The reaction to this idea would of course be HOW DARE YOU SPEND MONEY AND TELL ME WHAT TO DO WHARRGARBL, because 'murrica.
Of course the land surface area of "America" is relatively small compared to the rest of the world, so you don't really need "America" on board with a albedo modification plan...
Oh, you want "America's" money to spend how you please... I see the problem now
I see you have already drank the koolaid...
Although you think that AMEX (and other major credit providers) are charging both sides a fee, in reality, they are only charging the merchants a fee (the fee they charge you is basically nominal).
The profit from the credit card enterprise mostly comes from shaking down businesses (they aren't allowed to list prices as more different credit protection levels or for credit than cash) and extracting from the poor a highly regressive tax in the form of an usury/predatory loan. In reality, that no different than the government other than it's "voluntary".
The shakedown game they use is not much different than the so-called windows-tax. Companies that decided to ship any windows machines need to pay for every machine regardless if windows is shipped with that machine or not. Credit card merchant agreements generally require merchants to list the same prices for simple credit and rewards cards (generally the only ones with the buyer protection and no fees) even though they pay different processing fees for the rewards cards (up to 3x the merchant fees).
The only reason it seems workable to you is that you are free-riding on the "tax" paid by others in the system. With the "government" scheme, you feel others are free riding on your taxes and you resent it. Much like the government scheme, if the poor folks boycotted the credit card tax, your free-ride would end because it is not sustainable. I can't see much of a difference to be honest...
Of course there are many laws enforced by governments concerning with how you are allowed to use credit ratings (not discriminatory), how you can get recourse for mistakes, how long dings/marks/bankruptcies are allowed to stay on your credit report, various usury and reporting laws, etc, etc..
OTOH, with less regulation, you get things like "bond-rating" companies that can collude with security issuers causing chain reactions that put the whole economy in the dumpers for a few years...
The question at the root of this is if people actually have the natural right of redress or not. If you have no right of redress, it is up to you to enforce the performance of any contracts or suffer the victimization of a tort (say by attempting to besmirch your tortfeasor's reputation).
However, if redress is a right, then it is a reasonable function of common entity to provide a forum to do so to prevent the anarchy of perpetual revenge or from those with more resources to crush those with fewer resources. For a simple transaction on Ebay, the company provides a redress resource to further its business goals (of skimming transaction profits). In other real life situations, that is often the government (because there isn't much profit in providing a redress forum for most torts, so nobody will provide it gratis).
Note that for many large contracts, they specify arbitration clauses anyhow so they specifically don't use the government courts to arbitrate, but merely enforce the result of the arbitration.
Without some backstop authority like the government, I suspect there would be larger non-compliance and increased use of "other-means" which is probably not what anyone wants (e.g., the organized crime element)... Have you ever heard of businesses like mugshotsonline or dontdatehimgirl ? You don't necessarily need violence to be organized and criminal...
Contracts should exist similar to loans or buying things on ebay. There is risk to both parties making the contract and you can only go by the reputation of the party you are dealing with.
By having governments enforce contracts you just externalize the costs of dealing with dishonorable people.
If these employees signed a contract with A123 and broke it the only thing A123 should be able to do is make those contracts public and try to hurt the reputation of those employees.
Yeah, I think that's how organized crime works... Hopefully you aren't suggesting that A123 goes that route to enforce their contracts...
I think you are mistaken. Unauthorized transferring of a trade secrets (or conspiring to do so) is criminal both federally and in CA and the damages are likely to accrue to civil proceedings as well if there is any tort claims.
As I understand it, it is an extension of the laws that restrict unfair competition.
I'm afraid that there isn't anything funny about NIMH...
AFAIK, the "inspiration" for the secrets of NIMH was sadly this experiment...
Not much funny about that...
Although it does illustrate that Robert Frost's lamenting of the mending wall is bit idealistic, and perhaps there is a good reason to remember that sometimes, good fences do make good neighbors...
Seife suggests the FDA is trapped in a co-dependent relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, and needs strong legislative support to end its bad behavior.
He wants the completely-non-influenced-by-big-money legislature to do something about the FDA being co-dependent with big-pharma...
Yeah, that sounds like it's gonna work...
You know they changed it right because Pizza Hut paid them a pile of cash? Anyone who goes along with the change to Pizza Hut from Taco Bell is an asshole. It doesn't even make sense because some scenes still show the Taco Bell logo.
Your theory doesn't take in to consideration Pizza Hut and Taco Bell are part of the same company (was PepsiCo at the time of filming now Yum! Brands) and Pizza Hut and Taco Bell even have co-located in some stores (although there are other combinations like KFC/PizzaHut and KFC/TacoBell).
The commonly accepted rationale is that Taco Bell is mainly just a US brand and since PepsiCCo paid for the product placement originally, they wanted to substitute one of their well known international brands for the international release of the movie to get more advertising mileage out of the placement...
But PepsiCo probably had to pay for the change, and of course they did a crappy job of executing the change...
nah - even modern dimmers are digital too.
I'm not so sure you can classify a chopper circuit driven by a potentiometer a digital circuit (although they do have digital dimmers now days, most so-called "modern" dimmers are not)...
It's these chopper circuits make your light bulbs hum...
Similarly, the switched mode power supply in your computer is much more analog than a digital circuit...
Taco Bell being the only survivor of the restaurant wars
I think you mean pizza hut...
Let me be the first to predict Hexagonal Graphene.
Actually typical graphene is already a hexagonal lattice...
However, you might put your money on a square lattice (aka quadrille) or perhaps triangular lattice or the others listed here...
But instead of a boring quadrile or pentagonal tiling, let me be the first to predict a Penrose tiling... Now that would be cool
It's especially obnoxious since it's being diagnosed lately with sociology, rather than actual science.
AFAIK Autism is technically a syndrome (a set of symptoms or in this case behaviors), which is effectively defined in sociologic terms (psychs likes to call certain behaviors that are not "normal" a disorder). When science finally figure out what causes these symptoms/behaviors, then it will be either a disease (or maybe not). Just like GRID/AIDS was a syndrome and then they figured out HIV infection was a diagnosable factor that seemed to explain AIDS. They haven't gotten that far with Autism yet, but that doesn't mean it's not real or that they won't eventually figure something out. But maybe not.
you can't put nuclear close to a fault line, in a place where there's tornadoes or hurricanes, and you generally need to put it next to a river for cooling though you can also use giant cooling towers. And of course, you can't put it anywhere near a metro area.
Apparently you can...
They built San Onefre right near a fault line...
They built Wolf Creek right in tornado alley (ironically this was NOT one of the multiple plants that have been actually hit by tornados)...
12 east coast nuclear reactors were in the path of Hurricane Sandy...
They built Indian Point near New York City...
They built Palo Verde not near any natural body of water (they use treated sewage water from nearby Phoenix suburbs for cooling)
etc, etc, etc...
I'm not saying any of this was/is a good idea, but just that the mere existence of real nuclear power plant in these locations has trumped your statement.
Nuclear reactors don't need water. You can build liquid metal cooled reactors. Metallic sodium is one such metal used.
Although some reactors have been built with liquid metal cooling, nearly all have been experimental reactors only. However, even in liquid metal cooled reactors, generally the turbine that actually generates the electricity is driven using a steam cycle (which uses water). So technically a nuclear reactor doesn't need water, but generally you want electricity out such a reactor (unless you are using it simply to generate transuranic elements)...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this mean that the neutrons literally flow across a fourth dimensional axis, and then somehow bounce back after they've moved some distance on one of the other axes, landing in the trap while within our plane of the fourth dimension?
Not exactly, the quirk they are testing is effectively the neutron travelling through both "branes" in a superposition state (well, it's actually a bit more subtle than that, but that's the easiest way to explain it).
If so, how are they supposed to spot the neutrons the moment they cross into our brane but before they move into another one?
They aren't tracking specific neutrons, they are making a statistical assumption about a collection of neutrons.
More specifically, by running the experiment multiple times with the neutron source a different distance away from their shielded measurement chamber and at different times of year (to account for different magnetic vector contribution from the sun), they can potentially statistically isolate neutrons detection events that are expected to spontaneously appear (e.g., as a result of cosmic rays originating outside of experimental parameters) from those neutrons that supposedly move in and out of our "brane" as a result of superposition which are sourced locally (whose flux depends on the distance from the source).
We'll see how it goes. They haven't done the experiment yet...
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
