It's my understanding that although a "disaster," 3-mile island was a success in terms of appropriate action taken: everything failed according to plan.
or 2004 DNC (boston) where protestors were segregated to "free speech zones" locked behind a fence. under a freeway ramp. down the street from the convention center.
Free speech has never meant that you have a right to be heard. The only people who would argue for that are telemarketers. Do you also think that coke employees should be able to muscle their way into paid pepsi ads?
That said, I have a real problem with the way NO is being handled. If people want to provide some service, why not let them? Same thing with the boaters who tried to get in day one with chainsaws and provisions but were turned away. It seems as if whoever was/is in charge thinks that only "official" response is acceptable and good.
That "conspiracy theories only natural" meme is obviously planted by "the man" to keep us guessing and throwing out wild ideas instead of realizing the REAL conspiracy all around us.
if 51% are taking advantage, they will never vote away the leeches.
The assumption re: game theory made in this case is not that everyone will be greedy. It is that eventually, ONE person might be greedy. As a result, self interest requires the others to hoard. An example you might look to was the recent gas scare in FL and several other states following Katrina. If people didn't believe others would hoard gas, leading to shortage, they wouldn't be rushing to the pumps for the same reason. Although irrational on a mass-basis, each indivual decision was in fact justified by the events: there WAS a gas scare and there WAS a shortage.
One solution is that everyone must be personally invested in the well-being of the others. I don't think this can happen in a group that is too big for everyone to know everyone else indivually. The other solution is to force everyone to comply. I'm not convinced this can work either, but at least two world powers have tried it already.
Specifically, what is the benefit of a public manned space progam? I strongly suspect the original "push to the moon" was a not so subtle publicity stunt with the message, "Look! We've got rockets that are powerful enough to put people on the moon and guidance systems accurate enough to land them safely not once but twice. Your land targets are vulnerable to nuclear missile attack that you will not be able to repel." Which I believe would've been a perfectly reasonable justification: the peace dividend alone would've been worth it, let alone the inspiration value.
But what is the purpose today? What public benefit do we get? In private industry, if the returns are insufficient from a particular activity, the companies engaging in it go out of business (or move to some other activity). If you admit that the economic benefits of a manned space program are insufficient to support a program in the private sector, what overriding public benefit is there that justifies its existance?
hence, a communist government cannot exist without authoritarian control.
In fact, I would venture to say that your example fails with the introduction of strangers: Game theory indicates that without the group being emotionally invested in each other's welfare, the members will take advantage of the others' labors, since if they don't, the other members will.
Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is a byproduct of a significantly higher throughput operation: natural gas extraction. It can be cheaply obtained by cracking petroleum as well.
If we have to start talking about things like electrolysis, it's not going to be nearly as cheap as it is currently and will suffer from the supply problems, "pipeline restrictions" and other such things from significantly higher electrical output. (which better be nuclear* if you want to get off fossil fuels. *or maybe solar if you've got a lot of land)
ELECTROLYSIS ISN'T FREE. You must put in at least as much energy as electricity as you want to get out from the hydrogen you get. In fact, much much more since the reaction isn't particularly efficient and resistive losses will also be high.
In other words: The cheap ways of obtaining hydrogen that depend on the production of oil just like now. If hydrogen becomes the dominant energy transport scheme, the price of hydrogen will go up, not down.
Which is actually a really good solution to the "the levees are going to break" problem. We'd better forget about trying to build levees that won't break and focus on "unlikely to break but here's the plan if they do." Having a bunch of river barges available hasty repairs via quick sinking to plug a few holes would surely be cheaper than letting the entire city flood over several days while dropping thousands of thimblefulls of sand into the breach.
Forget sex discrimination in the future, I can't even {expletive159 not found} sign up for slashdot anymore. Soon I won't be able to get my tax return because of these stupid turing tests!
Mods are you crazy??? parent was obviously, "funny."
Since someone obviously needs a math lesson,
To a first order, the rounding goes like the least *number* of significant digits. If you're going to charge people down to the tenth of a penny, you'd better have the means of measuring a tenth of a penny worth of gasoline.
In the US, your liability in the event of loss/theft if your credit card is limited by law to $50 (provided you inform the bank as soon as you realize what happened). Debit cards have no such protection beyond whatever contract you and the bank agree to. Therefore, If you insist on using a debit card where you would previously have used a credit card, it behooves you to not only read the contract thoroughly, but also consult a lawyer as to the enforceability of the contract.
The cost of earthquake insurance is an idicator of how much actual earthquakes will cost. In fact, in a time averaged sense, it is exactly equal to that cost plus some administrative expense. If earthquake insurance is too much to bear for a particular use of that particular lot, it simply is not worth it to appropriate the land for that use.
This calculus is easy for business that must make a profit, but how do you calculate how valuable the "pretty view" or "nice climate" is to you to determine cost effectiveness? Regardless, if you cannot afford unsubsidized insurance for expected disaster types, you cannot afford to live there. Think about moving.
It is not all they say. Right after that it says "Except by Owner" It's there so that the shady matress salesmen don't try to rip you off with "lemon" mattresses.
Also, you're a tool. Mountain spring water is not necessarily any better than tap water. In fact, it could be far worse, healthwise. The municipal water at least has minimum standards and is treated to kill microorganisms. Mountain spring water has no such guarantee (except that the company doesn't want to get sued.. national brands should be okay, Pete's Wicked Water should be avoided like a cliche.)
When I buy water I buy the cheapest stuff that has no taste. If that's the local tap water I'm very happy. Sadly, tap quality seems to have been declining everywhere lately.
Brilliant. Only classify the important stuff then. That'll show those pesky enemies...
On an unrelated note, a Discovery Channel program on "real life spies" had some interesting stories about this. Aparantly, in one agency the secretaries would dispose of sensitive documents by ripping them in half before tossing them in the waste bin. Needless to say, this was very helpful for the espionagers: the trash was already presorted for them...
I tried to cancel recently after four years of trying to ignore the account which I thought i'd already cancelled. Apparantly I need to register a credit card with them in order to have my account re-activated up to the level that I can cancel it. There's no g'dang way I'm giving them that info (again I think, but the fewer places they have it written down, the better)
Paypal is a scam enabler if they're not a scam themselves. I wish someone would come up with a consignment version of Ebay.
How many people remain in New Orleans and how many troops are required to evacuate them?
I ask this because I feel for the victims and am very disturbed by the news coverage from the region. Every agency I've seen so far has discussed looting, rioting and gunfire aimed at rescue personnel. They replay the footage of the crowd standing around chanting "help us" over and over again. Angry citizens are shown shouting about the failure of the government to provide for them. A distrought woman was shown saying, "Who's in charge here? It seems like no one. This is rediculous." The trash building up at the dome. Not a single report has been made of a group of victims getting together and doing something about their plight: Finding somewhere to put the garbage at the stadium rather than wallowing in the filth. Getting a neighborhood together to walk out of town or at least setting up some way to collect fresh water to tide them through until rescue.
Is there not a single boy scout in the entire town? Are we to believe that everyone has given up and is waiting angrily for rescue or death. Surely everyone realises that the person with the greatest responsibility for their survival is themselves!
I choose to believe that the media is showing us only the victimy victims to some editorial end because the alternative, that the entire city of new orleans thinks we owe more concern for their very lives than they do is too disturbing to consider.
People tend to congrate in areas which can support the most people. Areas that have things like arable land, freshwater supply, and access to trade routes.
Volcanic soil is about the most fertile soil on the planet, which means that a society which uses it to develop its food supply can grow quite without having to import as much food.
Sheltered deepwater ports allow for large amounts of trade via the most efficient way of transporting things: huge barges.
Cities will even pop up at crossroads of sufficiently well-traveled trade routes, but cities that rely exclusively on overland trade tend to be smaller than their deepwater counterparts.
Coastal regions tend to have more moderate climates than further inland and subsequent longer growing seasons.
Ample freshwater supplies are another reason for the springing up of cities.
People don't just say, "let's put a city here." Cities just happen. Think of a petri dish randomly splayed with varying concentrations of nutrients here and there. Populations will grow accroding to available resources. One of those resources could be good urban planning resulting in a sane transportation system for instance. Eventually you'll notice that some areas have dense cities and some do not.
New Orleans is on the Mississippi river delta. It is the gateway to trade between a handful of states and the rest of the world. Being at the mouth of a huge, silty river, the ground should be almost as fertile as the volcanic soil previously mentioned, with plenty of fresh water filtered from the river or taped from the huge freshwater lake it was so recently a victim of.
Kansas on the other hand has one resource in abundance: land. There is plenty of acceptable but not very exciting farmland. There are other resources which must be mined scattered throughout the state and transportation is not as cheap as for port-cities. This does not particularly lend itself to concentrations of people.
Sino-Anglo "confeceracy" in firefly, the two remaining human superpowers in outlaw star are: some kind of english speaking european type power and some kind of mandarin speaking red-china type power. The main characters of course belong to a third group, outlaw to both.
final episode (on dvd) supposedly has a line to the effect of "I have become the ship" uttered by the mysterious "frozen chick"
Secret agents (government? para-government? they obviously work for the real power brokers) chasing after the experiment have mystical 'powers' analogous to the organization in outlaw star chasing after the ship&malfina
I think many of the plot points and names are meant to be homage to outlaw star. Perhaps that's wishful thinking and they're "meerly" archetypal, but we'll see when the movie comes out and more is revealed about the nature of the experiment and maybe the preacher's relation to it. If it weren't for OS, I would've never given Firefly another chance, but it stands on its own. the train robbery was just a terrible episode to start with.
If we run out of hydrogen, our problems will be much bigger than just, "what will I use to power my air conditioner" and be more like "what happened to all of my mass? and why am I so thirsty?"
Slashdot Mirror
It's my understanding that although a "disaster," 3-mile island was a success in terms of appropriate action taken: everything failed according to plan.
or 2004 DNC (boston) where protestors were segregated to "free speech zones" locked behind a fence. under a freeway ramp. down the street from the convention center.
Free speech has never meant that you have a right to be heard. The only people who would argue for that are telemarketers. Do you also think that coke employees should be able to muscle their way into paid pepsi ads?
That said, I have a real problem with the way NO is being handled. If people want to provide some service, why not let them? Same thing with the boaters who tried to get in day one with chainsaws and provisions but were turned away. It seems as if whoever was/is in charge thinks that only "official" response is acceptable and good.
That "conspiracy theories only natural" meme is obviously planted by "the man" to keep us guessing and throwing out wild ideas instead of realizing the REAL conspiracy all around us.
if 51% are taking advantage, they will never vote away the leeches.
The assumption re: game theory made in this case is not that everyone will be greedy. It is that eventually, ONE person might be greedy. As a result, self interest requires the others to hoard. An example you might look to was the recent gas scare in FL and several other states following Katrina. If people didn't believe others would hoard gas, leading to shortage, they wouldn't be rushing to the pumps for the same reason. Although irrational on a mass-basis, each indivual decision was in fact justified by the events: there WAS a gas scare and there WAS a shortage.
One solution is that everyone must be personally invested in the well-being of the others. I don't think this can happen in a group that is too big for everyone to know everyone else indivually. The other solution is to force everyone to comply. I'm not convinced this can work either, but at least two world powers have tried it already.
Specifically, what is the benefit of a public manned space progam? I strongly suspect the original "push to the moon" was a not so subtle publicity stunt with the message, "Look! We've got rockets that are powerful enough to put people on the moon and guidance systems accurate enough to land them safely not once but twice. Your land targets are vulnerable to nuclear missile attack that you will not be able to repel." Which I believe would've been a perfectly reasonable justification: the peace dividend alone would've been worth it, let alone the inspiration value.
But what is the purpose today? What public benefit do we get? In private industry, if the returns are insufficient from a particular activity, the companies engaging in it go out of business (or move to some other activity). If you admit that the economic benefits of a manned space program are insufficient to support a program in the private sector, what overriding public benefit is there that justifies its existance?
hence, a communist government cannot exist without authoritarian control.
In fact, I would venture to say that your example fails with the introduction of strangers: Game theory indicates that without the group being emotionally invested in each other's welfare, the members will take advantage of the others' labors, since if they don't, the other members will.
Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is a byproduct of a significantly higher throughput operation: natural gas extraction. It can be cheaply obtained by cracking petroleum as well.
If we have to start talking about things like electrolysis, it's not going to be nearly as cheap as it is currently and will suffer from the supply problems, "pipeline restrictions" and other such things from significantly higher electrical output. (which better be nuclear* if you want to get off fossil fuels. *or maybe solar if you've got a lot of land)
ELECTROLYSIS ISN'T FREE. You must put in at least as much energy as electricity as you want to get out from the hydrogen you get. In fact, much much more since the reaction isn't particularly efficient and resistive losses will also be high.
In other words: The cheap ways of obtaining hydrogen that depend on the production of oil just like now. If hydrogen becomes the dominant energy transport scheme, the price of hydrogen will go up, not down.
Jeez, I thought you people were google fans...
The Google calc for the conversion.
How often do you really find yourself being chased by ghosts that would make power pellets useful?
I would totally watch that film. But then, I thought "The Specials" was funny too, so YMMV.
Which is actually a really good solution to the "the levees are going to break" problem. We'd better forget about trying to build levees that won't break and focus on "unlikely to break but here's the plan if they do." Having a bunch of river barges available hasty repairs via quick sinking to plug a few holes would surely be cheaper than letting the entire city flood over several days while dropping thousands of thimblefulls of sand into the breach.
Forget sex discrimination in the future, I can't even {expletive159 not found} sign up for slashdot anymore. Soon I won't be able to get my tax return because of these stupid turing tests!
Mods are you crazy??? parent was obviously, "funny."
Since someone obviously needs a math lesson,
To a first order, the rounding goes like the least *number* of significant digits. If you're going to charge people down to the tenth of a penny, you'd better have the means of measuring a tenth of a penny worth of gasoline.
Are there any cell phone companies left that offer plans without "free nationwide long-distance?"
Actually, making big, clean nuclear weapons is "easy" as is making small, dirty ones. It's making small clean reactions that is "difficult"
In the US, your liability in the event of loss/theft if your credit card is limited by law to $50 (provided you inform the bank as soon as you realize what happened). Debit cards have no such protection beyond whatever contract you and the bank agree to. Therefore, If you insist on using a debit card where you would previously have used a credit card, it behooves you to not only read the contract thoroughly, but also consult a lawyer as to the enforceability of the contract.
The cost of earthquake insurance is an idicator of how much actual earthquakes will cost. In fact, in a time averaged sense, it is exactly equal to that cost plus some administrative expense. If earthquake insurance is too much to bear for a particular use of that particular lot, it simply is not worth it to appropriate the land for that use.
This calculus is easy for business that must make a profit, but how do you calculate how valuable the "pretty view" or "nice climate" is to you to determine cost effectiveness? Regardless, if you cannot afford unsubsidized insurance for expected disaster types, you cannot afford to live there. Think about moving.
It is not all they say. Right after that it says "Except by Owner" It's there so that the shady matress salesmen don't try to rip you off with "lemon" mattresses.
Also, you're a tool. Mountain spring water is not necessarily any better than tap water. In fact, it could be far worse, healthwise. The municipal water at least has minimum standards and is treated to kill microorganisms. Mountain spring water has no such guarantee (except that the company doesn't want to get sued.. national brands should be okay, Pete's Wicked Water should be avoided like a cliche.)
When I buy water I buy the cheapest stuff that has no taste. If that's the local tap water I'm very happy. Sadly, tap quality seems to have been declining everywhere lately.
Brilliant. Only classify the important stuff then. That'll show those pesky enemies...
On an unrelated note, a Discovery Channel program on "real life spies" had some interesting stories about this. Aparantly, in one agency the secretaries would dispose of sensitive documents by ripping them in half before tossing them in the waste bin. Needless to say, this was very helpful for the espionagers: the trash was already presorted for them...
You had me untill the hemp part. Why do you assume switching to hemp would SAVE forests? Experience indicates the opposite:
What do we have more of, endangered spotted owls which we don't eat or ugly smelly tasteless cows which we do?
I tried to cancel recently after four years of trying to ignore the account which I thought i'd already cancelled. Apparantly I need to register a credit card with them in order to have my account re-activated up to the level that I can cancel it. There's no g'dang way I'm giving them that info (again I think, but the fewer places they have it written down, the better)
Paypal is a scam enabler if they're not a scam themselves. I wish someone would come up with a consignment version of Ebay.
How many people remain in New Orleans and how many troops are required to evacuate them?
I ask this because I feel for the victims and am very disturbed by the news coverage from the region. Every agency I've seen so far has discussed looting, rioting and gunfire aimed at rescue personnel. They replay the footage of the crowd standing around chanting "help us" over and over again. Angry citizens are shown shouting about the failure of the government to provide for them. A distrought woman was shown saying, "Who's in charge here? It seems like no one. This is rediculous." The trash building up at the dome. Not a single report has been made of a group of victims getting together and doing something about their plight: Finding somewhere to put the garbage at the stadium rather than wallowing in the filth. Getting a neighborhood together to walk out of town or at least setting up some way to collect fresh water to tide them through until rescue.
Is there not a single boy scout in the entire town? Are we to believe that everyone has given up and is waiting angrily for rescue or death. Surely everyone realises that the person with the greatest responsibility for their survival is themselves!
I choose to believe that the media is showing us only the victimy victims to some editorial end because the alternative, that the entire city of new orleans thinks we owe more concern for their very lives than they do is too disturbing to consider.
People tend to congrate in areas which can support the most people. Areas that have things like arable land, freshwater supply, and access to trade routes.
Volcanic soil is about the most fertile soil on the planet, which means that a society which uses it to develop its food supply can grow quite without having to import as much food.
Sheltered deepwater ports allow for large amounts of trade via the most efficient way of transporting things: huge barges.
Cities will even pop up at crossroads of sufficiently well-traveled trade routes, but cities that rely exclusively on overland trade tend to be smaller than their deepwater counterparts.
Coastal regions tend to have more moderate climates than further inland and subsequent longer growing seasons.
Ample freshwater supplies are another reason for the springing up of cities.
People don't just say, "let's put a city here." Cities just happen. Think of a petri dish randomly splayed with varying concentrations of nutrients here and there. Populations will grow accroding to available resources. One of those resources could be good urban planning resulting in a sane transportation system for instance. Eventually you'll notice that some areas have dense cities and some do not.
New Orleans is on the Mississippi river delta. It is the gateway to trade between a handful of states and the rest of the world. Being at the mouth of a huge, silty river, the ground should be almost as fertile as the volcanic soil previously mentioned, with plenty of fresh water filtered from the river or taped from the huge freshwater lake it was so recently a victim of.
Kansas on the other hand has one resource in abundance: land. There is plenty of acceptable but not very exciting farmland. There are other resources which must be mined scattered throughout the state and transportation is not as cheap as for port-cities. This does not particularly lend itself to concentrations of people.
I think many of the plot points and names are meant to be homage to outlaw star. Perhaps that's wishful thinking and they're "meerly" archetypal, but we'll see when the movie comes out and more is revealed about the nature of the experiment and maybe the preacher's relation to it. If it weren't for OS, I would've never given Firefly another chance, but it stands on its own. the train robbery was just a terrible episode to start with.
If we run out of hydrogen, our problems will be much bigger than just, "what will I use to power my air conditioner" and be more like "what happened to all of my mass? and why am I so thirsty?"