Every kWh generated by solar panels is one kWh less of fuel that has to be transported through harms way. Multiply that by a few panels and you soon save one transport every time.
Questions if the "populist uprising", while it is more a "Muslim Brotherhood uprising" than anything "popular", will win by a large margin?
Yes, the insurgents killed ten times more people on *purpose* than the US Army, but only if the US Army toll includes legitimate targets AND civilians killed as collateral damage.
Yes, the insurgents made it crystal clear they will establish Shariah rule, suppress anyone in their way and imprison women.
Yes, the insurgents bombed elections, mosques, hospitals, marketplaces, roads, homes ON PURPOSE.
Let's assume for a moment that rational common Iraqi civilians would even think of voting for the group that is killing most common Iraqi civilians.
Also assume that a people that generally disliked Saddam with a vengeance will vote favorably upon a group that is killing more civilians per year then he did.
Then there's just one question remaining: how many will dare to go out in the polls and how many will be bombed to death by the oh-so "popular" uprising while in the polling booth?
Disclaimer: * Conditions for life to form are not completely understood. ** The probability of life formation may be lower than expected* *** Your mileage may vary. **** Do not taunt happy fun ball.
So were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Background radiation on the entire planet is still influenced by those two events.
And I'm sure that people from Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg were not overflowing with joy when the war ended in 1945.
But that only demonstrates the need for early, swift, directed and strong interventions rather than later having to decide between a drawn-out war with unbelievable losses of life or a stand-down that enables the other side to exterminate a few million Jews, Tutsi, Non-Muslim Sudanese or Nigerians.
Being invaded by the US was historically always the best thing that could happen to a country's economy.
All countries that were successfully invaded or "liberated" by the US are economically successful and indeed pretty "liberal" now up until the most recently liberated countries like the Kosovo which is still an Islamic hellhole.
(Liberal in the sense of having personal freedom for all or most. I never understood why the die-hard lefties in the US are called "Liberals", since that's not the true sense of the word, but anyway)
Examples?
Invaded: Texas, Alaska, West Germany, Japan, South Korea, Panama
Liberated: France (WW2), Israel(heavy support), Taiwan, Kuwait
Worse situations when the US invasion/liberation was cancelled or chosen to not intervene: Iraq 1991, Somalia, Vietnam (50y later, south V. is still economically superior to the north), Cambodia, Zaire (Hutu vs. Tutsi), Sudan (current)
Worse situation after US action: Iran
Verdict unclear: Iraq 2003, Serbia,
Free countries that will be overrun quickly if US or NATO support were ceased: Taiwan (PRC), Israel (Muslim brotherhood, MB), South Cyprus(?)(Turkey), Latvia(Russia, Ru), Lithuania(Ru), Estonia(Ru), Afghanistan (Taleban, TB), Pakistan (TB), Kuwait (MB)
Large oil fires aren't exactly healthy. If I remember, it was Saddam who lit them.
Anyway, what would you think would result if you conducted an independent study asking the Iraqi people if they'd rather lived under Saddam a few more decades?
And what about Ze Germans? Their Austrian guy was even legitimately elected in a democratic election when he first came to power. I think since it cost several million innocent lives to bring that to an end, the Free Nations is right if they don't allow regimes like that to ever gain strength again. Making things right afterward is not always possible and certainly costs more lives.
Of course there are innocents in and around the facility. As true as they were in Dresden back then. Or the 2nd Imperial Death Star, if you want.
The evil plan to dominate pacifists seems to be rather safe then: install a uranium enrichment plant in your evil lair and add a few million innocents. That way, you have slave labor and soon weapons grade Uranium plus you'll never get your plans foiled.
If you truly believe that Buschehr and Natanz are "civilian infrastructure", cut back on the Kool-Aid.
These plants have only one primary purpose and that is perfectly crystal-clear. Power generation is only some kind of by-product. With those costs sunk into the plants by the Iranian government, simple electricity generation would be a joke bordering on economical suicide when expressed in Dollars per Kilowatthour. - and strategic suicide considering it would place half the nation's generating power in one single site.
This thing is not meant to produce only electricity.
Probably because Israel is of all countries the most interested in Iran and their nuclear program. No surprise, with Iran's leaders announcing the wipe-out of the "Zionist Entity" every other week, then in one single weekend starting up a nuclear plant AND unveil a new tactical missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
But even if they made Stuxnet, I could not hold it against them. What would we do in their situation? Lie down and wait for help? Make peace with the world and pray? "Never Again" is probably the most important manifest of Israel and that might take more than laying down a few flowers at Yad Vashem once a year.
There are few means more effective that still enable the source to remain hidden and sheltered in plausible denial.
A JDAM will yield much more conclusive evidence than a stealthy virus. Additionally, getting bombed with laser guided munitions will garner support, getting bombed with a computer virus only garners ridicule.
Cleaning up is a whole lot easier when the OS protects itself reasonably well. Infecting is a whole lot harder as well.
Take a known-good machine, burn a virus scan live CD from a known-good image, scan the machine in question while its OS is not running. If no virus or rootkit is found, treat the machine as trusted. Keep the image in a safe place to repeat the process in 2 weeks, when newer signatures can be downloaded by the live CD.
That is not perfect, but in the real world, no one can reinstall the whole machine every day after a malicious website has been visited by a user.
The difference between an OS that protect itself vs. an OS that doesn't can easily be observed by connecting two Windows machines directly to the Internet. One running Win95, the other Win7. With both of them having a public, routable IP, they will sooner or later get infected. The OS that gets infected last is the winner.
Never, never ever underestimate the power of cultural factors in any discussion that compares anything involving things so completely culturally different like Japan and the US, or any Asian and European-esque society.
I'm from Europe, we have nice rail networks here and we use them well and often. For long distance travel. For daily work commute, we absolutely love to use our cars, it's just that our cities are so small, anti-vehicular and expensive to park the car in anywhere.
Reason?
Other "travellers" in public transit, just like in LA. Less and less people like to be bothered by those lowlifes that are increasingly inhabiting our cities, infesting our subways, trams and buses. Anti-socials, lunatics, stinking crazies, beggars, cell-phone-"DJs", thugs, out-of-control youth, testosterone timebombs and such.
Osaka on the other hand is in THE center of social conformity pressure. People in Japan - in Asia in general - just don't fall out of line so much. They do have their anti-socials, maybe the bosozoku, if that counts as such. You will not meet even a tenth of those deliberate annoyances there in several WEEKS that you will encounter in any public subway in the "Free" West in just one day.
Eradicate punks and idjits and people will ride the subways. Perverted forms of individual freedom and mass transit just don't mix.
Even if the rate of accidents AND the fatality percentage, it would not mean for sure that a certain provision is worse.
The reason behind this seemingly grim opinion is the fact that safety is not the only - maybe not even the primary design goal of road networks.
Simple counterexample: at a speed of 10mph, accident numbers will drop below statistical white noise. Fatalities will be reduced to a single digit number, above zero only because of a few heart attacks in endless traffic jams in the summer heat.
At 10mph, we would arrive at our destinations later, but safer. Even more at 5mph. Or 2.
That's why we need to balance cost, travel time and safety. Simply reducing speed limits can help, but the solution may not hit the optimum point.
The road are currently optimized for the goals throughput/benefit, safety, costs. These are conflicting enough as it is, so I doubt it is possible or even desirable to include any piece of social agenda in that calculation.
I hope I'm with you when I advocate toll roads that make the users pay for their actual share, but I'm heavily against social goals implemented in concrete and asphalt.
On a side note, it is the hallmark - and namesake - of a totalitarian society to subordinate the total of things to a certain social agenda or goal. We should not do that. Roads are made for people driving safe and speedy to their chosen destinations, not DEFINING destinations to people. Let everyone pay for the costs they cause, so they can vote with their wallets.
I don't care about reckless speeders removing themselves from future generations, I care about reckless speeders removing ME. No amount of insurance money paid to my heirs will improve MY situation in these cases.
On the other hand, I also care about actually be able to arrive somewhere sometime before the next ice age, so speed limits cannot be set artificially low.
But I like to repeat that it is - usually - not speed that causes accidents, except for accidents in bends, on ice, in rain etc.
For an accident where cars collide, one of them must have broken a rule of the road more severe than simply the speed limit: Ignored right of way, swerved out of the lane, left the parking lot without looking, driven while texting, driven while drunk, took the wrong turn, not used the turning indicator, not repaired the brake light, not repaired the brakes, not repaired the steering, driven the wrong tires.
Accidents, where speed is the only factor are actually pretty rare. Speed worsens accidents or disallows other drivers to react to prevent them, but it isn't the sole reason.
And who will decide that imposing speed limits are in fact a "reasonable state regulation"? A single judge? A jury of twelve?
Your State of Texas decided it is reasonable to allow all healthy adults free gun ownership and severely restrict highway speeds. Texans unite in claiming gun ownership is a right that the state has no grounds in restricting except for e.g. at special districts - and that civilians driving 210km/h or 140mph on a public highway is criminally insane.
My Federal Republic of Germany decided, it is reasonable to allow all healthy adults (with safety-inspected cars) free speeds on highway and severely restrict gun ownership. Germans unite in claiming free driving on an empty highway is a right the state has no grounds in restricting except e.g. on special sections - and that carrying a loaded firearm on a public street is criminally insane.
So either we're both insane or there's something to both points of view. As both claim it is done because of reason and individual freedom, I doubt there's an easy and universal answer to it.
I would agree with your first point, however, I would not dare to decide about cause-and-effect of ignorant driving.
People are adaptable. Of course to the speed limit as well. With 55mph roads everywhere, people are shifting their mental capacity away from the road. I know I would. I've been driving 210km/h on business trips every other week and at that speed, I'm 100% sure no one would dare try to tap a text on their phone. I hope nobody is, actually.
With that habit, doing 55mph on a Freeway equal in quality to our Autobahn, I could be tempted to play PSP matches with the passengers after 10 minutes. After 3 hours, I would probably write/. posts just to keep from falling asleep. After 10 hours, I'm probably trough with one or two Special Extended LOTR movies. And I'd barely covered a tenth of my distance to travel, as your country is just that big.
People are people. Doing 55mph on a perfect road with no traffic simply leaves the brain of a healthy adult severely underutilized. Of course we all should always give full attention to driving, but we all know how humans react to any repetitive task that is performed uneventfully for hours on end.
If so many people are texting, it means they subconsciously perceive a total risk low enough to do that. That doesn't mean it is correct, but they perceive the risk to be low enough.
Driving while texting can cause heavy road deaths at any speeds. Driving 20mph faster makes texting at the wheel seem insane to even the most ignorant folk, so people don't do it anymore. 20mph more increases the risks of all accidents slightly, but reduces driving-while-texting accidents to almost zero. Overall, this could mean a net-positive effect.
Speed limits are safe if people living there are used to them.
Native Germans driving in the US are probably bored to death on perfectly made freeways with a 55mph limit, suddenly understanding how people can actually, regularly, text on their phone while driving to work and survive until retirement.
Native USians driving the Autobahn would feel Shock and Awe while everyone around them would just do their daily commute, driving in their regular manner.
It's about regular vehicle safety inspections - and driver's experience and expectations. You can't suddenly remove all speed limits on the freeway, but increasing it by 5mph every 5 years will go a long way before any trouble comes up.
Speed limits are broken routinely, by the majority, all around the world.
It would be hones to construct the roads for a speed limit of X plus a safety of 5% and then do this: Post a speed limit X and punish infractions severely, randomly. If a significant fraction of the drivers exceed the limit without causing significantly more crashes, increase the limit by 5%. If accidents, where speed was a major factor, increase, lower the speed limit by 5%. Iterate.
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After I overdosed by a trillion through not taking a pill, I stopped doing homeopathy.
Will one million monkeys with one million typewriters someday come up with the entire works of Shakespeare?
Or, less random: Would one million students working one million man-years have discovered with General Relativity?
How many students are needed to produce a total output in "knowledge generating power" to one Heisenberg and two Hawkings?
Can diligence replace genius?
As usual, using less fuel is always better.
Every kWh generated by solar panels is one kWh less of fuel that has to be transported through harms way. Multiply that by a few panels and you soon save one transport every time.
Questions if the "populist uprising", while it is more a "Muslim Brotherhood uprising" than anything "popular", will win by a large margin?
Yes, the insurgents killed ten times more people on *purpose* than the US Army, but only if the US Army toll includes legitimate targets AND civilians killed as collateral damage.
Yes, the insurgents made it crystal clear they will establish Shariah rule, suppress anyone in their way and imprison women.
Yes, the insurgents bombed elections, mosques, hospitals, marketplaces, roads, homes ON PURPOSE.
Let's assume for a moment that rational common Iraqi civilians would even think of voting for the group that is killing most common Iraqi civilians.
Also assume that a people that generally disliked Saddam with a vengeance will vote favorably upon a group that is killing more civilians per year then he did.
Then there's just one question remaining: how many will dare to go out in the polls and how many will be bombed to death by the oh-so "popular" uprising while in the polling booth?
That is no moon!
Disclaimer:
* Conditions for life to form are not completely understood.
** The probability of life formation may be lower than expected*
*** Your mileage may vary.
**** Do not taunt happy fun ball.
So were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Background radiation on the entire planet is still influenced by those two events.
And I'm sure that people from Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg were not overflowing with joy when the war ended in 1945.
But that only demonstrates the need for early, swift, directed and strong interventions rather than later having to decide between a drawn-out war with unbelievable losses of life or a stand-down that enables the other side to exterminate a few million Jews, Tutsi, Non-Muslim Sudanese or Nigerians.
"A stitch in time saves nine."
Being invaded by the US was historically always the best thing that could happen to a country's economy.
All countries that were successfully invaded or "liberated" by the US are economically successful and indeed pretty "liberal" now up until the most recently liberated countries like the Kosovo which is still an Islamic hellhole.
(Liberal in the sense of having personal freedom for all or most. I never understood why the die-hard lefties in the US are called "Liberals", since that's not the true sense of the word, but anyway)
Examples?
Invaded:
Texas, Alaska, West Germany, Japan, South Korea, Panama
Liberated:
France (WW2), Israel(heavy support), Taiwan, Kuwait
Worse situations when the US invasion/liberation was cancelled or chosen to not intervene:
Iraq 1991, Somalia, Vietnam (50y later, south V. is still economically superior to the north), Cambodia, Zaire (Hutu vs. Tutsi), Sudan (current)
Worse situation after US action:
Iran
Verdict unclear:
Iraq 2003, Serbia,
Free countries that will be overrun quickly if US or NATO support were ceased:
Taiwan (PRC), Israel (Muslim brotherhood, MB), South Cyprus(?)(Turkey), Latvia(Russia, Ru), Lithuania(Ru), Estonia(Ru), Afghanistan (Taleban, TB), Pakistan (TB), Kuwait (MB)
Large oil fires aren't exactly healthy. If I remember, it was Saddam who lit them.
Anyway, what would you think would result if you conducted an independent study asking the Iraqi people if they'd rather lived under Saddam a few more decades?
And what about Ze Germans? Their Austrian guy was even legitimately elected in a democratic election when he first came to power. I think since it cost several million innocent lives to bring that to an end, the Free Nations is right if they don't allow regimes like that to ever gain strength again. Making things right afterward is not always possible and certainly costs more lives.
Of course there are innocents in and around the facility. As true as they were in Dresden back then. Or the 2nd Imperial Death Star, if you want.
The evil plan to dominate pacifists seems to be rather safe then: install a uranium enrichment plant in your evil lair and add a few million innocents. That way, you have slave labor and soon weapons grade Uranium plus you'll never get your plans foiled.
Then all DVI to HDMI adapters are illegal stuff?
If you truly believe that Buschehr and Natanz are "civilian infrastructure", cut back on the Kool-Aid.
These plants have only one primary purpose and that is perfectly crystal-clear. Power generation is only some kind of by-product. With those costs sunk into the plants by the Iranian government, simple electricity generation would be a joke bordering on economical suicide when expressed in Dollars per Kilowatthour. - and strategic suicide considering it would place half the nation's generating power in one single site.
This thing is not meant to produce only electricity.
Probably because Israel is of all countries the most interested in Iran and their nuclear program. No surprise, with Iran's leaders announcing the wipe-out of the "Zionist Entity" every other week, then in one single weekend starting up a nuclear plant AND unveil a new tactical missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
But even if they made Stuxnet, I could not hold it against them. What would we do in their situation? Lie down and wait for help? Make peace with the world and pray? "Never Again" is probably the most important manifest of Israel and that might take more than laying down a few flowers at Yad Vashem once a year.
There are few means more effective that still enable the source to remain hidden and sheltered in plausible denial.
A JDAM will yield much more conclusive evidence than a stealthy virus. Additionally, getting bombed with laser guided munitions will garner support, getting bombed with a computer virus only garners ridicule.
Talk about supply and demand.
If people pay MORE to use the automated process with a machine, it will have some kind of benefit for them to be worth it.
Cleaning up is a whole lot easier when the OS protects itself reasonably well. Infecting is a whole lot harder as well.
Take a known-good machine, burn a virus scan live CD from a known-good image, scan the machine in question while its OS is not running. If no virus or rootkit is found, treat the machine as trusted. Keep the image in a safe place to repeat the process in 2 weeks, when newer signatures can be downloaded by the live CD.
That is not perfect, but in the real world, no one can reinstall the whole machine every day after a malicious website has been visited by a user.
The difference between an OS that protect itself vs. an OS that doesn't can easily be observed by connecting two Windows machines directly to the Internet. One running Win95, the other Win7. With both of them having a public, routable IP, they will sooner or later get infected. The OS that gets infected last is the winner.
Never, never ever underestimate the power of cultural factors in any discussion that compares anything involving things so completely culturally different like Japan and the US, or any Asian and European-esque society.
I'm from Europe, we have nice rail networks here and we use them well and often. For long distance travel. For daily work commute, we absolutely love to use our cars, it's just that our cities are so small, anti-vehicular and expensive to park the car in anywhere.
Reason?
Other "travellers" in public transit, just like in LA. Less and less people like to be bothered by those lowlifes that are increasingly inhabiting our cities, infesting our subways, trams and buses. Anti-socials, lunatics, stinking crazies, beggars, cell-phone-"DJs", thugs, out-of-control youth, testosterone timebombs and such.
Osaka on the other hand is in THE center of social conformity pressure. People in Japan - in Asia in general - just don't fall out of line so much. They do have their anti-socials, maybe the bosozoku, if that counts as such. You will not meet even a tenth of those deliberate annoyances there in several WEEKS that you will encounter in any public subway in the "Free" West in just one day.
Eradicate punks and idjits and people will ride the subways. Perverted forms of individual freedom and mass transit just don't mix.
Even if the rate of accidents AND the fatality percentage, it would not mean for sure that a certain provision is worse.
The reason behind this seemingly grim opinion is the fact that safety is not the only - maybe not even the primary design goal of road networks.
Simple counterexample: at a speed of 10mph, accident numbers will drop below statistical white noise. Fatalities will be reduced to a single digit number, above zero only because of a few heart attacks in endless traffic jams in the summer heat.
At 10mph, we would arrive at our destinations later, but safer. Even more at 5mph. Or 2.
That's why we need to balance cost, travel time and safety. Simply reducing speed limits can help, but the solution may not hit the optimum point.
The road are currently optimized for the goals throughput/benefit, safety, costs. These are conflicting enough as it is, so I doubt it is possible or even desirable to include any piece of social agenda in that calculation.
I hope I'm with you when I advocate toll roads that make the users pay for their actual share, but I'm heavily against social goals implemented in concrete and asphalt.
On a side note, it is the hallmark - and namesake - of a totalitarian society to subordinate the total of things to a certain social agenda or goal. We should not do that. Roads are made for people driving safe and speedy to their chosen destinations, not DEFINING destinations to people. Let everyone pay for the costs they cause, so they can vote with their wallets.
I don't care about reckless speeders removing themselves from future generations, I care about reckless speeders removing ME. No amount of insurance money paid to my heirs will improve MY situation in these cases.
On the other hand, I also care about actually be able to arrive somewhere sometime before the next ice age, so speed limits cannot be set artificially low.
But I like to repeat that it is - usually - not speed that causes accidents, except for accidents in bends, on ice, in rain etc.
For an accident where cars collide, one of them must have broken a rule of the road more severe than simply the speed limit: Ignored right of way, swerved out of the lane, left the parking lot without looking, driven while texting, driven while drunk, took the wrong turn, not used the turning indicator, not repaired the brake light, not repaired the brakes, not repaired the steering, driven the wrong tires.
Accidents, where speed is the only factor are actually pretty rare. Speed worsens accidents or disallows other drivers to react to prevent them, but it isn't the sole reason.
And who will decide that imposing speed limits are in fact a "reasonable state regulation"? A single judge? A jury of twelve?
Your State of Texas decided it is reasonable to allow all healthy adults free gun ownership and severely restrict highway speeds. Texans unite in claiming gun ownership is a right that the state has no grounds in restricting except for e.g. at special districts - and that civilians driving 210km/h or 140mph on a public highway is criminally insane.
My Federal Republic of Germany decided, it is reasonable to allow all healthy adults (with safety-inspected cars) free speeds on highway and severely restrict gun ownership. Germans unite in claiming free driving on an empty highway is a right the state has no grounds in restricting except e.g. on special sections - and that carrying a loaded firearm on a public street is criminally insane.
So either we're both insane or there's something to both points of view. As both claim it is done because of reason and individual freedom, I doubt there's an easy and universal answer to it.
I would agree with your first point, however, I would not dare to decide about cause-and-effect of ignorant driving.
People are adaptable. Of course to the speed limit as well. With 55mph roads everywhere, people are shifting their mental capacity away from the road. I know I would. I've been driving 210km/h on business trips every other week and at that speed, I'm 100% sure no one would dare try to tap a text on their phone. I hope nobody is, actually.
With that habit, doing 55mph on a Freeway equal in quality to our Autobahn, I could be tempted to play PSP matches with the passengers after 10 minutes. After 3 hours, I would probably write /. posts just to keep from falling asleep. After 10 hours, I'm probably trough with one or two Special Extended LOTR movies. And I'd barely covered a tenth of my distance to travel, as your country is just that big.
People are people. Doing 55mph on a perfect road with no traffic simply leaves the brain of a healthy adult severely underutilized. Of course we all should always give full attention to driving, but we all know how humans react to any repetitive task that is performed uneventfully for hours on end.
Texting-while-driving is simply another form of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation.
If so many people are texting, it means they subconsciously perceive a total risk low enough to do that. That doesn't mean it is correct, but they perceive the risk to be low enough.
Driving while texting can cause heavy road deaths at any speeds. Driving 20mph faster makes texting at the wheel seem insane to even the most ignorant folk, so people don't do it anymore. 20mph more increases the risks of all accidents slightly, but reduces driving-while-texting accidents to almost zero. Overall, this could mean a net-positive effect.
Speed limits are safe if people living there are used to them.
Native Germans driving in the US are probably bored to death on perfectly made freeways with a 55mph limit, suddenly understanding how people can actually, regularly, text on their phone while driving to work and survive until retirement.
Native USians driving the Autobahn would feel Shock and Awe while everyone around them would just do their daily commute, driving in their regular manner.
It's about regular vehicle safety inspections - and driver's experience and expectations. You can't suddenly remove all speed limits on the freeway, but increasing it by 5mph every 5 years will go a long way before any trouble comes up.
Speed limits are broken routinely, by the majority, all around the world.
It would be hones to construct the roads for a speed limit of X plus a safety of 5% and then do this:
Post a speed limit X and punish infractions severely, randomly.
If a significant fraction of the drivers exceed the limit without causing significantly more crashes, increase the limit by 5%.
If accidents, where speed was a major factor, increase, lower the speed limit by 5%.
Iterate.