more correct than everyone else's? It seems to me a particularly self-aggrandizing and hubristic act.
At least Bradley Manning had video footage of innocents being killed. All Snowden had was some powerpoint slides he objected to.
Bradley Manning used one video to justify leaking whole screeds of unrelated and highly sensitive material. Snowden released only information directly relating to what he felt was illegal actions on the part of the government, and he released it via properly accredited journalists with legal departments behind them to ensure that nothing would be released that would endanger any lives or compromise live intel.
Oh there is plenty of stuff that probably justifies a top secret stamp.
Examples:
1) Landing location for a major offensive in a declared war. [Eg how much better could Germany have prepared, in WWII, if they knew exactly which beaches we were planning on using and what day we were going to launch our offensive...]
2) Technical specifications for NEW military hardware
===> Once the hardware is out there for a few years, say 7 years, the secret rating probably isn't as justified
3) Technical specifications for Nuclear bombs (no age limit...)
4) Identities of Our Spies operating in foreign countries
===> Note, I'm not stating that spying on folks is a correct thing. But if you accept that we must do it, because everyone else does it, then the spies identities must also be protected.
And probably lot's of other examples.
However, if you look at the vast majority of stuff released on expired official secrets/state secrets legislation, it revolves around public expenditure that was a little bit embarassing, or the coverup of an affair, or even war crimes.
There are genuine secrets too, but most uses of the "SECRET" stamp are fraudulent and abusive.
I think you're reading a little too far into it there. That he became disillusioned over a long period of time doesn't mean that his reaction wasn't justified in the immediate circumstance.
There are two paths through a career like his. Either you justify one "little white wrong" on the grounds of getting one bad guy off the streets, and then justify the next, slightly greyer one, and so on until you're excusing all manner of illegal, immoral and downright antisocial behaviour as being "protecting the good guys", or you start questioning one iffy decision and your doubt grows with every decision you question until your conscience can't take it any more.
Consider a typical office scenario. You're fresh in the door as a young graduate. Your boss lies to the client, and you're too afraid to call him up on it. He puts an extra hour or two on the timesheet, so that the company doesn't have to pay for his guys' time in company-internal meetings. You don't like this, you're not comfortable with this, but you don't have the power so you try to convince yourself it's OK. Over the years you either convince yourself it is OK, and become the same kind of manager, or you get out of the situation as soon as possible, shrug your shoulders and say "it's between them" or (if the situation is bad enough) you report your employer for criminal fraud. Very few corporate scenarios result in the last one, but God knows how many spooks have walked away from service with the shrug-of-the-shoulders saying "I'm not part of it, my conscience is clear"? Thankfully, all it takes is for one to blow the whistle.
""Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law," the spokesman, Shawn Turner, said.'"
Trying hard to say they're the same thing. It's unfortunate that modern legislature keeps ignoring the fact that the Nuremberg Defence has been well and truly established as no defence whatsoever....
If the developer is using it in his portfolio, I would assume that this was something that was cleared with the commissioning party either as part of the contract or subsequently. If he has permission to use it as a portfolio piece, the company shouldn't be taking action that prejudices this. If all he gets is a signed letter stating "he did this work, up to and including version X.XX," that should really be enough as supporting evidence for future contract applications.
Revenu comes at the expense of resources (skill, time, materials, etc.). You should be fairly paid on the value of these resources (eg: the time you put in multiplied by your skill level). If your revenue stream involves you putting the resources up front for a result that can be duplicated at no cost, you're running a pretty insane gamble and your business model is invalid.
Then you are saying that writing a novel, making a movie, recording an album and producing computer software are all insane gambles based on invalid business models.
You are basically saying that no-one in their right mind would write software professionally. That's what you're saying. You're saying that Microsoft and Apple, Lotus, Autodesk, Adobe and Quark are/were all crazy. You're saying that these and many oth companies, whose software has streamlined productivity for millions worldwide, revolutionising the workplace and improving practically every field of human endeavour, are working on a failed business model.
Don't you want these things? Don't you want future developments of a similar quality? (Even if some make buggier software than others!)
Behaviour modification may actually be necessary. The act of switching off your desk lamp when you leave the desk may not save the world, but it should hopefully encourage a better state of mindfulness about the effects of our actions. Once we've learned to recognise that we can and do have an effect, we will hopefully be more likely to think about the big things.
On the other hand, there is the problem of those small actions becoming us "doing our bit" and instead stopping us from being mindful. It is hard to find a balance.
Slashdot Mirror
It was Google Maps that buggered me up in the first place, by obscuring the entire river with there stupidly-thick boundary lines....
Yeah, but as a bit of "look what we can do" ego-stroking, it would be something else....
Any country powerful enough to have an active space programme would be a candidate, so India, maybe?
Oops... it would appear I can't read a map (and the river was obscured by the border marked on it too). Rather embarrassing.
It'd be nice to see some new kind of counterbalance-based system built into this new canal, though. Boat lifts are presumably out of the question on this scale, but if they could run pairs of docks simultaneously they could run a culvert between the pairs so that half the volume of water in any locking is not released downstream. OK, it wouldn't be a full 50% water saving (as they're never going to get a perfect match of 1-boat-up-for-each-boat-down), but it could save a hell of a lot of water with no need for upstream pumping.
I see no ships! ;-p
Nono, it was a PR trick to get the US to buy the canal off the collapsed French group instead of building the Nicaragua Canal, which would have been much better for the US, given that it would have been much closer to the US.
If the US wasn't hampered by an anti-American administration,
Ah, the no true Scotsman fallacy....
how many soldiers could you hide in a 250,000 tonne ship?
Lots, but killing them is like shooting fish in a barrel -- the ship has no evasive capacity and is difficult to evacuate in the event of an attack. It's also pretty hard to land anywhere. You will be restricted to only invading the world's 10 largest ports.
20cm over hundreds of miles is not significant. You'd have more run down from surrounding hills adding to the water level than the inflow of one of the oceans.
It's not a one dimensional measure though. The surface area of an ocean is unfeasably massive. 20cm of height * surface area of ocean = a fair tonnage of water, all seeking to go through the nearest possible channel to level things out. Have a look at naturally occuring tidal races, such as where the Baltic Sea flows into and out from the North Sea. The surface area of the entire Baltic is similar to the Carribean Sea, but the Carribean Sea has the Atlantic beside it. On the other side, we have the Pacific, which takes up a third of the world's surface area.
That 20cm is a tsunami.
If the water was that keen to level out, wouldn't it have already piled round the open flank between Patagonia and Antarctica, i.e. round whichever cape it is?
It does precisely that, twice daily. The massive tidal forces make it one of the most dangerous stretches of water on Earth. Allowing that amount of force to be exerted through a channel the depth of one tanker and as wide as two would create a maelstrom on both ends so powerful that no ship would be able to enter of leave the canal without being torn apart.
Lake Nicaragua is west of the watershed and empties into the Pacific at Tipitapa. The largest waterway west of the lake is Rio San Juan, which flows into Lake Nigaragua, having originated in the mountains of Costa Rica....
As fustakrakich says, no pumps needed. Need more water in the lock, get it from the higher water level side. Need less, give it to the lower water level side.
This means that you're constantly draining the reservoir. I remember one summer on the Caledonian canal having to wait an hour for another group of boats because Loch Oich was unusually low and they weren't willing to run the lock more than 3 or 4 times that day.
Now imagine you're operating the world's biggest and busiest shipping channel....
What's to stop Costa Rica or Columbia joining in?
1. Mountains 2. Water to operate the locks to get over those mountains. Panama and Nicaragua both have relatively low hills/mountains, and large lakes at sufficient altitude to supply water for the locks. Costa Rica and Colombia do not.
Low mountains are only a problem if you want to go over them. With high mountains, you can go under This would overcome the need for any reservoirs to feed the locks, as you'd be taking in sea water at both ends. Which isn't to say you aren't going to need lock gates at all -- you are, because otherwise you'd set up the world's fastest tidal race as 50% of the Atlantic tries to reach the Pacific, eroding the walls of the canal within a week.
The other advantage of this alternative would be the ability to harvest epic amounts of renewable energy by setting up the world's most powerful tidal electricity generator, capturing the massive output of the emptying locks. (Heck, you could probably use the tidal drop as a source of motive force and fire ships through the tunnel at speeds unimaginable under motor power alone....)
Even if that 15 foot difference is 15 feet above notional sea level, that's less than 5 meters, and would still be below the lowest point on the bed of Lake Nicaragua.
Well as far as the Atlantic coast's concerned, DC's about as close to Lake Erie as you can get in US territory, and it hardly seems a good idea to go via Lake Ontario and mess up the tourist trade at Niagara. But that leaves a huge expanse of dry land to cross between Lake Superior and Seattle.
How about instead we suggest to the ultraneocons that a canal along the Mexican border, would provide an easily defended barrier against illegal immigration.
Then we'd all get to laugh when it was revealed that the contractors raking it in on the public purse were cutting corners and employing illegal immigrant labour....
What's to stop Costa Rica or Columbia joining in?
Money, for starters. You'll want to read back on the fact that this costs billions of dollars to make, which Costa Rica doesn't have.
Neither does Nicaragua and neither did Panama, which is why the canal is to be built using foreign money in exchange for a long-term contract on the canal itself, as happened in Panama.
"Thankfully, all it takes is for one to blow the whistle" you write. I think it is worth turning that question around. If thousands of people are engaged in this enterprise, all of them also acting earnestly and also possessing eyes and consciences, what gives Edward Snowden the right to presume his moral judgements are more correct than everyone else's? It seems to me a particularly self-aggrandizing and hubristic act.
I'll see that with the bystander effect
And I'll raise you...
At least Bradley Manning had video footage of innocents being killed. All Snowden had was some powerpoint slides he objected to.
Bradley Manning used one video to justify leaking whole screeds of unrelated and highly sensitive material. Snowden released only information directly relating to what he felt was illegal actions on the part of the government, and he released it via properly accredited journalists with legal departments behind them to ensure that nothing would be released that would endanger any lives or compromise live intel.
Oh there is plenty of stuff that probably justifies a top secret stamp.
Examples: 1) Landing location for a major offensive in a declared war. [Eg how much better could Germany have prepared, in WWII, if they knew exactly which beaches we were planning on using and what day we were going to launch our offensive...] 2) Technical specifications for NEW military hardware ===> Once the hardware is out there for a few years, say 7 years, the secret rating probably isn't as justified 3) Technical specifications for Nuclear bombs (no age limit...) 4) Identities of Our Spies operating in foreign countries ===> Note, I'm not stating that spying on folks is a correct thing. But if you accept that we must do it, because everyone else does it, then the spies identities must also be protected.
And probably lot's of other examples.
However, if you look at the vast majority of stuff released on expired official secrets/state secrets legislation, it revolves around public expenditure that was a little bit embarassing, or the coverup of an affair, or even war crimes.
There are genuine secrets too, but most uses of the "SECRET" stamp are fraudulent and abusive.
I think you're reading a little too far into it there. That he became disillusioned over a long period of time doesn't mean that his reaction wasn't justified in the immediate circumstance.
There are two paths through a career like his. Either you justify one "little white wrong" on the grounds of getting one bad guy off the streets, and then justify the next, slightly greyer one, and so on until you're excusing all manner of illegal, immoral and downright antisocial behaviour as being "protecting the good guys", or you start questioning one iffy decision and your doubt grows with every decision you question until your conscience can't take it any more.
Consider a typical office scenario. You're fresh in the door as a young graduate. Your boss lies to the client, and you're too afraid to call him up on it. He puts an extra hour or two on the timesheet, so that the company doesn't have to pay for his guys' time in company-internal meetings. You don't like this, you're not comfortable with this, but you don't have the power so you try to convince yourself it's OK. Over the years you either convince yourself it is OK, and become the same kind of manager, or you get out of the situation as soon as possible, shrug your shoulders and say "it's between them" or (if the situation is bad enough) you report your employer for criminal fraud. Very few corporate scenarios result in the last one, but God knows how many spooks have walked away from service with the shrug-of-the-shoulders saying "I'm not part of it, my conscience is clear"? Thankfully, all it takes is for one to blow the whistle.
""Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law," the spokesman, Shawn Turner, said.'"
Trying hard to say they're the same thing. It's unfortunate that modern legislature keeps ignoring the fact that the Nuremberg Defence has been well and truly established as no defence whatsoever....
If the developer is using it in his portfolio, I would assume that this was something that was cleared with the commissioning party either as part of the contract or subsequently. If he has permission to use it as a portfolio piece, the company shouldn't be taking action that prejudices this. If all he gets is a signed letter stating "he did this work, up to and including version X.XX," that should really be enough as supporting evidence for future contract applications.
If you are not a lawyer or contractor, you may not understand "contract law"...
Revenu comes at the expense of resources (skill, time, materials, etc.). You should be fairly paid on the value of these resources (eg: the time you put in multiplied by your skill level). If your revenue stream involves you putting the resources up front for a result that can be duplicated at no cost, you're running a pretty insane gamble and your business model is invalid.
Then you are saying that writing a novel, making a movie, recording an album and producing computer software are all insane gambles based on invalid business models.
You are basically saying that no-one in their right mind would write software professionally. That's what you're saying. You're saying that Microsoft and Apple, Lotus, Autodesk, Adobe and Quark are/were all crazy. You're saying that these and many oth companies, whose software has streamlined productivity for millions worldwide, revolutionising the workplace and improving practically every field of human endeavour, are working on a failed business model.
Don't you want these things? Don't you want future developments of a similar quality? (Even if some make buggier software than others!)
Behaviour modification may actually be necessary. The act of switching off your desk lamp when you leave the desk may not save the world, but it should hopefully encourage a better state of mindfulness about the effects of our actions. Once we've learned to recognise that we can and do have an effect, we will hopefully be more likely to think about the big things.
On the other hand, there is the problem of those small actions becoming us "doing our bit" and instead stopping us from being mindful. It is hard to find a balance.