I presume the various fossil resources require distribution infrastructures, which could be replaced over time with additional electrical distribution infrastructure.
I thought you meant "since we're already paying to replacing it, we should just upgrade it for just a bit more". Sorry.
As much as building a power plant the size of Connecticut has a vicarious appeal, I'd be hoping we'd distribute the load across many smaller plants rather than a few big ones.
Funny, but that wasn't my point. Sometimes most of the Midwest is covered with dark clouds for a week, and then what will you do? Currently, even if one large-scale power plant in Chicago shuts down, there are dozens of other large ones within 100 miles that can cover the loss, but with a solar-centric system if every plant in that area gets hit with long-term cloud cover you're going to have to pull it from farther away, and our current grid won't let you run the entire Chicagoland area with power from Indiana or Wisconsin, let alone from Missouri or Michigan.
On the other hand, giant power plants would make sense in some areas: some of the Southwestern desert states could turn themselves into industrial centers with factories underneath the mirrors for the power towers. Phoenix or Vegas might have a future as a solar powered version of Detroit.:)
Ultimately, though? We need to do something other than digging up crap and burning it.
Agreed, but I really don't see any reasonable scenario for the next century (barring some truly massive breakthroughs) that doesn't include a heavy dose of nuclear, with renewables as important, but smaller scale, contributors.
We could set up a remote factory on Mercury. It probably has the materials.... and a few microwave energy transport towers.
And it's not necessarily more far fetched than a commercial fusion plant.
10% efficiency? Build ten 107x107 km plants. 5%? Build fifty. That's still a dot on the surface area of the planet.
Two things: First, it wouldn't be a dot "on the planet" because the other poster's numbers were for producing power in space, where night and weather aren't issues. Second, even if it were built on the surface, we're talking about 50 power plants about the size of Connecticut, or about 750 things the size of the City of New York.
Big cost to replace all our existing coal plants? We're going to have do that anyway, power stations require maintenance and eventually need replacing/rebuilding.
And if the costs were close to comparable there wouldn't be an issue.
Big cost to build a new distribution grid? Same thing, our current grid requires constant maintenance, one way or another we're spending the money...
Yes, except we wouldn't just be doing some minor upgrades, we'd have to up it's capacity by an order of magnitude to charge our cars, power the replacements for natural gas appliances, etc.
Then there's the issue that we wouldn't be pulling power from some neighboring towns while our power plant gets replaced, with some load balancing over a couple hundred miles - every once in a while we're going to have to ship the equivalent of all of the power for the entire Midwest a couple of thousand miles.
Impossible moral standard? Sheesh no, I just don't want to get the same diseaes you have, and those diseases cause your biological clock to get all out of proportion.
Celibacy is abnormal for human beings. Sex, like many recreational activities, does have some risks associated with it, but they're not that severe if proper precautions are taken.
Faggot is someone that breeds theirselves out of existance because it tries to reproduce with the same gender as itself.
A faggot is a bundle of sticks. It also became slang for an old woman or a homosexual man.
Perhaps you are flexible, so you never need to leave the house because you can suck your own dick.
Oh, if only!
Are you a Gay Nigger?
If you mean a homosexual black man, then yes.
Is orderly reproduction too much for you to handle,
Nope, surrogate mothers have worked well so far for me.
or is this soon to leave Planet Earth to rename as Planet Bordello?
What?
Cry me some moar of those tasty Weabooo butthurt tears
It doesn't hurt if you do it right, and plenty of heterosexuals enjoy it as well.
because they taste good seasoning my Farva Beans. nom nom nom nom
Weird spot for a "Silence of the Lambs" reference...
I think that it will parallel safety concerns in driving and seat belts before it is decided.
Except it's the exact opposite: When we didn't know much seat belts were voluntary by default, and only when we had solid evidence did they become required. With E-cigs some people want them banned by default, and only allowed when proven safe.
And the difference couldn't be more important - the first policy is the basis of a free society, and parallels concepts like "innocent until proven guilty" and "the burden of proof is on the prosecution", while the second concept is an authoritarian policy that not only prevents society from trying out new ideas, but also puts innovators under the thumb of politically-connected rivals.
This seems like a the same "My body, I can do what I want!" and "Don't tread on my personal freedoms!" argument.
Exactly - it's the same argument that's been used to defend every right and freedom that anyone has ever had.
Our biggest trade deficit is with China. Can you name any items they make which is useful?
Obviously somebody wants what they have, since we have that trade deficit with them.
NONE of them work for minimum wage, or less.... That is, an entry level production position pays about 7.00/hr
$7/hr is below minimum wage.
*Issues with services, taxes, etc*
Many illegal immigrants pay taxes under their assumed identities, but can't access services because of the increased scrutiny they'd receive.
Juan has never given ANYTHING to this country. No military service, for instance. He isn't even registered for the draft.
Most American citizens have neither provided military service nor registered for the draft.
US Citizens were laid off of their jobs, because Juan Fucking Illegal Alien was not eligible for unemployment benefits.
I'm not sure I get this. Do your employers really go out of their way to fire the employees that will suffer the least harm?
It is the hatred of CRIMINALS.
That's ridiculous - your entire post is a response to a statement about how illegal immigrants aren't particularly bad for us economically.
Remember, we've had a trade deficit for years now. Decades, actually. We're bleeding money overseas.
So we give them something that we can make in unlimited amounts for next to nothing, and they give us stuff that's actually useful. And you think that it's a bad thing for us?
Not to mention all of those illegal aliens who are bleeding us for money right here at home!
Yes, because people that make less than minimum wage just take so much from us.
Once again- if their kid is smart enough to go to college, why don't we help him go instead of forcing his parents to sell a fucking kidney. That's why we have Pell grants, student loans, scholarships, work study programs, federal aid, etc.
So "they can choose to give their kid a future at the expense of some health risks, and I can choose to live at the cost of some money" is deeply immoral, while "I can be forced to give them money, and hope they donate anyway" is just and proper.
I never understood the strange morality of sentencing people to death while making them donate to the less fortunate, just so that other people can be prevented from being able to make hard choices.
You see, this is a place where the free market doesn't work.
No, this is a place where people make choices that you don't like.
God is more interested in our eternal being.
That was exactly my point - there are plenty of ways to argue that God doesn't want us to kill, but "because he values (mortal) human life" isn't one of them.
Oh, and just so you know, it's the terrorists that are still taking lives over there, not the coalition soldiers.
That has to be the single most obviously wrong statement I've ever hear about either war. I don't even know what kind of craziness to attribute it to: Do you really believe that we're firing bullets, launching missiles, and dropping bombs and magically never hurting anyone? Do you just not count opposing forces as people and somehow think that no civilians get killed by our actions? Or do you just think that because we're "on the right side" that the people killed by our actions don't count?
And the war IS unavoidable. Even Obama continues to surge into Afghanistan.
I was specifically talking about the Iraq war. Don't change the subject.
I think if there was a way to avoid the war, Obama would have brought the troops home.
Those are different things - just like pregnancy, avoiding one to start with is quite different than stopping it in the middle.:)
You seem to forget the massive bi-partisan support the war originally had.
And how large must support for abortion rights be among Christians before you change your mind?
My point remains: Someone who has a personal relationship with God cannot in good conscience be a democrat.
And other people use the same type of logic to support the idea that they couldn't be a republican.
No, God does. His Bible does. His value of human life does.
You have GOT to be kidding me. God completely wipes the world clean of all life (save a chosen few) in a flood, orders the Hebrews to go to war and to murder the survivors, gives long lists of rules that end with "then they shall be put to death", and that's just the introduction! If you want to argue that God cares about the fate of our souls and as part of that orders us not to commit murder that's fine, but from a Biblical viewpoint mortal life is a trivial matter.
I simply find it impossible to support abortionists (democrats) as a Christian, regardless of (relatively) petty economic or foreign policies.
But you know, about as certainly as you possibly can, that even with significant Republican majorities that abortion will remain legal, and very few things in that area will change. On the other hand, with different leadership we might have avoided the Iraq war entirely - saving tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives, and possibly giving us the manpower to make Afghanistan work; health care reform (if done properly) could save thousands of American lives. And just to make it really crazy: better sex ed, cheap or free birth control, letting gays and single people adopt, and better health care could easily lower the number of abortions preformed, but because most people that support those things still want abortion legal, you're willing to support those that give token speeches about the evils of abortion, while doing everything possible to make sure that women still have reasons to get them.
Yes, moral values and ethical systems exist that both of us find crazy and horrifying - what's your point?
You seem to be implying that every other type of morals/ethics is vastly inferior to yours, and even worse, that this inferiority is so vast and obvious that you have an excuse for acting as if they didn't even exist in previous posts.
You've made some very well-structured legal arguments about the issue. Unfortunately all that does is show that you've completely missed the point I was trying to make. In some ethical systems, privacy includes protecting most "hidden" information - like what's in a person's DNA even if it is anonymous. And some people have a moral belief that the body is sacred and even "waste parts" deserve respect - so using them for scientific purposes or financial gain would be evil in the same way that hurting an innocent would be.
And that's the point - you aren't just claiming that you don't have a problem with this or that the legal system says it's OK, but that there are no privacy or property issues under any system at all, and then defending that idea using arguments that are only relevant in the one particular framework that you're used to. This is as myopic as a Christian believing in a single God, and being completely confounded as to how atheists and Hindus could possibly believe otherwise.
So there was no legal privacy issue, and no issue of legal property rights. And therefore the issue was moral or ethical, or that the legal system should be changed?
Which means you already have to start with more than one, to not become illegal when starting your self-employment.
How do you do that - sign two contracts, one with each hand, at the same time? And even if you just mean "start during the same year" you have the issue of people panicking in December because they need a second client before the 31st or get penalized.
Isn't the whole point of being a contractor, that you have more than one client, and that if one of them is a dick, you can say fuck you, and still work for your other clients?
That's not the only benefit. Another is that you have more flexibility in negotiating benefits - "my husband gets us health insurance through his job so I don't need that, but I want a more flexible schedule" or "I can do things quickly, so don't pay me by the hour, do it by paying per item I get done" or "forget the signing bonus, just improve the severance package" etc. For others it's just a philosophical difference - what some see as laws that rectify the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee, others see as being treated like children and resent that even if they go out of their way to structure their job as an openly-negotiated trade they aren't allowed to do so.
Can you name the "basic rights" that are being violated here? Nobody is stopping Muslims in Switzerland from practicing their religion, they are only not allowed to impose it on everyone else in the form of giant rockets (erect penises?) whose only purpose is to promote the said religion. Since they are not even being used for calling for prayer what else is their purpose?
Can you name the "basic rights" that are being violated here? Nobody is stopping Christians in Switzerland from practicing their religion, they are only not allowed to impose it on everyone else in the form of giant torture devices (lower case 't's?) whose only purpose is to promote the said religion. Since they are not even being used for crucifying people what else is their purpose?
Honestly no matter what humans do to save or destroy the earth, in 4-5 billion years the sun is going to engulf the earth.
That's why, about 3.9 billion years from now, I've set aside some time for developing an escape plan. Until then I plan on keeping the old homestead in good repair, because spending 50 million or so lifetimes in a dump doesn't sound like fun. I promise that when the time comes you can throw a huge party and trash the place.
It's hard to think of one that would be covered in semen. Although stealing a ton of samples from a fertility clinic and spreading them over a crime scene might be a good way to cover up any DNA that gets left behind.
So it was worth the time to make a snide remark, but not to point out what I missed so that we could have a good discussion. Kind of wastes a comment, doesn't it?
You're just being stubborn - several people have pointed out this fact to you.
Care to back up your assertion, with, say, anything?
If one follows your link, clicks "Search", and changes the "Sort By" drop-down to "Price: Low to High", it lists seven pages of properties that can be purchased for $54,000 or less. Some are empty lots, but many are actual houses.
As side notes: First, if you hadn't essentially accused the original poster of lying nobody would have cared about your post. Second, I love taunting trolls, so bring it on.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I presume the various fossil resources require distribution infrastructures, which could be replaced over time with additional electrical distribution infrastructure.
I thought you meant "since we're already paying to replacing it, we should just upgrade it for just a bit more". Sorry.
As much as building a power plant the size of Connecticut has a vicarious appeal, I'd be hoping we'd distribute the load across many smaller plants rather than a few big ones.
Funny, but that wasn't my point. Sometimes most of the Midwest is covered with dark clouds for a week, and then what will you do? Currently, even if one large-scale power plant in Chicago shuts down, there are dozens of other large ones within 100 miles that can cover the loss, but with a solar-centric system if every plant in that area gets hit with long-term cloud cover you're going to have to pull it from farther away, and our current grid won't let you run the entire Chicagoland area with power from Indiana or Wisconsin, let alone from Missouri or Michigan.
On the other hand, giant power plants would make sense in some areas: some of the Southwestern desert states could turn themselves into industrial centers with factories underneath the mirrors for the power towers. Phoenix or Vegas might have a future as a solar powered version of Detroit. :)
Ultimately, though? We need to do something other than digging up crap and burning it.
Agreed, but I really don't see any reasonable scenario for the next century (barring some truly massive breakthroughs) that doesn't include a heavy dose of nuclear, with renewables as important, but smaller scale, contributors.
We could set up a remote factory on Mercury. It probably has the materials. ... and a few microwave energy transport towers.
And it's not necessarily more far fetched than a commercial fusion plant.
No. It really is more far fetched - much more.
10% efficiency? Build ten 107x107 km plants. 5%? Build fifty. That's still a dot on the surface area of the planet.
Two things: First, it wouldn't be a dot "on the planet" because the other poster's numbers were for producing power in space, where night and weather aren't issues. Second, even if it were built on the surface, we're talking about 50 power plants about the size of Connecticut, or about 750 things the size of the City of New York.
Big cost to replace all our existing coal plants? We're going to have do that anyway, power stations require maintenance and eventually need replacing/rebuilding.
And if the costs were close to comparable there wouldn't be an issue.
Big cost to build a new distribution grid? Same thing, our current grid requires constant maintenance, one way or another we're spending the money...
Yes, except we wouldn't just be doing some minor upgrades, we'd have to up it's capacity by an order of magnitude to charge our cars, power the replacements for natural gas appliances, etc.
Then there's the issue that we wouldn't be pulling power from some neighboring towns while our power plant gets replaced, with some load balancing over a couple hundred miles - every once in a while we're going to have to ship the equivalent of all of the power for the entire Midwest a couple of thousand miles.
Impossible moral standard? Sheesh no, I just don't want to get the same diseaes you have, and those diseases cause your biological clock to get all out of proportion.
Celibacy is abnormal for human beings. Sex, like many recreational activities, does have some risks associated with it, but they're not that severe if proper precautions are taken.
Faggot is someone that breeds theirselves out of existance because it tries to reproduce with the same gender as itself.
A faggot is a bundle of sticks. It also became slang for an old woman or a homosexual man.
Perhaps you are flexible, so you never need to leave the house because you can suck your own dick.
Oh, if only!
Are you a Gay Nigger?
If you mean a homosexual black man, then yes.
Is orderly reproduction too much for you to handle,
Nope, surrogate mothers have worked well so far for me.
or is this soon to leave Planet Earth to rename as Planet Bordello?
What?
Cry me some moar of those tasty Weabooo butthurt tears
It doesn't hurt if you do it right, and plenty of heterosexuals enjoy it as well.
because they taste good seasoning my Farva Beans. nom nom nom nom
Weird spot for a "Silence of the Lambs" reference...
I think that it will parallel safety concerns in driving and seat belts before it is decided.
Except it's the exact opposite: When we didn't know much seat belts were voluntary by default, and only when we had solid evidence did they become required. With E-cigs some people want them banned by default, and only allowed when proven safe.
And the difference couldn't be more important - the first policy is the basis of a free society, and parallels concepts like "innocent until proven guilty" and "the burden of proof is on the prosecution", while the second concept is an authoritarian policy that not only prevents society from trying out new ideas, but also puts innovators under the thumb of politically-connected rivals.
This seems like a the same "My body, I can do what I want!" and "Don't tread on my personal freedoms!" argument.
Exactly - it's the same argument that's been used to defend every right and freedom that anyone has ever had.
The average IQ of both cites went up.
And you managed to increase the percentage of incorrectly-spelled words in slashdot posts.
Our biggest trade deficit is with China. Can you name any items they make which is useful?
Obviously somebody wants what they have, since we have that trade deficit with them.
NONE of them work for minimum wage, or less. ... That is, an entry level production position pays about 7.00/hr
$7/hr is below minimum wage.
*Issues with services, taxes, etc*
Many illegal immigrants pay taxes under their assumed identities, but can't access services because of the increased scrutiny they'd receive.
Juan has never given ANYTHING to this country. No military service, for instance. He isn't even registered for the draft.
Most American citizens have neither provided military service nor registered for the draft.
US Citizens were laid off of their jobs, because Juan Fucking Illegal Alien was not eligible for unemployment benefits.
I'm not sure I get this. Do your employers really go out of their way to fire the employees that will suffer the least harm?
It is the hatred of CRIMINALS.
That's ridiculous - your entire post is a response to a statement about how illegal immigrants aren't particularly bad for us economically.
Remember, we've had a trade deficit for years now. Decades, actually. We're bleeding money overseas.
So we give them something that we can make in unlimited amounts for next to nothing, and they give us stuff that's actually useful. And you think that it's a bad thing for us?
Not to mention all of those illegal aliens who are bleeding us for money right here at home!
Yes, because people that make less than minimum wage just take so much from us.
Name change recommendations for the United States of America:
Canada South
Constitutionland
Cunited Chates of Camerica
The good news is that the states of California, Connecticut and New Cork should have a smooth transition.
Once again- if their kid is smart enough to go to college, why don't we help him go instead of forcing his parents to sell a fucking kidney. That's why we have Pell grants, student loans, scholarships, work study programs, federal aid, etc.
So "they can choose to give their kid a future at the expense of some health risks, and I can choose to live at the cost of some money" is deeply immoral, while "I can be forced to give them money, and hope they donate anyway" is just and proper.
I never understood the strange morality of sentencing people to death while making them donate to the less fortunate, just so that other people can be prevented from being able to make hard choices.
You see, this is a place where the free market doesn't work.
No, this is a place where people make choices that you don't like.
Ah, to be young again. And also a nuclear powered robot with an intact penis.
I don't get scared when I'm walking down the street and see a white supremacist ...
Then you aren't black or hispanic.
God is more interested in our eternal being.
That was exactly my point - there are plenty of ways to argue that God doesn't want us to kill, but "because he values (mortal) human life" isn't one of them.
Oh, and just so you know, it's the terrorists that are still taking lives over there, not the coalition soldiers.
That has to be the single most obviously wrong statement I've ever hear about either war. I don't even know what kind of craziness to attribute it to: Do you really believe that we're firing bullets, launching missiles, and dropping bombs and magically never hurting anyone? Do you just not count opposing forces as people and somehow think that no civilians get killed by our actions? Or do you just think that because we're "on the right side" that the people killed by our actions don't count?
And the war IS unavoidable. Even Obama continues to surge into Afghanistan.
I was specifically talking about the Iraq war. Don't change the subject.
I think if there was a way to avoid the war, Obama would have brought the troops home. :)
Those are different things - just like pregnancy, avoiding one to start with is quite different than stopping it in the middle.
You seem to forget the massive bi-partisan support the war originally had.
And how large must support for abortion rights be among Christians before you change your mind?
My point remains: Someone who has a personal relationship with God cannot in good conscience be a democrat.
And other people use the same type of logic to support the idea that they couldn't be a republican.
No, God does. His Bible does. His value of human life does.
You have GOT to be kidding me. God completely wipes the world clean of all life (save a chosen few) in a flood, orders the Hebrews to go to war and to murder the survivors, gives long lists of rules that end with "then they shall be put to death", and that's just the introduction! If you want to argue that God cares about the fate of our souls and as part of that orders us not to commit murder that's fine, but from a Biblical viewpoint mortal life is a trivial matter.
I simply find it impossible to support abortionists (democrats) as a Christian, regardless of (relatively) petty economic or foreign policies.
But you know, about as certainly as you possibly can, that even with significant Republican majorities that abortion will remain legal, and very few things in that area will change. On the other hand, with different leadership we might have avoided the Iraq war entirely - saving tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives, and possibly giving us the manpower to make Afghanistan work; health care reform (if done properly) could save thousands of American lives. And just to make it really crazy: better sex ed, cheap or free birth control, letting gays and single people adopt, and better health care could easily lower the number of abortions preformed, but because most people that support those things still want abortion legal, you're willing to support those that give token speeches about the evils of abortion, while doing everything possible to make sure that women still have reasons to get them.
Yes, moral values and ethical systems exist that both of us find crazy and horrifying - what's your point?
You seem to be implying that every other type of morals/ethics is vastly inferior to yours, and even worse, that this inferiority is so vast and obvious that you have an excuse for acting as if they didn't even exist in previous posts.
You've made some very well-structured legal arguments about the issue. Unfortunately all that does is show that you've completely missed the point I was trying to make. In some ethical systems, privacy includes protecting most "hidden" information - like what's in a person's DNA even if it is anonymous. And some people have a moral belief that the body is sacred and even "waste parts" deserve respect - so using them for scientific purposes or financial gain would be evil in the same way that hurting an innocent would be.
And that's the point - you aren't just claiming that you don't have a problem with this or that the legal system says it's OK, but that there are no privacy or property issues under any system at all, and then defending that idea using arguments that are only relevant in the one particular framework that you're used to. This is as myopic as a Christian believing in a single God, and being completely confounded as to how atheists and Hindus could possibly believe otherwise.
So you're implying that the law should encompass morality and ethics?
No, I don't know you got that. All I suggested was that the issues some people might have with this situation might lie outside of the legal system.
So there was no legal privacy issue, and no issue of legal property rights. And therefore the issue was moral or ethical, or that the legal system should be changed?
Which means you already have to start with more than one, to not become illegal when starting your self-employment.
How do you do that - sign two contracts, one with each hand, at the same time? And even if you just mean "start during the same year" you have the issue of people panicking in December because they need a second client before the 31st or get penalized.
Isn't the whole point of being a contractor, that you have more than one client, and that if one of them is a dick, you can say fuck you, and still work for your other clients?
That's not the only benefit. Another is that you have more flexibility in negotiating benefits - "my husband gets us health insurance through his job so I don't need that, but I want a more flexible schedule" or "I can do things quickly, so don't pay me by the hour, do it by paying per item I get done" or "forget the signing bonus, just improve the severance package" etc. For others it's just a philosophical difference - what some see as laws that rectify the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee, others see as being treated like children and resent that even if they go out of their way to structure their job as an openly-negotiated trade they aren't allowed to do so.
Can you name the "basic rights" that are being violated here? Nobody is stopping Muslims in Switzerland from practicing their religion, they are only not allowed to impose it on everyone else in the form of giant rockets (erect penises?) whose only purpose is to promote the said religion. Since they are not even being used for calling for prayer what else is their purpose?
Can you name the "basic rights" that are being violated here? Nobody is stopping Christians in Switzerland from practicing their religion, they are only not allowed to impose it on everyone else in the form of giant torture devices (lower case 't's?) whose only purpose is to promote the said religion. Since they are not even being used for crucifying people what else is their purpose?
Honestly no matter what humans do to save or destroy the earth, in 4-5 billion years the sun is going to engulf the earth.
That's why, about 3.9 billion years from now, I've set aside some time for developing an escape plan. Until then I plan on keeping the old homestead in good repair, because spending 50 million or so lifetimes in a dump doesn't sound like fun. I promise that when the time comes you can throw a huge party and trash the place.
As someone who was born and raised in alabama.
I believe that you were educated in Alabama. Your poorly capitalized sentence fragment gives it away.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. :)
Crime scenes are not covered in semen, sorry.
Surely that depends on the crime?
It's hard to think of one that would be covered in semen. Although stealing a ton of samples from a fertility clinic and spreading them over a crime scene might be a good way to cover up any DNA that gets left behind.
I don't like the way this is going.
You win the award for projecting. With a cannon.
So it was worth the time to make a snide remark, but not to point out what I missed so that we could have a good discussion. Kind of wastes a comment, doesn't it?
And, no, the link does not.
You're just being stubborn - several people have pointed out this fact to you.
Care to back up your assertion, with, say, anything?
If one follows your link, clicks "Search", and changes the "Sort By" drop-down to "Price: Low to High", it lists seven pages of properties that can be purchased for $54,000 or less. Some are empty lots, but many are actual houses.
As side notes: First, if you hadn't essentially accused the original poster of lying nobody would have cared about your post. Second, I love taunting trolls, so bring it on. :)