I personally do not care WHY the climate is changing.
I DO care that it not only is apparent that it IS changing, but that the rate of change has been masked by reduced solar insolation in the past few decades
I also care that, like most systems, chaotic interactions can, have and will cause major undesirable changes over extremely short time periods--i.e. we can expect the temperature to change slowly until it becomes warm/cool enough to trigger some key event--whereupon it will change at extremely higher rates.
The down shot is that politicians (and the general public) have no understanding of chaos theory--despite their empirical knowledge of this kind of event(i.e. earthquakes, tsunami, etc.) Thus, everyone is willing to assume that such changes will occur on some sort of smooth function, when in fact it is much more likely that massive change will happen with a discontinuity.
This is, at least politically and emotionally, related to the existence of extinction level events in the geological record.
While there are arguments about the major events (i.e. asteroid? Volcanic activity? Whatever?) There is no argument that such events DO HAPPEN at semi-regular intervals, and that major changes in the ecology, i.e. die-offs, happen every few million years.
Do you really care if you die because of an asteroid impact or because the temperature got too high to support your ecosystem? Last time I looked, dead is dead.
Ya know, I'm getting pretty tired of hearing about "new" technical ideas which I remember hearing, studying and discussing in depth 30 years ago!
We've known for decades that:
1) Lunar subsoil contains water. 2) Lunar ores contain Oxygen 3) Lunar soils can grow food crops--better than some Earth soils! 4) That 1/6 g is a slight problem--compared to zero-g. At least in 1/6 g things tend to stay put.
Lunar mining was first seriously proposed in the 1950's, and studied extensively after we had lunar material samples to work with in the early 1970's.
Let's get off our collective asses and do some practical testing!
If we had setup an orbital manufacturing facility in the late 1970's when it was proven to be feasible, we could have:
1) A large-scale manufacturing/transshipment facility in L4/L5 2) A Lunar mining facility which not only supported itself, but provided materials for other orbital facilities, such as 3) Orbital power generation satellites capable of generating 120% of the current US electrical power usage.
Instead, we killed the manned space program, destroyed all of the working drawings and engineering specifications for the Saturn V and other functional systems, and put ourselves out of the space business by "settling" (by budgetary force from above) for the inadequate, cranky and more than moderately dangerous experimental vehicle known as the shuttle.
We canceled all development of true "space trucks" (i.e. reliable, durable, reusable, cost-effective transports capable of reaching at least LEO.
Instead, we destroy our environment with coal mines and pollution generating fossil fuel power generation facilities and nuclear waste generating fission power facilities.
Lets get out there and DO SOMETHING, we've spent decades studying this stuff like Aristotelian scholars when we need some practical engineering experience.
So, when is WA state going to start going after the really BIG offender?
Under this law, every time anyone in WA state Googles a gambling related word, Google is commiting a crime!
Ought to be most profitable for the State of Washington....
And, of course, every time anyone reads any of the posts about this story, or the story itself, the site is guilty of 'providing gambling related information.'
If fact, the way it's written, posting the text of the law is a violation....
Good thing you aren't required to even be aware of a law to be found guilty of breaking it!
While you can use UV LEDs for water purification, it doesn't really make much sense in remote, undeveloped areas, as such a system (which has to include a container, a power source and, of course, the LEDs,) is way more expensive than the cheapest known alternative.
The alternative is, of course, sunlight.
Using clear plastic bottles (the indestructable bane of the environment, now ubiquitous,) and combining a little shaking and a few hours of exposure to sunlight, you can sterilize quite a bit of water at the cost of a small amount of labor--much less labor than that required to obtain the water in the first place in many locales.
I've felt for a long time that the industry (as usual) was being shortsighted.
They know that movie theater goers watch movies, buy DVDs and rent movies.
The time between theatrical release and DVD release is dropping (it is now under 4 months in many cases,) and the natural market is the theater goers.
A properly made theatrical release is like the Greatful Dead, and experiance which is not duplicated on DVD.
So why not offer theater tickets which optionally come with a DVD release? If the movie is properly made for the theater, people will still come for the experiance, and each DVD sent out acts as an ad for the release while it is still in the theater.
I want the same thing I want from Human Resources (gag, I am _not_ a resource!)
When I am looking for someone, I want to be able to find a selection of the best people--available or not (I can often change their availability...) And I want it today, now, immediately.
When I am listing myself I want contacts from real employers with real jobs which actually have _something_ to do with my skills and interests.
Additionally, when I am looking, I want the ability to find postiions that I _might_ be interested in whether or not they are currently open.
I do not want emails from recruiters, job search assist companies, training companies or other spammers.
I want copanies which wish to hire subcontractors to do so on a fair and reasonable basis--not trying to screw both sides. Do what other agents do: give the contractor a percentage of what you get from the customer.
It is not fair to anyone to employ a person at their 'lowest possible rate' and then charge the customer their 'highest possible rate.'
A company paying $200 an hour for a contractor should not get someone who is earning $35. They will get (usually) $35/hr worth of work.
This dilutes the worth of people who actually are worth higher rates (due to things like more work per time unit, less maintanence over time etc..)
In twenty years of contract programming/analysis I have run into exactly ONE company which pays its subcontractors on a fair percentage basis.
If author's & models & actors agents can work on a straight percentage, there is no reason that technology agents can't do likewise.
And don't give me shit about their overhead! Their overhead is the same as any agency--if it truely is up to 5-6 times the rate that they pay, then their operation is not economically feasible and should die.
No agency deserves to make 500% of what the person actually doing the work is paid!
Instead of optical bugs in homes, where a resonable and constitutional expectation of privacy exists, we should take Keith Henson's suggestion and put cameras on those with _no_ expectation of privacy--the police and elected officials! Maybe that would slow down the corruption.
For details of this "little brother is watching" turnabout on 'domestic spying' see these links:
Slashdot Mirror
I personally do not care WHY the climate is changing.
I DO care that it not only is apparent that it IS changing, but that the rate of change has been masked by reduced solar insolation in the past few decades
I also care that, like most systems, chaotic interactions can, have and will cause major undesirable changes over extremely short time periods--i.e. we can expect the temperature to change slowly until it becomes warm/cool enough to trigger some key event--whereupon it will change at extremely higher rates.
The down shot is that politicians (and the general public) have no understanding of chaos theory--despite their empirical knowledge of this kind of event(i.e. earthquakes, tsunami, etc.) Thus, everyone is willing to assume that such changes will occur on some sort of smooth function, when in fact it is much more likely that massive change will happen with a discontinuity.
This is, at least politically and emotionally, related to the existence of extinction level events in the geological record.
While there are arguments about the major events (i.e. asteroid? Volcanic activity? Whatever?) There is no argument that such events DO HAPPEN at semi-regular intervals, and that major changes in the ecology, i.e. die-offs, happen every few million years.
Do you really care if you die because of an asteroid impact or because the temperature got too high to support your ecosystem? Last time I looked, dead is dead.
Ya know, I'm getting pretty tired of hearing about "new" technical ideas which I remember hearing, studying and discussing in depth 30 years ago!
We've known for decades that:
1) Lunar subsoil contains water.
2) Lunar ores contain Oxygen
3) Lunar soils can grow food crops--better than some Earth soils!
4) That 1/6 g is a slight problem--compared to zero-g. At least in 1/6 g things tend to stay put.
Lunar mining was first seriously proposed in the 1950's, and studied extensively after we had lunar material samples to work with in the early 1970's.
Let's get off our collective asses and do some practical testing!
If we had setup an orbital manufacturing facility in the late 1970's when it was proven to be feasible, we could have:
1) A large-scale manufacturing/transshipment facility in L4/L5
2) A Lunar mining facility which not only supported itself, but provided materials for other orbital facilities, such as
3) Orbital power generation satellites capable of generating 120% of the current US electrical power usage.
Instead, we killed the manned space program, destroyed all of the working drawings and engineering specifications for the Saturn V and other functional systems, and put ourselves out of the space business by "settling" (by budgetary force from above) for the inadequate, cranky and more than moderately dangerous experimental vehicle known as the shuttle.
We canceled all development of true "space trucks" (i.e. reliable, durable, reusable, cost-effective transports capable of reaching at least LEO.
Instead, we destroy our environment with coal mines and pollution generating fossil fuel power generation facilities and nuclear waste generating fission power facilities.
Lets get out there and DO SOMETHING, we've spent decades studying this stuff like Aristotelian scholars when we need some practical engineering experience.
So, when is WA state going to start going after the really BIG offender?
Under this law, every time anyone in WA state Googles a gambling related word, Google is commiting a crime!
Ought to be most profitable for the State of Washington....
And, of course, every time anyone reads any of the posts about this story, or the story itself, the site is guilty of 'providing gambling related information.'
If fact, the way it's written, posting the text of the law is a violation....
Good thing you aren't required to even be aware of a law to be found guilty of breaking it!
While you can use UV LEDs for water purification, it doesn't really make much sense in remote, undeveloped areas, as such a system (which has to include a container, a power source and, of course, the LEDs,) is way more expensive than the cheapest known alternative.
o wtech_solar_water_purification_it_works.htm
o a/wa/View/GrantProfile?n=1000504
The alternative is, of course, sunlight.
Using clear plastic bottles (the indestructable bane of the environment, now ubiquitous,) and combining a little shaking and a few hours of exposure to sunlight, you can sterilize quite a bit of water at the cost of a small amount of labor--much less labor than that required to obtain the water in the first place in many locales.
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/03/24/l
There is a research grant, http://apps.nciia.org/WebObjects/NciiaResources.w
which claims that "...recycled plastic bottle coated with titanium dioxide and placed in the sun for several hours, killing not only bacteria but other harmful substances such as arsenic and herbicides."
I really want to know more about this one, since in claims to eliminate the toxicity of the element arsenic....
I've felt for a long time that the industry (as usual) was being shortsighted.
They know that movie theater goers watch movies, buy DVDs and rent movies.
The time between theatrical release and DVD release is dropping (it is now under 4 months in many cases,) and the natural market is the theater goers.
A properly made theatrical release is like the Greatful Dead, and experiance which is not duplicated on DVD.
So why not offer theater tickets which optionally come with a DVD release? If the movie is properly made for the theater, people will still come for the experiance, and each DVD sent out acts as an ad for the release while it is still in the theater.
Or does that make too much sense?
I want the same thing I want from Human Resources (gag, I am _not_ a resource!)
When I am looking for someone, I want to be able to find a selection of the best people--available or not (I can often change their availability...) And I want it today, now, immediately.
When I am listing myself I want contacts from real employers with real jobs which actually have _something_ to do with my skills and interests.
Additionally, when I am looking, I want the ability to find postiions that I _might_ be interested in whether or not they are currently open.
I do not want emails from recruiters, job search assist companies, training companies or other spammers.
I want copanies which wish to hire subcontractors to do so on a fair and reasonable basis--not trying to screw both sides. Do what other agents do: give the contractor a percentage of what you get from the customer.
It is not fair to anyone to employ a person at their 'lowest possible rate' and then charge the customer their 'highest possible rate.'
A company paying $200 an hour for a contractor should not get someone who is earning $35. They will get (usually) $35/hr worth of work.
This dilutes the worth of people who actually are worth higher rates (due to things like more work per time unit, less maintanence over time etc..)
In twenty years of contract programming/analysis I have run into exactly ONE company which pays its subcontractors on a fair percentage basis.
If author's & models & actors agents can work on a straight percentage, there is no reason that technology agents can't do likewise.
And don't give me shit about their overhead! Their overhead is the same as any agency--if it truely is up to 5-6 times the rate that they pay, then their operation is not economically feasible and should die.
No agency deserves to make 500% of what the person actually doing the work is paid!
Instead of optical bugs in homes, where a resonable and constitutional expectation of privacy exists, we should take Keith Henson's suggestion and put cameras on those with _no_ expectation of privacy--the police and elected officials! Maybe that would slow down the corruption.
t mlt s.htm
For details of this "little brother is watching" turnabout on 'domestic spying' see these links:
http://www.csoonline.com/read/090402/edge_badge.h
http://www.outlander.com/badgecamera/social_effec
http://www.holysmoke.org/kh/kh620.htm
Tyranny, by whatever name it calls itself, ust be fought by those in it's grip.