'national security'... as far as I am concerned, if this is scaring some people in power, it's doing its job. It may not be press in the traditional sense, but it does appear to be something of a resurrection of that old check and balance.
Regardless of 'the way things are,' my take would be a compromise. By putting someone on call, you are restricting their movements quite a lot so there should be compensation. Maybe it's miniscule, like $2/hr. Failing that, being CALLED in should incur a higher cost for the employer. OT or doubletime regardless of whether a person has reached their 40 hours or not. I.e., not paying a person full rate for sitting around their house all day BUT paying a person enough to keep them working for you and at a rate and under conditions enough to keep the employer from abusing said employee.
... given that recent sequencing of the h.neanderthalensis' genome showed them to be predominantly redheads and blondes... and those same hair colors are only native to h.sapiens whose ancestry hails from the one region where the two species mappably coexisted? Yes, that makes no sense at all
Even with the sun's output/sunspots being at record lows, and even in spite of this past winter, we're still well above 1990's temps. Burning fossil fuels, clean or not, still consumes oxygen as it produces co2, and yet we clear-cut a football field of forest every second. The question is... is a drop in the bucket in terms of expense and manpower really too much to ask for when the odds that we're facing a very difficult future are as good as or better than the odds that everything is a-ok. I'd rather err on the side of caution and create a few jobs in the process.
Granted, it hurts to lose educated people from an economy that is in desperate need of new industry (as opposed to new services and new debts)... but... America isn't the whole of the world, and the world as a whole has real problems. Educating these people and then dispersing them to the wind like this... it may hurt right now, but what if they take seed in places of the world in greater need of educated people... places with runaway population growth, terrible environmental records, and similarly unsustainable practices?
Heck... beyond that, after a taste of democracy, who is to say all these people going back to their less tolerant homes won't also foment cultural reforms (not that our model is picture perfect right now, but...)
It's a notion, anyways
What the heck???????
If they're making so much money off these patents, what the heck are they charging students tuition for? Any student who's idea is taken by the university should be recompensed at the very least... with a full RETROACTIVE scholarship (i.e., including a refund of all expenses paid to date.) In the end the university will still probably end up making out like a bandit.
"Out floating in space."? Is 40,000-65,000 mph called "out floating" in your book?
yah... its all relative, mang... whole solar system is moving through the galaxy at sowhere between 220 and 250 kilometers per second... i.e., between 490,000mph and 560,000mph... and, while I don't know about you... but I can't even feel it happening!!
What... the 'roid will dramatically increase the oxygen content of the planet? (insectoid respiratory systems are terribly inefficient, hence drastically limiting their size)... ok, well that last bit kinda ruined the intended joke... except, I didn't think anyone would get it otherwise... *throws hands up in air in self frustration*... btw, did it hit yet?
Sorry; I just read the intro, and the first thing that clicked into my mind was a phenomenon known as [evolutionary] radiation.. where, a sudden opening in the environment causes species to diverge and experiment and evolve at rapid and experimental rates... this just FEELS the same... that given an industry that is far from 'fully grown', there's so much room for creativity, exploration, new paradigms of self-awareness, that it is having the same effect... a radiation of individuality given a wide expanse of possibilities.
not sure.5c is in our abilities just yet... we'd probably bankrupt the planet trying to pull it off for something even as small as a satellite. Maybe later =)
Well.. wait... this might be a good use of all the world's nukes... a sequential series of explosions should be able to slowly propel the thing (this was one of the 70s concepts for a interstellar within-our-lifetime designs). Better than pointing the things at each other, no?
indeed... see Mars... it's internal warmth died off quickly, being not only a small, but light-for-its-size, planet... Earth is waning now, but remained internally hot for billions of years longer... and even in spite of that, it once spent a fair period of time as an icecube before the cambrian explosion... just goes to show that location is important, but not enough.
that's a leap... the whole 'goldilocks' zone concept is fuzzy at best... an indicator, but not enough in itself; Take earth for example... we're NOT close enough to the sun to have liquid water by default. If the mantle cooled enough to end vulcanism, the atmosphere would grow thin, cold, and what water didn't freeze to the surface would seep down beneath the crust forever. Then take Europa... way way way too far from the sun for liquid water... and yet, due to internal stress, liquid water is not unlikely to be found there, under its crust of ice... the attributes of the body have as much if not more influence than the sun does (outside of being so close that the surface is thoroughly scorched, that is.)
The problem with this is that if this invention turns out to be 100% true, than it is a MAJOR problem for the oil companies who, it turns out, are the constituents that politicians care most about. They'll be all for silencing any kind of competition for their oil buds.
Those who listen to progressive/liberal discussion will have heard the two part speculation on this; A) that the demonstrated right wing spying on the democrats pre-911 may have dug up things they have been using to create such a pacified democratic majority and/or B) the democrats, obama included, think this bill is such an obvious and blatant violation of the constitution that its guaranteed to be struck down by the supreme court. The latter, to me, seems odd, though... they could just plain vote no and say so. It's maddening no matter what, though.
Well that was odd... I typed more than this, but all that came out was 'well...'
Anyhow, G. Washington himself warned us in the very beginning that political parties were a terrible idea and may ultimately undo the country... so far, he seems to be right.
I have no idea where you are getting your information...
these technologies are already IN USE... solar concentration included... the only solar technologies as of RIGHT NOW that need any kind of demo run are ThinFilm and CIGS... both are proven to work but need more mass-production capacity... but solar concentration and PV are decades old and quite effective... and now becoming immensely cost competitive, especially now that some excellent new improvements have dropped the cost of production AND increased the power produced dramatically, even as fossil fuel costs sky-rocket.
Well, that's what the article is about... they ARE up to their eyeballs... and then slapped down a moratorium so they can 'explore' the environmental impact... something they only do grudgingly when its their fossil fuel friends asking for permits.
Nuclear creates waste during its powering process, solar and wind only create waste during initial construction and panel replacement. Nuclear is not green at all, in fact, the pollution from it is so concentrated it makes the locations where spent rods are disposed of uninhabitable.
Not to mention, they require so much gorram fresh water, that each plant is a major burden in terms of water consumption (and then decontamination) on surrounding civilization. There are 'ideas' out there for alternatives, such as pebble plants... but I am not entirely familiar with how viable they are...
Plus, there's only enough KNOWN nuclear fuel left in the earth for a few more decades at today's rate of consumption...
The sun, and wind, and tides, and geothermal sources... not going anywhere in the next 500 million years or so (... geothermal will be winding down, though, and virtually dead after 1000 million years.)
A study was done by a (admittedly pro-green) group that showed what the net effect would be of investing 21.6$ billion dollars into solar power given today's available technology.
Simply put, 21.6 B$ would replace 22 coal plants, reduce emissions by 86 billion tons, save energy buys 8.something billion $ a year, create about 216,000 jobs, etc... the same amount of money given into 'more efficient' coal plants would net replacing 6 coal plants, save 21 billion tons of co2, increase the cost to the power buyer, and create only about as many jobs as it destroyed... and, finally, given to nuclear expansion, the same amount of money would replace 7 coal plants, reduce emissions my 27 billion tons of co2, break even in cost to the consumer and in jobs produced vs. lost.
It also helps that when a solar power plant breaks down... people just get brown outs... but when a coal plant breaks down, you get brown outs, injuries, fires, explosions possibly... and when a nuclear plant breaks down, you could potentially be talking about making the landscape uninhabitable for 20+ years and costing billions to clean up.
It's certainly true that there won't be enough solar and wind plants built overnight to solve all our problems by tomorrow... but the tech is here right now to start construction... and competition is stiff... exactly why fossil fuel selling corps lobby so damn hard to prevent it all.
How exactly do you build a power plant that hasn't been invented yet ?
That's a clever trick, making an inaccurate declaration as prescription to query... photovoltaics have been around for decades, their cost of production has dropped while the amount of 'tricity they produce per square unit has increased... they suffer from difficulty of silicon supply, though
But solar concentration technologies which have also existed for a while now don't suffer as much from lack of building material supply... they do generate heat, though, but only in a small area, and energy storage technologies and cooling technologies have blossomed lately in support of this kind of 'centralized' power production unit.
Meanwhile, CIGS and thin-film have arisen in the last couple-few years... and while their efficiency-of-deliver per square unit isn't quite as good yet as silicon, they will surpass it and not suffer either from the lack-of-resources problem, and can both be so small and so cheap that the only barrier between either and being so throughly ubiquitous in the construction of home, offices, and plants is having more in the way of mass production... which nanosolar recently demonstrated is not only possible, but so much so that it brought the cost of energy product, post manufacture AND post purchase, to less than that of burning coal.
Which of these things do you think doesn't exist, exactly? These are all 'today' technologies that offer no particular difficulty in implementation or production, and do not include stuff on the drawing board or being worked on in the labs.
I mean, hell... right now, a plant is being building in Australia that will produce 270 gigawatt hours per year, and that on PV, which is fast becoming the codgery step-grand-uncle of the future of solar power. Is that so insubstantial that you can justify ignoring it? Compare that to the following:
A 500 megawatt coal plant produces 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power a city of about 140,000 people. It burns 1,430,000 tons of coal, uses 2.2 billion gallons of water and 146,000 tons of limestone. -- http://www.ucsusa.org/
All that during operation (not construction of) the plant... would be interesting to see the construction costs/materials/hazards of both side by side... especially when you replace PV with TF/CIGS solar production.
It IS true that the solar friendly countries are doing so through partial subsidization... but we've subsidized more than our own fair share of power/fuel production, look the other way when disasters occur, etc... but then block competition from cleaner, less well funded, alternatives. My original point remains unscathed, I say. =)
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'national security' ... as far as I am concerned, if this is scaring some people in power, it's doing its job. It may not be press in the traditional sense, but it does appear to be something of a resurrection of that old check and balance.
Regardless of 'the way things are,' my take would be a compromise. By putting someone on call, you are restricting their movements quite a lot so there should be compensation. Maybe it's miniscule, like $2/hr. Failing that, being CALLED in should incur a higher cost for the employer. OT or doubletime regardless of whether a person has reached their 40 hours or not. I.e., not paying a person full rate for sitting around their house all day BUT paying a person enough to keep them working for you and at a rate and under conditions enough to keep the employer from abusing said employee.
... given that recent sequencing of the h.neanderthalensis' genome showed them to be predominantly redheads and blondes... and those same hair colors are only native to h.sapiens whose ancestry hails from the one region where the two species mappably coexisted? Yes, that makes no sense at all
Even with the sun's output/sunspots being at record lows, and even in spite of this past winter, we're still well above 1990's temps. Burning fossil fuels, clean or not, still consumes oxygen as it produces co2, and yet we clear-cut a football field of forest every second. The question is... is a drop in the bucket in terms of expense and manpower really too much to ask for when the odds that we're facing a very difficult future are as good as or better than the odds that everything is a-ok. I'd rather err on the side of caution and create a few jobs in the process.
Another step in the right direction... science, education, sustainability... all important
Granted, it hurts to lose educated people from an economy that is in desperate need of new industry (as opposed to new services and new debts) ... but ... America isn't the whole of the world, and the world as a whole has real problems. Educating these people and then dispersing them to the wind like this... it may hurt right now, but what if they take seed in places of the world in greater need of educated people... places with runaway population growth, terrible environmental records, and similarly unsustainable practices?
Heck... beyond that, after a taste of democracy, who is to say all these people going back to their less tolerant homes won't also foment cultural reforms (not that our model is picture perfect right now, but...)
It's a notion, anyways
What the heck??????? If they're making so much money off these patents, what the heck are they charging students tuition for? Any student who's idea is taken by the university should be recompensed at the very least... with a full RETROACTIVE scholarship (i.e., including a refund of all expenses paid to date.) In the end the university will still probably end up making out like a bandit.
meh... that 2nd watchman trailer wasn't nearly as good as the first... while the 2nd trek trailer is quite fab.
"Out floating in space."? Is 40,000-65,000 mph called "out floating" in your book?
yah... its all relative, mang... whole solar system is moving through the galaxy at sowhere between 220 and 250 kilometers per second... i.e., between 490,000mph and 560,000mph... and, while I don't know about you... but I can't even feel it happening!!
What... the 'roid will dramatically increase the oxygen content of the planet? (insectoid respiratory systems are terribly inefficient, hence drastically limiting their size) ... ok, well that last bit kinda ruined the intended joke... except, I didn't think anyone would get it otherwise... *throws hands up in air in self frustration* ... btw, did it hit yet?
Sorry; I just read the intro, and the first thing that clicked into my mind was a phenomenon known as [evolutionary] radiation.. where, a sudden opening in the environment causes species to diverge and experiment and evolve at rapid and experimental rates... this just FEELS the same... that given an industry that is far from 'fully grown', there's so much room for creativity, exploration, new paradigms of self-awareness, that it is having the same effect... a radiation of individuality given a wide expanse of possibilities.
i do agree, this is way off topic... BUT, do we have an extradition treaty with paraguay?
not sure .5c is in our abilities just yet... we'd probably bankrupt the planet trying to pull it off for something even as small as a satellite. Maybe later =)
Well.. wait... this might be a good use of all the world's nukes... a sequential series of explosions should be able to slowly propel the thing (this was one of the 70s concepts for a interstellar within-our-lifetime designs). Better than pointing the things at each other, no?
indeed... see Mars... it's internal warmth died off quickly, being not only a small, but light-for-its-size, planet... Earth is waning now, but remained internally hot for billions of years longer... and even in spite of that, it once spent a fair period of time as an icecube before the cambrian explosion... just goes to show that location is important, but not enough.
that's a leap... the whole 'goldilocks' zone concept is fuzzy at best... an indicator, but not enough in itself; Take earth for example... we're NOT close enough to the sun to have liquid water by default. If the mantle cooled enough to end vulcanism, the atmosphere would grow thin, cold, and what water didn't freeze to the surface would seep down beneath the crust forever. Then take Europa... way way way too far from the sun for liquid water... and yet, due to internal stress, liquid water is not unlikely to be found there, under its crust of ice... the attributes of the body have as much if not more influence than the sun does (outside of being so close that the surface is thoroughly scorched, that is.)
The problem with this is that if this invention turns out to be 100% true, than it is a MAJOR problem for the oil companies who, it turns out, are the constituents that politicians care most about. They'll be all for silencing any kind of competition for their oil buds.
Those who listen to progressive/liberal discussion will have heard the two part speculation on this; A) that the demonstrated right wing spying on the democrats pre-911 may have dug up things they have been using to create such a pacified democratic majority and/or B) the democrats, obama included, think this bill is such an obvious and blatant violation of the constitution that its guaranteed to be struck down by the supreme court. The latter, to me, seems odd, though... they could just plain vote no and say so. It's maddening no matter what, though.
Well that was odd... I typed more than this, but all that came out was 'well...' Anyhow, G. Washington himself warned us in the very beginning that political parties were a terrible idea and may ultimately undo the country... so far, he seems to be right.
Well...
I don't want to be antagonistic, but I think your information is 30 years old.
I have no idea where you are getting your information... these technologies are already IN USE... solar concentration included... the only solar technologies as of RIGHT NOW that need any kind of demo run are ThinFilm and CIGS... both are proven to work but need more mass-production capacity... but solar concentration and PV are decades old and quite effective... and now becoming immensely cost competitive, especially now that some excellent new improvements have dropped the cost of production AND increased the power produced dramatically, even as fossil fuel costs sky-rocket.
Well, that's what the article is about... they ARE up to their eyeballs... and then slapped down a moratorium so they can 'explore' the environmental impact... something they only do grudgingly when its their fossil fuel friends asking for permits.
Nuclear creates waste during its powering process, solar and wind only create waste during initial construction and panel replacement. Nuclear is not green at all, in fact, the pollution from it is so concentrated it makes the locations where spent rods are disposed of uninhabitable.
Not to mention, they require so much gorram fresh water, that each plant is a major burden in terms of water consumption (and then decontamination) on surrounding civilization. There are 'ideas' out there for alternatives, such as pebble plants... but I am not entirely familiar with how viable they are...
Plus, there's only enough KNOWN nuclear fuel left in the earth for a few more decades at today's rate of consumption...
The sun, and wind, and tides, and geothermal sources... not going anywhere in the next 500 million years or so (... geothermal will be winding down, though, and virtually dead after 1000 million years.)
A study was done by a (admittedly pro-green) group that showed what the net effect would be of investing 21.6$ billion dollars into solar power given today's available technology.
Simply put, 21.6 B$ would replace 22 coal plants, reduce emissions by 86 billion tons, save energy buys 8.something billion $ a year, create about 216,000 jobs, etc... the same amount of money given into 'more efficient' coal plants would net replacing 6 coal plants, save 21 billion tons of co2, increase the cost to the power buyer, and create only about as many jobs as it destroyed... and, finally, given to nuclear expansion, the same amount of money would replace 7 coal plants, reduce emissions my 27 billion tons of co2, break even in cost to the consumer and in jobs produced vs. lost.
It also helps that when a solar power plant breaks down... people just get brown outs... but when a coal plant breaks down, you get brown outs, injuries, fires, explosions possibly... and when a nuclear plant breaks down, you could potentially be talking about making the landscape uninhabitable for 20+ years and costing billions to clean up.
It's certainly true that there won't be enough solar and wind plants built overnight to solve all our problems by tomorrow... but the tech is here right now to start construction... and competition is stiff... exactly why fossil fuel selling corps lobby so damn hard to prevent it all.
typo implosion!
How exactly do you build a power plant that hasn't been invented yet ?
That's a clever trick, making an inaccurate declaration as prescription to query... photovoltaics have been around for decades, their cost of production has dropped while the amount of 'tricity they produce per square unit has increased... they suffer from difficulty of silicon supply, though
But solar concentration technologies which have also existed for a while now don't suffer as much from lack of building material supply... they do generate heat, though, but only in a small area, and energy storage technologies and cooling technologies have blossomed lately in support of this kind of 'centralized' power production unit.
Meanwhile, CIGS and thin-film have arisen in the last couple-few years... and while their efficiency-of-deliver per square unit isn't quite as good yet as silicon, they will surpass it and not suffer either from the lack-of-resources problem, and can both be so small and so cheap that the only barrier between either and being so throughly ubiquitous in the construction of home, offices, and plants is having more in the way of mass production... which nanosolar recently demonstrated is not only possible, but so much so that it brought the cost of energy product, post manufacture AND post purchase, to less than that of burning coal.
Which of these things do you think doesn't exist, exactly? These are all 'today' technologies that offer no particular difficulty in implementation or production, and do not include stuff on the drawing board or being worked on in the labs.
I mean, hell... right now, a plant is being building in Australia that will produce 270 gigawatt hours per year, and that on PV, which is fast becoming the codgery step-grand-uncle of the future of solar power. Is that so insubstantial that you can justify ignoring it? Compare that to the following:
A 500 megawatt coal plant produces 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours per year, enough to power a city of about 140,000 people. It burns 1,430,000 tons of coal, uses 2.2 billion gallons of water and 146,000 tons of limestone. -- http://www.ucsusa.org/
All that during operation (not construction of) the plant ... would be interesting to see the construction costs/materials/hazards of both side by side... especially when you replace PV with TF/CIGS solar production.
It IS true that the solar friendly countries are doing so through partial subsidization... but we've subsidized more than our own fair share of power/fuel production, look the other way when disasters occur, etc... but then block competition from cleaner, less well funded, alternatives. My original point remains unscathed, I say. =)