tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post115423979589949412..comments2024-03-18T21:52:45.757-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: The Decadence Excuse... The Song Sung by All Our Foes.David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154614456662198812006-08-03T07:14:00.000-07:002006-08-03T07:14:00.000-07:00Dear Dr. Brin:I have been reading your blog for a ...Dear Dr. Brin:<BR/><BR/>I have been reading your blog for a year now, and it has changed my perspective more thoroughly than your books have. I hope it flatters you to know that "Uplift" and "Earth" kept me awake at night worrying over your characters, and your blog has helped me find my center after the 2000 coup knocked me off balance. While I need to thank you for growing my mind for the past quarter-century, I must tell you that this post has generated a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance.<BR/><BR/>It seems to me that the essence of your blog has been a call to revel in the complex and to repudiate the polar. Thanks to this call, I have managed to cultivate optimism and resolve in these dark times. Now, if you'll forgive my pointing out tarnish on my idol, I fear that you have succumbed to the same dis-ease that Noonan has fallen prey to.<BR/><BR/>In your June 18 blog, you debunked "The Bottomless Well" by Peter Huber and Mark P. Mills as overenthusiastic Positive-Sum Gain. This was masterful analysis, in my opinion, but it also shows that this Zero/Positive Sum Gain axis is just as nebulous as the left/right schism.<BR/><BR/>Furthermore, I must assert another opinion: that we as a nation are still living off the dividends of an inevitable zero-sum gain. We have stolen a continent from native people and other, weaker, conquerors--and are now drinking the dregs of that draught. Now I understand that many still trapped in a left-right polarization might seek to write off this opinion, and I lack the eloquence that you possess to support this idea (i.e., your exposition about the Cherokees in "Startide Rising" helped this concept to erupt in my brain.) Nevertheless, I cannot help aligning myself with those who cry about the bill coming due.<BR/><BR/>One of the main difficulties in being a writer is managing to produce consistently. I understand that a theme was needed in order to respond to Noonan's ludicrosity, and simplicity is necessary in order to keep the edges from fraying. But I want you to know that, thanks to you teaching me how to think, I have to express that the Decadance Excuse should definitely not be written off this lightly--it would be a disservice to the enlightenment.MadMachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11155640532904807665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154564178494571762006-08-02T17:16:00.000-07:002006-08-02T17:16:00.000-07:00Larry:I was talking about what university should d...Larry:<BR/>I was talking about what university should do, not what it actually does do in all (or even most) cases. I tend to reflexively assume that it does because mine did for almost all of us - but then my alma mater has a reasonable claim to be the best university in the world (particularly at undergraduate level). I am not an American. And I'm well aware of how good some non-university educated people can be (although one of my friends who did fit this category has just got herself a PhD). My comment was a critique of the curriculums at universities as much as saying that university education > non-university education. (It really should be - but that's another story).<BR/><BR/>If you want to spin things off into discussions about education, I'm quite happy to - but know the educational systems of Britain rather than the US. (And most of what I know is second hand - I'm interested in almost anything, and my girlfriend is both a professional teacher and near the end of her MTeach).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154549473712117682006-08-02T13:11:00.000-07:002006-08-02T13:11:00.000-07:00Mark,There' a big difference between a few billion...Mark,<BR/><BR/>There' a big difference between a few billionaries and hipsters driving electric cars and even just 1% of Americans driving them.<BR/><BR/>As these past few weeks have shown...America's electric grid is maxxed out. Even a modest expansion of it would cost many billions of dollars.<BR/><BR/>Then you have the cost of the tools and training to have enough mechanics to service them.<BR/><BR/>I think we can see the downside to democracy and capitalism here. To make the switch to electric cars profitable, you'd need to do it all at once...economies of scale and all that.<BR/><BR/>What you need is Emperor Gore <I>ordering</I> America to convert.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154549093354923392006-08-02T13:04:00.000-07:002006-08-02T13:04:00.000-07:00Stock tip:Freight railroads.They're still running,...Stock tip:<BR/><BR/>Freight railroads.<BR/><BR/>They're still running, and doing a booming business, and if fuel prices go up will do even more. They are mature businesses and pay dividends.<BR/><BR/>I bought stock in Union Pacific and a railroad car manufacturer last year and am rather pleased.<BR/><BR/>* * *<BR/><BR/>It wouldn't be hard to come up with a test and a cure for those brain parasites.<BR/><BR/>Sci-Fi scenario:<BR/><BR/>A country manages to wipe it out. Next generation grows up . . . different. Votes the governing party out of office, loses interest in soccer, and changes religious affiliation <I>en masse</I>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154548443631338672006-08-02T12:54:00.000-07:002006-08-02T12:54:00.000-07:00Monkey: an electrical vehical that can haul tonnes...Monkey: an electrical vehical that can haul tonnes of goods up a mountain pass?<BR/>I'll give you a clue; it goes "choo-choo"<BR/>Have you seen the percentage of fatal accidents on North American roads caused by big trucks? <BR/>We built a continent-spanning rail infrastructure for a reason; abandoning it is probably going to be viewed as one of the worst domestic mistakes of the 20th century. <BR/><BR/>Stefan: Spooky story, especially since it's nearly the reverse of the microbe in our host's short story "The Changing Plague"Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154547581664843972006-08-02T12:39:00.000-07:002006-08-02T12:39:00.000-07:00Bizarre science news:25% of humans have personalit...Bizarre science news:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20060802-13074000-bc-britain-parasite.xml" REL="nofollow">25% of humans have personality-altering brain parasites.</A><BR/><BR/><B>Common cat parasite affects human brains</B><BR/><BR/><I>LONDON, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say more than a quarter of the world's population is infected with a feline parasite related to malaria and which causes personality changes.<BR/><BR/>The Toxoplasma-gondii is spread by cats to humans and other animal species, including rats, and can lead to suicidal tendencies, said Dr. Kevin Lafferty, of the University of California at Santa Barbara in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology.<BR/><BR/>"In populations where this parasite is very common, mass personality modification could result in cultural change," Lafferty wrote.<BR/><BR/>His study said about 7 percent of Britain's population had the parasite in their brains, while almost 70 percent of people in Brazil were affected.<BR/><BR/>Lafferty wrote that an infected rat's behavior changes and becomes more active, less cautious and therefore more likely to be caught by a cat.</I><BR/><BR/>I'm going to be especially careful not to let my dog eat cat crap in the future . . .Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154546910746146942006-08-02T12:28:00.000-07:002006-08-02T12:28:00.000-07:00Baby steps, Monkey. Baby steps.IMHO the number on...Baby steps, Monkey. Baby steps.<BR/><BR/>IMHO the number one advantage of electric cars is they put the car on the power grid and thus decoupling the car from the power source. This means any efficiency and advance we can make in power production instantly becomes available to our transportation system as well. (Light rail also has this advantage.)<BR/><BR/>But we don't have to convert all existing cars. I'd be quite happy to take twenty years to get just half way there. As long as we are moving forward we are doing good.Xactiphynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08254344563346437079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154545033378492072006-08-02T11:57:00.000-07:002006-08-02T11:57:00.000-07:00nicq,I think you are putting too happy a face on t...nicq,<BR/><BR/>I think you are putting too happy a face on the cost to convert America to electric cars.<BR/><BR/>Electric cars may or may not be more efficient than gas powered cars, but you lose a considerable amount of electrical power transmitting it...oil doesn't have that problem.<BR/><BR/>Almost 90% of America's goods are shipped via trucks...I have yet to see a design for an electrical truck that can haul tons of goods over a mountain pass.<BR/><BR/>Windmills in the MidWest may sound good, but on calm days, does the MidWest just stay home?<BR/><BR/>As for cost...200,000,000 vehicles converted to electrical power at, say, $10,000 a pop comes to $2 trillion...and you haven't even produced any power yet...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154542889269923162006-08-02T11:21:00.000-07:002006-08-02T11:21:00.000-07:00There were, as I recall, three major factors that ...There were, as I recall, three major factors that doomed the EV-1:<BR/><BR/>1) Range/power. I recall a test drive written up in the San Diego paper, in which the driver was trying to make his way out of the San Fernando Valley in a cold rain at night. With the wipers going, and the heater and headlights on, the car was barely making headway up the steep hills - and the range indicator was dropping steadily...<BR/><BR/>2) The cost of maintenance. If your battery pack went bad, the cost of getting a new one was horrendous, even with much of the cost still being borne by GM (due to factor #3).<BR/><BR/>3) GM didn't <I>sell</I> the EV-1 - it <I>leased</I> them. There was no way you could possibly wind up owning your little electric car, because the company that made them refused to ever sell them. When GM decided the experiment was over, all the drivers were forced to return their cars, without so much as a purchase option.<BR/><BR/>Now, as to the commuting concept. I currently live about 30 miles away from where I work, meaning that even if I don't drive my car anywhere except work and back, I need a range between recharges of at least 60 miles - and this must be independent of terrain, traffic, temperature, and other variables (which may or may not begin with T). The Tesla might fit that bill - the EV-1 would have been a complete failure for my purposes.<BR/><BR/>Further, we recently moved back to the Tacoma, WA, area, from San Diego - a distance of some 1250 miles. Had the Tesla been available at the time, this would have required us to either rent a car trailer (and another gas-burner to haul it with - our truck was pulling a trailer of household goods at the time), or stop every 250 miles or so and spend four hours recharging the silly thing (which would have meant at least tripling the cost of the move, since we would have needed to rent motel rooms to sleep in rather than just driving).<BR/><BR/>Assuming the cost of the Tesla will be within reach for a lower-middle-class guy like me, it would be ideal for my current commute. However, should we find it necessary to move again, the car might wind up being too expensive to keep...<BR/><BR/>Now, as to the "global cooling" controversy: I am old enough to remember that one. It was pushed by a small number of scientists, whose model was based on a statistical analysis of temperature trends over the past several million years, not an analysis of real-world temperature and climate shifts. By the historical model, we're about two hundred years overdue for the next glaciation. However, as was pointed out at the time, the model was excessively simplistic, failing to take into account such factors as variability in solar output and relative arrangements of continents (when they're pretty evenly spread out, as they are today, it tends to have a moderating effect on global temperatures). Global Cooling was popularized at the time because you could put up these dramatic pictures of a glacially-locked New York City on your magazine covers, and sell a few dozen more copies to the ignorant (and, as some of you may recall, that was when the Cult of the Ignorant was at its height, even greater than today - when the Age of Aquarius was supposed to give great intuitional insight to the Enlightened...).<BR/><BR/>Global Warming, on the other hand, uses analysis of actual temperature changes, noting that the rate of increase has accelerated since we started dumping massive quantities of CO, CO2, and other such gases into the atmosphere. And the anthropogenic hypothesis, while it may well be correct, doesn't need to be <I>the</I> explanation in order to make moderation of those quantities a good idea. Even if it's a long-term natural trend, doesn't it make sense to do whatever we can to slow the process down??Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154535993613552442006-08-02T09:26:00.000-07:002006-08-02T09:26:00.000-07:00monkyboy:Your math is WAY off.20 million barrels o...monkyboy:<BR/><BR/>Your math is WAY off.<BR/><BR/>20 million barrels of oil is the equivalent of 34 million MWh; an average new nuclear plant can produce 1.5 GW, and, if we assume it operates 24 hours a day, it can therefore produce 36 GWh of electricity per day, or the equivalent of approximately 21,200 barrels of oil daily. That's a little under a thousand reactors.... HOWEVER...<BR/><BR/>Electrical and hydrogen-based cars use energy much more efficiently than oil-based cars (which waste most of their energy output in heat anyway)- four to five times as efficiently, actually. And nuclear isn't the only clean and efficient source of energy- the untapped wind reserves of the midwest could easily handle 200,000 windmills- at 1.5 MW each, that's the equivalent of 200 nuclear reactors. The startup costs (turbines, land, infrastructure, hydrogen distilleries for storage and transport) for such a wind system would be around $300 billion, but a typical new windmill is designed for a century of steady operation with regular maintainence. A few hundred nuclear reactors, a thousand wind farms, a network of hydrogen distilleries and storage systems... together, such a system could be built for between $1-2 trillion and could guarantee America's energy independence for the forseeable future. $1-2 trillion is probably the same as we'll spend on this Iraq boondoggle before all is said and done.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154524732135431152006-08-02T06:18:00.000-07:002006-08-02T06:18:00.000-07:00Stefan Jones said... "There is interest in usin...Stefan Jones said...<BR/><BR/> "There is interest in using other plants as a source of ethanol. Quick-growing weeds that don't need much irrigation or fertilizer would be ideal."<BR/><BR/>You mean like Hemp? Ooops, chalk up another casualty in the growing ever-stupider "War on Drugs".<BR/><BR/>Francis:<BR/>I still couldn't disagree with you more. Formal education has it's place and it works well enough for some, but frankly college NEVER taught me "learning to think and learning underlying and abstract factors." I've learned far more from reading and self-education than any formal education ever hoped to achieve. <BR/><BR/>You may find some who have not learned some of those basic concepts, but frankly I have never found college to be the deciding factor for who does and does not know the most useful concepts required in this field nor who has critical thinking skills. In fact I've found it more likely that college-educated and "certified" individuals (most especially in a jack-of-all-trades field like Systems Administration) are far more rigid in thier approach being less likely to do the kind of out-of-box thinking often needed to find problems, troubleshoot them and work around them. <BR/><BR/>When all is said and done I've found our formal education standards in this country to be far more about rote learning and standardization then it is about creativity and critical thinking. Especially so at the pre-college level. I think Mr. Gatto has nailed it pretty well (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm) in pointing out some of the fallacies we've fallen to in education in this country.<BR/><BR/>In the meantime if you want to continue limiting yourself to only those with a college education for the folks you work with, go right ahead. I prefer to keep my options open.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154522041710142522006-08-02T05:34:00.000-07:002006-08-02T05:34:00.000-07:00Lenny:I ... pretty much discovered along the way t...Lenny:<BR/><EM>I ... pretty much discovered along the way that college courses simply taught me neither anything that I didn't already know nor the true skills I really need in to do a great job.</EM><BR/><BR/>I couldn't disagree more. Without serious education, I could learn to do a pretty good job (and do in a number of fields that aren't my own) - but to do a great job, I need a lot of the sort of theory that should be taught in college. To take two IT based examples, database normalisation and code optimisation. <BR/><BR/><EM>They may teach me how to memorize (the most useless skill in an ever-changing field) but they never really bother teaching you how to research.</EM><BR/><BR/>At least in my university experience, you were expected to learn to research in order to do the work. And there were ways of learning.<BR/><BR/>As for memorising, underlying principles of IT really haven't changed much in the past 20 years. Architectures have changed, packages and frontends have changed a lot - but database design hasn't changed that much, and the principles of code optimisation are also fairly static (if not as necessary as they used to be).<BR/><BR/>To take one obvious example, with tools like Access, any idiot can make a database. However, anyone who can't make databases in Second Normal Form (like some ex-cow-orkers of mine who couldn't manage 1NF) without resorting to books should not be claiming to be skilled at designing databases. And I don't care how much SQL they can look up and how cleverly they can code it to pull things out of their monstrous datbase.<BR/><BR/>Some principles of IT should be at such a level that anyone working in the field no more needs to be able to look them up than someone examined on working on a building site should be reminded to wear a hard hat. And such principles of IT rather than the individual apps should be what a degree level education teaches - the underlying principles, with the actual direct application left as an excercise.<BR/><BR/>(Besides, it's very hard to look up design principles and other seemingly abstract stuff in the middle of an exam).<BR/><BR/><EM>Frnakly every test, especially in an IT field, should be open book because finding answers quickly and efficiently is a far greater test of the skills you'll really use.</EM><BR/><BR/>And that assumes that the main goal of education should be to prepare you for the workplace. And that the skills you recognise yourself using in the workplace are the ones you actually use.<BR/><BR/>Degree level education should be about learning to think and learning underlying and abstract factors. Technical education directly relevant to the subject is another matter (although very useful).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154515476312024292006-08-02T03:44:00.000-07:002006-08-02T03:44:00.000-07:00anon,Once again, I have to disagree. Do you have ...anon,<BR/><BR/>Once again, I have to disagree. <BR/><BR/>Do you have any idea how much power is generated by the 20+ million barrels of oil America burns each day?<BR/><BR/>America would need to build 5000 nuclear power plants plus the additional grid to replace oil as our transportation power supply...at a cost of around $10 trillion.<BR/><BR/>No easy task for a country with $8.5 trillion in debt and going in the hole an additional $600 billion each year.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154513155794097742006-08-02T03:05:00.000-07:002006-08-02T03:05:00.000-07:00Recharging on the go would be easy. You just have...Recharging on the go would be easy. You just have a 'batter cartridge' that gets removed and replaced with a charged one at the refuelling station. They then charge up that one, and swap it into a car a few hours later.<BR/><BR/>Of course, the fuelling station would need to do quality control on the batteries and take them out of circulation for recycling after a couple of years (or whatever - what's the life of a battery these days?).<BR/><BR/>For those that wish to keep hold of their "brand new" batteries, perhaps they could remove it and stick it in the trunk, and buy a "used" one for swapping from the fuel station. If people look at batteries with the same mindset as they look at gas - who knows exactly the quality of what's put in the tank. Anyway, the car should be able to interface with the batteries and let the driver know how many charges they've had.<BR/><BR/>It doesn't even take much infrastructure or imagination to put this kind of idea into practice.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154501116820219022006-08-01T23:45:00.000-07:002006-08-01T23:45:00.000-07:00The Tesla looks fantastic and i hope it sells real...The Tesla looks fantastic and i hope it sells really well<BR/><BR/>But the range problem is still the elephant in the room for all electric cars.<BR/><BR/>Someone up stream said they would keep 2 cars one for short trips one for long - your richer than me obvioulsy.<BR/><BR/>my car is only used for about 30 miles a day commuting ,but and its a BIG but one of the things i have a car for is if, with no warning, I suddently need to drive 500 miles I can<BR/>(think sick relative, evacuation, sudden desire to head west...)<BR/><BR/>unitll i can recharge an electic car as quickly and easily i can a gas one i am not buying, and neither will millions of others.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154496283117064002006-08-01T22:24:00.000-07:002006-08-01T22:24:00.000-07:00I doubt in the future wars will be over oil.They'l...I doubt in the future wars will be over oil.<BR/><BR/>They'll be over water.<BR/><BR/><BR/>But on the subject of conspiracies, there's more than one kind of conspiracy. And some can come about just through people doing what they think is in their own best interests, not meeting in smoke-filled rooms or even really coordinating. For our example, the electric car.<BR/><BR/>Electric cars had a few technical problems, especially in regards to batteries. Those aren't gone, but there's been a lot of advances in battery tech in the past decade. But that's not all that kept them back. There were a lot of factors.<BR/><BR/>The oil companies obviously have no interest in promoting alternative fuels, except enough for PR purposes. Why should they? They've been making record profits with their current business model, even when oil was a lot cheaper than it is now.<BR/><BR/>The car companies have a lot of sunk costs in production of internal combustion cars. There's a lot of advances they could put into cars then and now, but haven't. Mainly because of cost. Why, they figure, should they put in an extra $50 part just to make the car use less gas? It'd jack up the end cost, and there wasn't much demand. At least back when gas was under $2 a gallon. And they didn't have any incentives from government to make their cars run better, CAFE standards haven't gone up in forever, even under Clinton. I don't know what his excuse was. Probably "gas is cheap, why bother?"<BR/><BR/>But gas isn't cheap now. And isn't going to be in the future. And there's proven demand for things like hybrids. Though things like Hummers still sell well, and make more profit for the car companies, I suspect.<BR/><BR/>So before, with no proof of demand and cheap gas, a CEO could probably have gotten sued for spending too much on something like electric cars. Most CEOs of public companies are required by law to try and raise the stock price as much as possible. And Wall Street doesn't think in decades, it barely thinks in quarters. Spend too much on something like electric cars, especially back when gas was cheap, and you could find yourself booted out of a job, or sued.<BR/><BR/>And the American public didn't care, SUVs were selling like crazy, gas was cheap, and Al Gore hadn't made a movie yet. All of the environmental costs of SUVs and such haven't ever been included in the price at the pump, they've been shunted off to goverment agencies like the EPA and under our taxes, which the Republicans can then rant about to get some votes. Handy how that works out.<BR/><BR/>And so the deck was stacked against electric cars. All without requiring any smoke-filled rooms. Not to say there weren't any, but the simpler explanation is usually (though not always) right. Just people all doing what they think is in their short term best interest, and totally screwing up the long term.<BR/><BR/>And that's one of the reasons I favor more active (intelligently active) government, because "the market" isn't ever going to put the costs of burning coal or gas on the people doing it. And the government can help make incentives to get people moving on problems before they become crises. Why oh why didn't Clinton put any effort into raising CAFE standards and making them apply to all cars, not just "fleets"?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154496007661869312006-08-01T22:20:00.000-07:002006-08-01T22:20:00.000-07:00There were plenty of wars before oil. You got me t...<I>There were plenty of wars before oil. </I><BR/><BR/>You got me there, Hawker. If the U.S. has to revive the horse cavalry...it's a fair bet we will have to look for enemies closer to home, though.<BR/><BR/>On electric cars, I still think the biggest obstacle is our aging power grid. Imagine if, during the recent heatwave, with our grid already straining...200 million cars and trucks were plugged into it...lights out!<BR/><BR/>Oil isn't easily replaced...it's a unique fuel.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154489212018819312006-08-01T20:26:00.000-07:002006-08-01T20:26:00.000-07:00Heh. Sorry. I retract.Heh. Sorry. I retract.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154489082421709732006-08-01T20:24:00.000-07:002006-08-01T20:24:00.000-07:00@Rob: It might have been her intention, but it was...@Rob: It might have been her intention, but it wasn't what she said:<BR/><I>"I note here what is to me a mystery. It is that people with lower IQs somehow tend, in our age, to have a greater apprehension of the meaning of things and the reality of life, than do our high-IQ professionals, who often seem, in areas outside their immediate field, startlingly dim."</I><BR/><BR/>Meanwhile, Tyson has an update in which <A HREF="http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000664/" REL="nofollow">a janitor</A> asks him a simple question. I feel that the answer given is as illuminating as the fact that the question was asked at all!<BR/>(*this* is decadence? Ha!)<BR/><BR/>...and <A HREF="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004765.html" REL="nofollow">'More Perfect'</A> sounds like an interesting site for an arena.Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154486689092123462006-08-01T19:44:00.000-07:002006-08-01T19:44:00.000-07:00Bliss was it that dawn to be aliveTo be young, was...Bliss was it that dawn to be alive<BR/>To be young, was very heaven!<BR/>-WWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154486243928836662006-08-01T19:37:00.000-07:002006-08-01T19:37:00.000-07:00No, I gathered that Noonan's offering was that wor...No, I gathered that Noonan's offering was that workaday people had more common sense, not less intelligence; I don't equate high intelligence with the ability to function in what I think is a university tenure system in need of significant repair. I dimly recall a study of IQ test results from decades ago that showed distributions of highly intelligent people in blue collar jobs.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154478599727990402006-08-01T17:29:00.000-07:002006-08-01T17:29:00.000-07:00Monkeyboy...There were plenty of wars before oil. ...Monkeyboy...<BR/><BR/>There were plenty of wars before oil. There will be plenty of wars after. For examples...<BR/>The Army's M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank has a gas turbine engine... while it runs best on jet fuel, it can use any liquid that burns: Kerosine, Gasoline, Diesel, Grain Alchohol, Wood Alchohol... The Navy's Burke class destroyers use similar engines.<BR/><BR/>Of course, you can always go lower tech... the record for miles per day (by a military unit) was set by the Mongol hordes on horseback.<BR/><BR/>On a lighter note: I do about 30 miles a day by car for my commute... I would gladly go for a electric car that could make that distance at 65mph.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154477495987210442006-08-01T17:11:00.000-07:002006-08-01T17:11:00.000-07:00In appealing to her audience, Noonan was inferring...In appealing to her audience, Noonan was inferring that common people had lower IQs than professionals. I considered that insulting, and merely pointed out Tyson's comment to demonstrate that people aren't inherently stupid or pig-ignorant. There's a hoary old definition of a PhD as being someone who knows everything about nothing. With that in mind, Noonan's 'mystery' isn't so astonishing: folk in general have a wider focus of interests than specialists.<BR/><BR/>Which is leading back into GAR vs FIBM vs WOC territory again...<BR/> <BR/>With the principles of IT evolving so rapidly, I agree that there is an incentive to keep yourself informed. I do have a degree from over 20 years ago but, while the concepts still apply, the specifics are woefully antiquated. Furthermore, I've learned not to depend solely on my employer offerings, which, if offered at all, are usually attuned to the needs of today's projects which rely on yesterday's technology. (Of course, you need to know how to do the job at hand, but you also need to judge what technologies are going to last).<BR/>A good reference book is a better resource than a high priced 'certification course' that is valid only until the next release of the OS.<BR/><BR/>----<BR/>Speaking of self learning, and to add a little more grist for the topics under discussion (now and previously), do go check out this week's <A HREF="http://www.newscientist.com/contents/issue/2562.html" REL="nofollow">New Scientist</A> (if only for the cover!):<BR/>- a rethink of what really happened to that self destruct mode culture on Easter Island (someone had fun with the front cover!)<BR/>- forget Tesla. How about a green car that runs on... water!?<BR/>- the usual collection of interesting odds and endsTony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154475978351620502006-08-01T16:46:00.000-07:002006-08-01T16:46:00.000-07:00tangent,Without oil...will the culture of war that...tangent,<BR/><BR/><I>Without oil...will the culture of war that exists in the Middle East last? </I><BR/><BR/>The U.S. military is currently burning up 15% of America's domestic oil production and refining capacity in the fight to, um, er, make America energy independent?<BR/><BR/>Without oil...the culture of war will end everywhere...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1154473419215145612006-08-01T16:03:00.000-07:002006-08-01T16:03:00.000-07:00"Why not pay a subsidy to grow corn or wheat or so..."Why not pay a subsidy to grow corn or wheat or something and turn it into ethanol?"<BR/><BR/>Rob, have you been asleep the last year or so? :-)<BR/><BR/>Corn-state politicians are pushing hard for making ethanol the alternative fuel of choice. There is already a requirement, at least in some states, for gasoline to have a certain percent of ethanol. This was a <I>political</I> decision.<BR/><BR/>The problem is, the energy benefit is very low, because corn requires a lot of water and fertilizer . . . petroleum based fertilizer!<BR/><BR/>The net benefit is very low; some say it is <I>negative</I>.<BR/><BR/>There is interest in using other plants as a source of ethanol. Quick-growing weeds that don't need much irrigation or fertilizer would be ideal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com