The fact of the matter is that the energy density of the sun's radiation (which is directly or indirectly the source of all renewable energy sources) is nothing compared to that of fissile materials. It also turns out that the more space needed to produce energy, the more the energy is going to cost.
Every dollar put into a source of energy other than fission (excluding fusion, if it ever works) is a dollar that could have been better spent (from the perspective of how much nuclear energy production it could have payed for). If we want to continue our economic growth, energy has to continually get cheaper. Therefore, every dollar put into renewable energy leads directly to a slowing (or lack of acceleration) of economic growth.
Obviously I have left some claims unsupported, and some of them may turn out to not be entirely true, but there are many more angles I can take to show that fission is still the best source of energy.
One thing we've got today is corn-based ethanol, soaking up appalling amounts of subsidies, sitting on prime farm acrage.
This is exactly the point I am trying to get at. All these biofuels require a non-renewable resource - the most important one we have - land. For every acre of coal strip-mines we don't utilize, we will need hundreds, if not thousands of acres of farm land. True, with proper crop rotation, the land can be used indefinitely, while strip mines run out of coal and must be covered up. However, with the constant growth of energy demands, we are just as limited on land for biofuels as we are on oil and coal (if not more so).
Not to mention that every acre, tool, fertilizer and pesticide that is used for biofuel is one that isn't used to grow food. Unless people in the future start eating less, or find some way to significantly reduce the man-power required to grow and distribute food (which seems unlikely considering we would probably already be utilizing it), then the percentage of the worlds total man-power put towards growing food will need to remain fairly constant. If the food industry has to compete with the energy industry, it will drive up a demand for these items which cannot be quenched because doing so would throw off the man-power balance.
I am all for renewable energy. I think solar-panels and wind power are a great way to slow carbon emissions. However I find it hard to believe these sources of energy will ever be dominant. Our only realistic option in my eyes is nuclear. Nuclear Fission plants are extremely expensive but extremely well researched. I haven't run the numbers, but I would imagine that diverting all of the money from biofuel, solar panel and wind turbine research and production (among others) into fission plants would more than quench our energy demands. With the use of breeder plants, we would not run out of fuel for centuries to come.
Technology is, I think, the key out: for every gas-pumping job lost (this will probably happen when gas becomes more expensive than the alternatives), there'll be another gained somewhere else- developing infrastructure, technology, installing solar panels or writing software for a domestic energy exchange among micro-producers, whatever. Fuel won't crowd food out in the market, it'll hit the same price ceiling fuel does and people will buy food, or grow it and show a profit- next to food, fuel demand is elastic. As energy production and distribution technology becomes something affordable by the average person (who can't bear the expense of drilling, exploration, transport, refining, etc. themselves) expect to see distributed micro-generation systems that will to some extent democratize the production of energy. To wit, I don't think we're in the best of all worlds and the future is bleak; I think we're pretty hosed now and we can (and will) do better.
The problem is not a lack of jobs. The problem is lack of resources for those jobs. For every job lost pumping gas, we will need 3 people working on an alternate energy source. If you only have 1 person, then we will have less energy, driving up costs. If energy costs more, then people will grow the biofuel crop rather than food, leading to an increase in food prices. Soon enough the only people who can eat are the people selling energy or growing food. This would lead to a mass breakdown of economy, and people would need to be either growing food or growing biofuels. Unfortunately the world can support only so many farmers.
Obviously, in reality, none of this would ever happen, because we have a much better/cheaper source of energy already well researched and developed - nuclear fission. Biofuel crops would never become very expensive, because as soon as energy went up in price, a nuclear power company would take over the market.
Every dollar that is waisted on biofuels translates to a portion of a fission plant's cost which would produce a certain amount of energy that could have been put forth towards something other than producing more energy.
There are some things that the birds do that, colloquially speaking, "just blow us away." We were training Alex to sound out phonemes, not because we want him to read as humans do, but we want to see if he understands that his labels are made up of sounds that can be combined in different ways to make up new words; that is, to demonstrate evidence for segmentation. He babbles at dusk, producing strings like "green, cheen, bean, keen", so we have some evidence for this behavior, but we need more solid data.
Thus we are trying to get him to sound out refrigerator letters, the same way one would train children on phonics. We were doing demos at the Media Lab for our corporate sponsors; we had a very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to see Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, "Alex, what sound is blue?" He answers, "Ssss." It was an "s", so we say "Good birdie" and he replies, "Want a nut."
Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, "What sound is green?" Alex answers, "Ssshh." He's right, it's "sh," and we go through the routine again: "Good parrot." "Want a nut." "Alex, wait. What sound is orange?" "ch." "Good bird!" "Want a nut." We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh."
Not only could you imagine him thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the point was that he had leaped over where we were and had begun sounding out the letters of the words for us. This was in a sense his way of saying to us, "I know where you're headed! Let's get on with it," which gave us the feeling that we were on the right track with what we were doing. These kinds of things don't happen in the lab on a daily basis, but when they do, they make you realize there's a lot more going on inside these little walnut-sized brains than you might at first imagine.
Maybe its the same to someone on the other side of the world. But to the person doing the killing, there are most likely irreperable psychological effects.
So to say they are the same is ridiculous. However, it is only evil if society says it is.
What if the person wanted to be killed? What if he thought it was an honor? Is it still evil?
Nothing is stopping you. However, someone with a bit of foresight will see that they will be better off (read happier, more successful, etc.) if they treat others with respect.
This is exactly where the morality of mainstream religions came from. Ancient philosophers who thought about how people would be best off, and wrote about their understanding in a religious context. Today, the religious context is not needed. Today, people have the intelligence to be moral without the threat of eternal pain and damnation.
However, back when books like the those found in the bible were written, the average person didn't think deeply about their actions and how best to live their lives. They were too busy getting by.
The only God that can't be disproved is one that constantly morphs in the face of criticism.
Any time someone tries to define exactly what their God is, and what it can do, I can provide a sound argument against the possibility of its existence.
Just because it is easier to believe doesn't make it true.
Einstein (being a believer of causal determinism) found Heisenberg uncertainty principle very difficult to believe. If Einstein, whom I doubt you will claim to be more intelligent than, can be confounded by his beliefs, then how do you think you stand a chance?
Beliefs are, by definition, frail suppositions unsupported by fact or experiment.
Just because currency isn't "just printed" right now, doesn't mean it couldn't be.
After WWII, Germany was required to pay a ridiculous retribution tax to the allies. How could a economically and culturally broke country afford to pay retribution? Well by printing millions and millions of bills of course. The bills quickly became worthless, leading to several accounts of people paying for a loaf of bread with a wheel-barrel full of bills.
Obviously, this is an extreme, and our government would never let something like this happen.... Right????
I'm not sure what makes you think you can't measure a temperature in a vacuum. A simple mercury thermometer could measure temperature in a vacuum (assuming the temperature is within the scale of the thermometer). All you do is wait for the temperature to stop changing, and thats it. Just because no conduction takes place doesn't mean you can't measure the temperature. There is still loss/gain of heat through radiation.
However, the combination of evaporation of the water in your skin, and the radiation of your heat leads me to believe that a human would freeze very quickly. On the other hand, it still wouldn't be as quick as death from depressurization.
Basically, if you end up in space without a suit, your SOL... unless someone happens to be using an infinite improbability drive somewhere around your part of the galaxy.
1. Really? Because I remember my father telling me years ago about lobsters crawling across the highway to reach a seperated body of water, and him picking them up and cooking them for dinner. Just because you don't see them crawling around beaches now that they are over-fished, doesn't mean they didn't back when no one ate them.
2. True. Somewhat. They can sometimes be different colors. However, you are correct that the lobsters they would have seen would have been a deep blue.
I'm going to use the same story I use every time someone makes a comment similar to yours.
In 1607 when the colony of Jamestown was founded, several hundred people from mid to upper class status went to live there. Unfortunately, very few of them knew how to farm, and come the first winter, many starved to death.
However, these people saw several red crustaceans crawling around on the beach. They were so ingrained in societies view of what was "moral" and appropriate, that they thought the lobsters where disgusting creatures, and stayed away from them. They continued to starve, while some were eventually saved by a local Indian tribe.
Society has its own view of morals that develop for the benefit of some people, but not for others. Don't blindly believe what you are told.
I'm not an anthropologist (only a lowly engineer), but I can't help but notice everyone basing their conclusions solely on the genetic distribution of humans. This seems fundamentally flawed given that humans are unlike any other creature. It seems to me that our higher intelligence and strong emotions lead us to actions that animals would not take (such as changing scenery for a reason other than why an animal would do so). For this reason, we can't expect humans to act similarly to animals.
However, what we can do (and have, as far as I know) is look at humans closest relatives (apes) and look at their genetic distribution. Now I'm no expert, but I think apes are most diverse in Africa (maybe Asia?). Now assuming no major geographical changes (i.e. forests turning into deserts), it should be safe to assume that apes originated from Africa (once again assuming that is where they are most diverse). Given that it is common knowledge that apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor, it makes sense that wherever apes originated from, humans originated somewhere not too far off.
The reading of the constitution has changed so much since the time it was first written that the federalist papers have far less bearing than they did then.
The Ninth Amendment was formulated exactly for the argument Hamilton and Madison were making.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Within 20 years of the writing of the constitution one of the strictest constructionists (Thomas Jefferson) went well outside the powers given to him by the constitution to negotiate the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. Since then, the powers have only grown.
As for the examples you gave - if the specific enumeration of these rights didn't prevent abuse, how do you think the lack of enumeration would have helped?
I disagree. I believe weapons are naturally easier to invent and produce than any other piece of technology.
Just think about how many pieces of technology cause harm to humans (even if they are not meant to). Humans are weak. They can die a multitude of ways. A slight shift in the amount of Nitric-Oxide in the air can cause huge detrimental effects to our health. Name a element or compound that we rely biological on, and it will most likely be deadly in a different concentration.
On the example of A-bombs: Think how much harder it was to harness fission for peaceful means. Yet still, the waste is deadly to humans.
Weapons are easy to invent because all you have to do is find one new way to kill humans, and then make it cheap.
As far as I know, the voltages required for a railgun would make it very difficult to fit it in a portable size. If you make it too small, the cap will discharge through an arch. Could be painful if you were wearing it in a holster...
Unfortunately, it can easily be shown that our universe, as we know it had a beginning.
If there was no beginning, why are start still burning? Why have they not run out of fuel?
This is the quickest way to show that there had to have been a "birth" of the universe. However, birth really only means that the the type of matter we experience was formed. What was going on before that is still up to debate.
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The fact of the matter is that the energy density of the sun's radiation (which is directly or indirectly the source of all renewable energy sources) is nothing compared to that of fissile materials. It also turns out that the more space needed to produce energy, the more the energy is going to cost.
Every dollar put into a source of energy other than fission (excluding fusion, if it ever works) is a dollar that could have been better spent (from the perspective of how much nuclear energy production it could have payed for). If we want to continue our economic growth, energy has to continually get cheaper. Therefore, every dollar put into renewable energy leads directly to a slowing (or lack of acceleration) of economic growth.
Obviously I have left some claims unsupported, and some of them may turn out to not be entirely true, but there are many more angles I can take to show that fission is still the best source of energy.
This is exactly the point I am trying to get at. All these biofuels require a non-renewable resource - the most important one we have - land. For every acre of coal strip-mines we don't utilize, we will need hundreds, if not thousands of acres of farm land. True, with proper crop rotation, the land can be used indefinitely, while strip mines run out of coal and must be covered up. However, with the constant growth of energy demands, we are just as limited on land for biofuels as we are on oil and coal (if not more so).
Not to mention that every acre, tool, fertilizer and pesticide that is used for biofuel is one that isn't used to grow food. Unless people in the future start eating less, or find some way to significantly reduce the man-power required to grow and distribute food (which seems unlikely considering we would probably already be utilizing it), then the percentage of the worlds total man-power put towards growing food will need to remain fairly constant. If the food industry has to compete with the energy industry, it will drive up a demand for these items which cannot be quenched because doing so would throw off the man-power balance.
I am all for renewable energy. I think solar-panels and wind power are a great way to slow carbon emissions. However I find it hard to believe these sources of energy will ever be dominant. Our only realistic option in my eyes is nuclear. Nuclear Fission plants are extremely expensive but extremely well researched. I haven't run the numbers, but I would imagine that diverting all of the money from biofuel, solar panel and wind turbine research and production (among others) into fission plants would more than quench our energy demands. With the use of breeder plants, we would not run out of fuel for centuries to come.
The problem is not a lack of jobs. The problem is lack of resources for those jobs. For every job lost pumping gas, we will need 3 people working on an alternate energy source. If you only have 1 person, then we will have less energy, driving up costs. If energy costs more, then people will grow the biofuel crop rather than food, leading to an increase in food prices. Soon enough the only people who can eat are the people selling energy or growing food. This would lead to a mass breakdown of economy, and people would need to be either growing food or growing biofuels. Unfortunately the world can support only so many farmers.
Obviously, in reality, none of this would ever happen, because we have a much better/cheaper source of energy already well researched and developed - nuclear fission. Biofuel crops would never become very expensive, because as soon as energy went up in price, a nuclear power company would take over the market.
Every dollar that is waisted on biofuels translates to a portion of a fission plant's cost which would produce a certain amount of energy that could have been put forth towards something other than producing more energy.
My exacts thoughts on every MMORPG I have ever played.
Thats why the only games I play now are DOD:S (haven't for a couple months now), and Guitar Hero.
I will probably have to get the Orange box though... Portal looks amazing.
I think you are missing the point.
NOTHING is better than what we've got.
Oil and coal an order of magnitude easier/cheaper to use than anything else.
Nuclear energy is safe and virtually unlimited. It is also fairly cheap (just not as cheap as oil).
Eventually we WILL be forced to switch over to other forms of energy, but they will be inferior. Economic growth will slow, and people will starve.
If all religion was based on this "God" and none other, then we would all be better off.
Oh, and your "God" sounds a lot like my Universe.
Take a look at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pepperberg03/peppe rberg_index.html.
The last 4 paragraphs read thusly:
There are some things that the birds do that, colloquially speaking, "just blow us away." We were training Alex to sound out phonemes, not because we want him to read as humans do, but we want to see if he understands that his labels are made up of sounds that can be combined in different ways to make up new words; that is, to demonstrate evidence for segmentation. He babbles at dusk, producing strings like "green, cheen, bean, keen", so we have some evidence for this behavior, but we need more solid data.
Thus we are trying to get him to sound out refrigerator letters, the same way one would train children on phonics. We were doing demos at the Media Lab for our corporate sponsors; we had a very small amount of time scheduled and the visitors wanted to see Alex work. So we put a number of differently colored letters on the tray that we use, put the tray in front of Alex, and asked, "Alex, what sound is blue?" He answers, "Ssss." It was an "s", so we say "Good birdie" and he replies, "Want a nut."
Well, I don't want him sitting there using our limited amount of time to eat a nut, so I tell him to wait, and I ask, "What sound is green?" Alex answers, "Ssshh." He's right, it's "sh," and we go through the routine again: "Good parrot." "Want a nut." "Alex, wait. What sound is orange?" "ch." "Good bird!" "Want a nut." We're going on and on and Alex is clearly getting more and more frustrated. He finally gets very slitty-eyed and he looks at me and states, "Want a nut. Nnn, uh, tuh."
Not only could you imagine him thinking, "Hey, stupid, do I have to spell it for you?" but the point was that he had leaped over where we were and had begun sounding out the letters of the words for us. This was in a sense his way of saying to us, "I know where you're headed! Let's get on with it," which gave us the feeling that we were on the right track with what we were doing. These kinds of things don't happen in the lab on a daily basis, but when they do, they make you realize there's a lot more going on inside these little walnut-sized brains than you might at first imagine.
Maybe its the same to someone on the other side of the world. But to the person doing the killing, there are most likely irreperable psychological effects.
So to say they are the same is ridiculous. However, it is only evil if society says it is.
What if the person wanted to be killed? What if he thought it was an honor? Is it still evil?
Nothing is stopping you. However, someone with a bit of foresight will see that they will be better off (read happier, more successful, etc.) if they treat others with respect.
This is exactly where the morality of mainstream religions came from. Ancient philosophers who thought about how people would be best off, and wrote about their understanding in a religious context. Today, the religious context is not needed. Today, people have the intelligence to be moral without the threat of eternal pain and damnation.
However, back when books like the those found in the bible were written, the average person didn't think deeply about their actions and how best to live their lives. They were too busy getting by.
The only God that can't be disproved is one that constantly morphs in the face of criticism.
Any time someone tries to define exactly what their God is, and what it can do, I can provide a sound argument against the possibility of its existence.
Just because it is easier to believe doesn't make it true.
Einstein (being a believer of causal determinism) found Heisenberg uncertainty principle very difficult to believe. If Einstein, whom I doubt you will claim to be more intelligent than, can be confounded by his beliefs, then how do you think you stand a chance?
Beliefs are, by definition, frail suppositions unsupported by fact or experiment.
Just because currency isn't "just printed" right now, doesn't mean it couldn't be.
After WWII, Germany was required to pay a ridiculous retribution tax to the allies. How could a economically and culturally broke country afford to pay retribution? Well by printing millions and millions of bills of course. The bills quickly became worthless, leading to several accounts of people paying for a loaf of bread with a wheel-barrel full of bills.
Obviously, this is an extreme, and our government would never let something like this happen.... Right????
I'm not sure what makes you think you can't measure a temperature in a vacuum. A simple mercury thermometer could measure temperature in a vacuum (assuming the temperature is within the scale of the thermometer). All you do is wait for the temperature to stop changing, and thats it. Just because no conduction takes place doesn't mean you can't measure the temperature. There is still loss/gain of heat through radiation.
However, the combination of evaporation of the water in your skin, and the radiation of your heat leads me to believe that a human would freeze very quickly. On the other hand, it still wouldn't be as quick as death from depressurization.
Basically, if you end up in space without a suit, your SOL... unless someone happens to be using an infinite improbability drive somewhere around your part of the galaxy.
1. Really? Because I remember my father telling me years ago about lobsters crawling across the highway to reach a seperated body of water, and him picking them up and cooking them for dinner. Just because you don't see them crawling around beaches now that they are over-fished, doesn't mean they didn't back when no one ate them.
2. True. Somewhat. They can sometimes be different colors. However, you are correct that the lobsters they would have seen would have been a deep blue.
Haha, thanks... I always have to correct people who mix the two up, and somehow I fell into the same trap.
The thing I find funny is that the summary could be summed up more like this:
"New study finds retards and geniuses don't get lucky as much as normal people."
I'd be more worried about Smug. With all these people buying hybrids, Smug levels are on a record high!
I'm going to use the same story I use every time someone makes a comment similar to yours.
In 1607 when the colony of Jamestown was founded, several hundred people from mid to upper class status went to live there. Unfortunately, very few of them knew how to farm, and come the first winter, many starved to death.
However, these people saw several red crustaceans crawling around on the beach. They were so ingrained in societies view of what was "moral" and appropriate, that they thought the lobsters where disgusting creatures, and stayed away from them. They continued to starve, while some were eventually saved by a local Indian tribe.
Society has its own view of morals that develop for the benefit of some people, but not for others. Don't blindly believe what you are told.
And the creationists I respect, use modern (read: scientifically informed) sources to decide how the heavens and earth were formed.
They are called astrologist's and physicists.
I believe they evolved from pirates. It just seems logical. I mean, why would the FSM make create anything other than a pirate?
I'm not an anthropologist (only a lowly engineer), but I can't help but notice everyone basing their conclusions solely on the genetic distribution of humans. This seems fundamentally flawed given that humans are unlike any other creature. It seems to me that our higher intelligence and strong emotions lead us to actions that animals would not take (such as changing scenery for a reason other than why an animal would do so). For this reason, we can't expect humans to act similarly to animals.
However, what we can do (and have, as far as I know) is look at humans closest relatives (apes) and look at their genetic distribution. Now I'm no expert, but I think apes are most diverse in Africa (maybe Asia?). Now assuming no major geographical changes (i.e. forests turning into deserts), it should be safe to assume that apes originated from Africa (once again assuming that is where they are most diverse). Given that it is common knowledge that apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor, it makes sense that wherever apes originated from, humans originated somewhere not too far off.
The Ninth Amendment was formulated exactly for the argument Hamilton and Madison were making. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Within 20 years of the writing of the constitution one of the strictest constructionists (Thomas Jefferson) went well outside the powers given to him by the constitution to negotiate the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. Since then, the powers have only grown.
As for the examples you gave - if the specific enumeration of these rights didn't prevent abuse, how do you think the lack of enumeration would have helped?
I disagree. I believe weapons are naturally easier to invent and produce than any other piece of technology.
Just think about how many pieces of technology cause harm to humans (even if they are not meant to). Humans are weak. They can die a multitude of ways. A slight shift in the amount of Nitric-Oxide in the air can cause huge detrimental effects to our health. Name a element or compound that we rely biological on, and it will most likely be deadly in a different concentration.
On the example of A-bombs: Think how much harder it was to harness fission for peaceful means. Yet still, the waste is deadly to humans.
Weapons are easy to invent because all you have to do is find one new way to kill humans, and then make it cheap.
As far as I know, the voltages required for a railgun would make it very difficult to fit it in a portable size. If you make it too small, the cap will discharge through an arch. Could be painful if you were wearing it in a holster...
Unfortunately, it can easily be shown that our universe, as we know it had a beginning.
If there was no beginning, why are start still burning? Why have they not run out of fuel?
This is the quickest way to show that there had to have been a "birth" of the universe. However, birth really only means that the the type of matter we experience was formed. What was going on before that is still up to debate.