I was expecting a comparative analogy more along the lines of "slowly enjoying a nice bowl of soup", versus "pulverizing a steak via tenderizer to the point of near-liquidation for 30 minutes".

I like to make my own stock from my veggie peelings and trimmings, I simmer them with a bay leaf and it ends up working pretty well.

Other times I use Massel veggie stock in a tin - http://www.massel.com.au/products/stock_powder.shtml - it's hard to find ones which don't have either MSG (I don't like the chemically after taste of MSG) or palm oil or trans fats (from Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil for instance) but that one is pretty good.

Another nice soup is spring vegetable soup, like this one:
http://www.jamieshomecookingskills.com.au/recipe.php?title=spring-vegetable-bean-soup

Or for the left over split red lentils, these koftesi have almost the same ingredients as the soup but make a quite different meal:
http://vegweb.com/recipes/kirmizi-mercimek-koftesi-red-lentil-burgers

Finally, a hearty soup for carnivores is Scotch broth:
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/lamb-recipes/scotch-broth-with-winter-root-veg

It's interesting you mention Tamari, my Dad uses gravy powder in his veggie soup Strangely, the gravy powder I have is vegan... not sure how that works, but it tastes spot on.

MMmmmmm... a few things to consider adding to a basic water/oil/savories type stock for anyone not wanting to use meat or chicken:

Tamari, Bragg's All-Purpose Seasoning, or there's this really good brand of vegetarian boullion Better Than Boullion, comes in about 5 varieties, including lobster and shrimp-You might also try some Traditional Molé, the Mexican paste used for tamales and other dishes...

This is a great basic procedural for most broth based, hearty soups-Nice one, oritteropo

Mmmmmm, loves me some Split Pea Soup now that I'm thinking about it....

Nat Geo puts out such trash these days. Even the Discovery Channel does better nature documentaries. Where'd they get that narrator; was if from Talk Soup on E! or from the Animal Planet ('I used my phone to videotape my dog acting neurotically') network?
David Attenborough might die early just so that he can roll over in his grave at this crap.

..and octopus don't have "tentacles". They have arms, eight arms.

I have always subscribed personally to a moderate combination of study as well as the "destrucktion of my mind" with drugs.

Sex = drug
Food = drug
Sleep = drug

Yeah Billy, all of these legal and universally-practiced exercises cause one's own body to produce drugs and can manifest as periods of altered states of consciousness, illness, etc. Everythings' a fucking drug man, your body is nature's chemistry lab and we continually introduce variables to the soup.

Some of the highest people I ever knew in my live were Korean, you can't tell me Asians don't like their drugs...If it were not for the opium pouring into the U.S. during the civil war music would be square as shit and everyone would be a lot meaner from pain!

Back to the video, fucking stupid hippies wasting good weed....D U M B A S S E S

The other day my friend almost cut off his middle finger opening a soup can. He had to rush to hospital. At the time, he had his 1 year old in his other hand. She didn't even know he had cut himself.

I miss it too. It was fun and engaging back in the day.



Anyway, on to this topic.

Your definition of "God" makes him capable, uniquely among all things in the universe, of proving his existence to a human. (What about me? Don't I prove my existence to you by communicating with you? Or if I showed up in your neighbourhood and had a beer with you, wouldn't that prove my existence? What do you mean, "only God can prove Himself"?)

At the same time, my definition of human --and I hope you agree on this-- includes that humans can be 100% convinced of false things. There is plenty of evidence of this in the many religions and folk beliefs of the world, as well as in mental health documentation and police records. Agreed? Assuming yes, it is fully consistent with your experience then that you SB could be 100% convinced of a false thing. You, as a human, are incapable of telling the difference between 100% conviction of a false thing, and 100% conviction of a true thing. The proof of this is that you are human, and people exist who 100% believe things that are incompatible with what you believe, so it must be possible for a human to 100% believe something false.

Well, let me connect the thoughts in these two paragraphs. You certainly do prove your existence to me by communicating with me. If you showed up in my neighborhood and we had a beer together(i dont drink but i would drink one with you), I would come away being 100 percent certain that you exist. I'm fairly sure you will agree that my certainty about your existence would be justified. Does this 100 percent certainty about your existence mean I could 100 percent prove it to someone else, or even to myself? Certainly not. No matter what evidence I had, even a video tape, someone could say that I am really just sea turtle dreaming this and none of it is real. Is that plausible? Not even remotely, but I couldn't disprove that hypothesis using evidence, empirical or otherwise.

So I think the disconnect here is that you are equating 100 percent certainty with 100 percent proof. Yes, it is technically true I could be a sea turtle dreaming all of this, and I could never disprove that, but I am 100 percent certain that isn't the case. To believe otherwise would make rational thought impossible. Therefore rationality is impossible without first assuming you are capable of rational thought. I have to believe this even though I cannot necessarily prove it. This poses a problem for the atheist. Essentially, all an atheist can say is that "my reasoning is sound because my reasoning says it is"..which begs the question as to why the chemical soup in the brain of an exalted ape fizzing a particular way should be called rationality. Whereas I can say that I am rational because I was created in the image of a rational being, God. Both arguments do use circular reasoning, but the atheist argument is viciously circular.

So, this comes to my point about my belief in God. To me, His existence has been sufficiently proven to the point where I can claim complete certainty, just as if we hung out together I would claim complete certainty that you exist. There is no real difference there and in fact, God has provided me better evidence of His existence because He is with me all of the time. whereas you could only be with me some of them time. I cannot prove to you that God is with me, or that He runs my life, but it doesn't diminish the reality of what He has proven to me.

So I think this leaves you in the position of having to claim that we can be certain of nothing, but in actuality the argument is self-defeating because it requires you to be certain of something (that nothing is certain). It's just the same as trying to claim that only relative truth exists ("is that absolutely true?") Otherwise you will have to say there is a possibility my certainty is justified.

Maybe there are no gods, or maybe I simply am not perceiving your Yahweh while he chooses not to directly reveal himself to me. Both conditions appear identical from my point of view, and I am incapable of telling which is true, so long as I don't perceive Yahweh.

I agree, and think about this. When I got saved I quickly realized that I had been living in an information bubble my entire life. Living in secular culture, you get confronted with this illusion which makes it seem like you have your finger on the pulse of reality. You are consuming all of this information about where we are, where we are headed, where the culture is, the scientific advances, the dreams and aspirations of those who think like you, and you get this sense of being connected to what is going on in planet Earth.

But what I found out is that this is all just basically confirmation bias. I thought that because I had an extremely wide feed and a diversity of interests that my filter was very nimble and narrow and was just sloughing off all of the trivial and non-essential things, when in fact the filter was wider than the feed and I was staring into a hall of mirrors. When that happens it means you are actually just consuming everything that mostly confirms what you already believe, such as what television shows and movies you watch, and what music you listen to, and what books you read. People also tend to hang out with people who think like they do. The seeming diversity of secular interests is actually a very narrow band which reflects very little truth so you end up in a little bubble (which seems like a Universe).

Both of our experiences with direct communication with gods are consistent with both of our beliefs (me: no contact => there are no gods or just no contact yet; you: contact => there is a god or you're wrong because you're human). The difference is that I freely admit that either is possible, while you insist that your view is correct. Get it?

To you either could be possible, because both experiences look the same to you. Whereas, to me only one is possible because the two experiences are alien to eachother. When you look at me, you have no way to tell the difference because you see no difference, therefore you allow the possibility. If you allow the possibility therefore, it isn't necessarily wrong to think that I am justified in believing I am right.

As for what I've said about Yahweh, you must be confusing me with someone else. I have never said I don't want him to reveal himself. I once, on your recommendation, got down on my knees and prayed for it, remember? I really, really, really want to understand the human condition and the true nature of the universe. If that includes the fact that Yahweh actually is our supreme being exactly as described in the Bible I would be very upset to learn that (just as I would be upset to find that I had been sold into slavery), but if that were the case, I'd want to know so I could make informed decisions for my future.

Yes, you're right, I think I did confuse you with someone else. Sorry about that.

I believe you when you say you just honestly want to know the truth, even if that truth wouldn't be pleasing to you. I think it reveals a lot about your character and the way that you think. I admire that kind of personal integrity.

Just before I became a Christian, when I found out that Jesus is the way God has chosen for us, I was resisting it because I knew that it meant that I had to stop living for me. I knew I was going to lose my right to my own personal autonomy and would have to place it in the care and trust of my Creator. What I found out though is that what I thought was freedom was slavery, and that the slavery I thought I was signing myself into was the true freedom. When you are born again, God makes you a new person and sets you free from all of the bondage of sin, and your present condition and your past suffering. This is literal and it is transformative. There is a tangible weight that lifts from your shoulders the moment you accept Christ and your sins are forgiven. It is a weight that is bowing you down all of your life. Everyone has their own theory about where the weight comes from..such as other people, the government, or even religion as some atheists like to think..but the weight is a spiritual weight stemming from the judgment against your sin. People become slaves of many things because they promise to remove that weight, but the weight always remains in the end because only God can set us free from it.

I do remember that prayer. One of the ways that God reveals Himself is through the reading of His word. Would you be willing to take it one step farther and read the gospel of John? I'm sure you've probably read it before, but this would be specifically for God to reveal Himself to you in a way that you can understand and relate to. You could pray before reading it..God, I once prayed for you to reveal yourself to me..I am asking that you do that through the reading of this book. Please help me understand what is being said and use it to give me revelation of your existence. Then read through it slowly..perhaps a chapter at a time, and going over each verse until you understand what it is saying. Pray each time before you read for revelation. I feel the Lord leading me to tell you this so I believe God will honor it and guide you.

In any case, it is good to talk to you again. God bless.

I'm with you. An occasional romp in the dopamine soup is good for awhile, then it's always good to return back to 'normal levels' and keep the neurochemistry good and pliable...

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

Fair Use

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Gordon-Ramsay-Eats-Shark-Fin-Soup-for-the-First-Time

Gordon Ramsay Eats Shark Fin Soup for the First Time has been added as a related post - related requested by Sagemind.

I do a ton of shark fishing off Mexico beach in Panama City, FL. My aunt always wants me to save her the shark fins. I usually grill the shark on a nice charcoal grill, amazing steaks.

but my Aunt makes shark fin soup a lot, and it tastes very good as well, on a lucky week I can haul in about half a ton of sharks for local fishmongers and for myself and family.

course my business is just family ran selling to fishmongers and local seafood restaurants for shark steaks and fins for soup.

And Last-minute 'n not a second to spare, sheppard and this fastidious bachelor-esque gem: Chicken-Mushroom SS w/ P

You'll need 4 boneless / skinless chicken breasts, a can of cambells mushroom soup, cheddar cheese, sugar, and parmesan cheese (grated)

Chicken breasts are easy, just heat up a skillet / pan and cook them with a couple tablespoons of canola oil (make sure to brown them on either side, and save the drippings)

Take your potatoes, wash em, and slice them as thin / thick as you want (thicker makes the cooking time longer) width wise (so you end up with potato circles) Place on a baking sheet and on each potato place a small amount of butter and sprinkle parmesan cheese over the batch. Cook them for ~45 minutes at ~425 degrees.

Start off cooking the soup normally, (however, use milk instead of water as the can instructs) and once it's at a rapid boil, add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1.5 cups of shredded cheddar cheese, and 1.5 tablespoons of parmesan cheese. Make sure to mix well, and once the chicken is fully cooked / browned, pour this over and mix it with the drippings / oil from the chicken.

@Shepppard, oh, you did misconstrue me!

I was talking about those folks who RESENT those who succeed. I have no idea if you resent success or not. (Also, this post isn't about the promote system design -- that is well covered elsewhere. This Sift Talk is just about power point limitations on noobs.)

And how does someone else's success act as a "detriment" to you? You aren't diminished if someone makes crown, are you?

Not everyone wants to have the obvious trappings of success around here. I mean, look at what we have discovered about those who gain pleasure from hoarding points. Nobody even knows they have them, but they have their secret reward pleasure from playing this game called Videosift. I LOVE THAT. Over four hundred power points? Are you kidding me? Whoever that is has Won the Sift, as far as I am concerned. And we don't even know who it is!

And @probie. I love probie. Been around forever. Clearly absolutely refuses to post a vid and lose his/her Big Red P. Isn't that great? S/he found a way to be unique in this soup of personalities. Good!

I'm with you -- I only post stuff I like. I have a HUGE pqueue, full of stuff I adore that no one else does. It pleases me to have some of that stuff on the Sift -- for historical reasons, for my own personal pleasure.

I wasn't too pleased at having my ability to earn power points limited to the number of years I have been "officially" on the Sift (I should be getting six power points, but that's another amusing story about computer noob failure on my part.) I was willing to live with it, and just work hard at spending the points I earned so I would always get my "pay."

But then I started to realize how this felt like ... well, punishment for success for new people. A conscious dampening of their involvement. It just feels.... wrong and bad for the Sift in the long run. New blood is what is going to keep this place going, right?

And I keep coming back to what @dag said -- what power do noobs have to change anything around here? Anything they do MUST have the support of a significant number of fellow Sifters. They can't do anything without the support and friendship and/or admiration of other Sifters. How is that bad for the Sift?

Besides, now that I know about our hidden community of secret Hoarders.... their pleasure has just been cut off completely. No more points for them. And that makes me sad. Now that I know about it.

Indeed, I am all for reactor simplification, the reactor I want to see constructed could theoretically be nearly completely made on a factory line then shipped and installed very simply. The molten salt reactor concept is just a bunch of pipes with a graphite core. Most of the Gen4 reactors have this goal, and while large construction projects do mean jobs, usually good jobs...they are also costs, and if we want China and India to adopt greener power systems, they need to be cheaper than coal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

I am going to sift this after I post, but it is a short look into reactors in general, and why the MSR and other potential Gen4 concepts could eliminate that huge capital and labor cost. And nearly completely eliminate radioactivity problems to the general public.

300 billion is actually not to much money when you get down to it. Each year, the global economy spends up to 10 trillion dollars on dino fuel technology. Considering the reliability of NPPs and the nearly 90% load rate over the course of many years...those costs are really really good! Typically speaking, when you consider the costs of decommissioning, waste transportation, nuclear generally ends up being about on par with coal...mostly because nuclear plants last so darn long, over 60 years for some of our gen2 plants in the US and still going strong! Compare that to the 150 billion or so Germany has spent on solar project to their total ACTUAL output and it is a very telling tail. Even more so when you look at total carbon emissions of Germany compared to France.

Waste is actually what made me anti-nuclear myself. My introduction to caring (negatively) about nuclear was the Fukushima Daiichi incident. But after learning more about that situation, I actually really started to appreciate nuclear more. No one died as a result of FD failure, the containment building stopped most of the most harmful radiation, and the stuff that did get out is the really mild stuff (stuff with the million year half lives). I don't want to downplay this, it is still a very serious industrial mess to clean up, but compared to the 20 thousand people who died in the Tsunami and the tons of fuels, trash and other crap that got souped around in Japan as a result, the old reactor help up respectably, and is a credit to the operators (all of whom are currently alive an well).

I had a common misconception about radioactivity, I thought something with a long half-life was bad because it was going to be radioactive for a long, long time. That is mostly wrong. What that means is it is going to be hardly radioactive for a long time, elements that are short lived are VERY radioactive, but disappear very fast. I don't want to mire you in most of the gritty details, but the fission products reactors produce don't last very long, most only hours, a fewer some decades, and only a few longer than that. Stuff that has billion year a billion year half life...well, you don't really need to worry about it at all, it just isn't that radioactive. Most of the worry is based around "transuranics". That is just fancy speak for "stuff heavier than uranium". This is the stuff like Plutonium and Curium ect. The great thing about modern, Gen4 reactors is they don't really make those things...the thorium reactor I like starts with thorium, which is a long, long way from making anything heavier than uranium (less than 1% theoretically possible). So micrograms per year...not really that much to worry about (there is also no way to really get that to go into the environment because we don't use pressure vessels, but I will leave that to Kirk to explain).

I don't want to make it sounds like there isn't any risk or anything, but the risks have been way overplayed by political interests and not technical ones. For instance, many of the exclusions zones for FD were way overblown, they were no more radioactive than my home in the mountains ...but that isn't want you heard in the news.

But I think I will leave it like that. Nuclear has a bunch of mystic joojoo around it. Don't take my work for it, please, give "bill gates nuclear" a google, or other "gen4 reactor" stuff a chance before you completely write off nuclear as a green option for the future. I personally think it will have a big role to play if we want to stem off CO2 production AND bring more people into a western quality of life. Thanks again for the back and forth.