No, that's not the worst issue. Walter Murch describes in an entry on Roger Ebert's blog, [suntimes.com] the convergence/focus issue, where the eye is expected to work in a way that millions of years of evolution never designed it to, where your eyes are asked to focus on an image very close, yet converge very far away.
Time to evolve further then!
Seriously though, we humans do stacks of things that evolution never designed us for...
Shoes? Human feet weren't designed for those.
Driving a car? I bet evolution never had that in mind.
Sitting all day? Ok that has been proven to be bad for you.
Typing on a keyboard? Using a mouse? w00t!
There may well be reasons why staring at 3DTV for hours on end is bad for us (by which I mean worse than staring at regular TV for hours on end), but "evolution never designed us for that" isn't really an explanation.
My eyes don't hurt but I feel a bit strange and don't like it (although they might hurt if I tried watching it for more than a few minutes). I'm also very sensitive to flicker on CRT (remember those:) screens - i'll always pick up flicker that nobody else can notice except maybe in peripheral vision. I wonder if the two are related...
[That's what sucks about the current 3D-movie craze: often the only version of a movie playing in a given location will be the 3D version, meaning those who don't enjoy the 3D effect must suffer an inferior viewing experience (dimmer image, awkward and uncomfortable glasses), and end up paying extra for the privilege!]
anecdotal evidence from staff at the local cinema is that their movie sales are higher for non-3D movies... that's a statistical anomaly based on what i've heard from other cinemas though.
The article implies that part of the reason for headaches is the 3D video causing your brain to believe you're moving about, while your inner ear does not agree. However, the source [childrensh...alblog.org] the article cites says that this causes nausea, not headaches. I would think this is similar to getting car sick.
I wonder if the nausea is more to do with the level of concentration on the medium. I dug out an old copy of "Magic Carpet" about a year ago and started playing it (thankyou DoxBox!). Within 5 minutes I felt like vomiting and needed to lie down and didn't feel quite right for the rest of the day. I tried playing again the next day but suffered much the same effect. Next time I found a pair of the "sea bands"[1] that my wife swore by when she had morning sickness and could then play for hours without any ill effects. It could have just been placebo but if I sat down and started playing without them i'd notice the nausea before i'd notice I wasn't wearing them. I got car sick fairly easy as a kid and this was exactly the same.
A few months ago I went into a shop looking to buy a microwave (daughter forgot to put water on her porridge before nuking it and the oven hasn't been quite the same since) and they had a 3DTV demo set up with the glasses. I put the glasses on and watched for a few minutes and while it seemed kind of neat, my vision seemed funny for about half an hour after and I felt a bit odd. Not sick though.
The two effects were completely different for me, so i'm inclined to agree with your conclusions.
[1] Sea Bands are wrist bands with a bead or something that presses against the inner wrist as a supposed accupressure point. The ones I used were bought from a chemist for a ridiculous price but you could probably find out how to make them on the internet easily enough.
This is why checks and balances are supposed to be good. For when there are legitimate secrets, there should be oversight. The problem is, you're dealing with humans, and the oversight mechanisms have flaws.
Until the machines rise up and take over, humans are the best we have.
There is no valid reason for a government to ever keep its activities secret from those it governs.
Interesting opinion. Back in the real world of shades other than black and white, there are situations where secrecy is required, at least in the short term. It's not much good making a sneak attack on Osama Bin Laden's secret bunker if you go and tell the people you govern that you are just about to do it, as you can be guaranteed that at least one of the people you govern is going to be working for the enemy. Likewise, if you were working undercover as one of Hitlers henchmen it would kind of suck if the fact was placed on the public record - your day would end very badly.
Emotional appeals for national security based on the safety of those engaged in espionage are not relevant. The individuals in question, without exception, agreed to exchange their safety for their government's.
... on the basis that their government would offer them suitable protection, including keeping their identity secret while they were under cover.
I think the trick here is to make sure that the fact is placed on public record as soon as secrecy is no longer required, so that the people keeping the secrets know that they will be held accountable, which is the whole point. If Osama's bunker turned out to actually be an orphanage then the decisions should be publicly investigated.
You didn't "mess up", except in the very limited and weasely sense that you 'miscalculated the level of bullshit that you could get away with'.
Very nicely put. It reminded me of an incident I witnessed at a computer 'swap meet' (which is just a way for backyard vendors to flog off imports without paying taxes). A guy casually walked past a booth, picked up a video card and slipped it under his jacket. The vendor saw and yelled at him. The guy took the card out from under his jacket, put it back where he grabbed it from, and made some sort of gesture to indicate "Sorry, it's fine, I'll put it back. Everything is fine", then casually walked away.
It would be nice if politicians could lose their seat for trying to slip something like that past the people...
They don't 'see' the position, they have to do math to get it
Which is different to what's going on in the depths of your mind how? The brain may not crunch numbers exactly how a computer does, but it still comes up with an output based on its inputs.
I get that playing chess against a computer is different to playing against another person, but I don't think it's about the math.
The trouble is that if you widen your search for things that aren't DNA too, you are going to get a whole load of false positives. I bet every time lightning strikes it mixes up a whole bunch of molecules in such a way that they could in theory form part of some non-DNA (or even non-carbon) lifeform.
The problem with "pilot error" determination is that maybe 50% (made up number of large percentage is accurate) of the time, it actually has absolutely nothing to do with the accident. Pilot error is sort of a catch-all for, "we have no fucking clue what happened and feel we must explain the crash if possible so pilot error is as good as any. Not to mention its very believable."
Based on what i've read it seems that the airspeed inputs went bad, causing the computer to throw it's hands in the air and say "I can't do this. You fly it", and it did so in the middle of a fairly big storm. Given that the pilots relied to some extent on the same sensors as the computer (looking out the window to try and gauge your speed doesn't really help when the horizon, stars, and ground aren't visible), the outcome was likely to not be good.
So in this case it's pilot error because the pilot was in control at the time...
if (situation_seriousness() >= omg_were_going_to_die) {
set_autopilot(off);/* hand control over to the pilot - we don't want to get blamed for this mess */ }
If you try super-thoroughly cleaning one half the windshield, and not clean the other half, you'll get an idea of how bad it is.
Got any tips for cleaning the glass? Whenever I try it just seems to move the layer of muck around, and I only notice that I've done a crappy job when the sun is shining in on the right angle.
Second, for most devices isn't the CPU consuming a lot more energy than the memory? If that is the case, won't more efficient memory have only a small impact on overall power consumption?
In standby mode where the CPU is more or less idle, maybe the amount of power required to keep the memory refreshed is significant in terms of total power use?
Factors such as the costs of waste (and associated issues) and different insurance costs are not included in the following.
Not including the costs of waste makes the figures essentially useless. We are now in an age where we pretty much have to start accounting for what we pump into the air. If I came up with a way of generating free energy from water that cost $1/GW and required no ongoing costs aside from a steady supply of seawater, but pumped 10x more CO2[1] into the air than anything ever had before, then it really doesn't cost $1/GW does it? The cost of the damage caused by the CO2 and/or the cost of sucking it back out of the air has to be accounted for.
Ditto for nuclear waste. The cost of storing the waste until it is no longer hazardous has the factored into the operational costs.
[1] How you get CO2 from H2O is an exercise for the reader:)
You can walk away at any time... unless there's a fucking earthquake. The problem isn't just thermal runaway, it's that the the steel containment vessel AND the outer concrete containment structure might be compromised. All the safety features in the world aren't going to help if your radioactive materials start leaking out onto the sidewalk.
No you pretty much can just walk away. Containing this stuff isn't really that hard, even when presented with an earthquake like we've just seen. Containing a hydrogen/oxygen explosion is hard, and when it does go boom the resulting pollution spreads over a fairly wide area, which is a problem. Keeping coolant flowing around your reactor when all your power has gone out is also a problem. Neither of those problems are relevant to the type of reactor under discussion here though.
If the radioactive materials spill out onto the sidewalk then you don't really have that much of a problem either apart from people actually standing on the sidewalk, and you have to put that into perspective - the people on the sidewalk around those flaming refineries also have a problem. The solution in both cases is to put a sensible amount of distance between the reactor and the sidewalk.
30 bananas every hour is 1 banana every 2 minutes. That's a lot of banana's. While the accumulated radiation from those bananas would probably be pretty benign, I think you'd still be dead pretty quickly:)
Pms happens about a week before ovulation. Menses are not ovulation. Glad to teach you.
Not married are you? PMS happens about a week before menstruation. Ovulation comes a bit after that is finished. PMS is likely related to the drop off in the various hormones at the end of the cycle that triggers the flushing of the uterine lining.
One theory for the evolutionary cause is that by making the woman grumpy when she didn't get pregnant, she's more likely to split with her current partner and find one that is capable of doing the job. I'm not sure if I agree with that though... anyone who's ever had a pregnant wife would know that they aren't always the easiest to get along with either:)
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No, that's not the worst issue. Walter Murch describes in an entry on Roger Ebert's blog, [suntimes.com] the convergence/focus issue, where the eye is expected to work in a way that millions of years of evolution never designed it to, where your eyes are asked to focus on an image very close, yet converge very far away.
Time to evolve further then!
Seriously though, we humans do stacks of things that evolution never designed us for...
Shoes? Human feet weren't designed for those.
Driving a car? I bet evolution never had that in mind.
Sitting all day? Ok that has been proven to be bad for you.
Typing on a keyboard? Using a mouse? w00t!
There may well be reasons why staring at 3DTV for hours on end is bad for us (by which I mean worse than staring at regular TV for hours on end), but "evolution never designed us for that" isn't really an explanation.
My eyes don't hurt but I feel a bit strange and don't like it (although they might hurt if I tried watching it for more than a few minutes). I'm also very sensitive to flicker on CRT (remember those :) screens - i'll always pick up flicker that nobody else can notice except maybe in peripheral vision. I wonder if the two are related...
I assume that's the case for most of the general population. It's just those of us sensitive to it that make a big noise about it :)
see another post by me. I was the same but found that I could play for hours with no ill effects if I was wearing sea bands.
[That's what sucks about the current 3D-movie craze: often the only version of a movie playing in a given location will be the 3D version, meaning those who don't enjoy the 3D effect must suffer an inferior viewing experience (dimmer image, awkward and uncomfortable glasses), and end up paying extra for the privilege!]
anecdotal evidence from staff at the local cinema is that their movie sales are higher for non-3D movies... that's a statistical anomaly based on what i've heard from other cinemas though.
The article implies that part of the reason for headaches is the 3D video causing your brain to believe you're moving about, while your inner ear does not agree. However, the source [childrensh...alblog.org] the article cites says that this causes nausea, not headaches. I would think this is similar to getting car sick.
I wonder if the nausea is more to do with the level of concentration on the medium. I dug out an old copy of "Magic Carpet" about a year ago and started playing it (thankyou DoxBox!). Within 5 minutes I felt like vomiting and needed to lie down and didn't feel quite right for the rest of the day. I tried playing again the next day but suffered much the same effect. Next time I found a pair of the "sea bands"[1] that my wife swore by when she had morning sickness and could then play for hours without any ill effects. It could have just been placebo but if I sat down and started playing without them i'd notice the nausea before i'd notice I wasn't wearing them. I got car sick fairly easy as a kid and this was exactly the same.
A few months ago I went into a shop looking to buy a microwave (daughter forgot to put water on her porridge before nuking it and the oven hasn't been quite the same since) and they had a 3DTV demo set up with the glasses. I put the glasses on and watched for a few minutes and while it seemed kind of neat, my vision seemed funny for about half an hour after and I felt a bit odd. Not sick though.
The two effects were completely different for me, so i'm inclined to agree with your conclusions.
[1] Sea Bands are wrist bands with a bead or something that presses against the inner wrist as a supposed accupressure point. The ones I used were bought from a chemist for a ridiculous price but you could probably find out how to make them on the internet easily enough.
This is why checks and balances are supposed to be good. For when there are legitimate secrets, there should be oversight. The problem is, you're dealing with humans, and the oversight mechanisms have flaws.
Until the machines rise up and take over, humans are the best we have.
There is no valid reason for a government to ever keep its activities secret from those it governs.
Interesting opinion. Back in the real world of shades other than black and white, there are situations where secrecy is required, at least in the short term. It's not much good making a sneak attack on Osama Bin Laden's secret bunker if you go and tell the people you govern that you are just about to do it, as you can be guaranteed that at least one of the people you govern is going to be working for the enemy. Likewise, if you were working undercover as one of Hitlers henchmen it would kind of suck if the fact was placed on the public record - your day would end very badly.
Emotional appeals for national security based on the safety of those engaged in espionage are not relevant. The individuals in question, without exception, agreed to exchange their safety for their government's.
... on the basis that their government would offer them suitable protection, including keeping their identity secret while they were under cover.
I think the trick here is to make sure that the fact is placed on public record as soon as secrecy is no longer required, so that the people keeping the secrets know that they will be held accountable, which is the whole point. If Osama's bunker turned out to actually be an orphanage then the decisions should be publicly investigated.
You didn't "mess up", except in the very limited and weasely sense that you 'miscalculated the level of bullshit that you could get away with'.
Very nicely put. It reminded me of an incident I witnessed at a computer 'swap meet' (which is just a way for backyard vendors to flog off imports without paying taxes). A guy casually walked past a booth, picked up a video card and slipped it under his jacket. The vendor saw and yelled at him. The guy took the card out from under his jacket, put it back where he grabbed it from, and made some sort of gesture to indicate "Sorry, it's fine, I'll put it back. Everything is fine", then casually walked away.
It would be nice if politicians could lose their seat for trying to slip something like that past the people...
They don't 'see' the position, they have to do math to get it
Which is different to what's going on in the depths of your mind how? The brain may not crunch numbers exactly how a computer does, but it still comes up with an output based on its inputs.
I get that playing chess against a computer is different to playing against another person, but I don't think it's about the math.
The trouble is that if you widen your search for things that aren't DNA too, you are going to get a whole load of false positives. I bet every time lightning strikes it mixes up a whole bunch of molecules in such a way that they could in theory form part of some non-DNA (or even non-carbon) lifeform.
and more importantly, what is a China Syndrome called when it happens in Japan???
What's next? Health clinics?
"Your culture tested positive for facial herpes. No kissing for a bit ok?"
The problem with "pilot error" determination is that maybe 50% (made up number of large percentage is accurate) of the time, it actually has absolutely nothing to do with the accident. Pilot error is sort of a catch-all for, "we have no fucking clue what happened and feel we must explain the crash if possible so pilot error is as good as any. Not to mention its very believable."
Based on what i've read it seems that the airspeed inputs went bad, causing the computer to throw it's hands in the air and say "I can't do this. You fly it", and it did so in the middle of a fairly big storm. Given that the pilots relied to some extent on the same sensors as the computer (looking out the window to try and gauge your speed doesn't really help when the horizon, stars, and ground aren't visible), the outcome was likely to not be good.
So in this case it's pilot error because the pilot was in control at the time...
if (situation_seriousness() >= omg_were_going_to_die) /* hand control over to the pilot - we don't want to get blamed for this mess */
{
set_autopilot(off);
}
If you try super-thoroughly cleaning one half the windshield, and not clean the other half, you'll get an idea of how bad it is.
Got any tips for cleaning the glass? Whenever I try it just seems to move the layer of muck around, and I only notice that I've done a crappy job when the sun is shining in on the right angle.
You could probably get away with one these days. Cell phones featuring an 'off' button have gotten much cheaper.
Affordable motorcars are Hitlers dream. What's his point?
Second, for most devices isn't the CPU consuming a lot more energy than the memory? If that is the case, won't more efficient memory have only a small impact on overall power consumption?
In standby mode where the CPU is more or less idle, maybe the amount of power required to keep the memory refreshed is significant in terms of total power use?
You made an analogy, using bridges, without mentioning cars???
From the wikipedia article you referenced:
Factors such as the costs of waste (and associated issues) and different insurance costs are not included in the following.
Not including the costs of waste makes the figures essentially useless. We are now in an age where we pretty much have to start accounting for what we pump into the air. If I came up with a way of generating free energy from water that cost $1/GW and required no ongoing costs aside from a steady supply of seawater, but pumped 10x more CO2[1] into the air than anything ever had before, then it really doesn't cost $1/GW does it? The cost of the damage caused by the CO2 and/or the cost of sucking it back out of the air has to be accounted for.
Ditto for nuclear waste. The cost of storing the waste until it is no longer hazardous has the factored into the operational costs.
[1] How you get CO2 from H2O is an exercise for the reader :)
Sorry, but it's a 30 bananas per day, for a whole year. :)
Is the 1015us figure they gave not per hour? That's how all the info I've read on it reads.
1 banana is about 36us. 1015us/hour = ~30 bananas/hour
You can walk away at any time... unless there's a fucking earthquake.
The problem isn't just thermal runaway, it's that the the steel containment vessel AND the outer concrete containment structure might be compromised.
All the safety features in the world aren't going to help if your radioactive materials start leaking out onto the sidewalk.
No you pretty much can just walk away. Containing this stuff isn't really that hard, even when presented with an earthquake like we've just seen. Containing a hydrogen/oxygen explosion is hard, and when it does go boom the resulting pollution spreads over a fairly wide area, which is a problem. Keeping coolant flowing around your reactor when all your power has gone out is also a problem. Neither of those problems are relevant to the type of reactor under discussion here though.
If the radioactive materials spill out onto the sidewalk then you don't really have that much of a problem either apart from people actually standing on the sidewalk, and you have to put that into perspective - the people on the sidewalk around those flaming refineries also have a problem. The solution in both cases is to put a sensible amount of distance between the reactor and the sidewalk.
1015 microsieverts - that is apparently a year's worth of radiation exposure each hour
Or 30 bananas...
30 bananas every hour is 1 banana every 2 minutes. That's a lot of banana's. While the accumulated radiation from those bananas would probably be pretty benign, I think you'd still be dead pretty quickly :)
I can hear the announcer now..."Side effects may include incapacitation or loss of muscle control, severe pain, breathing problems, and death."
As long as it doesn't cause penile detachment, I think you'll find a lot of people would just take the chance :)
Pms happens about a week before ovulation. Menses are not ovulation. Glad to teach you.
Not married are you? PMS happens about a week before menstruation. Ovulation comes a bit after that is finished. PMS is likely related to the drop off in the various hormones at the end of the cycle that triggers the flushing of the uterine lining.
One theory for the evolutionary cause is that by making the woman grumpy when she didn't get pregnant, she's more likely to split with her current partner and find one that is capable of doing the job. I'm not sure if I agree with that though... anyone who's ever had a pregnant wife would know that they aren't always the easiest to get along with either :)