Oh, I completely agree! The resistance to nuclear is insane; we should be moving to it as quickly as possible.
For renewables, though, hydro or tidal (or wave) are the way to go, simply because of the energy potential and mechanical coupling you get from falling (or rising) water. A single dam - like the Grand Coulee dam can do 6.8 GW of power generation. That's a LOT of 5 MW wind turbines, and you know exactly how much and when you can generate the power - you have the water stored up months or years in advance.
Wind or solar are, IMHO, a very distant second in terms of output potential and baseload use. Guarantee of supply and the amount of land required are big obstacles.
Putting the generation under water - free-tethered in the center of the water column - could be a good way to satisfy the NIMBYs worrying about the view, and not have much impact on the environment because of their location in the water.
We're not over-populated. Take every single living person on this earth. All 6.6 billion. Stick them on the land mass of Texas only (none of the lakes or rivers). You'll have lower population density than greater New York City and most of the European capitals.
Now take the remaining farmland in the US, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Don't convert an acre of forest, park, or city. No mountains, or prairies. Only the existing farmland. You can grow enough food for everyone (via a vegetarian diet).
Now take the fresh water outflow of the Columbia river - the river separating Washington from Oregon. You've got 27 gallons of fresh water per person per day.
Now put 700 nuclear plants in the deserts of Nevada. You have enough power for everyone to live at the energy consumption level of the US.
Go do the research, you'll see this all to be true. We could support every single person on the face of the earth within 40% of the North American continent. No one on any other continent, island, or waterway.
There aren't too many people; the issue is distribution of the resources. That is a political - not scientific - problem. We could feed the world and provide fresh water for everyone, if we could get countries to agree.
And note that it is almost always the country that would benefit that restricts the offer of aid. Think Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Turkmenistan, North Korea. Those countries are stricken with poverty because of the G8 or the first world; they are stricken because twisted, maniacal leaders are power-drunk.
Overpopulated? Not by a long shot. Poor distribution? Sure. The solution is to encourage free and expanded trade - and in some cases like Zimbabwe and Myanmar - a few well placed bullets. Economic growth is required to free more people.
And when there's more people with freedom and no longer having to worry about their next meal, or their next drink of water, you'll find a lot more participation in solving other big problems facing the world.
But the point remains that guerrilla warfare is a successful means of fighting a vastly superior armed force
I would posit that it is the best unsuccessful way of fighting; you're guaranteed to lose, but will lose slower. Guerrilla actions just don't work. Sure, you don't lose as quickly as a stand-up action, but the fact remains you still lose.
Is it better to get blown out in the first inning, 11-0 and lose 11-10, or keep it run-for-run throughout the game until you lose 11-10 in the ninth? Either way, it's a loss.
You don't have to field an armored division just because your opponent has one.
Well, if you want to have a chance to win, you kind of do. Hard to take out an M1A1 with AK-47s or even RPG-7s or RPG-9s. Best you can do is slow one down, or even immobilize it (take out the tracks, if you get a lucky shot), but an M1A1 immobilized is still impervious to small and medium arms fire, and still carries firepower (in the main gun and machine guns, grenade launchers and the like) to take out a few hundred infantry.
Ask the Mujahideen about the success of small arms fire and RPGs against the Soviet HIND helicopters. Anti-aircraft missiles were what turned that war. Until the Stinger and other similar systems arrived, the HIND was essentially untouchable, unbeatable, and unstoppable.
The US military is literally light years beyond what else is out there (I know, I developed a little bit of it), and is accelerating even faster. With the well-trained soldiers we have there's really nothing that can stand up to our military. Seriously. Air, land, or sea.
The best you - as a guerrilla - can hope for is to slow down your loss, but ultimately whether you lose or "win" (because we leave) is in the hands of politicians in DC, not the commanders on the field. And certainly not in your hands. You can only commit to hang on as long as possible.
The insurgents know this, too... It's why, every day I was in Iraq, you would get mortar fire about 1 PM in the afternoon. It gave the reporters enough time to write a story, take some pictures, and lead the morning news that day. Attacks were timed AND located at the places not where it made military sense, but where it made propaganda sense.
Being in a convoy that came under small arms fire once, it was rather surreal. A dozen insurgents popped up on roofs and immediately started spraying the convoy with small arms fire and a few RPGs. Literally seconds later the 249s of the USMC raked back, and less than 30 seconds later air support was there mopping up. One Marine injured, 4 insurgents killed, 9 captured. Faced with overwhelming odds, you just can't give those kinds of losses for very long at all.
I'd say 7 of the 8 attacks (one light arms attack, 6 mortars, one IED two blocks ahead of us) I witnessed in Iraq were purely political. They were timed and placed to make a statement, and if they killed a few US soldiers all the better. But chaos and death - Iraqi blood was fine with them, as long as there was blood - was what they wanted to see. They wanted the pressure to get to the President, to make him retreat. They were trying to simply hold on, and wait for the President to fold and pull the troops out. They guessed wrong - he's a stubborn guy and was in the fight to win.
Its funny that you mention the Ukraine and the Czech Republic, because, when those countries tried to rebel against their Soviet overlords in the '50s and '60s, the US turned its back. When they finally did overthrow their puppet governments, they did it without a whit of help from America.
And if we had helped them, it would have been the right thing to do. So because we screwed up in the past, we're to not take action in the future?
You can't use Saddam as an example, since the only reason he was able to consolidate his power in the first place is because of US support. Fact is, we kept Saddam supplied with arms and cash and turned a blind eye to his atrocities against his own people because we needed a bulldog to go against Iran (another mess of our own making).
Yep. Bad policy again. But does that mean no action in the future, because we screwed up in the past? That seems to be a common theme here...
How about kicking some Pakistani ass? Oh, that's right, it'd upset another one of our friendly puppets.
Pakistan was close to getting their own problems taken care of - remember the elections that almost happened? They're shaking themselves loose on their own.
While I agree with the sentiment, do you really want the US military to be fighting a full scale war every time some peasant gets repressed?
No. But in some cases - like Mugabe - a well placed bullet from an SOF would end a lot of problems. When a country gets to a point where people will risk their lives to flee, it's time to act.
And invariably in those situations, the best action isn't to flood the country with dollars and aid because it doesn't get to the people. Get rid of the government, and things will change, usually for better.
Oh, and my experience: 5 trips to Haiti on a medical team, 2 trips on a medical team to Burundi and Malawi, one trip to teach basic language and building skills to Myanmar, twice (2005 and 2006) to Iraq to teach English and commerce, and one trip to teach English to North Korea (where I also handed out 24 copies of the US Declaration of Indepedence and the Constitution, translated to Korean). I've been in the shitholes, and I'll say unequivocally that most of the general population prefer to try a new government - ESPECIALLY a puppet government that was stable - than keep the shit they had.
Without Reagan or someone with his same viewpoint towards the USSR, sure. They'd still be there, and there would still be 80 million Eastern Europeans living in a totalitarian state.
it seemed to work pretty well for the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Mujaheddin.
Actually, it didn't. The North Vietnamese were beaten badly time and again, and only survived because China supplied them with arms and men.
Iraq was a problem until the border with Iran was shut down. Suddenly the flow of supplies and materiel decreased, and the tables greatly turned (17 casualties in May - so much for the continuance of the insurgency).
Afgahnistan with the Soviets? Complete domination by the Soviets until the US started feeding weapons to and training the rebels. Then the tide turned.
Guerilla fighting holds up for a few months, at most unless it is backed with serious supplies and personnel. War is about resources, and small insurgent groups simply cannot keep up the resource race with a superpower.
Yes, much better to let them continue murdering and oppressing tens of millions of people, right?
We should have let the USSR continue to exist, it's not like the people in Poland, the Ukraine, or Czech Republic have it all that much better now. And the USSR only killed 30 million or so of their own people, we just needed to talk with them a bit more.
What's the solution you would have used for Saddam? Because we tried for 12 FREAKING years to go about the peaceful, UN approach and ended up finding the UN was skimming billions and in bed with Saddam anyway.
What's your solution to the Taliban?
Care to sit down with Mugabe and explain why he is wrong and he really should just try to understand his people a little better?
Give peace a chance, but after that prepare for an ass kicking...
Actually, in Iraq it's worked out rather well. Things are settling out, Iraqis are running their own government, and are increasingly responsible for their own security. I'd say not bad for a 5 year effort.
It also worked quite well in Japan, Germany, Columbia, Panama, the Philippines, Kuwait, and many other places.
Simply put: you cannot negotiate with those who see zero value in people. For they consider YOU also worthless, and why should the talk other than to delay action against them?
Better to save a few million lives and be feared and despised because we carry - and use - a big stick than the sit back and try to tell little Johnny Dictator that he really shouldn't be genocidal and continue to kill people...
Give peace a chance, but after that prepare for an ass kicking.
The average slashdotter is also a programmer, sitting for 16 hours a day and fueled by pizza and Mountain Dew. I bet the slashdotters have a higher percentage of C cups than the general population...
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 1
Works great, sometimes. First time I tried that my printer just wouldn't print it. I've solved that since, but for some reason I keep forgetting to bring my printer with me so i can print out the return boarding pass too.
My solution: I print to PDF, then FAX it to my hotel. Have yet to find a place where that did not work...
Better: if you want your luggage to arrive with you, don't check anything. Travel light.
If possible, sure. But sometimes I have to check a bag - supplies, gifts, suits (hard to get 3 of them into an overhead bag), etc. I have yet to have a bag lost. Maybe I'm lucky, but ~400 flights over the last 5 years is a pretty good record so far.
And don't wear shoes, be careful to not bring anything with wires in your luggage. Don't bring a laptop.
No, wear shoes that slip on and off (which are better anyway - kick them off on the plane, socks are much more comfortable), leave your wires in the laptop bag (or if they're not usable on the plane or the airport, check them in your bag), and just pull your laptop out of your laptop bag.
Never had a problem with the laptop, wires, or equipment so far - including my trip in and out of North Korea.
Similar observations work in grocery store lines, as neatly summarized by Apu in one Simpsons episode.
The Simpsons contains much wisdom! On that I fully agree...:)
Every single person on the face of the earth could live on the land (not water) of Texas, and have less population density than New York Metro area.
The outflow of the Columbia River (between Oregon and Washington) would provide each person with 23 gallons of fresh water EACH day.
The farmland in the rest of the US and Canada - not including Texas (where we live), and not including any forests, parks, roads, cities, etc - would allow for 0.6 acres per person, enough to grow food for that person (based upon a primarily vegetarian diet).
Essentially, the entire population could be supported within the confines of the US and Canada. No one and nothing needed anywhere else, or even on the oceans.
Our problem is not resources, our problem is distribution. And it's not a problem that you can solve at the source end - it's at the receiving end of the chain. And it's thugs like Mugabe, Al-bashir, Kim Jong Il, Raul Castro, and many more.
Restricting the resources of your masses makes it easier to control your masses. Dictator 101.
When you have a cell phone, or Internet connection, and the ruling thug doesn't want you to use it, a few well-placed bullets by the thug's goons pretty much dissuades you.
The problem is you assume others have respect for human life of their fellow countrymen. As a person who's been on all 7 continents and 94 countries, I can tell you that for much of the world those assumptions are worthless. Neighbors and fellow countrymen are simply obstacles to me getting whatever I want, when I want it.
Infrastructures in many of those dirt-poor countries are bad not because they don't have money or food or water, but because the ruling thugs WANT it that way. Easier to repress the masses. Keep them struggling to feed themselves or get a mouthful of water and you can more easily rule them.
And because they do not require their "people" to work to build an infrastructure and economy. No, we in the Western World simply give the government all they want. So they can supposedly build that infrastructure, and feed the masses. But that doesn't happen. The ruling thugs get fat on our well-intentioned (but entirely misplaced) funds, and they let more people starve, and plead more poverty so we send more...
And if this sounds like a rant against foreign aid - you read it completely right.
You want to know how to help out the shitholes of the world? Drop in a few special ops teams and blow off a few skulls. Seriously. Because these places WILL NOT CHANGE without cutting out the cancer that is the thugocracy running the place. Current ruler dies? Nothing changes - a crony steps in. And on and on. You want to change and better the lives of the people? It'll take a few 12.7mm sniper rounds, not dollars and flour (or flowers).
- Rants of a guy who's been to several of the shitholes of the world to at least work directly with the people, when possible.
I think someone doesn't like you... Not a no-fly list but a fuck-with-this-guy list...
I fly from the US to Asia 6-8 times a year, been doing so the last 5 years. Make it to Europe about 2-3 times a year. Have never had a bag lost (including domestic flights in the US and China), and the longest delay at takeoff I can remember was 2 years ago from YVR (Vancouver International) to PVG (Pudong, Shanghai), when we sat for about 45 minutes while they removed some bags from a passenger who never showed up.
Seriously, it's not the airlines. It's you. Let me know when you fly because I do NOT want that flight...
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 1
It works for short distances like London to Paris... That's 343 km, so you average around 160 kph. Not bad.
Now try that from, say, Seattle to the next big city, San Francisco - 1200 km (and two mountain ranges), so we're talking at least 10 hours. About the same from Chicago to NYC.
Even if you accept the 2 hour prior to departure rule, you're talking a 2 hour flight, 2 hours waiting, and 1 hour to and 1 hour from the airport. At most 6 hours versus 10.
Trains work in very dense, small geographic regions like Europe. Outside of smaller areas in the NE of the US, though, trains really aren't viable.
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
·
· Score: 4, Informative
As a frequent flyer (like nearly every week, inside the US or internationally), here's a few tips:
1. Check yourself in electronically - print out your boarding pass at home. That bypasses 30 minutes, easy.
2. Check your baggage AT THE CURB. Pretty much every major airport in the US will let you check your baggage at the curb. Yes, it costs an extra $3 per bag to do so, but that saves another 15 minutes.
3. No metal in your pockets, no liquids in your bag. Yes, you can survive without that bottle of water for 10 minutes.
4. Always choose the security lane with the fewest number of families and old folks. Even if it's longer, you'll get through faster.
I rarely show up more than 30 minutes before my boarding time, and have yet to NOT be at the gate prior to the start of boarding.
Re:The explanation is obvious
on
Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 1
In the NW too, eh? Once for experience I took the train to Portland (from Seattle) for a business trip. We left at 12:20. Arrived in Portland at 6:55 PM after several delays - stopped in the middle of nowhere (like between Tumwater and Chehalis).
For those not familiar with the Seattle/Portland area, that is a 3 hour drive, tops. So the train - at a cost of $42 per seat - takes twice as long as my 1999 Ford Ranger (which burns 8 gallons of gas to go the same distance).
Amtrak costs more, is slower, and not as comfortable. But it sure does make a pretty story!
Re:If that was the case...
on
Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 1
I fly around 40 trips a year (yes, I rack up about 250,000 miles a year, and about 80 takeoffs and - so far - a matching number of landings annually). This includes inside the US, Asia, and Europe.
So far, I am seriously delayed (meaning by more than 20 minutes) about twice a year. If only the trains I ride (in the NE US corridor, Asia, or the EU) and buses (here in Seattle, Shanghai, Singapore, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin) were only so regular.
Additionally, on the two times in the last 3 years where my delay was significant and would result in me missing another connection or critical meeting, the airline located an alternate airline for me, booked me, and gave me a meal coupon to boot.
Would I rather not have to change? Sure! But if there's a screwup at least the airlines own up to it and do what they can to make it right (NOTE: to get this treatment you need to be calm and courteous to the counter staff - seriously, it does work).
I can't remember the last time a bus driver apologized for being late or missing a connection, or a conductor re-booked my tickets because we were late coming out of Zurich.
Better yet, try prepaid credit cards. Work great, no name, and won't cut you off from lots of things that cash-only will (like paying for gas at the pump, online purchases and subscriptions, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
For renewables, though, hydro or tidal (or wave) are the way to go, simply because of the energy potential and mechanical coupling you get from falling (or rising) water. A single dam - like the Grand Coulee dam can do 6.8 GW of power generation. That's a LOT of 5 MW wind turbines, and you know exactly how much and when you can generate the power - you have the water stored up months or years in advance.
Wind or solar are, IMHO, a very distant second in terms of output potential and baseload use. Guarantee of supply and the amount of land required are big obstacles.
Putting the generation under water - free-tethered in the center of the water column - could be a good way to satisfy the NIMBYs worrying about the view, and not have much impact on the environment because of their location in the water.
The advantage is that ocean waves are continuous and unending. The wind has a pesky habit of dying down occasionally...
Now take the remaining farmland in the US, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Don't convert an acre of forest, park, or city. No mountains, or prairies. Only the existing farmland. You can grow enough food for everyone (via a vegetarian diet).
Now take the fresh water outflow of the Columbia river - the river separating Washington from Oregon. You've got 27 gallons of fresh water per person per day.
Now put 700 nuclear plants in the deserts of Nevada. You have enough power for everyone to live at the energy consumption level of the US.
Go do the research, you'll see this all to be true. We could support every single person on the face of the earth within 40% of the North American continent. No one on any other continent, island, or waterway.
There aren't too many people; the issue is distribution of the resources. That is a political - not scientific - problem. We could feed the world and provide fresh water for everyone, if we could get countries to agree.
And note that it is almost always the country that would benefit that restricts the offer of aid. Think Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Turkmenistan, North Korea. Those countries are stricken with poverty because of the G8 or the first world; they are stricken because twisted, maniacal leaders are power-drunk.
Overpopulated? Not by a long shot. Poor distribution? Sure. The solution is to encourage free and expanded trade - and in some cases like Zimbabwe and Myanmar - a few well placed bullets. Economic growth is required to free more people.
And when there's more people with freedom and no longer having to worry about their next meal, or their next drink of water, you'll find a lot more participation in solving other big problems facing the world.
Banging pictures don't count.
Yes they are. And it's time for my hourly walk to the front porch to shake my fist and yell "GET OFF MY LAWN!"
That's easy. Give them 2 weeks with any decent Marine drill sergeant and those atoms will form a line double-quick!
When the choice is an inhospitable environment or eating British food, the choice should be obvious. I see you still haven't chosen correctly.
I would posit that it is the best unsuccessful way of fighting; you're guaranteed to lose, but will lose slower. Guerrilla actions just don't work. Sure, you don't lose as quickly as a stand-up action, but the fact remains you still lose.
Is it better to get blown out in the first inning, 11-0 and lose 11-10, or keep it run-for-run throughout the game until you lose 11-10 in the ninth? Either way, it's a loss.
You don't have to field an armored division just because your opponent has one.
Well, if you want to have a chance to win, you kind of do. Hard to take out an M1A1 with AK-47s or even RPG-7s or RPG-9s. Best you can do is slow one down, or even immobilize it (take out the tracks, if you get a lucky shot), but an M1A1 immobilized is still impervious to small and medium arms fire, and still carries firepower (in the main gun and machine guns, grenade launchers and the like) to take out a few hundred infantry.
Ask the Mujahideen about the success of small arms fire and RPGs against the Soviet HIND helicopters. Anti-aircraft missiles were what turned that war. Until the Stinger and other similar systems arrived, the HIND was essentially untouchable, unbeatable, and unstoppable.
The US military is literally light years beyond what else is out there (I know, I developed a little bit of it), and is accelerating even faster. With the well-trained soldiers we have there's really nothing that can stand up to our military. Seriously. Air, land, or sea.
The best you - as a guerrilla - can hope for is to slow down your loss, but ultimately whether you lose or "win" (because we leave) is in the hands of politicians in DC, not the commanders on the field. And certainly not in your hands. You can only commit to hang on as long as possible.
The insurgents know this, too... It's why, every day I was in Iraq, you would get mortar fire about 1 PM in the afternoon. It gave the reporters enough time to write a story, take some pictures, and lead the morning news that day. Attacks were timed AND located at the places not where it made military sense, but where it made propaganda sense.
Being in a convoy that came under small arms fire once, it was rather surreal. A dozen insurgents popped up on roofs and immediately started spraying the convoy with small arms fire and a few RPGs. Literally seconds later the 249s of the USMC raked back, and less than 30 seconds later air support was there mopping up. One Marine injured, 4 insurgents killed, 9 captured. Faced with overwhelming odds, you just can't give those kinds of losses for very long at all.
I'd say 7 of the 8 attacks (one light arms attack, 6 mortars, one IED two blocks ahead of us) I witnessed in Iraq were purely political. They were timed and placed to make a statement, and if they killed a few US soldiers all the better. But chaos and death - Iraqi blood was fine with them, as long as there was blood - was what they wanted to see. They wanted the pressure to get to the President, to make him retreat. They were trying to simply hold on, and wait for the President to fold and pull the troops out. They guessed wrong - he's a stubborn guy and was in the fight to win.
And if we had helped them, it would have been the right thing to do. So because we screwed up in the past, we're to not take action in the future?
You can't use Saddam as an example, since the only reason he was able to consolidate his power in the first place is because of US support. Fact is, we kept Saddam supplied with arms and cash and turned a blind eye to his atrocities against his own people because we needed a bulldog to go against Iran (another mess of our own making).
Yep. Bad policy again. But does that mean no action in the future, because we screwed up in the past? That seems to be a common theme here...
How about kicking some Pakistani ass? Oh, that's right, it'd upset another one of our friendly puppets.
Pakistan was close to getting their own problems taken care of - remember the elections that almost happened? They're shaking themselves loose on their own.
While I agree with the sentiment, do you really want the US military to be fighting a full scale war every time some peasant gets repressed?
No. But in some cases - like Mugabe - a well placed bullet from an SOF would end a lot of problems. When a country gets to a point where people will risk their lives to flee, it's time to act.
And invariably in those situations, the best action isn't to flood the country with dollars and aid because it doesn't get to the people. Get rid of the government, and things will change, usually for better.
Oh, and my experience: 5 trips to Haiti on a medical team, 2 trips on a medical team to Burundi and Malawi, one trip to teach basic language and building skills to Myanmar, twice (2005 and 2006) to Iraq to teach English and commerce, and one trip to teach English to North Korea (where I also handed out 24 copies of the US Declaration of Indepedence and the Constitution, translated to Korean). I've been in the shitholes, and I'll say unequivocally that most of the general population prefer to try a new government - ESPECIALLY a puppet government that was stable - than keep the shit they had.
Without Reagan or someone with his same viewpoint towards the USSR, sure. They'd still be there, and there would still be 80 million Eastern Europeans living in a totalitarian state.
Actually, it didn't. The North Vietnamese were beaten badly time and again, and only survived because China supplied them with arms and men.
Iraq was a problem until the border with Iran was shut down. Suddenly the flow of supplies and materiel decreased, and the tables greatly turned (17 casualties in May - so much for the continuance of the insurgency).
Afgahnistan with the Soviets? Complete domination by the Soviets until the US started feeding weapons to and training the rebels. Then the tide turned.
Guerilla fighting holds up for a few months, at most unless it is backed with serious supplies and personnel. War is about resources, and small insurgent groups simply cannot keep up the resource race with a superpower.
We should have let the USSR continue to exist, it's not like the people in Poland, the Ukraine, or Czech Republic have it all that much better now. And the USSR only killed 30 million or so of their own people, we just needed to talk with them a bit more.
What's the solution you would have used for Saddam? Because we tried for 12 FREAKING years to go about the peaceful, UN approach and ended up finding the UN was skimming billions and in bed with Saddam anyway.
What's your solution to the Taliban?
Care to sit down with Mugabe and explain why he is wrong and he really should just try to understand his people a little better?
Give peace a chance, but after that prepare for an ass kicking...
It also worked quite well in Japan, Germany, Columbia, Panama, the Philippines, Kuwait, and many other places.
Simply put: you cannot negotiate with those who see zero value in people. For they consider YOU also worthless, and why should the talk other than to delay action against them?
Better to save a few million lives and be feared and despised because we carry - and use - a big stick than the sit back and try to tell little Johnny Dictator that he really shouldn't be genocidal and continue to kill people...
Give peace a chance, but after that prepare for an ass kicking.
The average slashdotter is also a programmer, sitting for 16 hours a day and fueled by pizza and Mountain Dew. I bet the slashdotters have a higher percentage of C cups than the general population...
My solution: I print to PDF, then FAX it to my hotel. Have yet to find a place where that did not work...
Better: if you want your luggage to arrive with you, don't check anything. Travel light.
If possible, sure. But sometimes I have to check a bag - supplies, gifts, suits (hard to get 3 of them into an overhead bag), etc. I have yet to have a bag lost. Maybe I'm lucky, but ~400 flights over the last 5 years is a pretty good record so far.
And don't wear shoes, be careful to not bring anything with wires in your luggage. Don't bring a laptop.
No, wear shoes that slip on and off (which are better anyway - kick them off on the plane, socks are much more comfortable), leave your wires in the laptop bag (or if they're not usable on the plane or the airport, check them in your bag), and just pull your laptop out of your laptop bag.
Never had a problem with the laptop, wires, or equipment so far - including my trip in and out of North Korea.
Similar observations work in grocery store lines, as neatly summarized by Apu in one Simpsons episode.
The Simpsons contains much wisdom! On that I fully agree...:)
Every single person on the face of the earth could live on the land (not water) of Texas, and have less population density than New York Metro area.
The outflow of the Columbia River (between Oregon and Washington) would provide each person with 23 gallons of fresh water EACH day.
The farmland in the rest of the US and Canada - not including Texas (where we live), and not including any forests, parks, roads, cities, etc - would allow for 0.6 acres per person, enough to grow food for that person (based upon a primarily vegetarian diet).
Essentially, the entire population could be supported within the confines of the US and Canada. No one and nothing needed anywhere else, or even on the oceans.
Our problem is not resources, our problem is distribution. And it's not a problem that you can solve at the source end - it's at the receiving end of the chain. And it's thugs like Mugabe, Al-bashir, Kim Jong Il, Raul Castro, and many more.
Restricting the resources of your masses makes it easier to control your masses. Dictator 101.
When you have a cell phone, or Internet connection, and the ruling thug doesn't want you to use it, a few well-placed bullets by the thug's goons pretty much dissuades you.
The problem is you assume others have respect for human life of their fellow countrymen. As a person who's been on all 7 continents and 94 countries, I can tell you that for much of the world those assumptions are worthless. Neighbors and fellow countrymen are simply obstacles to me getting whatever I want, when I want it.
Infrastructures in many of those dirt-poor countries are bad not because they don't have money or food or water, but because the ruling thugs WANT it that way. Easier to repress the masses. Keep them struggling to feed themselves or get a mouthful of water and you can more easily rule them.
And because they do not require their "people" to work to build an infrastructure and economy. No, we in the Western World simply give the government all they want. So they can supposedly build that infrastructure, and feed the masses. But that doesn't happen. The ruling thugs get fat on our well-intentioned (but entirely misplaced) funds, and they let more people starve, and plead more poverty so we send more...
And if this sounds like a rant against foreign aid - you read it completely right.
You want to know how to help out the shitholes of the world? Drop in a few special ops teams and blow off a few skulls. Seriously. Because these places WILL NOT CHANGE without cutting out the cancer that is the thugocracy running the place. Current ruler dies? Nothing changes - a crony steps in. And on and on. You want to change and better the lives of the people? It'll take a few 12.7mm sniper rounds, not dollars and flour (or flowers).
- Rants of a guy who's been to several of the shitholes of the world to at least work directly with the people, when possible.
I fly from the US to Asia 6-8 times a year, been doing so the last 5 years. Make it to Europe about 2-3 times a year. Have never had a bag lost (including domestic flights in the US and China), and the longest delay at takeoff I can remember was 2 years ago from YVR (Vancouver International) to PVG (Pudong, Shanghai), when we sat for about 45 minutes while they removed some bags from a passenger who never showed up.
Seriously, it's not the airlines. It's you. Let me know when you fly because I do NOT want that flight...
Now try that from, say, Seattle to the next big city, San Francisco - 1200 km (and two mountain ranges), so we're talking at least 10 hours. About the same from Chicago to NYC.
Even if you accept the 2 hour prior to departure rule, you're talking a 2 hour flight, 2 hours waiting, and 1 hour to and 1 hour from the airport. At most 6 hours versus 10.
Trains work in very dense, small geographic regions like Europe. Outside of smaller areas in the NE of the US, though, trains really aren't viable.
1. Check yourself in electronically - print out your boarding pass at home. That bypasses 30 minutes, easy.
2. Check your baggage AT THE CURB. Pretty much every major airport in the US will let you check your baggage at the curb. Yes, it costs an extra $3 per bag to do so, but that saves another 15 minutes.
3. No metal in your pockets, no liquids in your bag. Yes, you can survive without that bottle of water for 10 minutes.
4. Always choose the security lane with the fewest number of families and old folks. Even if it's longer, you'll get through faster.
I rarely show up more than 30 minutes before my boarding time, and have yet to NOT be at the gate prior to the start of boarding.
For those not familiar with the Seattle/Portland area, that is a 3 hour drive, tops. So the train - at a cost of $42 per seat - takes twice as long as my 1999 Ford Ranger (which burns 8 gallons of gas to go the same distance).
Amtrak costs more, is slower, and not as comfortable. But it sure does make a pretty story!
So far, I am seriously delayed (meaning by more than 20 minutes) about twice a year. If only the trains I ride (in the NE US corridor, Asia, or the EU) and buses (here in Seattle, Shanghai, Singapore, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin) were only so regular.
Additionally, on the two times in the last 3 years where my delay was significant and would result in me missing another connection or critical meeting, the airline located an alternate airline for me, booked me, and gave me a meal coupon to boot.
Would I rather not have to change? Sure! But if there's a screwup at least the airlines own up to it and do what they can to make it right (NOTE: to get this treatment you need to be calm and courteous to the counter staff - seriously, it does work).
I can't remember the last time a bus driver apologized for being late or missing a connection, or a conductor re-booked my tickets because we were late coming out of Zurich.
Better yet, try prepaid credit cards. Work great, no name, and won't cut you off from lots of things that cash-only will (like paying for gas at the pump, online purchases and subscriptions, etc).
No, you screw the HOOKERS. Damn, you are an engineer, aren't you?
...is that people actually LIVE where they test those rovers. I guess when we send men to Mars we know where to start looking for volunteers!