This sounds unlikely. The mass of the Earth is about 6 x 10^24 kg. If Earth is losing 2 x 10^12 kg of material every day then the Earth would lose all of its mass in about eight billion years, and this assumes that all of the material being lost is the genetic material.
I'm not agreeing with the OP's figures for the loss rate of materiel, but perhaps since you're running the calculations already, you could include the Earth's accretion rate? Doesn't the Earth also have an income of extraterrestrial materials, such as solar particles and space dust?
I wasn't saying that there was a limited supply to deliberately misinform or to dissuade. I figured that there were probably a bunch of unknown reserves that would have varying degrees of accessibility. That's why I brought up breeder reactors as a condition of making nuclear fission a long-term solution to our carbon problem. IIRC, the figure for supply of uranium 235 with known reserves is something like 100-150 years. But if we used breeders/re-enrichment, we could stretch that known supply up to 1000 years.
Maybe to call a 100 year supply with current reserves and techniques is "limited" is wrong, but from the perspective of wanting to find a long-term solution, 100 years isn't long enough IMHO. I just want our next base-load power supply to come from a tech that can tide us over until we have fusion, orbital solar arrays, or that next future tech that I haven't even imagined yet.
How about we get the national press to show more footage of the fly ash disaster that's going on in Tennessee right now? Over a billion gallons of liquid fly ash spilled out of a ruptured holding pond and covered the surrounding landscape with toxic waste. A few days later, another tank under the TVA nearly ruptured in a similar, but smaller fashion.
Despite the above disasters and the numerous other coal related disasters out there, somehow people still are rah-rah about coal. I'm not a huge fan of nuclear because of the ongoing problems with finding a proper disposal method, but it is easily a better option than any further coal development. At the very least, Stephen Chu is on the same page and believes that nuclear is a better option than more coal plants.
Since IANANS (nuclear scientist), why is the method in the summary preferred over using breeder reactors? It sounds to me that this method should be used in conjunction with breeder reactors to destroy the nuclear waste that can no longer be reprocessed into usable fuel, thereby getting the maximal amount of utility out of each unit of uranium (of which there is a limited supply, or so I hear).
Whenever someone brings up the human costs of spaceflight, this quote comes immediately to mind:
If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous - with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid.
If there's anything that makes me depressed about the prospects of my generation, it's the inability to imagine the opportunities of spaceflight and the fretting about rare losses of crew or materiel.
If they had buried the plutonium in a lead safe, they would have had radioactive AND lead-contaminated ground water. They were only looking out for the environmentalists!
Hmm, yes. Because what I'd want to hear after killing another unsuspecting human being is the Benny Hill theme.
...
Come on people, we already do enough propaganda to dehumanize our enemies before we go to war, do we really need immediate positive reinforcement of that process? Maybe we should just go the whole Harrison Bergeron nine yards and put headphones on the soldier to blast away any thoughts of shock or regret after they take a life?
I dunno, guns are pretty noisy. While you've been at the gun range, I've been working on my stealth stats and my ability to wield a board-with-a-nail-in-it.
I think you're missing the more pernicious slant of "lulz". Schadenfreude can be laughing at someone who slipped on a banana peel or BillG getting pied. People use lulz to justify aggressively anti-social, sadistic, and purposefully hurtful behavior towards others.
The man stole plutonium from Libyan terrorists, figured out how to engineer a refrigerator with 1880s blacksmithing tech, and built a time machine out of a Delorian and you question whether he figure out how to build an accurate clock?
Wow, it really must be the 21st century. For millennia, when navies had problems with viruses, it was the sailors being a little too loose while on shore leave. Today, the ships are the ones getting infected due to open ports.
Obama is a gadget guy, making use of devices like the Blackberry, the iPod, and (by some reports) the Zune. His tech addiction is causing a minor dust-up, as his security personnel are trying to convince him to part with his beloved PDA.
This is an excellent idea. Why aren't these enterprise versions of email software preventing the use of reply-all by default? Perhaps the email clients should by default have "reply-all" unless the IT department chooses to have that option turned on for some or all terminals?
Another option to removing the "reply-all" button would just to have the email client warn users by default if they try to send an email message using the "reply-all" button or a message that has more than say... 10 recipients?
PalmPDF, FileZ, TCPMP (audio/video player), GrxViewLt (photos), and ScummVM are all free, essential apps that I run on my Tungsten T3. There's also a program called NESEm which is an 8bit Nintendo emulator. It was soooo worth the money I paid.
I'm just hoping that my T3 survive until I can get the Pre on a carrier that I can tolerate. Maybe I'll do what a previous poster mentioned and buy a Treo 650 for cheap and have it tide me over.
But if Palm can bring themselves to provide an interface with Linux and Mac boxes simultaneously, they've made a sale here.
What exactly do you mean by "interface"? From the way I've heard it described in the video demos, the 8GB will be accessible via microUSB cable as standardized USB mass storage. If you meant interface like a PIM manager, I think Palm's goal of working in the cloud is to move away from desktop syncronization.
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This sounds unlikely. The mass of the Earth is about 6 x 10^24 kg. If Earth is losing 2 x 10^12 kg of material every day then the Earth would lose all of its mass in about eight billion years, and this assumes that all of the material being lost is the genetic material.
I'm not agreeing with the OP's figures for the loss rate of materiel, but perhaps since you're running the calculations already, you could include the Earth's accretion rate? Doesn't the Earth also have an income of extraterrestrial materials, such as solar particles and space dust?
Not all mercury is made the same. Ethylmercury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethyl_mercury vs methylmercury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylmercury.
Episode #146: The Chase. Great episode, if not for the mere wonder of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(TNG_episode)
So, MSFT replaced the innards of Windows 7 and replaced them with the engine of a Fiat Panda, as per Jeremy Clarkson?
I wasn't saying that there was a limited supply to deliberately misinform or to dissuade. I figured that there were probably a bunch of unknown reserves that would have varying degrees of accessibility. That's why I brought up breeder reactors as a condition of making nuclear fission a long-term solution to our carbon problem. IIRC, the figure for supply of uranium 235 with known reserves is something like 100-150 years. But if we used breeders/re-enrichment, we could stretch that known supply up to 1000 years.
Maybe to call a 100 year supply with current reserves and techniques is "limited" is wrong, but from the perspective of wanting to find a long-term solution, 100 years isn't long enough IMHO. I just want our next base-load power supply to come from a tech that can tide us over until we have fusion, orbital solar arrays, or that next future tech that I haven't even imagined yet.
How about we get the national press to show more footage of the fly ash disaster that's going on in Tennessee right now? Over a billion gallons of liquid fly ash spilled out of a ruptured holding pond and covered the surrounding landscape with toxic waste. A few days later, another tank under the TVA nearly ruptured in a similar, but smaller fashion.
First Spill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_fly_ash_spill
Second spill: http://timesfreepress.com/news/2009/jan/13/tennessee-widows-creek-ash-may-be-more-toxic-kings/?local.
Despite the above disasters and the numerous other coal related disasters out there, somehow people still are rah-rah about coal. I'm not a huge fan of nuclear because of the ongoing problems with finding a proper disposal method, but it is easily a better option than any further coal development. At the very least, Stephen Chu is on the same page and believes that nuclear is a better option than more coal plants.
Since IANANS (nuclear scientist), why is the method in the summary preferred over using breeder reactors? It sounds to me that this method should be used in conjunction with breeder reactors to destroy the nuclear waste that can no longer be reprocessed into usable fuel, thereby getting the maximal amount of utility out of each unit of uranium (of which there is a limited supply, or so I hear).
Whenever someone brings up the human costs of spaceflight, this quote comes immediately to mind:
If there's anything that makes me depressed about the prospects of my generation, it's the inability to imagine the opportunities of spaceflight and the fretting about rare losses of crew or materiel.
And if you went a few degrees further, I'm sure you'd find that Daschle is connected to Kevin Bacon.
Jesus Christ, Australia! In an earlier /. article, it was a Minister of Censorship. Now, it was a Shadow Minister.
What's next, Prime Minister Voldemort?
HAH! Your assumption that scientists or lesser enthusiasts (/.ers) could resist a big red button makes me laugh. HAH!
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/242/
Don't worry, Google is indexing the content of those emails for advertising analysis and now the public benefit!
If they had buried the plutonium in a lead safe, they would have had radioactive AND lead-contaminated ground water. They were only looking out for the environmentalists!
Hmm, yes. Because what I'd want to hear after killing another unsuspecting human being is the Benny Hill theme.
...
Come on people, we already do enough propaganda to dehumanize our enemies before we go to war, do we really need immediate positive reinforcement of that process? Maybe we should just go the whole Harrison Bergeron nine yards and put headphones on the soldier to blast away any thoughts of shock or regret after they take a life?
I dunno, guns are pretty noisy. While you've been at the gun range, I've been working on my stealth stats and my ability to wield a board-with-a-nail-in-it.
I think you're missing the more pernicious slant of "lulz". Schadenfreude can be laughing at someone who slipped on a banana peel or BillG getting pied. People use lulz to justify aggressively anti-social, sadistic, and purposefully hurtful behavior towards others.
The man stole plutonium from Libyan terrorists, figured out how to engineer a refrigerator with 1880s blacksmithing tech, and built a time machine out of a Delorian and you question whether he figure out how to build an accurate clock?
Wow, it really must be the 21st century. For millennia, when navies had problems with viruses, it was the sailors being a little too loose while on shore leave. Today, the ships are the ones getting infected due to open ports.
I'm sure Elim Garak would agree with the parent.
Obama is a gadget guy, making use of devices like the Blackberry, the iPod, and (by some reports) the Zune. His tech addiction is causing a minor dust-up, as his security personnel are trying to convince him to part with his beloved PDA.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't mention the Zune, he might lose the respect of the whole country: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/12/8/crisis/
Damn, I knew that skipping my high school morality class to throw rocks at cars on the highway was going to come back to haunt me...
This is an excellent idea. Why aren't these enterprise versions of email software preventing the use of reply-all by default? Perhaps the email clients should by default have "reply-all" unless the IT department chooses to have that option turned on for some or all terminals?
Another option to removing the "reply-all" button would just to have the email client warn users by default if they try to send an email message using the "reply-all" button or a message that has more than say... 10 recipients?
Not unless aliens have been blowing up all of our major cities and the USAF runs low on pilots before our last ditch attack.
PalmPDF, FileZ, TCPMP (audio/video player), GrxViewLt (photos), and ScummVM are all free, essential apps that I run on my Tungsten T3. There's also a program called NESEm which is an 8bit Nintendo emulator. It was soooo worth the money I paid.
I'm just hoping that my T3 survive until I can get the Pre on a carrier that I can tolerate. Maybe I'll do what a previous poster mentioned and buy a Treo 650 for cheap and have it tide me over.
But if Palm can bring themselves to provide an interface with Linux and Mac boxes simultaneously, they've made a sale here.
What exactly do you mean by "interface"? From the way I've heard it described in the video demos, the 8GB will be accessible via microUSB cable as standardized USB mass storage. If you meant interface like a PIM manager, I think Palm's goal of working in the cloud is to move away from desktop syncronization.
Damn dude, google. http://developer.palm.com/
Apparently, it's Linux underneath with all the apps written in web languages, like HTML, CSS, and Java.