> The more radioactive the waste, > the faster it decays.
Well, yes, and into what?
The Chernobyl exclusion zone has now been extended because -- after these few years -- some of the the highly radioactive fallout that was relatively safe isotopes of highly radioactive elements -- for example alpha emitters -- have now decayed.
And changed thereby, some of them, into longer lived and yet more dangerous beta and gamma emitting isotopes.
Alphas are stopped by tissue paper, you know, even a lot of them don't do a lot of damage as long as you don't inhale and wash up well.
But the fission daughters of some of those alpha emitters, oh, my.
> NO DATA Oh, for Christ's sake. Take 0.34 seconds to check what it's like BEFORE adding the toxic waste.
Results 1 - 100 of about 24,900 for "Gulf of Mexico" +"dead zone". (0.34 seconds)
NOAA's National Ocean Service: The Gulf of Mexico's dead zone swells each summer to about 18000 square kilometers--roughly the size of New Jersey.... oceanservice.noaa.gov/products/pubs_hypox.html -
The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a large region of water that has very low oxygen concentrations, and therefore can't support aquatic life. www.smm.org/deadzone/
Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," which last summer reached the size of the... www.fishingnj.org/artdedzn.htm
Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone" Is Size of New Jersey Each year a swath of the Gulf of Mexico becomes so devoid of shrimp, fish, and other marine life that it is known as the dead zone. news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0525_0505 25_deadzone.html - 28k - Sep 4, 2005
beneath the waves of the Gulf of Mexico lurks the "dead zone," a vast area off the Louisiana-Texas coast where oxygen-depleted water collects every...
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/12/1204_fish .html
Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia The Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone", or hypoxic zone, is an expanse of oxygen-depleted waters that cannot sustain most marine life. This hypoxic zone is caused... www.ncat.org/nutrients/hypoxia/hypoxia.html - 7k....
7000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico. Called the Gulf Dead Zone....
You quoted Maduro as saying the ozone statistics are based only on one 12 year period showing change, and the previous one shows no change.
Th That was true, twenty years ago.
QUOTE:
ROWLAND "... people had been asking since 1974, "Is there any evidence for ozone losses over the United States or Europe?" And, for 11 years, statisticians had been doing very elaborate calculations and had always concluded that no evidence for any ozone loss had been detected."
So -- for early 1980s -- Molina confirms what you were told about the statistics.
Maduro's giving you old info based on the false premise that ozone depletion must logically happen all year round, despite observations to the contrary.
The crux of the matter is that ozone depletion happens in a brief period when the sun reaches the polar stratosphere after the long cold dark six months of winter.
Looking at the statistics by month rather than averaged by year -- and since the 1930s rather than for just 11 years -- showed the ozone depletion clearly.
That was done -- 20 years ago. Maduro's telling you something disproven two decades ago.
And that happened just after the U-2 aircraft flew through the polar stratosphere during several weeks just as the sun came up in the spring, and documented the sudden loss of ozone.
The quote above and continuation below are my excerpts from the full text, Roland and Molina's published speeches and collected references and discussion, found here:
"... Neil Harris... did some calculations for the long record since 1931 of ozone measurements at the permanent station in Arosa, Switzerland.
He divided the record into 1931-1969 and 1970-1986 and compared the before/after averages for each calendar month, and found that there had been less ozone over Arosa in the winter months after 1970 than before. Then, as part of a sub-group of the Ozone Trends Panel, we extended this to all of the ozone-measuring stations with records for at least 22 years, that is, for the length of two solar sunspot cycles [because it was known that ozone levels varied a little with sunspot activity].
These calculations were simply the average over the winter months for one 11-year period, and then for another period of 11 years, subtracting one from the other. Every station in the northern hemisphere north of 30 degrees N latitude had shown less ozone in the second 11-year period than in the first.
The statisticians had missed this because they had assumed that if there were any ozone loss that it would be uniform all through the year. And it had been known for many years that the summer months had much less natural variation in ozone, so, if the summer had much less natural variation, then obviously, you should look at the times where a change would most easily be detectable. What the Ozone Trends Panel showed was that there was clearly a wintertime loss, and no significant evidence at that time for a loss during the summer. These calculations were the first evidence that ozone had been lost over heavily populated latitudes of the northern hemisphere.
MOLINA The scientific evidence was really accumulating by that time. Here we have a statement from by a colleague of ours at the Ozone Trends Panel press conference on March 15, 1988, "We've found more than the smoking gun. We've found the corpse." So, no surprise, ten days later after all of these findings really became evident, the Dupont Company, the largest manufacturer of CFCs, changed their mind and decided they would no longer manufacture these compounds.
The scientific evidence was extremely clear. I believe that was a very important turning point for the chemical industry."
Meat for midnight bull sessions in the dorms indeed.
I refute it thus!
You might find Buber's "I and Thou" in the same reading list.
Consider the difference between a solitary chlorine, and one in relation.
Take chlorine as a single atom. What happens? Nothing.
Take another one -- at a good distance away. What happens? Nothing. You're right, there. They're all alike, as atoms -- one at a time.
How many electrons around each one? What's its potential to react, if there were anything else near it?
You know this, right?
Bump them together. What happens? A chlorine molecule.
Take another isolated chlorine. Bump it against almost anything else. What happens? A chloride, chlorate, or some other reaction product. The chlorine goes out of circulation, fast, and stays bonded.
Most chlorine reacts before it reaches the stratosphere, and what the occasional volcano pushes up doesn't remain available for long -- chlorine gets taken out of circulation by chemical bonding.
If you've ever mixed bleach and ammonia, you know what happens. Kids, don't try this at home. Chlorine is a very reactive gas.
Now, consider the universe around that single chlorine atom.
This is where a chlorine in any other compound differs from a chlorine in a chlorofluorocarbon -- that's by design.
This is why they were invented, because the CFC is a very stable compound compared to anything else used for the purposes it was invented.
That's not philosophy, that's industrial chemistry. Something very stable was needed. CFCs looked like the answer to a great many problems in industrial chemistry.
Take chlorine bonded to most any naturally occuring chemical. What happens? Various things, but none of them especially surprising.
Take chlorine bonded to make a CFC. What happens?
1) extreme long life and stability. Very useful. 2) catalytic action on stratospheric ozone. Oops.
So, yes, chlorine in a CFC behaves very differently and in ways no one imagined -- until the ozone catalysis was observed and explained.
The Nobel Prize was given for that research.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
There's your problem. You read this as a political debate.
Google takes you straight to the Nobel Prize information, it's the top of the search results.
There's no debate about this in the science articles. Artificial, very stable chlorine compounds don't break down rapidly, that's why they were created. Atmospheric mixing carries them to the stratosphere where they catalyze ozone breakdown in the presence of ultraviolet, particularly below the temperatures that produce high ice clouds.
Naturally occurring chlorine compounds aren't longterm stable in the troposphere and don't reach the stratosphere except from some volcanic eruptions; even when they do, they're not longterm stable and degrade within a few years.
You knew this already, if you read the Nobel Prize documents.
There aren't two sides and there is no debate.
Yes, intelligent design _would_ have been a good idea. Pity we're on our own, eh?
will supply the information you say doesn't exist.
The Nobel Prize committe on the one hand, the disinformation manufacturers on the other.
Read both sides, at least, and consider that you may be misinformed.
You should read the science. Really, you should.
It is astonishing how lucky we were that bromine, rather than chlorine, was just slightly less cheap and more difficult to use as a basis for highly stable fluorocarbon compounds during the years before the problem was understood.
Gradually, over a period of a century or so, stratospheric ozone should recover. However, it was a close call.......... the nightmarish thought that if the chemical industry had developed organobromine compounds instead of the CFCs... we would have been faced with a catastrophic ozone hole everywhere and at all seasons during the 1970s, probably before the atmospheric chemists had developed the necessary knowledge to identify the problem and the appropriate techniques for the necessary critical measurements. Noting that nobody had given any thought to the atmospheric consequences of the release of Cl or Br before 1974, I can only conclude that mankind has been extremely lucky...." END QUOTE
(This was written a decade ago, before the Arctic ozone hole opened up and it became apparent that recovery was not going to be happening soon if at all -- we may in fact not have dodged this crisis.
Kind of like when the storm misses you and then, a day later, the levee collapses. Same problem, slower.
Yeah, but why would NASA bother sending volunteers there, knowing you'd be going blind from cataracts by the time you were in a position to do much to replay the investment in training and time?
It's not kindness that makes them concerned about radiation damage. It's practicality.
People smart enough to handle the job are valuable enough to keep healthy. People who aren't, aren't.
Nothing personal intended here. It's just that few people know the effects of radiation as well as the government -- it's not just the few Apollo astronauts who got outside of near earth orbit and heavily irradiated, it's everyone who's been overdosed on Earth in the time since radiation has been used. The information adds up. The cost is known.
>difficult to sue companies that apparently don't exist
You can't find them, because they have efficient corporate immune systems. As with your crocodiles, companies ("corporate persons" under the law) evolve, and the selection pressure is intense; "When you've evolved..., and your daily social behaviour involves biting limbs off other [corporations], you need a good immune system!"
They're successfully evading your attempts to attack them.
"... only a madman would give a loaded revolver to an idiot." -- Frederic Brown, "The Weapon"
"People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it.... Predicting the future is much too easy,.... predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better."
-- Ray Bradbury, "Beyond 1984: The People Machines"
{focused sound beam} "Pssst! You've been glancing at that young woman across the room. She's over 18, so it's OK to ask about her. We know what she likes. Would you like to know what she likes? Nod if it's ok to charge your card. We can get you her phone number. Would you like to have that? Nod if we can charge your card. Would you like to now if she's dating anyone? Nod if it's OK to charge your card. Would you like to see her naked? We have her last airport security scan images. Nod if it's OK to charge your credit card. Our eye tracking security camera system is watching out for what interests you, all the time....."
ARRL says this "should reduce the probability of interference to radio amateurs down to a level where it is reasonable to address the remaining interference on a case-by-case basis" if it's done right, that in theory it's "better engineering."
Comes down to, we who are ARRL members get to try to police another technological marvel and wonder against the companies that build things a little cheaper and a little worse than they promise.
I'm pretty dubious. Engineers, they can do things better, usually, than they're allowed to. Lawyers and Board of Directors members and top management, I suspect, are already doing business as competently and honestly as they possibly can, given the limitations of their roles.
Which is Enron, WorldCom, and the like.
The corporation -- remember, it's treated as a "legal "person" in our legal system -- is a "person" who lacks the requisite intellectual honesty to deal in a trustworthy way with physics, electronics, or even simple honest math.
No conscience, no brain, just a very sophisticated jellyfish with very long tentacles.
Now the archaeobacteria living below us for the first mile or two down in the rocks will be upgrading, able to grow fast interconnections instead of relying on slow chemical signaling.
I for one welcome our new archaeobacterial underlords.
Maybe they'll be able to make oil faster out of subducted organic material that comes their way, the next time life on the surface of the planet almost dies off.
From the live NASA TV feed a minute ago, ground to the Shuttle, described ascent imagery having showed "two observations [of debris]... around the time of the [solid rocket booster separation]" -- one object caught on radar, the other by the camera on the external tank -- and the imagery team is reviewing the videos -- team will meet around wakeup time on the Shuttle tomorrow and give them a preliminary analysis.
No mention yet I've heard of anything noticed right at launch.
There is nothing in the text at Sky News webpage about the launch that mentions anything falling at the launch pad and hitting the tail TODAY, no images I can find either.
They do mention it happening -- last time, when they scrubbed the launch.
I haven't found any "close up" video anywhere (Sky News is a paid subscription site, so if Wonderkid has the subscription -- screenshot please?)
Can anyone post an image of this? I haven't found it in the video. I wonder if it's not confused with the problem from the earlier liftoff that was cancelled, that is reported on the Sky News page: QUOTE The original planned July 13 launch was dogged by embarrassing problems.
A window cover fell off and damaged thermal tiles near the tail just two hours after the craft was declared fit to fly. END QUOTE
If something fell and hit the tail again this time -- let's hope the repairs held.
Slashdot Mirror
> The more radioactive the waste,
> the faster it decays.
Well, yes, and into what?
The Chernobyl exclusion zone has now been extended because -- after these few years -- some of the the highly radioactive fallout that was relatively safe isotopes of highly radioactive elements -- for example alpha emitters -- have now decayed.
And changed thereby, some of them, into longer lived and yet more dangerous beta and gamma emitting isotopes.
Alphas are stopped by tissue paper, you know, even a lot of them don't do a lot of damage as long as you don't inhale and wash up well.
But the fission daughters of some of those alpha emitters, oh, my.
> NO DATA
...
5 25_deadzone.html - 28k - Sep 4, 2005
...h .html
... ....
Oh, for Christ's sake. Take 0.34 seconds to check what it's like BEFORE adding the toxic waste.
Results 1 - 100 of about 24,900 for "Gulf of Mexico" +"dead zone". (0.34 seconds)
NOAA's National Ocean Service: The Gulf of Mexico's dead zone swells each summer to about 18000 square kilometers--roughly the size of New Jersey....
oceanservice.noaa.gov/products/pubs_hypox.html -
The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a large region of water that has very low oxygen concentrations, and therefore can't support aquatic life.
www.smm.org/deadzone/
Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," which last summer reached the size of the
www.fishingnj.org/artdedzn.htm
Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone" Is Size of New Jersey
Each year a swath of the Gulf of Mexico becomes so devoid of shrimp, fish, and
other marine life that it is known as the dead zone.
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0525_050
beneath the waves of the Gulf of Mexico lurks the "dead zone," a vast area off the Louisiana-Texas coast where oxygen-depleted water collects every
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/12/1204_fis
Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia
The Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone", or hypoxic zone, is an expanse of oxygen-depleted
waters that cannot sustain most marine life. This hypoxic zone is caused
www.ncat.org/nutrients/hypoxia/hypoxia.html - 7k
7000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico. Called the Gulf Dead Zone....
Important -- checking what we're told.
... did some calculations for the long record since 1931 of ozone measurements at the permanent station in Arosa, Switzerland.
You quoted Maduro as saying the ozone statistics are based only on one 12 year period showing change, and the previous one shows no change.
Th
That was true, twenty years ago.
QUOTE:
ROWLAND
"... people had been asking since 1974, "Is there any evidence for ozone losses over the United States or Europe?" And, for 11 years, statisticians had been doing very elaborate calculations and had always concluded that no evidence for any ozone loss had been detected."
So -- for early 1980s -- Molina confirms what you were told about the statistics.
Maduro's giving you old info based on the false premise that ozone depletion must logically happen all year round, despite observations to the contrary.
The crux of the matter is that ozone depletion happens in a brief period when the sun reaches the polar stratosphere after the long cold dark six months of winter.
Looking at the statistics by month rather than averaged by year -- and since the 1930s rather than for just 11 years -- showed the ozone depletion clearly.
That was done -- 20 years ago. Maduro's telling you something disproven two decades ago.
And that happened just after the U-2 aircraft flew through the polar stratosphere during several weeks just as the sun came up in the spring, and documented the sudden loss of ozone.
The quote above and continuation below are my excerpts from the full text, Roland and Molina's published speeches and collected references and discussion, found here:
http://www.ncseonline.org/NCSEconference/2000confe rence/Chafee/ChafeeMemorialLecture2000.pdf.
QUOTE
"... Neil Harris
He divided the record into 1931-1969 and 1970-1986 and compared the before/after averages for each calendar month, and found that there had been less ozone over Arosa in the winter months after 1970 than before. Then, as part of a sub-group of the Ozone Trends Panel, we extended this to all of the ozone-measuring stations with records for at least 22 years, that is, for the length of two solar sunspot cycles [because it was known that ozone levels varied a little with sunspot activity].
These calculations were simply the average over the winter months for one 11-year period, and then for another period of 11 years, subtracting one from the other. Every station in the northern hemisphere north of 30 degrees N latitude had
shown less ozone in the second 11-year period than in the first.
The statisticians had missed this because they had assumed that if there were any ozone loss that it would be uniform all through the year. And it had been known for many years that the summer months had much less natural variation in ozone, so, if the summer had much less natural variation, then obviously, you should look at the times where a change would most easily be detectable. What the Ozone Trends Panel showed was that there was clearly a wintertime loss, and no significant evidence at that time for a loss during the summer. These calculations were the first evidence that ozone had been lost over heavily populated latitudes of the northern hemisphere.
MOLINA
The scientific evidence was really accumulating by that time. Here we have a statement from by a colleague of ours at the Ozone Trends Panel press conference on March 15, 1988, "We've found more than the smoking gun. We've found the corpse." So, no surprise, ten days later after all of these findings really became evident, the Dupont Company, the largest manufacturer of CFCs, changed their mind and decided they would no longer manufacture these compounds.
The scientific evidence was extremely clear. I believe that was a very important turning point for the chemical industry."
END QU
Philosophy vs. physical chemistry, eh?
Meat for midnight bull sessions in the dorms indeed.
I refute it thus!
You might find Buber's "I and Thou" in the same reading list.
Consider the difference between a solitary chlorine, and one in relation.
Take chlorine as a single atom. What happens? Nothing.
Take another one -- at a good distance away. What happens? Nothing. You're right, there. They're all alike, as atoms -- one at a time.
How many electrons around each one? What's its potential to react, if there were anything else near it?
You know this, right?
Bump them together. What happens? A chlorine molecule.
Take another isolated chlorine. Bump it against almost anything else. What happens? A chloride, chlorate, or some other reaction product. The chlorine goes out of circulation, fast, and stays bonded.
Most chlorine reacts before it reaches the stratosphere, and what the occasional volcano pushes up doesn't remain available for long -- chlorine gets taken out of circulation by chemical bonding.
If you've ever mixed bleach and ammonia, you know what happens. Kids, don't try this at home. Chlorine is a very reactive gas.
Now, consider the universe around that single chlorine atom.
This is where a chlorine in any other compound differs from a chlorine in a chlorofluorocarbon -- that's by design.
This is why they were invented, because the CFC is a very stable compound compared to anything else used for the purposes it was invented.
That's not philosophy, that's industrial chemistry. Something very stable was needed. CFCs looked like the answer to a great many problems in industrial chemistry.
Take chlorine bonded to most any naturally occuring chemical. What happens? Various things, but none of them especially surprising.
Take chlorine bonded to make a CFC. What happens?
1) extreme long life and stability. Very useful.
2) catalytic action on stratospheric ozone. Oops.
So, yes, chlorine in a CFC behaves very differently and in ways no one imagined -- until the ozone catalysis was observed and explained.
The Nobel Prize was given for that research.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
"both sides of the debate"
There's your problem. You read this as a political debate.
Google takes you straight to the Nobel Prize information, it's the top of the search results.
There's no debate about this in the science articles. Artificial, very stable chlorine compounds don't break down rapidly, that's why they were created. Atmospheric mixing carries them to the stratosphere where they catalyze ozone breakdown in the presence of ultraviolet, particularly below the temperatures that produce high ice clouds.
Naturally occurring chlorine compounds aren't longterm stable in the troposphere and don't reach the stratosphere except from some volcanic eruptions; even when they do, they're not longterm stable and degrade within a few years.
You knew this already, if you read the Nobel Prize documents.
There aren't two sides and there is no debate.
Yes, intelligent design _would_ have been a good idea. Pity we're on our own, eh?
Think.
To paraphrase Gandhi's answer, when asked what he thought of Western civilization:
It would have been a good idea.
Google is your friend:
"ozone layer" +chlorofluorocarbon +catalysis
will supply the information you say doesn't exist.
The Nobel Prize committe on the one hand, the disinformation manufacturers on the other.
Read both sides, at least, and consider that you may be misinformed.
You should read the science. Really, you should.
It is astonishing how lucky we were that bromine, rather than chlorine, was just slightly less cheap and more difficult to use as a basis for highly stable fluorocarbon compounds during the years before the problem was understood.
It could have been over by now.
Read. Please, read.
http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1995/cru tzen-lecture.pdf
... AND THINGS COULD HAVE BEEN MUCH WORSE
..... .... ... we would have been faced with a catastrophic ozone hole everywhere and at all seasons during the 1970s, probably before the atmospheric chemists had developed the necessary knowledge to identify the problem and the appropriate techniques for the necessary critical measurements. Noting that nobody had given any thought to the atmospheric consequences of the release of Cl or Br before 1974, I can only conclude that mankind has been extremely lucky ...."
QUOTE
"
Gradually, over a period of a century or so, stratospheric ozone should recover. However, it was a close call.
the nightmarish thought that if the chemical industry had developed organobromine compounds instead of the CFCs
END QUOTE
(This was written a decade ago, before the Arctic ozone hole opened up and it became apparent that recovery was not going to be happening soon if at all -- we may in fact not have dodged this crisis.
Kind of like when the storm misses you and then, a day later, the levee collapses. Same problem, slower.
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=03 16106917
Oh (duh) you're right, the Rolling Stones music was bought for advertising 95, not 3.x.
Truly a memorable marketing campaign.
Windows 3.1 -- "Start Me Up ... it makes a grown man cry" was the advertising slogan.
Windows Vista -- "Look Out!" seems the obvious choice.
Yeah, but why would NASA bother sending volunteers there, knowing you'd be going blind from cataracts by the time you were in a position to do much to replay the investment in training and time?
It's not kindness that makes them concerned about radiation damage. It's practicality.
People smart enough to handle the job are valuable enough to keep healthy. People who aren't, aren't.
Nothing personal intended here. It's just that few people know the effects of radiation as well as the government -- it's not just the few Apollo astronauts who got outside of near earth orbit and heavily irradiated, it's everyone who's been overdosed on Earth in the time since radiation has been used. The information adds up. The cost is known.
Did you ever read a story called "The Sources of the Nile" by Avram Davidson?
Imagine finding a way to know what people are going to be thinking about, talking about, asking for -- in advance.
Well?
You could, say, direct advertising to them based on what you knew, if you could do that.
Email, digitized voice, a huge networked universe of fast computers growing all the time.
The Internet sees Google as unthreatening, and uses Google as a preferred route.
Has anyone ever asked the folks who came up with "Don't Do Evil" what the other half of their statement is? It must have a corollary.
I suspect it's -- Be God.
>difficult to sue companies that apparently don't exist
..., and your daily social behaviour involves biting limbs off other [corporations], you need a good immune system!"
You can't find them, because they have efficient corporate immune systems. As with your crocodiles, companies ("corporate persons" under the law) evolve, and the selection pressure is intense; "When you've evolved
They're successfully evading your attempts to attack them.
A recently translated fragment from among those in the Dead Sea Scrolls museum collection has allowed scholars to correct and amend the Bible.
What was mis-translated as the Number of the Beast is now properly translated as "Number of the Base."
One additional line of text follows it in the newly translated original:
"All your base stations are belong to us."
>joke
.... predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better."
JOKE?
Two relevant quotes:
"... only a madman would give a loaded revolver to an idiot." -- Frederic Brown, "The Weapon"
"People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it.... Predicting the future is much too easy,
-- Ray Bradbury, "Beyond 1984: The People Machines"
{focused sound beam} "Pssst! You've been glancing at that young woman across the room. She's over 18, so it's OK to ask about her. We know what she likes. Would you like to know what she likes? Nod if it's ok to charge your card. We can get you her phone number. Would you like to have that? Nod if we can charge your card. Would you like to now if she's dating anyone? Nod if it's OK to charge your card. Would you like to see her naked? We have her last airport security scan images. Nod if it's OK to charge your credit card. Our eye tracking security camera system is watching out for what interests you, all the time ....."
ARRL says this "should reduce the probability of interference to radio amateurs down to a level where it is reasonable to address the remaining interference on a case-by-case basis" if it's done right, that in theory it's "better engineering."
Comes down to, we who are ARRL members get to try to police another technological marvel and wonder against the companies that build things a little cheaper and a little worse than they promise.
I'm pretty dubious. Engineers, they can do things better, usually, than they're allowed to. Lawyers and Board of Directors members and top management, I suspect, are already doing business as competently and honestly as they possibly can, given the limitations of their roles.
Which is Enron, WorldCom, and the like.
The corporation -- remember, it's treated as a "legal "person" in our legal system -- is a "person" who lacks the requisite intellectual honesty to deal in a trustworthy way with physics, electronics, or even simple honest math.
No conscience, no brain, just a very sophisticated jellyfish with very long tentacles.
So, once we have RFID implemented everywhere, how big a loop antenna will I need to draw enough power to run my wearable electronics?
I foresee the copper-coil hat and cape replacing the tin foil hat.
Power to the people!
At least until Heinlein is proven right again, see his novel Waldo.
Now the archaeobacteria living below us for the first mile or two down in the rocks will be upgrading, able to grow fast interconnections instead of relying on slow chemical signaling.
I for one welcome our new archaeobacterial underlords.
Maybe they'll be able to make oil faster out of subducted organic material that comes their way, the next time life on the surface of the planet almost dies off.
Just how many functions can be crammed into a handheld portable device, do you think?
... all of them.
Oh, right
The best things in life are fees, right?
From the live NASA TV feed a minute ago, ground to the Shuttle, described ascent imagery having showed "two observations [of debris]... around the time of the [solid rocket booster separation]" -- one object caught on radar, the other by the camera on the external tank -- and the imagery team is reviewing the videos -- team will meet around wakeup time on the Shuttle tomorrow and give them a preliminary analysis.
No mention yet I've heard of anything noticed right at launch.
There is nothing in the text at Sky News webpage about the launch that mentions anything falling at the launch pad and hitting the tail TODAY, no images I can find either.
They do mention it happening -- last time, when they scrubbed the launch.
I haven't found any "close up" video anywhere (Sky News is a paid subscription site, so if Wonderkid has the subscription -- screenshot please?)
Maddening....
Can anyone post an image of this? I haven't found it in the video. I wonder if it's not confused with the problem from the earlier liftoff that was cancelled, that is reported on the Sky News page:
QUOTE
The original planned July 13 launch was dogged by embarrassing problems.
A window cover fell off and damaged thermal tiles near the tail just two hours after the craft was declared fit to fly.
END QUOTE
If something fell and hit the tail again this time -- let's hope the repairs held.