Man, the grandparent was talking about upgrading a 5A fuse on a car's cigarette lighter to a 10A fuse, and then moving it to the trunk. From the car battery to the trunk, that can't be more than 10 feet. The voltage drop wouldn't be an issue.
I certainly wasn't advocating running a 12VDC network around your house, as your example is suggesting.
You will find that the current rating for 14 AWG cables (you probably wouldn't use anything smaller) is typically 18A. Granted there are some derating factors, but you'd be unlucky to have thermal overload on a 14AWG cable from a 10A fuse.
As an electrical engineer who designs these platforms and also works offshore, this article was of genuine interest to me. However after reading it, I'm somewhat unconvinced. From what I gather, these robots are to be used on normally unmanned / minimal facilities platforms (usually wellhead platforms) or small production platforms at most. My objections to this are as follows:
Alot of these facilities are normally unmanned anyway. Operators go out to them to stroke a few valves and tweak some settings and perform maintenance duties. Insofar as maintenance is concerned, I doubt the robots would be capable of doing some of the tasks requiring fine motor skills, so people will have to go out there anyway. Besides, the robots themselves will need to be maintained.
Environmental conditions on an offshore rig are usually pretty harsh - it is salt-laden and equipment is subject to a fair amount of sea spray and extreme heat and cold (cold especially in the north sea). You try to limit the number of moving parts on these things. Robots sliding around on a gantry will surely suffer in the environment. I noticed in the photos, that the robots in the demo are operating in what looks like a pretty clean room.
I'm not sure what the power consumption of these robots are, my guess is 5kW per unit. For a team of 6 robots, that's 30kW. Minimal facilities platforms typically have a load less than 10kW, and many are supplied by solar and wind. With these robots, you'd need either a subsea power cable or offshore generation like gas turbines, Ormats, diesel gensets, etc. All of which require more maintenance which the robots won't be able to perform.
It's naive to think, as the guy in the article claims, that they can do away with the platform fire and gas systems. When people are onboard for maintenance, you'd want to be sure the F&G system is there and works.
These are all technical challenges that can be overcome, but when you look at the economic cost/benefit analysis, I suspect that this system is only viable for a very small subset of offshore facilities.
PS. Some people commented on security on offshore rigs. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any. On the platforms I've been to, I've never seen any security or anyone with a weapon for that matter. There are CCTV cameras in some places, but if you were determined to destroy a rig, it wouldn't be hard... it's full of explosive hydrocarbons to begin with. I don't know why anyone would really bother though, they are hard to get to and easy targets such as onshore pipelines would likely do more damage in disrupting operations (though less overall capital damage).
That's a bit trite, but there are indirect costs to cheap goods, most likely in the form of decreased QA/QC standards, corruption and dodgy practices to keep prices low. Which is not to say that the free market won't correct itself - it will - but there is always the potential for avoidable suffering along the way.
The Keynesian prescription of fiscal expansions to stimulate growth is more or less accepted as the conventional wisdom by most economists, but institutional factors are also arguably very important (ie. state institutions that promote the rule of law, property rights, corruption free government, streamlined bureacracies, limits on executive power etc).
Economists have been harping on about the quality of institutions for a while now, and usually the basket case economies of Africa are their textbook case studies in what not to do. So whilst government spending may help short term output growth and may be a good idea, they also need to work on (among other things) improving their institutions.
I don't think the article was suggesting that poor people are inherently lazy (or stupid). Rather, the pre-industrial revolution middle-upper classes had (in general) cultural values that were conducive to capitalism eg. the propensity to save, thrift, non-violence etc.
These values were passed on to their children - the word genetic is probably misapplied since values are arguably taught not inherited through genes. Whilst the poor generally didn't have these values, it was never suggested that they couldn't adopt them (if they chose).
I suppose the point of the article was that these cultural values became more dominant in the population because the middle-upper classes were reproducing faster than the poor. This guy argues that third world countries are poor because they haven't (rightly or wrongly) been imbued with the cultural values that work well with capitalism (and it's not because they are lazy). This is contrasted with the classic economist view that institutions are the main cause of wealth in countries.
The interpretation of the data may be debatable, but I wouldn't be so quick to accuse the author of eugenics or some kind of genetic superiority.
Why dont we have our students actually learn in school and not pander to the test mentality which has proven to be ineffective and misleading.
I think this is due to pragmatism more than anything else. In the broader context, the current schooling system is a simple and lazy way for society to sort children. It's not efficient, but it's easy.
The kids that are most able to pass the arbitrary tests are allowed to pursue the most prestigious professions (eg. medicine, law, etc). The other kids are sorted on a sliding scale, of ostensibly less important professions. This probably contributes to why skilled manual trades are generally held in such low regard by society (think a plumber vs a doctor)... as is teaching - they have low entrance requirements (with respect to the arbitrary tests). I guess this is similar to the "propadeutic" function John Taylor Gatto talks about, where only the brightest (or by implication, the rich) get the best education.
There are probably more efficient ways of sorting people, but I'm not sure they would be as simple and easy as the current system. I would favour an apprenticeship type system, but again, how do you select candidates? What basis would you have, apart from school results? In the past, it was through family relations. If you were the son of a butcher, you'd probably end up being a butcher. Or perhaps you'd be apprenticed out to a family friend, or some other family contact.
I have no objections to a system that really educates kids, but at some point there would need to be some assessment of ability for further training in a profession. At the moment, standardised testing is it. As far as I'm aware, even home-schooled kids need to pass tests to get into university.
The candidate in your constituency is there to represent YOUR interests. So to make an informed vote that is in line with your interests, you've got to:
1. List the issues that are most important to you (and your family). Is it taxes, social security, health, security, abortion, same sex marriage, etc etc?
2. Research where the candidates in your constintuency stand on all your important issues.
3. Pick the one that suits you most. If none of them appeal to you, perhaps abstaining from the vote is the most informed choice.
In the ideal representative democracy, the elected candidates represent you. The constituents should be checking up on the candidate's congress voting record and making sure that they are consistent with their election promises / stance.
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Man, the grandparent was talking about upgrading a 5A fuse on a car's cigarette lighter to a 10A fuse, and then moving it to the trunk. From the car battery to the trunk, that can't be more than 10 feet. The voltage drop wouldn't be an issue.
I certainly wasn't advocating running a 12VDC network around your house, as your example is suggesting.
You will find that the current rating for 14 AWG cables (you probably wouldn't use anything smaller) is typically 18A. Granted there are some derating factors, but you'd be unlucky to have thermal overload on a 14AWG cable from a 10A fuse.
As an electrical engineer who designs these platforms and also works offshore, this article was of genuine interest to me. However after reading it, I'm somewhat unconvinced. From what I gather, these robots are to be used on normally unmanned / minimal facilities platforms (usually wellhead platforms) or small production platforms at most. My objections to this are as follows:
These are all technical challenges that can be overcome, but when you look at the economic cost/benefit analysis, I suspect that this system is only viable for a very small subset of offshore facilities.
PS. Some people commented on security on offshore rigs. As far as I'm aware, there isn't any. On the platforms I've been to, I've never seen any security or anyone with a weapon for that matter. There are CCTV cameras in some places, but if you were determined to destroy a rig, it wouldn't be hard... it's full of explosive hydrocarbons to begin with. I don't know why anyone would really bother though, they are hard to get to and easy targets such as onshore pipelines would likely do more damage in disrupting operations (though less overall capital damage).Welcome to the unregulated free market.
That's a bit trite, but there are indirect costs to cheap goods, most likely in the form of decreased QA/QC standards, corruption and dodgy practices to keep prices low. Which is not to say that the free market won't correct itself - it will - but there is always the potential for avoidable suffering along the way.
The Keynesian prescription of fiscal expansions to stimulate growth is more or less accepted as the conventional wisdom by most economists, but institutional factors are also arguably very important (ie. state institutions that promote the rule of law, property rights, corruption free government, streamlined bureacracies, limits on executive power etc).
Economists have been harping on about the quality of institutions for a while now, and usually the basket case economies of Africa are their textbook case studies in what not to do. So whilst government spending may help short term output growth and may be a good idea, they also need to work on (among other things) improving their institutions.
I don't think the article was suggesting that poor people are inherently lazy (or stupid). Rather, the pre-industrial revolution middle-upper classes had (in general) cultural values that were conducive to capitalism eg. the propensity to save, thrift, non-violence etc.
These values were passed on to their children - the word genetic is probably misapplied since values are arguably taught not inherited through genes. Whilst the poor generally didn't have these values, it was never suggested that they couldn't adopt them (if they chose).
I suppose the point of the article was that these cultural values became more dominant in the population because the middle-upper classes were reproducing faster than the poor. This guy argues that third world countries are poor because they haven't (rightly or wrongly) been imbued with the cultural values that work well with capitalism (and it's not because they are lazy). This is contrasted with the classic economist view that institutions are the main cause of wealth in countries.
The interpretation of the data may be debatable, but I wouldn't be so quick to accuse the author of eugenics or some kind of genetic superiority.
Why dont we have our students actually learn in school and not pander to the test mentality which has proven to be ineffective and misleading.
I think this is due to pragmatism more than anything else. In the broader context, the current schooling system is a simple and lazy way for society to sort children. It's not efficient, but it's easy.
The kids that are most able to pass the arbitrary tests are allowed to pursue the most prestigious professions (eg. medicine, law, etc). The other kids are sorted on a sliding scale, of ostensibly less important professions. This probably contributes to why skilled manual trades are generally held in such low regard by society (think a plumber vs a doctor)... as is teaching - they have low entrance requirements (with respect to the arbitrary tests). I guess this is similar to the "propadeutic" function John Taylor Gatto talks about, where only the brightest (or by implication, the rich) get the best education.
There are probably more efficient ways of sorting people, but I'm not sure they would be as simple and easy as the current system. I would favour an apprenticeship type system, but again, how do you select candidates? What basis would you have, apart from school results? In the past, it was through family relations. If you were the son of a butcher, you'd probably end up being a butcher. Or perhaps you'd be apprenticed out to a family friend, or some other family contact.
I have no objections to a system that really educates kids, but at some point there would need to be some assessment of ability for further training in a profession. At the moment, standardised testing is it. As far as I'm aware, even home-schooled kids need to pass tests to get into university.
The candidate in your constituency is there to represent YOUR interests. So to make an informed vote that is in line with your interests, you've got to:
1. List the issues that are most important to you (and your family). Is it taxes, social security, health, security, abortion, same sex marriage, etc etc?
2. Research where the candidates in your constintuency stand on all your important issues.
3. Pick the one that suits you most. If none of them appeal to you, perhaps abstaining from the vote is the most informed choice.
In the ideal representative democracy, the elected candidates represent you. The constituents should be checking up on the candidate's congress voting record and making sure that they are consistent with their election promises / stance.