Rather than teaching them karate, you should enroll them in Brazilian Jujitsu. It is far more effective than karate (which relies on strength rather than leverage). Even a small child (8 or 9) can break an adult's arm or choke them to unconsciousness (you might want to take a few lessons yourself, so they don't use it on you!). A few months of training makes them as effective in a fight as someone ~3 times their mass. As someone who sparred with a 55 year old woman that was about a third my weight, I can tell you that they can get you into a submission against your will, and if you don't tap out, they are perfectly capable of leaving you there.
No, the populace wanted to go to war because Bush, rather convincingly, said that Saddam was going to nuke the US (smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud, anyone?). He claimed to have secret intelligence, and the whole population fell for it, including myself, and I was a liberal Democrat at the time). Once word that there were NEVER any WMDs came out, Bush's popularity tanked.
No, you are wrong there. Libertarianism does not support even the EXISTENCE of corporations, which is an unnatural shield that is granted by the government to shareholders. Articles of incorporation are granted by states, and entitle the owners of said corporation to conduct business and obtain personal profit without liability for their actions. This is the ANTITHESIS of libertarianism.
If everyone really understood how libertarianism worked, 99% of people would be libertarians. I used to be a liberal myself, until I learned about economics. REAL economics, not the Keynesian crap they teach in macroeconomics.
If you want to learn about REAL libertarianism, I would suggest going to mises.org and reading some of the articles there. They will open your eyes.
Of course, because it's better to have an unrestrained government full of sociopaths than a society that is free to interact as it pleases, within a few basic rules (no assault, no murder, no fraud, no theft).
Surely sociopaths in government would never line their own pockets, or those of their friends in the banking industry in exchange for cushy positions that pay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year at the end of their terms. Surely they would never sell America down the drain for their own interests.
In a libertarian society, people have power over themselves, and interact through mutual exchange for mutual benefit. Some might call this exploitation by money. In any other society, people have power over people, which leads to exploitation at the barrel of a gun (if you don't think this is true, try not paying your taxes for a few years and see what the gentlemen that come knocking at your door are carrying). Those are the only two ways people can deal with each other. Money or guns. It's your choice.
They are equivalent. No-body wanted McCain's policies because he wanted to continue Bush's policies, and it was well known that this happened on his watch. Everyone knew that Obama's policies wouldn't work because they don't make sense. How can you solve too much debt with more debt? How can you maintain high housing prices when people are losing their jobs? You can't. The only thing that will happen if you try is that the misery will be prolonged.
Many of us (libertarians) belong to the Republican party, but only because we are trying to take it back from the neoconservatives. I, myself am a member, but I have informed the party leadership on many occasions that, while I do have the ability to support them financially, that I never will until they become more welcoming to libertarian and anti-war views. I, personally, have made a lot of progress in talking to conservatives who are now waking up and realizing that they were betrayed by their leadership, and that Democrats have been betrayed as well (Guantanamo is still open, last I heard, though it doesn't make the news any more, and the Patriot Act is being extended, and there has been little or no accountability for the war crimes of the Bush administration at higher levels). This started with Reagan and his spending binge that started us down the road to national decline, and hopefully ended with the endless atrocities and spending of the Bush Administration. It is strange, it seems like a switch was flipped in every Republican's mind as soon as they lost the election. Where before they supported everything neoconservative, now they scream for libertarianism (except with the war).
Also strange is the switch that seems to have been flipped in every Democrat's mind. Now Republicans are the whiney, America hating terrorists. They have taken up the exact same rhetoric used up until the election by the Republicans, and indeed, they are continuing ALL of the major policies left in place by the Bush administration, while instituting every program they can think of because they (sincerely, I think) believe that government spending can somehow get us out of this Depression. It can't, of course. If it could, there would never be recessions. The Japanese tried it for twenty years, and only got twenty years of stagnation, and a huge debt to boot. Our debt is already unsustainable. What is going to happen when we double it?
I'm not worried about his arrogance, I'm concerned with the arrogance of our government. You know, the one that spent a half a trillion of our dollars on a war we didn't want in Iraq, and spent I-don't-even-know-how many trillions of our money on bailouts that the populace was against at a margin of something like 9:1.
Our government and both parties have proved that they are incompetent to lead this nation. I think it's time we try the policy that took us from being a backwater colony to the world's largest creditor nation with the greatest industrial capacity the world had ever seen. That is, small government with free markets. A month-long panic here or there is FAR preferable to the three generational depressions that we have been saddled with since the government adopted central planning in the form of the Federal Reserve.
The shuttle launches an average of 25,000 kilos for an average of 1.3 billion dollars per launch ($52,000/kilo, and understand that each dollar is spent on resources, so this reflects how much of humanities work goes into these launches). The Titan 4B launches slightly less, about 22,000 kilos for only 350 million dollars on the high end, or "only" $16,000/kilo.
And it doesn't matter if people in Africa are fighting over X resource, because people in Africa will ALWAYS (and have always) fight over resources, whether it's diamonds, slaves, rum, guns, or coltan. The space program is not the place to be arguing about such things, as despite the large size of the rockets, they are dwarfed by the amount of materials used in any other domestic industry. You would be better off getting people to recycle old electronics than trying and let the rockets remain disposables, because the mass of the computers and other electronics thrown out is probably a hundred times that of the rockets each year. Space is a unique industry, where even highly inefficient things like 1970's era solar cells (which cost more fuel to make than they ever put out in energy) are needed, because they reduce the launch weight, which is so incredibly expensive.
Chemical rockets are too expensive, really. You need something cheaper, and I think that anyone who knows anything agrees that space elevators, or some other transformative solution, is required to do it.
The thing is that reusable rockets take MORE fuel than single use rockets, because they have to be built heavier to survive more trips. In the long run, all you have thrown away are a bunch of heaps of scrap metal, which won't be rare on Earth...ever. You wind up using a LOT LESS fuel with the disposable rockets because they are so much lighter.
This is why the costs for the Space Shuttle have ballooned to the size they are today. It costs more to repair each time than it does to replace with a disposable rocket, and the reusable rocket is heavier, thus requiring more fuel.
Yes, the price will eventually go up to market value of the end product, but by introducing new supply, the price on the general market will come down.
I wonder how much long it will be before we start mining our trash for plastic, and why not copper, silver, and gold while we're at it.
Oil isn't the important part here, as the same amount of energy is expended every time in either system. It's relatively easy to build a system that will only be used one both safely and cheaply, whereas with reusable systems, you wind up spending more money (which implies the use of more resources) retrofitting and getting the old girl ready for her next launch than it would cost to just build another throwaway unit. In addition, you get economies of scale, as you would have continually operating infrastructure building these things, rather than losing talent over the years due to non-use. In addition, you aren't so locked into old designs when you are launching new rockets at each launch.
The limiting factor in space launches isn't the metal frame. Those can be mass produced cheaply and easily. It's the fuel that is the problem. When you have a reusable vehicle that has to be able to launch safely time and again, it is also likely to be heavier, so you wind up using more fuel that you would with a disposable system.
If you want a reusable system, it needs to be something with a minimum number of moving parts. I would suggest a space elevator.
FYI, Victorian era prudishness didn't hold sway anywhere in the world prior to *GASP* the Victorian Era. For the vast majority of human history, sex has been public, and sexual "deviance" accepted wholeheartedly. The only possible exception is the followers of God, in their various forms, who didn't take kindly to any "deviance" from any "norm", including sexuality, so much so that they kill each other over minor differences in their books.
Everything you said is absolutely true. That's why the Soviets won the Cold War, and why Cuba and North Korea have the highest standards of living in the world.
To be fair, neither has the government. Indeed, the acts of our own government would be called genocide had they been carried out by private corporations. Think Vietnam or Iraq here.
That depends solely on cost. It is a LOT cheaper to build a disposable unit to spec than it is to build a reusable one. That is one of the reasons why the Shuttle's launch costs have ballooned the way they have. It has also stuck us with a non-upgradable product that we have been forced to use until failure. That is not good.
And thus the strong survive to propagate their superior technology and business model.
I don't see a problem here. This is exactly the model that we need to use to get into space reliably. Not the "Well, we had a few launches fail catastrophically, so let's keep doing the same thing just spending more money, and never actually improve anything, oh and by the way your funding is cut" that we get with the involvement of government funded space agencies.
Who said anything about it pointing toward any existing model. This observation is something that was not predicted by the old model, yet will have significant consequences on thermal inputs.
This is why I always describe global warming people as cultists. Any "attack" on their dogma is immediately met with ridicule and belittlement, rather than an actual defense.
Of course, anti-global warming people are just as bad, it's just that I happen to agree with their thesis, that is, that global warming is cyclical and not significantly anthropogenic, and if it were to be real, it would actually be a positive for mankind, as warm periods always create Renaissance-type situations in civilization, while cold periods tend bring an end to great cultures.
Right, that's why you surround it with insulation. The metal is good at receiving and giving off heat, which means it can be tapped quickly and recharged efficiently. You still need a vessel.
Anonymous Coward thinks that science advances by clinging to accepted dogma regardless of new advances, and not connecting the dots between contradictory data points with new theories.
Sorry, how do you prove that any portion is anthropogenic when you don't have a control?
As a scientist looking at the global warming debate, it always marvels me that no-one ever talks about the effect that water vapor has on global temperatures, given that water vapor has a heat capacity of 1.8 kJ/kgK, while CO2 has a heat capacity of only 0.8 kJ/kgK, and also given that the concentration of water vapor on average is composes 10X more of the atmosphere than CO2, meaning that the total impact of CO2 is about 20 fold less than water vapor, which is itself highly variable in concentration. Why doesn't anyone ever complain about the deleterious effects of water vapor in the atmosphere? Why aren't we moving to ban hydrogen vehicles that put out huge amounts of water vapor?
Instead, we are undertaking an incredibly expensive adventure (I would call it tilting at windmills, as the effect that it would have is miniscule, as even the advocates for CO2 reduction admit) that would limit the economic growth of the world in such an appallingly uneven way that it could be considered genocide (that is, by not allowing emerging economies to industrialize, we are killing off vast numbers of their populations who need the goods supplied by an industrial society to live). What this discovery points out is that, well, maybe we don't really have a handle on this global warming thing, and that we shouldn't cut off the arms and legs of our civilization with an environmentally friendly electric chainsaw before we have a full grasp of what is going on here.
One should realize that if one wants to decrease the amount of CO2 put out into the atmosphere, the best way is to kill off people in industrial societies. Barring that, the second best way is to create a situtaion where we go into a permanent economic depression. When everyone is poor, CO2 emissions go down. Of course, that will wind up having the same effect as numerous people die from heat in the summer and cold in the winter, or starvation. Any other solution that anyone can come up with will have the same effect in one way or another, with the only possible exception that I can think of being to move toward nuclear power, or wild advances in solar. Therefore, if you want to decrease humanities carbon emissions without murdering people, or subjecting them to poverty, you need only remove all regulations limiting the implementation of nuclear power around the world. Stop worrying about brown skinned people getting a hold of nukes. They will only use them for self defense once their standard of living starts rising thanks to cheap power.
And when the Oompla Loompas said to WIllie Wonka, "Why do we need you any more?", he said, "Because I pay you in these little sheets of paper than I have printed. Without me, who will pay you for the things you produce?"
They then promptly tossed him out with the bad nuts.
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What does "forcibly removed" mean? That it was torn off? More likely they would simply remove it normally.
Rather than teaching them karate, you should enroll them in Brazilian Jujitsu. It is far more effective than karate (which relies on strength rather than leverage). Even a small child (8 or 9) can break an adult's arm or choke them to unconsciousness (you might want to take a few lessons yourself, so they don't use it on you!). A few months of training makes them as effective in a fight as someone ~3 times their mass. As someone who sparred with a 55 year old woman that was about a third my weight, I can tell you that they can get you into a submission against your will, and if you don't tap out, they are perfectly capable of leaving you there.
Not anymore you don't.
No, the populace wanted to go to war because Bush, rather convincingly, said that Saddam was going to nuke the US (smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud, anyone?). He claimed to have secret intelligence, and the whole population fell for it, including myself, and I was a liberal Democrat at the time). Once word that there were NEVER any WMDs came out, Bush's popularity tanked.
No, you are wrong there. Libertarianism does not support even the EXISTENCE of corporations, which is an unnatural shield that is granted by the government to shareholders. Articles of incorporation are granted by states, and entitle the owners of said corporation to conduct business and obtain personal profit without liability for their actions. This is the ANTITHESIS of libertarianism.
If everyone really understood how libertarianism worked, 99% of people would be libertarians. I used to be a liberal myself, until I learned about economics. REAL economics, not the Keynesian crap they teach in macroeconomics.
If you want to learn about REAL libertarianism, I would suggest going to mises.org and reading some of the articles there. They will open your eyes.
Of course, because it's better to have an unrestrained government full of sociopaths than a society that is free to interact as it pleases, within a few basic rules (no assault, no murder, no fraud, no theft).
Surely sociopaths in government would never line their own pockets, or those of their friends in the banking industry in exchange for cushy positions that pay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year at the end of their terms. Surely they would never sell America down the drain for their own interests.
In a libertarian society, people have power over themselves, and interact through mutual exchange for mutual benefit. Some might call this exploitation by money. In any other society, people have power over people, which leads to exploitation at the barrel of a gun (if you don't think this is true, try not paying your taxes for a few years and see what the gentlemen that come knocking at your door are carrying). Those are the only two ways people can deal with each other. Money or guns. It's your choice.
They are equivalent. No-body wanted McCain's policies because he wanted to continue Bush's policies, and it was well known that this happened on his watch. Everyone knew that Obama's policies wouldn't work because they don't make sense. How can you solve too much debt with more debt? How can you maintain high housing prices when people are losing their jobs? You can't. The only thing that will happen if you try is that the misery will be prolonged.
Many of us (libertarians) belong to the Republican party, but only because we are trying to take it back from the neoconservatives. I, myself am a member, but I have informed the party leadership on many occasions that, while I do have the ability to support them financially, that I never will until they become more welcoming to libertarian and anti-war views. I, personally, have made a lot of progress in talking to conservatives who are now waking up and realizing that they were betrayed by their leadership, and that Democrats have been betrayed as well (Guantanamo is still open, last I heard, though it doesn't make the news any more, and the Patriot Act is being extended, and there has been little or no accountability for the war crimes of the Bush administration at higher levels). This started with Reagan and his spending binge that started us down the road to national decline, and hopefully ended with the endless atrocities and spending of the Bush Administration. It is strange, it seems like a switch was flipped in every Republican's mind as soon as they lost the election. Where before they supported everything neoconservative, now they scream for libertarianism (except with the war).
Also strange is the switch that seems to have been flipped in every Democrat's mind. Now Republicans are the whiney, America hating terrorists. They have taken up the exact same rhetoric used up until the election by the Republicans, and indeed, they are continuing ALL of the major policies left in place by the Bush administration, while instituting every program they can think of because they (sincerely, I think) believe that government spending can somehow get us out of this Depression. It can't, of course. If it could, there would never be recessions. The Japanese tried it for twenty years, and only got twenty years of stagnation, and a huge debt to boot. Our debt is already unsustainable. What is going to happen when we double it?
I'm not worried about his arrogance, I'm concerned with the arrogance of our government. You know, the one that spent a half a trillion of our dollars on a war we didn't want in Iraq, and spent I-don't-even-know-how many trillions of our money on bailouts that the populace was against at a margin of something like 9:1.
Our government and both parties have proved that they are incompetent to lead this nation. I think it's time we try the policy that took us from being a backwater colony to the world's largest creditor nation with the greatest industrial capacity the world had ever seen. That is, small government with free markets. A month-long panic here or there is FAR preferable to the three generational depressions that we have been saddled with since the government adopted central planning in the form of the Federal Reserve.
The shuttle launches an average of 25,000 kilos for an average of 1.3 billion dollars per launch ($52,000/kilo, and understand that each dollar is spent on resources, so this reflects how much of humanities work goes into these launches). The Titan 4B launches slightly less, about 22,000 kilos for only 350 million dollars on the high end, or "only" $16,000/kilo.
And it doesn't matter if people in Africa are fighting over X resource, because people in Africa will ALWAYS (and have always) fight over resources, whether it's diamonds, slaves, rum, guns, or coltan. The space program is not the place to be arguing about such things, as despite the large size of the rockets, they are dwarfed by the amount of materials used in any other domestic industry. You would be better off getting people to recycle old electronics than trying and let the rockets remain disposables, because the mass of the computers and other electronics thrown out is probably a hundred times that of the rockets each year. Space is a unique industry, where even highly inefficient things like 1970's era solar cells (which cost more fuel to make than they ever put out in energy) are needed, because they reduce the launch weight, which is so incredibly expensive.
Chemical rockets are too expensive, really. You need something cheaper, and I think that anyone who knows anything agrees that space elevators, or some other transformative solution, is required to do it.
The thing is that reusable rockets take MORE fuel than single use rockets, because they have to be built heavier to survive more trips. In the long run, all you have thrown away are a bunch of heaps of scrap metal, which won't be rare on Earth...ever. You wind up using a LOT LESS fuel with the disposable rockets because they are so much lighter.
This is why the costs for the Space Shuttle have ballooned to the size they are today. It costs more to repair each time than it does to replace with a disposable rocket, and the reusable rocket is heavier, thus requiring more fuel.
By your logic, oil refineries also operate on pixie dust.
Luckily, DOW has a full team of imagineers on staff, or this whole oil based economy wouldn't exist.
Yes, the price will eventually go up to market value of the end product, but by introducing new supply, the price on the general market will come down.
I wonder how much long it will be before we start mining our trash for plastic, and why not copper, silver, and gold while we're at it.
Oil isn't the important part here, as the same amount of energy is expended every time in either system. It's relatively easy to build a system that will only be used one both safely and cheaply, whereas with reusable systems, you wind up spending more money (which implies the use of more resources) retrofitting and getting the old girl ready for her next launch than it would cost to just build another throwaway unit. In addition, you get economies of scale, as you would have continually operating infrastructure building these things, rather than losing talent over the years due to non-use. In addition, you aren't so locked into old designs when you are launching new rockets at each launch.
The limiting factor in space launches isn't the metal frame. Those can be mass produced cheaply and easily. It's the fuel that is the problem. When you have a reusable vehicle that has to be able to launch safely time and again, it is also likely to be heavier, so you wind up using more fuel that you would with a disposable system.
If you want a reusable system, it needs to be something with a minimum number of moving parts. I would suggest a space elevator.
FYI, Victorian era prudishness didn't hold sway anywhere in the world prior to *GASP* the Victorian Era. For the vast majority of human history, sex has been public, and sexual "deviance" accepted wholeheartedly. The only possible exception is the followers of God, in their various forms, who didn't take kindly to any "deviance" from any "norm", including sexuality, so much so that they kill each other over minor differences in their books.
Everything you said is absolutely true. That's why the Soviets won the Cold War, and why Cuba and North Korea have the highest standards of living in the world.
Wait a second...
To be fair, neither has the government. Indeed, the acts of our own government would be called genocide had they been carried out by private corporations. Think Vietnam or Iraq here.
That depends solely on cost. It is a LOT cheaper to build a disposable unit to spec than it is to build a reusable one. That is one of the reasons why the Shuttle's launch costs have ballooned the way they have. It has also stuck us with a non-upgradable product that we have been forced to use until failure. That is not good.
They have made the perfect the enemy of the good to such an extend that they were stuck with the worst, and people died because of it.
And thus the strong survive to propagate their superior technology and business model.
I don't see a problem here. This is exactly the model that we need to use to get into space reliably. Not the "Well, we had a few launches fail catastrophically, so let's keep doing the same thing just spending more money, and never actually improve anything, oh and by the way your funding is cut" that we get with the involvement of government funded space agencies.
Who said anything about it pointing toward any existing model. This observation is something that was not predicted by the old model, yet will have significant consequences on thermal inputs.
This is why I always describe global warming people as cultists. Any "attack" on their dogma is immediately met with ridicule and belittlement, rather than an actual defense.
Of course, anti-global warming people are just as bad, it's just that I happen to agree with their thesis, that is, that global warming is cyclical and not significantly anthropogenic, and if it were to be real, it would actually be a positive for mankind, as warm periods always create Renaissance-type situations in civilization, while cold periods tend bring an end to great cultures.
Right, that's why you surround it with insulation. The metal is good at receiving and giving off heat, which means it can be tapped quickly and recharged efficiently. You still need a vessel.
Anonymous Coward thinks that science advances by clinging to accepted dogma regardless of new advances, and not connecting the dots between contradictory data points with new theories.
Sorry, how do you prove that any portion is anthropogenic when you don't have a control?
As a scientist looking at the global warming debate, it always marvels me that no-one ever talks about the effect that water vapor has on global temperatures, given that water vapor has a heat capacity of 1.8 kJ/kgK, while CO2 has a heat capacity of only 0.8 kJ/kgK, and also given that the concentration of water vapor on average is composes 10X more of the atmosphere than CO2, meaning that the total impact of CO2 is about 20 fold less than water vapor, which is itself highly variable in concentration. Why doesn't anyone ever complain about the deleterious effects of water vapor in the atmosphere? Why aren't we moving to ban hydrogen vehicles that put out huge amounts of water vapor?
Instead, we are undertaking an incredibly expensive adventure (I would call it tilting at windmills, as the effect that it would have is miniscule, as even the advocates for CO2 reduction admit) that would limit the economic growth of the world in such an appallingly uneven way that it could be considered genocide (that is, by not allowing emerging economies to industrialize, we are killing off vast numbers of their populations who need the goods supplied by an industrial society to live). What this discovery points out is that, well, maybe we don't really have a handle on this global warming thing, and that we shouldn't cut off the arms and legs of our civilization with an environmentally friendly electric chainsaw before we have a full grasp of what is going on here.
One should realize that if one wants to decrease the amount of CO2 put out into the atmosphere, the best way is to kill off people in industrial societies. Barring that, the second best way is to create a situtaion where we go into a permanent economic depression. When everyone is poor, CO2 emissions go down. Of course, that will wind up having the same effect as numerous people die from heat in the summer and cold in the winter, or starvation. Any other solution that anyone can come up with will have the same effect in one way or another, with the only possible exception that I can think of being to move toward nuclear power, or wild advances in solar. Therefore, if you want to decrease humanities carbon emissions without murdering people, or subjecting them to poverty, you need only remove all regulations limiting the implementation of nuclear power around the world. Stop worrying about brown skinned people getting a hold of nukes. They will only use them for self defense once their standard of living starts rising thanks to cheap power.
And when the Oompla Loompas said to WIllie Wonka, "Why do we need you any more?", he said, "Because I pay you in these little sheets of paper than I have printed. Without me, who will pay you for the things you produce?"
They then promptly tossed him out with the bad nuts.