78stonewobble

I think it's the wrong question. The question should be, would the **** leaders have been interested in Von B beyond military needs? And if so, what would those interests be? ... No, I don't think **** germany could have won the war per say, but they might have fought it long and hard enough to possibly have negotiated more favourable conditions including their own survival. Especially so with nuclear weapons. EDIT: Remember that germany only really entered wartime levels of production very late in the war. If they could have done that earlier and with some of their newer most advanced technology. It would have made for a much harder victory for the allies and presumably more drawn out war. Even if, in the long term, population and ressource wise they could not compete with the US, Russia and these nations access to other countries and further ressources.

Oh yeah, that it's part of "beauty" is true enough, but I meant more along the lines of the OP... How many teeth in the jaws. We're not exactly looking for the next evolutionary leap there in our selection. No doubt, that beautifull and smart (or atleast seemingly so, for both) are traits we actively select.

"There's a consensus that not all hot spots are equal. Some are hot spots; some are wet spots." *chuckle* ... wet spot... Sorry, it's morning here and I haven't had enough coffee yet.

1. No, I'm replacing something with a high risk of many lives (going the wind/solar route and ignoring ie. coal), with something with a small risk to a small amount of people (nuclear). 2. Yeah, because using enough battery power, to be able to backup the western worlds electrical energy supply, is completely without any enviromental sideeffects. Yeah, right. EDIT: Or the inherent dangers of using ie. enough hydrogen to do the same (gas tanks never blow up right? Certainly not in earthquakes). Or the same thing with creating hundreds, if not thousands of high lying and dammed in reservoirs (dams never break? Certainly not in earthquakes). 3. No, it would be different. As evidenced by the fact that a newer nuclear powerplant was even closer to the earthquake and tsunami and survived it easily. It was actually so safe that people from the nearby town used it as emergency shelter. 4. If, you're gonna have a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, you're probably gonna have bigger problems than the nuclear powerplants. Such as every friggin other building, road, rail and bridge collapsing. In any case 9.0 earthquakes are so rare, that hardly any buildings are designed to withstand them. Presumably it's an engineering problem and it can be done. It would just be exceedingly expensive and impractical. 5. Use them and gradually replace them with newer designs. Unless a serious design fault or oversight crops up. In the Fukushima Daichii disaster a few extra meters of seawall would have pretty negated the entire thing. 6. No, it functions like everything else. It evolves as time passes by. The risk is minimal and as I said we need hundreds or even thousands of giant chernobyl disasters, for nuclear power to be as dangerous as the ignorant choice to go with renewable energy without removing the main polluting sources.

It still makes sense though, if you're gonna sexually reproduce, to communicate your fitness, in some way to partners. The sexual display structures you mention are a representation of that "fitness". ... With humans today there are still some attributes that make some people more desirable than others. Some make sense, others... maybe not so much. I doubt though that many people picks partners based on dental sets (like horses? ). ... Regarding the appendix. I did read a theory, that it still has a use. It's a survival "bunker" for beneficial intestinal bacteria. Ie. if you get a harmfull bacterial infection, the beneficial ones might survive in the appendix until ready to repopulate the rest of the intestines. Though, that might work both ways. If the harmfull ones get there, they might be harder to get rid of. Well, I only glanced over it.

And the comparison of a nuclear powerplant to a house is entirely valid. A house will collapse in on itself, if it is damaged enough. Actually happens alot during earthquakes. So, no, just because a house can collapse due to natural disasters, idiot intervention (remove a loadbearing wall during DIY) or just sloppy construction, does not mean the concept of a house is flawed. To claim that nuclear power is very unsafe, is the equivalent of claiming that flying is very unsafe compaired to driving. Because when planes crash alot of people die right? Well, only if you ignore it when small planes crash and completely ignore how many people drive so and so far and how many crash.

No! .... They are not alternatives, since they do not remove the need for having coal powerplants running in my country. I know of no battery or other storage solution that can generate 5.000 mw's of energy for even 8 hours, 12 hours or however long would be necessary.

The roads are a bad idea. It's inefficient at collecting solar power (better to use the money on a dedicated plant) and it's inefficient at improving road safety (remove the driver instead).

The cost of not going nuclear = 125.000.000.000 lives (WHO numbers btw.). If chernobyl cost 4.000 lives: We'd need 31.250 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative. If chernobyl cost 60.000 lives: We'd need 2.083 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative. If chernobyl cost 200.000 lives: We'd need 625 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative. If chernobyl cost 985.000 lives: We'd need 127 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative. In other words... In the absolutely worst calculation of the chernobyl accident, we killed 124 mio. people to save under a mio. Offcourse... That's a whole nother way of solving the worlds problems, but I doubt people would vote on it. Or to put the numbers in another perspective. Just driving cars around, kills around 1 mio. people and maims tens of millions, a year.

1. The problem here being, that if your electric grid consists of relatively large and relatively modern coal powerplants. Those coal powerplants need to run most of the time, because as you say, they cannot be used to pick up swift changes to electrical production or demand. Even if they have a small, but additional capacity to deal with peak demands. 2. I agree... But the point was that you cannot only use cost as the only measure of danger or impact, because the cost calculations can be highly selective, dare I say even purposefully ignorant. 3. And just what constitutes effective urban planning rules? The supposition that " There's also no reliable evidence of wind turbines having any negative health impacts due to noise. It's purely nuisance factor." ? ... In that case our effective urban planning rules just cut the distance between human living and windturbines to say 3 meters. In which case, we would end up with reliable evidence, that windturbines are noisy and that noise is a health factor. I agree that in most places it isn't a problem, because as you say ... the rules are actually pretty effective most places, but they shouldn't be set in stone and if people are building windmills legally in a way that does negatively affect other people (health even), then we should really see if the rules are adequate. It does render area uninhabitable, just like chernobyl did. The difference is that we can easily deconstruct the windmill and render it habitable again. Not use the technicality that obviously people don't want to live right next to windmills or in allready noisy/polluting or just smelly industrial zones. We could use the same argument to say that the chernobyl exclusion zone is a non problem, because noone wants to live there anymore. 4. Here we're being selective again. The cost and impact of the decision to only build wind energy in a country like mine, which also has coal power, which we do nothing to replace. Should include the continual impact of those coal powerplants. They are part of the decision / policy, even if they're hardly ever mentioned. It's like trying to loose weight, while eating some cake every week. It's possible, but hard. Very much harder, if you also stop going to the gym, because now your eating cake in that period. The full outcome of decisions does not only include what you do, but also what you end up not doing.

You could argue, that it is much less frivolous than ie. cancer research and many other kinds of medical research, which has little effect as to whether the entire species survives. It actually might be a detriment in allowing many people to live much longer, further increasing overpopulation.

Complex software my ass... In Denmarks case the high production of windmills can get wasted. When conditions are unfavorable we often have to import power at high cost. When conditions are favorable we have to export at low prices. Right now we're thankfully importing hydro power from our neighbours, but we are exporting our coal power to countries which have stopped using nuclear power or are trying to. Meaning we've actually taking a step backwards.

1. Wind generators do not replace coal power plants. If the wind doesn't blow, the coal power plants need to be there and running, ready to take over. So producing co2, plus adding co2 from the manufacturing of the windmills, constructing them and transporting them. Nuclear power, while more expensive, removes that basic necessary production of co2. No, cost is not a good measure. Ie. it fails to calculate the human cost of picking the "cheapest", least efficient solution. My guesstimate is on around 22,8 trillion dollars. 2. Well, good. Because you cannot predict taxation 50 years ahead. People are hardpressed to make accurate economic predictions even 5 years ahead. 3. There are clear examples of "enthusiasts" building windmills so close to housing, that the noise disrupts sleep and has negatively affected property value. "According to these guidelines, annual average night exposure should not exceed 40 decibels (dB), corresponding to the sound from a quiet street in a residential area. Persons exposed to higher levels over the year can suffer mild health effects, such as sleep disturbance and insomnia. Long-term average exposure to levels above 55 dB, similar to the noise from a busy street, can trigger elevated blood pressure and heart attacks." So yeah, windmills render areas uninhabitable. Roads should too...

The last sentence is then the next thing I'd want to see, before I believe it to be practically possible.

1. Global warming is estimated to indirectly cost 5 million lives every year from the year 2025-2050. That's 125 million lives over all. That's by keeping coal and driving cars. Adding sun panels and windmills is actually adding pollution due to manufacturing, transportation and so on. Nuclear power would actually replace that biggest polluter and save us from adding pollution with sun panels and windmills. It's too late now to reverse the ongoing effects, but if we'd begun going nuclear in the 60's and 70's we wouldn't have killed all those 125 million people. But here we are 50+ years later and we're still not replacing the big ass coal plants. 2. "How to predict future taxation? ... Yeah, well all it took here was one government change and 4 years and the sun panel market changed for the worse. PS: I wonder how much land has been "rendered inhabitable by humans" due to windmills. They make noise you know, enough to negatively affect sleep and significantly lowers real estate value.

Well, I still think the B-1 has the best curves.

For nuclear workers right? Civilian limits is somewhat lower right? Natural background radiation on the other hand is somewhere betwen 0,5 to 5 mSV yearly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity_in_Basel Well, here the largest one lead to 2.700 damage claims worth 6.5 million to 8.3 million U.S dollars and project shutdown. Maybe it was just the wrong place and knowledge has increased since then, but it might also mean that we can never be quite sure that such projects will be completely safe or viable in all the areas we want to put them.

Hmm... Well, I think some research into this area is warranted because, if possible, it would literally open up more space for mankind than all of exploration so far. The potential pay out is worth it imho. ... Or in other words playing the lottery is fine, it allows you to dream. Spending all your money on the lottery is stupid. But I'll still want to see a detection of actual manmade warping space before I see it.

You could offcourse just build a seawall of suitable height and be safe. Like they did at that other nuclear powerplant even closer to the earthquake, which was fine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2011

1. How can I be wrong, when I didn't even bring up economics in my argument. I know nuclear is expensive, especially if done as safe as possible, but I find that irrelevant compaired to the number of lives it might save. PS: How do you even predict taxation 50 years ahead? Regardless of technology in question. 2. Geothermal is not so good, if you trigger earthquakes and need to abandon the project. 3. No amount of solar/wind power is gonna replace the need for a dependable electrical capacity in the form of ie. a coal power plant. We have coal power plants here, they're the main polluters in our electrical sector. Those are the ones I want to replace. I don't want to add pollution, by manufacturing hundreds of square kilometers worth of windmills and solar arrays, that does not remove the polluting we are allready doing.

If we're talking large amounts of data? Sure, tape is certainly still used, when you need to store or backup tens or hundreds of petabytes of data. Raid is not backup. But yeah, I remember having an old amstrad something that loaded from tape too. Allthough you could get a floppy reader too. PS: At others saying bare essentials on the SSD... but, but, but ... my bare essentials include 600+ gb worth of games ... and those ssd's might still be too pricey for my tastes.

*yawn* ... Wind and solar is like donating whatever pocket change you had to some charity. It moooostly helps cover ones bad consciousness, but it does nothing to change the underlying or bigger problem. I see exactly one alternative to going nuclear (and actually doing something that matter) and thats geothermal energy. Thats unproven on the scale needed around here... So again, we're left with nuclear. I'd vote "heck yeah, put it in my backyard", if I could... But no... people are too whiny around here.

It loos like there's not 1, but 2, red HAL 9000 eyes in the cockpit. Yeah... I'm not betatesting this. It looks, swell/cool enough... but in the short term I'd prefer something more lowtech, but still pretty high utility like the nautilus x.

I think that, if we talk about going beyond just destroying satelites in LEO, then we will only be fighting over something relatively valuable. Meaning probably valuable enough to have people out there repairing also and those can then get in the way of anyone trying to destroying whatever valuable thingymobob. So we'll have to think humans into it somewhat. Personally I think it will be a relatively "slow" (sailing ships vs. jet fighters) and as dangerous as submarine warfare (hostile environment and direct hit will be rather dangerous to the entire ship). Hmm *ponders* Stealth will still be around in some fashion. Ie. if you use missiles you want them to be hard to acquire on radar and other spectrums until it's too late anyway. Presumably you'd also use the vast amounts of real estate to hide anyway you can, preferably behind something large.