CaptainPanic

! Moderator Note John Cuthber, The OP wanted a discussion with a few givens. You ignored that wish. Your knee-jerk response is not contributing to this discussion at all, and could even be considered soap-boxing, as you bring nothing new to the table and you reply with a few phrases that you could literally put in any religious thread on our forum.

Then again, the US government spends more on healthcare than on any other item... so it makes some sense that this is the biggest lobby too.

Hmm... according to that link (or, better, this one - same website), the pharma spend about twice as much on lobbying than even the oil industry. That is indeed an obscene amount of money (225 million $ in 2013).

Large companies influence politians through lobbying. This is nothing new. We all (at least in the Western world) voted to have capitalist governments. So, obviously, these governments will also promote economic growth. That means that they should listen to what corporations need. And in our goal to achieve economic growth and wealth, we have gone too far. I don't think that pharma has too much influence specifically. I think corporations in general have far too much influence in politics.

In a thread created earlier, a list of (mostly ethical) discussion topics was generated. I figured that we should just discuss them all. So, I'll try to post others too, at a later stage (and if anyone else wants to do it, feel free!). Here's the 1st one. The issue: Traffic, merging lanes - when to merge? This discussion is based on this post by Phi. It is worth noting that there were already two replies too: And: Personally, I believe the road should simply have a sign "Merge here (Dutch example)". Obviously, this should be announced at least a kilometer ahead, but if you decide to merge early, you shouldn't complain. In the Netherlands, it took a national advertising campaign (youtube in Dutch, but easy to understand) to get people to merge later. But now everybody merges later. That has reduced the problem to a technical problem: how to do this safely? In order to do it safely, there is a safety zone after the "Merge here" sign in case of trouble, in which it is illegal to drive, but which is big enough for a safe emergency stop. So, to answer the original question: you are wrong to get angry with the people who whizz past. They don't break the law (unless it is illegal to overtake in that lane). But the real problem is technical. IMHO. But perhaps someone else is happy to disagree?

I agree. Your text sounds like at least someone disagreed, so I thought I'd just make this clear. The EU never started any serious negotiations to get Ukraine into the EU. The negotiations are on a more shallow level: trade agreements, lifting visa requirements and such things. At this moment, the EU is in enough financial trouble already. It doesn't need a relatively poor country to join it. Especially the Western European countries (Germany, Netherlands, UK, to name a few) would definitely oppose the Ukraine joining at this moment. Do you have a source for this? I didn't know, and I'd like to read more about this.

Author is Gary Larson. I am not sure this is the original source of the picture (i found it on some blog).

! Moderator Note Pozessed, Please read our forum rules, especially section 2.7: Links, pictures and videos in posts should be relevant to the discussion, and members should be able to participate in the discussion without clicking any links or watching any videos. At this moment there is nothing to discuss (if anything it's politics, but it is not specified which country or state, so we cannot move forward on that topic either). This thread will therefore be closed. You're free to try again. Make sure to give a proper introduction of the topic. Thread closed

Sorry, but the world just isn't so black and white. It's more like a school class full of kids. Some are best friends. Some absolutely hate each other. And in most cases, kids just don't really care. There is no alliance of BRICS countries. When I did a search for support for the Crimea to connect to Russia, I found that: Brasil seems to criticize everybody: The USA, the EU, but also Russia. They're also economically involved with everybody. Russia - we can skip that in this analysis. Too obvious. India backs Russia, but they are no fans of a referendum, according to this source. China doesn't support the Crimea independence. They just fear that Tibet, Xinjiang or Taiwan might get some ideas. But they try to keep a low profile, not to piss off any trade partners on either side. South Africa... well, I failed to find any relevant news about South Africa at all. If they support the Russians through their mighty (sarcasm intended) BRICS network, they do so very quietly. So, once again, I fail to see any overwhelming support for each other from the BRICS countries.

If you want to hurt Russia, get the EU on board. If you want to get the EU on board, start exporting your shale gas to the EU, so the EU doesn't depend on Russian gas. At the moment, there is a defacto ban on export of shale gas. But really, why would you want to corner Russia even more? The citizens of the Ukraine just wrestled the Ukraine out of Russia's control, and the EU is now consolidating that. Putin is trying to make it sound like he's won. But his trophy is but a small one.

Russia is flexing its muscles, and the fact that the EU doesn't punch Russia directly in the face is explained as a weakness. Yet if you compare the map of Europe right before the Soviet union collapsed, and right now: I see a handful of East-Block states and 3 former Soviet states now full members of the EU, and several others with a focus on the West. Maybe the EU is not moving in like Team America, with its Shock-and-Awe tactics, and Putin probably has bigger balls than any EU government member, but the EU is doing extremely well in the big picture. Just one month ago, the Ukraine had a Russia-focussed government, and had just cancelled a deal with the EU. Now, most of the Ukraine has a EU-focussed government, and only the Crimea is still under Russian influence. The way I see it, the EU won in this exchange, even if it didn't do much itself. I bet that in the background, there are many negotiations with the new Ukrainian government. Instead of trying to keep the Crimea in Ukraine, these EU-negotiators just try to keep the rest of the Ukraine in Europe. And as far as I can see, they're succeeding. Also, something many don't seem to realize, Russia just "removed" 1.5 million Russia-oriented voters from the Ukraine by absorbing the Crimea, which means that it's almost certain that in the next elections, the results will be EU-oriented. And I predict that within the next 1-2 years, you'll see EU-oriented and EU-funded infrastructure plans (new roads and railroads) and possibly more financial aid. Short-term integration is perhaps done with soldiers. Long term integration is done through infrastructure, the exchange of people and culture. The EU works hard on the latter. This is just my prediction, and I cannot support it with any links.

Unless the pub owner, your friends, and your family all have a charger (which isn't unlikely). Anyway, I don't have time for a full reply. Gotta run. Weekend is starting! Off to the pub!

No. But we have very small connectors now, and I argued that if you make them even smaller, you run into other problems, e.g. their robustness. Especially if you do not standardize chargers, one must carry the charger everywhere with them, so the system must be robust. I just don't believe that there is a huge market pressure to make devices even thinner, or connectors even smaller. In fact, I think that people deliberately seem to be buying larger devices now, and there is a lot of sarcasm online if a manufacturer produces a phone which is 0.5 mm thinner than the previous. I also believe that law shouldn't get in the way of the market, and I believe that typically the EU does quite a good job at that. However, I applaud this development... and I hope that once a standard was set, the law can be dropped soon enough, as industry will proceed on a voluntary basis. I know there are several types, and only one type is used in phones, ipods, mp3 players, etc. ... Or, at least when I go to my local hardware store, and I look up the earplugs and headphones, there seems to be only one. And also, I can buy headphones of brand A, and use it in the audio player of brand B. I know multiple types of audio plugs exist (the larger one is frequently used with electric guitars, for example), but this is an example where I think that we approach something that we can call a standard. It's the 3.5 mm (mono and stereo both work). Luckily, no regulations were necessary. And this exact same principle failed to produce such a standard in the case of the chargers (see: OP), despite the letter of intent signed by a lot of manufacturers, and despite some market pressure (albeit not as much as with USB, where the standardization took place once people started carrying around small storage devices). I could live with that as well.

Those with the simplest phones and (currently) the cheapest chargers would have very little benefit, and perhaps the effects would even be negative. The only benefit would be that you can now charge your phone at a friends' house without having to bring your own charger. But I admit that this is hardly useful, since these types of phones never run out of juice anyway. (I also have one - it goes for 8 days on a single charged battery). Those with expensive phones (and especially Apple devices) would benefit a lot, since their chargers are ridiculously expensive, and the price they pay is several times the actual production costs. A standardized charger, produced by several competing companies, would be sold at a competing price close to the production costs. What if there would be 2 charger types: a flimsy one for little current, and a bulkier (more expensive) one for larger currents? Are there any (safety) issues if someone would connect the high-current charger to the flimsy phone, or the other way around? The two main problems that I have is that with every new phone (and camera, tablet, laptop) you have to buy a new charger too. And frequently, it happens that the manufacturer of the device have a monopoly position on the production of the chargers for their devices. Both these issues lead to added costs that I'd like to avoid. I hope this addresses it a little. I am not an electrical engineer, so I am not able to go into the technical details much. Just like with normal plugs and sockets for the 220V (or in the USA, 110 V), there is a minimum size limit, due to safety. I have no clue how small that would be for a phone charger, but I can imagine that it wouldn't become significantly smaller than a micro-usb connector. Also, personally, if a connector would become any smaller, I would risk destroying/bending is because I am clumsy. Also, the standardized sockets/plugs never seem to have halted any inventions in any devices I use at home. Could you give an example of a possible advancement that would be halted if the micro-usb would become the standardized plug for chargers? Finally, one last remark about this: the audio connector has been standardized ages ago. That too cannot be made smaller. Has this in any way endangered any advancements?

Fair point. So, there is some room for improvement in the entire digital world, including phones, laptops, cameras, tablets. The specific type (A/B/mini/micro) of USB connector is not very relevant to the data transfer speed, is it? I hope that once phones are standardized, the digital cameras and tablets will just follow that standard too.

It is standardized in the EU. There are just two small islands off the coast of Europe where they refuse to comply with the standard. I believe these are called Britain and Ireland. But there is already a great standard for transferring data at huge speeds. It is called USB. Nobody seems to complain that this was standardized? I think that some would rather trust the industry to make the right choice for the standard, and some have a deeply rooted mistrust of the (EU-)government. From that mistrust, you may argue that in each and every case, it would be better to take zero action, because any action would go wrong anyway. I simply do not share that mistrust of the EU. I think that the EU is in general a huge success, and I forgive their few failures and mistakes... So, I cannot accept the argument that "it may go wrong, so let's not do it". (The conclusion in italics was added by me). I trust that they will actually let the industry set the standard. The big difference is that this time, failure to reach a consensus is not an option for industry.

Obviously, new phone models must be designed so that they can be charged with the standard charger. Mobile phone manufacturers probably have enough understanding of electrical engineering to overcome this hurdle. They have until 2017 to redesign their models. If they can overcome complicated problems like totally new networks (they've gone from 1G, to 2G, 3G and now 4G, with 5G in the pipeline), then surely a little different voltage for charging isn't gonna be a problem.

I am delighted that finally an EU law will force phone manufacturers to provide a standardized charger that works with all phones. Earlier attempts with a letter of intent (.pdf warning), which was drafted in 2009, and was supposed to lead to a standardized charger by 2013, lead to absolutely nothing, since there were no consequences to a failure to comply. The new law may simply make it illegal to sell phones without standardized charger. Nowadays, phone chargers can cost as much as 40 euro if a replacement is needed... which is quite a lot of money considering I have a drawer full of obsolete chargers. I think this is a great example how you sometimes have to regulate a market, and not let the market regulate itself. Sometimes you need a stick, not a carrot. I applaud the EU for taking this initiative. Hopefully it will save us all some money, and resources in the future. Perhaps I should have posted this in the news section, but I hope that some of you are going to attack the interferences of the EU so we can have a political debate about it.

StringJunky, I stand corrected. Still, jet engines were first used in a practical way by the Germans.

! Moderator Note Bonerfart, read our rules, especially section 2.1 to learn how to behave. One more of such rule violation, and you'll be suspended. This is the last warning. To everyone else who feels the need to reply to this: this issue has now been dealt with. We're moving on. Do not reply to this mod note in the thread, and in addition, do not reply to Bonerfart's post.

Well... conflict gets in the way of cooperation between nations, but it certainly does not get in the way of progress. In fact, the rockets used to get to space are invented in WWII by the Germans. Jet engines too.

Where is the link?

A good trick with a video editor. I wouldn't bother spending any time on it until it can be proven that this is the genuine recording.

I have to admit that I don't know what is "normally covered in philosophy", as asked in the OP. A topic for possible debate that comes to mind is: - Who is responsible for a person's well-health and safety? (The state, the person, something else? Perhaps health and safety must be subcategorized to be able to answer this?) And this one came up in another thread, discussing the situation in Kiev: - When is a revolution ethically correct? When do you have the ethical right to overthrow your government? Hmm... perhaps we should use this thread as a source of inspiration, and open one or two topics every week from this growing list?

Evaporating / multi-effect evaporators While the heat of vaporization of water is 2260 kJ/kg, with proper heat integration and using heat pumps, the heat requirements per kg of water are much lower, with savings of up to 80%, according to this article (warning: .pdf!). Let's assuming that energy costs around 10 euro/GJ (I can't be bothered to back that up now, please ask if you don't believe this), if you use a common large scale gas heated boiler. So, even with 80% energy savings, a ton (or m3) of water would cost around 5 euro/m3. It will only go up if you use the sun to make water, because the investment costs are higher. Reverse osmosis As was stated before by Enthalpy, reverse osmosis is the modern method, and costs only around 0.5 euro/m3. This wikipedia article states a list of prices of water in $/m3, depending on the location. I conclude that reverse osmosis is around 10x cheaper than evaporation. Fill empty tankers with European river water Finally, how about this idea: The average cost of oil transport by tanker amounts to only two or three United States cents per 1 US gallon (3.8 L) (source: wikipedia). That amounts to about 5 euro/m3. However, tankers are full when going from arid places (e.g. Arab countries) to wet places (e.g. Rotterdam, Netherlands). If you can make them carry water on the way back (they typically go back empty), then the costs of this water should be a fraction of the costs. If it would be only 10%, the costs of water are similar to the costs of the desalination through reverse osmosis: around 0.5 euro/m3. Obviously, there is that issue that some residual oil in the tanker would contaminate the water. I haven't solved that yet. Costs of the forest Interestingly, with a price for water of 0.5 euro/m3 (reverse osmosis or cheap tankers), we can also calculate the costs of the forest. Assuming that the forest needs 1 m of 'rainfall' (or irrigation) per year, or about 1 million m3 per square kilometer, the costs for the water for 1 km2 of forest is 500,000 euro/year (in which I totally ignore the costs of the actual irrigation system, or maintenance). The production of for example eucapyptus can be as much as 53 ton/ha/yr (pdf warning), or 5300 ton/km2/yr. That simply means that the estimated costs of the water alone for that wood would be very close to 100 euro/ton of wood... which is rather expensive. (Normally, wood in bulk sells for prices up to 100 euro/ton, but that includes everything... from the profit for the land owner, to the harvesting and transport, and not just the water for growing it). I don't believe in planting trees with the sole purpose to save the planet. In this modern capitalist world, it is more likely to work if someone makes money while saving the planet. p.s. I hope I didn't make any mistakes in this back-of-the-envelope calculation.