That's a fair point.

Thanks for the info - I'll go brush up on C++ again.

Perl's strength is that it's expressive. It's not a language which is easy to learn or which generates heavily optimized code.

In the demo phase, you're not really worried about performance. The goal is to have something showing as quickly as possible, and not worry too much about how fast it runs, or how much memory it takes. Overspec your demo system for the time being (ie - make it really fast and install lots of memory), and once you have a reasonable interface go back and recode it in a simpler language which can be more easily optimized.

Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive. You end up spending tons of time debugging issues of memory allocation, library interface details, and datatype conversion.

Expressive languages are harder to learn, but any individual line in the expressive language does a lot more. Since you are writing fewer lines, and since the fewer lines do more, you end up making programs more easily and in less time.

Yes, the programs will execute a little slower, but as mentioned, this is not important in the demo stage. Your productivity will be much higher. And there are lots of places where performance simply doesn't matter. Scripts usually fall into this category.

Perl was designed by a linguist, not an engineer. As such, it's harder to learn (it's got tons more keywords and context), but once you get the hang of it coding is much more efficient. The following single line:

@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;

unfolds into several lines of C++, plus a subroutine definition with datatype definitions. The following line:

@Files = <c:/Windows/*.exe>;

can be implemented using one of over a dozen possible library calls in C++, but is builtin in perl. You don't have to look up the library call interface specific to your system.

And note that writing unreadable/unmaintainable code is an aspect of the *coder*, not the language. If you disregard perl because "other people use it to write poorly" you are probably one of those people, in which case you should avoid coding altogether.

Because when the Global Governance folk roll into town you have to lock up your daughters, stop issuing parking tickets (they won't pay 'em anyway) and create an entirely new layer of quasi-government to 'interface' and 'negotiate' with them. Ultimately this leads to some time-wasting end that will benefit them more than it does you, *if* you are convinced what you're doing is sound.

The way we have operated nuclear plants in the US is sound. The safety record shows it, and the gigawatt-years of reliable power underscore that success. I believe that as a layman who has researched the topic I am more objective saying this than even the most experienced plant operator... because I am looking from a grand perspective of history, while their own safety culture imposes a certain vulnerability on them, it discourages them from making self-serving statements, even if true. A humility that keeps them from standing up to say "Enough is enough!"

Nuclear energy, as we have done it, has proven to be the most promising and most sustainable --- to use the proper definition of the word --- way to ensure the continuance of modern life.

But there will always be those who try to convince you that another layer of governance is good for you. So when Switzerland proposes that "making the principle of "avoiding off-site contamination" legally binding in the Convention would be a vital step towards improved global nuclear safety. ..." the rational human response is What the fuck.

As in... what the fuck, do these people believe off-site contamination is like a drunk running a stop sign? That keeping Earth safe from contamination is for lack of some simple rule?

As in... what the fuck does 'legally binding' mean in this context? Again, a governance organization arrogantly asserts that there is some evil malfeasance let loose in a lawless world, for lack of something that would be 'legally binding'. Here they come to save the day. What form would a legally binding punishment be, if a signatory is unfortunate to suffer a disaster that spreads a discernible count of radiation across the border? A preemptive strike? Sanctions? Regime change? I'm sure all of this will be discussed at the next meeting.

Don't get me wrong. The IAEA has done some excellent work. Not all international conventions are trite and insulting. To render assistance in a disaster, responsibly notify one's neighbors, agree on safe handling practices, and even address liability in our litigious world, are worth things to agree on.

They want to give this nebulous diplomatic instrument teeth with the stroke of the pen. It has not earned them. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has teeth. It has earned them. It is also a very specific and useful framework tailored to our task at hand.

Now if the Swiss had said, "Be sure you have some form of containment at all" (Chernobyl) or "don't put all your generators in the basement" (Fukushima), you could sink your teeth into that. Such may be the way "things are done". But I would propose that for the most part in real life, things are done by rules of common sense anyway. Has anyone ever asked a plant operator if safety interferes with their bottom line?

Sorry to vent so, thanks for your comment. Also thanks to mdsolar for bringing to our attention evidence that nuclear energy is in a total shambles and the US is once again disappointing the world by acting in its own self-interest.

The Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) is a treaty-ish pile of broad and anti-specific foofy diplo-language. Its purpose is not to share or agree on a single iota of practical knowledge, though over time a tiny bit might creep into it. It exists to permit and encourage the ratification of itself by as many parties as possible, and in this, it is like those "bad luck if you do not forward me" chain letters.

The Swiss proposal said in effect, stop all the music and implement every feature ever conceived to make new plant designs safer, to every existing plant. Somehow. Even if it is redundant and absurd. The whole kitchen sink. They cannot be bothered with specifics, that is not the game being played. Signing on to every broad recommendation would be a direct insult to our own NRC, which does not dabble in such diplomatic newspeak, preferring to assess actual risk, look at each site, mandate practical and specific engineering guidelines, evaluate what has been done.

See INFCIRC/449 and Add.2 and Add.3 and Add.4 and Swiss Amendment.

This stuff was written by people from another planet. It was probably leaked from Planet X which is orbiting with the Earth directly behind the Sun. Planet X is just like ours only its United Nations truly runs everything. That is why they send UFOs to abduct an engineer every now and then, to keep their shit from falling apart. Then we send one of our own (out of Hangar 19) to bring 'em back. Maybe we got the wrong one back, one of their 'senior diplomats' instead.

In it you will find some vague things that sound like good ideas. You're supposed to imagine that this is a world where people do not apply common sense unless they are acting directly on the recommendations of a multi-national NGO.

The compromise statement now says basically, "New nuclear power plants should be designed and constructed with the objective of preventing accidents, and minimizing off-site contamination in case of accidents. Reasonably achievable safety improvements identified at existing plants during... safety assessments should be oriented to these objectives and be implemented in a timely manner."

Engineers should not be afraid to stand up and express their anger when they are insulted. This is an insult. We lose an essential part of our human self-respect and tenacity when insults like this go unanswered. Governance of the world should not be bestowed upon folks who cannot be bothered to delve into detail. Regardless, some people will be comforted by the mere presence of the CNS, they're the people who distrust corporations and their own government, to find solace in the flowery language of international diplomacy even though there is little substance in it.

Basically, this organization-thing was spawned in 1994 and went to sleep. Fukushima woke it up, and they've been running in little circles ever since to come up with a timely response. The response has finally arrived and is on the table in early 2015. This is the kind of time frame you can expect if you pursue world governance.

Meanwhile, the United States Nuclear Power industry and its associated regulatory body NRC hit the ground running in 2011, assessing the disaster and lessons learned from Fukushima. If you are expecting me to elaborate on them and think there is something to be learned from every earthly experience you will be disappointed.

We learned NOTHING from Fukushima.
Because there was nothing to learn.
It was a STUPID FAIL that had nothing to do with nuclear energy.
Batteries worked, generators did not.
We know better. We do not build that way.
Because we are not stupid.

___
"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole.

What I'm hoping for is some form of pulse-charging track built into roadways, so that electric vehicles could maintain charge while traveling and even arrive at their destinations with a surplus of energy.

But when it comes to practical transportation liquid fuel reigns supreme today. Ammonia has been proposed as an alternative for vehicle fuel, though it has its problems, such as being only half the energy density of gasoline. And it would be stinky and hazardous in a new way. But it does provide liquid fuel while taking carbon out of the equation altogether. Elemental hydrogen is really dangerous but some form of solid encapsulation to ensure its slow release would help.

Barring some Jetsons miracle invention, I think the eventual winner for cars and airplanes as oil and gas runs out might be the very same gasoline and jet fuel. All you would need is an economical and massive source of heat or neutrons to separate hydrogen from water, to be bound with carbon to make our own 'fossil' fuel, as nature does. If you sequester that carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere you at least achieve break-even what it burns.

But that sequestration process to extract carbon from the thin atmospheric ~0.04% carbon dioxide would itself be a massive endeavor requiring additional energy. Would you run this Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper with its giant sucking mechanical lungs for an hour to get a lump of carbon... or when no one is looking, feed trees and grass into it and get a dozen lumps a minute? Or sneak into a coal mine for a hundred? In the end the best way is to electrify transportation to the greatest extent possible, and pursue a sequestration strategy that operates independently of the fuel producers --- making use of plants and farmed algae as well as direct feats of applied chemical engineering.

Some calculations showing actual energy/thermal output of some ~2.5Gwt for a year from tonne of Thorium. This is an amazing, unprecedented amount of carbon-neutral energy for a fuel source that is present on every continent, and can be mined with a very small footprint.

We deserve the chance to discover what we could accomplish with such a win-win energy source. So many environmental 'solutions' come down to (you first) conservation or outright malicious sabotage of modern lifestyle. I want no fewer options for my own children than I have, and a whole lot more.

Got to go work on the blueprints for the Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper. Because there really ought to be such a thing.

___
"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.

Probably but I don't see how it will work. What is to stop companies registering themselves elsewhere so that they are no longer US companies and then only their US operations will get taxed? Even if this strategy does not work they have an army of lawyers using the legal system of every country in the world to figure out workarounds that will work.

That is like saying we'll never get beyond the nuclear bronze age (thermal spectrum). We already have, fast breeders can output enriched product even from low-yield inputs like depleted uranium, though the reactor is expensive and dangerous and fun to operate, like a fine sports car.

But the GP poster was obviously referring not to depleted uranium, but spent irradiated fuel stockpiled from conventional reactors which contains significant amounts of unburned fissile. You probably knew that but forgot to point it out. Glad to be of assistance. Aside from re-enrichment, fuel-diverse Thorium breeders or even burners could use fission reactor waste 'as-is'.

Short answer: Shoddy thinking, broken promises and irrational fear.

Longer answer: a brief history of nuclear fear in the United States

___
Please see Thorium Remix and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security

Aside from a timeless Summer, there is also the every-day time. You're not going to achieve the proper effect unless, during the evening time when they are supposed to be doing homework, you are nearby and are also reading a book.

Abridged history of the Great Distraction.

1. parents reading or knitting, kids have nothing but homework in front of them (until it is done)
2. family gathers around the radio, kids manage to multitask just enough to complete homework
3. early television, all watch a favorite TV show then it is turned off, followed by silent book and homework time
[... several years omitted ...]
10. Television in every room blaring age-targeted drivel. Parents drooling in front of television glancing at Facebook shouting something about homework. Kids in another room with TV, radio and cell phone beeping constant SMS messages from local friends, rolling chats and web pages with countless worldwide near-acquaintances recommending youtube videos, endless Buzzfeed and Tweety scrolls.

The Distraction Ends.

"We were all excited when the package arrived. Daddy opened it slowly as we put down our screens and watched. 'It was recommended by someone on Facebook... I don't remember friending him, but he saw me post about the problems we've been having with sleep and schoolwork... said this is the first step towards a solution.' It was a large heavy metal box with a single red button. We looked at it for a moment and as I reached for the button Daddy grabbed my arm and said 'hold on...' and rooted through the wrapping but all he found was a small sheet of paper written in some strange script. Chinese, Korean, Tagalog...? 'Well, that doesn't help.' so with a shrug he nodded and let me press the button. There was a loud hum, the lights dimmed and went out and the little screens in our hands threw sparks with a loud Snap!. We shrieked, then a silence set in. We could hear the neighbors talking and shouting, doors down the block opening. Mom stepped toward the front door carefully, feeling for it in the dark. As she opened it and stepped outside I remember clearly her shape superimposed on the night sky."

"Then she said softly, 'Look... at all those stars!'."

We lost our memories.
Now we need to make new ones.

Bulbous-eyed fellow, throat sac a-billow,
sweet voice melodic as the pip-squeaks
of sneakers at an NBA playoff,
what is your secret, your purpose?
I am unable to fathom you by light
scattered as if by Cupid's arrows
that never found the mark.

By photonic lance I have found thee
as in the manner of mine own kind, ever
tossing a mess of things at other things
to see what bounces back.
I am surrounded by light.
Why am I blind??

But perhaps this tuned möbius laser
will do the trick.

By use of this special lens...
we see that the frog is quite handsome...!
Plaid waistcoat and chain fob
handkerchief at the ready, Oxfords and scarf,
setting aside a walking stick of oak,
with a doff of his derby, he stoops and squats
to fertilize a clutch of eggs left by his beloved,
in gentle seminal rain.
All in all, a most proper gentleman.

Now I will set my möbius laser skyward
to illuminate Mars! Where it will resolve the illusion
of dry valleys and magnificent desolation
into a cheerful reality of watery canals,
tall spires of intelligent, unknown purpose,
and one can even see the ripples
spreading outward from the poles and oars
of longboats and trailing garlands of flowers.

I was blind,
but now I see.

"Hi, I'm the lowest-level support guy, I've got this menu I have to go down before I give up and connect you to someone who understands your problem."

"Let's start. Unplug the modem, wait 60 seconds, and plug it back in. Does that solve your problem?"

(Several steps later)

"Okay, now unplug the ethernet cable from the modem and computer, switch it end-for-end, and plug it back in again. Does that solve your problem?(*)"

This is what I have to go through before I can talk to someone about their system bouncing an E-mail I sent.

It's a psychology thing. When you need to give someone instructions or ask for help or whatever, you have to communicate the situation and what you want done.

I've never had a problem with level 2 support, they understand the problem, ask some pertinent questions ("but you can otherwise access the internet OK, yes?") and fix the problem.

If the level 1 person continually misunderstands what you are describing, misdiagnoses the problem, or stubbornly avoids dealing with your problem getting angry is a natural consequence. They are wasting your time, and doing it on purpose.

It's OK to get angry at stupid, stubborn people.

(*) Not making this up. An actual Comcast level-1 support request.

I think there is some confusion over what "parallel" universe means. This is generally taken to be a universe which has been an exact parallel of our own universe up to some point after which it diverges i.e. everything is the same up to some point in time. In the quantum multiverse interpretation of QM this happens for each possible result of collapsing the wave function.

I've never heard of this ever being associated with multiple 'universes' from inflation because QM requires that the universes interact before they separate (this is how it explains the self interference of a single particle) whereas inflation requires that the universes be causally disconnected after their creation i.e. inflationary universes are just different universes, not parallel ones. So I think the author of the article got himself rather confused.

You're placing a guaranteed positive outcome for the human race over any number of imaginings of potentially negative outcomes.

Congratulations.

When Diadema Antillarum , commonly known as the Caribbean God Damned Motherfucking Black Sea Urchin, began to die off in the 80s from an unknown cause... we're talking ~97% mortality... we knew we were in deep shit. Any day the World Wildlife Fund would issue a press release and lobby regional governments to cease all human activity. The Greenpeace ship would arrive and putt-putt around harassing fishermen, charter boats or anything that did not resemble a sea urchin or baby seal. There would be impassioned speeches at the UN to tie urchin preservation with environmental sustainability so they could use financial aid as a blunt instrument to conk small nation-states over the head.

What a relief. None of this happened.

Certainly the young girl who stepped on one and screamed, and her father who ran into the water to help her and wound up with dozens of spines in his feet and legs (which break off leaving the tips in the body), hospitalized with sepsis, they didn't object. The only creature that might have spoken up, Balistes Vetula , commonly known as Ole Wife --- whose pouty lips are perfectly suited to this spine-plucking lip smacking treat --- was too busy dining on shrimp and crabs to feel threatened. The urchins have come back but not in obscene numbers as before.

So not all die-offs are bad. Send those Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes home to Jesus.

My inner nerd wholly agrees with you.

My outer nerd thinks orbital base load energy would be a single point of failure, and the entity that provides it would become the de-facto world government. Better to build autonomous terrestrial plants in sovereign countries fueled by an element present on every continent.

And yes, I have even more layers of nerd underneath. It's nerd all the way down.

Darn... saw the article and raced here to post something pithy and brief with 'Duh' in the subject. Too late.

Good point. The glaring assertion that the sanctity of scientific authority would carry forth across disciplines, and that those in different branches of science carry more weight than say --- a layman who has put effort to research a specific subject --- is dubious.

One might even say this tabloid appeal to authority is religious... but I would not grace it like that. I have too much respect for my religious friends. I may not share their faith but I can easily see that they deliberately and carefully choose their sources of information (such as the Bible, ancient text and modern sermons) and consider the messenger with each message. They would not inherently revere a reverend with 'priest' rubber-stamped on the forehead any more than we should defer to the results of a poll whose categories are drawn from the presence or absence of a University degree in fields the pollsters considered to be 'sciency'.

Whatever the criteria for being one, scientists are part of the demographic 'public' in the real world.

There is also the fact that people who have read a fair amount in certain fields may understand the questions in a poll but because of their background they may have different perceptions as to the meaning. For example, when I saw the article "Americans Support Mandatory Labeling of Food That Contains DNA"... I did NOT spot it a mile off as a malicious trip-wire question to expose duh-idiots (which it apparently was). I recalled the recent scientific controversy over whether microRNA uptake in digestion might change gene expression in a harmful way, and whether any specific GMO food (by virtue of its narrow genetic origins) might, as an unintended consequence, be able to deliver such a payload. It was all over the news in the US a few years ago and the 'public' had every right to be concerned. Though the science is pretty well settled (see this excellent article) it turns out that the hysteria was fed partly by a failure of the scientific process, among other things. Years ago when the microRNA article was published it was refuted, too casually, even though its implications if true may be dire. Our DNA mechanisms are well-adapted to deal with these fragments and they are indeed very prevalent. This was never explained well enough to the public, who were thinking in terms of a new type of man-made 'contaminant' that had suddenly appeared in the food supply.

It is the "4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend Trident Sugarless Gum for their patients who chew gum" phenomenon, where the fifth dentist's opinion does not fit the message and is not even revealed. Could the fifth dentist have known or glimpsed something that would have blown all the others away, convinced them or shamed them? (the survey was actually 1,700 dentists).

If you show most anyone -- including 'scientists' --- a list of major Yellowstone eruptions over time and point out that it has been ~640,000 years since the last, and asked the question "Would you say that an eruption is overdue?" they will tend to say YES. They may even sense it is a trick question. But a geologist would shout "NO!!" and if another Geologist says yes, they would form a mob with pitchforks-mob and march to the door. Geologists are aware of the fuzziness of geologic time scales but above all, their too-casual answers have been used to dupe-scare people.

These polls have been taken before. And the tendency is to perceive them as a sort of exposé of how stupid the 'public' is. But for a few of the issues presented on this poll (I will not name Names) I believe the more appropriate response may be, what does the public know that 'scientists' who casually adopt the opinions of other 'scientists' --- need to do a bit of real research into...?