Comment ... untold environmental consequences ... (Score 4, Funny) 71
... when migrating aliens get their heads ( er
** probing anal orifices **
A sad discovery indeed.
... when migrating aliens get their heads ( er
** probing anal orifices **
A sad discovery indeed.
Yes the description may be flawed but seems to me that this is essentially a technique that has been in use for a long time, at least back to the 1950's, with systems like surveillance radar where several ping round trips are superimposed (added together). Involves delaying/storing the received signal and adding back together in a time correlated manner. Noise tends to reduce and object reflections tend to reinforce resulting in an effective improvement in the signal to noise ratio. In the early days, analog delay lines were used which also introduced noise but which would also cancel out.
With high performance computing it is not hard to imagine compensating for and correlating frame position, observer location, time etc.
Even if the object has a velocity such that there is no reflection signal increase, background noise will be decreased.
. . . 70mph! Nonsense!
That's well under the base speed on the QEII or Highway 63 on a Friday night (Alberta).
FYI: Notes for the understandably confused -
--- QEII is the fast pipe between Edmonton and Calgary which, every weekend, appear to exchange urban populations at a rate limited only by asphalt, wind resistance, and whatever protective limits are programmed into engines.
--- Highway 63 is the deadly route between Edmonton and Ft McMurray (oil mines)
The RCMP set up speed traps but it's a bit like swatting snowflakes in a blizzard.
70mph same same 113 km/h
In Alberta, you can usually travel at 10km/h over the limit (100 or 110 on most highways) without getting a ticket. On the QEII where the limit is 110, if I travel at 120 km/h then I have to stick in the slow lane while vehicle after vehicle passes me rapidly.
Alberta has the second highest provincial fatality rate in Canada but pales in comparison with Saskatchewan which is 50% higher.
Yukon T. and NWT have double Alberta's already high rate.
Yeah, I agree. I did that sort of thing for a long time and it has many downsides to counter the upsides. A lot of folk make it work though but there has to be serious emotional resilience, life pattern flexibility and commitment by both partners. Kids do fine as long as they see overall stability and don't get forgotten about.
Again, companies do what they need to attract workers into positions that make serious demands on their lives. When a whole community lives that way, the community culture gets weird.
Not a one-company town . . . a mining town with lots of big players.
The similarities are:
- lots of money and opportunities for multiple players (companies). Think of Silicon Valley as a huge mining operation. There is a rich field of opportunity for players that get it right.
- many of the workers plan to work long hours and sacrifice personal time to make a bundle and become financially independent early in life
- the companies do a what they can to facilitate the 'nose to the grindstone' crowd
- the community suffers (in my opinion) from this money-work-golden-payoff culture
One of the things I noticed in San Jose (haven't been there for 10 years) was the way the community shut down early in the evening. Hard to find a place to eat after 9pm. Maybe that has changed but a restaurant manager said nobody goes out late because they are all up early. Ft Mac is the same except for the yahoo/cowboy bars. When the restaurants close says a lot about how much leisure time people in a community are allowing themselves. Also means no after-show late crowds.
Just saying that the clean living Silicon Valley industry has numerous attributes usually associated with the dirty end of the industrial spectrum: mining towns. Busing workers is part of it.
Boom/bust cycling is another.
Not perfect comparison but curious I think . . .
Oil sands workers in Ft. McMurray.
The plants send out buses to pick up workers early in the morning, pretty much door to door service. Sys admins, truck drivers, and execs. BTW: truck drivers (big trucks - 400 ton) are highly valued, more so than lowly sys admins/IT workers.
Buses come early and suburb house lights are all out by 10pm. Next day same same all over again.
Lots of money to be made and not a lot of folk believe they are in a long term position.
As much as I am in favour of eliminating environmental lead where possible, at least some research shows that firing range lead does not migrate into the surrounding environment or leach into ground water; it basically stays put. Containing and covering may be sufficient for rehabilitation purposes although leaving the lead in place may not be a good thing in the long run. You never know when there will be a price to be paid because of an unforeseen issue.
Like my mom told me: "Always wear clean underwear in case you die in an accident".
You might look at a report from 2004 from Virginia tech, although I don't know what bias the researchers brought to the study:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041104005801.htm
Donald Rimstidt, a professor in the Department of Geosciences, College of Science at Virginia Tech, will report the conclusions of a five-year study at the 116th national meeting of the Geological Sciences of America in Denver Nov. 7-10. [2004]
"We were invited by the U.S. Forest Service to look at the shooting range in the National Forest near Blacksburg."
The researchers' survey found 11 metric tons of shot in the shotgun range and 12 metric tons of lead bullets in the rifle range. "These ranges are 10 years old. Most of the lead shot has accumulated on about four or five acres. Some shots have been into the woods, which cover hundreds of acres," Rimstidt said.
However some lead escapes, he said. "But we learned that it is absorbed in the top few inches of soil and does not migrate beyond that," Rimstidt said. "Lead is not very mobile. It does not wash away in surface or ground water."
Another finding is that there are large amounts of lead in the trees near the shooting range – but not in a large percentage of the trees, Rimstidt said. "If and when those trees are harvested, they would be contaminated with lead "
Fisheries and Wildlife professor Pat Scanlon was an investigator on the project until his death in 2003. "He found no evidence that birds were eating shot, but this portion of the research was not completed," Rimstidt said. "We are not saying that wildlife would not ingest lead, but it does not appear to be a problem on this range. Other shooting ranges may be different."
If a complete cleanup is required then it can be costly. A 15 hectare site near Edmonton cost about 6.5M CAD to fix up in 2006.
BTW: That range had been in use for over 20 years and there was no spread of contamination off of the site on the surface or into the ground/water table.
Just sayin'
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."
