I can't recall where i saw it, but a long time ago i saw a comedy skit(maybe) that had a large spike coming from the steering wheel in order for people to drive more carefully.

Umm... I probably wouldn't have been able to get my hand around the kid and ended up spiking her like a Superbowl touchdown.

They tested it on 3 macs and one pc. Mac motherboards are nothing special because you don't build you own macs, but a built pc might have a quality motherboard with all those hard caps and voltage spike protection. My guess is that is what saved it. a cheap pc motherboard would die, too.

Congratulations! Your comment on Spike Lee's "Wake Up" | Bernie Sanders has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

Your video, Spike Lee's "Wake Up" | Bernie Sanders, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

ya, sort of. Way over simplified. For example, drinking orange juice is not a ton of calories, but all that sugar in your bloodstream spikes your insulin response and you suddenly become an efficient fat storing machine. (unless you just did a heavy workout in which case you become a muscle building machine if paired with protein.)

Also, when you work out correctly your base metabolism will be WAY faster than before, and calorie counting really doesn't matter much at that point. Only thing that matters is the quality and composition of the food. Low/no sugar, equal proportions of protein/fat/unrefined carbs. etc.


Also,

Love the Conan cameo! King of creepy;)

and police spikes.

@RedSky

First, if it were up to me, you could take over as Minister of Finance in this country tomorrow. Our differences seem miniscule compared to what horrendous policies our last three MoF have pushed. The one prior, ironically, was dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by The Sun.

We're in agreement on almost everything you mentioned in your last comment, so I'll focus on what I perceive differently.

First, I'd differentiate between fiscal stimulus and fiscal spending, the former being a situational application of the latter. As you said, fiscal stimulus during an economic crisis tends to be inadequate with regards to our macroeconomic objectives. You can neither whip out plans for major investments at a whim nor can you mobilize the neccessary resources quickly enough to make a difference and still be reasonable efficient. Not to mention that it only affects certain parts of the economy (construction, mostly), leaving others completely in the wind. So I'm with you on that one, it's a terribly inefficient and ineffective approach.

Automatic stabilizers work magnificently in this regard, but they barely take any pressure from the lower wage groups, especially if unemployment benefits come with a metric ton of strings attached, as is the case in Germany. A basic income guarantee might work, but that's an entirely different discussion.

The problem I see with merely relying on reasonable automatic stabilizers in the form of payments is that they do put a floor into demand, but do very little to tackle the problem of persistent unemployment due to a lack of jobs. As useful as training and education are, the mere number of highly educated people forced to work mundane jobs tells me that, at best, it doesn't work, and at worst pushes a systemic problem onto the individual, leading to immense pressure. Not to mention the psychological effects of being unemployed when employment is tauted as a defining attribute of a proper person -- aka the demonization of the unemployed.

It's still somewhat decent in Australia, but in Europe... it's quite a horrible experience.

Anyway, my point is that I'd rather see a lot more fiscal spending (permanent!) in the shape of public sector jobs. A lot of work cannot be valued properly by the market; should be done without the expectation of a return of investment (hospitals, anyone?); occurs in sectors of natural monopolies -- all of that should be publicly run. A job guarantee, like your fellow countryman Bill Mitchell advocates quite clearly, might be an approach worth trying out. Economy in the shit? More people on the public payroll, at rather low (but living wage!) wages. Do it at the county/city level and you can create almost any kind of job. If the private sector wants those people instead, they'd have to offer better working conditions. No more blackmail through the fear of unemployment -- you can always take a public job, even if it is at a meagre pay.

I should probably have mentioned that I don't buy into the notion of a stable market. From where I am standing, it's inherently unstable, be it through monopolies/oligopolies, dodging of laws and regulations (Uber), impossibility to price-in externalities (environmental damage most of all) or plain, old cost-cutting leading to a system-wide depression of demand. I'm fine with interfering in the market wherever it fails to deliver on our macroeconomic objectives -- which at this point in time is almost everywhere, basically.

Healthcare is all the rage these days, thanks to the primaries. I'd take the publicly-run NHS over the privately-run abomination in the US any day of the week. And that's after all the cuts and privatizations of the last two decades that did a horrible number on the NHS. Fuck ATOS, while we're at it.

Same for the railroad: the pre-privatization Bundesbahn in Germany was something to be proud of and an immeasurable boost of both the economy and the general standard of living.

In the mid/long run, the effects of automation and climate change-induced migration will put an end to the idea of full employment, but for the time being, there's still plenty of work to be done, plenty of idle resources to be employed, and just nobody to finance it. So why not finance it through the printing press until capacity is reached?

As for the Venezuela comparison: I don't think it fits in this case. Neither does Weimar Germany, which is paraded around quite regularly. Both Venezuela and Weimar Germany had massive supply-side problems. They didn't have the production capacity nor the resources to meet the demand they created by spending money into circulation. If an economy runs at or above its capacity, any additional spending, wherever it comes from, will cause inflation. But both Europe and the US are operating faaar below capacity in any measurable metric. You mentioned LRAS yourself. I think most estimates of it, as well as most estimates of NAIRU, are off quite significantly so as to not take the pressure off the wage slaves in the lowest income sector. You need mass unemployment to keep them in line.

As you said, the participation rate is woefully low, so there's ample space. And I'd rather overshoot and cause a short spike in inflation than remain below potential and leave millions to unneccessary misery.

Given the high level of private debt, there will be no increase in spending on that front. Corporations don't feel the need to invest, since demand is down and their own vaults are filled to the brim with cash. So if the private sector intends to net save, you either have to run a current account surplus (aka leech demand from other countries) or a fiscal deficit. Doesn't work any other way, sectoral balances always sum up to zero, by definition. If we want to reduce the dangerous levels of private debt, the government needs to run a deficit. If we don't want to further increase the federal debt, the central bank has to hand the cash over directly, without the issuance of debt through the treasury.

As for the independant central bank: you can only be independant from either the government or the private sector, not both. Actually, you can't even be truly independant from either, given that people are still involved, and people have ideologies and financial ties.

Still, if an "independant" central bank is what you prefer, Adair Turner's new book "Between Debt and the Devil" might be worth a read. He's a proponent of 100% reserve banking, and argues for the occasional use of the printing press -- though controlled by an inflation-targeting central bank. According to him, QE is pointless and in order to bring nominal demand up to the level we want, we should have a fiscal stimulus financed by central bank money. The central bank controls the amount, the government decides on what to spend it on.

Not how I would do it, but given his expertise as head of the Financial Services Authority, it's quite refreshing to hear these things from someone like him.

Here in Germany its easy to have a direct comparison. Winter tires are pretty much mandatory in the Winter. The difference is huge. You cant use summer tires or allseason ones on lots of snow. You will get stuck. With Winter tires you will have no problems except in the harshest conditions here only spikes or chains will help. But even there you will have it much easier with Winter tires than with summer ones.

Also, due to my high powered car, I easily notice when temperatures get too low for summer tires. They will start spinning much easier even on dry pavement. That starts at around 8C. Winter tires wont spin easily even at minus temperatures.

And yes, some people have season cars. One for Winter and one for warmer seasons. But thats mostly because they dont want to ruin the good season one, because its more valuable to them (mostly old timers, young timers, convertibles, sports cars).

I want all of my clothes to have spikes on them.

*dead since http://www.spike.com/efp is gone!

Thank you sir, that let me see it. Some weird audio volume spikes and dips in there, but 100% watch (and listen) able.

As I said in that thread, I don't see an incentive for the US to intervene. This isn't the Cold War battle over spheres of influence, neither does oil have the same geopolitical relevance. Despite the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya, none has led to a spike in oil prices? Instead it's fallen precipitously. Why, because the US being the swing shale oil producer has capped world prices.

Meanwhile I listed the reasons for Russia to intervene, none of which you have challenged or refuted. TOWs have by all accounts been supplied by the Saudis. I don't think Russia is attempting to destabilize Syria, but they do wish to prop up Assad. Bombing has conveniently been primarily of non-ISIS rebels since they challenge the regime more directly than ISIS which is being bombed already.

Syria includes a litany of rebel groups some as radical as ISIS. From what I have read it is suspected that both the Syrian army and al-Nusra/ISIS used various chemical weapons. The Syrian army has undoubtedly dropped barrel bombs, weapons designed to create indiscriminate collateral damage to civilians just like chemical weapons, it is entirely consistent that they would have also tried using chemical weapons which is practical terms are no less likely to be deadly to civilians or likely to incite terror. There are by all accounts >5,000 different rebel groups in Syria. That you would ascribe them all as wanting chaos would suggest you've been fed a narrative.

A Cold War MAD mindset makes little sense today. Russian bombing of western Europe in some kind of hypothetical retaliation against the US makes no sense in this day and age. In any case it was scrapped because of Putin's paranoia.

@Asmo

Don't really want to get a more general argument about the history of US foreign policy, I was talking more about the present day. The US's rationale for intervention during the Cold War was an exaggerated sense of the spread of communism and later to prevent anything that might precipitate an oil price spike like in the 1973-74/79. Nowadays with greatly expanded US shale oil supply and no Cold War I simply don't see any real incentive, if anything with the furore over debt, quite the opposite.

@enoch

Successful US intervention in the previous century generally involved large sums of money, whether it be propping up a government (Zaire/Congo) or funding an insurgent militia (Guatemala). Same thing with the USSR (North Korea). The ability to influence public opinion or mount credible propaganda campaigns in my opinion is generally exaggerated especially in a large, modern and educated country like Iran. It's also the conspiratorial myth that repressive regimes (like Iran, Russia) frequently turn to when they need to discredit dissent. A good example is:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/11/arab-conspiracy-theories

I mention Russia because this is the line pushed aggressively to both his domestic audience by it's wholly state controlled television media and to a mix of foreign and expatriate audiences (of which Russia Today is most successful) through a web of shadowy funding and home grown sounding organisations (see link below for a nice overview, e.g. http://www.globalresearch.ca/). It's pretty important to view what he says as part of a narrative to vastly exaggerate US and western intervention in Ukraine and previously Georgia, because that allows him to construct his myth of being a counterbalance to present day western imperialism.

https://criticusnixalsverdruss.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/propagramm3.jpg

And your first paragraph pretty much spells out why solar PV is a dud investment for small plant/home plant if it were completely unsupported by a plethora of mechanisms designed to make it viable financially (and that's before even considering whether the energy cost is significantly offset by the energy produced), not to mention trying to make time to do things when your PV production is high so that you're not wasting it.

I try to load shift as much as possible, even went so far as to have most of the array facing the west where we'll scrape out some extra power when we're actually going to use it (eg. in the afternoon, particularly for running air conditioners in summer), but without feed in tariffs that are 1:1 with energy purchase prices and government subsidies on the installation of the system, the sums (at least in Australia) just do not ever come close to making sense.

But as I said in the first paragraph, that is all financial dickering, it has nothing to do with actual energy used vs energy generated. There is no free energy, you have to spend energy to make energy. You have to buil a PV array, pay for the wages of the people who install it, transport costs etc etc. They all drain energy out of the system. And most people in places where feed in tariffs are either on parity with the cost of purchasing energy when your PV isn't producing align their solar arrays with the ideal direction for greatest generation of energy that they can get the best profit for, not for generation of energy when energy demands spike.

The consequences of this are that at midday, energy is coursing in to the grid and unless your electricity provider has some capacity for extended storage and load shifting (eg. pumped hydro, large scale battery arrays), it's underutilised. Come peak time in the afternoon when people get home, switch on cooling/heating, start cooking etc when PV's production is very low, the electricity company still has to cycle up gas turbines to provide the extra power to get over that peak demand, and solar does little to offset that.

So carbon still get's pissed away every day, but as long as PV owners get a cheaper bill, it's all seen to be working like a charm... ; )

The energy current efficiency panels return is only on an order of 2-3x the energy input, which is barely enough energy returned to support a subsistence agrarian lifestyle (forget education, art, industrialisation). There's a reason that far better utilisation of coal and oil via steam heralded the massive breakthrough of industrialisation, it's because coal has close to a 30 to 1 return on energy invested. Same with petrochemicals, incredibly high return on energy.

The biggest advances in human civilisation came with the ability to harness energy more effectively, or finding new energy sources which gave high amounts of energy in return for the effort of obtaining them and utilising them. Fire, water (eg. mills etc), carbon sources, nuclear and so on. Even if you manage to get 95% efficiency on the panels for 100% of their lifetime (currently incredibly unlikely), you're only turning that number in to 8-12x the energy invested compared to 25-30x for coal/petro, 50x+ for hydro and 75-100+x for gen IV nuke reactors.