I think what some people forget is that the plant was hit with the worst natural disaster, short of a meteor strike, that it could be. A 9.0 quake, which are exceedingly rare (and remember the scale is logarithmic) and a massive tsunami. Then there were a number of fuckups in the response, like not having the right kind of generator on hand. All that, and it still didn't "do a Chernobyl."

None of that is to say it is perfectly safe, but it should provide some perspective on the thing.

The guy is a professional troll (actual name Mark Stephens). Literally, he writes stupid shit designed to inflame people. He's wrong all the time (he predicted big Y2K problems on account of Windows NT), he's a liar (claimed to have a PhD from Stanford, was in fact a TA) and so on.

Don't give his dumb ass the ad revenue from links.

Just as a simple counterpoint, his data about earthquakes is totally fucked. This was the biggest quake on record in Japan, previous winner was an 8.6 in 1707. Also, while quakes happen over there all the time, they don't all happen in the same spot. For example in 2003 there was a pretty big one in Hokkaido, an 8.3, that only caused one death. However if you look at a map you find that Hokkaido is quite a distance from Tohoku where the last quake was off of. So even if a quake happens in 10 years (like he has any idea if that will happen) there's no saying if it happens in the same place.

Guy is a moronic troll that has made a good living of it for years. Stop feeding him.

People (Americans in particular) want to discount genetics, pretend that we can all be anything we want to be, that we have no inbuilt limitations.

Of course we know that is false. Most simply it can be seen (and strangely the one area it is accepted) is athletics. Some people have the genes that allows them to become top athletes, the rest don't and that is that. We also see in athletics the difference between men and women, that the genders are not equal at the top, they have areas they are better in.

Well, this carries over to mental, emotional, and other differences as well. Your genetics don't dictate who you are, but they do define some limits on you and also what you might be interested in.

So you are going to see differences in the interest of the genders, even without any societal forces. One interesting example I see is veterinary medicine. Since it has become a field that was acceptable for women to work in (used to be teaching and nursing was all that was considered "ok" for women to be in) it has become very popular for women. The vet office I use is ALL female. All the vets, all the vet techs, all the receptionists, all women. From what I've learned, the heavy amount of women is not an anomaly, it is a field that women have a lot of interest in.

Now why is that? I'm not sure, I've never seen any research on it. Perhaps it is the nurturing aspect that appeals to many women. Whatever the case it certainly isn't something where there's a big push in society to "get women in to veterinary medicine" yet it is happening. It appeals to women, so they go in to it.

None of this is to say that culture and childhood encouragement don't play a part, of course. If a girl is interested in computers but continually told that "girls don't play with computers" that can well change the course of her life. However we have to be open to the idea that just as different individuals have different predispositions, so do the sexes.

We may always see a situation where there are less women interested in IT than men. Frankly I don't think that should be a concern, so long as we make sure it isn't because women are being unfairly forced away from it. I would think it far worse to try and start pressuring women in to careers they don't like all with some misguided idea of "balance".

I guess I feel pretty strongly about this because computers were something I always wanted to do, since as long as I can remember. This wasn't because of my family, mom, dad, grandparents, none of them are technically savvy. However I loved computers and electronics and was fascinated by it from age 3. Clearly it is just one of those things about me, a genetic predisposition. I'm glad I got to follow that, and I wasn't told to do something different because people decided that I should have interests other than that.

People like to repeat it without much actual proof.

HOWEVER even if true it doesn't matter. Why? Because after Apple entered the market price fixing was clearly in place. Ebooks cost MORE than their physical counterparts. There is no way anyone can say that is reasonable or necessary. It costs less to distribute an electronic copy than it does to distribute a physical copy. As such there's no way the final price should be more.

If prices had risen a little, I'd say "Ok, maybe Amazon was forcing the publishers in to prices that were too low." However I'm sorry, but this shit does not need to cost more than physical books.

Also, surprise, surprise, now that the DOJ is involved that has been changing. Ebook prices aren't as low as they were initially but they are lower than the physical book prices (from most publishers at least).

I don't mind companies needing to make a reasonable amount of money for their product. I mind being screwed. When I go to Amazon to buy Dune and the paperback version is $12 but the Kindle version is $15 along with a "This price was set by the publisher" message you telling me there isn't some bullshit collusion going on? How the hell can a digital edition cost more than the paperback (brand new paperback mind you).

Same shit but worse at B&N. They'll sell me Dune for $10 in paperback, they are undercutting Amazon on it but the Nook Book? $15. Hmmmm...

So sorry, but Apple and the publishers colluded to raise prices, and it has hurt consumers, and the DOJ is on to them about it. They can't white knight their way out of this.

I think the hope is that pollution standards will (continue to?) rise along with living standards in Asia, and at that point the West will already have developed certain practices and technologies that the newly developed countries can adopt. E.g. the price of PV panels has dropped significantly in the past years (along with the energy required to build them), fueled by an increase in demand in the Western countries. If it drops a bit more, it'll be cost effective enough to at least be a part of the strategy dealing with the rapidly increasing energy needs of the Asian countries. That's just the general argument and you don't need to "believe" in PV power generation to buy the argument itself.

Of course that's just one part of it, there's also the fact that despite much better environmental regulations, our per-capita emissions are still much worse (even you don't consider "exported" emissions via product manufacturing) and of course the fact that we've been emitting for a much longer time than the newly developed countries[0]. Those are moral arguments, the first one is more utilitarian -- e.g. even if you don't think per-capita emissions should be the important figure, the argument holds water.

[0] We have been emitting since the industrial revolution, that is. I wonder, though, considering the growth of both population and world economy -- 28% of the human hours lived were lived in the 20th century and, incredibly, "over 23% of all the goods and services made since 1AD were produced from 2001 to 2010" --, if the (CO2) emissions of the past 10 or 20 years don't exceed all emissions made prior to that.

You say that like they'll be building guns out of steel pipe and ball bearings. But the truth is, making guns in a new caliber and making ammunition to match is easy enough that some hobbyists do it in their garage.

That's making one, or at best a small handful of weapons that will babied on the range. It's cool and all... But it's not building weapons by the gross lot capable of withstanding field conditions, being maintained by the lowest common denominator, etc... That's a very different problem.
 

I Am Not A Military Expert

Yet, that doesn't stop you from pontificating at length.

The Dragon spacecraft is the first vehicle which has been built primarily with private funds, where the "ownership" of the vehicle does not belong to a government agency.

Wrong. There's a whole raft load of satellites on orbit built entirely with private funds, launched on private boosters by private companies, with no "ownership" whatsoever by any government agency.

It is revolutionary from the standpoint that the government didn't lay down the requirements for what they wanted (or just designed the item themselves) in a space vehicle, just ISS interface requirements. SpaceX built what they wanted without NASA or DoD people sticking their noses in.

That's the geek urban legend. And it's utter bullshit.
 
Nothing flies from the Cape that doesn't meet DoD safety requirements and (for commercial flights, of which there are many) FAA requirements. Nothing docks to the ISS that doesn't meet NASA safety requirements. Etc... etc... The DoD, and NASA, and the FAA, and the State Dept, and... well, a whole raftload stuck their noses in.

Money is just a theoretical construct to facilitate trade, nothing more nothing less. It isn't anything real, even if the tokens used to represent it are real items. It is a theoretical store of value, something that everyone agrees to use. This leads to a couple properties of money:

1) Money is only useful, and thus only really money, if you can spend it. I can call whatever I want "money" I can even "back" it with whatever else I want. Doesn't matter, if it isn't something others will accept, it isn't money, it doesn't function as a currency. It has to be something you can spend, otherwise it doesn't make trade happen and thus isn't useful.

2) Money also is only useful if people DO spend it. Like I said, it is something to facilitate trade. So even if you have something that every person in the world agrees is valuable and they'd take as payment, say the Hope Diamond, if people don't actually spend it, use it to get something, then it isn't money. It only functions as money when people spend it to have others give them goods and services. If everyone just keeps it in a box and nobody spends it, then it isn't money.

So ya, if you can't spend Bitcoins on anything but illegal drugs from one site and maybe a couple online games that almost nobody plays it really isn't money. What's more, even with vendors like that you can tell it isn't money, just a payment system. People buy the bitcoins with actual money, pay, and the people they paid convert it back to USD or other currency. It is just a money laundering system, it isn't being used as currency and spent and respent, held and moved around.

Until it is something that people can use in a lot of places, until it is something that people will accept in many places it isn't a real currency.

Also this is why government currencies are so useful, is because they have a big amount of automatic acceptance. The government will accept them as payment for taxes, so right there is a big use for it. If I want to pay my takes, the US government wants US dollars for them. If you live in any developed nation, and most developing ones, paying your taxes is something you'll be doing. Also the government requires that they are accepted to settle any debts.

So if I owe someone for something in the US, they have to accept US dollars to settle it. They could agree on another kind of settlement, but accepting the government's currency is mandatory. My power company can't say "You used X amount of electricity last month so we want a goat from you to settle the debt, we'll take nothing else." They could offer to take a goat, instead of US dollars, if they wanted but they HAVE to take US dollars to settle the debt.

That, combined with the credibility of a currency backed by the government of the place where you live, makes it something people are quite interested in using. It makes it something they'll spend, and agree to receive, which makes it money.

Right now, bitcoins don't function as money hardly at all. People speculate on them, and some places use them to launder money (Silk Road doesn't hold on to bitcoins, they convert them back to currency immediately, they just use it to mask transactions). That isn't money, isn't a currency, in any real way. You get Amazon and Walmart to start taking them, you get them traded on the Forex market, you get it to where people will agree to be paid in bitcoins and not immediately convert them to something else, then you've got a currency.

If I want to buy stocks, I go to some place like the NYSE which has a ton of regulation and checks and oversight in it. If I want to buy US dollars I can do it from a bank, which have a ton of regulation and oversight. If I want to purchase US bonds, well I do that from the US government itself.

Where can I buy bitcoins? Well some place run by a 17 year old kid in Singapore, some service run by a guy who calls himself "MagicalTux" and his company out of somewhere in Asia...

Hmmm, seems like maybe there is a bit of a problem with the credibility of bitcoin in terms of the credibility of the exchanges.

If these are the only kind of places that want to deal with bitcoins, well maybe ask yourself why. Also for regular people it doesn't really even matter why, it matters that it is. When you can deal with USD or Euros or JPY at a stable, regulated, monitored bank, but bitcoins with some kid in Singapore, well then where keep your money becomes much more simple.