Comment Re:Plain solar panels cost less (Score 1) 268
Look at the frigging picture in the article. This thing is to be built like a radio telescope, probably with a price tag to match.
Look at the frigging picture in the article. This thing is to be built like a radio telescope, probably with a price tag to match.
which would also be used on PV
No, most PV panels are flat and fixed in place.
It says it's parabolic right in the summary.
TFA shows a parabolic dish made of smaller mirrors. Those mirrors may look flat, but there's no way that they get "2000X" solar concentration unless each individual mirror is also precisely curved.
The whole setup looks far more expensive than conventional solar panels of the same area, or even a larger set of solar collectors capable of gathering the same amount of energy.
Actually, as soon as the garbage men show up, it's the governemnt's trash. I don't see why they shouldn't be free to do whatever they want with their property.
If it's the government's trash, why are they threatening ME with a fine if THEIR trash has too much food waste in it?
Because you have an agreement with the government that they will take possession of some types of your undesirable property in exchange for fixed fee. Part of the agreement is that different types of undesirable materials have to be segregated in order to reduce overall costs, direct and external. You did not properly segregate the materials as specified under the agreement, and therefore pay a specified surcharge. Presumably, this surcharge helps the government offset the cost of having to build a new landfill earlier because the current one is filled up with your otherwise compostable food waste.
Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to segreagate your waste according to the government's specifications. You're always free to load your garbage in your car, find a privately run landfill who will accept it as-is, and bring it there.
Mirrors are a whole lot cheaper than PVs.
Flat mirrors, maybe. Parabolic mirrors on gimbals with sun tracking mechanisms, maybe not so much.
Nobody can stop you from discreetly handing your bags of spoiled food over to a man who pulls up to your front door in an unmarked service vehicle.
other blatant examples of government micromanagement (like looking through your trash)
Actually, as soon as the garbage men show up, it's the governemnt's trash. I don't see why they shouldn't be free to do whatever they want with their property.
If you don't like the government's terms of service, you're always free to hire a private firm to come in an unmarked van and discreetly take away your food waste.
Get them in season (early winter months), still on the stalk, and cook them properly (refer to the Good Eats episode on Brussels sprouts, for exmaple). There will still be some variations in quality based on the exact batch you have, but the best vegetables I've ever eaten have been when I found particularly good stalks of Brussel sprouts.
Your statement should apply equally to pedestrians and cyclists. However, pedestrians aren't the ones arguing that they'd be safer walking down the middle of the road than on the sidewalk.
Neither cyclists nor pedestrians travel down the middle of the road.
Because most pedestrians that are hit by an automobile are not on the sidewalk, they're in the road.
As I said, only a small fraction of cyclists are hit while traveling down the road not near an intersection.
At an intersection, by definition, YOU'RE IN THE ROAD, whether you had been on a sidewalk or not. Now read that last sentence again, because you seem to be incapable of understanding that simple geometric fact.
The issue is that motorists rarely look for objects moving faster than 0.5mph coming from a sidewalk. Maybe instead of making cyclists stop and dismount at every goddamned driveway as you want, we should address the original source of the risk and institute a nationwide comprehensive 15 mph speed limit.
I never suggested they didn't get killed by cars all the time. I said they manage to handle intersections just fine. That is, with an acceptable surivaval rate.
Where did you come up with that idea? Pedestrians are routinely killed at intersections, coming from sidewalks. Where do you get the idea that that's acceptable?
I don't hear nearly as much whining from pedestrians rights groups as I do from cyclists rights groups, so I assume that pedestrians have greater success in intersections than cyclists do. Of course, it's possible that cyclists are more whiney. Could go either way.
Maybe they're whiny because they hear unsubstantiated crap like this all the time from ill-informed people like you.
Somehow pedestrians manage to handle intersections just fine, all while staying on sidewalks and crosswalks. Perhaps if navigating intersections is too challenging on a bicycle, one might dismount and walk the bike cross?
Pedestrians get killed by cars all the time. Please stop talking out of your ass.
Yet only something like 5% of bike injuries involve being rear-ended by cars on roads.
Almost all other cases would involve intersections of some sort, where being on the sidewalk doesn't help or is counterproductive. You're still vulnerable to the high-speed cars while crossing roads, and you're more likely to collide because they're not looking at where you're coming from.
If we could only arrange for every segment of every bike trip to enjoy a 3% downhill grade, a stiff tail wind, 40 degF dewpoint and partly cloudy skies, then almost nobody would even bother to buy a car.
You are not kept away from cars on a sidewalk.
Since drivers rarely look for traffic on sidewalks as they go in and out of driveways and side streets, you run a high risk of getting run over at every curb cut. At least when you're on the road, drivers usually see you when they bother to glance up from their cellphones.
Once upon a time DOS came with Basic.
Better still, it also came with DEBUG.COM.
It seems odd that the pigs are too irradiated to eat but seem to thrive and breed just fine.
Most people these days prefer to live a good deal longer than their earliest possible breeding time.
That does not compute.
