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Comment Electric infrastructure more efficient than cars (Score 1) 775

A mobile internal combustion engine has to have certain concessions for weight, vibrations, ease of maintenance, and other things that a stationary power plant does not need, and power plants can install expensive equipment and expensive maintenance to reduce emissions that a car cannot have.

See for example: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11 and let's assume that we are generating our energy according to 2012 rates http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1 so that average CO2 production per kwh is 1.20.

Let's compare the 2013 RAV4 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33397 which gets 44 kwh per 100 miles (the worst I could find that has a gas equivalent). Compare that to the RAV4 2WD http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=33425 which gets 26 MPG.

1 mile on the gas-powered RAV4 produces .63 pounds of CO2.
1 mile on the electric RAV4 produces .52 pounds of CO2.

(I used to do the same calculations on coal alone, but it appears that either coal has gotten more polluting or gas powered cars have gotten a lot more efficient since I last checked)

Comment What does this mean for my Picosecond Event Timer? (Score 1) 448

As of today, we have some pretty sophisticated equipment used to measure picosecond-sized times. I sincerely doubt that, for any definition of not too distant future, we'll get down to the level where something that is in only a few research labs is used for trades. Also speed of light.

Comment Uncanny valley/Mirror neurons (Score 1) 126

The need to know it's fake might have some sympathy with the uncanny valley phenomenon. If we know that something is not real, but looks almost real, we have a visceral reaction to it, since we can detect that there's no mind there.

Might it be similar here, but in reverse? We can detect that there's no mind in the fake violence, so it's placed in the (positive) uncanny valley and our reaction ceases to be what it would be if we could detect a mind?

Comment Re:Best Part (Score 1) 174

See that's the thing though. Since you hadn't heard about it, you wouldn't try to run it. He heard about it, presumably knew that it was a linux executable, and tried to run it on a machine that he thought was also capable of running Windows executables. It takes a special type of dumb to be aware of something, but to try to run it on something that shouldn't be able to run it.

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