Not at all. "Moving part" simply means an internal mechanical component that moves in relation to the rest of the machine. A gear, piston or valve is a moving part.
The machine as a whole does not constitute a single moving part, despite the fact that in the literal interpretation of the phrase it sounds like it could. The key word is "part", i.e. as separated from the whole.
A rocket can be as simple as a hollow tube, capped at one end, filled with solid propellant. You ignite the fuel (preferably via a fuse) and watch it fly. No part of the rocket moves in relation to any other part, unless you wish to interpret "part" so loosely as to include the exhaust.
Radar pulse hits bat. Pulse generates heat, which produces sound waves, inside the bats head (sounds scary, but we've been operating proximate to radar machines since WWII). I've heard of this effect elsewhere, and can readily believe it might be more pronounced in bats than humans. Sound confuses/diverts/drives off bat - they're not sure how exactly, but any number of theories might explain this behaviour.
Not the issue you might think it is. Bat's hearing includes a whole range of sounds outside of what we mere humans can hear. You could probably make an ultrasonic system that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to bats, and nothing at all to us.
Why not just use a direct sonic system, instead of using radar pulses to generate sound indirectly? Bats have very sensitive hearing, and there are probably ways of generating noises that keep them away, either by interfering with their sonar, or simply generating unpleasant aural input. I seem to recall ultrasonic systems devised for driving off human beings, or other animal species, so it's a demonstrated concept.
Of course, such a system could exist and use more energy, or cost more to implement. Nothing in the article about that however.
I've run into the notion of pairing a hydrogen economy with a hydrocarbon one before. While it interests me, I'd rate the likelihood of it becoming a reality well below that of biofuels.
After all, it's the same basic equation. Energy + carbon + water = hydrocarbon energy storage, where energy is in the one case the solar energy trapped by organisms and is in the other case electrical energy generated at a power plant. Biofuel sources are technologically simpler, and therefor likely to become widespread long before we have a synthetic hydrocarbon economy worked out. Doubly so when the best candidate for supplying the energy in the latter case is, as you say, nuclear power, which the public deeply mistrusts. Mind you, the nuclear NIMBY angle comes up for any fossil fuel replacement solutions that don't involve photosynthesis, since transportation requires major energy inputs, no matter what the storage medium (hydrogen, hydrocarbon, battery power, etc), and nuclear is the only man-made power source currently suitable for the job.
Back to the original argument, which was internal combustion engines versus fuel cells. Assuming, for the sake of argument, we devise a working hydrogen fuel economy (meaning we have the energy to produce H2 in usefully huge quantities, and can distribute and store it safely), we're left with the question of how to convert that fuel into work.
One the one hand, we could use an internal combustion engine. This has the advantage of using proven technology, with some or all of the refinements we've made on fossil fuel engines these past hundred years. ICEs are cheap, compatible with our existing repair and manufacturing infrastructure, and couple possibly be adapted to more than one fuel. I very much doubt you could use hydrogen and gasoline interchangeably, but I might believe in an ICE that can run on either hydrogen or propane, assuming the tank could store either, or be swapped out.
On the other hand, we have fuel cells paired with electric motors. They have the advantage of a minimum of moving parts, reduced number of components, lighter weight (per engine block), efficiency and the possibility of integrating technologies incompatible with a pure IC system (regenerative braking for example, though you can put that on a hybrid ICE/Electric). The sole drawback is cost - I realize you also mentioned durability, but to my knowledge fuel cells don't break that often or that easily, and an ICE is hardly malfunction-proof.
To my way of thinking, the cost difference is largely a result of the one technology being vastly more common than the other. The cost of an ICE is driven down by the extent of our manufacturing infrastructure - there's economy of scale at work, something fuel cells lack. The biggest barrier to a FC/Electric car today is not the cells themselves, but rather the storage tank for the hydrogen, and the absence of a hydrogen fuel infrastructure to supply it.
..without the complexities of the internal combustion engine
What complexities are these? ICEs can be made with 2 moving parts.
Rockets can be made with zero moving parts. And there are very, very simple rockets in existence, dating back millennia (think fireworks). That does not mean "rocket science" is easy, and nor does it mean that the statement "rockets are complex" is in any way wrong.
Same goes for piston engines. Yes they can be "simple" - they made the first of the damn things in the days when people still though of "aether" and "phlogiston", it doesn't require advanced chemistry or physics. That does not mean they always, or even often, are. Most such engines are complex beasts that require a great deal of science and engineering to design.
"Hydrogen engine" is vague to the point of uselessness. It's like saying "Combustion engine", which covers everything from steam locomotives to rockets.
I suspect you read "hydrogen engine" to mean a fuel cell powering an electric motor. From the context, it sounds more like he meant an internal combustion engine, fuelled by hydrogen, which is a different beast entirely. Hence the confusion. An ignition source is indeed potentially useful for such an engine, though not absolutely necessary (not all IC engines use spark plugs).
Hydrogen IC engines do exist, both on paper and in prototype, but I strongly suspect that if we ever get hydrogen to work as a fuel, meaning we can generate and store it in the needed quantities, we won't be burning it in a piston engine of any kind. Fuel cells make more sense in that context.
I would imagine that such a technology could be adapted to other fuel sources like hydrogen. In fact, I suspect that hydrogen engines might actually benefit greatly from this.
I'm not so sure of that. Granted, you can use hydrogen fuel in an IC engine, but storing it is a big PITA. At sea level pressure, gaseous hydrogen has abysmal energy density per volume, and any solution for reducing that volume would have to be adapted for every car on the road. Meaning liquid hydrogen is a non-starter, pressurized hydrogen needs to be stored in a collision-rated tank, and hydrogen dissolved in or bonded with something else needs a cost-effective carrier of limited weight per fuel (else the energy density per weight or price per tank becomes a problem).
If we've got the hydrogen storage problem licked, and with all the R&D focusing on precisely that we very well might someday in the not too far future, then why use an IC engine over a fuel cell? In a FC + electric motor configuration, the engine makes very little noise, there are fewer moving parts than an IC engine, no need for a separate (and heavy) alternator + battery to power the electronics, and probably other advantages I've overlooked. The one downside is cost, which can probably be substantially reduced via mass production - the cost per cell is high now, but we aren't making them for every car on the road.
The only problem with that I see with the Thermite solution is getting through airport security with those bomb sniffing devices.. otherwise I like!:)
The only problem you can see with having a high temperature incendiary that close to your danglies is getting it past security? The only problem?
In the hopes that you'll avoid adding your name to the short list of surviving Darwin Award winners, might I suggest asbestos long-johns and a ceramic codpiece?
(Oh, and airports might not be the problem people think in this case. Most of the security is in place to stop a person from boarding with an explosive, not an incendiary. I'm not at all sure the bomb dogs are trained on Thermite, or anything chemically similar to it.)
Regrettably, I have no working computer systems of any kind, as there have been a number of mishaps with my Thermowipe prototype, versions 1 through 25 inclusive.
I am now the proud owner of several lovely portions of melted plastic and metal slag, which I will thank you kindly to take off my hands. You can collect them from the local fire marshal's office, along with the remains of my desk, chair and cat.
That's a TERRIBLE idea... Like, HOLY SHIT terrible.
Then your threshold for terrible needs adjusting. I'm sure I can think of something worse than what the AC suggested:-P
For example: a small thermite charge, proximate to the hard drive platter. It's fused to go off if a particular peripheral isn't detected upon boot-up; you keep the peripheral "key" with you, perhaps attached to your regular key-chain. A thief tries to boot, and BOOM (okay, thermite doesn't "boom", but you get the idea) - no more HDD. Or netbook. Or whatever it happened to be on top of. Bonus points if the thief happens to have it on their lap at the time.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you propose a terrible idea. Compared to this, a full disk wipe sounds positively safe and reasonable.
(IMPORTANT: If anyone out there is stupid enough to take this suggestion seriously and implement this obvious deathtrap, I cannot be held accountable for any loss of property, organic damage or Darwin award nominations that result.)
See, that's the thing that people just don't get about evolution. There is no "better" or "improved", because that would mean that evolution has a goal, an 'ideal' in mind - and it doesn't. It doesn't even have a mind. It is just a word which describes the way in which populations adapt to their environment.
True, but that applies mainly to natural selection.
Artificial selection, which is essentially genetic engineering without the high tech, does have "better" or "improved" metrics, usually associated with whatever the domestic species is used for. A dog with a more sensitive nose is "better" as a drug-sniffer than a dog without. Ergo, breeding for greater olfactory sensitivity is "improving" the breed, at least in that narrow range.
Granted, improvement here is a measure of specialization, which may be counterproductive to survival. One of the reasons I dislike the argument that artificial selection is morally superior to genetic engineering is the reality of the extremely negative side effects that breeding for a specific trait can cause.
Actually, I wonder if the ethanol could serve as a sterilizing agent. Presumably the fuel algae are themselves resistant to it, whereas most microorganisms are not. In a high-ethanol environment, they might have the upper hand over normal algae.
Mix X units of ethanol with Y units of seawater, seed with algae, allow photosynthesis, and (eventually) extract 2X units of ethanol, setting aside one unit for reuse. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only stuff you need to do is add more water, more nutrients and remove excess salt buildup.
Right, but you don't want just any manpower here. I suspect being a park ranger in a tiger preserve is one of those jobs that requires more than just a week of on the job training to do. Particularly since it offers several ways to fuck up and die if you aren't careful and knowledgeable about the risks. Never mind that you have to pay the rangers enough that the poachers can't bribe them easily, so it's not a situation where you can throw legions of underpaid unskilled workers at the problem and expect it to go away.
And before somebody busts out the "it's the third world, silly" argument, even in the furthest parts of rural India, a government operation like this is going to be bound by a certain level of CYA oversight. If the local management decides to hire any old idiot to do a dangerous job, and said idiot gets mauled, there will be consequences coming down from higher up for the negligent fool who put him in that position in the first place. Conversely, the more lawless the region, the more likely the negligent fool will be getting a visit from the many irate relatives of the deceased.
So no, the fact that India has a lot of people does not help this situation in the slightest, and if anything makes the problem much worse - try to imagine the difficulty of establishing and maintaining a large nature preserve in a country of 1+ billion spread over an area smaller than the US.
In this particular case, "profit" is exactly what's driving them to extinction. Idiots demand bits of the tiger anatomy for "natural medicine" (read: impotency cures). Poachers supply them with their magical erection-granting kibbles & bits, slowly killing off the last of the species in the process, and making a tidy profit from their crimes.
Poaching. Pure and simple. And these governments simply don't set their priorities on conserving endangered species.
In addition to this, maintaining any kind of boundary around a tiger preserve is going to be a costly, manpower intensive operation. Likely the park didn't get that kind of staff or budget, and left the gate open, so to speak.
Tigers are large. They're territorial apex predators. Each adult male needs lots and lots of room to himself, which means a park of a couple dozen is going to cover a wide territory. Plus, I doubt the park was at capacity with 24, so it probably was set aside with more room than the bare minimum for its now departed population.
As a result, the park's borders are going to be long. Unless they have scads of park rangers, or whatever they're called in this case, they can't police the entirety of it. A poacher could get in unopposed. And given the rarity of the cats, poaching them is probably lucrative enough that they can bribe the, at most, one or two officials who might see them to look the other way.
I can't think of a single genuinely totalitarian regime in the past century that came into being incrementally without something disastrous to accompany it.
(Emphasis added)
I was not saying that the totalitarian regimes of the past did not erode the rights of their citizens incrementally. I'm saying it took a crisis for the citizens to accept this erosion - a losing war, usually, though it doesn't have to be.
You cannot show me a tyrant that rose to power amidst a peaceful and prosperous time for their country. I hold that it is the crises that allow the gradual move toward tyranny, and the erosion of rights that come with it, not the other way around. The universal meme is the strongman seizing more and more power while justifying this in the name of resolving the current crisis.
The right erodes a certain set of civil liberties and the left erodes a different set. Power shifts hands, sure, but the freedoms generally don't come back once they're gradually taken away.
This is a widely held view, but I'm not sure I agree with it. I can, within the confines of 20th century American history, think of examples wherein the freedoms available to the citizenry expanded, rather than contracted.
Most such examples would involve the removal of biased laws, granted. The removal of Jim Crow laws, women's rights, that sort of thing. Cases where rights and freedoms expand by the removal of legal restrictions upon them.
If you look at a narrower subset, for example your mention of the second amendment specifically, you can find places where the rights or freedoms of the citizenry have contracted. I'm not sure that shows an overall trend.
Worth remembering that whoever happens to be in power at the moment often got there by promising more rights/freedoms to the electorate, something they might or might not deliver on. Failure to deliver gives ammunition to the opposition - how often do you see attack adds about how the incumbent broke election promises, so vote the new guy in?
Simplified: Tyrants do not rise to power in vacuum. They're given power in crises, usually because people are afraid and want the tyrant to protect them. The erosion of rights is also present, but it's not the be-all and end-all of how you get from a free society to a totalitarian one, and fixating too heavily on it makes every unjust law appear to be a sinister conspiracy by the powers-that-be.
You or I can oppose an unjust law on the basis of its injustice, without resorting to calling its proponents "Big Brother".
It's times like this that I suggest the respondent look at my posts elsewhere in this story before jumping to conclusions. Calling me an "asshole" for defending these jerks makes you look like someone who has no reading comprehension whatsoever (assuming of course that I was the person you intended to reply to).
I have stated elsewhere my ambivalence about this case. My feelings can be summed up that A) the defendants were horrible people and B) I do not think it just that they be jailed for it. I don't know any way to simplify this further for you.
Right, the argument that begins with a metaphor. If you put a frog in boiling water, it leaps out; put it in warm water and boil it incrementally, and it cooks alive.
Trouble is, the metaphor has it exactly backwards. In real life, the frog getting dropped into boiling water dies swiftly, while the one in the slowly heating pot jumps clear when the temperature rises beyond its comfort level.
Same applies in real life. I can't think of a single genuinely totalitarian regime in the past century that came into being incrementally without something disastrous to accompany it. Nazi Germany had the lingering aftereffects of WWI coupled with a failed economy, same applies to Soviet Russia, China was recovering from an invasion, as were too many other parts of southeast Asia to count. Lets not even get into the myriad tyrants in the middle east, all rising amidst local turmoil.
You get totalitarian regimes in the wake of wars (especially losing ones), societal collapses, economic depressions, massive social injustice or other transitory crises. Things go wrong and the government "steps in", taking power with the promise of giving it back when the trouble has passed, which only happens occasionally.
Impose tyranny gradually and the opposition to tyranny will also rise gradually to meet it. Impose it all at once, under the guise of necessary sacrifices in the face of adversity, and the opposition can be silenced swiftly.
A quick search turns up two separate sets of laws relevant to this discussion.
The first are "hate crime" laws that are, as you say, ways of increasing punishment for crimes motivated by race (which would still be crimes were race irrelevant to the case). The second are "hate crime" laws which are more properly called "hate speech" laws, which are the type mentioned in TFA. It should be noted that the distinction is primarily relevant to lawyers, and in point of fact, slashdot uses the common, rather than legal, usage of the phrase "hate crime" right there in the summary.
So yes, "hate crime" is a perfectly correct term for describing censorship laws. You're being lawyerly and pedantic to insist otherwise.
Were I being pedantic, I would have made a distinction when I posted, but given TFA conflates the phrases anyway, and the person I replied to latched on to that phrasing, I felt drawing a distinction was unnecessary.
I agree completely Citizen! The fact that it was already illegal to incite violence was inadequate - that only protected public safety, and did nothing to deter BadThink. We must trust the Leaders to guide us towards GoodThink at all times! Inciting violence because you lack thought process approved by our Leader is far, far worse than otherwise inciting violence, because it's more important to stop BadThink than violence any day.
The trouble with busting out 1984 references and parodies every time this happens is it cheapens them to the point of irrelevance. If every infringement upon liberty, no matter how significant, is called tyranny, than what shall real tyranny be called?
Orwell would probably be troubled by the direction we're heading in. He'd also probably be appalled at how silly we've made his (legitimate) concerns look to the world.
1984 is a chilling look at how the world could become if we let it, it is not raw material for constructing alarmist strawmen.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all. "Moving part" simply means an internal mechanical component that moves in relation to the rest of the machine. A gear, piston or valve is a moving part.
The machine as a whole does not constitute a single moving part, despite the fact that in the literal interpretation of the phrase it sounds like it could. The key word is "part", i.e. as separated from the whole.
A rocket can be as simple as a hollow tube, capped at one end, filled with solid propellant. You ignite the fuel (preferably via a fuse) and watch it fly. No part of the rocket moves in relation to any other part, unless you wish to interpret "part" so loosely as to include the exhaust.
Nah, nothing so direct.
Radar pulse hits bat. Pulse generates heat, which produces sound waves, inside the bats head (sounds scary, but we've been operating proximate to radar machines since WWII). I've heard of this effect elsewhere, and can readily believe it might be more pronounced in bats than humans. Sound confuses/diverts/drives off bat - they're not sure how exactly, but any number of theories might explain this behaviour.
Not the issue you might think it is. Bat's hearing includes a whole range of sounds outside of what we mere humans can hear. You could probably make an ultrasonic system that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to bats, and nothing at all to us.
Why not just use a direct sonic system, instead of using radar pulses to generate sound indirectly? Bats have very sensitive hearing, and there are probably ways of generating noises that keep them away, either by interfering with their sonar, or simply generating unpleasant aural input. I seem to recall ultrasonic systems devised for driving off human beings, or other animal species, so it's a demonstrated concept.
Of course, such a system could exist and use more energy, or cost more to implement. Nothing in the article about that however.
I've run into the notion of pairing a hydrogen economy with a hydrocarbon one before. While it interests me, I'd rate the likelihood of it becoming a reality well below that of biofuels.
After all, it's the same basic equation. Energy + carbon + water = hydrocarbon energy storage, where energy is in the one case the solar energy trapped by organisms and is in the other case electrical energy generated at a power plant. Biofuel sources are technologically simpler, and therefor likely to become widespread long before we have a synthetic hydrocarbon economy worked out. Doubly so when the best candidate for supplying the energy in the latter case is, as you say, nuclear power, which the public deeply mistrusts. Mind you, the nuclear NIMBY angle comes up for any fossil fuel replacement solutions that don't involve photosynthesis, since transportation requires major energy inputs, no matter what the storage medium (hydrogen, hydrocarbon, battery power, etc), and nuclear is the only man-made power source currently suitable for the job.
Back to the original argument, which was internal combustion engines versus fuel cells. Assuming, for the sake of argument, we devise a working hydrogen fuel economy (meaning we have the energy to produce H2 in usefully huge quantities, and can distribute and store it safely), we're left with the question of how to convert that fuel into work.
One the one hand, we could use an internal combustion engine. This has the advantage of using proven technology, with some or all of the refinements we've made on fossil fuel engines these past hundred years. ICEs are cheap, compatible with our existing repair and manufacturing infrastructure, and couple possibly be adapted to more than one fuel. I very much doubt you could use hydrogen and gasoline interchangeably, but I might believe in an ICE that can run on either hydrogen or propane, assuming the tank could store either, or be swapped out.
On the other hand, we have fuel cells paired with electric motors. They have the advantage of a minimum of moving parts, reduced number of components, lighter weight (per engine block), efficiency and the possibility of integrating technologies incompatible with a pure IC system (regenerative braking for example, though you can put that on a hybrid ICE/Electric). The sole drawback is cost - I realize you also mentioned durability, but to my knowledge fuel cells don't break that often or that easily, and an ICE is hardly malfunction-proof.
To my way of thinking, the cost difference is largely a result of the one technology being vastly more common than the other. The cost of an ICE is driven down by the extent of our manufacturing infrastructure - there's economy of scale at work, something fuel cells lack. The biggest barrier to a FC/Electric car today is not the cells themselves, but rather the storage tank for the hydrogen, and the absence of a hydrogen fuel infrastructure to supply it.
..without the complexities of the internal combustion engine
What complexities are these? ICEs can be made with 2 moving parts.
Rockets can be made with zero moving parts. And there are very, very simple rockets in existence, dating back millennia (think fireworks). That does not mean "rocket science" is easy, and nor does it mean that the statement "rockets are complex" is in any way wrong.
Same goes for piston engines. Yes they can be "simple" - they made the first of the damn things in the days when people still though of "aether" and "phlogiston", it doesn't require advanced chemistry or physics. That does not mean they always, or even often, are. Most such engines are complex beasts that require a great deal of science and engineering to design.
"Hydrogen engine" is vague to the point of uselessness. It's like saying "Combustion engine", which covers everything from steam locomotives to rockets.
I suspect you read "hydrogen engine" to mean a fuel cell powering an electric motor. From the context, it sounds more like he meant an internal combustion engine, fuelled by hydrogen, which is a different beast entirely. Hence the confusion. An ignition source is indeed potentially useful for such an engine, though not absolutely necessary (not all IC engines use spark plugs).
Hydrogen IC engines do exist, both on paper and in prototype, but I strongly suspect that if we ever get hydrogen to work as a fuel, meaning we can generate and store it in the needed quantities, we won't be burning it in a piston engine of any kind. Fuel cells make more sense in that context.
Yes, my car only takes 2 shovel fulls of coal to make it o work and back.
What's that in rods per hogshead?
I would imagine that such a technology could be adapted to other fuel sources like hydrogen. In fact, I suspect that hydrogen engines might actually benefit greatly from this.
I'm not so sure of that. Granted, you can use hydrogen fuel in an IC engine, but storing it is a big PITA. At sea level pressure, gaseous hydrogen has abysmal energy density per volume, and any solution for reducing that volume would have to be adapted for every car on the road. Meaning liquid hydrogen is a non-starter, pressurized hydrogen needs to be stored in a collision-rated tank, and hydrogen dissolved in or bonded with something else needs a cost-effective carrier of limited weight per fuel (else the energy density per weight or price per tank becomes a problem).
If we've got the hydrogen storage problem licked, and with all the R&D focusing on precisely that we very well might someday in the not too far future, then why use an IC engine over a fuel cell? In a FC + electric motor configuration, the engine makes very little noise, there are fewer moving parts than an IC engine, no need for a separate (and heavy) alternator + battery to power the electronics, and probably other advantages I've overlooked. The one downside is cost, which can probably be substantially reduced via mass production - the cost per cell is high now, but we aren't making them for every car on the road.
The only problem with that I see with the Thermite solution is getting through airport security with those bomb sniffing devices.. otherwise I like! :)
The only problem you can see with having a high temperature incendiary that close to your danglies is getting it past security? The only problem?
In the hopes that you'll avoid adding your name to the short list of surviving Darwin Award winners, might I suggest asbestos long-johns and a ceramic codpiece?
(Oh, and airports might not be the problem people think in this case. Most of the security is in place to stop a person from boarding with an explosive, not an incendiary. I'm not at all sure the bomb dogs are trained on Thermite, or anything chemically similar to it.)
Dear FBI.
Regrettably, I have no working computer systems of any kind, as there have been a number of mishaps with my Thermowipe prototype, versions 1 through 25 inclusive.
I am now the proud owner of several lovely portions of melted plastic and metal slag, which I will thank you kindly to take off my hands. You can collect them from the local fire marshal's office, along with the remains of my desk, chair and cat.
Thanks!
R
That's a TERRIBLE idea... Like, HOLY SHIT terrible.
Then your threshold for terrible needs adjusting. I'm sure I can think of something worse than what the AC suggested :-P
For example: a small thermite charge, proximate to the hard drive platter. It's fused to go off if a particular peripheral isn't detected upon boot-up; you keep the peripheral "key" with you, perhaps attached to your regular key-chain. A thief tries to boot, and BOOM (okay, thermite doesn't "boom", but you get the idea) - no more HDD. Or netbook. Or whatever it happened to be on top of. Bonus points if the thief happens to have it on their lap at the time.
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you propose a terrible idea. Compared to this, a full disk wipe sounds positively safe and reasonable.
(IMPORTANT: If anyone out there is stupid enough to take this suggestion seriously and implement this obvious deathtrap, I cannot be held accountable for any loss of property, organic damage or Darwin award nominations that result.)
See, that's the thing that people just don't get about evolution. There is no "better" or "improved", because that would mean that evolution has a goal, an 'ideal' in mind - and it doesn't. It doesn't even have a mind. It is just a word which describes the way in which populations adapt to their environment.
True, but that applies mainly to natural selection.
Artificial selection, which is essentially genetic engineering without the high tech, does have "better" or "improved" metrics, usually associated with whatever the domestic species is used for. A dog with a more sensitive nose is "better" as a drug-sniffer than a dog without. Ergo, breeding for greater olfactory sensitivity is "improving" the breed, at least in that narrow range.
Granted, improvement here is a measure of specialization, which may be counterproductive to survival. One of the reasons I dislike the argument that artificial selection is morally superior to genetic engineering is the reality of the extremely negative side effects that breeding for a specific trait can cause.
Actually, I wonder if the ethanol could serve as a sterilizing agent. Presumably the fuel algae are themselves resistant to it, whereas most microorganisms are not. In a high-ethanol environment, they might have the upper hand over normal algae.
Mix X units of ethanol with Y units of seawater, seed with algae, allow photosynthesis, and (eventually) extract 2X units of ethanol, setting aside one unit for reuse. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only stuff you need to do is add more water, more nutrients and remove excess salt buildup.
Right, but you don't want just any manpower here. I suspect being a park ranger in a tiger preserve is one of those jobs that requires more than just a week of on the job training to do. Particularly since it offers several ways to fuck up and die if you aren't careful and knowledgeable about the risks. Never mind that you have to pay the rangers enough that the poachers can't bribe them easily, so it's not a situation where you can throw legions of underpaid unskilled workers at the problem and expect it to go away.
And before somebody busts out the "it's the third world, silly" argument, even in the furthest parts of rural India, a government operation like this is going to be bound by a certain level of CYA oversight. If the local management decides to hire any old idiot to do a dangerous job, and said idiot gets mauled, there will be consequences coming down from higher up for the negligent fool who put him in that position in the first place. Conversely, the more lawless the region, the more likely the negligent fool will be getting a visit from the many irate relatives of the deceased.
So no, the fact that India has a lot of people does not help this situation in the slightest, and if anything makes the problem much worse - try to imagine the difficulty of establishing and maintaining a large nature preserve in a country of 1+ billion spread over an area smaller than the US.
In this particular case, "profit" is exactly what's driving them to extinction. Idiots demand bits of the tiger anatomy for "natural medicine" (read: impotency cures). Poachers supply them with their magical erection-granting kibbles & bits, slowly killing off the last of the species in the process, and making a tidy profit from their crimes.
Poaching. Pure and simple. And these governments simply don't set their priorities on conserving endangered species.
In addition to this, maintaining any kind of boundary around a tiger preserve is going to be a costly, manpower intensive operation. Likely the park didn't get that kind of staff or budget, and left the gate open, so to speak.
Tigers are large. They're territorial apex predators. Each adult male needs lots and lots of room to himself, which means a park of a couple dozen is going to cover a wide territory. Plus, I doubt the park was at capacity with 24, so it probably was set aside with more room than the bare minimum for its now departed population.
As a result, the park's borders are going to be long. Unless they have scads of park rangers, or whatever they're called in this case, they can't police the entirety of it. A poacher could get in unopposed. And given the rarity of the cats, poaching them is probably lucrative enough that they can bribe the, at most, one or two officials who might see them to look the other way.
Please read completely, rather than selectively.
I can't think of a single genuinely totalitarian regime in the past century that came into being incrementally without something disastrous to accompany it.
(Emphasis added)
I was not saying that the totalitarian regimes of the past did not erode the rights of their citizens incrementally. I'm saying it took a crisis for the citizens to accept this erosion - a losing war, usually, though it doesn't have to be.
You cannot show me a tyrant that rose to power amidst a peaceful and prosperous time for their country. I hold that it is the crises that allow the gradual move toward tyranny, and the erosion of rights that come with it, not the other way around. The universal meme is the strongman seizing more and more power while justifying this in the name of resolving the current crisis.
The right erodes a certain set of civil liberties and the left erodes a different set. Power shifts hands, sure, but the freedoms generally don't come back once they're gradually taken away.
This is a widely held view, but I'm not sure I agree with it. I can, within the confines of 20th century American history, think of examples wherein the freedoms available to the citizenry expanded, rather than contracted.
Most such examples would involve the removal of biased laws, granted. The removal of Jim Crow laws, women's rights, that sort of thing. Cases where rights and freedoms expand by the removal of legal restrictions upon them.
If you look at a narrower subset, for example your mention of the second amendment specifically, you can find places where the rights or freedoms of the citizenry have contracted. I'm not sure that shows an overall trend.
Worth remembering that whoever happens to be in power at the moment often got there by promising more rights/freedoms to the electorate, something they might or might not deliver on. Failure to deliver gives ammunition to the opposition - how often do you see attack adds about how the incumbent broke election promises, so vote the new guy in?
Rather than rehash my previous arguments, I'll simply link to them:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1299639&cid=28663451
Simplified: Tyrants do not rise to power in vacuum. They're given power in crises, usually because people are afraid and want the tyrant to protect them. The erosion of rights is also present, but it's not the be-all and end-all of how you get from a free society to a totalitarian one, and fixating too heavily on it makes every unjust law appear to be a sinister conspiracy by the powers-that-be.
You or I can oppose an unjust law on the basis of its injustice, without resorting to calling its proponents "Big Brother".
It's times like this that I suggest the respondent look at my posts elsewhere in this story before jumping to conclusions. Calling me an "asshole" for defending these jerks makes you look like someone who has no reading comprehension whatsoever (assuming of course that I was the person you intended to reply to).
I have stated elsewhere my ambivalence about this case. My feelings can be summed up that A) the defendants were horrible people and B) I do not think it just that they be jailed for it. I don't know any way to simplify this further for you.
Right, the argument that begins with a metaphor. If you put a frog in boiling water, it leaps out; put it in warm water and boil it incrementally, and it cooks alive.
Trouble is, the metaphor has it exactly backwards. In real life, the frog getting dropped into boiling water dies swiftly, while the one in the slowly heating pot jumps clear when the temperature rises beyond its comfort level.
Same applies in real life. I can't think of a single genuinely totalitarian regime in the past century that came into being incrementally without something disastrous to accompany it. Nazi Germany had the lingering aftereffects of WWI coupled with a failed economy, same applies to Soviet Russia, China was recovering from an invasion, as were too many other parts of southeast Asia to count. Lets not even get into the myriad tyrants in the middle east, all rising amidst local turmoil.
You get totalitarian regimes in the wake of wars (especially losing ones), societal collapses, economic depressions, massive social injustice or other transitory crises. Things go wrong and the government "steps in", taking power with the promise of giving it back when the trouble has passed, which only happens occasionally.
Impose tyranny gradually and the opposition to tyranny will also rise gradually to meet it. Impose it all at once, under the guise of necessary sacrifices in the face of adversity, and the opposition can be silenced swiftly.
A quick search turns up two separate sets of laws relevant to this discussion.
The first are "hate crime" laws that are, as you say, ways of increasing punishment for crimes motivated by race (which would still be crimes were race irrelevant to the case). The second are "hate crime" laws which are more properly called "hate speech" laws, which are the type mentioned in TFA. It should be noted that the distinction is primarily relevant to lawyers, and in point of fact, slashdot uses the common, rather than legal, usage of the phrase "hate crime" right there in the summary.
So yes, "hate crime" is a perfectly correct term for describing censorship laws. You're being lawyerly and pedantic to insist otherwise.
Were I being pedantic, I would have made a distinction when I posted, but given TFA conflates the phrases anyway, and the person I replied to latched on to that phrasing, I felt drawing a distinction was unnecessary.
I agree completely Citizen! The fact that it was already illegal to incite violence was inadequate - that only protected public safety, and did nothing to deter BadThink. We must trust the Leaders to guide us towards GoodThink at all times! Inciting violence because you lack thought process approved by our Leader is far, far worse than otherwise inciting violence, because it's more important to stop BadThink than violence any day.
The trouble with busting out 1984 references and parodies every time this happens is it cheapens them to the point of irrelevance. If every infringement upon liberty, no matter how significant, is called tyranny, than what shall real tyranny be called?
Orwell would probably be troubled by the direction we're heading in. He'd also probably be appalled at how silly we've made his (legitimate) concerns look to the world.
1984 is a chilling look at how the world could become if we let it, it is not raw material for constructing alarmist strawmen.
Bah, being pedantic is supposed to be my bit. Git offa my lawn, you kid!
And anyway, to be really pedantic, they did seek asylum after they were charged. I omitted that they had also been convicted at that point.
(I probably should have specified that they were convicted, but I was in a hurry when I proofread what I wrote.)