You are lucky. Though I find the Model M helps a lot myself, so your luck is both that your genetics are right, and you have found good equipment. I have both carpal tunnel, and a more generic wrist pain. Carpal tunnel isn't a problem I get from computer (though others do), but rather physical labor. (Good equipment helps there too, my $100 hammer really makes the pain go away!) From the computer I get wrist pain, which I have traced to using the mouse for long periods. I've learned to switch hands, which helps a lot. Of course vi/emacs (I use both...) also prevents a lot of need for the mouse.
Why should guns be banned from school? For all the obvious reasons. Think about it, seriously.
I have thought about it seriously. I can not come up with a good reason to ban guns from schools. Remember the "bad guys" ignore laws, so all we the ban does is restrict the law abiding people from having a gun around. Reasons to have a gun in school: target practice, which should be a part of gym class, just like archery is (at least it was in my school). Then there is protection, if a bad guys brings a gun to school and starts shooting the only good way to stop them is to shoot back, which the "good guys" won't be doing if they don't have a gun. Yes, accidents can happen, but accidents can happen otherwise too. There are more guns than people in the US, yet almost nobody dies in a gun accident (a few every year), drowning is more likely to kill you. Sure there are a lot of murders committed with guns, but that isn't the fault of the tool.
My brain is to think. I can spend a few minutes multiplying 1526.86 * 93477.193 or I can get the answer in moments from my calculator. Now if the problem is fourth grade math, yes I should be doing it with paper and a pencil, but if the problem comes up in forth grade science from some experiment my time is better spent understanding the problem at hand. I already proved in math that I can get the right answer (or worse proved I can't, and now my math lacks are going to take down my science score) so I'm better off spending the time understanding the science behind those numbers than the math behind it.
Thats not nearly as bad as the time My sister wanted to go Minneapolis-Washington D.C., and found the cheapest fare involved a plane change in Paris, France! She decided not to do that, but seriously considered spending a day in France both ways to see the sights, it would still save money. (IIRC she didn't have enough vacation time saved up)
You can build yourself a better case though if you can tell the court: "I was unable to find a legal source for X, so I was forced to download it illegally. I am perfectly willing to pay for legal rights, as proof I have bought several games from StarRoms. If copyright holder would sell rights for a reasonable price I would pay it."
The judge/jury is likely to find that you only owe a small amount. Of course if it gets to court you are in contact with the copyright owner and can settle out of court before it gets this far. Thus your argument should finish "[some large number] dollars is not reasonable in my opinion, StarRoms charges just a few dollars. I have therefore deleted this Rom from my system." Again, the court is likely to decide you did all that a reasonable person could do, and fine your a tiny amount.
Insightful up to the last paragraph. Sure I can only learn so much (knowledge and skills). Becoming good at playing the guitar means a trade off, and perhaps by making that choice you don't learn to skin rabbits, fly airplanes, and so on. Yet some have done several of the above. There is enough knowledge that you cannot learn it all. As a population we do not lose old skills, at least not near as often as we learn new ones.
Some things take years to learn, some take minutes to learn and years to master, and some take just minutes to learn. Some are worth teaching everyone (reading for example), some are worth learning despite no practical use (playing guitar for example), and some are hobbies that a few people learn for the fun of it (skinning rabbits). Few skills are lost over time though, and now that reading is universal less are lost because those who know can write down for latter use.
Look around and you will find a few people who can tat, make chain mail, build a bark canoe and so on. All useless skills in this modern world, but kept alive because someone made it their hobby. I've seen books on all of the above, and many more.
If the doom sayers worst perdictions come true and you are one of the few people to survive [whichever disaster is in vogue today] you can go to a library and get books for the skills you need. Find someone to have kids with, and you are likely to pass reading and simple math onto them, and they to their kids. Eventually civilization will return with population, and your many times great grandkids will have an advantage in that they can read our books to tell them what works so they don't make the mistakes we did.
Why should guns be banned from school? Serious question, why? Forget about the bad guys, they are going to break the rules anyway, so whats the point in keeping good guys away from guns?
Yes this is on topic: why should calculators be banned from math? Once again something that sounds good, but requires more thought. In truth, higher math like algebra is normally done on contrived problems where the math is easier and faster to do in your head. (and you learn that if you can't do the math in your head to re-do some earlier work as you likely made a mistake) In cases where the math isn't easy give the kid a calculator and let him worry about the problem instead of of carrying the 1...
Challenge all assumptions. Sometimes they have a good reason, but don't state them as facts unless you are prepared to back them up. You will encounter people like me who don't see the point in keeping guns our of schools.
Minnesota rules
I'm unemployed right now, so I have to go through these... the relavant parts:
2. Partially or Totally Unemployed Through No Fault of Your Own
Even with enough wages to qualify for unemployment benefits, the reason for your job separation could disqualify you from receiving benefits. Some reasons are:
Quit without a good reason caused by the employer - Leaving for personal reasons or circumstances, not because it was the employer's fault.
Discharged for misconduct - For actions such as continued, unexcused absences and/or tardiness; breaking company rules; neglect of duties; insubordination; being impaired by drugs or alcohol on the job; fighting; harassment.
Refused a job or failed to apply for a suitable job without "good cause"- For refusing work that was suitable for you based on your work history, training, skills, ability, the pay scale in the local labor market, the distance to the job, and how long you have been out of work.
On strike -When off work because you are a member of the striking union or are participating in the strike by honoring a picket line.
NOTE: If you were not laid off due to lack of work from your last job, a Customer Service Center representative will contact you and your last employer for additional information. If you are disqualified from benefits because of a job separation, you will be mailed a written determination explaining the reason.
I've also heard it from court papers that "if a reasonable person would quit in this situation" Thus you can quit if you are assigned a job that while you can do, is not safe. They might agree that being asked to train your replacement before you are laid off counts, or might not, hard to say. A reasonable person might not quit, but would agree that it is a reasonable thing to do, OTOH, it is a safe job that you are qualified to do. You better be able to prove they were intending to lay your off after this though.
I wouldn't expect unemployment offices to have much sympathy for a company moving your job offshore though. They have some ability to make life hard on companies, but I'm not sure how much (likely very little)
Yeah, midevil warm period. little ice age. Just in the last 1000 years we have seen both enough cooling and warming to be significant. And despite all the global warming claims, the earth is not as warm not as it has been.
Why is it unsafe to mix pedestrians and cars in this situation? Wal-Mart mixes them in their parking lot, and cars move a lot faster in a parking lot than waiting in line for the ATM. I'll grant that the blind will have more trouble than a seeing person, but if the drivers are paying attention (a different rant) this isn't more of a problem than anywhere else. Less of a problem than crossing the street for instance because the cars are moving slower.
I regularly use the drive up ATMs as a pedestrian, the windows in my car do not work, and I've seen others do so as well. Not common, but not unheard of. If the bank is closed this may be the only choice. Outside of banks, ATMs don't normally accept deposits.
As for fast food, the only reason they don't accept pedestrians is because the sensors detect metal, and so they do not know you are out there. For short orders it is far cheaper service drive through. 3 people in drive through can handle more orders than 6 people at the counter, at least when I managed fast food, by dollar value. In fact some places have "walk-throughs" inside if they get enough short orders. Its not mixing with cars that is the problem, it is that sensors that detect people are not worth it considering the typical customer.
In response to your second point: the local banks around here have installed headphone jacks for the blind. I don't know how it works, but they put some effort into it. This at the drive through ATMs, so I know they want the blind to use them. Perhaps your local blind club should talk to the bank and get them installed.
Remember last year when every story (almost twice the normal amount it seemed like) was obviously completely false? I have to say that the stories this year a much better. Likely false, but there is enough behind them that they could be true. Slashdot is doing a much better job this year, I'm enjoying the stories.
Okay, consider me your boss until they give you something else to do. Your assignment: Konqueror (KDE) has a number of bugs, particularly CSS related. Start fixing them.
My email address is on my homepage (nothing else worth looking at there...), should you seriously need someone to direct you. Otherwise, just start hacking away at something. I'm unemployed right now, and I'm keeping busy by hacking on KDE. (But since I'm unemployed I don't have to look busy so I don't get as much done as I'd like)
No it doesn't, load hay into the back of moving trucks is easy work. Doesn't pay good (farmers do not have to pay minimum wage, but then it is all cash so you don't pay taxes so that washes), and hard work, but you get to be outside in the sun all day.
What sucks is unloading those wagons. Well not the unloading itself, but you normally unload into a shed that is 130+ inside. Sure it is shade, but there is no breeze. Don't forget that farming is the most dangerous job out there, meaning that not only are you working in 130 degrees, loading 80 lbs bales, but they are falling from 15 feet above you. You need to run into this steady stream, grab a bale, and get out before the next one comes.
Farmers daughters sounds good, but the ones I knew needed 10+ years to grow up before I'd enjoy looking at them.
I've also had jobs where I got to walk on a 3.5inch wide board, 16 feet in the air. Or a 5.5 inch wide board 40 feet up. I never got used to that. I know some people do that 100 stories up, but it doesn't matter much.
The worst job I ever had was draintile for a new house. Every contractor working on that house for the last 3 months was peeing into the corner where I was now digging. On a hot humid day.
With good crop rotation, and other standard farming practices soil depletion and erosion is not an issue. Hasn't been for years. Ethanol can be made from many different crops, corn is just one of them. Even assuming normal farming, as opposed to the most conservative ones soil overall stays the same, but fertilizer is added to keep it there (or often improve it first and then keep it there). Fertilizer manufacture is becoming much more efficient. While farmers are using less.
I am of course ignoring solar in claiming ethanol is energy position. IIRC plants are something like 2% efficient in converting solar energy to other forms, while solar cells can reach 40%. (laboratory, but 10% is reasonable in the real world, and these are old figures)
A quick google search reveals that typical studies show ethanol had 1:1.34 energy ratio in the mid 90s, and that number was going up, that is studies from the early 90s did have a negative balance. Interestingly, Gasoline production is quoted at 1:0.85, that is more energy is needed to produce gasoline than you get from it! (mostly because of cracking and other refinery costs)
Read that again. I did not say there were =. I said that you can extract biodiesel from corn, and then from the waste of that extract ethanol. Different processes. Biodiesel is just the corn oil, which is not useful for making ethanol. I don't know if it can work practicly, but in theory it does.
I've never had much luck with brakes on my bikes. I normally stopped by dragging my feet, which worked, though not well. That includes times when my commute was 13 miles one way.
Though I will admit to a few times when I was lucky. Even still you are a coward.
Sure, but do you use all those services? Not all churchs are equal, nor are schools, cafes, comptuer shops, and so on. (I know nothing about off-license, pharmacys, tanning salons, or kitchen salesrooms, but I would assume they are not all equal) Walking is fine, if everything is equal, what if it is not.
What if both of those two churches are false, and will lead all members to hell. So you end up going 10 miles (passing perhaps 10 churches on the way...) before you get to one that actually leads to eternal life, and isn't just a feel good place for those on the way to hell.
Perhaps that school doesn't teach kids to think, so your kids end up going to a private school elsewhere anyway.
Similear areguments can be applied to the other shops. Though I would agree that if you can't stand anything near you, either you are too picky, or you should move. Lets assume that a couple of those shops are good enough, and overall you like the neighborhood, and you would just have problems with other ones too.
Not to mention jobs, if you and your wife both work minimum wage jobs you can work withing walking distance of about anywhere. If you are more skilled you might be forced to take jobs that are quite a distance away from where the other works, so one of you at least cannot walk. What if whoever is walking gets laid off and the only job that pays for her skills isn't in walking distance? Do you move or end up both commuting by something other than walking?
Ethanol is NOT a net loss as a fuel. 15-20 years ago it was, but modern ethanol plants are energy positive (a little bit). Even back then ethanol was a net positive because even though more energy was used to make ethanol than was taken out, the by-products of ethanol production have valueable in themselves, so you can discount some of the energy extration because the byproducts would be grown anyway. (though the by-products are not as valueable as the whole plant so it may not have been worth it.
I've been told that you can extract corn oil and make bio-diesel, and then use the by-products of that process to make ethanol with little/no loss of efficiency. If true this makes ethanol/bio-diesel an even better win. (But I don't know how to evaluate that claim)
Just call up a list of all the people who used to work for you, and tell HR they were 1s and 2s, so you "convinced" them to leave. All you have left now are 3s, 4s, and 5s.
Seriously, there is always a bell curve, but if there is someone on the bottom of it they are either someone you should fire, or, if you had kept all those incompetent to do the job, they would work out to 3s on the curve. That is the curve is skewed.
The US learned a lot from space exploration in the 60s. Not, IMHO enough to justify the cost, but there was a lot learned. How to build big rockets for instance. Sure the Russians can get small payloads into space, but not big ones. They don't have rockets with the ability to get men and all their support gear to the moon and back. The Saturn V was a large rocket.
Re:Over-population is real but it begs the questio
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How To Feed The World
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· Score: 1
Yes, Japan is crowded. However a look at statistics will show that they have a age imbalance. There are more old people than young people. In other words the population is shrinking. Modern education, and toys mean there is plenty to do other than reproduce, and people know the effects of kids on their life style, so many choose not to have kids. On a macro scale Japan's population is set to drop.
You obvisouly did not read the artical and know nothing about how it works in reality. It may stand to reason that increasing food supply increases popultion (less people die from malnutrition), but in the real world a better food supply makes most people have less kids, by enough to not only compensate, but over compenstate. As the artical shows, the grains introduced in the 1960s to parts of Africa have already worked to greatly slow the population growth over there.
Yeah, they suck. I wouldn't live under one either. However there are also laws in the US. Many of these things forbid satellite dishes for example, but federal law preempts that, so you can have them anyway.
I agree, they are ghettos. 100 houses, all exactly the same, down to the color of paint, the length of the grass, and the flowers in the garden. Ugly, but people buy them. I'd prefer to live in something Gaudi designed, but he wouldn't be allowed to build anything in a typical town... (Note that he wasn't allowed to build a lot of things that he did, but he did anyway in the process creating memorable buildings)
The pen is mightier than the sword, but not at any given moment.
Or to use modern examples, the computer is mightier than the gun, but not at any given moment. I own both, with the computer I can write great well reasoned[1] essays that will convince others to help my cause. As soon as I pick up my gun I'm limited the help of those already on my side who know what I'm doing. Sure I can kill 10 people (I happen to have 10 bullets in my house[2]), but once those are gone, I can't kill anyone. Worse, if I haven't made use of my pen beforehand correctly I now have police after me. National television will show the police breaking down my door, and people will cheer. However if I used my pen before hand I could get the people on my side, the police might break down my door, but it will just turn me into a martyr and help the cause!
The pen and sword (computer/gun) combined are much stronger together, but the strength comes from the pen.
[1]Pretend I'm a good writer, I know I'm not.
[2]Left over from my last hunting trip. I hope that I never have need to use my gun for any other purpose. I would if I had to, but I don't want to.
Left handers learn to use their right hand, you can learn to use your left. You might not ever be as good, but you can do just fine. I can use the mouse in either hand, I like to switch to save my wrists. You can too, if you practice. In fact for some tasks your left hand might be better on the mouse since it frees your right hand to use the keyboard. Or in this case a different mouse.
Slashdot Mirror
You are lucky. Though I find the Model M helps a lot myself, so your luck is both that your genetics are right, and you have found good equipment. I have both carpal tunnel, and a more generic wrist pain. Carpal tunnel isn't a problem I get from computer (though others do), but rather physical labor. (Good equipment helps there too, my $100 hammer really makes the pain go away!) From the computer I get wrist pain, which I have traced to using the mouse for long periods. I've learned to switch hands, which helps a lot. Of course vi/emacs (I use both...) also prevents a lot of need for the mouse.
Why should guns be banned from school? For all the obvious reasons. Think about it, seriously.
I have thought about it seriously. I can not come up with a good reason to ban guns from schools. Remember the "bad guys" ignore laws, so all we the ban does is restrict the law abiding people from having a gun around. Reasons to have a gun in school: target practice, which should be a part of gym class, just like archery is (at least it was in my school). Then there is protection, if a bad guys brings a gun to school and starts shooting the only good way to stop them is to shoot back, which the "good guys" won't be doing if they don't have a gun. Yes, accidents can happen, but accidents can happen otherwise too. There are more guns than people in the US, yet almost nobody dies in a gun accident (a few every year), drowning is more likely to kill you. Sure there are a lot of murders committed with guns, but that isn't the fault of the tool.
My brain is to think. I can spend a few minutes multiplying 1526.86 * 93477.193 or I can get the answer in moments from my calculator. Now if the problem is fourth grade math, yes I should be doing it with paper and a pencil, but if the problem comes up in forth grade science from some experiment my time is better spent understanding the problem at hand. I already proved in math that I can get the right answer (or worse proved I can't, and now my math lacks are going to take down my science score) so I'm better off spending the time understanding the science behind those numbers than the math behind it.
Thats not nearly as bad as the time My sister wanted to go Minneapolis-Washington D.C., and found the cheapest fare involved a plane change in Paris, France! She decided not to do that, but seriously considered spending a day in France both ways to see the sights, it would still save money. (IIRC she didn't have enough vacation time saved up)
Depends.... Mostly on the jury.
You can build yourself a better case though if you can tell the court: "I was unable to find a legal source for X, so I was forced to download it illegally. I am perfectly willing to pay for legal rights, as proof I have bought several games from StarRoms. If copyright holder would sell rights for a reasonable price I would pay it."
The judge/jury is likely to find that you only owe a small amount. Of course if it gets to court you are in contact with the copyright owner and can settle out of court before it gets this far. Thus your argument should finish "[some large number] dollars is not reasonable in my opinion, StarRoms charges just a few dollars. I have therefore deleted this Rom from my system." Again, the court is likely to decide you did all that a reasonable person could do, and fine your a tiny amount.
Insightful up to the last paragraph. Sure I can only learn so much (knowledge and skills). Becoming good at playing the guitar means a trade off, and perhaps by making that choice you don't learn to skin rabbits, fly airplanes, and so on. Yet some have done several of the above. There is enough knowledge that you cannot learn it all. As a population we do not lose old skills, at least not near as often as we learn new ones.
Some things take years to learn, some take minutes to learn and years to master, and some take just minutes to learn. Some are worth teaching everyone (reading for example), some are worth learning despite no practical use (playing guitar for example), and some are hobbies that a few people learn for the fun of it (skinning rabbits). Few skills are lost over time though, and now that reading is universal less are lost because those who know can write down for latter use.
Look around and you will find a few people who can tat, make chain mail, build a bark canoe and so on. All useless skills in this modern world, but kept alive because someone made it their hobby. I've seen books on all of the above, and many more.
If the doom sayers worst perdictions come true and you are one of the few people to survive [whichever disaster is in vogue today] you can go to a library and get books for the skills you need. Find someone to have kids with, and you are likely to pass reading and simple math onto them, and they to their kids. Eventually civilization will return with population, and your many times great grandkids will have an advantage in that they can read our books to tell them what works so they don't make the mistakes we did.
Why should guns be banned from school? Serious question, why? Forget about the bad guys, they are going to break the rules anyway, so whats the point in keeping good guys away from guns?
Yes this is on topic: why should calculators be banned from math? Once again something that sounds good, but requires more thought. In truth, higher math like algebra is normally done on contrived problems where the math is easier and faster to do in your head. (and you learn that if you can't do the math in your head to re-do some earlier work as you likely made a mistake) In cases where the math isn't easy give the kid a calculator and let him worry about the problem instead of of carrying the 1...
Challenge all assumptions. Sometimes they have a good reason, but don't state them as facts unless you are prepared to back them up. You will encounter people like me who don't see the point in keeping guns our of schools.
Minnesota rules I'm unemployed right now, so I have to go through these... the relavant parts:
2. Partially or Totally Unemployed Through No Fault of Your Own Even with enough wages to qualify for unemployment benefits, the reason for your job separation could disqualify you from receiving benefits. Some reasons are:
Quit without a good reason caused by the employer - Leaving for personal reasons or circumstances, not because it was the employer's fault.
Discharged for misconduct - For actions such as continued, unexcused absences and/or tardiness; breaking company rules; neglect of duties; insubordination; being impaired by drugs or alcohol on the job; fighting; harassment.
Refused a job or failed to apply for a suitable job without "good cause"- For refusing work that was suitable for you based on your work history, training, skills, ability, the pay scale in the local labor market, the distance to the job, and how long you have been out of work.
On strike -When off work because you are a member of the striking union or are participating in the strike by honoring a picket line.
NOTE: If you were not laid off due to lack of work from your last job, a Customer Service Center representative will contact you and your last employer for additional information. If you are disqualified from benefits because of a job separation, you will be mailed a written determination explaining the reason.
I've also heard it from court papers that "if a reasonable person would quit in this situation" Thus you can quit if you are assigned a job that while you can do, is not safe. They might agree that being asked to train your replacement before you are laid off counts, or might not, hard to say. A reasonable person might not quit, but would agree that it is a reasonable thing to do, OTOH, it is a safe job that you are qualified to do. You better be able to prove they were intending to lay your off after this though.
I wouldn't expect unemployment offices to have much sympathy for a company moving your job offshore though. They have some ability to make life hard on companies, but I'm not sure how much (likely very little)
Yeah, midevil warm period. little ice age. Just in the last 1000 years we have seen both enough cooling and warming to be significant. And despite all the global warming claims, the earth is not as warm not as it has been.
Why is it unsafe to mix pedestrians and cars in this situation? Wal-Mart mixes them in their parking lot, and cars move a lot faster in a parking lot than waiting in line for the ATM. I'll grant that the blind will have more trouble than a seeing person, but if the drivers are paying attention (a different rant) this isn't more of a problem than anywhere else. Less of a problem than crossing the street for instance because the cars are moving slower.
I regularly use the drive up ATMs as a pedestrian, the windows in my car do not work, and I've seen others do so as well. Not common, but not unheard of. If the bank is closed this may be the only choice. Outside of banks, ATMs don't normally accept deposits.
As for fast food, the only reason they don't accept pedestrians is because the sensors detect metal, and so they do not know you are out there. For short orders it is far cheaper service drive through. 3 people in drive through can handle more orders than 6 people at the counter, at least when I managed fast food, by dollar value. In fact some places have "walk-throughs" inside if they get enough short orders. Its not mixing with cars that is the problem, it is that sensors that detect people are not worth it considering the typical customer.
In response to your second point: the local banks around here have installed headphone jacks for the blind. I don't know how it works, but they put some effort into it. This at the drive through ATMs, so I know they want the blind to use them. Perhaps your local blind club should talk to the bank and get them installed.
Remember last year when every story (almost twice the normal amount it seemed like) was obviously completely false? I have to say that the stories this year a much better. Likely false, but there is enough behind them that they could be true. Slashdot is doing a much better job this year, I'm enjoying the stories.
One of two things will happen soon though that will turn it into a nightmare.
They will change their mind next week: can't take a risk on new code, so continue with the old stuff.
It compiles? Put into production now.
Okay, consider me your boss until they give you something else to do. Your assignment: Konqueror (KDE) has a number of bugs, particularly CSS related. Start fixing them.
My email address is on my homepage (nothing else worth looking at there...), should you seriously need someone to direct you. Otherwise, just start hacking away at something. I'm unemployed right now, and I'm keeping busy by hacking on KDE. (But since I'm unemployed I don't have to look busy so I don't get as much done as I'd like)
No it doesn't, load hay into the back of moving trucks is easy work. Doesn't pay good (farmers do not have to pay minimum wage, but then it is all cash so you don't pay taxes so that washes), and hard work, but you get to be outside in the sun all day.
What sucks is unloading those wagons. Well not the unloading itself, but you normally unload into a shed that is 130+ inside. Sure it is shade, but there is no breeze. Don't forget that farming is the most dangerous job out there, meaning that not only are you working in 130 degrees, loading 80 lbs bales, but they are falling from 15 feet above you. You need to run into this steady stream, grab a bale, and get out before the next one comes.
Farmers daughters sounds good, but the ones I knew needed 10+ years to grow up before I'd enjoy looking at them.
I've also had jobs where I got to walk on a 3.5inch wide board, 16 feet in the air. Or a 5.5 inch wide board 40 feet up. I never got used to that. I know some people do that 100 stories up, but it doesn't matter much.
The worst job I ever had was draintile for a new house. Every contractor working on that house for the last 3 months was peeing into the corner where I was now digging. On a hot humid day.
And people wonder why I want my desk job back.
With good crop rotation, and other standard farming practices soil depletion and erosion is not an issue. Hasn't been for years. Ethanol can be made from many different crops, corn is just one of them. Even assuming normal farming, as opposed to the most conservative ones soil overall stays the same, but fertilizer is added to keep it there (or often improve it first and then keep it there). Fertilizer manufacture is becoming much more efficient. While farmers are using less.
I am of course ignoring solar in claiming ethanol is energy position. IIRC plants are something like 2% efficient in converting solar energy to other forms, while solar cells can reach 40%. (laboratory, but 10% is reasonable in the real world, and these are old figures)
A quick google search reveals that typical studies show ethanol had 1:1.34 energy ratio in the mid 90s, and that number was going up, that is studies from the early 90s did have a negative balance. Interestingly, Gasoline production is quoted at 1:0.85, that is more energy is needed to produce gasoline than you get from it! (mostly because of cracking and other refinery costs)
Links: Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update ETHANOL'S ENERGY BALANCE - Illinois Plenty more at Google, I just copied in the more interesting ones. I tried adding "Richard Heinberg" onto the search terms, but all I got was a bunch of FUD links with no hard data. (And a link to Amazon.com where I could buy his book, which might or might not be real science, I don't have the money to buy it)
Read that again. I did not say there were =. I said that you can extract biodiesel from corn, and then from the waste of that extract ethanol. Different processes. Biodiesel is just the corn oil, which is not useful for making ethanol. I don't know if it can work practicly, but in theory it does.
I've never had much luck with brakes on my bikes. I normally stopped by dragging my feet, which worked, though not well. That includes times when my commute was 13 miles one way.
Though I will admit to a few times when I was lucky. Even still you are a coward.
Sure, but do you use all those services? Not all churchs are equal, nor are schools, cafes, comptuer shops, and so on. (I know nothing about off-license, pharmacys, tanning salons, or kitchen salesrooms, but I would assume they are not all equal) Walking is fine, if everything is equal, what if it is not.
What if both of those two churches are false, and will lead all members to hell. So you end up going 10 miles (passing perhaps 10 churches on the way...) before you get to one that actually leads to eternal life, and isn't just a feel good place for those on the way to hell.
Perhaps that school doesn't teach kids to think, so your kids end up going to a private school elsewhere anyway.
Similear areguments can be applied to the other shops. Though I would agree that if you can't stand anything near you, either you are too picky, or you should move. Lets assume that a couple of those shops are good enough, and overall you like the neighborhood, and you would just have problems with other ones too.
Not to mention jobs, if you and your wife both work minimum wage jobs you can work withing walking distance of about anywhere. If you are more skilled you might be forced to take jobs that are quite a distance away from where the other works, so one of you at least cannot walk. What if whoever is walking gets laid off and the only job that pays for her skills isn't in walking distance? Do you move or end up both commuting by something other than walking?
Ethanol is NOT a net loss as a fuel. 15-20 years ago it was, but modern ethanol plants are energy positive (a little bit). Even back then ethanol was a net positive because even though more energy was used to make ethanol than was taken out, the by-products of ethanol production have valueable in themselves, so you can discount some of the energy extration because the byproducts would be grown anyway. (though the by-products are not as valueable as the whole plant so it may not have been worth it.
I've been told that you can extract corn oil and make bio-diesel, and then use the by-products of that process to make ethanol with little/no loss of efficiency. If true this makes ethanol/bio-diesel an even better win. (But I don't know how to evaluate that claim)
Just call up a list of all the people who used to work for you, and tell HR they were 1s and 2s, so you "convinced" them to leave. All you have left now are 3s, 4s, and 5s.
Seriously, there is always a bell curve, but if there is someone on the bottom of it they are either someone you should fire, or, if you had kept all those incompetent to do the job, they would work out to 3s on the curve. That is the curve is skewed.
The US learned a lot from space exploration in the 60s. Not, IMHO enough to justify the cost, but there was a lot learned. How to build big rockets for instance. Sure the Russians can get small payloads into space, but not big ones. They don't have rockets with the ability to get men and all their support gear to the moon and back. The Saturn V was a large rocket.
Yes, Japan is crowded. However a look at statistics will show that they have a age imbalance. There are more old people than young people. In other words the population is shrinking. Modern education, and toys mean there is plenty to do other than reproduce, and people know the effects of kids on their life style, so many choose not to have kids. On a macro scale Japan's population is set to drop.
You obvisouly did not read the artical and know nothing about how it works in reality. It may stand to reason that increasing food supply increases popultion (less people die from malnutrition), but in the real world a better food supply makes most people have less kids, by enough to not only compensate, but over compenstate. As the artical shows, the grains introduced in the 1960s to parts of Africa have already worked to greatly slow the population growth over there.
Yeah, they suck. I wouldn't live under one either. However there are also laws in the US. Many of these things forbid satellite dishes for example, but federal law preempts that, so you can have them anyway.
I agree, they are ghettos. 100 houses, all exactly the same, down to the color of paint, the length of the grass, and the flowers in the garden. Ugly, but people buy them. I'd prefer to live in something Gaudi designed, but he wouldn't be allowed to build anything in a typical town... (Note that he wasn't allowed to build a lot of things that he did, but he did anyway in the process creating memorable buildings)
The pen is mightier than the sword, but not at any given moment.
Or to use modern examples, the computer is mightier than the gun, but not at any given moment. I own both, with the computer I can write great well reasoned[1] essays that will convince others to help my cause. As soon as I pick up my gun I'm limited the help of those already on my side who know what I'm doing. Sure I can kill 10 people (I happen to have 10 bullets in my house[2]), but once those are gone, I can't kill anyone. Worse, if I haven't made use of my pen beforehand correctly I now have police after me. National television will show the police breaking down my door, and people will cheer. However if I used my pen before hand I could get the people on my side, the police might break down my door, but it will just turn me into a martyr and help the cause!
The pen and sword (computer/gun) combined are much stronger together, but the strength comes from the pen.
[1]Pretend I'm a good writer, I know I'm not.
[2]Left over from my last hunting trip. I hope that I never have need to use my gun for any other purpose. I would if I had to, but I don't want to.
Left handers learn to use their right hand, you can learn to use your left. You might not ever be as good, but you can do just fine. I can use the mouse in either hand, I like to switch to save my wrists. You can too, if you practice. In fact for some tasks your left hand might be better on the mouse since it frees your right hand to use the keyboard. Or in this case a different mouse.