Any plan to reduce carbon output that does not include the use of nuclear power is not serious.
Unreliable energy sources like wind and solar cannot power a first world economy. Any use of bio-fuel is based on unrealistic conversion efficiencies of converting solar power into usable energy by using plant life as in intermediary, or they are just "green washing" the burning of fossil fuels since we are still using fossil fuels to transport, harvest, and fertilize those plants. These unreliable energy sources require lots of land to capture wind, wave, or sun, and there just is not enough of it to go around.
Any claims that the use of nuclear power is going to kill us all is laughable to me if the claims of global warming from burning fossil fuels is true. Right now, after over fifty years of government subsidy of unreliable energy we have less than 3% of our grid power coming from these sources. At this rate we'll all be baked to a crisp before we build enough unreliable energy to replace coal. I think we can manage a little bit of nuclear waste to avoid the catastrophe that is global warming, that is assuming the threat is real.
Even using old school nuclear, with steam turbines and solid fuel rods, we'd be better off using it than not. Fortunately we now have better ways to harness nuclear power with molten salt reactors. MSRs can burn up all the uranium or thorium fuel without reprocessing, as oppose to the less than 1% efficiency we get now with once through solid fuel. MSRs can even use the old solid fuel waste as fuel. With MSRs we could produce valuable radio isotopes for industry, science, and medicine, something that is prohibitively expensive now with solid fuel reactors.
The best things about nuclear power is it works when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, and the rain doesn't fall. It will also do this in any location on this planet. MSRs cannot melt down like solid fuel reactors so putting them in places where we would not even think of putting a solid fuel reactor is possible. They can also be built much smaller than a traditional nuclear power plant, meaning they cost much less to build and operate.
Conserving energy is nice but that does not eliminate burning fossil fuels, it only prolongs the inevitable. Using wind, solar, and hydro where it can be profitable is just good business and therefore will happen whether or not the government subsidizes it. Trying to make unreliable energy where it cannot be profitable, and relying on government subsidy to make it work, is just green washing on another level. Our economy runs on fossil fuels so taxing coal to subsidize wind only makes us rely on the coal even more, not less.
Bloom boxes and solar panels can get us only so far. To eliminate the burning of coal requires an energy source that is equally reliable and inexpensive and, barring some leap in technology, that means nuclear fission power.
Long, long ago, in a land far, far away there were people that were very protective of their ideas. They'd go to great lengths to keep these ideas to themselves. Skilled workers were very protective of the processes they used to create their products. I recall reading of factories where the workers would never leave. They'd have effectively a castle built to house the workers and equipment. Food and raw material would enter and finished product would leave. As technology improved and society developed the concept of intellectual property was eventually born. In this way the people with the knowledge and skills would no longer have to be locked up to protect industrial processes.
This idea of intellectual property didn't end the practice of trade secrets but did provide an option to people that thought intellectual property laws were a better option than building a castle and trying to convince skilled craftsmen to lock themselves inside of it. The trade off was that the ideas that would otherwise be held a secret would be exposed to the government. The government would then give a time limited protection to the use of that idea so that the creator, and society, may profit from the idea. Any violations of this protection was therefore enforced by the government.
The problem with government enforced trade secrets is that the government does not know what they are protecting before there is a claim of a violation. The government would essentially have to rely on the claimant that the idea was actually their own to begin with. The accused would likewise have to show that they came up with the same idea independently, lawfully acquired the idea, or some other defense that would prevent prosecution.
In law and in theory the accused is innocent until proven guilty but in practice that does not always hold true.
I see so many ways that this could be abused. Unfortunately I cannot get the article to load, perhaps it's been slashdotted, so I don't know if the article spells out all the ways this law can be abused. We already have a very long history of legal protections of intellectual property, I see no need to change it now. If someone wishes to keep something a trade secret then they need to make sure no one else finds out through existing legal means. If someone wants legal protections of their intellectual property then they need to share that with a government body first, before it is revealed to anyone else, so that there is no question on who came up with the idea first. Without this prior revelation then there is always a reasonable doubt on who owns the property.
This bill should not become law, of only because any claim against it would be nearly impossible to prove in a court. As someone that has developed intellectual property for a living I believe I have a pretty strong understanding of how intellectual property laws benefit us all. I also understand the need to simply keep things to yourself if you want to keep something secret. For example, if I kept a crypto key (or a house key) in a obscure location then I can't be expected to have the government punish someone because they happened upon where I kept it. If that key enables someone to snoop around my electronic files (or my refrigerator) then there are laws against that. I can expect the government to protect my property to the extent that I made an effort to secure it, but if I don't secure my stuff then why should I expect the government to do that for me?
Let's assume that anything radioactive is bad. We must admit that some radiation is acceptable since everything around us is radioactive to some degree, and we use radiation for medical reasons. But let's say that we must remove radiation from the world. There are two ways to make something radioactive no longer radioactive. First is to wait it out. Anything radioactive will decay eventually. The other way to destroy radioactive material is to put it in a nuclear reactor. If it is radioactive then it is nuclear fuel. Not all things radioactive make good fuel but everything radioactive will produce heat that can be captured in a reactor. So, to get rid of this radioactive stuff we should use it as fuel.
That "waste" that you claim must be stored for millennia or it will harm us is fuel. Why would we throw it away? Oh, I know. We throw it away because fear mongers like you are too ignorant to figure out that this radioactive material is useful. Like I said, it may not be good reactor fuel but anything radioactive is fuel. The good fuel we should burn in a reactor. The stuff that is not so good as fuel tends to be the kind of stuff we need for medicine and industry. The few things that are radioactive and don't make good fuel and don't have any useful application we know of is so small that we could easily wait that stuff out to decay away. The radioactive material that is truly waste are things with such short half lives that it would only take days or months to wait for it to decay away. We know how to contain radioactive material for a few months.
You say we need a "workable solution" for the waste. We have one. It's a solution we figured out decades ago. The solution is more nuclear reactors. We have a name for these reactors, waste annihilating molten salt reactors. We didn't call them that decades ago but the technology was figured out in the 1960s.
If it's radioactive then we likely have a use for it. The stuff we don't have a use for would have likely decayed away in the time it took you to read my post.
I often wondered why there is such a tendency for reboots in TV and movies. Why re-make something when you could make something new? Then I realized something. In today's society of perpetual copyrights it is nearly impossible to create something new that would not be considered derivative of some existing work. The path of least resistance is to license a known entity to shield the show creators from a nearly inevitable barrage of lawsuits from people with rights to any movie, show, novel, comic book, or whatever, seeking to get a piece of the profits.
The creators of the reboot can then derive freedom to re-invent the premise with even wildly variations on the theme so long as they retain enough of the character names, plot elements, and so forth that they can logically claim it is still a derivative of the original. The ability to bring in fans of the original work no doubt allows for some insurance of success for the series.
This is why, IMHO, we can't have anything new. We've built up such a history of copyrighted works that anything that is not completely foreign to a potential audience will no doubt be considered a derivative of some existing work. Anything that is so foreign to be considered truly novel is so unlikely to be successful that the chances of finding someone willing to fund the effort would be very small.
Lost in Space sounds like a basis upon which someone could build a very entertaining universe. It could also turn out as badly as the original and the movie.
NASA is desperate for the Pu-238 needed to create radio-thermal generator units. To make this material requires a nuclear reactor. Most any nuclear reactor will do but some are more suited to this task than others. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are a prime candidate for this, they can make the Pu-238 in normal operation while also producing power and other valuable radioactive isotopes.
The heat from a LFTR reactor is high enough that it makes cracking water into hydrogen for rocket fuel a very efficient process. After the water is cracked the heat left over can be used to make electricity, another valuable resource.
We are not going to send people to space with an economy based on "green" energy like wind and solar. Fossil fuels won't get us there either. If space exploration is going to be more than just communication satellites and the occasional trip to low earth orbit on the ISS then we need nuclear power. We'll need nuclear power on earth to make the energy needed to get things into space. We'll also need to develop nuclear power systems suited to operation in space.
Solar panels are great for many situations in space but if we go to Mars then we'll need nuclear power. There's no atmosphere to speak of on Mars so there won't be windmills. Even if one was able to drill for oil on Mars there is no air to burn it. To make that happen we'll need people trained in designing, building, and operating nuclear power plants. To get these people we'll need an infrastructure built to train those people. If we want college graduates trained in nuclear power for a mission to Mars in 2030 then we need to start building the programs to train them now.
The government has to do very little to make this happen. All they need to do is get off their thumbs and allow people to invest their own money in building nuclear reactors. I don't want to hear how these politicians will encourage nuclear power since government seems to have a reverse Midas touch, everything they touch turns to shit. I want to hear how the government will step aside and allow the market to provide the means to develop nuclear power and all the other technologies we need to get into space.
The great thing about space exploration is that it drives so many technologies with uses here on earth. This is true with so many other scientific endeavors. A new space race might be just what we need to allow this federation to reduce poverty, increase employment, raise wages, and so much more.
The scenario you propose is only one of many reasons why I despise people that claim we can be carbon neutral only if we create a national grid connecting all the wind and solar plants scattered about the country. We should not create an even larger interconnected electricity grid, we need more smaller grids. We can get carbon neutral by using nuclear power.
We can spread out the nuclear power using small modular reactors. Large multi-gigawatt nuclear power plants are a prime target for attack. Multiple small nuclear power plants with a capacity around a half gigawatt is not such a nice target. Using molten salt reactors means that if one is attacked there would not be a meltdown and spread of radioactive material beyond the grounds of the power plant site.
One deterrent to an EMP attack is to create the infrastructure that is not vulnerable to it. We will no doubt have some sort of means to connect the various grids together so that should there be a loss of generating capacity on one grid can be made up by surplus from a neighboring grid. It should be the norm that the grids remain relatively small and disconnected from the rest so that a cascade failure cannot happen, such as in the case of an EMP attack, sunburst, forest fire, power plant failure, or whatever.
Wind, solar, and a large interconnected grid would be a very expensive and fragile means to get a "green" national grid. Using small modular molten salt reactors would be a much more feasible and robust means to that end. I'm sure many believe the problem lies with NIMBY in keeping nuclear power from becoming the primary source of electricity in the USA but I believe it is the federal government holding it up. There are plenty of low population places in this federation where power lines already exist to put a nuclear power plant. Getting the permits to build one would require an act of God or Congress.
That's what I do now, I got a truck and plow through the snow.
youre the guy who keeps railing against government and for libertarian ideals.
I do believe that governments exist to build and maintain roads. That's what my taxes are for. But I'm fine with the city taking priority of clearing school bus routes and fire lanes first. Not only does that keep taxes low for everyone it also means that I'm not treated any special than others, that's how a republic works. I also have this feeling that if I did actually plow the roads myself you'd be someone to tell me I'm an idiot for plowing the road as I'm not a professional and could damage the road, damage private property, or injure someone.
also, have you never heard of tire chains?
Yes, I have heard of them. Problem is the manufacturer of the car I owned previously stated specifically in the manual not to put chains on the tires. So I did what the neighbors did, and what my brothers recommended, I got a four wheel drive vehicle. Since then there has been only one time I could not drive all the way into my garage. Even then it was an exceptionally slippery day and I ended up parking across the street, not a mile away.
you literally admitted to foreknowledge of conditions, so why didn't you prepare beforehand, oh prophet of self-reliance?
Where did I say I had foreknowledge of the road conditions? When I lived at my brother's my car was suitable since there the street in front of his house was plowed early and often. When I moved across town I expected the same. My guess is that the street to my brother's house was on a school bus route, while my house was several blocks from one.
I did find it odd that nearly every neighbor had a SUV when I was moving in to my place. I just thought it was some sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" thing. Nope, it was that those that had regular jobs needed that vehicle to get to work. The people with front wheel drive cars were either retired or wishing they had four wheel drive.
Slashdot has posted several articles about people that have fled the internet of things due to the real or perceived health problems that living with technology causes. If we bring the technology everywhere then where can these people go to remove themselves from technology?
I only being halfway serious here. We should offer technology to everyone, but also offer the opportunity to do without.
How low should anyone's carbon footprint be? What is my recommended daily allowance of carbon output?
The GPP drives a 2015 Passat, which I'd think has a lower carbon footprint than my 2006 Explorer. Perhaps the GPP is not concerned about the carbon output of the Passat because the alternative could have been a Ford F-150, as in the GPP believes that choice was sufficient to gain the praises of those concerned about the carbon footprint of the public.
It seems that some people just cannot be pleased. I could be taking the bus to work but someone will still complain that I should be walking, biking, or riding a horse instead. Perhaps that is even too much and I should be working from home. But then my home is air conditioned, and it shouldn't be. I should be happy to sweat a little in the summer. In the winter my thermostat is set too high at 72 degrees. If I had it at 65 degrees then I'll be told it should be at 62 degrees.
Yes, everyone can do something to reduce their carbon footprint. I think that all those people complaining about my carbon footprint on the internet should reduce their own, by turning off their computers and complain to themselves in a darkened room.
Most folks would rather we did things to the benefit of the environment, as long as their personal sacrifice is somewhere between minimal and nonexistent.
I tried driving a fuel efficient car, that worked well until I moved from my brother's basement to my own place. That first winter I found myself several times where I had my car stuck in the snow or the path to my home so slicked with ice that I had to walk the last mile home. There is a school near where I live so that path is cleared quite quickly but that still leaves the last mile with deep snow after a storm, often for days.
When I went to look at vehicles I took fuel economy into consideration. I considered hybrids, natural gas cars, as well as more traditional vehicles. I came to several conclusions. Fiirst was that I needed a four wheel drive vehicle like my neighbors or I might find myself looking for a new job because I could not get to work when required of me. Second, that no one makes a vehicle that is both a hybrid, natural gas, or otherwise reduced carbon output and four wheel drive. GMC made a hybrid truck for a while but they didn't sell well and so were no longer made. Also, fuel efficiency is expensive. The most efficient cars are new cars, and I could not afford a new car. I'd be spending far more on car payments than I would on fuel savings.
So, I'm one of those people you complain about. I'll sacrifice to save on the fuel I burn but to do so would mean spending so much money that I could no longer make payments on my school loans or house loan. I suppose you'd suggest I continue living in my brother's basement. Well his daughters use that as their play room now.
I now drive a small SUV. I also get to live in my own house, keep my job, and make my loan payments. I also don't have to put up with my nieces everyday. I love them to death but an uncle needs his space.
If you want to talk about the environmental disaster that is cars sitting still in traffic then lets talk about those HOV lanes. I've seen studies that show that HOV lanes reduce total movement of traffic. So, while you are happy that you get to cruise by all those single occupant vehicles those vehicles are burning fuel. Fuel that cold be burnt getting those people home instead of sitting idle in traffic.
HOV lanes have shown to produce exactly the opposite effect of what they claim to produce. It might encourage people to car pool with the carrot of getting to their destination more quickly but studies show the dedicated lanes hold up far more people than it moves.
We've seen this too with bicycle lanes. It may encourage more people to bike to work but it also holds up far more people that can not or are not willing to bike.
I will tell anyone willing to listen, and a few that aren't, that these "greenies" will get us all killed. We don't just need to do something to reduce energy use, we need to do something EFFECTIVE.
For example, rather than dictating by law that people cannot buy incandescent lights for their home, a rather small consumer of the total energy used, I propose we do something about the source of that electricity. If we replace coal and gas with nuclear power then we would not nibbling at the edges of our "carbon footprint", we'd take a bit bite out of it.
I replied to this post earlier but then decided it was likely too long for most people to bother to read. Here's a much shorter version.
The Government can and certainly will interfere. In everything. (They are generally interested in politics - and as an advert here a few years ago said - "If you're not into politics, you're not into anything." Or, as I prefer to think of it "We will meddle in everything")
Just because the government can does not mean it should. Might does not equal right.
You'd generally want your Government to be interested in somebody trying to give health care in a sewer (The place) or operations being done by somebody who is claiming to be a doctor who isn't. (The manner)
My body, my choice. I should be able to choose what kind of care I get, whom should provide it, where that happens, and when. So long as we both agree upon the terms of the transaction then the government should not be able to interfere. With something as fundamental like medical care that means the government should not be able to tax it either.
If you want to see how taxation can destroy then look at ethanol. Prohibition of alcohol destroyed the alternative fuel hobbyist. Taxation upon it, and subsidies to it, keeps it from becoming more than a means to buy votes in the corn belt. That alone is something that I feel set back alternative energy by a century. Taxation, regulation, and subsidy of healthcare is going to destroy that industry too. There are already many examples of medical advancements we'd see by now if it weren't for government "oversight" of medical care.
Indeed. But where we're on a planet where a very small number of people have the same total wealth as half of the planet, would taking more money from that very small number of people be a bad thing?
Yes, that would be a bad thing. People have the right of property. If the government can simply declare that something I own is now something they own is the destruction of the right of property.
What are they going to do with it anyway?
This is delicious. Somehow we are allowed to simply take stuff from the wealthy, presumably because they are greedy, because... why? Is not taking stuff from someone else arbitrarily also greedy? They own that stuff so what they do with it should not be my or your concern.
It cannot be taxed? Wouldn't not paying tax be a form of subsidy?
Perhaps. It would also be a means of subsidy that would be about as fair as we can get. We need only establish that the product or service falls into something "fundamental" and therefore is free of any government interference. At a minimum any product or service that is "fundamental" but not declared so by the government should be taxed no more or less than any other common product or service.
You have the right to eat? Really?
I presume that any free nation would recognize the right to live. That would include basic biological functions like eating, drinking, breathing, etc. I think I understand your confusion. You seem to assume that a right compels a government to provide. It does not. My right to eat means that the government cannot interfere with my ability to grow crops on my own land, purchase food from another, dictate what I may consume, and likewise cannot interfere with my ability to provide food to others. If you believe that a right obligates a government to act then you would be confused because very few people expect the government to provide the populace with the food it requires.
The person gets to choose the price that the provider and patient agree upon. So... the Government gets no tax on that at all? Really? Not even VAT?
In most every society I've seen on earth the government recognizes that people need to eat. In order to assure that the government does not interfere with people getting the food to live we see that food is not taxed. If we declare that medical care is equally protected under the law as a necessary aspect of the right to live then medical care should also not be taxed.
The Government can and certainly will interfere. In everything. (They are generally interested in politics - and as an advert here a few years ago said - "If you're not into politics, you're not into anything." Or, as I prefer to think of it "We will meddle in everything")
Just because the government can does not mean it should.
You'd generally want your Government to be interested in somebody trying to give health care in a sewer (The place) or operations being done by somebody who is claiming to be a doctor who isn't. (The manner)
No, I wouldn't. If someone is injured in a sewer then I'd want them to get medical care immediately. If you make a blanket statement that no person is to provide medical care outside of a licensed and inspected medical care facility then emergency care is impossible.
Claiming to be a "doctor" is misrepresentation, and has little to do with getting proper medical care. If *I* deem someone qualified to perform surgery on me then that should be my decision alone. This is also why health care costs so much in many parts of the world. The costs of satisfying the government that one is qualified to be a surgeon is so high that the only way to recover that cost is through exceedingly high fees of those that provide the service. The costs are also so high that a person typically cannot fund this process on their own, they need to get
The host, Bill Whittle, does get into some political commentary with a conservative slant but also gives an excellent history of fighter jet development in the USAF in less than 8 minutes.
The F-15 Eagle first flew in 1972, was updated in the 1980's to the F-15E Strike Eagle. Even though the two have a common history the F-15E is a very different, and much more capable, aircraft. Boeing is now working on the F-15 Silent Eagle, a version of the aircraft with capabilities in stealth and lethality that the F-35 wish it had. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I believe that the US Air Force and Navy would be better served with the F-15SE than the platinum plated lead sled that is the F-35. The US Marine Corps, however, needs a multi-role fighter that can take off from and land on the deck of an amphibious assault ship. If the Department of Defense had only focused on providing a capable VSTOL airframe, and updating existing airframes with improved engines and electronics, then we wouldn't have the F-35 in it's current form. We'd also have a much more capable military at a lower cost.
What the powers that be tried to do is replace four very different aircraft, F-15, F-16, A-10, and AV-8, with one. This common airframe was supposed to come with a cost savings. Instead what we have is a very expensive compromise that is a jack of all trades and master of none.
As many will tell to anyone that will listen the goal of the F-35 is not to provide a superior airframe, it is to spend federal government money in as many Congressional districts as possible.
I have a right to free speech, does that mean the government must provide me with time on a radio station? I have the right to travel freely, does that obligate the government to buy me a car?
Let's get even more "fundamental"...
I have the right to eat, does that obligate the government to buy me food? I have the right to shelter, does that obligate the government to buy me a house?
A recent debate is that medical care is a "fundamental right". So I find myself in need of medical care, does that obligate the government to provide it? Who is the "government" anyway? Government is people. Do I have the right to another person's labor? Are other people obligated to provide me with their resources? That is what things like food, shelter, internet access, and medical care are, they are the time, labor, and resources of others.
I don't have a "fundamental right" to another person's stuff. Claiming such sounds a lot like, "to everyone according to their needs, from everyone according to their abilities." I'd bet that a lot of people don't even know where that phrase comes from or what it means. That phrase is what brought us Marxism, communism, and socialism.
Let's assume we have a society that everyone gets what they need, and everyone provides to their ability, who enforces that? Who decides what people need and another can provide? Usually the answer is that the government does. Which means that phrase translates to, "the government takes and the government gives." Another way to put it is the often maligned phrase, "tax and spend".
If we claim that a fundamental right requires a government to provide it is the path to socialism, big government, perhaps "big brother", and certainly a path to poverty. To me a "fundamental right" means the government cannot interfere. A "fundamental right" to healthcare means a person should be able to obtain medical care from whomever that person chooses, at a price both provider and patient agree upon, and the government cannot interfere with the time, place, or manner in which it is provided.
If we declare internet access then what we should do is declare that it cannot be taxed. It also cannot be subsidized, because if it was then there would be inherent favoritism by the government to providers. Subsidizing "internet" means the government defines what the internet is and therefore who is subject to the subsidies. In other words it's a lot on how we treat the right of free speech. When the government starts to subsidize "free" speech then it's not free any more, there is the cost of speaking what the government wants others to hear in order to get the subsidy.
The nuclear power industry might be asking for loosened standards because the standards are so high as to be unreasonable.
There's a meme that is floating around the internet with a picture of Grand Central Terminal in New York explaining that the radiation in the station from natural decay of elements in the granite walls would be high enough to have any nuclear power plant in the USA shut down. People obviously visit the terminal daily with no signs of ill effects but that level of radiation would be intolerable from federal regulators if seen in a nuclear power plant.
"The companies operating nuclear reactors have a 60 year track record of greed, corruption, dishonesty, massive cost over-runs (passed on to consumers) and general incompetence."
Well those power plants that screw up royally make the news, the ones that operate safely don't. Also, would you not expect to have any cost incurred by any power plant, or any corporation providing any service to the public, to have those costs placed on the consumers? Of course costs they bear are placed on the consumers. Also, any means they have to reduce costs are also placed on the consumer. What you have done is just made an argument where anyone providing a service is evil, because if they save people money by cutting costs they are evil, but if they fail to cut costs then they are charging people money and are therefore evil.
Side note, I hear liberals scream up and down on how the eeeeevil oil companies need to pay increased taxes to pay for the damage they are doing to the environment. At the same time the liberals scream on how the eeeeevil oil companies are gouging the little guy for fuel they need to drive to work and heat their homes. News flash: If the eeeevil oil companies can't make a profit because the government tells them to both pay more taxes and reduce prices then the oil companies will have to fold because they can't pay the "little guys" that work for them. If the oil companies fold then NO ONE can drive to work, and NO ONE can heat their homes. If you want to see an environmental disaster then raise oil prices. People will be cutting down every tree within walking distance so they won't freeze to death this winter.
The nuclear power industry wants to build new reactors that are far safer that those currently in operation. The problem is the NRC is sitting on their hands because no one in the government wants to be responsible for a nuclear power plant that fails. You can't fail if you don't try, right? Well, you won't win that way either.
In the mean time we keep running old reactors well beyond their designed lifespan because power companies need to profit or they cannot stay in business. The longer we wait in building new nuclear power plants the longer we run these old plants, and the longer we burn coal with all its downsides.
Tell me, rudy_wayne, how to you propose we resolve this problem of greed, corruption, etc., etc.?
Is natural gas your solution? "And even without all those problems, cheap natural gas makes it impossible for nuclear power to be competitive."
Some day natural gas will no longer be cheap. Right now the time to get a new nuclear power plant is seemingly infinite. No new nuclear power plant has been built in the USA for over forty years. This is solely because the NRC cannot be satisfied with any design presented to them. They keep demanding "safer" but give no bounds on how safe a nuclear reactor must be. Claiming that failure is not an option means that success is not an option either. Some form of failure must be acceptable, but the NRC doesn't see it that way. Right now we could build a nuclear power plant where failure would result in destruction of the power plant, and radiation would spread no further than the bounds of the containing structure. That is not sufficient for the NRC, they ask for the impossible.
Of course it is impossible for nuclear power to be competitive, because the NRC has made it so. As it is right now the levels of radiation from just common building material would mean a nuclear power plant is condemned even before any nuclear fuel is brought on site. With restrictions like that how do you expect any nuclear power plant to be built?
I know the parent post is from an AC but there is insight in that.
The FDA seems to be greatly afraid of testing any drug before they've proven to a high degree of certainty that the drug is both effective and safe. While the FDA is holding back drugs that have shown promise in early testing people are dying from disease.
Large numbers of people have come forward asking for FDA reform because they've already had a dozen physicians tell them that they are going to die unless they find a suitable treatment in time. People developing drugs to treat these diseases, with the hope to make the money back in selling the drug, want to test it. So, we have the drugs, people are already suffering from the disease, these people are willing to have the drugs tested on them, but the FDA will not allow the testing because... why?
I believe that the US federal government has gone beyond discouraging bad medicine through regulation and is now discouraging good medicine. While the FDA is holding up drug development people are dying and companies doing research are folding up because they cannot get a return on their investment.
I also believe that we are going to see medical advancement come from people that break FDA rules willingly to save lives, or research will move to places where the FDA has no authority. If the FDA does not ease up then the USA may soon no longer be able to claim to be first in medical research.
"Until then, the conservatives and libertarians will gladly attend your funeral...just kidding, they don't give a flying rat's ass about you."
Okay, let's let the liberals run the health care business, where no one is allowed to make a profit from the misery of others. To prevent health care providers from gouging patients they are only allowed a wage dictated by the government. All medical research is to be funded by the government with oversight from the government. Anyone attempting to profit in health care beyond government limits will be severely punished. Well this has been tried in several countries and it does not turn out well.
I recall an interview of a brain surgeon that lived during the Soviet era. He was a brilliant surgeon that people from around the world sought out to learn from. The problem was that with the few people that needed his special skills, and the price controls on what he could charge for his services, he could not make a living as a brain surgeon in the Soviet Union. He wanted to leave so that he could perform surgery on people that lived outside the Soviet Union but the government would not allow such a brilliant surgeon to leave, because they were afraid he might not come back. People sick enough to require his services were typically not healthy enough to go to the Soviet Union for the surgery. So, the brain surgeon stopped doing surgery and found a job as a bus driver, because driving a bus was more profitable than doing brain surgery.
One story not enough to convince you? Think the Soviet Union is a place so different from the USA that using that as an example it too much? I can give another example.
One of my professors in computer engineering worked for a company that made medical electronics. Over time the FDA created more and more restrictions on medical devices that the company stopped trying to make money in the medical field. So what they do now is make electronics for the veterinary field. You see since a dog is merely property then having a medical device fail is not considered much of a big deal, legally speaking. On the other hand people that might need these very same devices cannot because the FDA will not approve them for use in people. So, you get to keep your dog alive but you will die from the same medical condition.
Still not convinced?
If you want a good surgeon there are plenty to find in elective surgeries. People that do cosmetic surgery have to compete on price and quality, so if you want quality then you have to pay for it. If you are in need of a life saving procedure, and the government is paying the bill, then you very likely get a second rate surgeon. All the good surgeons have moved on to where they can make more money.
Wait, I have more...
Steven Crowder did an excellent video on Canadian government health care. A friend of his had a fall while skateboarding and wanted to have his swollen arm looked at in case it was broken. They went to the emergency room and checked in, then waited. After hours of waiting they got to see... a nurse. She then gave them a priority to see a physician. She also told them that if they wanted to see a physician more quickly then they best go to a private clinic, there they'd be paying the bill, not the government. They were not seen by a physician that day. They went back the next day, same thing, wait for a government funded physician or go to a private clinic. They did not see a physician that day either. The third day the guy ended up going to a private clinic, and saw a physician immediately.
Us conservatives and libertarians do care about people. What liberals seem to forget is that it takes more than caring to get things done and pay the bills. When the government runs healthcare we have literal brain surgeons driving buses and people putting limbs at risk from sitting in government funded waiting rooms.
You mean tipping the car sales people for the price of the vehicle isn't customary?
Seriously though, how do you ensure that the profits from patent protection is sufficient to spur development and do not pad the profits of those that develop it? Also, would not increasing the profits of those that develop innovative products provide them with even more assets to do even more innovation?
My sister was part of a team that got a patent. The university where she worked shopped around for people that might be able to profit from the patent. Nobody bought it. It sat in the patent office until the patent expired. Now all people that could profit from the patent are free to do so without having to pay the university for the privilege. How do you prevent that from happening again?
I suppose we could have the patent not expire until the patent holder can show they've earned enough money to pay back their costs. Then we could have patents going on forever because, while the patent describes something that society could benefit from, no one is willing to take the risk of proving the patent beneficial.
Also, how would you prevent someone from holding a patent for a really long time by some creative bookkeeping? Or, flip it around and the government dictates how much a company can make from a patent and everyone that files gets screwed?
I don't think that there is any good answer to this so all we can do is compromise in a way that is simple to enforce and reasonably fair to all. I'd think that putting a time limit on the discovery is reasonable. For something like a life saving discovery I'd hope that any one that invested in the research will find a compromise between profits and saving lives. Don't tell me people should not profit from saving lives. People can and do save lives without profit but when your company is in the business of saving lives then keeping the company running, which means showing a profit, then staying in business saves more lives in the long run.
Profit is not evil. Profit is the means by which we can encourage people to do things that they normally would not. Making a profit in medicine is not in itself evil. Those of us with empathy for our fellow humans don't like to see people profit from the misery of others. But if no one can make a profit in medicine then we'd rely solely on the empathy of others to provide our medical needs.
I might not tip a car dealer $20,000 for finding me the right kind of car to drive. What I might be willing to spend $20,000 on is making sure that the person that is about to do surgery on me is someone competent to do so. Otherwise that competent person might be selling cars and the person that should be selling cars is doing surgery.
From the article: "Other unanswered questions include how to dispose of the waste material â" both solid and liquid â" created by 3-D printers. At this point, the researchers think it is best to take it to a hazardous waste center."
So how does the hazardous waste center dispose of the material if they don't yet know what aspect of the 3D printed part makes it hazardous? I assume there is a catch all process for such materials, like sealing it up real tight into something that won't leak and dropping it down a really deep hole. Perhaps another catch all is heat it up so hot that any molecules in the material are broken down to their constituent atoms.
Also, once we know what makes them hazardous then it is quite possible we can find a means to remove that aspect of the material and/or find a means for a user of that material to perform whatever process is necessary to render it inert. Such as if the process is to expose the 3D printed product to UV light then tell the manufacturer or user that it should be left out in the sunlight for how many hours it takes to destroy the hazardous material. For some items, like wind chimes and license plate holders, the UV exposure would be expected in normal use.
While this is certainly interesting it seems to me that this article is click bait, scaremongering, or both. Lots of people have been using 3D printed products without any health problems showing up. This is really something that should be of interest only to fish breeders and material scientists.
I'd think a liberal arts major that studied the finer points of the written and spoken word is precisely the kind of person that should be defining what an engineer should be. This person should also have had some exposure to engineering, and someone that is a professor teaching in the computer science and engineering fields likely has done so.
Do you need to be a surgeon to define what surgery is? Someone that is a medical technician or nurse should be able to define surgery accurately. Do you need to be an mechanical engineer to define mechanical engineering? I'd think that a welder or machinist would be able to tell you that what they are doing is not engineering, and be able to identify when an actual engineer is speaking to them. I don't know how much programming this guy knows but I'd assume that teaching in the College of Computing at a university for seven years he'd have enough interactions with real programmers and engineers that he should be able to know the difference.
I graduated with a computer engineering degree, and was at one time in a computer science program. There are a lot of courses that are similar, and at most colleges and universities students in either program will take many of the same course.
What is different is that the engineering students must take classes that teach them the engineering process. Typically a computer science student is permitted to take the computer engineering courses but they are not required, so it's not improbable for a computer scientist to also be a good engineer.
Engineering to me is a process, and engineers are people that follow a rigorous engineering process. Programming is a part of software engineering but not everything. Software engineers may have programmers that work under their supervision, much like how a mechanical engineer will supervise machinists, or a physician will have nurses and technicians to help with a patient.
When I went to college the first time I had to decide if I wanted to take computer science or computer engineering. What made up my mind was this, a recruiter told me that he preferred to hire computer engineers rather than computer scientists. The engineering students understood the process required to make a good product, and teaching them a computer language on the job was easy. The computer science students knew lots of programming languages, but it was hit or miss on if they knew how to develop a good product, and teaching people how to make a good product on the job was hard.
Another analogy, I'm taking music classes but I would not call myself a musician. I may know how to plunk keys on a piano, and pluck a few notes on a bass, but I know next to nothing on how to write music, proper playing technique, or theory on melodies and harmonics. A good bass player, like a good programmer, can certainly make a lot of money doing what they are good at. A musician, like a software engineer, can understand and explain the why and how of their craft.
No, there is a reason to oppose a complete ban on nuclear weapon testing outside of politics.
So, let's say we use simulations to verify our weapon design. Does that simulation prove the weapon works as intended? No, it doesn't. Only detonation of the weapon will prove it works as intended.
In computer engineering we us simulations all the time. Creating a real actual integrated circuit costs a lot of money. Even using FPGAs in testing costs money because it's a lot easier to simulate a test bench than to build one for real. Even after all the testing is done in simulation a small run of real circuits are built for testing. Good thing too. If computer testing was done like nuclear weapon testing then we'd have a pile of worthless computers because the real circuit didn't work like the simulated one.
If any nation is going to claim to have a working nuclear arsenal then they must prove it through periodic testing. Someone that's detonated a real nuclear bomb in war time, like the USA, might be able to bluff their way through not testing for a long time but that won't suffice for everyone. These nations are going to want to test their weapons, of only to show others that they have a successful design before a shooting war starts.
Also, digital circuit design is not like nuclear weapon deign. We've been building digital circuits for a very long time and making billions or trillions of them. We know how they work. Nuclear weapons are a technology that we are still learning about. We need to test to build a proper simulation. The simulation is only as good as the data put into it. Garbage in, garbage out. Nuclear weapon testing not only verifies the design, it verifies the simulation.
No wonder a complete nuclear weapon test ban failed to get approval, no one with the knowledge of how actual simulation works is going to agree to not be able to test their simulations once in a while. If the simulators are garbage then the designs tested by it are likely to be garbage as well.
That is why I believe we should have term limits. I don't mean that one can only serve two terms like POTUS, I mean a person can serve one term in any given office. That should contain the corruption somewhat.
An inevitable retort, "What of a politician that is really good at his/her job?" Then they can run for a different office. If you do the math someone can serve a series of public offices, from school board to US senator, an stay in public office for 20 years. If you add in things like VPOTUS and POTUS, it's 30 years or so. Add in appointed offices like ambassadors, flag officers (generals and admirals), judges/justices, and cabinet positions then a person could be a public employee for their entire adult life.
Nobody is that good that we cannot find someone to replace them given the entire US population to draw from. Politicians, like diapers, needs to be changed often and for the same reason. We should not have senators who, once in office, only leave it feet first.
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Any plan to reduce carbon output that does not include the use of nuclear power is not serious.
Unreliable energy sources like wind and solar cannot power a first world economy. Any use of bio-fuel is based on unrealistic conversion efficiencies of converting solar power into usable energy by using plant life as in intermediary, or they are just "green washing" the burning of fossil fuels since we are still using fossil fuels to transport, harvest, and fertilize those plants. These unreliable energy sources require lots of land to capture wind, wave, or sun, and there just is not enough of it to go around.
Any claims that the use of nuclear power is going to kill us all is laughable to me if the claims of global warming from burning fossil fuels is true. Right now, after over fifty years of government subsidy of unreliable energy we have less than 3% of our grid power coming from these sources. At this rate we'll all be baked to a crisp before we build enough unreliable energy to replace coal. I think we can manage a little bit of nuclear waste to avoid the catastrophe that is global warming, that is assuming the threat is real.
Even using old school nuclear, with steam turbines and solid fuel rods, we'd be better off using it than not. Fortunately we now have better ways to harness nuclear power with molten salt reactors. MSRs can burn up all the uranium or thorium fuel without reprocessing, as oppose to the less than 1% efficiency we get now with once through solid fuel. MSRs can even use the old solid fuel waste as fuel. With MSRs we could produce valuable radio isotopes for industry, science, and medicine, something that is prohibitively expensive now with solid fuel reactors.
The best things about nuclear power is it works when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, and the rain doesn't fall. It will also do this in any location on this planet. MSRs cannot melt down like solid fuel reactors so putting them in places where we would not even think of putting a solid fuel reactor is possible. They can also be built much smaller than a traditional nuclear power plant, meaning they cost much less to build and operate.
Conserving energy is nice but that does not eliminate burning fossil fuels, it only prolongs the inevitable. Using wind, solar, and hydro where it can be profitable is just good business and therefore will happen whether or not the government subsidizes it. Trying to make unreliable energy where it cannot be profitable, and relying on government subsidy to make it work, is just green washing on another level. Our economy runs on fossil fuels so taxing coal to subsidize wind only makes us rely on the coal even more, not less.
Bloom boxes and solar panels can get us only so far. To eliminate the burning of coal requires an energy source that is equally reliable and inexpensive and, barring some leap in technology, that means nuclear fission power.
Long, long ago, in a land far, far away there were people that were very protective of their ideas. They'd go to great lengths to keep these ideas to themselves. Skilled workers were very protective of the processes they used to create their products. I recall reading of factories where the workers would never leave. They'd have effectively a castle built to house the workers and equipment. Food and raw material would enter and finished product would leave. As technology improved and society developed the concept of intellectual property was eventually born. In this way the people with the knowledge and skills would no longer have to be locked up to protect industrial processes.
This idea of intellectual property didn't end the practice of trade secrets but did provide an option to people that thought intellectual property laws were a better option than building a castle and trying to convince skilled craftsmen to lock themselves inside of it. The trade off was that the ideas that would otherwise be held a secret would be exposed to the government. The government would then give a time limited protection to the use of that idea so that the creator, and society, may profit from the idea. Any violations of this protection was therefore enforced by the government.
The problem with government enforced trade secrets is that the government does not know what they are protecting before there is a claim of a violation. The government would essentially have to rely on the claimant that the idea was actually their own to begin with. The accused would likewise have to show that they came up with the same idea independently, lawfully acquired the idea, or some other defense that would prevent prosecution.
In law and in theory the accused is innocent until proven guilty but in practice that does not always hold true.
I see so many ways that this could be abused. Unfortunately I cannot get the article to load, perhaps it's been slashdotted, so I don't know if the article spells out all the ways this law can be abused. We already have a very long history of legal protections of intellectual property, I see no need to change it now. If someone wishes to keep something a trade secret then they need to make sure no one else finds out through existing legal means. If someone wants legal protections of their intellectual property then they need to share that with a government body first, before it is revealed to anyone else, so that there is no question on who came up with the idea first. Without this prior revelation then there is always a reasonable doubt on who owns the property.
This bill should not become law, of only because any claim against it would be nearly impossible to prove in a court. As someone that has developed intellectual property for a living I believe I have a pretty strong understanding of how intellectual property laws benefit us all. I also understand the need to simply keep things to yourself if you want to keep something secret. For example, if I kept a crypto key (or a house key) in a obscure location then I can't be expected to have the government punish someone because they happened upon where I kept it. If that key enables someone to snoop around my electronic files (or my refrigerator) then there are laws against that. I can expect the government to protect my property to the extent that I made an effort to secure it, but if I don't secure my stuff then why should I expect the government to do that for me?
Let's assume that anything radioactive is bad. We must admit that some radiation is acceptable since everything around us is radioactive to some degree, and we use radiation for medical reasons. But let's say that we must remove radiation from the world. There are two ways to make something radioactive no longer radioactive. First is to wait it out. Anything radioactive will decay eventually. The other way to destroy radioactive material is to put it in a nuclear reactor. If it is radioactive then it is nuclear fuel. Not all things radioactive make good fuel but everything radioactive will produce heat that can be captured in a reactor. So, to get rid of this radioactive stuff we should use it as fuel.
That "waste" that you claim must be stored for millennia or it will harm us is fuel. Why would we throw it away? Oh, I know. We throw it away because fear mongers like you are too ignorant to figure out that this radioactive material is useful. Like I said, it may not be good reactor fuel but anything radioactive is fuel. The good fuel we should burn in a reactor. The stuff that is not so good as fuel tends to be the kind of stuff we need for medicine and industry. The few things that are radioactive and don't make good fuel and don't have any useful application we know of is so small that we could easily wait that stuff out to decay away. The radioactive material that is truly waste are things with such short half lives that it would only take days or months to wait for it to decay away. We know how to contain radioactive material for a few months.
You say we need a "workable solution" for the waste. We have one. It's a solution we figured out decades ago. The solution is more nuclear reactors. We have a name for these reactors, waste annihilating molten salt reactors. We didn't call them that decades ago but the technology was figured out in the 1960s.
If it's radioactive then we likely have a use for it. The stuff we don't have a use for would have likely decayed away in the time it took you to read my post.
I often wondered why there is such a tendency for reboots in TV and movies. Why re-make something when you could make something new? Then I realized something. In today's society of perpetual copyrights it is nearly impossible to create something new that would not be considered derivative of some existing work. The path of least resistance is to license a known entity to shield the show creators from a nearly inevitable barrage of lawsuits from people with rights to any movie, show, novel, comic book, or whatever, seeking to get a piece of the profits.
The creators of the reboot can then derive freedom to re-invent the premise with even wildly variations on the theme so long as they retain enough of the character names, plot elements, and so forth that they can logically claim it is still a derivative of the original. The ability to bring in fans of the original work no doubt allows for some insurance of success for the series.
This is why, IMHO, we can't have anything new. We've built up such a history of copyrighted works that anything that is not completely foreign to a potential audience will no doubt be considered a derivative of some existing work. Anything that is so foreign to be considered truly novel is so unlikely to be successful that the chances of finding someone willing to fund the effort would be very small.
Lost in Space sounds like a basis upon which someone could build a very entertaining universe. It could also turn out as badly as the original and the movie.
NASA is desperate for the Pu-238 needed to create radio-thermal generator units. To make this material requires a nuclear reactor. Most any nuclear reactor will do but some are more suited to this task than others. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are a prime candidate for this, they can make the Pu-238 in normal operation while also producing power and other valuable radioactive isotopes.
The heat from a LFTR reactor is high enough that it makes cracking water into hydrogen for rocket fuel a very efficient process. After the water is cracked the heat left over can be used to make electricity, another valuable resource.
We are not going to send people to space with an economy based on "green" energy like wind and solar. Fossil fuels won't get us there either. If space exploration is going to be more than just communication satellites and the occasional trip to low earth orbit on the ISS then we need nuclear power. We'll need nuclear power on earth to make the energy needed to get things into space. We'll also need to develop nuclear power systems suited to operation in space.
Solar panels are great for many situations in space but if we go to Mars then we'll need nuclear power. There's no atmosphere to speak of on Mars so there won't be windmills. Even if one was able to drill for oil on Mars there is no air to burn it. To make that happen we'll need people trained in designing, building, and operating nuclear power plants. To get these people we'll need an infrastructure built to train those people. If we want college graduates trained in nuclear power for a mission to Mars in 2030 then we need to start building the programs to train them now.
The government has to do very little to make this happen. All they need to do is get off their thumbs and allow people to invest their own money in building nuclear reactors. I don't want to hear how these politicians will encourage nuclear power since government seems to have a reverse Midas touch, everything they touch turns to shit. I want to hear how the government will step aside and allow the market to provide the means to develop nuclear power and all the other technologies we need to get into space.
The great thing about space exploration is that it drives so many technologies with uses here on earth. This is true with so many other scientific endeavors. A new space race might be just what we need to allow this federation to reduce poverty, increase employment, raise wages, and so much more.
The scenario you propose is only one of many reasons why I despise people that claim we can be carbon neutral only if we create a national grid connecting all the wind and solar plants scattered about the country. We should not create an even larger interconnected electricity grid, we need more smaller grids. We can get carbon neutral by using nuclear power.
We can spread out the nuclear power using small modular reactors. Large multi-gigawatt nuclear power plants are a prime target for attack. Multiple small nuclear power plants with a capacity around a half gigawatt is not such a nice target. Using molten salt reactors means that if one is attacked there would not be a meltdown and spread of radioactive material beyond the grounds of the power plant site.
One deterrent to an EMP attack is to create the infrastructure that is not vulnerable to it. We will no doubt have some sort of means to connect the various grids together so that should there be a loss of generating capacity on one grid can be made up by surplus from a neighboring grid. It should be the norm that the grids remain relatively small and disconnected from the rest so that a cascade failure cannot happen, such as in the case of an EMP attack, sunburst, forest fire, power plant failure, or whatever.
Wind, solar, and a large interconnected grid would be a very expensive and fragile means to get a "green" national grid. Using small modular molten salt reactors would be a much more feasible and robust means to that end. I'm sure many believe the problem lies with NIMBY in keeping nuclear power from becoming the primary source of electricity in the USA but I believe it is the federal government holding it up. There are plenty of low population places in this federation where power lines already exist to put a nuclear power plant. Getting the permits to build one would require an act of God or Congress.
you should have plowed your own road home.
That's what I do now, I got a truck and plow through the snow.
youre the guy who keeps railing against government and for libertarian ideals.
I do believe that governments exist to build and maintain roads. That's what my taxes are for. But I'm fine with the city taking priority of clearing school bus routes and fire lanes first. Not only does that keep taxes low for everyone it also means that I'm not treated any special than others, that's how a republic works. I also have this feeling that if I did actually plow the roads myself you'd be someone to tell me I'm an idiot for plowing the road as I'm not a professional and could damage the road, damage private property, or injure someone.
also, have you never heard of tire chains?
Yes, I have heard of them. Problem is the manufacturer of the car I owned previously stated specifically in the manual not to put chains on the tires. So I did what the neighbors did, and what my brothers recommended, I got a four wheel drive vehicle. Since then there has been only one time I could not drive all the way into my garage. Even then it was an exceptionally slippery day and I ended up parking across the street, not a mile away.
you literally admitted to foreknowledge of conditions, so why didn't you prepare beforehand, oh prophet of self-reliance?
Where did I say I had foreknowledge of the road conditions? When I lived at my brother's my car was suitable since there the street in front of his house was plowed early and often. When I moved across town I expected the same. My guess is that the street to my brother's house was on a school bus route, while my house was several blocks from one.
I did find it odd that nearly every neighbor had a SUV when I was moving in to my place. I just thought it was some sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" thing. Nope, it was that those that had regular jobs needed that vehicle to get to work. The people with front wheel drive cars were either retired or wishing they had four wheel drive.
Slashdot has posted several articles about people that have fled the internet of things due to the real or perceived health problems that living with technology causes. If we bring the technology everywhere then where can these people go to remove themselves from technology?
I only being halfway serious here. We should offer technology to everyone, but also offer the opportunity to do without.
And yet it isn't as low as it could or should be.
How low should anyone's carbon footprint be? What is my recommended daily allowance of carbon output?
The GPP drives a 2015 Passat, which I'd think has a lower carbon footprint than my 2006 Explorer. Perhaps the GPP is not concerned about the carbon output of the Passat because the alternative could have been a Ford F-150, as in the GPP believes that choice was sufficient to gain the praises of those concerned about the carbon footprint of the public.
It seems that some people just cannot be pleased. I could be taking the bus to work but someone will still complain that I should be walking, biking, or riding a horse instead. Perhaps that is even too much and I should be working from home. But then my home is air conditioned, and it shouldn't be. I should be happy to sweat a little in the summer. In the winter my thermostat is set too high at 72 degrees. If I had it at 65 degrees then I'll be told it should be at 62 degrees.
Yes, everyone can do something to reduce their carbon footprint. I think that all those people complaining about my carbon footprint on the internet should reduce their own, by turning off their computers and complain to themselves in a darkened room.
Most folks would rather we did things to the benefit of the environment, as long as their personal sacrifice is somewhere between minimal and nonexistent.
I tried driving a fuel efficient car, that worked well until I moved from my brother's basement to my own place. That first winter I found myself several times where I had my car stuck in the snow or the path to my home so slicked with ice that I had to walk the last mile home. There is a school near where I live so that path is cleared quite quickly but that still leaves the last mile with deep snow after a storm, often for days.
When I went to look at vehicles I took fuel economy into consideration. I considered hybrids, natural gas cars, as well as more traditional vehicles. I came to several conclusions. Fiirst was that I needed a four wheel drive vehicle like my neighbors or I might find myself looking for a new job because I could not get to work when required of me. Second, that no one makes a vehicle that is both a hybrid, natural gas, or otherwise reduced carbon output and four wheel drive. GMC made a hybrid truck for a while but they didn't sell well and so were no longer made. Also, fuel efficiency is expensive. The most efficient cars are new cars, and I could not afford a new car. I'd be spending far more on car payments than I would on fuel savings.
So, I'm one of those people you complain about. I'll sacrifice to save on the fuel I burn but to do so would mean spending so much money that I could no longer make payments on my school loans or house loan. I suppose you'd suggest I continue living in my brother's basement. Well his daughters use that as their play room now.
I now drive a small SUV. I also get to live in my own house, keep my job, and make my loan payments. I also don't have to put up with my nieces everyday. I love them to death but an uncle needs his space.
If you want to talk about the environmental disaster that is cars sitting still in traffic then lets talk about those HOV lanes. I've seen studies that show that HOV lanes reduce total movement of traffic. So, while you are happy that you get to cruise by all those single occupant vehicles those vehicles are burning fuel. Fuel that cold be burnt getting those people home instead of sitting idle in traffic.
HOV lanes have shown to produce exactly the opposite effect of what they claim to produce. It might encourage people to car pool with the carrot of getting to their destination more quickly but studies show the dedicated lanes hold up far more people than it moves.
We've seen this too with bicycle lanes. It may encourage more people to bike to work but it also holds up far more people that can not or are not willing to bike.
I will tell anyone willing to listen, and a few that aren't, that these "greenies" will get us all killed. We don't just need to do something to reduce energy use, we need to do something EFFECTIVE.
For example, rather than dictating by law that people cannot buy incandescent lights for their home, a rather small consumer of the total energy used, I propose we do something about the source of that electricity. If we replace coal and gas with nuclear power then we would not nibbling at the edges of our "carbon footprint", we'd take a bit bite out of it.
I replied to this post earlier but then decided it was likely too long for most people to bother to read. Here's a much shorter version.
The Government can and certainly will interfere. In everything. (They are generally interested in politics - and as an advert here a few years ago said - "If you're not into politics, you're not into anything." Or, as I prefer to think of it "We will meddle in everything")
Just because the government can does not mean it should. Might does not equal right.
You'd generally want your Government to be interested in somebody trying to give health care in a sewer (The place) or operations being done by somebody who is claiming to be a doctor who isn't. (The manner)
My body, my choice. I should be able to choose what kind of care I get, whom should provide it, where that happens, and when. So long as we both agree upon the terms of the transaction then the government should not be able to interfere. With something as fundamental like medical care that means the government should not be able to tax it either.
If you want to see how taxation can destroy then look at ethanol. Prohibition of alcohol destroyed the alternative fuel hobbyist. Taxation upon it, and subsidies to it, keeps it from becoming more than a means to buy votes in the corn belt. That alone is something that I feel set back alternative energy by a century. Taxation, regulation, and subsidy of healthcare is going to destroy that industry too. There are already many examples of medical advancements we'd see by now if it weren't for government "oversight" of medical care.
Indeed. But where we're on a planet where a very small number of people have the same total wealth as half of the planet, would taking more money from that very small number of people be a bad thing?
Yes, that would be a bad thing. People have the right of property. If the government can simply declare that something I own is now something they own is the destruction of the right of property.
What are they going to do with it anyway?
This is delicious. Somehow we are allowed to simply take stuff from the wealthy, presumably because they are greedy, because... why? Is not taking stuff from someone else arbitrarily also greedy? They own that stuff so what they do with it should not be my or your concern.
It cannot be taxed? Wouldn't not paying tax be a form of subsidy?
Perhaps. It would also be a means of subsidy that would be about as fair as we can get. We need only establish that the product or service falls into something "fundamental" and therefore is free of any government interference. At a minimum any product or service that is "fundamental" but not declared so by the government should be taxed no more or less than any other common product or service.
You have the right to eat? Really?
I presume that any free nation would recognize the right to live. That would include basic biological functions like eating, drinking, breathing, etc. I think I understand your confusion. You seem to assume that a right compels a government to provide. It does not. My right to eat means that the government cannot interfere with my ability to grow crops on my own land, purchase food from another, dictate what I may consume, and likewise cannot interfere with my ability to provide food to others. If you believe that a right obligates a government to act then you would be confused because very few people expect the government to provide the populace with the food it requires.
The person gets to choose the price that the provider and patient agree upon. So... the Government gets no tax on that at all? Really? Not even VAT?
In most every society I've seen on earth the government recognizes that people need to eat. In order to assure that the government does not interfere with people getting the food to live we see that food is not taxed. If we declare that medical care is equally protected under the law as a necessary aspect of the right to live then medical care should also not be taxed.
The Government can and certainly will interfere. In everything. (They are generally interested in politics - and as an advert here a few years ago said - "If you're not into politics, you're not into anything." Or, as I prefer to think of it "We will meddle in everything")
Just because the government can does not mean it should.
You'd generally want your Government to be interested in somebody trying to give health care in a sewer (The place) or operations being done by somebody who is claiming to be a doctor who isn't. (The manner)
No, I wouldn't. If someone is injured in a sewer then I'd want them to get medical care immediately. If you make a blanket statement that no person is to provide medical care outside of a licensed and inspected medical care facility then emergency care is impossible.
Claiming to be a "doctor" is misrepresentation, and has little to do with getting proper medical care. If *I* deem someone qualified to perform surgery on me then that should be my decision alone. This is also why health care costs so much in many parts of the world. The costs of satisfying the government that one is qualified to be a surgeon is so high that the only way to recover that cost is through exceedingly high fees of those that provide the service. The costs are also so high that a person typically cannot fund this process on their own, they need to get
An excellent video describing the failings of the F-35 program:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The host, Bill Whittle, does get into some political commentary with a conservative slant but also gives an excellent history of fighter jet development in the USAF in less than 8 minutes.
The F-15 Eagle first flew in 1972, was updated in the 1980's to the F-15E Strike Eagle. Even though the two have a common history the F-15E is a very different, and much more capable, aircraft. Boeing is now working on the F-15 Silent Eagle, a version of the aircraft with capabilities in stealth and lethality that the F-35 wish it had.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I believe that the US Air Force and Navy would be better served with the F-15SE than the platinum plated lead sled that is the F-35. The US Marine Corps, however, needs a multi-role fighter that can take off from and land on the deck of an amphibious assault ship. If the Department of Defense had only focused on providing a capable VSTOL airframe, and updating existing airframes with improved engines and electronics, then we wouldn't have the F-35 in it's current form. We'd also have a much more capable military at a lower cost.
What the powers that be tried to do is replace four very different aircraft, F-15, F-16, A-10, and AV-8, with one. This common airframe was supposed to come with a cost savings. Instead what we have is a very expensive compromise that is a jack of all trades and master of none.
As many will tell to anyone that will listen the goal of the F-35 is not to provide a superior airframe, it is to spend federal government money in as many Congressional districts as possible.
I have a right to free speech, does that mean the government must provide me with time on a radio station? I have the right to travel freely, does that obligate the government to buy me a car?
Let's get even more "fundamental"...
I have the right to eat, does that obligate the government to buy me food? I have the right to shelter, does that obligate the government to buy me a house?
A recent debate is that medical care is a "fundamental right". So I find myself in need of medical care, does that obligate the government to provide it? Who is the "government" anyway? Government is people. Do I have the right to another person's labor? Are other people obligated to provide me with their resources? That is what things like food, shelter, internet access, and medical care are, they are the time, labor, and resources of others.
I don't have a "fundamental right" to another person's stuff. Claiming such sounds a lot like, "to everyone according to their needs, from everyone according to their abilities." I'd bet that a lot of people don't even know where that phrase comes from or what it means. That phrase is what brought us Marxism, communism, and socialism.
Let's assume we have a society that everyone gets what they need, and everyone provides to their ability, who enforces that? Who decides what people need and another can provide? Usually the answer is that the government does. Which means that phrase translates to, "the government takes and the government gives." Another way to put it is the often maligned phrase, "tax and spend".
If we claim that a fundamental right requires a government to provide it is the path to socialism, big government, perhaps "big brother", and certainly a path to poverty. To me a "fundamental right" means the government cannot interfere. A "fundamental right" to healthcare means a person should be able to obtain medical care from whomever that person chooses, at a price both provider and patient agree upon, and the government cannot interfere with the time, place, or manner in which it is provided.
If we declare internet access then what we should do is declare that it cannot be taxed. It also cannot be subsidized, because if it was then there would be inherent favoritism by the government to providers. Subsidizing "internet" means the government defines what the internet is and therefore who is subject to the subsidies. In other words it's a lot on how we treat the right of free speech. When the government starts to subsidize "free" speech then it's not free any more, there is the cost of speaking what the government wants others to hear in order to get the subsidy.
The nuclear power industry might be asking for loosened standards because the standards are so high as to be unreasonable.
There's a meme that is floating around the internet with a picture of Grand Central Terminal in New York explaining that the radiation in the station from natural decay of elements in the granite walls would be high enough to have any nuclear power plant in the USA shut down. People obviously visit the terminal daily with no signs of ill effects but that level of radiation would be intolerable from federal regulators if seen in a nuclear power plant.
"The companies operating nuclear reactors have a 60 year track record of greed, corruption, dishonesty, massive cost over-runs (passed on to consumers) and general incompetence."
Well those power plants that screw up royally make the news, the ones that operate safely don't. Also, would you not expect to have any cost incurred by any power plant, or any corporation providing any service to the public, to have those costs placed on the consumers? Of course costs they bear are placed on the consumers. Also, any means they have to reduce costs are also placed on the consumer. What you have done is just made an argument where anyone providing a service is evil, because if they save people money by cutting costs they are evil, but if they fail to cut costs then they are charging people money and are therefore evil.
Side note, I hear liberals scream up and down on how the eeeeevil oil companies need to pay increased taxes to pay for the damage they are doing to the environment. At the same time the liberals scream on how the eeeeevil oil companies are gouging the little guy for fuel they need to drive to work and heat their homes. News flash: If the eeeevil oil companies can't make a profit because the government tells them to both pay more taxes and reduce prices then the oil companies will have to fold because they can't pay the "little guys" that work for them. If the oil companies fold then NO ONE can drive to work, and NO ONE can heat their homes. If you want to see an environmental disaster then raise oil prices. People will be cutting down every tree within walking distance so they won't freeze to death this winter.
The nuclear power industry wants to build new reactors that are far safer that those currently in operation. The problem is the NRC is sitting on their hands because no one in the government wants to be responsible for a nuclear power plant that fails. You can't fail if you don't try, right? Well, you won't win that way either.
In the mean time we keep running old reactors well beyond their designed lifespan because power companies need to profit or they cannot stay in business. The longer we wait in building new nuclear power plants the longer we run these old plants, and the longer we burn coal with all its downsides.
Tell me, rudy_wayne, how to you propose we resolve this problem of greed, corruption, etc., etc.?
Is natural gas your solution?
"And even without all those problems, cheap natural gas makes it impossible for nuclear power to be competitive."
Some day natural gas will no longer be cheap. Right now the time to get a new nuclear power plant is seemingly infinite. No new nuclear power plant has been built in the USA for over forty years. This is solely because the NRC cannot be satisfied with any design presented to them. They keep demanding "safer" but give no bounds on how safe a nuclear reactor must be. Claiming that failure is not an option means that success is not an option either. Some form of failure must be acceptable, but the NRC doesn't see it that way. Right now we could build a nuclear power plant where failure would result in destruction of the power plant, and radiation would spread no further than the bounds of the containing structure. That is not sufficient for the NRC, they ask for the impossible.
Of course it is impossible for nuclear power to be competitive, because the NRC has made it so. As it is right now the levels of radiation from just common building material would mean a nuclear power plant is condemned even before any nuclear fuel is brought on site. With restrictions like that how do you expect any nuclear power plant to be built?
I meant to say...
I know the parent post is from an AC but there is insight in that, so someone please mod that up!
I know the parent post is from an AC but there is insight in that.
The FDA seems to be greatly afraid of testing any drug before they've proven to a high degree of certainty that the drug is both effective and safe. While the FDA is holding back drugs that have shown promise in early testing people are dying from disease.
Large numbers of people have come forward asking for FDA reform because they've already had a dozen physicians tell them that they are going to die unless they find a suitable treatment in time. People developing drugs to treat these diseases, with the hope to make the money back in selling the drug, want to test it. So, we have the drugs, people are already suffering from the disease, these people are willing to have the drugs tested on them, but the FDA will not allow the testing because... why?
I believe that the US federal government has gone beyond discouraging bad medicine through regulation and is now discouraging good medicine. While the FDA is holding up drug development people are dying and companies doing research are folding up because they cannot get a return on their investment.
I also believe that we are going to see medical advancement come from people that break FDA rules willingly to save lives, or research will move to places where the FDA has no authority. If the FDA does not ease up then the USA may soon no longer be able to claim to be first in medical research.
"Until then, the conservatives and libertarians will gladly attend your funeral...just kidding, they don't give a flying rat's ass about you."
Okay, let's let the liberals run the health care business, where no one is allowed to make a profit from the misery of others. To prevent health care providers from gouging patients they are only allowed a wage dictated by the government. All medical research is to be funded by the government with oversight from the government. Anyone attempting to profit in health care beyond government limits will be severely punished. Well this has been tried in several countries and it does not turn out well.
I recall an interview of a brain surgeon that lived during the Soviet era. He was a brilliant surgeon that people from around the world sought out to learn from. The problem was that with the few people that needed his special skills, and the price controls on what he could charge for his services, he could not make a living as a brain surgeon in the Soviet Union. He wanted to leave so that he could perform surgery on people that lived outside the Soviet Union but the government would not allow such a brilliant surgeon to leave, because they were afraid he might not come back. People sick enough to require his services were typically not healthy enough to go to the Soviet Union for the surgery. So, the brain surgeon stopped doing surgery and found a job as a bus driver, because driving a bus was more profitable than doing brain surgery.
One story not enough to convince you? Think the Soviet Union is a place so different from the USA that using that as an example it too much? I can give another example.
One of my professors in computer engineering worked for a company that made medical electronics. Over time the FDA created more and more restrictions on medical devices that the company stopped trying to make money in the medical field. So what they do now is make electronics for the veterinary field. You see since a dog is merely property then having a medical device fail is not considered much of a big deal, legally speaking. On the other hand people that might need these very same devices cannot because the FDA will not approve them for use in people. So, you get to keep your dog alive but you will die from the same medical condition.
Still not convinced?
If you want a good surgeon there are plenty to find in elective surgeries. People that do cosmetic surgery have to compete on price and quality, so if you want quality then you have to pay for it. If you are in need of a life saving procedure, and the government is paying the bill, then you very likely get a second rate surgeon. All the good surgeons have moved on to where they can make more money.
Wait, I have more...
Steven Crowder did an excellent video on Canadian government health care. A friend of his had a fall while skateboarding and wanted to have his swollen arm looked at in case it was broken. They went to the emergency room and checked in, then waited. After hours of waiting they got to see... a nurse. She then gave them a priority to see a physician. She also told them that if they wanted to see a physician more quickly then they best go to a private clinic, there they'd be paying the bill, not the government. They were not seen by a physician that day. They went back the next day, same thing, wait for a government funded physician or go to a private clinic. They did not see a physician that day either. The third day the guy ended up going to a private clinic, and saw a physician immediately.
Us conservatives and libertarians do care about people. What liberals seem to forget is that it takes more than caring to get things done and pay the bills. When the government runs healthcare we have literal brain surgeons driving buses and people putting limbs at risk from sitting in government funded waiting rooms.
You mean tipping the car sales people for the price of the vehicle isn't customary?
Seriously though, how do you ensure that the profits from patent protection is sufficient to spur development and do not pad the profits of those that develop it? Also, would not increasing the profits of those that develop innovative products provide them with even more assets to do even more innovation?
My sister was part of a team that got a patent. The university where she worked shopped around for people that might be able to profit from the patent. Nobody bought it. It sat in the patent office until the patent expired. Now all people that could profit from the patent are free to do so without having to pay the university for the privilege. How do you prevent that from happening again?
I suppose we could have the patent not expire until the patent holder can show they've earned enough money to pay back their costs. Then we could have patents going on forever because, while the patent describes something that society could benefit from, no one is willing to take the risk of proving the patent beneficial.
Also, how would you prevent someone from holding a patent for a really long time by some creative bookkeeping? Or, flip it around and the government dictates how much a company can make from a patent and everyone that files gets screwed?
I don't think that there is any good answer to this so all we can do is compromise in a way that is simple to enforce and reasonably fair to all. I'd think that putting a time limit on the discovery is reasonable. For something like a life saving discovery I'd hope that any one that invested in the research will find a compromise between profits and saving lives. Don't tell me people should not profit from saving lives. People can and do save lives without profit but when your company is in the business of saving lives then keeping the company running, which means showing a profit, then staying in business saves more lives in the long run.
Profit is not evil. Profit is the means by which we can encourage people to do things that they normally would not. Making a profit in medicine is not in itself evil. Those of us with empathy for our fellow humans don't like to see people profit from the misery of others. But if no one can make a profit in medicine then we'd rely solely on the empathy of others to provide our medical needs.
I might not tip a car dealer $20,000 for finding me the right kind of car to drive. What I might be willing to spend $20,000 on is making sure that the person that is about to do surgery on me is someone competent to do so. Otherwise that competent person might be selling cars and the person that should be selling cars is doing surgery.
From the article:
"Other unanswered questions include how to dispose of the waste material â" both solid and liquid â" created by 3-D printers. At this point, the researchers think it is best to take it to a hazardous waste center."
So how does the hazardous waste center dispose of the material if they don't yet know what aspect of the 3D printed part makes it hazardous? I assume there is a catch all process for such materials, like sealing it up real tight into something that won't leak and dropping it down a really deep hole. Perhaps another catch all is heat it up so hot that any molecules in the material are broken down to their constituent atoms.
Also, once we know what makes them hazardous then it is quite possible we can find a means to remove that aspect of the material and/or find a means for a user of that material to perform whatever process is necessary to render it inert. Such as if the process is to expose the 3D printed product to UV light then tell the manufacturer or user that it should be left out in the sunlight for how many hours it takes to destroy the hazardous material. For some items, like wind chimes and license plate holders, the UV exposure would be expected in normal use.
While this is certainly interesting it seems to me that this article is click bait, scaremongering, or both. Lots of people have been using 3D printed products without any health problems showing up. This is really something that should be of interest only to fish breeders and material scientists.
I'd think a liberal arts major that studied the finer points of the written and spoken word is precisely the kind of person that should be defining what an engineer should be. This person should also have had some exposure to engineering, and someone that is a professor teaching in the computer science and engineering fields likely has done so.
Do you need to be a surgeon to define what surgery is? Someone that is a medical technician or nurse should be able to define surgery accurately. Do you need to be an mechanical engineer to define mechanical engineering? I'd think that a welder or machinist would be able to tell you that what they are doing is not engineering, and be able to identify when an actual engineer is speaking to them. I don't know how much programming this guy knows but I'd assume that teaching in the College of Computing at a university for seven years he'd have enough interactions with real programmers and engineers that he should be able to know the difference.
I graduated with a computer engineering degree, and was at one time in a computer science program. There are a lot of courses that are similar, and at most colleges and universities students in either program will take many of the same course.
What is different is that the engineering students must take classes that teach them the engineering process. Typically a computer science student is permitted to take the computer engineering courses but they are not required, so it's not improbable for a computer scientist to also be a good engineer.
Engineering to me is a process, and engineers are people that follow a rigorous engineering process. Programming is a part of software engineering but not everything. Software engineers may have programmers that work under their supervision, much like how a mechanical engineer will supervise machinists, or a physician will have nurses and technicians to help with a patient.
When I went to college the first time I had to decide if I wanted to take computer science or computer engineering. What made up my mind was this, a recruiter told me that he preferred to hire computer engineers rather than computer scientists. The engineering students understood the process required to make a good product, and teaching them a computer language on the job was easy. The computer science students knew lots of programming languages, but it was hit or miss on if they knew how to develop a good product, and teaching people how to make a good product on the job was hard.
Another analogy, I'm taking music classes but I would not call myself a musician. I may know how to plunk keys on a piano, and pluck a few notes on a bass, but I know next to nothing on how to write music, proper playing technique, or theory on melodies and harmonics. A good bass player, like a good programmer, can certainly make a lot of money doing what they are good at. A musician, like a software engineer, can understand and explain the why and how of their craft.
No, there is a reason to oppose a complete ban on nuclear weapon testing outside of politics.
So, let's say we use simulations to verify our weapon design. Does that simulation prove the weapon works as intended? No, it doesn't. Only detonation of the weapon will prove it works as intended.
In computer engineering we us simulations all the time. Creating a real actual integrated circuit costs a lot of money. Even using FPGAs in testing costs money because it's a lot easier to simulate a test bench than to build one for real. Even after all the testing is done in simulation a small run of real circuits are built for testing. Good thing too. If computer testing was done like nuclear weapon testing then we'd have a pile of worthless computers because the real circuit didn't work like the simulated one.
If any nation is going to claim to have a working nuclear arsenal then they must prove it through periodic testing. Someone that's detonated a real nuclear bomb in war time, like the USA, might be able to bluff their way through not testing for a long time but that won't suffice for everyone. These nations are going to want to test their weapons, of only to show others that they have a successful design before a shooting war starts.
Also, digital circuit design is not like nuclear weapon deign. We've been building digital circuits for a very long time and making billions or trillions of them. We know how they work. Nuclear weapons are a technology that we are still learning about. We need to test to build a proper simulation. The simulation is only as good as the data put into it. Garbage in, garbage out. Nuclear weapon testing not only verifies the design, it verifies the simulation.
No wonder a complete nuclear weapon test ban failed to get approval, no one with the knowledge of how actual simulation works is going to agree to not be able to test their simulations once in a while. If the simulators are garbage then the designs tested by it are likely to be garbage as well.
That is why I believe we should have term limits. I don't mean that one can only serve two terms like POTUS, I mean a person can serve one term in any given office. That should contain the corruption somewhat.
An inevitable retort, "What of a politician that is really good at his/her job?" Then they can run for a different office. If you do the math someone can serve a series of public offices, from school board to US senator, an stay in public office for 20 years. If you add in things like VPOTUS and POTUS, it's 30 years or so. Add in appointed offices like ambassadors, flag officers (generals and admirals), judges/justices, and cabinet positions then a person could be a public employee for their entire adult life.
Nobody is that good that we cannot find someone to replace them given the entire US population to draw from. Politicians, like diapers, needs to be changed often and for the same reason. We should not have senators who, once in office, only leave it feet first.