I would define an activist judge as one whom - rather than starting with the facts of the case, the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law - has a preconceived desired outcome for the case (based on political ideology) and uses legal mumbo jumbo to justify his position.
For example, in the recent 2nd amendment supreme court ruling, the minority opinion could be basically boiled down to "society is too violent, and I want to ban guns. Therefore I think the 2nd amendment doesn't say X, but says Y." Where as the majority opinion used historical arguments and writings of the guys that wrote the constitution to figure out what the spirit of the law as written actually was.
This is fundamentally wrong. Physics may be more-or-less an exact science. The entire point of engineering is "how much can you get away with estimating/compromising and still have a safe and working product".
at the most possible fundamental level of human behavior, Democrats have always trended toward more densely populated areas (the city), whereas Republicans have always trended toward rural America, small towns and the country. This parallels the respective political philosophies, ie., Democrats like other people where Republicans don't. The most exreme Republicans come from Alaska, where people go to die in the wilderness, cold and alone.
No, it's because Democrats are attracted to power, control, government, and authority which is why they all support leaders like Castro, Stalin, Hitler, etc. Where as Republicans are attracted to freedom and think everyone should live without interference from others. So Democrats are attracted to capital cities where authority is centralized, where as Republicans try to get as far away from them as possible.
The Japanese economy has survived despite its financial failures precisely because its industrial economy is so efficient.
Um no, the economy has only survived due to being placed on life-support by the government, forcing perpetual near-zero interest rates for the last 2 decades. What is their debt to GDP ratio again?
My impression also is that meltdowns produce more dirty products than deliberate detonations, but I'm not sure.
A small fission bomb like little boy causes something on the order of 10^23 fissions. An average nuclear power reactor produces as many fissions every 5 hours. Therefore there are orders of magnitude more fission products contained in the fuel. In addition to the fission products, there are also trans-uranics which have long half-lives.
Do you have a link to a graph that includes the measurement uncertainties? IIRC, the man whom created that chart recently came out on TV saying that there was not a 95/95 statistically significant warming trend in that data, although I may be thinking of a different chart.
So yeah, there will be plenty of food in the Yukon - which is great for the 34,000 people who live there, the question is what do you do with the populations that grew up around what used to be fertile plains and that will likely become expanding deserts?
Global warming only predicts a 0.5 meters increase in sea level rise and a couple degrees increase in temperature, over 100 years. Even the most ardent global warming advocates are not predicting that regional climates will change. Furthermore, the changes are so gradual that technological and economical improvements in that time frame will vastly, vastly dwarf any implications of global warming (loss of coastal property, changes in agriculture industry, etc. keep in mind, this is over 100 years).
The study included the cost of management, security, fuel procurement, waste disposal, and decomissioning of the power plant -- costs for which the US government pays some or all.
Include those costs, and gee whiz -- the nuclear power plants are getting quite a deal, only paying about 1/3 of the actual cost of their operation.
I guess it is easy to flat-out lie when your agenda is more important than the facts.
All of these items listed are already in the cost for nuclear power and is passed on to the customers. This information is very easily obtainable by a simple google search.
The only direct subsidy that I am aware of is the liability of a nuclear catastrophe where damages exceed $10 billion dollars. The worth of which is something along the lines of $1 billion/year for the entire industry, although it has zero cost unless such an accident actually took place.
Fission reactors generate huge amounts of neutrinos. Roughly 2.5% of the total energy output of a reactor is radiated away as neutrinos. For a 3 GW thermal reactor, that means around 80 megawatts of neutrinos. If the average neutrino has an energy of 1 eV, that is 5x10^26 neutrinos per second.
I think the increase in resolution from 480 lines to 1080 lines along with lossless audio is a much, much, much bigger improvement to my movie watching experience than stupid annoying menus.
I'm pretty sure I have wasted more time trying to skip through all the forced previews, piracy warnings, and forced menu animations then I ever had to spend rewinding VHS tapes.
(as a side note, this is why low pressure nuclear power plants have such poor efficiency - because the water is only at 100 degrees Celsius after being heated by the nuclear fuel).
The reason why nuclear power plants are not as efficient as coal or combined cycle plants is because as part of their design, they can not create super-heated steam, which limits the efficiency of the turbine. The steam created by the reactor or steam generators is typically at saturation temperature at 1000 PSI (~540 degrees F)
Nuclear plants can run perfectly fine at lower powers. The reason why they do not want to is because it is throwing money away. Nuclear fuel is practically free, what makes up a majority of the operating cost is personnel. And you can't send half of your engineers home for the day because the plant is only running at 50% - the cost is fixed. Therefore running at anything lower than 100% is a waste of human resources.
Columbia is accustomed to reducing power to 85 percent and sometimes 60 percent. In the following days, however, BPA asked the nuclear [note: I added "nuclear" for context] plant operators to go down to just 22 percent. “This year was extraordinary because it all came so heavy and so fast,’’ Mr. Milstein said.
Here by renewable energy, you mean hydroelectricity. And they had an excess due to larger than normal amount of rain. And the reason why they had an excess of electricity was because they lacked the transmission capacity to sell the power to other areas where it was needed.
You are right, except that you have the parties backwards.
It was the republicans in the mid-2000's calling for regulations and reform of the banking/mortgage system, the Democrats steadfastly refused any sort of reform and directly stated that there was no chance of such a financial meltdown occurring.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." - Democrat Barney Frank, House Banking Commission, 2003
"I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation," McCain said. "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole." - Republican John McCain, 2006
"I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." - Former President Bill Clinton, 2008
A tax on carbon is a tax on everything. Food prices will rise. The price of everything ordered on Amazon will rise. The price of everyhtng transported by road or rail will rise. The price of running your heater or AC will rise, a lot. And it's a regressive tax, like all consumption taxes.
If half the harms of global climate change come true, that's going to happen anyway. I'd hate to pay more for my amazon order, but I'd hate even more to catch malaria because it was warm enough now for it to thrive in my latitude.
(note that I have no idea how likely that effect of climate change is. I'd probably invest in some bug spray and gin and tonic... maybe that's not a bad thing...)
Global warming only predicts a 0.5 meters increase in sea level rise and a couple degrees increase in temperature, over 100 years. So no, the items the parent posted would not happen anyway. No one is predicting that regional climates will substantially change. Technological and economical improvements in that time frame will vastly, vastly dwarf any implications of global warming (loss of coastal property, changes in agriculture industry, etc. keep in mind, this is over 100 years).
You are obviously too young to remember the days when programmers wrote optimised and intelligent code. These days all of the lazy fucks that call themselves programmers just point and click in pretty drag and drop IDEs that require 10MB of RAM just to print "hello fucking world".
Back in the day, engineers were cheap and computer resources were extremely expensive.
Now, computer resources are practically free and engineers are even cheaper:)
a) Where would we be if we banned all air travel (or merely the production of new airplanes) after the first plane crash? Where would we be if we dismantled all nuclear power plants after TMI? Ceased all coal mining after any one of the recent mine disasters? Ceased all chemical products production after the Bhopal disaster? Guess what, shit happens. You make safeguards to prevent them. You have a plan how to fix things when they go sour. But life is risky, there is no avoiding it.
b) if we don't drill for oil, someone else will. And it is almost certain that they will have far more lax safety standards, and not really care so much if they do have a spill.
c) the crazy Muslims have been violent for long, long, long before any oil was discovered in the region. Don't make excuses for their barbarism.
And, more importantly, why do we want to make drilling off the cost of Florida legal?
I'll tell you why: it's the same reason we aren't all driving electric cars. Because the oil industry, by hook and crook, has done everything it can to make damned sure we're totally dependent on them for our transportation needs, such as buying up all the patents to make sure NIMH and Li-Ion batteries couldn't be used in cars, lobbying hard against ZEV-promoting initiatives, etc. See Who Killed the Electric Car?.
Whining that the oil companies are making us dependent on oil makes about as much sense as complaining that the agriculture industry is making us dependent on food.
"The Act establishes a no fault insurance-type system in which the first $10 billion is industry-funded as described in the Act (any claims above the $10 billion would be covered by the federal government)."
"Power reactor licensees are required by the act to obtain the maximum amount of insurance against nuclear related incidents which is available in the insurance market (as of 2010[update], $375 million per plant). Any monetary claims that fall within this maximum amount are paid by the insurer(s). The Price-Anderson fund, which is financed by the reactor companies themselves, is then used to make up the difference. Each reactor company is obliged to contribute up to $111.9 million in the event of an accident. As of 2008[update], the maximum amount of the fund is approximately $11.6 billion if all of the reactor companies were required to pay their full obligation to the fund."
We've tried laissez-faire capitalism - it's called the Gilded Age, and it was TERRIBLE for 90% of the population. Previously, we tried it in Edwardian/Victorian Britain. It was horrible and soul-crushingly destructive then, too. Sensing a theme? Pure free market economies are no better an idea than communism, if somewhat more efficient at producing products.
Terrible compared to what, modern standards? Compared to what the lower class was living like before the industrial revolution, it was a big step up. Reliable jobs and income combined with rapidly decreasing cost of goods meant a huge increase in the standard of living for those 90% of people.
Actually it would be quite convenient to follow the law. The law being the Geneva convention, which states that unorganized non-uniformed combatants that hide amongst civilians are supposed to be immediately executed upon capture for violating the rules of warfare.
If remote execution of terrorists without trial or public knowledge is acceptable, then how do we know that only terrorists are executed?
Last time I checked soldiers weren't required to read enemy soldiers their Miranda rights before shooting at them. It's a war, not a criminal investigation.
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The problem is that much energy would require a billion kilograms of Uranium to produce by fission.
I would define an activist judge as one whom - rather than starting with the facts of the case, the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law - has a preconceived desired outcome for the case (based on political ideology) and uses legal mumbo jumbo to justify his position.
For example, in the recent 2nd amendment supreme court ruling, the minority opinion could be basically boiled down to "society is too violent, and I want to ban guns. Therefore I think the 2nd amendment doesn't say X, but says Y." Where as the majority opinion used historical arguments and writings of the guys that wrote the constitution to figure out what the spirit of the law as written actually was.
This is fundamentally wrong. Physics may be more-or-less an exact science. The entire point of engineering is "how much can you get away with estimating/compromising and still have a safe and working product".
No, it's because Democrats are attracted to power, control, government, and authority which is why they all support leaders like Castro, Stalin, Hitler, etc. Where as Republicans are attracted to freedom and think everyone should live without interference from others. So Democrats are attracted to capital cities where authority is centralized, where as Republicans try to get as far away from them as possible.
Um no, the economy has only survived due to being placed on life-support by the government, forcing perpetual near-zero interest rates for the last 2 decades. What is their debt to GDP ratio again?
A small fission bomb like little boy causes something on the order of 10^23 fissions. An average nuclear power reactor produces as many fissions every 5 hours. Therefore there are orders of magnitude more fission products contained in the fuel. In addition to the fission products, there are also trans-uranics which have long half-lives.
Do you have a link to a graph that includes the measurement uncertainties? IIRC, the man whom created that chart recently came out on TV saying that there was not a 95/95 statistically significant warming trend in that data, although I may be thinking of a different chart.
Global warming only predicts a 0.5 meters increase in sea level rise and a couple degrees increase in temperature, over 100 years. Even the most ardent global warming advocates are not predicting that regional climates will change. Furthermore, the changes are so gradual that technological and economical improvements in that time frame will vastly, vastly dwarf any implications of global warming (loss of coastal property, changes in agriculture industry, etc. keep in mind, this is over 100 years).
I guess it is easy to flat-out lie when your agenda is more important than the facts.
All of these items listed are already in the cost for nuclear power and is passed on to the customers. This information is very easily obtainable by a simple google search.
The only direct subsidy that I am aware of is the liability of a nuclear catastrophe where damages exceed $10 billion dollars. The worth of which is something along the lines of $1 billion/year for the entire industry, although it has zero cost unless such an accident actually took place.
Fission reactors generate huge amounts of neutrinos. Roughly 2.5% of the total energy output of a reactor is radiated away as neutrinos. For a 3 GW thermal reactor, that means around 80 megawatts of neutrinos. If the average neutrino has an energy of 1 eV, that is 5x10^26 neutrinos per second.
I think the increase in resolution from 480 lines to 1080 lines along with lossless audio is a much, much, much bigger improvement to my movie watching experience than stupid annoying menus.
I'm pretty sure I have wasted more time trying to skip through all the forced previews, piracy warnings, and forced menu animations then I ever had to spend rewinding VHS tapes.
(as a side note, this is why low pressure nuclear power plants have such poor efficiency - because the water is only at 100 degrees Celsius after being heated by the nuclear fuel).
The reason why nuclear power plants are not as efficient as coal or combined cycle plants is because as part of their design, they can not create super-heated steam, which limits the efficiency of the turbine. The steam created by the reactor or steam generators is typically at saturation temperature at 1000 PSI (~540 degrees F)
Nuclear plants can run perfectly fine at lower powers. The reason why they do not want to is because it is throwing money away. Nuclear fuel is practically free, what makes up a majority of the operating cost is personnel. And you can't send half of your engineers home for the day because the plant is only running at 50% - the cost is fixed. Therefore running at anything lower than 100% is a waste of human resources.
Sometimes you end up having to scale your nuclear plant back because there's so much renewable energy:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/sudden-surplus-calls-for-quick-thinking/
Columbia is accustomed to reducing power to 85 percent and sometimes 60 percent. In the following days, however, BPA asked the nuclear [note: I added "nuclear" for context] plant operators to go down to just 22 percent. “This year was extraordinary because it all came so heavy and so fast,’’ Mr. Milstein said.
Here by renewable energy, you mean hydroelectricity. And they had an excess due to larger than normal amount of rain. And the reason why they had an excess of electricity was because they lacked the transmission capacity to sell the power to other areas where it was needed.
They also often have to scale down during the hottest times of the year due to problems with thermal pollution of their heat sinks (rivers or lakes).
The net electric output of the generator may drop a few megawatts due to the loss of efficiency, but they still run at 100%.
You are right, except that you have the parties backwards.
It was the republicans in the mid-2000's calling for regulations and reform of the banking/mortgage system, the Democrats steadfastly refused any sort of reform and directly stated that there was no chance of such a financial meltdown occurring.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." - Democrat Barney Frank, House Banking Commission, 2003
"I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation," McCain said. "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole." - Republican John McCain, 2006
"I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." - Former President Bill Clinton, 2008
A tax on carbon is a tax on everything. Food prices will rise. The price of everything ordered on Amazon will rise. The price of everyhtng transported by road or rail will rise. The price of running your heater or AC will rise, a lot. And it's a regressive tax, like all consumption taxes.
If half the harms of global climate change come true, that's going to happen anyway. I'd hate to pay more for my amazon order, but I'd hate even more to catch malaria because it was warm enough now for it to thrive in my latitude.
(note that I have no idea how likely that effect of climate change is. I'd probably invest in some bug spray and gin and tonic... maybe that's not a bad thing...)
Global warming only predicts a 0.5 meters increase in sea level rise and a couple degrees increase in temperature, over 100 years. So no, the items the parent posted would not happen anyway. No one is predicting that regional climates will substantially change. Technological and economical improvements in that time frame will vastly, vastly dwarf any implications of global warming (loss of coastal property, changes in agriculture industry, etc. keep in mind, this is over 100 years).
You are obviously too young to remember the days when programmers wrote optimised and intelligent code. These days all of the lazy fucks that call themselves programmers just point and click in pretty drag and drop IDEs that require 10MB of RAM just to print "hello fucking world".
Back in the day, engineers were cheap and computer resources were extremely expensive.
Now, computer resources are practically free and engineers are even cheaper :)
A few points.
a) Where would we be if we banned all air travel (or merely the production of new airplanes) after the first plane crash? Where would we be if we dismantled all nuclear power plants after TMI? Ceased all coal mining after any one of the recent mine disasters? Ceased all chemical products production after the Bhopal disaster? Guess what, shit happens. You make safeguards to prevent them. You have a plan how to fix things when they go sour. But life is risky, there is no avoiding it.
b) if we don't drill for oil, someone else will. And it is almost certain that they will have far more lax safety standards, and not really care so much if they do have a spill.
c) the crazy Muslims have been violent for long, long, long before any oil was discovered in the region. Don't make excuses for their barbarism.
And, more importantly, why do we want to make drilling off the cost of Florida legal?
I'll tell you why: it's the same reason we aren't all driving electric cars. Because the oil industry, by hook and crook, has done everything it can to make damned sure we're totally dependent on them for our transportation needs, such as buying up all the patents to make sure NIMH and Li-Ion batteries couldn't be used in cars, lobbying hard against ZEV-promoting initiatives, etc. See Who Killed the Electric Car?.
Whining that the oil companies are making us dependent on oil makes about as much sense as complaining that the agriculture industry is making us dependent on food.
No, it is you that needs to do research instead of copying and pasting green peace propoganda.
The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act:
"The Act establishes a no fault insurance-type system in which the first $10 billion is industry-funded as described in the Act (any claims above the $10 billion would be covered by the federal government)."
"Power reactor licensees are required by the act to obtain the maximum amount of insurance against nuclear related incidents which is available in the insurance market (as of 2010[update], $375 million per plant). Any monetary claims that fall within this maximum amount are paid by the insurer(s). The Price-Anderson fund, which is financed by the reactor companies themselves, is then used to make up the difference. Each reactor company is obliged to contribute up to $111.9 million in the event of an accident. As of 2008[update], the maximum amount of the fund is approximately $11.6 billion if all of the reactor companies were required to pay their full obligation to the fund."
We've tried laissez-faire capitalism - it's called the Gilded Age, and it was TERRIBLE for 90% of the population. Previously, we tried it in Edwardian/Victorian Britain. It was horrible and soul-crushingly destructive then, too. Sensing a theme? Pure free market economies are no better an idea than communism, if somewhat more efficient at producing products.
Terrible compared to what, modern standards? Compared to what the lower class was living like before the industrial revolution, it was a big step up. Reliable jobs and income combined with rapidly decreasing cost of goods meant a huge increase in the standard of living for those 90% of people.
Actually it would be quite convenient to follow the law. The law being the Geneva convention, which states that unorganized non-uniformed combatants that hide amongst civilians are supposed to be immediately executed upon capture for violating the rules of warfare.
If remote execution of terrorists without trial or public knowledge is acceptable, then how do we know that only terrorists are executed?
Last time I checked soldiers weren't required to read enemy soldiers their Miranda rights before shooting at them. It's a war, not a criminal investigation.
The so-called Coffee Party is actually just another astroturf wing of the Obama campaign machine.