But forget computers. That they can pick up on their own if they're interested. And if you try to teach them you'll kill their interest by making i seem like school work instead of a possible fun hobby that might, at some future date, come in handy.
I don't believe that's true. I had chemistry in high school and college and that didn't make chemistry look like "homework" to me. My sister took the same classes, and much more, she has a masters degree in chemistry. I also took home economics (or whatever they call it these days) and found cooking fascinating. Sewing was fun too. What made them "homework" later was having to put those skills to work regularly in cooking meals and doing home repairs.
I took shop classes in high school, as did my brothers, and we all do much of our own home repairs, on some level at least. We'd build our own speaker cases, wire up the crossovers, and sew a grill to the front. We built cabinets and shelves. Big brother made a career out of it, first as an apprentice architect, later as a woodworker building custom furniture and artwork. doing some general contracting as well. He'll probably be a machinist and welder soon if he gets the job he's interviewing for. I took as much computer science I could in high school, as did my younger brother. We went to study electrical and computer engineering. He's doing stuff that I'm not sure I even understand. Not that he could do what I do either.
Baby brother and baby sister are engineers, he a mechanical and aerospace engineer, and she a civil engineer. This involves a lot of math and computers, taught at the university. I'm sure chemistry too. Which has been a means to produce their own alcohol to feed their other hobby...
I do not believe that computers are much of a "hobby" any more. Computer games might be a hobby but that's not a lot of computer science there, unless it's building the game.
For schools to teach "hobbies" would be the things like chess club, music club, theater, sports, art club. and perhaps others. I've gone back to school to learn large data analysis, which includes programming, statistics, and some "hobbies" like reading literature and playing music.
Lots of examples of classwork becoming hobbies, and being more than just "homework".
I'd agree with you on two conditions. First, if the stuff they ordered were stuff that they intended to keep and use themselves. Second, if they reported the flaw themselves.
Among the items were 3 vacuum cleaners, multiple pairs of boots, and... $25000 in underwear? Lowes sells underwear? If they hadn't bought enough furniture to furnish their house many times over then they might have an excuse for this being a "mistake". It still could have ended in criminal charges but they'd have a better bargaining position for getting the charges dropped or a plea deal for "$50 and time served".
They tried to get away with a quarter million dollars. The $13k was just what wasn't recovered when they were caught.
Just "calling it even" encourages further abuse like this. Jailing people that found such flaws honestly, and reported it, encourages abuses like this too. If people expect to get cuffed for reporting flaws then people will just keep quiet and the abuse will continue. A line must be drawn somewhere and that is going to be difficult to do. The suspects here didn't just step over the line, they leaped over with both feet and started running. They deserve jail.
Imagine your car goes to the Lowes website to buy tires. Your car finds out a way to get the tires shipped to the house without paying for them. Your car is now selling the tires at half price on eBay, and for some reason you don't mind a pile of tires in your garage. Now, should your car be sent to prison for this, or should your car have the remaining tires returned and then told to... retire... from selling things on eBay?
Got that right. There is a communication problem in any big organization. This can be taken advantage of if you know the system.
In the Army there's a lot of delegation and division of duties. I've seen this used and abused. A fellow recruit (happened to be prior service Marine so he knew the system better than I) and I needed to get some luggage before getting our orders but we knew that if we simply asked for permission to go to the PX it would likely be denied. He just said to follow him and I did, I watched him go from one sergeant to the next with BS and half truths and in 20 minutes we were walking to the PX. He just did a Jedi mind trick on three sergeants to get us what we wanted. That's a pretty mild abuse of the system and if someone ever asked too many questions it would have been a "don't do that again" warning.
Another recruit would like to pull this trick by claiming "Sergeant Major says..." which got annoying real quick. Going to ask the Sergeant Major every time would have taken more time than just doing what he asked and I don't know if he got nailed on it. I got my luggage and my orders and I was gone before that happened.
There's always someone who can afford to accrue property with the intention of crapping it up.
Because it's not a perfect solution then it's the worst? Of course private property owners aren't always working in their best interest, that's the exception not the rule.
Look at commune farms versus private farms. In the Soviet era the farmers would have the government fields but were allowed small plots for themselves. The small privately owned plots produced more crop than the much larger government plots. Why? Because of ownership. They got paid the same regardless of how much the government land produced. The private land produced something they could eat, or sell on the black (or perhaps more "grey") market for profit.
Not allowing people to make money and keep it just makes everyone equally poor. The ability to keep private property helps the poor too, you know that don't you? It's kind of hard to get out of poverty if ownership is somehow bad. For society to become wealthy means that some will get more wealth than others. This wealth disparity should not be feared or despised, it just is. There will always be poverty, not much we can do about that. As a nation, community, or whatever gets more wealth there will be greater wealth disparity because there will always be someone with zero.
I'm no detective or anything but I can imagine that these skills are "use it or lose it" like any other. If they aren't doing anything of a higher priority then why not?
I can also imagine that there is matter of pride. There's someone that got away and finding out who did it, even this far in the past, does prove something, doesn't it?
I vaguely recall an argument, from the UK I believe, on the funds spent by the military picking up lost hikers and skiers. Some politician thought this was a waste of government resources. A high ranking officer explained that if the military was not doing this service they'd have to concoct drills of similar difficulty to keep the people trained. Doing this service effectively cost nothing, kept people safe(r), and was an effective recruiting tool. Sending out civilians in a jeep instead of military in a helicopter would look cheaper at first but it'd also save no money in the end since the helicopters would be flying anyway. If war breaks out those same people would be picking up downed pilots and doing medical evacuations of wounded soldiers.
Let the FBI go dig in the mud looking for rotted bank notes and bits of a parachute. If in the future they need some experienced people to find a suspect in a "hot" case then we know where to find them.
It's nice, I guess, to see people talk of what they are passionate about and want to share with others. I'll say good things about music, books, movies, and such I like with anyone that asks, and a few that don't ask.
This Jonathan Coulton music and book sounds like something I might want to try but unless I hear it's good from someone that does not financially gain from the sale I'll have my doubts.
Right, the oceans are connected. The thing is that fish can thrive in one area of the ocean even if they are effectively extinct in another area.
We see this in Africa with all the connected lands where wildlife can roam. One nation might not have hunting licenses and conservation officers to enforce hunting regulations. Another will have sanctioned hunting, licenses, and officers to enforce the law. The nation with enforcement will have a thriving wildlife because the animals have value, if the animals are gone then so are the hunters and the money they bring.
Where there is no enforcement the poachers take over. Farmers will kill the animals too since they become a nuisance. The people generally don't want the wildlife because it attracts poachers, and they don't much care about killing domesticated animals if they get in the way. Or killing the owners of those cattle for that matter, if they get in the way too.
So long as the poachers stay on their side of the border between these nations the wildlife can be protected. I wish I could remember the details but there was a case like this a few years ago. A famous rhino, lion, tiger, or something was in a large national wildlife preserve but wandered too close to a border where poachers were not controlled. The animal was found dead with trophy parts removed and the meat left to rot. There was some dispute on which side of the border it was on. And there were likely many instances of this which is why I can't recall the details.
So, sure, some of the fish might wander from where they are protected to where they are not. What needs to happen though is that those that can't take care of the fish in their waters not be allowed to ruin it for the other nations.
The first possible solution requires a government entity to enforce limits on individuals. This enforcement must mean punishment harsh enough that people cannot simply pay a fine and still come out ahead.
A second possible solution is to divide up the commons into places that an individual has near complete control. That way if they overuse then they are just putting themselves out of business.
My dad would rent out land to neighboring farmers but never for less than three years. The reason he said was because if they rented for just a year or two then they'd tend to not care for the property. They'd plant a crop, and not bother with weed control or fertilizer. If they had "ownership" of the land for three years then they'd have to take care of it the first year if they expected a crop that third year.
Giving people ownership, of anything really, doesn't seem popular though. It seems people would rather live in the mess that a commons inevitably becomes than see some individual actually own something.
Did I say they were rare? I said they had to be mined. Wind power takes a lot of resources, ten times as much as coal, natural gas, or nuclear. Very few talk about that. Not just rare earth elements but also steel, copper, and so on.
If you honour regulations it is no problem mining them
If you follow the laws of the USA mining rare earth elements means it is prohibitively expensive. Thorium is a byproduct of rare earth mining and US federal law considers this "weapon grade material" and has to be handled as if it is high grade plutonium, even though it's worthless for weapons. That's why the US produces very little, its cheaper to ship it in from China where they just pile up the thorium. Rare earth elements from China is still expensive, just cheaper than if we produced it here under current law.
Change the laws and it would be "no problem" but then we'd have a lot of thorium too. Too bad federal law effectively prohibits using thorium as a nuclear reactor fuel, that's another regulation that needs to change.
Long haul trucks are actually an ideal case for EVs
No, they are not. I used to wash trucks for UPS and I'd talk with the drivers. The REALLY long haul trucks would have two drivers and sometimes even a chemical toilet. They wouldn't even stop to take a piss if they didn't need to stop for fuel too. That's just the mechanics of the driving. When you look at how much battery would be needed, and how long it would take to charge, nothing less than a total battery swap would do and those batteries would have to be HUGE. That's a lot of dead weight they'd have to carry and those trucks are already built to the legal limits now.
Have you ever had to use cordless tools for an extended period? You'll need three or four batteries for each tool if you want to keep going all day. You'll need one in the tool, and two on the chargers, or you'll be waiting for the batteries to charge. If you're working the tools real hard then you'll need a fourth in the rotation, cooling off before being put on the charger.
Go look up how much energy is stored in a typical long haul truck fuel tanks. Take that same amount of energy and figure out how large of a conductor it would take to carry that energy in a reasonable amount of time. Go ahead and divide by four to account for an ICE being 25% efficient and an electric motor being near 100%, not quite fair since it's more like a three times as efficient, or maybe double, but go with four. That's a lot of electricity.
Even if you take out two drivers switching places on a truck you still have the problems of keeping the batteries charged, and the MASSIVE weight they'd need to be even close to a true long haul truck.
I believe a lot of people fail to realize the vast numbers of vehicles on the road that are not people commuting to work, getting groceries, or picking up kids from school. There are still a lot of long haul trucks on the road.
Say what you will about replacing trucks with trains and barges but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. Electric commuter cars are just nibbling at the edges of replacing petroleum as a fuel. Even if batteries could be charged in full in a matter of minutes there is still the problem of where to get that energy. Wind and solar is still very expensive and batteries will not change that.
What we need is more nuclear power. From that not only can we charge all those electric cars but we can synthesize hydrocarbon fuels. This fuel synthesis can use the carbon and water from the air, or more likely from the ocean where it ends up after a rain. It closes the carbon loop, so it's as "zero emission" as any electric car with all the advantages of burning gasoline or diesel.
I grew up on a farm and I saw how much diesel is burned to plant and harvest food. A whole lot of trucks need to carry the crop to market. A lot of propane is burned to dry the corn and keep livestock warm. This is not easily replaced with batteries. We can replace this all with synthesized fuels though.
That's just mentioning the farming and some of the shipping. There's still a lot of trains, ships, airplanes, and industrial processes that rely on petroleum. They don't have to any more.
Oh and this...
Torque and acceleration up the wazoo.
It's called a diesel electric drivetrain. Nothing new there, and we don't need high tech batteries for it either.
The list of benefits goes on for miles.
So does the list of reasons that diesel fuel still rules the road.
The headline is over an electric car that has the same range as a gasoline car since... forever? Not impressed.
Later in that article though is a bit about how hydrogen fuel cells might come to market. I think that hydrogen as a fuel is a terrible idea but the idea that a fuel cell might be cheap and durable enough for a passenger car would be news.
Electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells are all about the supposed "addiction" to fossil fuels, and the damage it may (or may not) be doing to the environment. There is nothing inherently wrong with the internal combustion engine. The problem is in the fuel. Or rather how we get it currently.
The US Navy is developing a means to produce hydrocarbon fuels from seawater. If that gets cheap enough then it can be scaled up effectively infinitely. It's not like we're going to run out of seawater. When the fuel is burned it gets turned back into the water and CO2 it came from. It closes the loop on water and carbon, and there's no sulfur or anything in the fuel, unless put there in the process.
I guess I know why this isn't getting proper funding or the headlines it deserves. The problem is the process is powered by nuclear reactors. It doesn't have to but it does take a lot of electricity. Kind of like the electricity to charge those electric cars, or to produce the hydrogen for fuel cells. The difference is that it can be stored and transported like the fossil fuels we use already. Very little new infrastructure needed.
Maybe that's a problem too. Senators can't spend government money on new infrastructure in their state if the new fuel doesn't need infrastructure, no one can buy votes that way. Oh, and NUCLEAR BAD!! Because strip mining the planet for rare earth metals to make windmills, batteries, and solar panels has NO IMPACT on the environment. On the other hand we could take our fuel from seawater (including the uranium) and use the byproducts (like fresh water, oxygen gas, and sea salt) to feed industry and feed people. Nothing to lose there but your precious government subsidies.
Since senators can't buy votes without subsidies then it's not likely to happen any time soon.
Oh, and another thing. Another potential byproduct of this seawater-to-fuel process is hydrogen gas. We could use that for those fuel cells. Again I think hydrogen is a terrible fuel outside of sending rockets to space but if fuel cells are going to be a thing then we need nuclear power to make that happen. Using fossil fuels to make hydrogen kind of defeats the purpose, using wind or solar would take far too much land, so nuclear is where it must come from.
In all, the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.
That's just the ones they found so far.
I went to check more recent news on voter ID laws and perhaps you've been busy like I have the last couple days and were unaware that Trump and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been going back and forth the last few days over voter fraud problems in Chicago. I didn't know this until today but it's apparently been on the news a bit for a week now.
People don't know how bad it is in Chicago because no one has taken the time to take a good look at it. We won't know how bad it is until we look either. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel seems pretty adamant on keeping the federal government from looking too. Why would that be?
I know that "if you have nothing to hide then we should be free to look" is not how the government should treat people. That is how people should deal with the government though.
How do you get hunters to practice their marksmanship? They need "bullets" (I'm pretty sure you mean "cartridge" or "shell" but whatever) to practice. Do you want wildlife control or not? You do know that over population of deer create road hazards, can spread diseases (even among the deer, it's for their good too), and other problems. With "bullet control" you'll have a lot of hunters missing their mark and creating a lot of wounded animals. Why do you hate wildlife?
Also, how does bullet control work for a musket? People still hunt with those you know. They are cast of lead easily. What of bird hunting? They use shot, not bullets.
I believe you didn't think this through and got this crazy idea from the Brady Campaign or some comedy routine, I get those two confused.
Those aren't why we have marriage licenses.
I know why they were created. The Democrats created them in the Jim Crow era to enforce a ban on interracial marriages. Up until that time marriages were solely a religious matter. Why do you think we have them now? Whatever purpose they served in the past they serve no purpose now.
Do you have an alternative?
Yes, let people do what they want and be responsible for their actions when they fuck up. You know, this concept called "liberty"? Don't they teach that in school any more?
It's real hard to argue against a voter registry, it's hard to enforce that no one is voting multiple times without it. What of the other government databases? Can't they also be leaked and/or abused? Should we be using Social Security numbers everywhere?
A couple examples. Licenses to drive, do we really need those? Maybe a license for minors that lack the legal authority for things like signing an insurance contract, would be difficult to sue in court if caught violating the law or doing damage, etc. The license for a minor is much about an adult, presumably the parent, agreeing that they take responsibility for the behavior of the minor as it is about making sure the minor has a minimum understanding of how to drive. An adult though is always legally responsible, licensed or not. Every day is a driving exam by police officers looking for bad drivers.
We don't need gun licenses either, and for much the same reason as driving licenses. If you own and carry a gun then you are assumed responsible for anything that happens if it is discharged, licensed or not. These have been abused by law enforcement and by the public. Get rid of them.
Some licenses we probably need though are things like hunting and fishing, building repair and construction, or anything where there is a need to manage quantity. Can't have too many hunters hunting at once, that's bad for managing the wildlife. Can't have a building without knowing who owns it, that's a matter of managing taxes, census, and so forth.
We don't need marriage licenses. Marry who you want to marry. Have kids with whomever you choose. Might need record of who is responsible for the actions of a minor, like the driving license example, but that's what birth certificates are for. In cases of adoption, guardianship, whatever, there's existing means to record that.
In cases like this I believe we should think more about whether we need these records in the first place, rather than how to keep them secure. Voter registration is perhaps not the greatest example, again we do need to assure one person gets only one vote. Perhaps we can not record so much on the voter registration, like Social Security numbers, or party affiliation. A political party is at it's core just a club membership. There's no reason a person can only be a member of one club or the other. Why can't I join both clubs?
Right! Get the government out of my bedroom! Get the government out of women's wombs! Get the government out of my health care! MY BODY, MY CHOICE! I should be able to choose what physician I see, when, and where. I should be able to shop for the best care at a price I can afford. I should be able to buy health insurance from any state. Also, I shouldn't have to petition the government for use of an experimental drug. MY BODY, MY CHOICE!
I should be able to choose who I get to serve in my shop. If I don't want Nazis buying my cakes then I shouldn't be forced by the government to sell to them, right? If a gay couple wants my cakes then I should be able to refuse them as well, right? CHOICE!
Left wingers don't want people to be free to choose, because then they might choose to not think like the left wingers.
Just last semester I saw an opinion article about how a "right winger" was denied the ability to speak on campus and the guy thought this was a "win" for free speech. I read it and the guy had to go through some real mental gymnastics to "prove" his point but I just had to roll my eyes. "We can't have this 'hate speech' on campus!" Isn't telling these people they aren't welcome to speak freely also "hate speech"?
No wonder the left is eating it's own right now. Their "logic" is contradictory and when the logic of one "left" group meets that of another "left" group then things get ugly real quick.
You keep shouting "CHOICE!" all you like, I've become numb to it now. It's people like you that want people to have the freedom to choose only so long as they choose to think as you do.
The cost of Fukushima alone is 187 billion dollars US. Where's that factor into the tired "Nuclear power forever!" rhetoric?
The same way a construction worker falling to his death from a windmill tower would be factored into wind power. Or a failed bearing on a windmill starting a forest fire. We don't use a single incident to define the industry. When did Fukushima have its meltdown? Six years ago? How many nuclear reactors have been operating safely since? Not only that, how many people died from the Fukushima meltdown? Last I checked it was zero.
You also talk of the one nuclear power plant that is over budget. How many of the dozens being constructed now are on time and budget? I honestly don't know because no one seems to talk about them. No news is good news, no? Also, how much of the troubles of new nuclear construction in the USA is because of government meddling? The government has a nasty habit of changing the rules during construction. I believe nuclear power would thrive if the government would just let it.
Or the fact that solar power can still improve dramatically for cost, and should able to beat the, entirely theoretical, ROI on nuclear within a decade.
I keep hearing this, solar will be the best... in a decade. You believe nuclear power cannot improve? if so, why? If solar can be half the price and twice as efficient if only we dump some money in it then can't the same be said of nuclear?
Here's where solar power fails and will always fail, it doesn't work at night. There's lots of places with lots of people where the sun can shine for only a few hours in the day. Batteries you say? Why can't we use those batteries on a nuclear power plant? Nuclear power is only base load, is the common complaint. Well, put some batteries next to that nuclear power plant and it's no longer just base load now, right?
You complain of the theoretical ROI of nuclear at the same time claiming solar will, in theory, have a better ROI.
"Nuclear!" is just a fantasy people with a bad case of Dunning-Kruger effect concerning energy utilities yell to make themselves feel superior.
I do know what "average" means. Do you realize that those workers at Chernobyl were 18 years old on the low end? There were plenty in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. That was three decades ago. They are 50 years old now at a minimum.
What's the average age of a NCO? They'd have to be serving for something like six years to make that rank, so 25 to 35 years old, right? What's a typical age of an officer? Even a junior officer fresh out of the academy? 21? 23? There were no Majors or Captains there? Pretty sure there were, they'd be in their 30s then and, if they are still alive, in their mid-60s now.
All those men at Chernobyl weren't pimply faced recruits just out of boot camp. I don't know this for sure, but just statistically speaking they are going to be, on average, somewhere in their 20s. Soldiers smoke, a LOT, all around the world. They've been known to drink too. A lot of them after the military go to do manual labor, where accidents happen.
Tell me that 2/3rds of them are dead now? I say, that sounds about right. Might be a bit high, even for Ukraine, but not significantly so. They weren't schoolteachers, they were soldiers. After the military they'd go to be farmers, construction workers, police officers, and so on. They'd also keep smoking, drinking, and eating bad food.
Oh, and the claim of them having long term health problems? Show me a veteran in their 50s and 60s, from anywhere in the world, without some sort of long term health problem and I'll be shocked.
Prove it. Prove to me that solar and wind is cleaner, safer, and cheaper than nuclear.
I'm calling those that fail to mention nuclear in an article on the safety of wind and solar liars by omission.
Nuclear is among the dirtiest forms of power we have, and is literally the least economical form in common use.
Prove it. To make this claim someone had to study the matter, no? Show me the study.
That's my point, no one even seems to study this. More likely though is that someone did the study and it makes solar and wind look REALLY bad, so they keep it quiet. If nuclear is all that bad then there should be something showing it.
I saw a single nuclear power plant make the news recently for going over budget and behind schedule. That's one plant. How are the rest doing? Are they all that bad? There's dozens of nuclear power plants being built in the world right now. There's hundreds of nuclear power plants in operations right now, how are they doing?
That's my point we don't know nuclear is unsafe and expensive because no one talks about it. If they aren't talking about it then I must assume the news is bad for wind.
since you're going to run out of fissible material
There's enough uranium (not just U-235, U-238 is fuel too) and thorium to last millions or billions of years, certainly thousands of years. We are not going to run out. There's enough uranium dissolved in seawater alone to last a VERY long time. Anyone with access to the sea has an effectively unlimited supply of energy. The great thing about extracting uranium from the sea is that it makes room for more to dissolve from the seabed, let the water do the mining and transporting for you!
A quick Google search shows a lot of advancement in getting uranium from seawater in just the last year. This is already a viable source of uranium, if only there was a market for it.
Slashdot Mirror
But forget computers. That they can pick up on their own if they're interested. And if you try to teach them you'll kill their interest by making i seem like school work instead of a possible fun hobby that might, at some future date, come in handy.
I don't believe that's true. I had chemistry in high school and college and that didn't make chemistry look like "homework" to me. My sister took the same classes, and much more, she has a masters degree in chemistry. I also took home economics (or whatever they call it these days) and found cooking fascinating. Sewing was fun too. What made them "homework" later was having to put those skills to work regularly in cooking meals and doing home repairs.
I took shop classes in high school, as did my brothers, and we all do much of our own home repairs, on some level at least. We'd build our own speaker cases, wire up the crossovers, and sew a grill to the front. We built cabinets and shelves. Big brother made a career out of it, first as an apprentice architect, later as a woodworker building custom furniture and artwork. doing some general contracting as well. He'll probably be a machinist and welder soon if he gets the job he's interviewing for. I took as much computer science I could in high school, as did my younger brother. We went to study electrical and computer engineering. He's doing stuff that I'm not sure I even understand. Not that he could do what I do either.
Baby brother and baby sister are engineers, he a mechanical and aerospace engineer, and she a civil engineer. This involves a lot of math and computers, taught at the university. I'm sure chemistry too. Which has been a means to produce their own alcohol to feed their other hobby...
I do not believe that computers are much of a "hobby" any more. Computer games might be a hobby but that's not a lot of computer science there, unless it's building the game.
For schools to teach "hobbies" would be the things like chess club, music club, theater, sports, art club. and perhaps others. I've gone back to school to learn large data analysis, which includes programming, statistics, and some "hobbies" like reading literature and playing music.
Lots of examples of classwork becoming hobbies, and being more than just "homework".
I'd agree with you on two conditions. First, if the stuff they ordered were stuff that they intended to keep and use themselves. Second, if they reported the flaw themselves.
Among the items were 3 vacuum cleaners, multiple pairs of boots, and... $25000 in underwear? Lowes sells underwear? If they hadn't bought enough furniture to furnish their house many times over then they might have an excuse for this being a "mistake". It still could have ended in criminal charges but they'd have a better bargaining position for getting the charges dropped or a plea deal for "$50 and time served".
They tried to get away with a quarter million dollars. The $13k was just what wasn't recovered when they were caught.
Just "calling it even" encourages further abuse like this. Jailing people that found such flaws honestly, and reported it, encourages abuses like this too. If people expect to get cuffed for reporting flaws then people will just keep quiet and the abuse will continue. A line must be drawn somewhere and that is going to be difficult to do. The suspects here didn't just step over the line, they leaped over with both feet and started running. They deserve jail.
Okay, car analogy...
Imagine your car goes to the Lowes website to buy tires. Your car finds out a way to get the tires shipped to the house without paying for them. Your car is now selling the tires at half price on eBay, and for some reason you don't mind a pile of tires in your garage. Now, should your car be sent to prison for this, or should your car have the remaining tires returned and then told to... retire... from selling things on eBay?
No, don't get up, I can find the exit myself.
Got that right. There is a communication problem in any big organization. This can be taken advantage of if you know the system.
In the Army there's a lot of delegation and division of duties. I've seen this used and abused. A fellow recruit (happened to be prior service Marine so he knew the system better than I) and I needed to get some luggage before getting our orders but we knew that if we simply asked for permission to go to the PX it would likely be denied. He just said to follow him and I did, I watched him go from one sergeant to the next with BS and half truths and in 20 minutes we were walking to the PX. He just did a Jedi mind trick on three sergeants to get us what we wanted. That's a pretty mild abuse of the system and if someone ever asked too many questions it would have been a "don't do that again" warning.
Another recruit would like to pull this trick by claiming "Sergeant Major says..." which got annoying real quick. Going to ask the Sergeant Major every time would have taken more time than just doing what he asked and I don't know if he got nailed on it. I got my luggage and my orders and I was gone before that happened.
You are definitley an idiot.
You are correct. I am an idiot for trying to argue with you. You apparently are arguing with the voice in your head and not anything I wrote.
And, do the sharks have lasers on their heads?
Kick his ass, sea bass!
There's always someone who can afford to accrue property with the intention of crapping it up.
Because it's not a perfect solution then it's the worst? Of course private property owners aren't always working in their best interest, that's the exception not the rule.
Look at commune farms versus private farms. In the Soviet era the farmers would have the government fields but were allowed small plots for themselves. The small privately owned plots produced more crop than the much larger government plots. Why? Because of ownership. They got paid the same regardless of how much the government land produced. The private land produced something they could eat, or sell on the black (or perhaps more "grey") market for profit.
Not allowing people to make money and keep it just makes everyone equally poor. The ability to keep private property helps the poor too, you know that don't you? It's kind of hard to get out of poverty if ownership is somehow bad. For society to become wealthy means that some will get more wealth than others. This wealth disparity should not be feared or despised, it just is. There will always be poverty, not much we can do about that. As a nation, community, or whatever gets more wealth there will be greater wealth disparity because there will always be someone with zero.
why continue the case?
Because it's good practice for more recent cases?
I'm no detective or anything but I can imagine that these skills are "use it or lose it" like any other. If they aren't doing anything of a higher priority then why not?
I can also imagine that there is matter of pride. There's someone that got away and finding out who did it, even this far in the past, does prove something, doesn't it?
I vaguely recall an argument, from the UK I believe, on the funds spent by the military picking up lost hikers and skiers. Some politician thought this was a waste of government resources. A high ranking officer explained that if the military was not doing this service they'd have to concoct drills of similar difficulty to keep the people trained. Doing this service effectively cost nothing, kept people safe(r), and was an effective recruiting tool. Sending out civilians in a jeep instead of military in a helicopter would look cheaper at first but it'd also save no money in the end since the helicopters would be flying anyway. If war breaks out those same people would be picking up downed pilots and doing medical evacuations of wounded soldiers.
Let the FBI go dig in the mud looking for rotted bank notes and bits of a parachute. If in the future they need some experienced people to find a suspect in a "hot" case then we know where to find them.
It's nice, I guess, to see people talk of what they are passionate about and want to share with others. I'll say good things about music, books, movies, and such I like with anyone that asks, and a few that don't ask.
This Jonathan Coulton music and book sounds like something I might want to try but unless I hear it's good from someone that does not financially gain from the sale I'll have my doubts.
So, is it any good?
Right, the oceans are connected. The thing is that fish can thrive in one area of the ocean even if they are effectively extinct in another area.
We see this in Africa with all the connected lands where wildlife can roam. One nation might not have hunting licenses and conservation officers to enforce hunting regulations. Another will have sanctioned hunting, licenses, and officers to enforce the law. The nation with enforcement will have a thriving wildlife because the animals have value, if the animals are gone then so are the hunters and the money they bring.
Where there is no enforcement the poachers take over. Farmers will kill the animals too since they become a nuisance. The people generally don't want the wildlife because it attracts poachers, and they don't much care about killing domesticated animals if they get in the way. Or killing the owners of those cattle for that matter, if they get in the way too.
So long as the poachers stay on their side of the border between these nations the wildlife can be protected. I wish I could remember the details but there was a case like this a few years ago. A famous rhino, lion, tiger, or something was in a large national wildlife preserve but wandered too close to a border where poachers were not controlled. The animal was found dead with trophy parts removed and the meat left to rot. There was some dispute on which side of the border it was on. And there were likely many instances of this which is why I can't recall the details.
So, sure, some of the fish might wander from where they are protected to where they are not. What needs to happen though is that those that can't take care of the fish in their waters not be allowed to ruin it for the other nations.
Right, and there are two ways I see to fix this.
The first possible solution requires a government entity to enforce limits on individuals. This enforcement must mean punishment harsh enough that people cannot simply pay a fine and still come out ahead.
A second possible solution is to divide up the commons into places that an individual has near complete control. That way if they overuse then they are just putting themselves out of business.
My dad would rent out land to neighboring farmers but never for less than three years. The reason he said was because if they rented for just a year or two then they'd tend to not care for the property. They'd plant a crop, and not bother with weed control or fertilizer. If they had "ownership" of the land for three years then they'd have to take care of it the first year if they expected a crop that third year.
Giving people ownership, of anything really, doesn't seem popular though. It seems people would rather live in the mess that a commons inevitably becomes than see some individual actually own something.
rare earths are not rare, it just a name.
Did I say they were rare? I said they had to be mined. Wind power takes a lot of resources, ten times as much as coal, natural gas, or nuclear. Very few talk about that. Not just rare earth elements but also steel, copper, and so on.
If you honour regulations it is no problem mining them
If you follow the laws of the USA mining rare earth elements means it is prohibitively expensive. Thorium is a byproduct of rare earth mining and US federal law considers this "weapon grade material" and has to be handled as if it is high grade plutonium, even though it's worthless for weapons. That's why the US produces very little, its cheaper to ship it in from China where they just pile up the thorium. Rare earth elements from China is still expensive, just cheaper than if we produced it here under current law.
Change the laws and it would be "no problem" but then we'd have a lot of thorium too. Too bad federal law effectively prohibits using thorium as a nuclear reactor fuel, that's another regulation that needs to change.
Long haul trucks are actually an ideal case for EVs
No, they are not. I used to wash trucks for UPS and I'd talk with the drivers. The REALLY long haul trucks would have two drivers and sometimes even a chemical toilet. They wouldn't even stop to take a piss if they didn't need to stop for fuel too. That's just the mechanics of the driving. When you look at how much battery would be needed, and how long it would take to charge, nothing less than a total battery swap would do and those batteries would have to be HUGE. That's a lot of dead weight they'd have to carry and those trucks are already built to the legal limits now.
Have you ever had to use cordless tools for an extended period? You'll need three or four batteries for each tool if you want to keep going all day. You'll need one in the tool, and two on the chargers, or you'll be waiting for the batteries to charge. If you're working the tools real hard then you'll need a fourth in the rotation, cooling off before being put on the charger.
Go look up how much energy is stored in a typical long haul truck fuel tanks. Take that same amount of energy and figure out how large of a conductor it would take to carry that energy in a reasonable amount of time. Go ahead and divide by four to account for an ICE being 25% efficient and an electric motor being near 100%, not quite fair since it's more like a three times as efficient, or maybe double, but go with four. That's a lot of electricity.
Even if you take out two drivers switching places on a truck you still have the problems of keeping the batteries charged, and the MASSIVE weight they'd need to be even close to a true long haul truck.
I believe a lot of people fail to realize the vast numbers of vehicles on the road that are not people commuting to work, getting groceries, or picking up kids from school. There are still a lot of long haul trucks on the road.
Say what you will about replacing trucks with trains and barges but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. Electric commuter cars are just nibbling at the edges of replacing petroleum as a fuel. Even if batteries could be charged in full in a matter of minutes there is still the problem of where to get that energy. Wind and solar is still very expensive and batteries will not change that.
What we need is more nuclear power. From that not only can we charge all those electric cars but we can synthesize hydrocarbon fuels. This fuel synthesis can use the carbon and water from the air, or more likely from the ocean where it ends up after a rain. It closes the carbon loop, so it's as "zero emission" as any electric car with all the advantages of burning gasoline or diesel.
I grew up on a farm and I saw how much diesel is burned to plant and harvest food. A whole lot of trucks need to carry the crop to market. A lot of propane is burned to dry the corn and keep livestock warm. This is not easily replaced with batteries. We can replace this all with synthesized fuels though.
That's just mentioning the farming and some of the shipping. There's still a lot of trains, ships, airplanes, and industrial processes that rely on petroleum. They don't have to any more.
Oh and this...
Torque and acceleration up the wazoo.
It's called a diesel electric drivetrain. Nothing new there, and we don't need high tech batteries for it either.
The list of benefits goes on for miles.
So does the list of reasons that diesel fuel still rules the road.
The headline is over an electric car that has the same range as a gasoline car since... forever? Not impressed.
Later in that article though is a bit about how hydrogen fuel cells might come to market. I think that hydrogen as a fuel is a terrible idea but the idea that a fuel cell might be cheap and durable enough for a passenger car would be news.
Electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells are all about the supposed "addiction" to fossil fuels, and the damage it may (or may not) be doing to the environment. There is nothing inherently wrong with the internal combustion engine. The problem is in the fuel. Or rather how we get it currently.
The US Navy is developing a means to produce hydrocarbon fuels from seawater. If that gets cheap enough then it can be scaled up effectively infinitely. It's not like we're going to run out of seawater. When the fuel is burned it gets turned back into the water and CO2 it came from. It closes the loop on water and carbon, and there's no sulfur or anything in the fuel, unless put there in the process.
I guess I know why this isn't getting proper funding or the headlines it deserves. The problem is the process is powered by nuclear reactors. It doesn't have to but it does take a lot of electricity. Kind of like the electricity to charge those electric cars, or to produce the hydrogen for fuel cells. The difference is that it can be stored and transported like the fossil fuels we use already. Very little new infrastructure needed.
Maybe that's a problem too. Senators can't spend government money on new infrastructure in their state if the new fuel doesn't need infrastructure, no one can buy votes that way. Oh, and NUCLEAR BAD!! Because strip mining the planet for rare earth metals to make windmills, batteries, and solar panels has NO IMPACT on the environment. On the other hand we could take our fuel from seawater (including the uranium) and use the byproducts (like fresh water, oxygen gas, and sea salt) to feed industry and feed people. Nothing to lose there but your precious government subsidies.
Since senators can't buy votes without subsidies then it's not likely to happen any time soon.
Oh, and another thing. Another potential byproduct of this seawater-to-fuel process is hydrogen gas. We could use that for those fuel cells. Again I think hydrogen is a terrible fuel outside of sending rockets to space but if fuel cells are going to be a thing then we need nuclear power to make that happen. Using fossil fuels to make hydrogen kind of defeats the purpose, using wind or solar would take far too much land, so nuclear is where it must come from.
Go ahead, show us how bad it is there.
Seriously? I did a Google search on "Chicago dead voters" and this was the first hit:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/20...
In all, the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.
That's just the ones they found so far.
I went to check more recent news on voter ID laws and perhaps you've been busy like I have the last couple days and were unaware that Trump and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been going back and forth the last few days over voter fraud problems in Chicago. I didn't know this until today but it's apparently been on the news a bit for a week now.
People don't know how bad it is in Chicago because no one has taken the time to take a good look at it. We won't know how bad it is until we look either. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel seems pretty adamant on keeping the federal government from looking too. Why would that be?
I know that "if you have nothing to hide then we should be free to look" is not how the government should treat people. That is how people should deal with the government though.
You could just issue a certain number of bullets.
How do you get hunters to practice their marksmanship? They need "bullets" (I'm pretty sure you mean "cartridge" or "shell" but whatever) to practice. Do you want wildlife control or not? You do know that over population of deer create road hazards, can spread diseases (even among the deer, it's for their good too), and other problems. With "bullet control" you'll have a lot of hunters missing their mark and creating a lot of wounded animals. Why do you hate wildlife?
Also, how does bullet control work for a musket? People still hunt with those you know. They are cast of lead easily. What of bird hunting? They use shot, not bullets.
I believe you didn't think this through and got this crazy idea from the Brady Campaign or some comedy routine, I get those two confused.
Those aren't why we have marriage licenses.
I know why they were created. The Democrats created them in the Jim Crow era to enforce a ban on interracial marriages. Up until that time marriages were solely a religious matter. Why do you think we have them now? Whatever purpose they served in the past they serve no purpose now.
Do you have an alternative?
Yes, let people do what they want and be responsible for their actions when they fuck up. You know, this concept called "liberty"? Don't they teach that in school any more?
It's real hard to argue against a voter registry, it's hard to enforce that no one is voting multiple times without it. What of the other government databases? Can't they also be leaked and/or abused? Should we be using Social Security numbers everywhere?
A couple examples. Licenses to drive, do we really need those? Maybe a license for minors that lack the legal authority for things like signing an insurance contract, would be difficult to sue in court if caught violating the law or doing damage, etc. The license for a minor is much about an adult, presumably the parent, agreeing that they take responsibility for the behavior of the minor as it is about making sure the minor has a minimum understanding of how to drive. An adult though is always legally responsible, licensed or not. Every day is a driving exam by police officers looking for bad drivers.
We don't need gun licenses either, and for much the same reason as driving licenses. If you own and carry a gun then you are assumed responsible for anything that happens if it is discharged, licensed or not. These have been abused by law enforcement and by the public. Get rid of them.
Some licenses we probably need though are things like hunting and fishing, building repair and construction, or anything where there is a need to manage quantity. Can't have too many hunters hunting at once, that's bad for managing the wildlife. Can't have a building without knowing who owns it, that's a matter of managing taxes, census, and so forth.
We don't need marriage licenses. Marry who you want to marry. Have kids with whomever you choose. Might need record of who is responsible for the actions of a minor, like the driving license example, but that's what birth certificates are for. In cases of adoption, guardianship, whatever, there's existing means to record that.
In cases like this I believe we should think more about whether we need these records in the first place, rather than how to keep them secure. Voter registration is perhaps not the greatest example, again we do need to assure one person gets only one vote. Perhaps we can not record so much on the voter registration, like Social Security numbers, or party affiliation. A political party is at it's core just a club membership. There's no reason a person can only be a member of one club or the other. Why can't I join both clubs?
Right! Get the government out of my bedroom! Get the government out of women's wombs! Get the government out of my health care! MY BODY, MY CHOICE! I should be able to choose what physician I see, when, and where. I should be able to shop for the best care at a price I can afford. I should be able to buy health insurance from any state. Also, I shouldn't have to petition the government for use of an experimental drug. MY BODY, MY CHOICE!
I should be able to choose who I get to serve in my shop. If I don't want Nazis buying my cakes then I shouldn't be forced by the government to sell to them, right? If a gay couple wants my cakes then I should be able to refuse them as well, right? CHOICE!
Left wingers don't want people to be free to choose, because then they might choose to not think like the left wingers.
Just last semester I saw an opinion article about how a "right winger" was denied the ability to speak on campus and the guy thought this was a "win" for free speech. I read it and the guy had to go through some real mental gymnastics to "prove" his point but I just had to roll my eyes. "We can't have this 'hate speech' on campus!" Isn't telling these people they aren't welcome to speak freely also "hate speech"?
No wonder the left is eating it's own right now. Their "logic" is contradictory and when the logic of one "left" group meets that of another "left" group then things get ugly real quick.
You keep shouting "CHOICE!" all you like, I've become numb to it now. It's people like you that want people to have the freedom to choose only so long as they choose to think as you do.
The cost of Fukushima alone is 187 billion dollars US. Where's that factor into the tired "Nuclear power forever!" rhetoric?
The same way a construction worker falling to his death from a windmill tower would be factored into wind power. Or a failed bearing on a windmill starting a forest fire. We don't use a single incident to define the industry. When did Fukushima have its meltdown? Six years ago? How many nuclear reactors have been operating safely since? Not only that, how many people died from the Fukushima meltdown? Last I checked it was zero.
You also talk of the one nuclear power plant that is over budget. How many of the dozens being constructed now are on time and budget? I honestly don't know because no one seems to talk about them. No news is good news, no? Also, how much of the troubles of new nuclear construction in the USA is because of government meddling? The government has a nasty habit of changing the rules during construction. I believe nuclear power would thrive if the government would just let it.
Or the fact that solar power can still improve dramatically for cost, and should able to beat the, entirely theoretical, ROI on nuclear within a decade.
I keep hearing this, solar will be the best... in a decade. You believe nuclear power cannot improve? if so, why? If solar can be half the price and twice as efficient if only we dump some money in it then can't the same be said of nuclear?
Here's where solar power fails and will always fail, it doesn't work at night. There's lots of places with lots of people where the sun can shine for only a few hours in the day. Batteries you say? Why can't we use those batteries on a nuclear power plant? Nuclear power is only base load, is the common complaint. Well, put some batteries next to that nuclear power plant and it's no longer just base load now, right?
You complain of the theoretical ROI of nuclear at the same time claiming solar will, in theory, have a better ROI.
"Nuclear!" is just a fantasy people with a bad case of Dunning-Kruger effect concerning energy utilities yell to make themselves feel superior.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I do know what "average" means. Do you realize that those workers at Chernobyl were 18 years old on the low end? There were plenty in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. That was three decades ago. They are 50 years old now at a minimum.
What's the average age of a NCO? They'd have to be serving for something like six years to make that rank, so 25 to 35 years old, right? What's a typical age of an officer? Even a junior officer fresh out of the academy? 21? 23? There were no Majors or Captains there? Pretty sure there were, they'd be in their 30s then and, if they are still alive, in their mid-60s now.
All those men at Chernobyl weren't pimply faced recruits just out of boot camp. I don't know this for sure, but just statistically speaking they are going to be, on average, somewhere in their 20s. Soldiers smoke, a LOT, all around the world. They've been known to drink too. A lot of them after the military go to do manual labor, where accidents happen.
Tell me that 2/3rds of them are dead now? I say, that sounds about right. Might be a bit high, even for Ukraine, but not significantly so. They weren't schoolteachers, they were soldiers. After the military they'd go to be farmers, construction workers, police officers, and so on. They'd also keep smoking, drinking, and eating bad food.
Oh, and the claim of them having long term health problems? Show me a veteran in their 50s and 60s, from anywhere in the world, without some sort of long term health problem and I'll be shocked.
That is a lie, and you are a liar for saying it.
Prove it. Prove to me that solar and wind is cleaner, safer, and cheaper than nuclear.
I'm calling those that fail to mention nuclear in an article on the safety of wind and solar liars by omission.
Nuclear is among the dirtiest forms of power we have, and is literally the least economical form in common use.
Prove it. To make this claim someone had to study the matter, no? Show me the study.
That's my point, no one even seems to study this. More likely though is that someone did the study and it makes solar and wind look REALLY bad, so they keep it quiet. If nuclear is all that bad then there should be something showing it.
I saw a single nuclear power plant make the news recently for going over budget and behind schedule. That's one plant. How are the rest doing? Are they all that bad? There's dozens of nuclear power plants being built in the world right now. There's hundreds of nuclear power plants in operations right now, how are they doing?
That's my point we don't know nuclear is unsafe and expensive because no one talks about it. If they aren't talking about it then I must assume the news is bad for wind.
since you're going to run out of fissible material
There's enough uranium (not just U-235, U-238 is fuel too) and thorium to last millions or billions of years, certainly thousands of years. We are not going to run out. There's enough uranium dissolved in seawater alone to last a VERY long time. Anyone with access to the sea has an effectively unlimited supply of energy. The great thing about extracting uranium from the sea is that it makes room for more to dissolve from the seabed, let the water do the mining and transporting for you!
A quick Google search shows a lot of advancement in getting uranium from seawater in just the last year. This is already a viable source of uranium, if only there was a market for it.
Infowars has a radio station now?
No, Fox News.