You're also pretending that I don't want any oil production whatsoever. That's quite impossible, given our need for materials like plastics
Actually petro oil isn't needed to make plastic. Plastic was originally made with the same thing as what this new plant uses to make ethanol, plant cellulose. Eastman Kodak, the camera company, has a good description on making plastic from trees: From Trees to Plastic
as I said, the "clean" way to deal with the fuel is to reprocess it.
Reprocessing nuclear fuel is not clean. It produces highly toxic waste and the radioactive waste left is even hotter. IEEE's Spectrum magazine had an article in the Febuary 2007 issue on France's, who has gone the farthest on it, reprocessing program "Nuclear Waste Land". In it the writer, Peter Fairley, goes over the problems the French have with reprocessing, and "the basic problem of waste remains unsolved."
Many Australians were Irate that we were walked over by the US in our recent free trade agreement. The US decided that free trade doesn't apply to Sugar or Beef, two of Australia's major exports.
Freetrade did not mattered to the US government through the 1900s. US businesses and the politicians in thier pockets don't want freetrade, they want the government to raise the prices of thier foreign competitors and give them subsidies. It raises tariffs on imports such as beef and sugar while it hands out billions of dollars to US companies, many of which are really multinational corporations or private equity firms. And both sugar and beef are major Brazilian exports as well.
"lots of US farmland is actually fallow to keep food prices up"
let me guess, it's all a conspiracy of the big corperations? call me crazy but i don't see high food prices
In case you didn't know, the government does or did pay farmers not to plant. Though this study doesn't say this specifically a study from Reason Foundation, "Free Mind and Free Markets", does have this to say about idle cropland:
E. Farm Output, Land Prices, and the Real-Estate Market
If farmers can grow more food on less land, more land is available for other uses such as open space, commercial development, or housing. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently found that, although cropland acreage has undergone little net change since 1945, whether cropland is harvested, idle, or lays fallow depends on federal programs and economic markets. Strong export markets fueled expansions of cropland in the 1970s and 1980s, but cropland fell as millions of acres were diverted into federal programs. Idle cropland, for example, has varied from 20.5 percent of the total used for crops in 1987 to 5.5 percent in 1982. In 1992, 56 million acres, or 16.6 percent of the total amount used for crops, was idle. An analysis of the causes of farmland loss between 1949 and 1992 by Ohio State University agricultural economist Luther Tweeten found the "lack of farm economic viability rather than urban encroachment" was the principal reason for cropland loss.
And the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau says this:
Acreage Reduction Program The acreage reduction program (ARP) is a voluntary land retirement program administered by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). A farmer may idle a set portion of their crop acreage base of wheat, feed grains, cotton, or rice. They are not given a direct payment for ARP, but may be eligible for benefits such as CCC loans and deficiency payments. Participating farmers are sometimes offered the option of idling additional land under a paid diversion program that gives them a specific payment for each idle acre. ARP program was eliminated by 1996 Farm Bill.
Acreage Reduction Program
From the 1930's, the U.S. has attempted to avoid excess supplies of grain and raise grain prices and farm income by encouraging farmers to voluntarily take some land out of production. The effect of a restriction on land for corn would be to shift the U.S. supply curve to the left.
So yes, the government did encourage farmer to not grow crops. And that's besides the billions of dollars give farmers in subsidies.
no i don't think you understand how biodiesel is produced (yet you seem to support it so vigarously?) a key component of biodiesel is the amount of fertiliser used to produce the crop which uses a lot of - you guessed it - OIL.
Petro based fertilizers aren't need to grow crops. I've been gardening for more than 30 years and not once did I use them. Though al I have right now is a postage stamp sized garden, I'm growing acorn squash, pickling cucumbers, onions, 4 different pepers, 4 tomatoes, and tomatilos. Organic farmers don't use them either. Admittedly though in order to grow feedstock, crops, to produce enough biofuels to replace even a small part of the petro used now without clearcutting forests you need to use petro based fertilizers.
the nasty stuff you refer to is the spent fuel rods, which is easy enough to store.
Forgetting about mining uranium, where are you going to store spent fuel, Yucca Mountain? If you think it's a good place to store nuclear waste I bet you didn't know Yucca Mountain is in a
That was my thought exactly. I actually double-majored in a non-computer related engineering (Aerospace) and Business, with an IT minor.
Way back when I wanted to do a double major as well, Computer Engineering and Ethnobotany. After an accident while in college I realized that if I still wanted to go into CE I'd basically have to start all over, my memory was damaged. However I didn't want to anymore. I'm still interested in it but no longer want to do it as a career. I don't even know what I can do that I'm interested in doing.
sure you can just lay seed for the first 2 - 3 years, after that your crops won't grow because the organic matter in the soil will be completely used up.
If plants from seeds die after 2 or 3 years how in the world does a tree live for 1000s of years?
you don't just push a seed in the ground and it grows you know, it takes lots of ammonia nitrate to grow crops on the scale you are talking about, the production of which requires lots of oil and gas.
I think you've never gardened. I have since I was little and most of the tyme I've had a garden that's exactly what I did. As for nitrates, there are a number of Nitrogen Fixers such as the various Astragalus species, soya, and the various clover species.
In this case, the residue is ash because the material is turned into a gas. This can still be used as a fertilizer but it is not the same as returning carbon to the soil: http://www.rangefuels.com/conversion_process
Thanks, I didn't realize it was gasified, maybe I missed that in TFA. Yeap, I did: Range biofuels uses a more straightforward thermo-chemical process to gasify the cellulose and then convert it to ethanol.
Switchgrass is one of the better ones. It grows everywhere and is very disease, drought, etc resistant.
Hemp shares those same characteristics. It also has medical uses as well as can be used for bioremediation to cleanup toxic spills and such. Bioremediationcan be defined as any process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition. In this, switchgrass might also be usuable, I don't know.
You can store the wood for a long time or just leave the trees planted. You don't have that option with switchgrass or hemp -- you can't store the stuff or it will start decomposing.
You're mistaken here, hemp can be left alone to grow on it's own. A long tyme ago I knew someone who's family owned land out in the middle of nowhere South Carolina and they had trees of hemp growing. They had one photo of her standing under a hemp plant towering over her. According to this, hemp fibers can get up to 15 foot long, so I'd image hemp can grow much higher.
Besides, as with any type of farming, the best yields will come from a variety of crops rotated to preserve the land as much as possible.
if you used hemp, you would then have all these people getting upset over people smoking it instead of using it for fuel.
Industrial hemp has hardly any THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. You'd have to smoke something like a pound, a lot more than one joint, of industrial hemp to get high.
In 1892 Rudolph Diesel designed his engine and ran it on vegetable oil. He used hemp oil amoung them. Then in the 1930s Henry Ford built a vehicle not only using hemp in the construction but was fueled with alcohol made from hemp, hemp he grew on his Iron Mountain Estate. Hemp was found to be a good source for fuel. Also in the 1930s MIT did a study showing an acre of hemp produced more paper than an acre of forest. Eventually some who felt threatened by hemp's industrial uses pushed to make it illegal and via the 1937 Marijuna Tax Act and between them they were successful.
If we stopped keeping sugar prices artificially high, and especially if we let Cuban sugar in, it would be amazingly cost-effective.)
Cuban sugarcane is one reason the trade embargo hasn't been ended long ago, and why Brazilian sugarcane isn't being imported into the US. US sugarecane farmers, centered around Lake Okeechobee, FL, hold a lot of political clout.
What they fail to figure is the opportunity cost of turning all of that cellulose into ethanol vs. its current use, which is largely animal feed and compost that is used to make products, as cover for off seasons, and to enrich soils for another season of crops. What is the energy cost of destroying your soil or offsetting the loss in other areas of the economy?
Actually there still is residues left after converting cellulose to ethanol and that residue can be used as fertilizer. Better is that what's left is fiber which can be used to make stuff like paper, cordage, and clothing. And if the foodstock used is edible the fiber may be edible as well, and everyone needs fiber in their diet.
The big energy inputs are equipment, water, and soil enrichment.
Take the residue left from the conversion and mix it with manure from factory farming of cattle and pigs, which are currently creating Dead Zones along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, then compost it. It'll make an excellent soil additive.
Should a software vendor be responsible for every previous format older versions were compatible with?
YES! If a vender can't bother to use open formats then they should be required to maintain a method old formats can be opened and displayed properly. If I have an old document, say a spreadsheet or a contract, backed up and 5, or 10, years later I want or need to I should be able to open it. And without having to convert it. Though I'm not sure if it's true I heard lawyers have to keep documents at least 7 years, and what of medical records?
People are quick to bitch about Microsoft's actions, but what the hell is a non-tech-savvy user doing installing a trial of Office 2007 anyway ? If they already have 2000 or 2003 preinstalled on their system, they should stick with that.
Because they want to try the lastest and greatest? Or because they want to make sure it suits their wants and needs? Do you buy a car without test driving it?
The compatibility readers are available for free, as they've always been since Office 95!
The only version of Office I have is 97, and I once tried to open a newer doc with it. Not only was I not asked if I wanted to download a module that would allow me to open the doc, but Office crashed on me. I shutdown, unplugged my PC, then after a few minutes I rebooted and it did the same thing.
think of backing up their important files on a regular basis, or AT THE VERY LEAST backing up before replacing a major piece of software, welllll...
Don't just think of backing up when upgrading, actually backup at least occassionally. I don't have removable media backups, but I'm looking for a dl dvd drive so I can store backups my files offsite. Even using a dld dvd though it's take at least 20-25 disks to backup all my files, I've got more than 160GB on my hdds. RSN I plan on getting a Macbook Pro so I may use it's dvd drive to backup.
If you are as you described "having a broad range of interests and wishing to dabble in everything", then you can learn practical things yourself while you study the computer science.
True but it looks better if it's on your college transcripts. That's what I did while majoring in Computer Engineering when I was a fulltime student. As a student I also took foreign language classes as well as classes in pe, philosophy, and theatre.
You could take both CS and IT, CS and EE, or EE and IT. You would either graduate with the two degrees and have many options for your career or sample both to discover which degree you prefer.
You could even increase your options if instead of taking a technical or science major as your second one, you took one totally different, like finance or healthcare. You could then get a position setting up or programming financial or health systems for instance. Though I don't know any myself I've heard both banks or other finacial institutes and those in heathcare industries are looking for those who have scientific or technical qualifications but also have knowledge of these other industries. I've heard the opposite also. Companies like Inuit, developers of Quicken and Quickbooks, want programmers with financial backgrounds.
That and for the few species that have benefited, there's plenty that have not and a result of the cleaner water means the growth of weeds has exploded.
Ah, one of those invasive species, "weeds", is Kudzu, another invasive species from Asia. The problem with invasive species is that they over compeat with native species.
Someone who is going to be building compilers is going to have to devote themselves to the discipline. Someone who is doing web front-ends should be getting a well-rounded education that includes art, psychology (HCI), sociology (market segments), English, etc.
Someone developing compilers should only devote themself to the discipline if they only want to be a greasemonkey. A well rounded education will prepare a person for more problem solving than focusing on one discipline will as well as give them new ways of thinking. As my favorite prof in physics and calculus, he taught both, used to say don't remember equations, instead learn to solve for a problem and sometimes a person needs to think creatively to solve it.
As important as computers are, I think there should be a lot more breadth in education.
Oh, I whole heartedly agree. Too many people are focusing on narrow specializations instead of getting a well rounded education. If a problem outside that domain comes up they have no way of solving it.
Unless Beijing promoted a BBC food correspondent to the head of their food safety administration and then executed her, I rather think you mean Zheng Xiaoyu.
I disagree. Execution may not bring back the victims of the criminal, but it certainly does prevent that person from performing those acts again.
I don't know, if I killed someone and thought I'd get the death penality I think it might be worthwhile to go ahead and kill more. Also once a person is executed there's no chance of bringing them back to life if it's found out an innocent person was executed. If they're in prison however they can be released and have their name cleared. And recent dna testing has cleared a number of innocent people on death row. About the only way I could agree with executing someone is if they wanted to be executed.
the Great Lakes are THE largest source of freshwater on the planet.
I think you're wrong. Lake Baikal in Syberia contains 1/5 of all the freshwater in the world. Unfortunately it may be much more polluted than the Great Lakes are. The Soviets used it as a dumping ground.
Slashdot Mirror
You're also pretending that I don't want any oil production whatsoever. That's quite impossible, given our need for materials like plastics
Actually petro oil isn't needed to make plastic. Plastic was originally made with the same thing as what this new plant uses to make ethanol, plant cellulose. Eastman Kodak, the camera company, has a good description on making plastic from trees:
From Trees to Plastic
as I said, the "clean" way to deal with the fuel is to reprocess it.
Reprocessing nuclear fuel is not clean. It produces highly toxic waste and the radioactive waste left is even hotter. IEEE's Spectrum magazine had an article in the Febuary 2007 issue on France's, who has gone the farthest on it, reprocessing program "Nuclear Waste Land" . In it the writer, Peter Fairley, goes over the problems the French have with reprocessing, and "the basic problem of waste remains unsolved."
FalconMany Australians were Irate that we were walked over by the US in our recent free trade agreement. The US decided that free trade doesn't apply to Sugar or Beef, two of Australia's major exports.
Freetrade did not mattered to the US government through the 1900s. US businesses and the politicians in thier pockets don't want freetrade, they want the government to raise the prices of thier foreign competitors and give them subsidies. It raises tariffs on imports such as beef and sugar while it hands out billions of dollars to US companies, many of which are really multinational corporations or private equity firms. And both sugar and beef are major Brazilian exports as well.
Falcon"lots of US farmland is actually fallow to keep food prices up"
let me guess, it's all a conspiracy of the big corperations? call me crazy but i don't see high food prices
In case you didn't know, the government does or did pay farmers not to plant. Though this study doesn't say this specifically a study from Reason Foundation, "Free Mind and Free Markets", does have this to say about idle cropland:
E. Farm Output, Land Prices, and the Real-Estate Market
If farmers can grow more food on less land, more land is available for other uses such as open space, commercial development, or housing. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently found that, although cropland acreage has undergone little net change since 1945, whether cropland is harvested, idle, or lays fallow depends on federal programs and economic markets. Strong export markets fueled expansions of cropland in the 1970s and 1980s, but cropland fell as millions of acres were diverted into federal programs. Idle cropland, for example, has varied from 20.5 percent of the total used for crops in 1987 to 5.5 percent in 1982. In 1992, 56 million acres, or 16.6 percent of the total amount used for crops, was idle. An analysis of the causes of farmland loss between 1949 and 1992 by Ohio State University agricultural economist Luther Tweeten found the "lack of farm economic viability rather than urban encroachment" was the principal reason for cropland loss.
And the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau says this:
Acreage Reduction Program The acreage reduction program (ARP) is a voluntary land retirement program administered by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). A farmer may idle a set portion of their crop acreage base of wheat, feed grains, cotton, or rice. They are not given a direct payment for ARP, but may be eligible for benefits such as CCC loans and deficiency payments. Participating farmers are sometimes offered the option of idling additional land under a paid diversion program that gives them a specific payment for each idle acre. ARP program was eliminated by 1996 Farm Bill.
The Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics has this to say:
Acreage Reduction Program
From the 1930's, the U.S. has attempted to avoid excess supplies of grain and raise grain prices and farm income by encouraging farmers to voluntarily take some land out of production. The effect of a restriction on land for corn would be to shift the U.S. supply curve to the left.
So yes, the government did encourage farmer to not grow crops. And that's besides the billions of dollars give farmers in subsidies.
no i don't think you understand how biodiesel is produced (yet you seem to support it so vigarously?) a key component of biodiesel is the amount of fertiliser used to produce the crop which uses a lot of - you guessed it - OIL.
Petro based fertilizers aren't need to grow crops. I've been gardening for more than 30 years and not once did I use them. Though al I have right now is a postage stamp sized garden, I'm growing acorn squash, pickling cucumbers, onions, 4 different pepers, 4 tomatoes, and tomatilos. Organic farmers don't use them either. Admittedly though in order to grow feedstock, crops, to produce enough biofuels to replace even a small part of the petro used now without clearcutting forests you need to use petro based fertilizers.
the nasty stuff you refer to is the spent fuel rods, which is easy enough to store.
Forgetting about mining uranium, where are you going to store spent fuel, Yucca Mountain? If you think it's a good place to store nuclear waste I bet you didn't know Yucca Mountain is in a
That was my thought exactly. I actually double-majored in a non-computer related engineering (Aerospace) and Business, with an IT minor.
Way back when I wanted to do a double major as well, Computer Engineering and Ethnobotany. After an accident while in college I realized that if I still wanted to go into CE I'd basically have to start all over, my memory was damaged. However I didn't want to anymore. I'm still interested in it but no longer want to do it as a career. I don't even know what I can do that I'm interested in doing.
Falconsure you can just lay seed for the first 2 - 3 years, after that your crops won't grow because the organic matter in the soil will be completely used up.
If plants from seeds die after 2 or 3 years how in the world does a tree live for 1000s of years?
Falconyou don't just push a seed in the ground and it grows you know, it takes lots of ammonia nitrate to grow crops on the scale you are talking about, the production of which requires lots of oil and gas.
I think you've never gardened. I have since I was little and most of the tyme I've had a garden that's exactly what I did. As for nitrates, there are a number of Nitrogen Fixers such as the various Astragalus species, soya, and the various clover species.
FalconIn this case, the residue is ash because the material is turned into a gas. This can still be used as a fertilizer but it is not the same as returning carbon to the soil:
http://www.rangefuels.com/conversion_process
Thanks, I didn't realize it was gasified, maybe I missed that in TFA. Yeap, I did: Range biofuels uses a more straightforward thermo-chemical process to gasify the cellulose and then convert it to ethanol.
FalconSwitchgrass is one of the better ones. It grows everywhere and is very disease, drought, etc resistant.
Hemp shares those same characteristics. It also has medical uses as well as can be used for bioremediation to cleanup toxic spills and such. Bioremediation can be defined as any process that uses microorganisms, fungi, green plants or their enzymes to return the environment altered by contaminants to its original condition. In this, switchgrass might also be usuable, I don't know.
You can store the wood for a long time or just leave the trees planted. You don't have that option with switchgrass or hemp -- you can't store the stuff or it will start decomposing.
You're mistaken here, hemp can be left alone to grow on it's own. A long tyme ago I knew someone who's family owned land out in the middle of nowhere South Carolina and they had trees of hemp growing. They had one photo of her standing under a hemp plant towering over her. According to this, hemp fibers can get up to 15 foot long, so I'd image hemp can grow much higher.
Besides, as with any type of farming, the best yields will come from a variety of crops rotated to preserve the land as much as possible.
Agreed!!!
Falconif you used hemp, you would then have all these people getting upset over people smoking it instead of using it for fuel.
Industrial hemp has hardly any THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. You'd have to smoke something like a pound, a lot more than one joint, of industrial hemp to get high.
FalconIn 1892 Rudolph Diesel designed his engine and ran it on vegetable oil. He used hemp oil amoung them. Then in the 1930s Henry Ford built a vehicle not only using hemp in the construction but was fueled with alcohol made from hemp, hemp he grew on his Iron Mountain Estate. Hemp was found to be a good source for fuel. Also in the 1930s MIT did a study showing an acre of hemp produced more paper than an acre of forest. Eventually some who felt threatened by hemp's industrial uses pushed to make it illegal and via the 1937 Marijuna Tax Act and between them they were successful.
FalconIf we stopped keeping sugar prices artificially high, and especially if we let Cuban sugar in, it would be amazingly cost-effective.)
Cuban sugarcane is one reason the trade embargo hasn't been ended long ago, and why Brazilian sugarcane isn't being imported into the US. US sugarecane farmers, centered around Lake Okeechobee, FL, hold a lot of political clout.
FalconWhat they fail to figure is the opportunity cost of turning all of that cellulose into ethanol vs. its current use, which is largely animal feed and compost that is used to make products, as cover for off seasons, and to enrich soils for another season of crops. What is the energy cost of destroying your soil or offsetting the loss in other areas of the economy?
Actually there still is residues left after converting cellulose to ethanol and that residue can be used as fertilizer. Better is that what's left is fiber which can be used to make stuff like paper, cordage, and clothing. And if the foodstock used is edible the fiber may be edible as well, and everyone needs fiber in their diet.
The big energy inputs are equipment, water, and soil enrichment.
Take the residue left from the conversion and mix it with manure from factory farming of cattle and pigs, which are currently creating Dead Zones along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, then compost it. It'll make an excellent soil additive.
FalconIt also drives up the cost of living.
FalconShould a software vendor be responsible for every previous format older versions were compatible with?
YES! If a vender can't bother to use open formats then they should be required to maintain a method old formats can be opened and displayed properly. If I have an old document, say a spreadsheet or a contract, backed up and 5, or 10, years later I want or need to I should be able to open it. And without having to convert it. Though I'm not sure if it's true I heard lawyers have to keep documents at least 7 years, and what of medical records?
FalconThis isn't some neferious attempt to ruin your office files.
It IS EVIL if some trialware you're trying converts all of your files so that your old software can't properly read and display the converted docs.
FalconPeople are quick to bitch about Microsoft's actions, but what the hell is a non-tech-savvy user doing installing a trial of Office 2007 anyway ? If they already have 2000 or 2003 preinstalled on their system, they should stick with that.
Because they want to try the lastest and greatest? Or because they want to make sure it suits their wants and needs? Do you buy a car without test driving it?
The compatibility readers are available for free, as they've always been since Office 95!
The only version of Office I have is 97, and I once tried to open a newer doc with it. Not only was I not asked if I wanted to download a module that would allow me to open the doc, but Office crashed on me. I shutdown, unplugged my PC, then after a few minutes I rebooted and it did the same thing.
think of backing up their important files on a regular basis, or AT THE VERY LEAST backing up before replacing a major piece of software, welllll...
Don't just think of backing up when upgrading, actually backup at least occassionally. I don't have removable media backups, but I'm looking for a dl dvd drive so I can store backups my files offsite. Even using a dld dvd though it's take at least 20-25 disks to backup all my files, I've got more than 160GB on my hdds. RSN I plan on getting a Macbook Pro so I may use it's dvd drive to backup.
FalconOh and we have universitys here in the states too, its just a different classification of schools. Colleges are smaller, uiversitys are larger.
In the US universities are usually collections of colleges. A university can have a College of Engineering and Science, College of Business, College of Liberal Arts, and so on. Take the university where I live, University Of Minneasota. It has a College of Biological Sciences, Institute of Technology, and College of Liberal Arts amoung others.
FalconIf you are as you described "having a broad range of interests and wishing to dabble in everything", then you can learn practical things yourself while you study the computer science.
True but it looks better if it's on your college transcripts. That's what I did while majoring in Computer Engineering when I was a fulltime student. As a student I also took foreign language classes as well as classes in pe, philosophy, and theatre.
FalconYou could take both CS and IT, CS and EE, or EE and IT. You would either graduate with the two degrees and have many options for your career or sample both to discover which degree you prefer.
You could even increase your options if instead of taking a technical or science major as your second one, you took one totally different, like finance or healthcare. You could then get a position setting up or programming financial or health systems for instance. Though I don't know any myself I've heard both banks or other finacial institutes and those in heathcare industries are looking for those who have scientific or technical qualifications but also have knowledge of these other industries. I've heard the opposite also. Companies like Inuit, developers of Quicken and Quickbooks, want programmers with financial backgrounds.
FalconIt's not about demand for petroleum, fuckhead.
It's about shutting down all the coal burning power plants out there and replacing them with nuclear reactors.
Ah, another one who can't discuss rationally. Supposedly /. is for nerds who can think and communicate reasonably but I guess not.
FalconThat and for the few species that have benefited, there's plenty that have not and a result of the cleaner water means the growth of weeds has exploded.
Ah, one of those invasive species, "weeds", is Kudzu, another invasive species from Asia. The problem with invasive species is that they over compeat with native species.
FalconSomeone who is going to be building compilers is going to have to devote themselves to the discipline. Someone who is doing web front-ends should be getting a well-rounded education that includes art, psychology (HCI), sociology (market segments), English, etc.
Someone developing compilers should only devote themself to the discipline if they only want to be a greasemonkey. A well rounded education will prepare a person for more problem solving than focusing on one discipline will as well as give them new ways of thinking. As my favorite prof in physics and calculus, he taught both, used to say don't remember equations, instead learn to solve for a problem and sometimes a person needs to think creatively to solve it.
As important as computers are, I think there should be a lot more breadth in education.
Oh, I whole heartedly agree. Too many people are focusing on narrow specializations instead of getting a well rounded education. If a problem outside that domain comes up they have no way of solving it.
FalconUnless Beijing promoted a BBC food correspondent to the head of their food safety administration and then executed her, I rather think you mean Zheng Xiaoyu.
My mistake, it was Zheng Xiaoyu who was executed.
FalconI disagree. Execution may not bring back the victims of the criminal, but it certainly does prevent that person from performing those acts again.
I don't know, if I killed someone and thought I'd get the death penality I think it might be worthwhile to go ahead and kill more. Also once a person is executed there's no chance of bringing them back to life if it's found out an innocent person was executed. If they're in prison however they can be released and have their name cleared. And recent dna testing has cleared a number of innocent people on death row. About the only way I could agree with executing someone is if they wanted to be executed.
Falconthe Great Lakes are THE largest source of freshwater on the planet.
I think you're wrong. Lake Baikal in Syberia contains 1/5 of all the freshwater in the world. Unfortunately it may be much more polluted than the Great Lakes are. The Soviets used it as a dumping ground.
Falcon