There are several problems with your scenario:
1. Current TEs are no where close to 50% efficient. More like about 5%.
2. Pu238 is available in very limited quantities from reactor fuel reprocessing
3. You can't "turn-off" an RTG. They have to run continuously.
If a kid can't grasp and stack those wooden blocks
Where is the data that says kids can no longer grasp and stack wooden blocks, and that this hypothetically declining ability is in any way correlated with tablet use?
then mommy really is using the screen to avoid spending time with their kid.
Without data, this is pure conjecture. Why is using a tablet to avoid spending time with your kid any worse than using a TV to avoid spending time with your kid, like they did in the good old days?
So... sink a steel pipe half a mile into the ground, it isn't that hard to create a heat gradient.
That would give you enough of a gradient to generate a micro-watt from a ton of TEs. In a perfect ideal TE, the efficiency is (1 - Th/Tc) where Th= Hot side in Kelvins, Tc = Cold side in Kelvins. Existing TEs are no where close to ideal, and the earth's heat gradient is about 0.025K/meter. A negligible amount of heat would flow through the TE, and far less than 1% of that would be converted to electricity.
if you have a "thermoelectric engine" then what is producing the heat to power the thermoelectrics?
A flame.
If the car is electric it could be powered by waste heat from industrial processes and primary power generation.
TEs are bound by the same Carnot efficiency limitations as any other heat engine. If you use low grade "waste heat" then you are going to get very little power.
thermo electrics could make it more efficient by recycling waste heat. but the thermoelectrics themselves would not power the cars.
If they are sufficiently efficient, they could power a car directly. An internal combustion engine is typically only about 15-20% efficient, so the bar is not too high. Using thermoelectrics directly could have several advantages: being solid state, they would be reliable and require little or no maintenance; and since the fuel is just used to create heat, it could use cheaper grades of fuel.
We better speed up this global warming thing so we can power our thermo cars!
That doesn't work. TEs aren't powered by heat, but by heat gradients. So if everything is uniformly heated by the same amount, there is no benefit.
Even if just 56% of them become rich that's good enough a chance for me.
I am not sure if accumulating $1M over a lifetime counts as "rich". I started working 35 years ago. I immediately started regularly and automatically putting a little from each paycheck into my IRA, invested in an index fund. The monthly payroll contribution was less than my car payment. Yet, today my IRA has over $700K. Unless there is a market crash, it should be over $1M by the time I retire.
In other words, not ready for prime time.
Indeed. There were tablet computers in the 1990s and even 1980s. Tablets didn't become mainstream in the 2010s because someone just thought of it, but because acceptable hardware was finally available.
We are talking about little kids. You tend to get them the Big Blocks instead.
... because little kids don't have the dexterity to use regular Legos. The reason two year old kids can use an iPad and aren't ready for standard Legos is because the latter requires more skill. TFA claims claims that exposing kids to technology is causing our civilization to spiral down the drain, but provides no evidence whatsoever, other than anecdotes and conjecture.
is that a PA law? In some states you can record.
Under federal law, it is illegal to record unless at least one party is aware that they are being recorded. So this would be legal under federal law, since the bullied kid was a party to the conversation. Some state laws go further. In California (where I live) all parties must be informed that they are being recorded. Pennsylvania also requires all parties to be informed. It seems that a reasonable change to the law would be to allow surreptitious recording when there is probable cause to believe that a crime is going to be committed.
The question is whether this "some" represents a non-negligible amount.
To mean anything, it would not only have to be non-negligible, but also be more common among Republicans than non-Republicans. There are no statistics for child abuse by political affiliation, but there are statistics by race, which is rough proxy. Child abuse is significantly higher than average among Native Americans (much higher than any other ethnic group), blacks, and Hispanics. None of these groups lean Republican. It is also higher in rural areas, which do lean Republican. So who knows?
The point of Lakoff's book is that people should not let themselves be manipulated by people twisting words around, yet he does the same thing.
Would they be provided with uniforms, food, pay, and medical care at least while on duty?
I spent several years in the Inactive Ready Reserve in the 1980s. During that time I received no money for uniforms, food, or medical care, and only a token annual pay check (I think it was about $200). In 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, I was recalled to active duty.
Well, yeah, raping children and giving them drugs
Other than unsubstantiated allegations, there is no evidence for that. Some children made statements about abuse, but later retracted those statements and said they were pressured into making them. The FBI and ATF were caught lying about almost every aspect of the standoff, so they have zero credibility.
George Lakoff explained how it works in his book Don't think of an elephant.
I once picked up this book in a bookstore. I read a few pages into the first chapter, where he claims that Republicans believe in beating newborn babies with "sticks, belts and wooden paddles". I stopped reading at that point, figuring that such a partisan shill can't possibly have anything useful to say.
Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.
