CaptainPanic

It is interesting how apparently the Chinese have a different opinion about the cost effectiveness of wind energy... Although they have a plan based economy, they too will do an economic analysis and make an estimate of the value of wind power. They must have arrived at a very different conclusion. It worries me that the economy, which is the argumentation for almost every decision in our world, is apparently a very subjective thing.

The bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, is that there used to be a lot of information in the reputation. Now, it's much more limited. For the receiver: find out which exact posts were received well, which are considered bad, and why. We do not get that feedback now - we just get the net-difference. To find out actual rep, we have to go through all our previous posts. For the giver: there used to be the option to explain why we give rep points (in a little text box). For the other forum members: the little green boxes used to show the rep of a member. Now, I cannot find that anywhere... and you actually have to go into someone's profile (and it's just not worth the time to go into a profile for something as unimportant as the reputation). I notice that a strong opinion on the politics forum gets significantly more rep than a good post on any of the science sub forums.

If it is "engineering day", then I would suggest that you make sure that you show how strong the bridge is. It's easy to build a balsa wood bridge to cross a 1 meter gap. It's something different altogether to be able to place a crate of beer on it in the middle.

The primary effect is that you get very wet.

If you have a gas stove, you could light the fire. Then you continuously mix methane and air, and you produce about 55 MJ/kg methane. The hottest is perhaps hydrogen and oxygen? Continuous reactions can last as long as you like. It is a choice that the designer (engineer) can make. In fact, most chemical factories are running continuous.

Of course it works both ways. I just have the strong feeling that the right wing (in the USA, but also in other countries) are much (much!) better at exaggerating, playing on emotions, obscuring important facts. Basically, I believe that the right is better at manipulating... and therefore is more populist than the other. But you have a good point.

A civilization so advanced that it can use advanced technology like wireless communications. They visit 1928, USA. ... But they are stupid enough to be talking visibly on their futuristic communications device on one of the few cameras on the film set of one of the most famous movie stars of the time. I guess that the phone that the woman had didn't have a camera on it... otherwise she would have realized what they're doing there (shooting a film).

In the graph above, how many of those arguments were started by the Scientific community, and how many by the populist movement of climate skeptics? The Skeptics always have the initiative. Every discussion is initiated by them, on a topic of their choice. Logically, it sounds like they are right, and the global warming theory is wrong. And the skeptics have easy picking, since the theory has some uncertainty (logically)... and attacking uncertainty is easy... defending it is difficult (especially if you have to defend it using a one liner). It has become politics, rather than science. I wrote about this in the thread regarding Sarah Palin's possible candidacy in 2012. And rather than writing the same again, I will just link to it. It applies here too. The key to getting what you want is populism. Facts do not matter. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/52572-stopping-sarah-palin/page__view__findpost__p__570911

I disagree. We can calculate it with maths (and physics/chemistry). We just need more input (more weather stations). We're already able to predict the weather up to 7 days ahead! Regarding the climate, we look at less details, so less input is required. Still, maths is used (although no CFD, to my knowledge).

Republicans use populist tactics, and are winning because of it. It's not about who is the best... that doesn't matter for either side. What really matters is that Obama has been responding to the outrageous claims of the republicans. He lost the initiative. Republicans determine what's on the headlines. They are on the offensive. As retarded as it may seem after 8 devastating years of Bush... they are winning the popular vote. Republicans twist the truth, and even spread lies... but they get away with it, because they have the initiative. Simply put: it takes more time to refute a lie than to create a one. It also takes more time to create a good plan than a bad one. It's all about initiative. Obama actually has to govern a country. That means that whatever he will do, the republicans will criticize him. And the republicans get to choose on which topic, and which level of detail they will attack him. I wrote a post about it in another thread. (Link).

That's what I was thinking too, at first. Sarah Palin talks a lot of nonsense... which seems ideal for campaigning against. However, the last thing you want to do in a campaign is to respond to all her plans... Even though Sarah Palin will make it incredibly tempting to respond to her plans. She will say completely outrageous things, and just generate a lot of attention. The media will demand an answer from the other candidates (Obama). She will probably deliberately provoke the other candidates... and she will win. If she is a typical populist politician (I think she is), her focus will change often. She will respond to incidents. She will make empty promises which sound good. Populism can create statements faster than anyone can refute them, so these must be ignored. If you base a campaign on responding to all the nonsense that these types of politicians say, you will lose... Their whole aim is to generate some emotions, not to make sense in every sentence they say. Also, by responding to their outrageous plans, you admit that you take it serious (even though you try to point out how stupid it is). Populists will win that discussion, because they will find a tiny little flaw in your massive attack against their stupid plan, and expand on that little flaw. All the time, their original idiot plan keeps getting the main headlines, and the discussion will be about something irrelevant. Or they can also just call you a left-wing socialist (which logically implies that you're wrong), and win the discussion by calling names. There is no defense. Such a battle must be avoided at all cost. Problem however is: the populists will deliberately and continuously provoke the other side. I know that it's very tempting to show the general public that populist politicians talk crap... but by the time you've refuted one statement, they've made 2 new ones. To refute the populist plans, you will need to use long and complicated phrases, and you need to explain ethical concepts, while they just come up with dumb (but popular) plans. And those simple statements generate just as much media attention as your proper argument against it. In short: they win the headlines in the media. If Obama sticks to his own plans, and if he makes the populists respond to his plans, it should be no problem. The populists will try to come up with some plans that are so outrageous that Obama feels that he must respond. And then they he will lose the initiative. He cannot allow that to happen. He must stick to his own game plans. He must stand above the schoolkid bullying that will try to undermine his plans.

I believe that you have to figure out what consciousness is, and no science has figured that out. Building up a body from scratch (including designing the genes) seems like something that's around the corner (next couple of decades). So, biology or microbiology would be needed to build a humanoid body. Ethics will be an integral part of your study. And I really don't know what else - but the main problem isn't solved yet.

Do we compare "drinking soft drinks" to drinking: - water - beer - milk - nothing at all - fruit juices - the same mixture of sugars, additives and fruit extracts as the soft drinks, but without the CO2 gas dissolved in it? - something else And what other diet (food) do we assume the basic diet? I guess the number of vitamins, calories, minerals (etc) in the food are also important for the question. After all, it all ends up in the same digestive system. I just ask, because this discussion will inevitably become a comparison to something else. I admit that this response is a little bit lame... but the easiest answer to the question is: the health benefit is that you do not die from dehydration.

Success depends on the costs. In industry, costs are made up of: operational costs (energy, material, labour, maintenance, etc) and investments. Regarding CO2 storage, we seem to look only at energy, material and investments... but storage is forever, so logically, there must be at least a little labour forever. Talking in terms of energy, the main efforts are (depending on the method) either: - the additional chemicals needed to store CO2 in mineral form - energy for compression for underground storage I believe that these are rather unavoidable. Regarding the actual storage: It's there forever. Especially if CO2 is stored in its gaseous state underground, I'd like someone to keep an eye on it... forever. That's a long period... and that has to be paid for. Even if it's a little bit of work, but for a long time, we'd better think about this right now. It's only fair to future generations. Why I think we must keep an eye on this? After all, we humans drilled a bunch of holes into the soil, released the pressure in that soil (so that the soil sinks up to 50 cm as a result)... the gas drilling can even cause earthquakes. Are we really certain that these empty gas fields are stable?

As so often, wikipedia has a website about it. In addition to what insane_alien mentioned (I agree with all of it), the weather simulations suffer from a lack of input, which is twofold. - Geological details influence the weather. Features may be missing (the famous butterfly can actually influence the weather, so every leaf on every tree counts). - Weather stations are scarce. In some countries, the density of weather stations can be 1 station per 1000 km2... but in other areas, this can be a lot lower. With weather predictions, just like with any other model, the principle of Garbage in, garbage out is valid. The lack of weather stations means that the input is limited. Logically, the output is therefore also wrong - especially on the long term, the predictions will likely be wrong.

For one thing, you'd better make sure that the revenue from the stock market investment are larger than the interest you have to pay to do that investment in the first place. Governments have almost always a debt, not a surplus of money so they need to borrow money for every additional investment. If investing in the stock market was guaranteed to give a profit on the long term, then almost everybody would be borrowing money to invest in the stock market. Secondly, if you wish to do this, it seems more straightforward to give the shares of the stock market directly to the people? Then they have to pay less tax (since you don't need to buy shares, or pay interest and repay a debt) and the government still gets the profit, through taxation. Then the population becomes the shareholder of all the stock market, and Carl Marx will be happy.

Education is considered just another factor in the government's financial picture. I believe that the reason is that politicians need to please the population. The population demand instant satisfaction... (Yes, we blame the politicians and managers to be short term thinkers, but the general public is far worse). And the short term thinking will mean that it is very interesting to reduce the budget of education. Add to that the fact that universities are considered very expensive, and the people working there are "a bunch of nerds that just turn their hobby into a job", and all they do is "look at the stars" which "has no purpose at all", so they are "getting free money for doing nothing" while all the other people are "working to feed those eternal students"... - That's just some statements that I picked up in the media over the years. People do not understand the value of science. It is a sad situation where universities probably need a marketing department to justify the money they spend.

Creating many state owned companies, creating money which can be used to run the state??? Having the same state create the rules - undoubtedly also to maximize its own efficiency??? I thought that we just defeated communism 20 years ago? And tell me, if one of your state-companies is running at a loss. What would be the state's interest to fire these people (just so that they will instantly enter the welfare program, and still cost a lot of money)? It's funny that you mention games. In games, there is often a plan based economy, with you as the despotic ruler. In a plan based economy, the whole country is viewed as resources, labour force (or production capacity), and a list of desired products or services. Such a system is often considered communist... the market instead will regulate itself. Now, you seem to suggest a more plan-based economy as a solution to tax deficits.

Your neighbors will love you for it... but most likely you will get arrested for not having a permit. CO is toxic, odourless, colorless. Don't mess around with it. You die faster than the bugs. I think that setting your house on fire would also kill the bugs... but like the CO plan it is a bad idea. Btw, what the hell can be so bad that normal bug sprays wouldn't work? Or maybe I should ask: are we dealing with a theoretical issue - and just doing some brain exercise, or is there a practical issue which just needs to be solved in the most efficient way? In other words: what are the boundary conditions to the solution you want from us?

PV panels normally have back contacts of metal - just a regular sheet of metal, which will have the same effect as a mirror. If those back contacts deliberately were left out (I think that complicates the production, and increases the price), then the goal of the panel may be to actually let some light through... for architectural reasons, it can be interesting to have glass that partially blocks the sunlight, but lets some through.

Your friend gave you a pretty decent summary of our immigration issues... although tension (which started around 2000) already rose during the boom, not after it. For example, I have never heard the popular anti-immigration statement that immigrants were stealing our jobs. If anything, they were accused of not working enough (right wing has two popular statements against immigrants: they either don't work or they steal our jobs - it's impossible for them to do it right). The main issue in the Netherlands however seems to be the lack of integration and adaptation. The people we invited to work here were of such a different culture that it requires more than 1 generation to properly integrate. And everybody got a bit impatient I guess. That impatience, and the resulting tension was then fueled by some politicians who got a lot of votes simply for saying in public what quite a few were thinking: that there were too many foreigners... especially of a Muslim origin. Problems were (in my opinion) exaggerated. That all went down well in a very critical society such as the Dutch. And that brings us to where we are today. A country with about 6% Muslim minority which is no longer integrating, but instead is alienating itself from the rest of the country because media and politicians can gain popularity by stating that there are such differences. And pointing out differences between groups of people will often increase those differences. In short, I am not sure we have "already been through" it all. We're in the middle of it... and with a global economy, modern transportation and communication, I believe that we haven't seen the most of it yet. So, to get this thread back on topic (before the mods split it off altogether), the immigration laws are a lot more strict now... to a point where emigration of Muslims and immigration are nearly equal (although the right wing still talk about "mass immigration", which is just pop-talk to gain votes). And we have adapted our laws so that legal immigrants can have the right to vote on local issues. Illegal immigrants are not very common, and because there aren't so many, we haven't really created a lot of services aimed towards helping those.

Already in use: ion thrusters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster Not yet possible, but at least the physics seems to work: Project Orion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29 Impossible so far: A lot of sci-fi stuff But we should realize: The next star is 4 light years away... The link at the bottom of my post gives a map of the 50 lightyears around our sun. There are 133 stars mapped... and there are approximately 2000 stars in total within the 50 lightyears around ourselves. There may be many planets in this bubble... In any case, the propulsion methods that I just listed will struggle to reach even the nearest stars within the lifetime of a person. http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html same type of website as above: a map of the local neighborhood, but with zoom in, and zoom out: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/250lys.html

You need a temperature difference to make electricity. I cannot see where the phone would be at two different temperatures at the same time (unless it cools down or heats up really quickly on the outside, while having a buffer internally). But even then, it would run out of battery if the outside temperature approaches 37 deg C. jimmydasaint, it doesn't look more fragile than any other modern phone. In fact, the front side (keypad and screen) look very ordinary to me. It's the back side that is "new" because it's made of metal (I guess all metals will work because of the high heat conductivity).

It is a strong message... I like the idea. It is good to send this message to kids (or in this case allow kids to find it on youtube). In addition, I think we should also send the same message to everybody who brings up children. At least in the Netherlands, there is a strong movement to protect kids who are bullied... a movement that originated from parents and perhaps teachers. But I personally believe that bullying is a (nasty but) natural habit of kids. And since "it gets better" indeed (I speak from experience), maybe we shouldn't make so much fuss about it. I believe that being bullied can make kids stronger on the long term.

My reply here applies only to legal foreigners: All you have to do is to make a formal boundary between what the non-citizens can vote for, and what they cannot vote for. In the Netherlands, non-Dutch people can vote for city councils if they lived in the country (legally) for 5 years or more, or if they are EU citizen (then they only have to register at the town hall). The non-Dutch people can never vote for the Dutch parliament... but they have the right to vote for whatever government they have in their home country. All EU citizens can vote for the EU parliament, regardless of where they live (not sure what happens if they leave Europe though). That boundary seems to make sense to me: Nationality applies for national issues. And on the scale of a city, it matters who lives in the city. Regarding illegal foreigners The main problem is that these people exist at all. Can someone explain me how these people have kids in a school, without being registered anywhere? Literally every step they take is tricky. They're officially now allowed to be where they are. But I understand from padren's post that the status of illegal immigrants is also quite different from country to country - and within the USA also perhaps from state to state.