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Comment Re: Who cares? (Score 1) 35

Not so fast, mercantilist ! I can go out to the forest or beach  anytime I desire and gather a free lunch. Guess you are not much of an out-door person. Also, bread , beans and milk are SURPLUS products almost everywhere on earth --- production is higher than consumption --- so why does their cost inflate with available dollars ? Items in scarcity ... like caviar , 15 Y/O scotch,  GPUs or silk shirts ...  of-course   price differently. 

Comment Two things.... (Score 1) 46

First, we need a plushy of Kit. My wife couldn't tell you the difference between Chrome, Edge, or Firefox from a practical standpoint...but she wants a Kit plushy...so, merchandising works.

Second...Firefox seems to be spending it time making itself more and more annoying. As much as one could appreciate that not everybody knows how to use all the browser features...it's adopted Edge levels of nags, notifications, and "helpful hints". Be less helpful.

Comment low frontier (Score 2) 30

I have never understood the "high frontier" concept. Why spend trillions going to Mar ( which hates us and makes astroboiz eat toothpaste  ) ...  instead of spending millions  at off-shore Hawaii where every lunch is lobster or maimai .  And snorkling 1st class. We don't even talk of  sufacing into  sunny afternoons spent surfing, instead of hiding in a  gawdforsaken  ( -80 F ) cave while dust-storms rage just feet away. And does kevlar/teflon astro-sheik compare to  palm-frond hula-babe dancing ? What's the perv against our low frontier with all the untapped minerals 1000 generations of humans would crave ?   I just don't understand current priorities.

Comment Re:Get solar panels (Score 1) 113

Yes. Watt peak. And it does, at least for me. Let's say I can get 120 Watts on average over 8 hrs at 300 days/year, this means that I can get 300 kWh a year. If I pay 20 ct/kWh, it will pay back my initial investment of $300 within 5 years.

There is nothing that forbids me to install more than one of those $300/800 Wp systems in general. But I am no longer allowed to just plug them into the next wall socket according to local regulations, and inform my utility after the fact. If I want more than 800 Wp, I have to apply for a larger system, and I have to get it approved. If for instance, I want 10 kWp, I buy 12 of them, costing me $3600, a power management system for maybe $1500, and I need a board certified engineer to approve the setup. At the end, I'll pay maybe $8000 for the whole 10 kW setup, but not $50,000.

Comment Re:The biggest mistake (Score 1) 88

No, it was not because we wanted cheap stuff. No politician ran on cheap stuff, hell no politician ran on globalisation or mass immigration. That was all railroaded by the elite. The only politicians and media who were protesting it, were on the extreme fringe.

We the people are guilty of a lot of things, but we didn't vote for this.

Comment Re:Get solar panels (Score 1) 113

That's a very U.S. centric problem. Apparently, the U.S. make it extremely cumbersome and expensive to build and own Solar, while I can go to the next departement store or to an online store and buy a 800 Wp setup for $300, mount it myself, and all the paper work I have to do is to tell my utility, that I have that 800 Wp system in place.

Comment Re:Dark energy discovered 27 years ago?? (Score 1) 79

Space itself ... if a self exists ... but if it doesn't exist how can you bend it? .  The "aether" assumption was well motivated. Maxwell believed it, Lorentz believed it. I suspect the  Aharanov/Bohm effect implies it. How to get-around the Michaelson/Morley result I have no idea. 

Comment Re:Dark energy discovered 27 years ago?? (Score 2) 79

If you read Fritz Zwicky's original 1933 and 1936 papers, that's what he actually said about Dark Matter.

Einer Expansion von 500 km/sek pro Million Parseks entspricht nach EINSTEIN und DE SITTER eine mittlere Dichte von rho = 10^-28 gr/cm^3. Aus den Beobachtungen an selbstleuchtender Materie schätzt HUBBLE rho ~ 10^-31 gr/cm^3. Es ist natürlich möglich, dass leuchtende plus dunkle (kalte) Materie zusammengenommen eine bedeutend höhere Dichte ergeben, und der Wert rho ~ 10^28 gr/cm^3 erscheint daher nicht unvernünftig.

Helvetica Physica Acta, Vol. 6, p. 122

An expansion rate of 500 kilometers per second per million parsecs is equivalent to an average density of rho = 10^28 grams per cm^3, according to EINSTEIN and DE SITTER. From the observation of self radiating matter HUBBLE estimates rho ~ 10^31 grams per cm^3. Of course, it is possible, that radiating plus dark (cold) matter put together result in a massively larger density, and the value rho ~ 10^28 grams per cm^3 seems not unreasonable.

As you can see, Zwicky himself coins the term Dark Matter as the place holder for non-radiation stuff out there to resolve a discrepancy of 1 to 1000. Better measurements of the Hubble constant, which at the time was estimated to be 500 km/sec per million parsecs, and is now estimated to be 70 km/sec per million parsecs has shrunk the discrepancy to about 1 to 5, but still, Dark Matter is exactly that, postulated stuff to make up for a discrepancy.

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