check out the "Generation By Fuel Type" tables... if you imagine Germany gets something better you probably deserve the overcharge on your electricity bill.
yes, my country gets 30% from hydro each year (got close to 50% during the '90s, when the post-communist recession was driving the economy to the bottom) , but for some reason that does not count as "renewables" when Eurostat does the counting...
less than 5% are the "new renewables": solar, wind and biogas... hydro does not need subsidies
An intelligent combination of capacitors, solar power, wind power, and so on can make a difference.
so, in Germany you have super-capacitors ?
How many billion € are you spending yearly to get less than 5% of consumption from "renewables" ? How many hundreds of € are you personally paying each month to maintain the "renewables" (look at your electricity bills and fuel bills, and see how much of that is taxes ) ?... think a bit about it and you might realize that it's just what in US is very politely called "pork": corporate welfare for the 1%-ers.
But very slowly and very messily. They get heart attacks and strokes more often than non smokers.
so, health-nuts don't die this way ? They get taken to heaven by an angel instead of rotting inside until no amount of medical intervention can save them, the way it happens to us, the sinners ?
government is paying for the health consequences of smoking
... in fact, smokers die young and skip the age where government is paying a lot for health care. Smokers, obese, gluttons, drug users etc. consume a lot less than a healthy living person that lives until 85.
the shift from 100 hours to 50 hours per week was largely the result of mass protests and unionization
... it happened when the cost of equipment surpassed the cost of labor, and having a tired worked break a machine by sticking his hand between wheels was more expensive than having 4 shift changes than 2 shift changes in a day, and when productivity allowed living wages for only 8h/day instead of the 10, 12 or 14h/day.
Mass protests and unionization were dealt swiftly when inconvenient.
That is true, "Occupy..." is peanuts (or a PR stunt, same as the "Tea Party"), more so when you think about how the "19th century labor movement" was less about labor conditions and more about granting privileges to particular labor unions and keeping non-unionized workers out of work, and the "mass protests" were usually huge brawls between the unionized workers and the non-unionized workers.
Why does it take 25 years to pay a house that can be built in 6 weeks? zoning => limited offer
Why are we still working 40 hour weeks? Because we consume a lot more than people that worked 100 hour weeks 200 years ago.
What are we producing, why, and for who? We're producing mainly to allow other products to be produced: 200 years ago the production chain had 3-4 links at most, now it's a lot longer and most work goes in producing inputs for the production of other inputs for the production of other inputs etc. One farmer does indeed produce more than 100 farmers 200 years ago, but in his work he consumes inputs produced by 50 other people... there was a productivity growth but you get the wrong impression if you look only at one worker.
"in the process of developing, manufacturing, and launching rockets on an industrial scale"
that another problem: they spent more money in mass producing two useless rocket designs than US spent on the entire Manhattan Project... not to speak of the lives wasted or the resources wasted on them.
German rocket technology was crap, even with 20 years of research in US it could not be fixed to be useful at something else except throwing rocks at a city (yes, the payload of a V2 during the war was more often than not a chunk of concrete, and they could not hit a target smaller than London) or suborbital ballistic missiles.
The soviets were building rockets since the late 20s and had better designs. They built only two rockets based on the V2 design (R1 and R2, used only for suborbital ballistic missiles), and abandoned it when they reached the limits. Sputnik did not ride a "V2" clone.
yes, extremely novel, they impurified the semiconductor with cellulose... or is it "they reinforced the semiconductor with cellulose fibers"... equally novel
"The new estimate comes a day after the French Parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly. " it seems their bosses have some other opinion, since they did not blame anthropogenic global warming.
I could not care less how many years they spent in school or for how long they published studies...
Thank you for the comparison with the "deniers of climate change", I am honored by it...... well, honored if I am am allowed to pick which "denier" to be compared with.
they put it in Novosibirsk, which means the batteries won't be exported... the army needs batteries too:)
Not sure all the projects are idiotic... they might not make sense per se, but you need to train engineers and line managers before you get to build the real stuff, no matter how good your research and design team is.
Worked with a couple of guys from Novosibirsk, they were good... to bad the management was crap, but the management was in yet another country.
France (and the rest of Europe too) has an aging population. If you have more old people, then more will die. They just compared with the death in the previous year but did not adjust to the population structure.
Where I live temperatures over 100F in the summer are the rule, not the exception, and it was the same 100 years ago. Nobody complained much about this until the TV stations started posting color coded temperature alerts...
The purpose of subsidizing production is to guarantee that production actually happens
Let's subsidize production of carbon nano-tubes... let's spend, each country, 5% of GDP on making carbon nano-tubes using the current technology, surely this will help build the space elevator... or let us all make mud cakes, this will end world hunger.
Mass production of inefficient solutions is a waste of resources. You don't need to build 1000000 solar panels to test the technology.
In my country, if we work outside the country we don't get taxed at all by my country, pay tax in the country I work in.
My province spent public money to build a toll road that has become very profitable for the local cheese and vegetable producers, private schools and hitchhikers.
Where do the money for those subsidies come from ? Oil and coal are taxed, then some of the taxes are given back. The "renewables" get taxed too, but a lot more money are given back to the producers.
e-learning works, it's the brick and mortar schools that became babysitter replacements and they won't perform better no matter how much "e-" you add in front of it.
Would it be e-learning if the textbooks and practice quizzes would be distributed in an electronic format ? Would it be still e-learning if the reference materials would be available in an electronic format ? Would it be e-learning if the teachers would use Skype/YM/GTalk/forums to interact with the students after classes ? I guess it would, but then the "e-learning" solution providers would gain less.
The best e-learning tool is wikipedia. It's not perfect, or accurate or neutral, but in itself is a learning tool and the schools are stupid not to embrace it.
I'm guessing it's because continuing the program allowed him to get the funding and resources he needed to continue developing his designs. If his goal was to reach space, the effectiveness they had as weapons (where accuracy is the most important factor) would have been unimportant to him.
did he continue to develop his designs ?:)... that is, until he lost his job with the Nazis and had to find another employer and sell another miracle rocket? Korolyov actually had better success in improving von Braun's designs than von Braun did, but he also was smart enough to abandon them when the limit was reached. Sputnik did not get to space on a "von Braun" rocket.
he was in charge when billions were spend on mass production of a dummy rocket... yeah, it could go to space, but it was not useful for anything else... he was not interesting in developing rockets, he was interested in being in charge
Instead of lionizing him the space-maniacs on Slashdot should consider what was the real price for the propaganda victory of going to the moon: same money could be spent on developing better launch systems, and we would have been closer now to actually having a permanent presence on Luna. You don't mass produce a development design: you get a prototype, test it, then improve that prototype or try another design etc. until you get something that you can actually use without bankrupting yourself... which is what the soviets did; they went bankrupt in the end, but not because of the space program.
"but the Eisenhower administration prohibited them from doing so"... damn' politicians, eh ?
"it was a Redstone (derivative of the V2) which launched the first two Mercury missions."... and the other 10 were, what... Atlas... politics again ?
von braun might have been a charismatic and go-getting manager, but he was an expert at hugely expensive systems, too, sinking an enormous amount of resources into mass-producing a flawed rocket, much like the engineers that build the heavy tanks used in the last years of the war. He should get a statue for his personal positive contribution to the Allied victory. The soviets should have built him a statue for delaying the US space program.
If von braun were working in software, he would have convinced Balmer to put all the money in Microsoft Bob v.2, v.3 and v.4, arguing that it almost works and next iteration will get it.
Korolyov worked on rockets since the the late '20s, and his designs had nothing to do with V2 except for the short time he tried to fix the V2 design (the R1 and R2 rockets). Iterations of his rockets still fly. Von Braun's work is buried, and rightly so.
Slashdot Mirror
recent data for UK
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
check out the "Generation By Fuel Type" tables ... if you imagine Germany gets something better you probably deserve the overcharge on your electricity bill.
yes, my country gets 30% from hydro each year (got close to 50% during the '90s, when the post-communist recession was driving the economy to the bottom) , but for some reason that does not count as "renewables" when Eurostat does the counting ...
less than 5% are the "new renewables": solar, wind and biogas ... hydro does not need subsidies
An intelligent combination of capacitors, solar power, wind power, and so on can make a difference.
so, in Germany you have super-capacitors ?
How many billion € are you spending yearly to get less than 5% of consumption from "renewables" ? How many hundreds of € are you personally paying each month to maintain the "renewables" (look at your electricity bills and fuel bills, and see how much of that is taxes ) ? ... think a bit about it and you might realize that it's just what in US is very politely called "pork": corporate welfare for the 1%-ers.
But very slowly and very messily. They get heart attacks and strokes more often than non smokers.
so, health-nuts don't die this way ? They get taken to heaven by an angel instead of rotting inside until no amount of medical intervention can save them, the way it happens to us, the sinners ?
government is paying for the health consequences of smoking
... in fact, smokers die young and skip the age where government is paying a lot for health care. Smokers, obese, gluttons, drug users etc. consume a lot less than a healthy living person that lives until 85.
yes, let them go broke, let's see who is going to buy from Germany :) , and you'll see who is carrying whom
the shift from 100 hours to 50 hours per week was largely the result of mass protests and unionization
... it happened when the cost of equipment surpassed the cost of labor, and having a tired worked break a machine by sticking his hand between wheels was more expensive than having 4 shift changes than 2 shift changes in a day, and when productivity allowed living wages for only 8h/day instead of the 10, 12 or 14h/day.
Mass protests and unionization were dealt swiftly when inconvenient.
That is true, "Occupy ..." is peanuts (or a PR stunt, same as the "Tea Party"), more so when you think about how the "19th century labor movement" was less about labor conditions and more about granting privileges to particular labor unions and keeping non-unionized workers out of work, and the "mass protests" were usually huge brawls between the unionized workers and the non-unionized workers.
Why does it take 25 years to pay a house that can be built in 6 weeks? zoning => limited offer
Why are we still working 40 hour weeks? Because we consume a lot more than people that worked 100 hour weeks 200 years ago.
What are we producing, why, and for who? We're producing mainly to allow other products to be produced: 200 years ago the production chain had 3-4 links at most, now it's a lot longer and most work goes in producing inputs for the production of other inputs for the production of other inputs etc. One farmer does indeed produce more than 100 farmers 200 years ago, but in his work he consumes inputs produced by 50 other people ... there was a productivity growth but you get the wrong impression if you look only at one worker.
"in the process of developing, manufacturing, and launching rockets on an industrial scale"
that another problem: they spent more money in mass producing two useless rocket designs than US spent on the entire Manhattan Project ... not to speak of the lives wasted or the resources wasted on them.
how is this informative ?
German rocket technology was crap, even with 20 years of research in US it could not be fixed to be useful at something else except throwing rocks at a city (yes, the payload of a V2 during the war was more often than not a chunk of concrete, and they could not hit a target smaller than London) or suborbital ballistic missiles.
The soviets were building rockets since the late 20s and had better designs. They built only two rockets based on the V2 design (R1 and R2, used only for suborbital ballistic missiles), and abandoned it when they reached the limits. Sputnik did not ride a "V2" clone.
yes, extremely novel, they impurified the semiconductor with cellulose ... or is it "they reinforced the semiconductor with cellulose fibers" ... equally novel
have you read the article ? :)
"The new estimate comes a day after the French Parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly. " it seems their bosses have some other opinion, since they did not blame anthropogenic global warming.
I could not care less how many years they spent in school or for how long they published studies ...
Thank you for the comparison with the "deniers of climate change", I am honored by it ... ... well, honored if I am am allowed to pick which "denier" to be compared with.
they put it in Novosibirsk, which means the batteries won't be exported ... the army needs batteries too :)
Not sure all the projects are idiotic ... they might not make sense per se, but you need to train engineers and line managers before you get to build the real stuff, no matter how good your research and design team is.
Worked with a couple of guys from Novosibirsk, they were good ... to bad the management was crap, but the management was in yet another country.
alright, next question:
France (and the rest of Europe too) has an aging population. If you have more old people, then more will die. They just compared with the death in the previous year but did not adjust to the population structure.
Where I live temperatures over 100F in the summer are the rule, not the exception, and it was the same 100 years ago. Nobody complained much about this until the ...
TV stations started posting color coded temperature alerts
yes, but did those people die _because_ of the heat ? People die all the time everywhere for all sort of reasons.
no, they should move the thermometers further away from the exhausts of the air conditioning units ...
The purpose of subsidizing production is to guarantee that production actually happens
Let's subsidize production of carbon nano-tubes ... let's spend, each country, 5% of GDP on making carbon nano-tubes using the current technology, surely this will help build the space elevator ... or let us all make mud cakes, this will end world hunger.
Mass production of inefficient solutions is a waste of resources. You don't need to build 1000000 solar panels to test the technology.
In my country, if we work outside the country we don't get taxed at all by my country, pay tax in the country I work in.
My province spent public money to build a toll road that has become very profitable for the local cheese and vegetable producers, private schools and hitchhikers.
Where do the money for those subsidies come from ? Oil and coal are taxed, then some of the taxes are given back. The "renewables" get taxed too, but a lot more money are given back to the producers.
but ultimately the methods of making green energy need to be cheap to produce to begin with.
so you subsidize _research_ into production too, not only fundamental research on how to get energy when you leave semiconductors in the sun ...
care to find a quote ?
gifts used to be given on Saint Nicholas day, Cristmass was a purely religious holy day.
e-learning works, it's the brick and mortar schools that became babysitter replacements and they won't perform better no matter how much "e-" you add in front of it.
Would it be e-learning if the textbooks and practice quizzes would be distributed in an electronic format ? Would it be still e-learning if the reference materials would be available in an electronic format ? Would it be e-learning if the teachers would use Skype/YM/GTalk/forums to interact with the students after classes ? I guess it would, but then the "e-learning" solution providers would gain less.
The best e-learning tool is wikipedia. It's not perfect, or accurate or neutral, but in itself is a learning tool and the schools are stupid not to embrace it.
I'm guessing it's because continuing the program allowed him to get the funding and resources he needed to continue developing his designs. If his goal was to reach space, the effectiveness they had as weapons (where accuracy is the most important factor) would have been unimportant to him.
did he continue to develop his designs ? :) ... that is, until he lost his job with the Nazis and had to find another employer and sell another miracle rocket? Korolyov actually had better success in improving von Braun's designs than von Braun did, but he also was smart enough to abandon them when the limit was reached. Sputnik did not get to space on a "von Braun" rocket.
he was in charge when billions were spend on mass production of a dummy rocket ... yeah, it could go to space, but it was not useful for anything else ... he was not interesting in developing rockets, he was interested in being in charge
Instead of lionizing him the space-maniacs on Slashdot should consider what was the real price for the propaganda victory of going to the moon: same money could be spent on developing better launch systems, and we would have been closer now to actually having a permanent presence on Luna. You don't mass produce a development design: you get a prototype, test it, then improve that prototype or try another design etc. until you get something that you can actually use without bankrupting yourself ... which is what the soviets did; they went bankrupt in the end, but not because of the space program.
so, why did he accept to supervise mass production of useless weapons ? Hated his countrymen, or just did not want to lose his job ?
"but the Eisenhower administration prohibited them from doing so" ... damn' politicians, eh ?
"it was a Redstone (derivative of the V2) which launched the first two Mercury missions." ... and the other 10 were, what ... Atlas ... politics again ?
von braun might have been a charismatic and go-getting manager, but he was an expert at hugely expensive systems, too, sinking an enormous amount of resources into mass-producing a flawed rocket, much like the engineers that build the heavy tanks used in the last years of the war. He should get a statue for his personal positive contribution to the Allied victory. The soviets should have built him a statue for delaying the US space program.
If von braun were working in software, he would have convinced Balmer to put all the money in Microsoft Bob v.2, v.3 and v.4, arguing that it almost works and next iteration will get it.
Korolyov worked on rockets since the the late '20s, and his designs had nothing to do with V2 except for the short time he tried to fix the V2 design (the R1 and R2 rockets). Iterations of his rockets still fly. Von Braun's work is buried, and rightly so.