A TVA engineer may have been working under a particular set of assumptions that worked back in the 70s when our oil EROEI ratio was closer to 100 to 1, not the current 12 to 1 (and declining).
"Economical" is a different concept when electrical prices go up enough because just transporting the coal gets much more expensive.
He also may not have been thinking of something the size of a municipal reservoir producing just enough power to service scattered small communities. Why would he? Not in his worldview at all, I imagine.
A big dam, perhaps. One of a few thousand small dams, no. Moreover, a dam causes its damage and then is no longer dangerous. Not so with a nuclear plant. You've heard of Chernobyl?
Isn't there room for quite a lot more hydroelectric power in the USA?
I mean, build a diversion pond, put in a generator, hook to grid. Repeat on a small to medium scale thousands of times wherever it makes sense. Same with solar. Same with wind. Same with geothermal.
Seems that a distributed heterogeneous solution would make a lot more sense in terms of sustainability over the long run. Not to mention being much more difficult for your average (or even above-average) terrorist to exploit for nefarious purposes.
Agreed. The "Wall Street Journal" has morphed into "Wall Street People Magazine" and useful to line my cat litter box and stuff packages containing fragile items but not much more. FT is still tolerable if you want information about the economy, but don't want to have ultraconservative delusional thinking shoved down your throat as "Investor's Business Daily" does.
I think the whole point of a diversion dam is that you *don't* dam up the river. You divert some of the flow to a reservoir, use it for small to medium scale power generation, and return it to the river. At worst, you get a few miles of river with diminished flow.
Useful is in the eye of the beholder. Admittedly, you couldn't use the Rio Grande to power El Paso, but you could use the Mississippi, with difficulty and some very wide paddle wheels to power most of the towns around it.
We must not allow any consciousness alteration that does not involve singing about Jesus all day! To save all souls, we will lock all children in a telephone booth size room until their indoctrination is complete at age 55. It's for their own good! Really!
Excuse me, I have to mop up some sarcasm while contemplating how unprofitable the news business must be if they're stooping to drug scares *again* to drive revenue and distract from real economic and ecological problems.
Um, no there isn't infinite water, but there's a lot in a lot of different areas that could be adding power to the grid. It does require land, and the way, the method to capture and contain it is usually called a "dam."
So, are you seriously suggesting that building a nuclear power plant doesn't require water, doesn't require land, and has fewer technical issues than a small dam with a power turbine?
You really might want to think this one through a bit.
Is it the only solution? No. Will it eliminate the need for nuclear power plants. Probably not. Will it eliminate the need for *some* nuclear plants. Yes.
The bottom line here is that hydro as I described it is sustainable, distributed, lower-tech and probably cheaper per watt than any nuclear power plant and doesn't depend on yet another limited resource, often purchased from hostile powers.
Well, that's why you build side diversion dams that don't block the main river, just siphon off part of the flow to a reservoir and use that for power before returning it to the main river. You get flood control and increased water habitat in the bargain.
why thousands of small to medium size hydro-electric side diversion dams aren't built on all the rivers in the USA where it makes sense? Not sexy enough? Boring technology? Just works? Robust? Too decentralized and under local control? Too much redundancy in case one goes down? Too little radiation or dependence on foreign powers? What? What?!
which as a person born in nineteen fifty (mumble, mumble), I remember quite well. It was in the public library, museums, photography magazines, news stands, posters....
Unless the conservative christian talibani want to ban all those things and confine us all to our homes where presumably we'll sing about Jesus all day, it's unlikely that they'll even slow down the average adolescent male.
Some civilizations will, for a short period of time, use detectable radio as a means of communication, but I suspect that there are very few of these at the same point in their technological development as we are. It would make more sense to look for objects that are almost certainly artifacts. Geometrically placed stars moving in the same direction at the same speed. The infrared signature of Dyson spheres. Anything that's too geometrically perfect to be natural. Anything that's accelerating//decelerating relative to it's surroundings. In our own solar system, what would an asteroid mine tailing look like, and does anything look like that?
And Doctorates too, but it depends on what you're hiring them for. I interviewed a math PH.D. who was applying for a software test automation job. I needed him to be able to think and solve real time technical problems and longer term architectural problems. During the interview, I lobbed him what I thought were fairly easy problem solving questions.
Zip. Zilch. Nada. The guy appeared to be a hopeless idiot. I gave him a thumbs down for the testing department.
Development eventually hired him, for numerical analysis development, at which he excelled, even though his programming per se is pretty awful.
It's a simple enough proposition. The government directs you to provide free resources and labor in the form of software security enforcement to the for-profit organization we designate or we cut off your education funding.
In case nobody's noticed, we win wars on technology.... made abroad in China and India. One day, either may not like us so much, or may like another country more.
So all you "free flow of capital" guys can tell me about it when the bombs are falling and the troops are standing at your door with dogs and guns at 5 am. This happened to my Uncle and Grandfather when the Russians stopped by to chat. Think it can't happen here? Think again.
Right now, there's no tax or any other incentive to produce in the USA, so corporate executives who can afford to live comfortably in any country they wish were, and still are, quite happy to accumulate money while selling people who work in the USA (i.e. peasants) down the river. An invasion or economic depression here won't bother them. There's always another country.
The citizens will revolt when: 1) Cheap food is unavailable AND 2) Cheap psychoactive drugs are unavailable AND 3) Cheap entertainment is unavailable
Not before. The elites who control the money of the world know this very well. Nobody is revolting in Peru or even Haiti. Nobody is going to revolt here either. WikiLeaks is a sideshow for the rubes, much like the conservative republican/liberal democrat smackdown that goes on daily.
Of course, even the wealthy have no answers either to oil depletion, the replay of act II of the depression, the gulf oil spill, fussy countries with nuclear weapons or a good solid carrington event.
New job posting! Live in the USA. Get an absurdly high salary. Hobnob with politicians. Raise hydrangeas. Provide nearly useless tidbits of information. Pick your job title from the following list:
1) Journalist 2) Spy 3) Lobbyist 4) Politician running for office 5) Lawyer 6) Wealthy old money parasite 7) Failed CEO of HP/Compaq, Microsoft, Enron or any Hedge fund. 8) Oprah (or generic talk show host)
Slashdot Mirror
A TVA engineer may have been working under a particular set of assumptions that worked back in the 70s when our oil EROEI ratio was closer to 100 to 1, not the current 12 to 1 (and declining).
"Economical" is a different concept when electrical prices go up enough because just transporting the coal gets much more expensive.
He also may not have been thinking of something the size of a municipal reservoir producing just enough power to service scattered small communities. Why would he? Not in his worldview at all, I imagine.
Could you tell me how you know that? Links? References? Not trying to be argumentative. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Just trying to get the facts.
A big dam, perhaps. One of a few thousand small dams, no. Moreover, a dam causes its damage and then is no longer dangerous. Not so with a nuclear plant. You've heard of Chernobyl?
Isn't there room for quite a lot more hydroelectric power in the USA?
I mean, build a diversion pond, put in a generator, hook to grid. Repeat on a small to medium scale thousands of times wherever it makes sense. Same with solar. Same with wind. Same with geothermal.
Seems that a distributed heterogeneous solution would make a lot more sense in terms of sustainability over the long run. Not to mention being much more difficult for your average (or even above-average) terrorist to exploit for nefarious purposes.
Agreed. The "Wall Street Journal" has morphed into "Wall Street People Magazine" and useful to line my cat litter box and stuff packages containing fragile items but not much more. FT is still tolerable if you want information about the economy, but don't want to have ultraconservative delusional thinking shoved down your throat as "Investor's Business Daily" does.
I think the whole point of a diversion dam is that you *don't* dam up the river. You divert some of the flow to a reservoir, use it for small to medium scale power generation, and return it to the river. At worst, you get a few miles of river with diminished flow.
Useful is in the eye of the beholder. Admittedly, you couldn't use the Rio Grande to power El Paso, but you could use the Mississippi, with difficulty and some very wide paddle wheels to power most of the towns around it.
We must not allow any consciousness alteration that does not involve singing about Jesus all day! To save all souls, we will lock all children in a telephone booth size room until their indoctrination is complete at age 55. It's for their own good! Really!
Excuse me, I have to mop up some sarcasm while contemplating how unprofitable the news business must be if they're stooping to drug scares *again* to drive revenue and distract from real economic and ecological problems.
Um, no there isn't infinite water, but there's a lot in a lot of different areas that could be adding power to the grid. It does require land, and the way, the method to capture and contain it is usually called a "dam."
So, are you seriously suggesting that building a nuclear power plant doesn't require water, doesn't require land, and has fewer technical issues than a small dam with a power turbine?
You really might want to think this one through a bit.
Is it the only solution? No. Will it eliminate the need for nuclear power plants. Probably not. Will it eliminate the need for *some* nuclear plants. Yes.
The bottom line here is that hydro as I described it is sustainable, distributed, lower-tech and probably cheaper per watt than any nuclear power plant and doesn't depend on yet another limited resource, often purchased from hostile powers.
Well, that's why you build side diversion dams that don't block the main river, just siphon off part of the flow to a reservoir and use that for power before returning it to the main river. You get flood control and increased water habitat in the bargain.
why thousands of small to medium size hydro-electric side diversion dams aren't built on all the rivers in the USA where it makes sense? Not sexy enough? Boring technology? Just works? Robust? Too decentralized and under local control? Too much redundancy in case one goes down? Too little radiation or dependence on foreign powers? What? What?!
which as a person born in nineteen fifty (mumble, mumble), I remember quite well. It was in the public library, museums, photography magazines, news stands, posters....
Unless the conservative christian talibani want to ban all those things and confine us all to our homes where presumably we'll sing about Jesus all day, it's unlikely that they'll even slow down the average adolescent male.
Or whatever you call baby shrimp.
That might be enough if we have to run the simulations in Windows.
Actually, I'm sort of OK with "aliens are real" at this point. I figure there's time to exchange recipes later.
Some civilizations will, for a short period of time, use detectable radio as a means of communication, but I suspect that there are very few of these at the same point in their technological development as we are. It would make more sense to look for objects that are almost certainly artifacts. Geometrically placed stars moving in the same direction at the same speed. The infrared signature of Dyson spheres. Anything that's too geometrically perfect to be natural. Anything that's accelerating//decelerating relative to it's surroundings. In our own solar system, what would an asteroid mine tailing look like, and does anything look like that?
But would such "noise" get past a zipf analysis? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law). Even compressed and encrypted data doesn't lose order.
And Doctorates too, but it depends on what you're hiring them for. I interviewed a math PH.D. who was applying for a software test automation job. I needed him to be able to think and solve real time technical problems and longer term architectural problems. During the interview, I lobbed him what I thought were fairly easy problem solving questions.
Zip. Zilch. Nada. The guy appeared to be a hopeless idiot. I gave him a thumbs down for the testing department.
Development eventually hired him, for numerical analysis development, at which he excelled, even though his programming per se is pretty awful.
You mean you don't?
Actually "nod politely, and back away slowly, calling the police on your cell phone" would be my advice.
It's a simple enough proposition. The government directs you to provide free resources and labor in the form of software security enforcement to the for-profit organization we designate or we cut off your education funding.
What could be the problem with that?
In case nobody's noticed, we win wars on technology.... made abroad in China and India. One day, either may not like us so much, or may like another country more.
So all you "free flow of capital" guys can tell me about it when the bombs are falling and the troops are standing at your door with dogs and guns at 5 am. This happened to my Uncle and Grandfather when the Russians stopped by to chat. Think it can't happen here? Think again.
Right now, there's no tax or any other incentive to produce in the USA, so corporate executives who can afford to live comfortably in any country they wish were, and still are, quite happy to accumulate money while selling people who work in the USA (i.e. peasants) down the river. An invasion or economic depression here won't bother them. There's always another country.
Beer of the Feast. Amen.
The citizens will revolt when:
1) Cheap food is unavailable AND
2) Cheap psychoactive drugs are unavailable AND
3) Cheap entertainment is unavailable
Not before. The elites who control the money of the world know this very well. Nobody is revolting in Peru or even Haiti. Nobody is going to revolt here either. WikiLeaks is a sideshow for the rubes, much like the conservative republican/liberal democrat smackdown that goes on daily.
Of course, even the wealthy have no answers either to oil depletion, the replay of act II of the depression, the gulf oil spill, fussy countries with nuclear weapons or a good solid carrington event.
All those books and papers? Comedy! Literate programming? C'mon, who'd take *that* seriously. TeX? Wrote it as a joke on his professor.
New job posting! Live in the USA. Get an absurdly high salary. Hobnob with politicians. Raise hydrangeas. Provide nearly useless tidbits of information. Pick your job title from the following list:
1) Journalist
2) Spy
3) Lobbyist
4) Politician running for office
5) Lawyer
6) Wealthy old money parasite
7) Failed CEO of HP/Compaq, Microsoft, Enron or any Hedge fund.
8) Oprah (or generic talk show host)