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• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: '... allow commercial organisations, consortia, cabals, cartels and complexes to get big enough to be a danger to the body politic.' Plus not pay their fair share of taxes, plus be allowed to contribute (and probably use as a...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: People freezing in the cold In my neck of the woods, the largest (and often most wasteful) users of electric energy are businesses - and they all get massive 'volume' discounts while consumers are berated for 'wasting' energy. And...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: 'If there was a way to extract energy from darkness we'd be laughing!' Maybe you'd like to read this - could be worth a small chuckle. 'Generating Light From Darkness' https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30412-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS254243511930412X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue Here's the non-techie version: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/science/solar-energy-power-electricity.html...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: "Underwater Chernobyl with anti-environmentalist message." Why not 'Fukushima II - Because the on-land version did so well during the 2011 typhoon'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushimanucleardisaster According to the below - weather is really the leading cause of oil rig disasters. Followed by...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: Nature article & 'We'd suggest looking up what's coming down-stream rather than from the depths. Oh, and sewage discharge near the sea, for instance.' Not that I understood a lot of this but the 'downstream' of factory biocontaminants sounds...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: '... and keep it 60 km offshore like a wind farm.' Not being snide but ... How do you make something like this secure given the following: a) increasingly and longer lasting violent weather - can current construction designs...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: 'Scientists working on an adaptive landscape model of part of the virus spike identified three mutations that could make the virus hard for immune systems to detect*. So far, no virus strain has shown all three mutations simultaneously.' Very...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: 'Pity it's [WSJ] paywalled - it sounds interesting.' Not sure whether this could work for you (i.e., profound deafness) but although the print is paywalled the robot-voice audio in a pale blue box 'Listen to article' is accessible for...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: '... caused by small circulating blood clots,'' Yeah - when I first heard about the loss of smell/taste I immediately thought that COVID was somehow screwing up blood cells therefore causing blood clots leading to mini-strokes. [The ACE binding...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Duffy @ 405: Re: 'Deaths from Covid-19 among the unvaccinated result in ...' But in the meanwhile you've got people (including young kids) from across the political spectrum with serious illnesses who can't access time-critical treatments because the hospitals are...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: 'We had a chance to elect the first honest PM since Thatcher with Corbyn, and the sheeple swallowed the lying propaganda ... ' Don't follow UK politics closely enough to feel confident that I can spot a good (social...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: '"GoLocal Agriculture is HARD WORK - ask me how I know this?' Intended to reply to this earlier ... Yes - I know that growing your own food on your own patch of land is hard work. I -...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Re: Energy & demographics A good reminder that how and how fast our demographics change will affect everything else that's normally tied to that particular segment. Basically: people's needs change with almost every life stage they enter i.e., we didn't...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Excellent recap of Covid - thanks! EV - I had to get a new car and decided to lease instead of buy because I didn't want to get stuck with an unsellable car. Also figured that in 5 years' time,...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: 'To protect against a crash, you need a lot of semi-crushable padding (e.g. plastic bladders full of air)...' After I posted I got this flash: why not use bubble-wrap? Haven't looked to see whether anyone's actually tried it but...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: '... cheeerfully and maniacally unloading chiropteran feces' Okay - here's a personal jet-pack video for you. Pretty informative overall. Plus, the designer mentioned a few technical challenges that he'd like others to look at like using electricity/batteries instead of...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: '... video of a demonstrably quiet helicopter. ' This is amazing! The video you linked to immediately went to the next one showing the students who built/flew this thing. Danged - some look (high school) young! U of T...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: '... so there's little excuse for some Navy not having a "terrestrially-colored" camouflage pattern for land ops that's nonetheless entirely marine in inspiration.' The image that immediately sprang to mind was a soldier/marine/sailor rummaging through his/her closet trying to...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: 'And there's no reason to limit ourselves to optical wavelengths or indeed to sound/sight; why not go for chemotaxic sensors -- smell, taste? Upshot: I expect drones to out-evolve camouflage for quite a long time to come.' Agree that...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: 'I don't expect to see that one in the Army/Navy surplus stores any time soon.' Maybe not official/actual Army/Navy but there's already been about 10 years of thinking about how to achieve this. https://www.wired.com/2013/01/anti-drone-camouflage-apparel/ Personally I think that the...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: Calendars 'Just over 10 years ago I gave a paper to a law conference on related topics.' Very interesting paper/presentation - thanks! A question for you: Has anyone tested how 'cloud computing' changed the ability to accurately measure time...
• Commented on Omicron
  Re: 'Instead, the key is indirect control that is difficult to prove.' Yes - because access to their 'fortune' can be easily severed by the State (i.e., Putin) according to at least one former Russian billionaire. The paper below identifies...
• Commented on Omicron
  Re: 'Putin's more a plutocrat who might want to be a Czar-oid. When he's attacking the US government, it's worth thinking about what he and his coterie get out of it.' Tend to agree with this - a lot of...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Re: 'Is there a lineage of stealthy and quiet copters in the US military, or is it a normally-dormant idea that gets periodically revived as needed?' This showed up in my GoogleNews - curious what the aviation/high-tech folks here think....
• Commented on Omicron
  Re: '... why were US and British (and maybe others - not sure) expeditionary forces fighting in Russia after WWI' My understanding is that this was to prevent what happened anyway, i.e., the creation and isolation of 'satellite' countries as...
• Commented on Omicron
  Re: (Reynolds) '"You are doing your best to screw Canada, your best friend and closest ally in the entire world.' I think the UK is the current 'bestie'. Besides, I imagine that Justin's dad probably mentioned how the US-Canada relationships...
• Commented on Quantum of Nightmares
  Charlie and everyone here: Best wishes for 2022! Thanks for all the lively and informative discussion - looking forward to more in the New Year. Take care, SFReader...
• Commented on Omicron
  Re: '... whose definition of "freedom of speech"?' Okay - but I thought every jurisdiction already had something along the lines of: free speech does not mean that you can shout 'Fire!' in the movie theater and cause a stampede....
• Commented on Omicron
  Re: '... since 2020...' Glad to see you back and that you've made it okay (?) through a COVID bout! With all the to-and-fro comments above, you'll probably be soon caught up with the folks here. One comment - It's...
• Commented on Omicron
  Re: 'It's easy to sweep away any negative stuff as being the fault of Trump and that Biden's election returned the world to being normal, but that is sadly false.' Hard to tell because the process (therefore analysis) of likely...