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Comment Re:GMO is not a problem (Score 5, Insightful) 400

It's not entirely the fault of the populace that they are ignorant. Have you tried finding out in what way GMO foods at your local supermarket have been modified?

Heck, if the agriculture companies had started using genetic engineering to make crops healthier, they would have been far more likely to be accepted. But they started by making crops more watery (and thus less nutritious), making it so farmers can blanket entire US states with herbicides without affecting the desired crops, and introducing pesticides that AFAIK are just assumed to be safe. So a broad brush was used, and because of the agriculture companies it was the bad brush instead of the good one.

Comment $25 billion a pittance?! (Score 1) 233

Duke's market capitalization is $50 billion and their annual earnings are $2.2 billion. How is $25 billion a pittance?

To that end, there are several companies trying to come out with pre-approved smaller reactor designs (50MW instead of 1100MW) which they would build for $1 billion apiece and then build them one after another on the same site until they had however many they wanted (could be 24, could be 6). That way, at any one time the financial risk is actually manageable.

Comment Re:Cue anti-union rage (Score 1) 467

The grad student union where I was a grad student is responsible for lowering the pay of grad student researchers and teaching assistants in sciences (when the first unionized 10 years ago). And the new postdoc union is responsible for contractual prohibitions on graduating PhD students getting temporary postdocs (as recently as 2 months ago) at their school before moving elsewhere, creating lots of unnecessary red tape, or being employed as a grad student researcher even after getting a PhD. Of course, that means you also are not eligible for the postdoc health insurance, (and you're not eligible for student health insurance if you're not enrolled).

None of that is remotely beneficial.

Comment Re:Mass Mail (Score 1) 473

Once a week is a bit extreme, and would require the post office to store a whole lot of mail over the course of a week, but I figure we could switch to standard 3-day delivery without a problem. Half of each zip code gets mail Mon, Wed, and Friday, and the other half gets mail Tues, Thurs, & Saturday. So if someone mails you something, it'll at most take an additional two days (1 extra day waiting to go out, and 1 extra at your post office waiting for your delivery day)---assuming you check your mail every day anyway. And the post office needs half as many maintained vehicles, half as many drivers, and uses half as much gas. And there's always the possibility of charging extra for everyday delivery.

Comment Re:American concept of pricing? (Score 2) 303

To be fair, LA is 266 miles away from Las Vegas; drive 1mph slower and you'll make it. Alternatively, they plan to put in a fast-charge station in Barstow (152 miles away) as one of the first 6 fast-charge stations just to make sure people can make it from LA to Las Vegas.

Many families in the US have multiple cars and only take one on a road trip at a time. Most families don't need both cars to be able to go 450 miles on a tank that's fillable anywhere in 5 minutes.

Most people live on the coasts, and are a lot closer to places they'd regularly drive to. You could drive from New York City to Boston or Washington DC on a single 265 mile charge. In southern California, you could drive from LA to San Diego and back on a 265 mile charge. You could even drive around the entire San Francisco Bay Area on a single 190 mile charge (the $60,000 version).

A large number of (wealthy) people in San Francisco, New York, etc. don't even own cars. Surely if they don't need a car then a limited-range EV would satisfy their needs. Sure, EVs aren't for everyone; but a lot of US driving done with gas-powered cars could be easily done with EVs.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot - How can I help a seasoned technical writer find work?

An anonymous reader writes: A friend of mine is a tech writer. He's had a rough time in this recession and is at the end of his unemployment. He has a long trail of recommendations, awards, etc. I suspect that, or age discrimination may be working against him. He has operated as an independent before, but can't seem to find work that way either.

To be honest I just haven't heard of anything about openings for dedicated tech writer openings in a very long time... is that becoming uncommon? I've told him I could help him if he wanted to head toward qa and that he might get to do a little writing there depending on organizational needs, though starting money is probably not so good. I'm not sure what else to tell him. Advice?
Games

Submission + - Sim City 5 vs. Cities XL a future showdown? (tekgoblin.com)

tekgoblin writes: "As many of you may now know, SimCity 5 is slated for release in early next year. Maxis is promising us a glorious and grand return of the title, with amazing new game play and world set up. Yet, they now have some major competition in the city building and simulation genre. SimCity’s cheif competition is Cities XL, which first appeared in 2009 to fill the city building and simulation void left by Maxis and EA when they chose to take such a long break from the franchise. It offers users a full 3D world that could be zoomed into street level and panned 360, as well as multiplayer capabilities. Cities XL offers and entire globe full of city locations and a variety or maps to choose from, with stunning new and updated graphics it brought to us everything that Sim City 4 couldn’t or hadn’t."

Comment Re:Pollution not a valid argument for the left (Score 1) 545

It's not about the concentration (absolute or relative), but the effect. If someone started to double the concentration of O2 in out atmosphere from 21% to 42%, I would call that pollution because of the large number of negative externalities (ie. due to the impact it would have on forest fires). If someone increased N2 concentration from 78% to 89%, we'd all have a harder time getting to oxygen we need to function, so continued willy-nilly dumpin of N2 into the atmosphere would be pollution.

Actually, changes to low concentrations of greenhouse gases has a larger effect than changes at high concentrations. In a simplistic picture where the transmissivity of the atmosphere in a certain band depends on a single molecule, you can write the transmissivity of the atmosphere as I = 2^(-t/h). Where I is the % of the light that makes it out of the earth's atmosphere, t is the thickness of the molecule, and h is the level at which that molecule blocks half the light from making it out of the atmosphere.

Let's assume that 200ppm will block out half the light. At 280ppm, 38% of the light made it through. At 390ppm, 26% of the light makes it through. At 480ppm, 19% of the light makes it through. By 5%, basically no light makes it through, which means that from 280ppm, 480ppm is halfway to 5% and at 390ppm (where we are now) we are a third of the way to the effect of 5%. In actuality, every molecule has multiple absorption bands, and I'm sorry I don't have exact numbers handy. But, this exponential dependence is one of the reasons why methane, which is normally at a much lower absolute concentration, is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 (the other reason being that the ocean won't gradually reabsorb it).

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