I would think a whole other factor is that when wind turbines are new to an area the expertise in putting them up and maintaining them would be low; thus the costs would be a bit higher. But after a decade or so of experience that the local talent would be getting better and better at selecting, installing, and maintaining the turbines and associated electrical infrastructure.

This would be on top of the fact that the turbines themselves are becoming cheaper and better with their nearly continuous improvements. So for anyone making decisions on future projects these numbers would not only be getting more reliable but could end up not being optimistic enough. Whereas with more mature technologies like coal the numbers are going to simply be the numbers.

Maybe if they were grinding up the camels live (legs first) for fuel for their streetview vehicle. Or were dragging the camels behind the streetview vehicle, then they would have a point.

I see PETA about the same way I do see camels, ornery, biting, spitting, smelly, animals

I give this project a very high hoax factor but it is no longer 100% like it was the first day that I first read about it. The test I would like to see would include Penn And Teller as the debunkers as they would think way outside the box, not examining extreme physics, but looking for smoke and mirrors.

Oddly enough if Penn and Teller gave it a thumbs up while working with the appropriate physics and chemistry experts, I would say that this is probably true moreso than if any group of physicists gave it a thumbs up.

The simple reality is that this guy really needs to publish how to build your own and let the world have a crack. With this the hoax factor almost instantly goes to 100% or 0%. If it isn't a hoax I suspect that the guy is obsessed with not being ripped off. If I were him what would piss me off is if some somewhat famous physicist looked over my publication and then called the effect governing the process after himself, and the nomenclature stuck. Of course I would also be pissed off is somehow my patent was end-run somehow.

A whole other psychological thing that might be at play would be that the guy does have something but has no idea how it works; thus he might accidentally have figured out an interesting way of tapping into nearby high tension powerlines or something and will be proven to be a fool, even though he may have still developed something fairly interesting, just non-nuclear. Also if many other scientists do get their hands on it and figure out how it works he might just be called a tinkerer, idiot savant, etc as opposed to pretty much being classified along with the guy who invented fire.

I wouldn't bet on this being real, but much like the faster than light neutrinos I have my fingers crossed. Those would have been so cool!

If this thing turns out to work it will upset a whole lot of apple carts and I am not only talking about the obvious energy sector ones. But projects like ITER go to hell. Patent offices would be forced to use their brains. And then worst of all a whole lot of very smart people with very respectable degrees would have to say, "Not only was that not invented in a prestigious institution by a prestigious graduate who was funded by a prestigious grant giving organization, but we don't have a clue as to how the magic works."

But the real problem with his project is basically that after the last cold fusion debacle nobody will touch that with a 20 foot pole. Basically if you want to work on cold fusion the closest would be to try and get a grand for "Alternate forms of neutron emission for the detection of hidden explosives." To associate your reputation and name with cold fusion would be roughly equal to associating it with paranormal studies. So even if you have a pet theory that you have in a bottom drawer that perfectly meshes with what this guy is doing would you dare take the risk and back this guy?

I would be so happy if this was an ITER killer. To me the ITER project is just a massive white elephant that was designed to last entire careers of delivering nothing. All the squabbling over who builds what and where it is built just reeks of petty bureaucrats gone wild. The zillions of dollars should have gone to hoards of small scale fundamental research projects instead of one giant role of the dice.

What would make me laugh even harder would be to find out that the "leaders" of ITER were trying to squash this fusion project just so they don't get shut down.

The other thing that I would be willing to bet is that if the ITER project were shut down that physicists and engineers would pour out of the woodwork saying that they didn't previously dare criticise the project for fear of their careers being destroyed but that now they can say how much the project stunk.

Top Gear had an interesting experiment where they raced a Prius against a BMW M3. But what they did was have the Prius go all out and the M3 just paced it. Then they measured the actual gas consumed and found that the BMW had better mileage under those circumstances.

Some time ago I had a big old V8 car and I could pretty much halve my mileage simply by being only somewhat more aggressive. City driving would also send that car's mileage into a tailspin. The rated mileage was around 23/18Mpg but I would say that with gentle highway driving I could do 23 but with typical city driving it might have been below 12.

So what I would like to see for a metric would be something similar to the Top Gear scenario; basically they would drive the car around a test track at three(light, normal, and lead foot) given sets of reasonable accelerations, braking, speeds, etc and then tell us the consumption rate. Then we could compare apples to apples when buying cars.

If automation doesn't kill at least 50% by 2025 I'll have my robot eat its hat.

What hasn't happened yet is the creation of the IBM PC of robots. There have been a few cracks at it such as the PR2 but I see that as more of a Sinclair than PC. I want a whitebox robot that I can then glue bits on through a PCI type interface equivalent and make it a factory robot, a hospital robot, or an agricultural robot. For instance I was looking at a machine that was making pretzels and someone had called it a robot. I would have called it a slightly adaptable pretzel making machine.

I have two rules of thumb for what I call a robot: One is that it adapts to its environment somewhat; for instance a garbage picking up machine that looked for garbage, picked up garbage, and did other things such as bringing back a full load and dumping it would meet rule one. Rule two(the lesser rule) is that at the core of the machine can be adapted to something else. So the garbage picking up robot could have some bits switched and it could be a mowing robot or a snow removal robot. I am not saying that the actual garbage robot would be swapable, but that the factory that makes them would be at least adapting a central common core.

So a roomba very much meets rule one but is mostly failing on rule two.

And my rules also apply to software that eliminates a job. I suspect that the software that replaces a call center worker will end up being related to the software that replaces a medical doctor on diagnoses. So adapts to is limited environment, and has a common core.

But when robot designers are working with tools that meet both of my rules then the robot revolution will take off and the job losses will be astronomical. Basically any fairly repetitive job that follows a simple set of logical rules is doomed. This describes many many jobs ranging from building cleaners to medical doctors. Oddly enough some lower skilled jobs will require humans for a very long time. Car repair would be a good example. Often when a car breaks in some way things can be disrupted. So that a simple repetitive routine won't work. Things need to be pounded, pried, and even torched to even get things apart. But computers will assist with such a job by helping to diagnose. If robots are going to damage the car repair profession at all it will be by the robotic assembly of cars resulting in more reliable cars and fewer accidents by robotically driven cars.

The local (a 2nd or even 3rd rate) medical school has pushed for a BSc in Medical Science which is starting its first year the past September. The dean of the medical school told me that the HS class average was 98%. Quite simply many public schools won't grade inflate enough for a 98 average. My daughter had the highest grade 12 math average in a 1000+ HS at 97. (She didn't apply to this program) But that might not have been enough.

There are all kinds of ways that a superior student could end up with far less than a 98%. Taking advanced courses, taking lots of hard courses, entering plenty of math/science competitions, fantastic science fair projects, etc.

Basically what they are saying is that you get to go to medical school if you have OCD and aren't interested in anything else.

Some med schools also have lists of this or that activity that they like to see but then the students go through it like a checklist.

I have long thought that there should be more of a risky system where you apply for medical school and then spend 6 months doing medically related things but then the people who just don't fit in are dropped. The same with other programs such as physics, chemistry, engineering, etc.

If this turns out to be provably true then an easy solution would be to boot Russia from the swift system for a few weeks. That would basically mean that no international transactions could take place large or small. Or if they wanted to make it interesting they could restrict swift transactions to minor amounts so that the very richest would be impacted while the average Russian would feel a lesser impact.

But large food importers and whatnot would be massively impacted.

But before this can be done Europe needs to find an alternative to Russian Gas. But when Europe does then they won't tolerate Russian shenanigans for 1 second.

The key is that any retaliation needs to hit those around Putin who can change their mind about his being in power. The average Russian on the street will choose Putin over the West nearly 100% of the time.

If they were charging some people $1,000 during that time period then it would only have taken 600 customers to cover the fine. With all the smaller fish who were fried it could easily have been millions. Plus the huge inconvenience for those who went without. This fine should have been ruinous and someone should have gone to jail. Someone really senior, not just some tech dweeb who was scapegoated.

One of the rules that have long thought should be that when a corporation commits a felony there should be mandatory jail time and that it should be at the highest level that may (not certainly) have been aware of the crime. So if a UPS driver runs someone over going too fast that he may or may not go to jail but that if they can show that some executive was told that some policy would push drivers to speed, then boom it would be whatever sentence that would apply had he been speeding himself.

The average speed of a train in Canada has slowed significantly down from where they were in the 1930's. My family recently took a few trips to a location that is 2.5 hours of driving and the scheduled time for the train is a bit over 3 hours. Each time it is usually around the 4 hour mark and sometimes has exceeded 6. Plus major rail lines are being ripped up and turned into walking trails and the runs are far less frequent on the remaining ones. The areas with the removed train services have sunk into economic stagnation.

You might be thinking that we have a marvellous road system or something but, nope, our potholes have potholes (pictures available) and our most productive fishing and farming areas have a tortuous routes to get to major markets.

This is fairly typical of most of Canada with the exception of a tiny corridor running by the Ottawa area (our federal capital).

Unless it is a really violent religion that actively encourages human sacrifice as one of its lesser requirements for entry into heaven. Or it is one of these massive time wasting religions where people forego nearly every productive activity to do religious stuff; basically worse than TV is now.

Religion is something that an ET might bring. It could be in the form of creation myths, some strange gap they discovered in physics and a religion built up around it. Or they may have always had a religion that drove them to pursue physics with a fanatic's zeal resulting in space travel while not straying from their core faith.

Or even worse, they could be way ahead of us in pretty much every science yet have a fanatical religion where the two options are pretty much to pray to some god or spread out and convert other species.

Another nasty variation is that they come with some religion that has a series of logical arguments that can pretty much convince anyone who doesn't have a PhD in rhetoric. So they come along drop off their book of faith and leave.

But if they do come with any religion at all we can all be certain that it will end up with adherents on Earth. Seeing that we have Neo Nazis there is no creed too stupid for some people.

I would no more call this a robot than I would call an xray machine a robotic innards examiner or a smoke detector a robot fireman's nose.

I would call it a robot if it wandered the streets of Bangkok smelling for the most Thai food and recording on a map where it found it.

Does this benefit the population at large or does this benefit corrupt officials and the large corporations that corrupted them?