Unless you are implying a shift to nuclear power this shift to energy production that will last longer than fossil fuels will hamstring society.
The technologies we have available to us right now make nuclear, coal, natural gas, and hydro the cheapest energy production we have. Those energy sources are roughly the same cost per kWh. Everything else, wind, solar, geothermal, cost at least twice as much. Doubling the price of electricity would have a disastrous effect on the economy and our standard of living. The price of everything would go up since everything relies on energy.
As of right now the only option we have that would reduce carbon output, provide reliable energy production, and do so at a price on parity with coal, is nuclear power.
You mean the same government that removed my ability to purchase inexpensive incandescent light bulbs? The government that made CFL bulbs the only replacement I can find on store shelves? CFL bulbs that contain mercury?
I can hear it now, "but what about all the mercury from burning coal?" Well, we would not have that mercury if the government didn't make building nuclear power plants near impossible to do.
That is just an example. An example that may not apply any more that LED lighting is becoming cheaper and new nuclear power plants are getting built. Point is that the government does not always have my best interests in mind, or does not appear to based on how I interpret the dangers in my life. Other examples, gun control laws that don't actually reduce crime. Child booster seat laws that don't make children safer. Drug control laws that make getting effective medication difficult or impossible. "Green" energy laws that do not actually reduce carbon output.
Then there also laws that do not effect my safety but do make my life less convenient or less comfortable. With that out of the way I will state that we need government. I fear a world without government. I just belief that a government governs best when it governs least.
The government does great things to keep me safe. The problem is that sometimes they get it wrong. The solution is not to dissolve the government. The solution is a government that rules based on real evidence and with an eye on unintended consequences. I like that the government funds research on things like pollution and how chemicals affect our bodies. I like it when they make recommendations based on what they find. There are just a lot of times where I think the government should not be making laws prohibiting activity. There are just too many times where I see unintended consequences or the government acting outside of their authority.
What do you mean by "changing passwords on a regular basis"? Do you mean that they should be changing passwords regularly or that they are not?
There is significant evidence that requiring people to change passwords, outside of the belief the password was compromised, is a very bad idea. Changing passwords regularly cause people to forget them, causing people to write them down so they don't forget them. This also creates an issue where people, users and administrators, use public or other readily available information to reset passwords.
We need to get rid of this idea that changing passwords regularly increases security, it does the opposite.
While investigating options for going back to school I found that a university not far from me offers something like you describe. If you have a BS/BA from them they will allow adding majors to your degree after the fact. At least that is how I understand it. I assume other colleges and universities have similar policies. What it does is allow one to return to the university and take classes there after graduating, once one has satisfactorily met the requirements of the second major their transcript would be updated to state a second major was met for the degree.
If someone wants to just take courses in the same major they graduated with years prior there would not be a piece of paper reflecting that outside of the transcript. I'd think that would be sufficient for employers.
Certification entities like CompTIA require continuing education. Keeping current means presenting proof of continuing education. I assume college courses relevant to the certification would be acceptable for continuing education. Perhaps what you are saying is that colleges and universities need to coordinate with certification entities to make this seamless and worthwhile (generally translated as profitable) for everyone. Perhaps colleges and universities could get in the business of offering certifications directly.
I'm thinking that what you suggest is being offered, just not by the traditional education system, or perhaps just not in the exact form that you describe.
Take a look at the Star Trek world. They have instant within a planet, and within the planet orbit, by "beaming". Interplanetary travel is nearly instant by regularly scheduled shuttles in populated solar systems. Interstellar travel is done by nearly anyone that wants it and, while not quite instantaneous, appears to be very quick.
Is this a world that appears to be powered by solar power? Do the math on how much power one can get from solar panels, even ones that are 100% efficient, and we cannot power such transportation with something so dilute. Transportation is just a small part of that. The world of Star Trek has powerful energy weapons, spaceships the size of current aircraft carriers, materials and machines of incredible complexity. This all takes energy.
These systems are powered by things like warp cores, something that is envisioned as radioactive. People inherently understand that a world powered by wind and sun is incompatible with a world that has interstellar travel. Roddenberry understood this, so he created this power source that is implied to be some sort of nuclear reactor.
Perhaps we can have a world that is powered by solar panels everywhere and promises effectively free transportation within the solar system. I suspect your second guess is closer to the truth, we may have to wait for robots mining the moon for helium to power our fusion reactors.
I think that fusion is something that will not be feasible until we can afford to manufacture things of a size and complexity that would bankrupt even large nations today. That means a few transition technologies in between, I don't think graphene solar panels is one of those technologies.
Exactly. In much of the USA the price is less than 15 cents per kWh. I assume that the GP is talking about Euros compared to my dollars which does not help. With the exchange rate being about $1.40 to the Euro then I'm paying nearly 1/4 for electricity here as compared to Germany.
Saying that nuclear power in unreliable because France has to shut down their plants at certain times of the year is like saying all airplanes are unsafe because the Boeing 737 has issues with it's rudder getting stuck. France chose their reactor designs and sites poorly. That is why we don't make them like that any more.
New reactors can operate all year without concern of heating the local water supply. That is because there are new reactor designs that are air cooled and operate at much higher temperatures. Current reactors operate at about 300C, which can be an issue if the temperature outside is 40C. A molten salt reactor operates at about 600C. Even if the temperature was 50C outside the reactor could still operate.
Even the most efficient windmills can only work if the wind blows. Solar panels only work when the sun shines. Nuclear power, properly designed, can work all the time. I will grant that wind power prices may be cheap, and may be getting cheaper, but that still does not make the wind blow when we need power.
Perhaps you should check again and make up your mind about what you want to talk: production costs, consumer prices, market prices at peaks etc.
No, I don't need to make up my mind. That is because I am talking about the total cost of wind power, or the "real" cost of wind power. Wind power around here is cheap for the consumer, or at least it appears that way. It's cheap because it is subsidized by the government and backed up by cheap natural gas. Remove the subsidies, and the natural gas, and it gets real expensive. It gets expensive because storing electricity in batteries is expensive. The losses in transmission lines, the cost of building and maintaining those transmission lines, for windmills far from where the electricity is consumed also adds to the cost.
I'm probably wasting my time and should have stopped long ago in explaining this. I will say that in the USA we get about 4% of our electricity from wind, Germany gets probably over 10% from wind. In the USA our prices for electricity is less than half what it is in Germany. I believe this is more than coincidence.
Windmills and solar panels will change the scenery. Whether they "ruin" it is a matter of opinion. The power lines to connect them are inherent side effect to a power source dependent on location.
Nuclear power plants can be placed where the power is needed. Doesn't always remove the need to run ugly power lines but it does reduce it. Nuclear power plants could also be put underground if that is what people want. They can and have been put under water too.
The argument is about power lines now. It will be about windmills next time. Building delays, court cases, advertising, and other PR issues will add to the cost. As I pointed out before the cost for "green" power is already high and this will only drive it higher. I'm thinking that at some point these tree huggers will have an epiphany and BEG for nuclear power. The other options are freezing to death or pushing over trees to make room for windmills, power lines, and solar panels.
That "green" power isn't sounding so "green" any more, am I right?
I think "green" energy would be great if it didn't cost so much. I may be mistaken but I recall that Germany has some of the most expensive power in Europe. The prices would be higher if they weren't buying electricity from France.
Part of what makes wind and solar expensive is that it is almost never where you need it. People like to live by water, fresh water to drink, sea water for cheap transport of goods. Industry likes to be where the raw materials are or can be transported to cheaply, by water usually. This may not always be where the wind blows, and sun shines. Granted, being by water can mean power from the natural flow of that water. If that was enough they they would not be running these power lines.
It's these long power lines that add to the expense of the power. I assume that over time people might move to where the power is cheap but then you now have a long transport line for food, water, clothing, whatever.
I see one of two things happening. "Green" energy is going to have some great leap in technology and there won't be arguments over power lines, we'll be able to produce the power where the people are because wind and solar will be so cheap and efficient. The other option is that people will change their minds on nuclear power. The status quo on burning coal, oil, and natural gas will only last so long as we can find it cheaper than wind and solar.
Last I checked wind costs twice as much as coal. Solar three times as much. Natural gas costs about the same as coal, unless used for peaking power then the price doubles. Electricity from burning oil costs about three times what coal power does so that's only done in special cases. Nuclear power costs about the same as coal power. With Germany rejecting nuclear power means that they will continue to have high electricity costs, and they'll only go up.
Government subsidies for "green" energy only mask the true costs, they will still be paying more but it will show on their tax bill instead of their utility bill. Subsidies don't lower the costs, it raises them, because now you have the government as a middleman. Nuclear is the only real option I see. Some leap in "green" energy technology might change that but it hasn't happened yet.
I'll agree with that. Democrats are also the party of big government. Both parties want big government. Democrats want government health care, big welfare, government schools, and generally take everything you have and give you what they think you deserve.
Both parties want to tax and spend us all into poverty or slavery, whichever happens to come first. The only difference is that the Democrats seem to be more open about it. The Republicans just lie to us more.
Really? Democrats are less corrupt? Perhaps I have a bias but I don't recall too many Republicans going to jail recently. I do recall quite a few Democrats sitting behind bars right now.
Maybe the Republicans are just better at covering their tracks. If that is true then that just means the Democrats are corrupt, and also stupid.
I'm not someone that is going to come running to defend the GOP. I'm also not going to stand by while someone tries to tell me with a straight face that Democrats are trustworthy. Democrats are notorious for election fraud. I'm just at a loss for words.
Everybody takes advantage of everyone else whenever and wherever they can, oil companies are no different in that respect.
I don't know why oil companies get kicked around like they do. If they all disappeared tomorrow we'd all be sitting in the dark wondering if we're going to starve to death before we freeze to death. People can talk about how we should not be burning oil but the fact is that we do. We will still be burning oil a century from now. We do that, and will continue to do so, because oil is cheap.
Until we come up with something cheaper than oil then we are going to keep burning oil. After we replace oil then people will complain about how someone else is screwing over the American public to get huge stacks of cash.
I believe that all the cool stuff comes from the USA because America believes in property rights, rule of law, advancement by merit, among many other reasons.
I've had conversations with people that lived in and visited India. There are still remnants of a caste system that keep people from certain jobs. There are also laws to combat the caste system that allows people to advance beyond their comparative skill, a kind of reverse discrimination. There is a kind of central control of the economy that discourages new business, the description of the laws give the impression of an almost communist economy. Because of the laws that give the government so much authority there is ample opportunity for corruption to take hold.
Strict gun control laws leave people at the mercy of the strong and violent. Few law enforcement officers or security guards are armed. Those that were armed were poorly trained as ammunition was difficult to obtain.
I don't recall any numbers given but I had the impression that taxes were high. I recall that kerosene, commonly used for cooking, was often used in gasoline engines. That was because kerosene was cheap but gasoline was expensive. It made engines run very rough and inefficient (lots of unburnt fuel came out the tailpipe as blue smoke) but for someone without much money it's what they had to do.
As I write this I'm getting the feeling why the economy in the USA has been sucking so much in the last decade. Our lawmakers have been passing laws which are much like what keeps India poor.
No, they are not working "well" in Scotland and Germany. They only work because of government subsidies. They are the same as any other location with large installations of wind power, prices and carbon output has gone up.
Prices go up because the utilities are required by law to purchase the wind power whether they need it or not, and do so at a price that would be profitable for the wind turbine owners, even it that means a loss for the utility.
Carbon output goes up because the wind power is unpredictable. The utility has to keep their boilers hot even when the wind is blowing because it can take hours to get them running again. They burn coal even if they are not producing power. The only reason they are not producing power is because they are obligated to buy the power from the wind turbines.
I will admit that I have not seen data from Scotland and Germany but I have seen data from the UK (perhaps that includes Scotland) and Denmark. Both UK and Denmark have seen higher carbon output and higher electricity prices thanks to the addition of wind power. Perhaps if the rules were changed so that the utilities were not required to buy the electricity, requiring wind to compete on a level playing field, then wind might actually be able to reduce prices and lower carbon output. As it is right now wind cannot compete and I believe it is because it does not have to.
I believe the time for wind subsidies has passed. Wind technology has had plenty of time to develop. Now it is time for it to sink or swim on its own merits. I think it can swim. Anyone that is advocating for continued subsidies is admitting that wind is still too expensive to stand on its own.
The only reason that nuclear power costs so much is because we are not building them. Until they are built the cost is an unknown, which means no one will loan out the money.
I could go right now today and ask a bank (granted, it'd have to be a big bank) for one billion dollars to drill for oil. I can do that because drilling for oil is a known quantity with a high probability for profit, and is therefore a low risk for the bank.
The same goes for insurance. I can go to any insurance company of sufficient size and get an insurance policy on my billion dollar oil rig. I can do that because the risks are known, we've been drilling for oil for over a century.
When it comes to nuclear power plants the costs are not a known quantity because the rules on nuclear power keep changing. Every change in the rules means a change in the design, and those changes have a cost associated with it. Too keep the changes, and therefore costs, to a minimum the new reactors being built right now are generation III+ designs. These designs are very safe but still bring along with them the baggage of the problems of designs have been derived from ancient research and plutonium producing reactors. They still use solid fuel rod designs optimized for producing mushroom clouds over battlefields than producing electricity. The coolant is water, something more suited for coal than a power source capable of reaching temperatures that can disassociate the water into hydrogen and oxygen gasses. The boilers are large vats filled with water, graphite control rods, and zirconium clad fuel rods. Should the reactor get too hot the water will boil. The steam from that will react with the graphite and zirconium, setting them on fire. This will mean the creation of highly flammable gasses like O2, H2, and CO. The molten fuel will collect on the bottom of the reactor, getting hotter and hotter as the moderator burns off or boils away.
The insurance companies will insure against this melt down condition because the physics behind all of this is well known, and because the designers have assured everyone involved on the near impossibility of this happening. They will show that such a catastrophic meltdown cannot happen because there are multiple redundant cooling systems, each capable of quenching any fire and nuclear fission that may result.
They will get their funding and license to operate because this is a known design with known risks. At the same time they will refuse the construction of a generation IV reactor design, a molten salt reactor. The insurance people and the government license board will ask to see their passive water cooling supply, and then be shocked that there is no cooling water supply. The temperature a MSR operates within would turn water into a fireball. Instead a supply of neutron absorbing salt is shown as a means for emergency cooling. They ask to see the containment dome drawings. No such drawings exist as no water means no radioactive steam. A meltdown condition is dealt with by allowing the non-radioactive elements to boil off and escape, leaving the heavier radioactive elements to collect at the bottom of the structure.
So, we get inferior nuclear reactors licensed and insured. We have safer nuclear reactors on the drawing board with all kinds of simulations, equations, and stacks upon stacks of documentation showing how much cheaper, safer, and more profitable they are to operate. They don't get licensed because it is so different than what they've seen before that they don't even know how to issue a license.
It seems to me that the only way to remove this old way of thinking on how to build a nuclear reactor is to remove the old thinkers. At some point they will retire or die and someone else will take their place. Maybe then we can see some real advancement in nuclear power.
If throttling a nuclear reactor is truly that simple then why would we bother with wind and solar at all?
The only reason we use wind and solar power for grid power is because it allows utilities to greenwash their coal power and get federal subsidies. Wind and solar cost three times as much as coal and twice as much as natural gas. If the government subsidies went away then so would the windmills and solar panels.
A nuclear reactor costs the same to operate regardless of how much power it produces. The fuel used in a nuclear reactor is such a small portion of the operating cost that it is down in the noise. Should we have enough nuclear power reactors that we could provide all the power we'd need when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow then we'd be tearing down solar panels and wind turbines purely out of economic reasons, they'd just cost too much to keep around.
I believe that properly sited and operated wind turbines can compete with coal on cost but the problem is that wind is unreliable, that translates into money. Solar power is so expensive that it is only viable in places where coal is not available. Even in places where solar is price competitive it is limited to only daylight hours for operation, that translates to money.
Nuclear power is not a partner to wind and solar, it's their replacement.
That's great but how much will that cost? It took me a while to get to this point but I realized the economic forces behind the choices we make for power. We don't burn coal because we are assholes that want to pollute the environment. We burn coal because it is cheap and the environmental impacts are small enough that the savings in using coal over other sources allow us to fund the efforts needed to clean up the mess coal leaves behind.
Wind might work for Japan but that country is a special case. There are few locations in this world like Japan, where they have a first world economy with such limited access to oil, coal, and natural gas. They can afford to built wind turbines and grid sized batteries. The rest of the world cannot afford such an expensive source of electricity.
Solar and wind cost three to four times what coal and nuclear cost. Solar and wind cannot even compete with natural gas turbines which cost twice what coal costs to operate. Solar, geothermal, and hydro are highly dependent on location, the site has to have nearly perfect conditions for those to be even close to viable.
You may be right that the proper mix of solar, wind, tidal, hydro, and geothermal would provide all the electricity we need when we need it. The problem is that the cost of that electricity is somewhere around four times what coal costs. Until those energy sources are competitive with coal we are going to keep burning coal.
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling. The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently. A thermal plant that operates at higher temperatures would not have this limitation. To run at higher temperatures requires using a coolant other than water.
This is where molten salt reactors come in. MSRs operate at temperatures high enough that the temperature difference of the outside air is largely irrelevant. These reactors operate at temperatures that would melt aluminum. At that high temperature the air is a sufficient heat, even if the reactor is located in Death Valley under a noon day sun.
I'm no longer an advocate of mixed sources of power generation like I used to be. I think all of our grid electricity could, and should, come from nuclear power. People that do not have access to the electrical grid should choose whatever works best for them, which might also be nuclear power. A modern MSR can load follow just as well as natural gas. Nuclear power is very insensitive to the price of the fuel, it uses so little fuel to produce such vast amount of usable electricity that a change of the fuel price by orders of magnitude will change the price to the consumer by only pennies. As pointed out above a MSR does not care about the weather. MSRs can be placed just about anywhere that power is needed.
Solar, wind, hydro, whatever are certainly welcome to attach to the grid to provide power in my world, I just don't see the need. Modern nuclear power could be so cheap and reliable that if allowed to reach it's full potential that I feel no other power source could compete.
Yes, law enforcement jobs rely on keeping marijuana illegal. The problem is that the prolonged recession we've had has left the government with not enough revenue to pay their wages. What the states have figured out is that by legalizing marijuana they get both more revenue (through taxing marijuana sales) and reduced spending (fewer potheads in jail means fewer jailors required).
I recall that one aspect that ended the prohibition of alcohol was the Great Depression placing similar forces on the government. Enforcing Prohibition required spending on law enforcement and no revenue from the black market alcohol trade. Legal alcohol means less spending on enforcement and more tax revenue.
Yes, it's been 70 years since marijuana has been made illegal. A lot of little things have changed since then. One of those little things is that there are now jobs that rely on non-enforcement of marijuana prohibitions. If the DEA wants to act on that prohibition then they should expect a reaction from the people that are now making money on marijuana. Those people vote.
As I understand the law the House removed itself from the process of scheduling drugs decades ago. The Controlled Substances Act granted the DEA and FDA authority to schedule drugs. As I recall the FDA has been trying to do research into the potential medical uses of marijuana for a very long time, likely ever since marijuana was banned. So far the DEA has only allowed that for a very limited time and for very few test cases. A change in that policy would require either the head of the DEA has a change of mind, or the head of the DEA is exchanged for someone that would allow for rescheduling marijuana. The President can appoint someone to that position, and the Senate would have to approve.
I don't believe that the Republicans are willing to expend a whole lot of political capital on fighting rescheduling marijuana. A quick Google search tells me that between 1/3 and 1/2 of Republicans would support lifting the prohibitions on marijuana. Assuming the Republicans do want to keep marijuana illegal, they'd have to pass a law to keep the Democrats from doing so. That law would have to get past the Democrat controlled Senate and White House.
If I'm wrong and it would take legislation to make marijuana legal again it still leaves the Democrats in charge. The Senate can propose a bill and it'd only take a handful of Republicans to go along to get it through the House. Every two years the entire House comes up for elections, and a majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana. If the Republicans want to retain control of the House then I suspect a few of them will have to vote with their constituents to stay in office. I'm not so sure how Obama would react if such a bill landed on his desk but I suspect he'd reschedule marijuana so he can get out of the corner he's painted himself into.
I'm trying to figure out why the DEA even exists. I know it exists to enforce drug laws but that is not what I mean. I found out a couple interesting facts about the DEA. One is that the DEA shares jurisdiction with the FBI. Any crime the DEA investigates the FBI can also investigate. That was something undoubtedly enacted to smooth over the politics of creating a new federal law enforcement agency.
Another interesting fact is that the DEA shares authority with the FDA on the classification of drugs. I'm not quite sure on how this authority is shared but the DEA has some sort of say in how the Controlled Substances Act is applied to new and existing drugs.
So, what does the DEA actually do that some other federal agency cannot? Apparently it can violate our rights and get away with it. It seems to me that the FBI somehow keeps itself above this crap. Perhaps its because the DEA is so good at violating our rights that the FBI lets them do the dirty work. Perhaps it's because the FBI is too busy investigating murders, assaults, rapes, arson, thefts, and so on (you know, "real" crimes) that they don't have to resort to such depths to keep busy.
The way things are going now with the federal government turning a blind eye to violations of federal prohibitions on marijuana trade I suspect we are going to see marijuana reclassified under the Controlled Substances Act in less than five years. It might not be complete legalization and getting dropped from all controls but something has to change. I see marijuana getting federal control somewhere between alcohol and tobacco (getting carded upon purchase, high taxes, etc.) and Tylenol (strict laws on labeling, purity controls, but generally over the counter).
I recall that the DEA gets most of its arrests and convictions from marijuana. When (not if, it's going to happen) marijuana laws change the DEA is going to have a real hard time justifying its own existence.
Everything can be abused. People will eat too much, run too much, sleep too much, drink too much water. I've read about people that get addicted to eating the stuffing inside couch cushions. People will take large amounts of antihistamines to get high. People drink brake fluid to get drunk.
Every drug is dangerous. Have you read the warnings on the stuff you buy from the pharmacy? They all have some sort of overdose risk, risk of a certain population being sensitive to it, and side effects that can be dangerous. People die from Tylenol, the most used pain killer in the world. Just like certain people are sensitive to codeine there are certain people that are sensitive to Tylenol.
Everything is a precursor to something. Sugar is a precursor to alcohol. Gasoline is a precursor to desomorphine. Matches are a precursor to desomorphine and methamphetamine. Are we going to make matches and gasoline available only by prescription now? It might cut down on arson but I doubt it will have an effect on drug abuse. People drink brake fluid to get drunk.
The same reason to keep codeine from being over the counter are the same for Tylenol, alcohol, and a huge number of other already readily available medicines and materials. Everything can be abused. Everything is dangerous, Everything is a precursor to something else that is even more dangerous.
Thanks to the ever increasing controls on whatever might get us high we can't get a decent cold medicine without a prescription. It had no effect on the number of people abusing drugs, they just find more creative ways to slowly kill themselves.
I remember when my mom could no longer just buy syringes off the shelf for my diabetic sister. It was about the same time that AIDS was making the news for spreading so quickly. I have a suspicion that this is more than coincidence.
Thanks to the DEA we have more people dead than high. I don't see that as an improvement.
I used to take codeine with APAP until I complained of stomach pain to my physician. I don't recall how much APAP was in those pills, I think it was 500 or 600mg. The physician first offered some sort of antacid which bothered me, I was already taking something with side effects so I was reluctant to just take more drugs. I asked if I could instead get the codeine without the APAP, she reluctantly agreed.
With the new formulations of the opiate/APAP mixtures I recently switched to hydrocodone/APAP at 7.5/325. I usually cut them in half to reduce the amount of APAP I take at a time. I agreed to the switch to the hydrocodone/APAP because the process for getting the prescription is easier (less paperwork than with an opiate alone), the pills are larger (makes them easier to cut), and the APAP dose was small enough that I thought it'd be easy enough to tolerate. I haven't been taking it for too long just yet, seems to be working for me so far.
This is all a sham to me. The real druggies already figured out how to separate the APAP from the opiate. When surfing the web to find out what the clinic was giving me I found all kinds of ways on how to distill the good stuff from the bad stuff. I never tried it myself, found no need to. I don't take the stuff to get high, I take it for pain.
In researching my prescriptions I saw all kinds of ways people found out on how to get high. I also saw that our federal prisons are full of people locked up for drug crimes. It's got so bad that the US DOJ is thinking of ways to reduce sentences for these people. At some point the government is going to have to reconsider what we consider punishable drug offenses. I saw that an estimated 30 million people will admit to using a controlled substance, we can't lock them all up.
Having taken tramadol myself I can say that it is quite effective at relieving pain. It also tends to keep me from sleeping. The withdrawal from it was unpleasant, just taking it once can give dizziness and nausea for hours after it wears off.
I hate tramadol but it seems some people really like it because of the intense high it can give. After the bad experience with tramadol I was able to convince my physician to give me codeine and hydrocodone (not at the same time) which works much better for me. Because of the crazy laws we have I could get truly high inducing levels of tramadol without much issue but getting opiates without liver killing levels of NSAIDs to go with it requires an act of Congress.
I believe that codeine should be over the counter medications. The NSAIDs I was given before were ineffective and were likely poisoning me. I got a clue on how bad that stuff was when my physician scheduled me for a liver and kidney function test. The number of people that are hospitalized or die from Tylenol overdose every year is staggering. The people that die from opiate overdose do so largely because the quality control of street drugs is questionable.
I also have to wonder how many opiate overdoses were not actually an overdose of the opiate, but instead an overdose of the Tylenol or NSAID that is usually mixed with it. I'm sure the big money in medicines want to keep any overdoses quiet when they can. When they can't they'll blame it on the "evil" opiates. It not only makes the drug makers look good, it makes the DEA look good.
Got off on a rant there. Anyway, tramadol isn't so great. NSAIDs and Tylenol work for mild pain. The best stuff is the natural stuff, codeine. People, and their pets, have been taking it for thousands of years. It's safe and effective. Overdose is only a real issue when concentrated to insane levels to get high. If you're getting high off codeine then you're doing it wrong.
There was a time when USA would launch satellites for other nations, now we off shore even that. What is NASA's mission now? I thought it was supposed to encourage domestic space exploration.
Oh, that's right, some White House talking head said NASA exists to make the descendents of the people that basically invented mathematics and science feel good. How about we have NASA inspire all Americans to seek knowledge? You know, like they used to do?
I don't want to sound like I'm tearing down everyone at NASA. I'm sure there are some very smart and motivated people there doing great work. The problem lies in the management. It seems the government does not know what to do with NASA any more. Any project that NASA gets seems to lose funding as soon as it gets even close to launching anything. That's the nature of a government driven by professional politicians that are more concerned about winning the next election than actually improving the lives of Americans.
I'm glad to see that this failure of NASA to lead us into space has resulted in private industry picking up where they left off. I predict we're going to see private space launches exceed anything NASA has been able to do real soon now. I predict the next person on the moon will be an American but the spacecraft will not bear the NASA emblem.
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Unless you are implying a shift to nuclear power this shift to energy production that will last longer than fossil fuels will hamstring society.
The technologies we have available to us right now make nuclear, coal, natural gas, and hydro the cheapest energy production we have. Those energy sources are roughly the same cost per kWh. Everything else, wind, solar, geothermal, cost at least twice as much. Doubling the price of electricity would have a disastrous effect on the economy and our standard of living. The price of everything would go up since everything relies on energy.
As of right now the only option we have that would reduce carbon output, provide reliable energy production, and do so at a price on parity with coal, is nuclear power.
Only government can do that job.
You mean the same government that removed my ability to purchase inexpensive incandescent light bulbs? The government that made CFL bulbs the only replacement I can find on store shelves? CFL bulbs that contain mercury?
I can hear it now, "but what about all the mercury from burning coal?" Well, we would not have that mercury if the government didn't make building nuclear power plants near impossible to do.
That is just an example. An example that may not apply any more that LED lighting is becoming cheaper and new nuclear power plants are getting built. Point is that the government does not always have my best interests in mind, or does not appear to based on how I interpret the dangers in my life. Other examples, gun control laws that don't actually reduce crime. Child booster seat laws that don't make children safer. Drug control laws that make getting effective medication difficult or impossible. "Green" energy laws that do not actually reduce carbon output.
Then there also laws that do not effect my safety but do make my life less convenient or less comfortable. With that out of the way I will state that we need government. I fear a world without government. I just belief that a government governs best when it governs least.
The government does great things to keep me safe. The problem is that sometimes they get it wrong. The solution is not to dissolve the government. The solution is a government that rules based on real evidence and with an eye on unintended consequences. I like that the government funds research on things like pollution and how chemicals affect our bodies. I like it when they make recommendations based on what they find. There are just a lot of times where I think the government should not be making laws prohibiting activity. There are just too many times where I see unintended consequences or the government acting outside of their authority.
What do you mean by "changing passwords on a regular basis"? Do you mean that they should be changing passwords regularly or that they are not?
There is significant evidence that requiring people to change passwords, outside of the belief the password was compromised, is a very bad idea. Changing passwords regularly cause people to forget them, causing people to write them down so they don't forget them. This also creates an issue where people, users and administrators, use public or other readily available information to reset passwords.
We need to get rid of this idea that changing passwords regularly increases security, it does the opposite.
While investigating options for going back to school I found that a university not far from me offers something like you describe. If you have a BS/BA from them they will allow adding majors to your degree after the fact. At least that is how I understand it. I assume other colleges and universities have similar policies. What it does is allow one to return to the university and take classes there after graduating, once one has satisfactorily met the requirements of the second major their transcript would be updated to state a second major was met for the degree.
If someone wants to just take courses in the same major they graduated with years prior there would not be a piece of paper reflecting that outside of the transcript. I'd think that would be sufficient for employers.
Certification entities like CompTIA require continuing education. Keeping current means presenting proof of continuing education. I assume college courses relevant to the certification would be acceptable for continuing education. Perhaps what you are saying is that colleges and universities need to coordinate with certification entities to make this seamless and worthwhile (generally translated as profitable) for everyone. Perhaps colleges and universities could get in the business of offering certifications directly.
I'm thinking that what you suggest is being offered, just not by the traditional education system, or perhaps just not in the exact form that you describe.
Take a look at the Star Trek world. They have instant within a planet, and within the planet orbit, by "beaming". Interplanetary travel is nearly instant by regularly scheduled shuttles in populated solar systems. Interstellar travel is done by nearly anyone that wants it and, while not quite instantaneous, appears to be very quick.
Is this a world that appears to be powered by solar power? Do the math on how much power one can get from solar panels, even ones that are 100% efficient, and we cannot power such transportation with something so dilute. Transportation is just a small part of that. The world of Star Trek has powerful energy weapons, spaceships the size of current aircraft carriers, materials and machines of incredible complexity. This all takes energy.
These systems are powered by things like warp cores, something that is envisioned as radioactive. People inherently understand that a world powered by wind and sun is incompatible with a world that has interstellar travel. Roddenberry understood this, so he created this power source that is implied to be some sort of nuclear reactor.
Perhaps we can have a world that is powered by solar panels everywhere and promises effectively free transportation within the solar system. I suspect your second guess is closer to the truth, we may have to wait for robots mining the moon for helium to power our fusion reactors.
I think that fusion is something that will not be feasible until we can afford to manufacture things of a size and complexity that would bankrupt even large nations today. That means a few transition technologies in between, I don't think graphene solar panels is one of those technologies.
You lost us at 25cents/kWh being cheap.
Exactly. In much of the USA the price is less than 15 cents per kWh. I assume that the GP is talking about Euros compared to my dollars which does not help. With the exchange rate being about $1.40 to the Euro then I'm paying nearly 1/4 for electricity here as compared to Germany.
Saying that nuclear power in unreliable because France has to shut down their plants at certain times of the year is like saying all airplanes are unsafe because the Boeing 737 has issues with it's rudder getting stuck. France chose their reactor designs and sites poorly. That is why we don't make them like that any more.
New reactors can operate all year without concern of heating the local water supply. That is because there are new reactor designs that are air cooled and operate at much higher temperatures. Current reactors operate at about 300C, which can be an issue if the temperature outside is 40C. A molten salt reactor operates at about 600C. Even if the temperature was 50C outside the reactor could still operate.
Even the most efficient windmills can only work if the wind blows. Solar panels only work when the sun shines. Nuclear power, properly designed, can work all the time. I will grant that wind power prices may be cheap, and may be getting cheaper, but that still does not make the wind blow when we need power.
Perhaps you should check again and make up your mind about what you want to talk: production costs, consumer prices, market prices at peaks etc.
No, I don't need to make up my mind. That is because I am talking about the total cost of wind power, or the "real" cost of wind power. Wind power around here is cheap for the consumer, or at least it appears that way. It's cheap because it is subsidized by the government and backed up by cheap natural gas. Remove the subsidies, and the natural gas, and it gets real expensive. It gets expensive because storing electricity in batteries is expensive. The losses in transmission lines, the cost of building and maintaining those transmission lines, for windmills far from where the electricity is consumed also adds to the cost.
I'm probably wasting my time and should have stopped long ago in explaining this. I will say that in the USA we get about 4% of our electricity from wind, Germany gets probably over 10% from wind. In the USA our prices for electricity is less than half what it is in Germany. I believe this is more than coincidence.
Windmills and solar panels will change the scenery. Whether they "ruin" it is a matter of opinion. The power lines to connect them are inherent side effect to a power source dependent on location.
Nuclear power plants can be placed where the power is needed. Doesn't always remove the need to run ugly power lines but it does reduce it. Nuclear power plants could also be put underground if that is what people want. They can and have been put under water too.
The argument is about power lines now. It will be about windmills next time. Building delays, court cases, advertising, and other PR issues will add to the cost. As I pointed out before the cost for "green" power is already high and this will only drive it higher. I'm thinking that at some point these tree huggers will have an epiphany and BEG for nuclear power. The other options are freezing to death or pushing over trees to make room for windmills, power lines, and solar panels.
That "green" power isn't sounding so "green" any more, am I right?
I think "green" energy would be great if it didn't cost so much. I may be mistaken but I recall that Germany has some of the most expensive power in Europe. The prices would be higher if they weren't buying electricity from France.
Part of what makes wind and solar expensive is that it is almost never where you need it. People like to live by water, fresh water to drink, sea water for cheap transport of goods. Industry likes to be where the raw materials are or can be transported to cheaply, by water usually. This may not always be where the wind blows, and sun shines. Granted, being by water can mean power from the natural flow of that water. If that was enough they they would not be running these power lines.
It's these long power lines that add to the expense of the power. I assume that over time people might move to where the power is cheap but then you now have a long transport line for food, water, clothing, whatever.
I see one of two things happening. "Green" energy is going to have some great leap in technology and there won't be arguments over power lines, we'll be able to produce the power where the people are because wind and solar will be so cheap and efficient. The other option is that people will change their minds on nuclear power. The status quo on burning coal, oil, and natural gas will only last so long as we can find it cheaper than wind and solar.
Last I checked wind costs twice as much as coal. Solar three times as much. Natural gas costs about the same as coal, unless used for peaking power then the price doubles. Electricity from burning oil costs about three times what coal power does so that's only done in special cases. Nuclear power costs about the same as coal power. With Germany rejecting nuclear power means that they will continue to have high electricity costs, and they'll only go up.
Government subsidies for "green" energy only mask the true costs, they will still be paying more but it will show on their tax bill instead of their utility bill. Subsidies don't lower the costs, it raises them, because now you have the government as a middleman. Nuclear is the only real option I see. Some leap in "green" energy technology might change that but it hasn't happened yet.
I'll agree with that. Democrats are also the party of big government. Both parties want big government. Democrats want government health care, big welfare, government schools, and generally take everything you have and give you what they think you deserve.
Both parties want to tax and spend us all into poverty or slavery, whichever happens to come first. The only difference is that the Democrats seem to be more open about it. The Republicans just lie to us more.
Really? Democrats are less corrupt? Perhaps I have a bias but I don't recall too many Republicans going to jail recently. I do recall quite a few Democrats sitting behind bars right now.
Maybe the Republicans are just better at covering their tracks. If that is true then that just means the Democrats are corrupt, and also stupid.
I'm not someone that is going to come running to defend the GOP. I'm also not going to stand by while someone tries to tell me with a straight face that Democrats are trustworthy. Democrats are notorious for election fraud. I'm just at a loss for words.
Everybody takes advantage of everyone else whenever and wherever they can, oil companies are no different in that respect.
I don't know why oil companies get kicked around like they do. If they all disappeared tomorrow we'd all be sitting in the dark wondering if we're going to starve to death before we freeze to death. People can talk about how we should not be burning oil but the fact is that we do. We will still be burning oil a century from now. We do that, and will continue to do so, because oil is cheap.
Until we come up with something cheaper than oil then we are going to keep burning oil. After we replace oil then people will complain about how someone else is screwing over the American public to get huge stacks of cash.
I believe that all the cool stuff comes from the USA because America believes in property rights, rule of law, advancement by merit, among many other reasons.
I've had conversations with people that lived in and visited India. There are still remnants of a caste system that keep people from certain jobs. There are also laws to combat the caste system that allows people to advance beyond their comparative skill, a kind of reverse discrimination. There is a kind of central control of the economy that discourages new business, the description of the laws give the impression of an almost communist economy. Because of the laws that give the government so much authority there is ample opportunity for corruption to take hold.
Strict gun control laws leave people at the mercy of the strong and violent. Few law enforcement officers or security guards are armed. Those that were armed were poorly trained as ammunition was difficult to obtain.
I don't recall any numbers given but I had the impression that taxes were high. I recall that kerosene, commonly used for cooking, was often used in gasoline engines. That was because kerosene was cheap but gasoline was expensive. It made engines run very rough and inefficient (lots of unburnt fuel came out the tailpipe as blue smoke) but for someone without much money it's what they had to do.
As I write this I'm getting the feeling why the economy in the USA has been sucking so much in the last decade. Our lawmakers have been passing laws which are much like what keeps India poor.
No, they are not working "well" in Scotland and Germany. They only work because of government subsidies. They are the same as any other location with large installations of wind power, prices and carbon output has gone up.
Prices go up because the utilities are required by law to purchase the wind power whether they need it or not, and do so at a price that would be profitable for the wind turbine owners, even it that means a loss for the utility.
Carbon output goes up because the wind power is unpredictable. The utility has to keep their boilers hot even when the wind is blowing because it can take hours to get them running again. They burn coal even if they are not producing power. The only reason they are not producing power is because they are obligated to buy the power from the wind turbines.
I will admit that I have not seen data from Scotland and Germany but I have seen data from the UK (perhaps that includes Scotland) and Denmark. Both UK and Denmark have seen higher carbon output and higher electricity prices thanks to the addition of wind power. Perhaps if the rules were changed so that the utilities were not required to buy the electricity, requiring wind to compete on a level playing field, then wind might actually be able to reduce prices and lower carbon output. As it is right now wind cannot compete and I believe it is because it does not have to.
I believe the time for wind subsidies has passed. Wind technology has had plenty of time to develop. Now it is time for it to sink or swim on its own merits. I think it can swim. Anyone that is advocating for continued subsidies is admitting that wind is still too expensive to stand on its own.
The only reason that nuclear power costs so much is because we are not building them. Until they are built the cost is an unknown, which means no one will loan out the money.
I could go right now today and ask a bank (granted, it'd have to be a big bank) for one billion dollars to drill for oil. I can do that because drilling for oil is a known quantity with a high probability for profit, and is therefore a low risk for the bank.
The same goes for insurance. I can go to any insurance company of sufficient size and get an insurance policy on my billion dollar oil rig. I can do that because the risks are known, we've been drilling for oil for over a century.
When it comes to nuclear power plants the costs are not a known quantity because the rules on nuclear power keep changing. Every change in the rules means a change in the design, and those changes have a cost associated with it. Too keep the changes, and therefore costs, to a minimum the new reactors being built right now are generation III+ designs. These designs are very safe but still bring along with them the baggage of the problems of designs have been derived from ancient research and plutonium producing reactors. They still use solid fuel rod designs optimized for producing mushroom clouds over battlefields than producing electricity. The coolant is water, something more suited for coal than a power source capable of reaching temperatures that can disassociate the water into hydrogen and oxygen gasses. The boilers are large vats filled with water, graphite control rods, and zirconium clad fuel rods. Should the reactor get too hot the water will boil. The steam from that will react with the graphite and zirconium, setting them on fire. This will mean the creation of highly flammable gasses like O2, H2, and CO. The molten fuel will collect on the bottom of the reactor, getting hotter and hotter as the moderator burns off or boils away.
The insurance companies will insure against this melt down condition because the physics behind all of this is well known, and because the designers have assured everyone involved on the near impossibility of this happening. They will show that such a catastrophic meltdown cannot happen because there are multiple redundant cooling systems, each capable of quenching any fire and nuclear fission that may result.
They will get their funding and license to operate because this is a known design with known risks. At the same time they will refuse the construction of a generation IV reactor design, a molten salt reactor. The insurance people and the government license board will ask to see their passive water cooling supply, and then be shocked that there is no cooling water supply. The temperature a MSR operates within would turn water into a fireball. Instead a supply of neutron absorbing salt is shown as a means for emergency cooling. They ask to see the containment dome drawings. No such drawings exist as no water means no radioactive steam. A meltdown condition is dealt with by allowing the non-radioactive elements to boil off and escape, leaving the heavier radioactive elements to collect at the bottom of the structure.
So, we get inferior nuclear reactors licensed and insured. We have safer nuclear reactors on the drawing board with all kinds of simulations, equations, and stacks upon stacks of documentation showing how much cheaper, safer, and more profitable they are to operate. They don't get licensed because it is so different than what they've seen before that they don't even know how to issue a license.
It seems to me that the only way to remove this old way of thinking on how to build a nuclear reactor is to remove the old thinkers. At some point they will retire or die and someone else will take their place. Maybe then we can see some real advancement in nuclear power.
If throttling a nuclear reactor is truly that simple then why would we bother with wind and solar at all?
The only reason we use wind and solar power for grid power is because it allows utilities to greenwash their coal power and get federal subsidies. Wind and solar cost three times as much as coal and twice as much as natural gas. If the government subsidies went away then so would the windmills and solar panels.
A nuclear reactor costs the same to operate regardless of how much power it produces. The fuel used in a nuclear reactor is such a small portion of the operating cost that it is down in the noise. Should we have enough nuclear power reactors that we could provide all the power we'd need when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow then we'd be tearing down solar panels and wind turbines purely out of economic reasons, they'd just cost too much to keep around.
I believe that properly sited and operated wind turbines can compete with coal on cost but the problem is that wind is unreliable, that translates into money. Solar power is so expensive that it is only viable in places where coal is not available. Even in places where solar is price competitive it is limited to only daylight hours for operation, that translates to money.
Nuclear power is not a partner to wind and solar, it's their replacement.
That's great but how much will that cost? It took me a while to get to this point but I realized the economic forces behind the choices we make for power. We don't burn coal because we are assholes that want to pollute the environment. We burn coal because it is cheap and the environmental impacts are small enough that the savings in using coal over other sources allow us to fund the efforts needed to clean up the mess coal leaves behind.
Wind might work for Japan but that country is a special case. There are few locations in this world like Japan, where they have a first world economy with such limited access to oil, coal, and natural gas. They can afford to built wind turbines and grid sized batteries. The rest of the world cannot afford such an expensive source of electricity.
Solar and wind cost three to four times what coal and nuclear cost. Solar and wind cannot even compete with natural gas turbines which cost twice what coal costs to operate. Solar, geothermal, and hydro are highly dependent on location, the site has to have nearly perfect conditions for those to be even close to viable.
You may be right that the proper mix of solar, wind, tidal, hydro, and geothermal would provide all the electricity we need when we need it. The problem is that the cost of that electricity is somewhere around four times what coal costs. Until those energy sources are competitive with coal we are going to keep burning coal.
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling. The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently. A thermal plant that operates at higher temperatures would not have this limitation. To run at higher temperatures requires using a coolant other than water.
This is where molten salt reactors come in. MSRs operate at temperatures high enough that the temperature difference of the outside air is largely irrelevant. These reactors operate at temperatures that would melt aluminum. At that high temperature the air is a sufficient heat, even if the reactor is located in Death Valley under a noon day sun.
I'm no longer an advocate of mixed sources of power generation like I used to be. I think all of our grid electricity could, and should, come from nuclear power. People that do not have access to the electrical grid should choose whatever works best for them, which might also be nuclear power. A modern MSR can load follow just as well as natural gas. Nuclear power is very insensitive to the price of the fuel, it uses so little fuel to produce such vast amount of usable electricity that a change of the fuel price by orders of magnitude will change the price to the consumer by only pennies. As pointed out above a MSR does not care about the weather. MSRs can be placed just about anywhere that power is needed.
Solar, wind, hydro, whatever are certainly welcome to attach to the grid to provide power in my world, I just don't see the need. Modern nuclear power could be so cheap and reliable that if allowed to reach it's full potential that I feel no other power source could compete.
Yes, law enforcement jobs rely on keeping marijuana illegal. The problem is that the prolonged recession we've had has left the government with not enough revenue to pay their wages. What the states have figured out is that by legalizing marijuana they get both more revenue (through taxing marijuana sales) and reduced spending (fewer potheads in jail means fewer jailors required).
I recall that one aspect that ended the prohibition of alcohol was the Great Depression placing similar forces on the government. Enforcing Prohibition required spending on law enforcement and no revenue from the black market alcohol trade. Legal alcohol means less spending on enforcement and more tax revenue.
Yes, it's been 70 years since marijuana has been made illegal. A lot of little things have changed since then. One of those little things is that there are now jobs that rely on non-enforcement of marijuana prohibitions. If the DEA wants to act on that prohibition then they should expect a reaction from the people that are now making money on marijuana. Those people vote.
As I understand the law the House removed itself from the process of scheduling drugs decades ago. The Controlled Substances Act granted the DEA and FDA authority to schedule drugs. As I recall the FDA has been trying to do research into the potential medical uses of marijuana for a very long time, likely ever since marijuana was banned. So far the DEA has only allowed that for a very limited time and for very few test cases. A change in that policy would require either the head of the DEA has a change of mind, or the head of the DEA is exchanged for someone that would allow for rescheduling marijuana. The President can appoint someone to that position, and the Senate would have to approve.
I don't believe that the Republicans are willing to expend a whole lot of political capital on fighting rescheduling marijuana. A quick Google search tells me that between 1/3 and 1/2 of Republicans would support lifting the prohibitions on marijuana. Assuming the Republicans do want to keep marijuana illegal, they'd have to pass a law to keep the Democrats from doing so. That law would have to get past the Democrat controlled Senate and White House.
If I'm wrong and it would take legislation to make marijuana legal again it still leaves the Democrats in charge. The Senate can propose a bill and it'd only take a handful of Republicans to go along to get it through the House. Every two years the entire House comes up for elections, and a majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana. If the Republicans want to retain control of the House then I suspect a few of them will have to vote with their constituents to stay in office. I'm not so sure how Obama would react if such a bill landed on his desk but I suspect he'd reschedule marijuana so he can get out of the corner he's painted himself into.
I'm trying to figure out why the DEA even exists. I know it exists to enforce drug laws but that is not what I mean. I found out a couple interesting facts about the DEA. One is that the DEA shares jurisdiction with the FBI. Any crime the DEA investigates the FBI can also investigate. That was something undoubtedly enacted to smooth over the politics of creating a new federal law enforcement agency.
Another interesting fact is that the DEA shares authority with the FDA on the classification of drugs. I'm not quite sure on how this authority is shared but the DEA has some sort of say in how the Controlled Substances Act is applied to new and existing drugs.
So, what does the DEA actually do that some other federal agency cannot? Apparently it can violate our rights and get away with it. It seems to me that the FBI somehow keeps itself above this crap. Perhaps its because the DEA is so good at violating our rights that the FBI lets them do the dirty work. Perhaps it's because the FBI is too busy investigating murders, assaults, rapes, arson, thefts, and so on (you know, "real" crimes) that they don't have to resort to such depths to keep busy.
The way things are going now with the federal government turning a blind eye to violations of federal prohibitions on marijuana trade I suspect we are going to see marijuana reclassified under the Controlled Substances Act in less than five years. It might not be complete legalization and getting dropped from all controls but something has to change. I see marijuana getting federal control somewhere between alcohol and tobacco (getting carded upon purchase, high taxes, etc.) and Tylenol (strict laws on labeling, purity controls, but generally over the counter).
I recall that the DEA gets most of its arrests and convictions from marijuana. When (not if, it's going to happen) marijuana laws change the DEA is going to have a real hard time justifying its own existence.
Everything can be abused. People will eat too much, run too much, sleep too much, drink too much water. I've read about people that get addicted to eating the stuffing inside couch cushions. People will take large amounts of antihistamines to get high. People drink brake fluid to get drunk.
Every drug is dangerous. Have you read the warnings on the stuff you buy from the pharmacy? They all have some sort of overdose risk, risk of a certain population being sensitive to it, and side effects that can be dangerous. People die from Tylenol, the most used pain killer in the world. Just like certain people are sensitive to codeine there are certain people that are sensitive to Tylenol.
Everything is a precursor to something. Sugar is a precursor to alcohol. Gasoline is a precursor to desomorphine. Matches are a precursor to desomorphine and methamphetamine. Are we going to make matches and gasoline available only by prescription now? It might cut down on arson but I doubt it will have an effect on drug abuse. People drink brake fluid to get drunk.
The same reason to keep codeine from being over the counter are the same for Tylenol, alcohol, and a huge number of other already readily available medicines and materials. Everything can be abused. Everything is dangerous, Everything is a precursor to something else that is even more dangerous.
Thanks to the ever increasing controls on whatever might get us high we can't get a decent cold medicine without a prescription. It had no effect on the number of people abusing drugs, they just find more creative ways to slowly kill themselves.
I remember when my mom could no longer just buy syringes off the shelf for my diabetic sister. It was about the same time that AIDS was making the news for spreading so quickly. I have a suspicion that this is more than coincidence.
Thanks to the DEA we have more people dead than high. I don't see that as an improvement.
I used to take codeine with APAP until I complained of stomach pain to my physician. I don't recall how much APAP was in those pills, I think it was 500 or 600mg. The physician first offered some sort of antacid which bothered me, I was already taking something with side effects so I was reluctant to just take more drugs. I asked if I could instead get the codeine without the APAP, she reluctantly agreed.
With the new formulations of the opiate/APAP mixtures I recently switched to hydrocodone/APAP at 7.5/325. I usually cut them in half to reduce the amount of APAP I take at a time. I agreed to the switch to the hydrocodone/APAP because the process for getting the prescription is easier (less paperwork than with an opiate alone), the pills are larger (makes them easier to cut), and the APAP dose was small enough that I thought it'd be easy enough to tolerate. I haven't been taking it for too long just yet, seems to be working for me so far.
This is all a sham to me. The real druggies already figured out how to separate the APAP from the opiate. When surfing the web to find out what the clinic was giving me I found all kinds of ways on how to distill the good stuff from the bad stuff. I never tried it myself, found no need to. I don't take the stuff to get high, I take it for pain.
In researching my prescriptions I saw all kinds of ways people found out on how to get high. I also saw that our federal prisons are full of people locked up for drug crimes. It's got so bad that the US DOJ is thinking of ways to reduce sentences for these people. At some point the government is going to have to reconsider what we consider punishable drug offenses. I saw that an estimated 30 million people will admit to using a controlled substance, we can't lock them all up.
Having taken tramadol myself I can say that it is quite effective at relieving pain. It also tends to keep me from sleeping. The withdrawal from it was unpleasant, just taking it once can give dizziness and nausea for hours after it wears off.
I hate tramadol but it seems some people really like it because of the intense high it can give. After the bad experience with tramadol I was able to convince my physician to give me codeine and hydrocodone (not at the same time) which works much better for me. Because of the crazy laws we have I could get truly high inducing levels of tramadol without much issue but getting opiates without liver killing levels of NSAIDs to go with it requires an act of Congress.
I believe that codeine should be over the counter medications. The NSAIDs I was given before were ineffective and were likely poisoning me. I got a clue on how bad that stuff was when my physician scheduled me for a liver and kidney function test. The number of people that are hospitalized or die from Tylenol overdose every year is staggering. The people that die from opiate overdose do so largely because the quality control of street drugs is questionable.
I also have to wonder how many opiate overdoses were not actually an overdose of the opiate, but instead an overdose of the Tylenol or NSAID that is usually mixed with it. I'm sure the big money in medicines want to keep any overdoses quiet when they can. When they can't they'll blame it on the "evil" opiates. It not only makes the drug makers look good, it makes the DEA look good.
Got off on a rant there. Anyway, tramadol isn't so great. NSAIDs and Tylenol work for mild pain. The best stuff is the natural stuff, codeine. People, and their pets, have been taking it for thousands of years. It's safe and effective. Overdose is only a real issue when concentrated to insane levels to get high. If you're getting high off codeine then you're doing it wrong.
There was a time when USA would launch satellites for other nations, now we off shore even that. What is NASA's mission now? I thought it was supposed to encourage domestic space exploration.
Oh, that's right, some White House talking head said NASA exists to make the descendents of the people that basically invented mathematics and science feel good. How about we have NASA inspire all Americans to seek knowledge? You know, like they used to do?
I don't want to sound like I'm tearing down everyone at NASA. I'm sure there are some very smart and motivated people there doing great work. The problem lies in the management. It seems the government does not know what to do with NASA any more. Any project that NASA gets seems to lose funding as soon as it gets even close to launching anything. That's the nature of a government driven by professional politicians that are more concerned about winning the next election than actually improving the lives of Americans.
I'm glad to see that this failure of NASA to lead us into space has resulted in private industry picking up where they left off. I predict we're going to see private space launches exceed anything NASA has been able to do real soon now. I predict the next person on the moon will be an American but the spacecraft will not bear the NASA emblem.
Good thing that California banned fires on the beach, can't be too careful. That sand could catch fire at any second.