tp1024

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• Commented on The language of alienation
  For 2003 anything involving "Fracking". (For 99+% of the population.) I keep thinking about telling my grandfather about biofuels back in 1991, when he was still alive. I'm from a small town (pop. 25,000) that annually consumes 700.000 tons of...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  Well, that explains a lot of the disconnect between my (post 2001) actual experience of slashdot and the implicit (pre-1999) description in "Lobsters"....
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Competent police work? You do know that he was found after a local resident told the police that there was blood on the tarp over a boat? All that only after the lock down was over. Before that, the "professionals"...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  All I could think of is this: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” The whole thing is beyond belief for me. In terms of the loss of liberty,...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Well, sure, the media reporting is out of hand (and I guess I failed to take that into account). But I wouldn't call these measures just "a bit" extreme either....
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Can anybody put in words, just how far out of their minds Americans are to do what they are just doing in Boston? I tried, but ultimately failed, to do that on my blog....
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Whatever happened to that good old word "bomb"? At what point, exactly, is a bomb no longer "improvised"? When it is dropped from an airplane? When it is a standard-issue anti-personal mine?...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  > "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulter, Economist." Or they are using a non-constant scale. Such as saying that a 60Mhz Pentium processor...
• Commented on Me, talking
  Charlie, the problem with hydrogen isn't storage. You make methane from hydrogen and storage kind of works (much better than the alternatives anyway). The problem is hydrogen is high entropy. You take low-entropy electricity, make hydrogen (or some derivate like...
• Commented on Me, talking
  That is why ITER will be using Beryllium and Tungsten for its walls and not steel. Just as the most recent upgrade of JET....
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  From a more realistic point of view, China is no longer ruled with the mandate from heaven - which formed the basis of power for all the dynasties....
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  Past performance is no indication of future longevity. About 100 years ago, China stopped being ruled by an Emperor - which has been the case for about as long as there has been a catholic church. It is easily imaginable...
• Commented on If this had happened 30 years ago today, we would all have died
  The worst about all this is - as usual - the media coverage. Little to no fact checking and mindless repetition of whatever somebody with "authority" said. There are claims that the asteroid had just 10 tons ... well, 1000...
• Commented on Tapeworm Logic
  Replace jacket with spacecraft and pants with spacesuit. There have been distinctly human beings on the moon after all. I didn't mean to say "and thus we'll settle the universe" in any case. Merely that at least as a biological...
• Commented on Tapeworm Logic
  There is the problem that for tapewormkind to change, the tapeworms themselves need to change in order to live in the rest of their shitty universe. On the other hand, for humankind to change doesn't require any changes to individual...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  I want to apologize sincerely if my post created the impression that environmental activists bear the least resemblance to such groups as the KKK. This would not be a sincere apology, if I would not also say, that I do...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  There is no point in making an apology for observing that disaffected and angry people tend to join groups of other disaffected and angry people. Some do indeed join racist or violent groups, others join groups who are not, like...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  I didn't say or imply that groups of highly visible, disaffected and angry people are evil. Just that they consist of disaffected and angry people. I for one prefer those disaffected and angry people who don't join violent or racist...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  Don't forget environmental activists, who are just as disaffected and angry as the others and even more visible....
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  Charlie wrote: > Daniel, you've picked a fight with the assembled crowd. This is for odd values of "picking a fight", since all replies to his comment were 2 and 3 liners, while his comments were relatively well reasoned. However,...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  Germany is using 600TWh per year, that's 600bn kWh. One billion kWh will last for about 16 hours. This is enough to smooth out nights and weather through moderate spells of bad weather, but there's no way you'll get through...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  Nojay: 1) You're putting words into my mouth. I HATE PEOPLE DOING THAT. Read what you wrote and what I responded to. "The human race has nearly two hundred years experience of using pressurised water and steam to produce power"...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  > The human race has nearly two hundred years experience of using pressurised water and steam to produce power and we're really quite good at it now. After tens of thousands of people died in accidents, whereas nobody ever died...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  PV has a perfectly unsustainable business model. Almost none of the capacity pays for itself, neither in the short run, nor in the long run. Nuclear power was cheap from the outset, it was just a matter of financing the...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  Greg: The Leningrad Nuclear Power Station didn't move away when the city was renamed St. Petersburg (and wasn't renamed either). Nojay @58: Metal cooled reactors are the answer to several problems such as evaporating coolants that leave fuel rods no...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  > Liquid-metal nuclear reactors continue to be expensive and prone to difficult corrosion problems. Existing reactors continue to have cost the price they cost at the time they were build and continue to have had the problems they had in...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  Stating the obvious is, that the consequences of the appropriation of modern technology by developing countries from the stagnating countries will continue to baffle the media - namely continued economic growth in Asia, particularly China. The same will broadly be...
• Commented on Happy Christmas! Here is a flame war in a can
  Charlie, October? You have it good! Here in Germany the christmas stuff is brought out in middle to late August, with a few stragglers waiting until September....
• Commented on STROSS IN COMPUTER-FREE VACATION SHOCKER
  Have fun over here. I take it that the notion vacation is incompatible with screaming hordes of fans and groupies following you around, so I wouldn't dare to ask where in Germany you'll be, would I?...
• Commented on THE END.
  The main point I wanted to express was that I wouldn't want to be anywhere within 1km of a Shuttle launch either (or SLS launch for that matter), because of the toxicity of the exhaust. "Any less toxic" was certainly...