I also believe that the body has a natural weight maintenance scheme where it can moderate how much calories it can burn based on how much is consumed. What exercise does though is convert unhealthy weight, in fat, into healthy weight, in muscle. Muscle being more dense than fat means getting thinner even if no weight is lost.
Having greater muscle mass also means the body is better able to moderate weight, since muscle burns more calories than fat. Yes, fat cells burn calories, they are live cells after all.
This statement though is bullshit...
To lower the target weight, the key is not to exercise more or eat less, it's to gradually increase sensitivity to leptin, by having a carefully tuned rotation of high fat and carbs aspects to the diet.
I'm pretty sure that eating less will lower your weight. Exercise will make you thinner, even if you don't lose weight. If you feel that you weigh too much the place to start is with calories consumed.
I have not had any weight problems until recently. I did two things to reduce my calories. First, I cut out my end of day beer. It took me a while to figure out why people enjoyed a beer at the end of the day but for some reason I started the habit. It's relaxing and dulls the aches from the day but it also has a lot of calories. I lost 20 pounds fairly quickly after dropping that habit. Second, I started to keep bottled water around the house. When thirsty I tended to grab whatever I had in a single serve bottle or can. This usually meant a fizzy drink. With bottled water on hand I can grab one of those instead.
Bottled water comes in handy when there are things contaminate the city water like floods or some idiot put a backhoe through a water main. This does not happen often but when it does and city water is deemed undrinkable then bottled water can get real hard to find. I keep a few bottles in the freezer for when I need to put ice in a cooler, when the ice melts I drink the water from the bottle. Also good for adding thermal mass to the refrigerator and freezer for when the power blinks.
So, you admit that people can and do drive without a license? Also, you admit they had a license, and still drove poorly? I mean you cannot revoke a license if they had none in the first place.
If we cannot keep people from driving without a license then what purpose do they serve? It's not like the presence of the license makes them drive safely. All we are doing is making life inconvenient for the safe drivers. If at some point they prove to no longer be able to drive safely they are "asked" to not drive any more by taking away their license. We don't need the licensee to ask people to drive safely, or to ask them to not drive if they are incapable of driving safely.
Drivers are only a problem if they fail to drive safely, and we don't need a piece of plastic in their pocket to enforce safe driving.
"In a country that is supposedly as great as ours, all education should be free."
Public education is free in the USA. It is also worthless.
Public schools in places like DC and Chicago give high school diplomas to those that cannot even read at an 8th grade level.
I'm sorry but the facts are facts. If you want an education then you have to pay for it.
To public schools students are just boxes on a conveyor belt. They get paid based on how many boxes reach the end. They don't care if the boxes are full of knowledge, full of misinformation, or just plain empty, they still get paid the same regardless.
Parents can complain but since they aren't paying the salaries the teachers are not accountable to them. In many cases the parents can't even "fire" the teachers by moving their children to another school because the government decided the only schools allowed are the public schools. Parents can't even home school because if you aren't sending your children to a "school" (as defined by the government) then you are obviously allowing your children to live in ignorance and therefore the children must be taken from you. For their own good of course.
"Remove the financial burden from a people, and see what inspiration could really accomplish."
You are correct. If freed from the tax burden of these failed schools then I can only imagine what we could accomplish.
"On MacOS you still throw drives in the bin to eject them."
Does that still work? I've been using Macintosh computers daily since I bought a PowerMac and I haven't even thought of that in years. Ever since two button mice and context menus became a thing I've been right-clicking (or control-clicking) on a drive and selecting "Eject".
I will say this about MacOS, the UI does remove some need for thought to do some things. I remember doing some cleanup on a Mac and I was just tossing files in the trash. Then I had to edit a text file and then, like I did with those files, I highlighted some text and tossed it in the trash. After I did that I stopped and realized what I did was kind of cool. I would not even thought of that had I not been in the mindset of tossing things in the trash to delete to begin with.
You are not alone. As much as people mock Apple for it's lack of ports or whatever I like their hardware and the lack of phoning home by the OS. When I need to run Windows stuff (which is becoming less often as time goes on) I just hit a key macro and flip to Windows. With the right VM software I effectively have three computers in one, MacOS, Linux, and Windows. It can really throw people for a loop by flipping between different operating systems with a keystroke to show how a web page would look on different operating systems.
The need for adapters for USB or Thunderbolt ports to whatever is a non-issue. I found a place that offers USB-A to RJ-45 serial cables for Cisco equipment and similar devices, I bought a couple. When I upgrade to a new Apple I'll just get a handful of USB-A to USB-C adapters for the few USB adapters I have. Thunderbolt is a bit different, it might be in my best interest to get new Thunderbolt 3 (or is it Thunderbolt-C?) devices than adapters to Thunderbolt 2. Time marches on and those things are a bit aged now.
I use Windows regularly because the university gives it to me. If I had to actually pay for it then I'd have to stop and think if I wanted to pay for it. I probably would buy it in the end but the idea that I'd have to think about it should concern Microsoft. They convinced the university to turn student and government funds into rent for Microsoft products but is that how someone makes a future for their business? Even though Microsoft is free I see a lot of students with Apple computers. Perhaps a large portion of them came to the same conclusion I did. It's stupid to buy Windows if the university gives it to you. Get an Apple, install Windows in a VM, and you have both. When graduation comes around then decide if Windows is worth your own money.
Chromebooks are quite popular too. Microsoft is getting squeezed out of the market and their installed base "inertia" is not going to save them like in the past. Computers used to be these things that sat on a desk, cost a lot of money, and didn't talk well with others unless bought from the same place. Now they are really cheap, really small, and if they don't play well with others then they sit in a corner where people can forget they even exist.
Every time I hear people speak of a carbon free future they will mention wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal but add the caveat of something like "with a little bit of nuclear" as if to try to please the entirety of the crowd.
Musk is doing the same in his talks, he'll say that solar would work to meet our energy needs. Of course he'd say that, he's a salesman trying to sell his products. I ask, how much would it cost? Not just in dollars but in lives.
I've had people dispute the numbers on nuclear power safety by claiming those numbers did not include large scale accidents like Chernobyl. As far as I can tell the numbers not only include Chernobyl but also expected reduced lifespan from the survivors. Chernobyl is also largely irrelevant, no one builds nuclear power like that any more and no one would be foolish enough to do so in the future.
People then tend to dispute the solar death numbers by claiming that trip and fall deaths "don't count" for some reason. These are still people dead from the construction and maintenance of solar power, even if it's because people failed to follow the safety rules and paid with their lives for it. By this metric we could say Chernobyl deaths "don't count" because they failed to adhere to proper safety protocols and many died as a result. Dead is dead, and if we are honest about the deaths then nuclear is much safer than even solar.
Nuclear power has nearly half the carbon output per energy produced than solar photovoltaic power. Concentrated solar thermal power has a lower carbon footprint than nuclear but that is not what Musk is selling, likely because those cannot be put on the roof of your house and because at current estimates it would cost double what PV does.
I look at the math and I found that Musk has it backwards. The future isn't solar "with a little bit of nuclear", it's nuclear with a little bit of solar.
Maybe we should think of this fictional character as the 23rd century counterpart to a naval officer (Scotty had officer rank, we wasn't a Chief Warrant Officer or such rank) in charge of Engineering on a nuclear aircraft carrier? Who probably has at least an undergrad degree in Nuclear Engineering?
Sure, Commander Scott likely did have training, in this fictional world, that would equate to an engineering degree that one would expect someone from a person leading the team managing the propulsion systems on a modern day real world aircraft carrier. His position was chief of engineering, or something similar, because he was in charge of the engines. The people under his command should be accurately considered "engineers" because they are members of the engineering department, and maintained the engines.
Another definition of "engineer" is "crafty schemer", which fits Commander Scott, and his team, as well.
As to getting battered by a shovel, didn't locomotives lose their shovels decades ago when they switched from coal-fired steam to oil-fired Diesel?
I was thinking more of a shovel for corn or soybeans, because that's what I see on trains a lot around here, or for sand and snow, because it snows around here and sand is used to deal with it. I thought that might seem an odd statement to some after I posted it, but whatever. If shovel seems odd then insert some other long handled tool you might think a train engineer might have in reach.
I understood "engineer" on the Enterprise to be equivalent to the engineer on a locomotive, as in people concerned with the propulsion of a vehicle. Calling them technicians would not be inaccurate either, they are people well trained and skilled in all kinds of technology. Saying that they are not "real engineers" is in my mind simply not understanding that the word has two common meanings for occupations.
Telling a person that operates a train for a living is not a "real engineer" to his/her face could run the risk of getting a shovel to the side of the head.
Assume I agree with you, how does the absence of a license prevent people from driving? You can say it's a privilege, and to exercise it one must submit themselves to a written test, test of eyesight, having their photo taken, and so forth. How is this enforced?
Due to a mix-up while I was in the Army my license to drive was revoked but I didn't know about it. I drove for four or five years not knowing I didn't have the "privilege" to drive. I found out only after I went to have my license renewed. To get my new license they made me take a "driving test", which involved taking a lady in uniform for a drive around the block and managing to not hit another car in the process. The license to drive is a joke. If that's what people are tested on to get the "privilege" of driving then just get rid of the license, it tests nothing.
By most estimates there are millions of people driving without a license in the USA today. Seems to me that they are likely some of the safest drivers out there because they don't want to get caught. The truth is that every day is a "driving test". If you pass then you retain the "privilege" of being able to continue driving. If you fail, then you are punished for your failure.
Some may ask, how would we deal with bad drivers if they don't have an ID? I ask in return, how do we deal with those millions of drivers that don't have a license now? Whatever the answer is, do that.
As long as we're going to have a legal drinking age, there's going to need to be some form of identification involved.
Then do away with the drinking age.
The examples you gave are examples of the government creating a problem where an ID card is the solution. The government can still get their taxes, it just doesn't have to be from income and such. The government can tax the property, that's not going anywhere. Eliminate the other taxes and adjust the property taxes accordingly. Then you can have the tax collectors go around and collect from those occupying the property, like they did way back when before photographic identifier cards existed. Of course this can be automated in any of a number of ways, an actual person doesn't need to go around collecting coins, but the effect is much the same.
Not only does this simplify the tax code it gets the government out of my business and your business. They don't need to require banks to keep government ID cards on file, let the banks figure it out on their own. Like how one bank I have an account with, they take your picture and keep it in their database. I can walk up to the teller and give my name, and it's searched on their computer, on the screen will come up my account, and photo. They can ask me certain questions to verify my identity such as asking my address, or a password, or something. Everything is written down, there are cameras recording everything, and signatures on paper. If there is a dispute somewhere then there is ample evidence to go back to and no government ID required.
This not only applies to banking but any business in which an account or membership is kept, from a bookstore, to a golf course, to a barbershop. A barbershop isn't going to keep as meticulous records as a bank but no matter how it is measured up we should not need a government ID to do business.
I think having to show ID to buy alcohol is stupid. It may have been a while ago but I remember high school and college. It was not difficult to get alcohol or tobacco then, especially when it was your buddy working behind the counter.
Maybe the government should not concern itself over some teenagers getting drunk in a cornfield. I'd think making sure bridges don't fall into rivers as people are driving over them should be of a much greater concern.
You have the option not to enter if you do not wish to be searched.
Do you?
If you get a driver license you are required to sign a statement that you waive the right to deny a search for alcohol. If there is a state that does not have a similar waiver then I'd be surprised. Do you say that if you do not wish to be searched then don't drive? I've often wondered, what would happen if a person was driving without a license and refused a search for alcohol? They signed no waiver. Seems to me the reasonable thing to do is drive without a license.
In most states shops that sell alcohol, firearms, fireworks, prescription medications, tobacco products, and perhaps other things that slip my mind, are required to have cameras on site to record who comes and goes. Can you name a shop for vital items like food and clothing that don't also sell these controlled items? Every shop has cameras, with recordings available to law enforcement. How can a person avoid these?
DHS has been setting up checkpoints on highways, train stations, and so much more, to search travelers. So you don't like the DHS searching you at the airport, so you take the train, only to discover the DHS is searching people there too. So just don't travel anywhere?
I believe we are due for a surveillance revolt. Soon people will rip the license plates of their cars, burn their licenses to drive, and just watch as law enforcement tries to stop them all. It won't take many people to get the point across.
If you have a passport issued in the last decade or so, your face is ALREADY in "the system".
If this is true then the government should not care if I travel without my "papers", but this seems to concern them greatly. I should be able to tell them my face is my passport.
You think that perhaps it is time to do away with the drivers license? At least for non-commercial drivers.
The drivers license is mission creep at its worst. Had it not been for the creation of the drivers license we'd likely not have so many other interactions, public and private, needing the showing of ID. Buying alcohol would not likely require the showing of ID today if so many adults did not already have an existing ID that met that requirement. Can you imagine the outrage if everyone had to go to some state office to have their picture taken to buy a beer? I imagine a large portion of the population don't even think much of the nonsense to show a driver license to get into a bar or buy a six pack at the grocery store. I thought we wanted people that drank alcohol to not drive?
Now we have "motor voter" laws where people can register to vote at the DMV. Can I go to the county auditor's office to get my license to drive? If it goes one way then why not the other? Then there is "Real ID" which wanted to turn the driver license into a passport. There are laws to indicate organ donation preferences on a driver license. People go to the DMV to get a non-driver identification card. So, you have no intention to drive, or are unfit to drive, but you must go to the DMV to get a card that let's you vote, indicates organ donor preferences, allows you to travel as a passenger on a bus, train, or plane, allows to to buy alcohol and tobacco, and basically everything but allow you to drive. At the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Yes, I have a problem with the DMV taking my picture. I have a problem largely because the license to drive is no longer a license to drive. If it were then the only person I'd be required to show it to are law enforcement investigating a traffic violation. I should get an odd look for showing my driver license to a bank teller when making a withdrawal. As an experiment I once gave a different form of ID to a teller, a government issued and perfectly valid form of ID by the way, and I was asked if I had a driver license to show.
Once after I had moved I went to buy a rifle for some hunting. My license did not show my current address so I brought ample, and I mean AMPLE, forms of identification to meet ATF requirements to buy the rifle. The store refused to do the paperwork for the transfer until I had a current ID from the DMV. (Having to show who you are at all to buy a rifle is another rant.)
The issue is when the database gets hacked and misused.
We are long passed that now. You can argue on if it's been "hacked" if it's being used for things like ID to vote, or buy a beer, but I mentioned nothing about how people have abused the driver license system for fraudulent means. DMV databases get "hacked" all the time, through corruption, mismanagement, and actual computerized copying and manipulation of databases.
I do not see people jumping up and getting pissed over that.
If you think the technological hurdles are what are holding up such a plan, you are not sufficiently familiar with the issue to provide useful input.
I'm pretty sure that what is holding it up is that it is impractical.
The most productive algae systems require CO2 pumped into them. This is usually sourced from CO2 rich gases like that from coal fired industry. If we aren't burning coal more, because it got rare and expensive, then where is this CO2 coming from? If we are still burning coal then there are more efficient means available to us to convert coal to liquid fuels than algae.
Separating the CO2 from the air or taking it out of solution from water takes energy. Where is this energy coming from? If you use solar power then the solar collectors for the CO2 "mining" increases the area needed considerably. If you are using nuclear power, or any other source of electricity really, to "mine" the CO2 then why bother with the algae process? We already have proven technology to turn electricity into liquid fuels and they don't require large solar collectors.
Lacking the concentration of CO2 in the process means efficiency drops, areas required increases substantially, which means costs go up as well.
The limitation on solar power available per area is already a considerable hurdle. The conversion efficiency of algae to turn that solar energy into something we can use as fuel is another large hurdle. We cannot fix these with technology, except by leaving out the solar and algae parts.
Go read what Dr. MacKay wrote on the topic on his website, he lays out the case against algae well.
Honestly, it surprises me that a reversible heat pump would be that much more expensive or massive than a standard AC unit
The problem with using a heat pump in a car is that efficiency of the heat pump drops quickly with temperature. Also, there is a problem of the working fluid freezing. Perhaps the issue of the freezing of the fluid has been, or could be. solved with different chemistry but a heat engine is a heat engine and the laws of physics still apply.
I have an air sink heat pump in my house, much like what would be used in an automobile. A house can use a ground sink heat pump but an automobile cannot, for reasons that should be obvious. At moderate temperatures (about 50F or 30C) my heat pump is rated for about 30k BTU/hr (or 9 kW) which is sufficient to keep the house at a comfortable temperature. When temperatures get near freezing the efficiency falls to the point that it's producing only 2/3rds the power, while at the same time heat losses from the house to the air increase. When temperatures get much lower than that (say about 10F or -10C) the power output of the heat pump is equivalent to using resistor heat. Any lower than that and the heat pump is pumping heat out of the cabin, not into it.
Making the heat pump larger does not help since at sub-zero temperatures a heat pump simply cannot pump heat into the cabin, they just don't work that way. Perhaps with more exotic materials we could make a heat pump that works at these temperatures but then you run into issues of cost and safety.
you still have the potential to draw the equivalent heat of a small portable space heater off of your powertrain
No, you don't. The batteries need to be protected from being frozen. Not normally an issue for a modern battery while holding a charge but if you hook a heat pump to this and start drawing off heat in sub-zero temperatures and you risk damaging a very expensive piece of equipment, and the means to get you home in sub-zero temperatures.
I understand how this might confuse people as I had the same misunderstanding of heat pumps myself. Getting a heat pump for my house gave me a real world experience of their limitations. Also, in case you are wondering, I heat my house with a natural gas furnace when outdoor temperatures get too low. My system lets me set the temperature for when it switches from heat pump to furnace, I just forget where I set it.
Once you have cheap, plentiful, reliable, and exceedingly safe nuclear power then why bother with wind or solar? Is it to be "green"? Nuclear power has the lowest carbon output of any energy source we have, with a possible exception to hydroelectric, and damming rivers has it's own environmental issues.
You want to claim nuclear power is not plentiful? Look it up. You want to claim nuclear power is not reliable? Look it up. You want to claim nuclear power is not safe? Look it up. You want to claim nuclear power is not cheap? This we might have an argument but only because of politics, not physics or economics. Compared to nuclear power wind and solar take more land, concrete, steel, or any resource you can think of, and they call cost money. Remove the political barriers and nuclear gets real cheap.
The only reason we are investing in wind and solar is because of politics and the subsidies that follow, remove the politics and they get expensive.
Algae fuel is experimental. People have done hydrocarbon synthesis for a very long time. The only switch on this process is using nuclear power to drive the process. We've been doing nuclear power for a long time too, but there's a lot we can gain yet on that.
So, sure, go do that algae experiment and see how that works out. I have an idea on how well that would work out because Dr. MacKay did the math on that too.
The best you can get from solar power is about 1000 W/m^2, that's a top limit. The processes we have to convert that sun into useful energy are incredibly inefficient. And, again, there is a top limit based on the area and if we can only extract 10%, 20%, or 30% of that then that is a lot of area needed. Nuclear power today gets ten times the power by area, and we've only started on that. 1000W with maybe 1500W on the top end for solar compared to 1000w on the bottom end for nuclear and any form of solar, including algae, cannot compete.
I used to think algae was a great idea too, but then I saw the math.
While it is true that running a car off of bio-fuels is potentially low carbon what it is not is sustainable. We simply do not have enough land to grow both our food and our fuel.
I think one conclusion is clear: biofuels can't add up - at least, not in countries like Britain, and not as a replacement for all transport fuels. Even leaving aside biofuels' main defects - that their production competes with food, and that the additional inputs required for farming and processing often cancel out most of the delivered energy (figure 6.14) - biofuels made from plants, in a European country like Britain, can deliver so little power, I think they are scarcely worth talking about.
What does seem viable is the seawater to jet fuel system that the US Navy is working on. By using nuclear power and some pretty basic chemistry we can get zero carbon fuel.
Give me all the bullshit you like about nuclear waste scaremongering but here's the deal, nuclear power works now. This seawater to fuel technology works now. This does not require any new technology and 90% of the infrastructure to make this replace fossil fuels already exists by virtue of it being a hydrocarbon, just like the fossil fuels.
We could be zero carbon in just a few decades if we went on this track, and 99.9% of the population would not even know it's happening. We'd need to issue nuclear power licenses at a rate of two per month in the USA to do it. That might sound like a lot until you compare it to how many cornfields, solar panels, and windmills it would take for the same energy.
I believe you are attributing brilliance where there was ignorance. It seems as though no one at Amazon sat down to compute the costs that Prime memberships would incur if people in remote communities ordered bulky items but not the less bulky items too.
They can take some losses on bulky items, like truck tires, so long as the people in these communities order an amount of less bulky items, like diapers, in ratios equivalent to what less remote communities would.
If you are sending a delivery to some distant location assuring the people on the other end that they get what they ordered in 5 days then it does not matter much if it's a semi-truck or pickup truck. There are a lot of costs that are the same regardless of how big it is. This is true only to a point, as Amazon found out. They computed pricing based on a national average, but this is not an average community. They were ordering bulky items in a vastly differing proportion, which took their numbers and binned them.
People took advantage of Amazon's mistake, and were apparently having fun with it some. Then someone at Amazon stopped the practice. Amazon didn't stop the free shipping after this. They stopped shipping most anything. It would be monopolistic practices if they raised prices. They "went out of business" instead. Not totally out of business, just in that area.
They didn't secure themselves a monopoly. I don't know what you'd call this.
If China wants to clean up the air with electric vehicles then they need to stop using coal to charge them. Solar and wind are nice but they are still expensive. Hydro works if you don't mind displacing potentially millions of people and flooding huge tracts of land. Oh, then there's the thousands dead if the dam fails.
China has plans to double their nuclear power output in the next five years, double it again in another five years, and no plans to slow down any time soon.
Sure, they are investing in wind and solar too but this is dwarfed by their nuclear energy efforts.
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I also believe that the body has a natural weight maintenance scheme where it can moderate how much calories it can burn based on how much is consumed. What exercise does though is convert unhealthy weight, in fat, into healthy weight, in muscle. Muscle being more dense than fat means getting thinner even if no weight is lost.
Having greater muscle mass also means the body is better able to moderate weight, since muscle burns more calories than fat. Yes, fat cells burn calories, they are live cells after all.
This statement though is bullshit...
To lower the target weight, the key is not to exercise more or eat less, it's to gradually increase sensitivity to leptin, by having a carefully tuned rotation of high fat and carbs aspects to the diet.
I'm pretty sure that eating less will lower your weight. Exercise will make you thinner, even if you don't lose weight. If you feel that you weigh too much the place to start is with calories consumed.
You assume such people showered in the first place.
It's bawls?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I have not had any weight problems until recently. I did two things to reduce my calories. First, I cut out my end of day beer. It took me a while to figure out why people enjoyed a beer at the end of the day but for some reason I started the habit. It's relaxing and dulls the aches from the day but it also has a lot of calories. I lost 20 pounds fairly quickly after dropping that habit. Second, I started to keep bottled water around the house. When thirsty I tended to grab whatever I had in a single serve bottle or can. This usually meant a fizzy drink. With bottled water on hand I can grab one of those instead.
Bottled water comes in handy when there are things contaminate the city water like floods or some idiot put a backhoe through a water main. This does not happen often but when it does and city water is deemed undrinkable then bottled water can get real hard to find. I keep a few bottles in the freezer for when I need to put ice in a cooler, when the ice melts I drink the water from the bottle. Also good for adding thermal mass to the refrigerator and freezer for when the power blinks.
So, you admit that people can and do drive without a license? Also, you admit they had a license, and still drove poorly? I mean you cannot revoke a license if they had none in the first place.
If we cannot keep people from driving without a license then what purpose do they serve? It's not like the presence of the license makes them drive safely. All we are doing is making life inconvenient for the safe drivers. If at some point they prove to no longer be able to drive safely they are "asked" to not drive any more by taking away their license. We don't need the licensee to ask people to drive safely, or to ask them to not drive if they are incapable of driving safely.
Drivers are only a problem if they fail to drive safely, and we don't need a piece of plastic in their pocket to enforce safe driving.
"In a country that is supposedly as great as ours, all education should be free."
Public education is free in the USA. It is also worthless.
Public schools in places like DC and Chicago give high school diplomas to those that cannot even read at an 8th grade level.
I'm sorry but the facts are facts. If you want an education then you have to pay for it.
To public schools students are just boxes on a conveyor belt. They get paid based on how many boxes reach the end. They don't care if the boxes are full of knowledge, full of misinformation, or just plain empty, they still get paid the same regardless.
Parents can complain but since they aren't paying the salaries the teachers are not accountable to them. In many cases the parents can't even "fire" the teachers by moving their children to another school because the government decided the only schools allowed are the public schools. Parents can't even home school because if you aren't sending your children to a "school" (as defined by the government) then you are obviously allowing your children to live in ignorance and therefore the children must be taken from you. For their own good of course.
"Remove the financial burden from a people, and see what inspiration could really accomplish."
You are correct. If freed from the tax burden of these failed schools then I can only imagine what we could accomplish.
"On MacOS you still throw drives in the bin to eject them."
Does that still work? I've been using Macintosh computers daily since I bought a PowerMac and I haven't even thought of that in years. Ever since two button mice and context menus became a thing I've been right-clicking (or control-clicking) on a drive and selecting "Eject".
I will say this about MacOS, the UI does remove some need for thought to do some things. I remember doing some cleanup on a Mac and I was just tossing files in the trash. Then I had to edit a text file and then, like I did with those files, I highlighted some text and tossed it in the trash. After I did that I stopped and realized what I did was kind of cool. I would not even thought of that had I not been in the mindset of tossing things in the trash to delete to begin with.
You are not alone. As much as people mock Apple for it's lack of ports or whatever I like their hardware and the lack of phoning home by the OS. When I need to run Windows stuff (which is becoming less often as time goes on) I just hit a key macro and flip to Windows. With the right VM software I effectively have three computers in one, MacOS, Linux, and Windows. It can really throw people for a loop by flipping between different operating systems with a keystroke to show how a web page would look on different operating systems.
The need for adapters for USB or Thunderbolt ports to whatever is a non-issue. I found a place that offers USB-A to RJ-45 serial cables for Cisco equipment and similar devices, I bought a couple. When I upgrade to a new Apple I'll just get a handful of USB-A to USB-C adapters for the few USB adapters I have. Thunderbolt is a bit different, it might be in my best interest to get new Thunderbolt 3 (or is it Thunderbolt-C?) devices than adapters to Thunderbolt 2. Time marches on and those things are a bit aged now.
I use Windows regularly because the university gives it to me. If I had to actually pay for it then I'd have to stop and think if I wanted to pay for it. I probably would buy it in the end but the idea that I'd have to think about it should concern Microsoft. They convinced the university to turn student and government funds into rent for Microsoft products but is that how someone makes a future for their business? Even though Microsoft is free I see a lot of students with Apple computers. Perhaps a large portion of them came to the same conclusion I did. It's stupid to buy Windows if the university gives it to you. Get an Apple, install Windows in a VM, and you have both. When graduation comes around then decide if Windows is worth your own money.
Chromebooks are quite popular too. Microsoft is getting squeezed out of the market and their installed base "inertia" is not going to save them like in the past. Computers used to be these things that sat on a desk, cost a lot of money, and didn't talk well with others unless bought from the same place. Now they are really cheap, really small, and if they don't play well with others then they sit in a corner where people can forget they even exist.
Every time I hear people speak of a carbon free future they will mention wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal but add the caveat of something like "with a little bit of nuclear" as if to try to please the entirety of the crowd.
Musk is doing the same in his talks, he'll say that solar would work to meet our energy needs. Of course he'd say that, he's a salesman trying to sell his products. I ask, how much would it cost? Not just in dollars but in lives.
According to this study the safest energy source we have is nuclear power.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
According to the EIA nuclear is very low cost in dollars too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I've had people dispute the numbers on nuclear power safety by claiming those numbers did not include large scale accidents like Chernobyl. As far as I can tell the numbers not only include Chernobyl but also expected reduced lifespan from the survivors. Chernobyl is also largely irrelevant, no one builds nuclear power like that any more and no one would be foolish enough to do so in the future.
People then tend to dispute the solar death numbers by claiming that trip and fall deaths "don't count" for some reason. These are still people dead from the construction and maintenance of solar power, even if it's because people failed to follow the safety rules and paid with their lives for it. By this metric we could say Chernobyl deaths "don't count" because they failed to adhere to proper safety protocols and many died as a result. Dead is dead, and if we are honest about the deaths then nuclear is much safer than even solar.
Then there is the carbon footprint, the whole reason we are having this discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nuclear power has nearly half the carbon output per energy produced than solar photovoltaic power. Concentrated solar thermal power has a lower carbon footprint than nuclear but that is not what Musk is selling, likely because those cannot be put on the roof of your house and because at current estimates it would cost double what PV does.
I look at the math and I found that Musk has it backwards. The future isn't solar "with a little bit of nuclear", it's nuclear with a little bit of solar.
Maybe we should think of this fictional character as the 23rd century counterpart to a naval officer (Scotty had officer rank, we wasn't a Chief Warrant Officer or such rank) in charge of Engineering on a nuclear aircraft carrier? Who probably has at least an undergrad degree in Nuclear Engineering?
Sure, Commander Scott likely did have training, in this fictional world, that would equate to an engineering degree that one would expect someone from a person leading the team managing the propulsion systems on a modern day real world aircraft carrier. His position was chief of engineering, or something similar, because he was in charge of the engines. The people under his command should be accurately considered "engineers" because they are members of the engineering department, and maintained the engines.
Another definition of "engineer" is "crafty schemer", which fits Commander Scott, and his team, as well.
As to getting battered by a shovel, didn't locomotives lose their shovels decades ago when they switched from coal-fired steam to oil-fired Diesel?
I was thinking more of a shovel for corn or soybeans, because that's what I see on trains a lot around here, or for sand and snow, because it snows around here and sand is used to deal with it. I thought that might seem an odd statement to some after I posted it, but whatever. If shovel seems odd then insert some other long handled tool you might think a train engineer might have in reach.
Does it look something like this?
https://xkcd.com/1856/
Much like how so many things in science are "just a theory"? The prime minister needs an introductory course in information theory.
I understood "engineer" on the Enterprise to be equivalent to the engineer on a locomotive, as in people concerned with the propulsion of a vehicle. Calling them technicians would not be inaccurate either, they are people well trained and skilled in all kinds of technology. Saying that they are not "real engineers" is in my mind simply not understanding that the word has two common meanings for occupations.
Telling a person that operates a train for a living is not a "real engineer" to his/her face could run the risk of getting a shovel to the side of the head.
What is with politicians today making nonsensical statements like this?
This is far from a recent development.
No. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
Assume I agree with you, how does the absence of a license prevent people from driving? You can say it's a privilege, and to exercise it one must submit themselves to a written test, test of eyesight, having their photo taken, and so forth. How is this enforced?
Due to a mix-up while I was in the Army my license to drive was revoked but I didn't know about it. I drove for four or five years not knowing I didn't have the "privilege" to drive. I found out only after I went to have my license renewed. To get my new license they made me take a "driving test", which involved taking a lady in uniform for a drive around the block and managing to not hit another car in the process. The license to drive is a joke. If that's what people are tested on to get the "privilege" of driving then just get rid of the license, it tests nothing.
By most estimates there are millions of people driving without a license in the USA today. Seems to me that they are likely some of the safest drivers out there because they don't want to get caught. The truth is that every day is a "driving test". If you pass then you retain the "privilege" of being able to continue driving. If you fail, then you are punished for your failure.
Some may ask, how would we deal with bad drivers if they don't have an ID? I ask in return, how do we deal with those millions of drivers that don't have a license now? Whatever the answer is, do that.
As long as we're going to have a legal drinking age, there's going to need to be some form of identification involved.
Then do away with the drinking age.
The examples you gave are examples of the government creating a problem where an ID card is the solution. The government can still get their taxes, it just doesn't have to be from income and such. The government can tax the property, that's not going anywhere. Eliminate the other taxes and adjust the property taxes accordingly. Then you can have the tax collectors go around and collect from those occupying the property, like they did way back when before photographic identifier cards existed. Of course this can be automated in any of a number of ways, an actual person doesn't need to go around collecting coins, but the effect is much the same.
Not only does this simplify the tax code it gets the government out of my business and your business. They don't need to require banks to keep government ID cards on file, let the banks figure it out on their own. Like how one bank I have an account with, they take your picture and keep it in their database. I can walk up to the teller and give my name, and it's searched on their computer, on the screen will come up my account, and photo. They can ask me certain questions to verify my identity such as asking my address, or a password, or something. Everything is written down, there are cameras recording everything, and signatures on paper. If there is a dispute somewhere then there is ample evidence to go back to and no government ID required.
This not only applies to banking but any business in which an account or membership is kept, from a bookstore, to a golf course, to a barbershop. A barbershop isn't going to keep as meticulous records as a bank but no matter how it is measured up we should not need a government ID to do business.
I think having to show ID to buy alcohol is stupid. It may have been a while ago but I remember high school and college. It was not difficult to get alcohol or tobacco then, especially when it was your buddy working behind the counter.
Maybe the government should not concern itself over some teenagers getting drunk in a cornfield. I'd think making sure bridges don't fall into rivers as people are driving over them should be of a much greater concern.
You have the option not to enter if you do not wish to be searched.
Do you?
If you get a driver license you are required to sign a statement that you waive the right to deny a search for alcohol. If there is a state that does not have a similar waiver then I'd be surprised. Do you say that if you do not wish to be searched then don't drive? I've often wondered, what would happen if a person was driving without a license and refused a search for alcohol? They signed no waiver. Seems to me the reasonable thing to do is drive without a license.
In most states shops that sell alcohol, firearms, fireworks, prescription medications, tobacco products, and perhaps other things that slip my mind, are required to have cameras on site to record who comes and goes. Can you name a shop for vital items like food and clothing that don't also sell these controlled items? Every shop has cameras, with recordings available to law enforcement. How can a person avoid these?
DHS has been setting up checkpoints on highways, train stations, and so much more, to search travelers. So you don't like the DHS searching you at the airport, so you take the train, only to discover the DHS is searching people there too. So just don't travel anywhere?
I believe we are due for a surveillance revolt. Soon people will rip the license plates of their cars, burn their licenses to drive, and just watch as law enforcement tries to stop them all. It won't take many people to get the point across.
If you have a passport issued in the last decade or so, your face is ALREADY in "the system".
If this is true then the government should not care if I travel without my "papers", but this seems to concern them greatly. I should be able to tell them my face is my passport.
You think that perhaps it is time to do away with the drivers license? At least for non-commercial drivers.
The drivers license is mission creep at its worst. Had it not been for the creation of the drivers license we'd likely not have so many other interactions, public and private, needing the showing of ID. Buying alcohol would not likely require the showing of ID today if so many adults did not already have an existing ID that met that requirement. Can you imagine the outrage if everyone had to go to some state office to have their picture taken to buy a beer? I imagine a large portion of the population don't even think much of the nonsense to show a driver license to get into a bar or buy a six pack at the grocery store. I thought we wanted people that drank alcohol to not drive?
Now we have "motor voter" laws where people can register to vote at the DMV. Can I go to the county auditor's office to get my license to drive? If it goes one way then why not the other? Then there is "Real ID" which wanted to turn the driver license into a passport. There are laws to indicate organ donation preferences on a driver license. People go to the DMV to get a non-driver identification card. So, you have no intention to drive, or are unfit to drive, but you must go to the DMV to get a card that let's you vote, indicates organ donor preferences, allows you to travel as a passenger on a bus, train, or plane, allows to to buy alcohol and tobacco, and basically everything but allow you to drive. At the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Yes, I have a problem with the DMV taking my picture. I have a problem largely because the license to drive is no longer a license to drive. If it were then the only person I'd be required to show it to are law enforcement investigating a traffic violation. I should get an odd look for showing my driver license to a bank teller when making a withdrawal. As an experiment I once gave a different form of ID to a teller, a government issued and perfectly valid form of ID by the way, and I was asked if I had a driver license to show.
Once after I had moved I went to buy a rifle for some hunting. My license did not show my current address so I brought ample, and I mean AMPLE, forms of identification to meet ATF requirements to buy the rifle. The store refused to do the paperwork for the transfer until I had a current ID from the DMV. (Having to show who you are at all to buy a rifle is another rant.)
The issue is when the database gets hacked and misused.
We are long passed that now. You can argue on if it's been "hacked" if it's being used for things like ID to vote, or buy a beer, but I mentioned nothing about how people have abused the driver license system for fraudulent means. DMV databases get "hacked" all the time, through corruption, mismanagement, and actual computerized copying and manipulation of databases.
I do not see people jumping up and getting pissed over that.
You found one.
If you think the technological hurdles are what are holding up such a plan, you are not sufficiently familiar with the issue to provide useful input.
I'm pretty sure that what is holding it up is that it is impractical.
The most productive algae systems require CO2 pumped into them. This is usually sourced from CO2 rich gases like that from coal fired industry. If we aren't burning coal more, because it got rare and expensive, then where is this CO2 coming from? If we are still burning coal then there are more efficient means available to us to convert coal to liquid fuels than algae.
Separating the CO2 from the air or taking it out of solution from water takes energy. Where is this energy coming from? If you use solar power then the solar collectors for the CO2 "mining" increases the area needed considerably. If you are using nuclear power, or any other source of electricity really, to "mine" the CO2 then why bother with the algae process? We already have proven technology to turn electricity into liquid fuels and they don't require large solar collectors.
Lacking the concentration of CO2 in the process means efficiency drops, areas required increases substantially, which means costs go up as well.
The limitation on solar power available per area is already a considerable hurdle. The conversion efficiency of algae to turn that solar energy into something we can use as fuel is another large hurdle. We cannot fix these with technology, except by leaving out the solar and algae parts.
Go read what Dr. MacKay wrote on the topic on his website, he lays out the case against algae well.
Honestly, it surprises me that a reversible heat pump would be that much more expensive or massive than a standard AC unit
The problem with using a heat pump in a car is that efficiency of the heat pump drops quickly with temperature. Also, there is a problem of the working fluid freezing. Perhaps the issue of the freezing of the fluid has been, or could be. solved with different chemistry but a heat engine is a heat engine and the laws of physics still apply.
I have an air sink heat pump in my house, much like what would be used in an automobile. A house can use a ground sink heat pump but an automobile cannot, for reasons that should be obvious. At moderate temperatures (about 50F or 30C) my heat pump is rated for about 30k BTU/hr (or 9 kW) which is sufficient to keep the house at a comfortable temperature. When temperatures get near freezing the efficiency falls to the point that it's producing only 2/3rds the power, while at the same time heat losses from the house to the air increase. When temperatures get much lower than that (say about 10F or -10C) the power output of the heat pump is equivalent to using resistor heat. Any lower than that and the heat pump is pumping heat out of the cabin, not into it.
Making the heat pump larger does not help since at sub-zero temperatures a heat pump simply cannot pump heat into the cabin, they just don't work that way. Perhaps with more exotic materials we could make a heat pump that works at these temperatures but then you run into issues of cost and safety.
you still have the potential to draw the equivalent heat of a small portable space heater off of your powertrain
No, you don't. The batteries need to be protected from being frozen. Not normally an issue for a modern battery while holding a charge but if you hook a heat pump to this and start drawing off heat in sub-zero temperatures and you risk damaging a very expensive piece of equipment, and the means to get you home in sub-zero temperatures.
I understand how this might confuse people as I had the same misunderstanding of heat pumps myself. Getting a heat pump for my house gave me a real world experience of their limitations. Also, in case you are wondering, I heat my house with a natural gas furnace when outdoor temperatures get too low. My system lets me set the temperature for when it switches from heat pump to furnace, I just forget where I set it.
Once you have cheap, plentiful, reliable, and exceedingly safe nuclear power then why bother with wind or solar? Is it to be "green"? Nuclear power has the lowest carbon output of any energy source we have, with a possible exception to hydroelectric, and damming rivers has it's own environmental issues.
You want to claim nuclear power is not plentiful? Look it up.
You want to claim nuclear power is not reliable? Look it up.
You want to claim nuclear power is not safe? Look it up.
You want to claim nuclear power is not cheap? This we might have an argument but only because of politics, not physics or economics. Compared to nuclear power wind and solar take more land, concrete, steel, or any resource you can think of, and they call cost money. Remove the political barriers and nuclear gets real cheap.
The only reason we are investing in wind and solar is because of politics and the subsidies that follow, remove the politics and they get expensive.
Algae fuel is experimental. People have done hydrocarbon synthesis for a very long time. The only switch on this process is using nuclear power to drive the process. We've been doing nuclear power for a long time too, but there's a lot we can gain yet on that.
So, sure, go do that algae experiment and see how that works out. I have an idea on how well that would work out because Dr. MacKay did the math on that too.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c...
The best you can get from solar power is about 1000 W/m^2, that's a top limit. The processes we have to convert that sun into useful energy are incredibly inefficient. And, again, there is a top limit based on the area and if we can only extract 10%, 20%, or 30% of that then that is a lot of area needed. Nuclear power today gets ten times the power by area, and we've only started on that. 1000W with maybe 1500W on the top end for solar compared to 1000w on the bottom end for nuclear and any form of solar, including algae, cannot compete.
I used to think algae was a great idea too, but then I saw the math.
While it is true that running a car off of bio-fuels is potentially low carbon what it is not is sustainable. We simply do not have enough land to grow both our food and our fuel.
https://www.withouthotair.com/...
I think one conclusion is clear: biofuels can't add up - at least, not in
countries like Britain, and not as a replacement for all transport fuels. Even
leaving aside biofuels' main defects - that their production competes with
food, and that the additional inputs required for farming and processing
often cancel out most of the delivered energy (figure 6.14) - biofuels made
from plants, in a European country like Britain, can deliver so little power,
I think they are scarcely worth talking about.
What does seem viable is the seawater to jet fuel system that the US Navy is working on. By using nuclear power and some pretty basic chemistry we can get zero carbon fuel.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Give me all the bullshit you like about nuclear waste scaremongering but here's the deal, nuclear power works now. This seawater to fuel technology works now. This does not require any new technology and 90% of the infrastructure to make this replace fossil fuels already exists by virtue of it being a hydrocarbon, just like the fossil fuels.
We could be zero carbon in just a few decades if we went on this track, and 99.9% of the population would not even know it's happening. We'd need to issue nuclear power licenses at a rate of two per month in the USA to do it. That might sound like a lot until you compare it to how many cornfields, solar panels, and windmills it would take for the same energy.
I believe you are attributing brilliance where there was ignorance. It seems as though no one at Amazon sat down to compute the costs that Prime memberships would incur if people in remote communities ordered bulky items but not the less bulky items too.
They can take some losses on bulky items, like truck tires, so long as the people in these communities order an amount of less bulky items, like diapers, in ratios equivalent to what less remote communities would.
If you are sending a delivery to some distant location assuring the people on the other end that they get what they ordered in 5 days then it does not matter much if it's a semi-truck or pickup truck. There are a lot of costs that are the same regardless of how big it is. This is true only to a point, as Amazon found out. They computed pricing based on a national average, but this is not an average community. They were ordering bulky items in a vastly differing proportion, which took their numbers and binned them.
People took advantage of Amazon's mistake, and were apparently having fun with it some. Then someone at Amazon stopped the practice. Amazon didn't stop the free shipping after this. They stopped shipping most anything. It would be monopolistic practices if they raised prices. They "went out of business" instead. Not totally out of business, just in that area.
They didn't secure themselves a monopoly. I don't know what you'd call this.
Or they could use nuclear power.
If China wants to clean up the air with electric vehicles then they need to stop using coal to charge them. Solar and wind are nice but they are still expensive. Hydro works if you don't mind displacing potentially millions of people and flooding huge tracts of land. Oh, then there's the thousands dead if the dam fails.
China has plans to double their nuclear power output in the next five years, double it again in another five years, and no plans to slow down any time soon.
Sure, they are investing in wind and solar too but this is dwarfed by their nuclear energy efforts.