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Comment Re:Simple (Score 1) 481

I think they should both drop ALL subsidies for the commercial airlines AND drop all the regulations that restrain competition in the aviation market (i.e. the rule that requires domestic carriers in the US to be US-owned and made it so hard for Virgin America to get going)

Comment Re: Science... Yah! (Score 1) 958

I know fresh ingredients are better tasting and I have had fresh-made many times before (but with tomato paste rather than actual tomatoes) but the jar stuff is both more convenient AND cheaper (I did the math to confirm this). As for the sugar content, I get 4 servings out of one jar and the nutrition information says one such serving contains only 8% of the recommended daily intake of sugar. One serving also contains a single serve of veggies. Oh and the ingredients list doesn't mention a single preservative or anything else artificial, just natural ingredients.

Comment Re:Science... Yah! (Score 1) 958

The alternative is to look at the kind of diet eaten by people who don't have problems with obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes etc and eat food more like that.

Such food would contain a LOT less simple sugars (whether from sugar cane, sugar beets, corn or elsewhere), less fat, more low-GI sustained energy from complex carbohydrates, more fruits and vegetables, more fiber and more vitamins and minerals than the diet of a large chunk of the US population currently does.

Comment Re:Science... Yah! (Score 3, Interesting) 958

The whole "fat is bad" mantra that started in the 80s is actually one of the root causes of the obesity epidemic in the US. The "fat is bad" mantra lead to food companies removing fat from their foods. But in order to keep the taste levels high, they needed something else. And that something else is a whole family of chemicals extracted from corn including High Fructose Corn Syrup.

There is evidence that HFCS and the other corn products contribute to obesity much more than either fat OR cane sugar but the corn industry is so powerful that no-one of any substance has the guts to challenge them and really fight.

IMO the excellent documentary Food, Inc should be required viewing for American school kids. Show them where their food REALLY comes from.

Comment Re: Science... Yah! (Score 1) 958

Here in Australia I can buy 500g of lean beef mince, 500g of spaghetti and a 500g jar of tomato pasta sauce for around A$10. That much food makes 4-5 servings of Spaghetti. (and you probably only need about 1/2-2/3 of the packet of spaghetti). Oh and that pasta only takes about 15-20 minutes to cook depending on how long the water takes to boil.

To get food for 4 people from any of the fast food options in my area I would need to spend at least A$20 if not more and I would get food that is less healthy AND less filling. To buy, say, a 4-person serving of a preprocessed frozen heat-and-eat pasta would also cost more than the A$10 it costs to make it myself.

Is it really so bad in America that its cheaper to buy the unhealthy preprocessed crap than it is to buy actual ingredients and make it yourself? (oh and btw, the A$10 price could be reduced by buying cheaper mince with a bit more fat as well as cheaper supermarket brand pasta and sauce)

Comment Re:It is unfair competition (Score 4, Insightful) 204

Look at the comparison between people in the US who have electricity provided by a commercial for-profit entity and those who have it provided by a co-op/municipal entity. All the evidence I can find suggests that the municipal systems are better for the community than the commercial operators.

I cant find any suggestions that people living in areas where the electricity is provided by a municipal monopoly are unhappy with the service or wish they had a commercial operator running things.

And there is nothing to suggest that municipal broadband is going to be anywhere near as crap as the current offerings. Its likely to be high speed fiber links (so already it will be faster in the real world than the crappy speeds most cable and DSL operators currently give you) and there is no real reason for the municipality to try and pull tricks to protect TV revenues (since the municipalities generally dont have skin in the TV game in the way the current monopolies do)

Comment Re:What about the GPU? (Score 1) 355

Didn't Broadcomm publish a whole bunch of specs on their GPU a while back specifically for the Raspberry Pi project? The biggest problem with the Pi in my eyes is that (for some BS reasons that don't seem entirely clear to me) it still needs a closed source bootloader on the VideoCore side of things in order to actually use the thing.

If Broadcomm were smart they would publish the specs (or code) for that too and make the Broadcomm chip-set in the Pi the first mobile SoC with a complete set of specs available for all its hardware.

Comment It depends on the biofuel feedstock (Score 1) 224

Using corn to produce ethanol is about the worst possible way to do it, it actually takes more energy to produce x amount of E85 corn ethanol than you get out of it when you use it.
Using sugar cane to produce ethanol is a little bit better but still inefficient.

Using something like switchgrass on the other hand is much better, you can grow it in places where other stuff wont grow, you dont need anywhere near as much energy inputs or chemicals to produce it and with a little R&D and the right kind of processing plants you could get more output per hectare than either corn OR sugar cane.

Comment Re:Not going to disappear quickly.... (Score 2) 293

Looking at Wikipedia, Korean Air, Arik Air, Air China and Transaero have also ordered the 747-8 along with sales of 9 aircraft to what Boeing labels "business jet/VIP" (i.e. sales to entities that aren't airlines). Order numbers for the passenger variant aren't that far behind the numbers for the freight variant.

The older 747s are going away because they are inefficient and expensive to run and maintain. But the -8 contains technology from their latest aircraft like the 787 and the 737-9 to make it more fuel efficient and cheaper to run (being newer, the maintanence costs are probably lower too)

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