MSimon wrote:
In fact I'm against our new President's plan to kill off coal plants before we have a lower cost replacement. It will cause some deaths. Maybe not many. It would be too many for me.
Depends... if taxation on coal power companies was used to subsidise the most vulnerable in society from going cold in the winter, it wouldn't cause any deaths at all. If would just make electricity a little more expensive for rich people.
The rebates are not preemptive. They are retroactive. If you run out of cash flow before the government paperwork is completed - well tough. One less consumer that needs to be subsidized. The government can save the money for more pressing needs like bribing some rich guy to give a campaign donation.
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And not to worry - taking money out of the economy and giving it to the government in a down turn has always been a recipe for a quick recovery. See Hoover, Herbert.
Of course passing out government money in a downturn has always been a recipe for a quick recovery.
See Roosevelt, Franklin.
So we're mass-murderers? That is, by your logic, since we do practice industrialization, and the result of this is less of our populace, then we must be advocating murder. Since educated industrialization is what the people in question are advocating.
Couldn't be people choosing to have fewer children... no, that's unthinkable.
Mike Holmes wrote:So we're mass-murderers? That is, by your logic, since we do practice industrialization, and the result of this is less of our populace, then we must be advocating murder. Since educated industrialization is what the people in question are advocating.
Couldn't be people choosing to have fewer children... no, that's unthinkable.
Mike
It is a slippery slope Mike. And it is no emergency. It is now pretty much accepted that the way to lower population growth is to raise living standards and educate women.
Had they advocated that I'd be in favor. But a 10 year moratorium on having children? How do you make that happen? The way China does?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Seems that even people in the auto industry themselves agree with me.
Mike
Toyota is in a race with GM to get a plug in hybrid on the market. If GM dies autos will still evolve.
Here is a money quote from that article:
Paine, who has been working on a Volt-centered sequel, said U.S. automakers would have been better able to weather the current crisis if they had listened to critics who blasted them for turning away from electric cars earlier this decade.
"This may turn out to be the biggest blunder ever for these companies," he said.
I was reading Megan McArdle the other day and in the comments some one who claimed numerous contacts with auto company executives said they are dumber than rocks.
Take Chrysler. They had a design for a hybrid Ram Charger Truck that also doubled as an on site generator with 20 KW of electrical power. It never saw the light of day.
I wrote about it shortly after 9/11. It is not like they didn't know how to do what needs to be done. They just decided not to do it.
Even if sales had been poor they would have gotten experience.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Well, gosh, if we deregulate everything, then soon we'll all be slaves to the megacorporations!
Slippery slope? You do realize that's the name of yet another logical fallacy. So you're conceeding the point? Very well, I accept.
If, on the other hand, what you mean to imply is that there's some chain of events that must demonstrably occur if we take the first step, then I await with baited breath for you to make those suppositions. But until I see the Canadians start in on mass-murder, I'm going to feel pretty safe with the "murder greens" around. No more threatened than I am by groups like the White Supremacist organizations that actually DO advocate genocide as the "Final Solution."
I thought you were thoroughly against fearmongering?
MSimon wrote: But may you are right. Maybe 100,000 garage shops can build a 747-400.
Boeing, the company, built 747s before they bought out all those other companies and became the megacorp they are now. Indeed, Boeing, the megacorp, seems almost chicken-s#!+ in their design strategy now they are a megacorp.
MSimon, I think in general you and I are on the same side. Isn't it a pity we seem to be wasting our time chatting about this BS rather than planning what to do to bring about the BFRs.
Does anyone have any ideas how to light a fire? I mean, the recent small contracts are nice, but they ain't the $200M needed. What can we do?
MSimon wrote: But may you are right. Maybe 100,000 garage shops can build a 747-400.
Boeing, the company, built 747s before they bought out all those other companies and became the megacorp they are now. Indeed, Boeing, the megacorp, seems almost chicken-s#!+ in their design strategy now they are a megacorp.
MSimon, I think in general you and I are on the same side. Isn't it a pity we seem to be wasting our time chatting about this BS rather than planning what to do to bring about the BFRs.
Does anyone have any ideas how to light a fire? I mean, the recent small contracts are nice, but they ain't the $200M needed. What can we do?
I'm holding my fire until the new President is sworn in. Roger Fox has the Democrats really well covered. I have my contacts with the Republicans.
Both of us have blogs (Roger's is at DKos) that can move a few people - Dr. B said that bloggers (Tall Dave was mentioned) helped in getting the WB-6 contract for EMC2.
McCain knows about Polywell and is still in the Senate.
The community is now a (small) political force. We are in much better shape than we were in as of Nov of 2006.
For most of us the technical topics have been pretty well worked over so what remains for now? Discussing stupid stuff until we have some more technical stuff to work with.
I was going to crank up the publicity/political machine until I found out about the keep alive contracts.
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So that is about where we are today.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Um, for a guy who claims to be so versed in sarcasm, you sure don't recognize it when you see it. In fact I went on to point out how I felt that the fear of government was as irrational as the fear of megacorporations. Don't get me wrong, they are both capable of doing damage. But they both have strengths, which is why we have them both.
In any case, I see that you've both thrown in the towel on this matter, and have decided to change the subject. So I guess this thread is over. If you want to talk about promoting BFR (great subject, I agree), you ought to put it in a new thread so that folks will see it.
I think that with careful reading of my post you could have sussed out my meaning. But perhaps I overestimate my ability to communicate in this medium.
On topic discussion is always good. This thread's topic is, in fact, policies related to AGW and such (which has meandered into questions of trust of the government, etc). Now if you can relate that to the overall forum's topic of the polywell, that's great. Just changing the topic does no service to either this thread, or the subject to which you're changing it.
I have over ten million words posted to internet fora (I stopped counting a while back)... I'm pretty much an expert on this.
Not sure what your last point is, but if it's that we've wandered too far from this thread's topic, then it's you who have lead us astray consistently by bringing up side-topics like "murder greens." In any case, I do think that we've likely said all that we need to say on this subject. Time to focus on other threads, for me at least.