“George Soros funded DA Bragg”

George Soros and Alvin Bragg have never met in person or spoken by telephone, email, Zoom etc.. There has been no contact between the two. Neither George Soros nor Democracy PAC contributed to Alvin Bragg's campaign for Manhattan District Attorney. There is absolutely zero evidence to the contrary besides the reich’s favorite racist trope….”Jews control blacks and pit them against whites and freedom for financial gain.”. I believe another leader made the same claims.

On my list of favorites. RIP Alvin

RIP Alvin Lee - Obscure Interview has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.

*dead RIP Alvin and this video embed

RIP Tom Connors ... Alvin Lee died this day too.

@oritteropo (oh ya, as an aside, if your a fan of Wigner, his pupal Alvin Weinberg was already thinking about the energy crisis back in the 50/60's, and wrote a great little diddy on it "ENERGY as an ultimate raw material, or problems of burning the sea and burning the rocks" http://energyfromthorium.com/energy-weinberg-1959/ They cut them from a different mold back then I guess.)

When I was 6 I had an Alvin & the Chipmunks LP with this on it, I thought back then that these were all Chipmunk original songs. Of course I also thought the Chipmunks played their own instruments :-)

While there are a LOT of things I want to comment on, I'd like to point out one thing that I very vehemently agree with. While I can't say that I believe that Jesus was the 'ideal' man, I can say that he's someone that a vast majority of people I know could aspire to emulating.

I'm glad that we can agree on Jesus. I highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Changed-World-Alvin-Schmidt/dp/0310264499

It's not Jesus that is the problem, as awesome of a guy as he was (allegedly). Christianity teaches that it is not the actions that grant you access to Heaven, it is God's Grace. Whether it's Grace because you've acknowledged Jesus as your Lord, or Grace through TULIP-style pre-destination... All of an individual Christian's actions (except for the 'I Believe' action) are, in fact, meaningless. If the speaker thought more about his own Christian Philosophy, rather than de-contextualizing Atheists' quotes, he'd have realized this already.

That isn't true though. Although, you cannot earn your salvation, there are rewards in Heaven based on what you did here on Earth. Neither is it meaningless to follow the two greatest commandments:

Love the Lord thy God with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your mind, and with all of your strength.

and

Love thy neighbor as yourself

Unless you count loving God and your fellow man as meaningless, they are both a reward onto themselves and filled with meaning.

If Christian 'Judgement' were based on actions and not belief in God (hence, their actions and lives had meaning), as many of my non-Christian friends would make it into Heaven as my Christian friends...

The judgment is about sin. Your friends, along with every Christian, have transgressed Gods laws, and the wages of sin is death. The difference is, Christians have received Gods pardon for their transgressions, whereas unbelievers have rejected it and thus have to face God on their own merits.

One specific data point is violence. Every one of my non-christian friends is non-violent. They oppose violence, both offensive and defensive. Never once did Jesus EVER advocate any form of violence. And, if you take his life as a blueprint, he proved his mettle by submitting to being crucified, even stopping the people who would have defended him.

Jesus said this:

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

There are some Christians who are non-violent (Mostly Mennonites/Amish)... I respect them. Others, not-so-much. Any branch of Christianity that doesn't take a hard stance against violence is twisting the Bible to their own selfish ends... which is, unfortunately, most of them.

A Christian is simply someone who has been born again, and has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and the true church is the body of Christ. Regardless of what a denomination might say, a Christian should consult the word of God:

Matthew 26:52

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Lest you think I'm cherry-picking, read the Beatitudes... You'll read about being meek, righteous, merciful, peacemakers and persecuted... But you won't see anything that could have justified the Crusades, Slavery or Gay-Hate.

I agree with everything you're saying here. Christians are to love their enemies, bless those who curse them, and pray for those who despitefully use them. We are to unconditionally love everyone, because they are in the image of God, and because God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. That is the model of behavior He has given us.

So, as an Atheist, let me go on the Record... I don't dis-believe in God... I dis-believe in the God that is worshiped by Christians. I also have very specific issues with other Religions, but that can wait for another time. Given that I've found all of the Religions that I've encountered to be as 'bad' as any others... My position is that God may or may not exist, but if He DOES exist, He won't be found in any current religious textbooks...

I'll just say that God deeply loves you, and wants you to know Him personally.

(FYI, I'm one of the "life is meaningless" people that the speaker seems to think can't exist. I can stare into the Abyss and take pleasure walking the line, knowing one day I'll fall in and vanish utterly. It does not, in any way, depress me.)

I don't think he said they don't exist, I think he said that on one hand you may believe it, but on the other hand, you don't live as if everything is meaningless.

>> ^hatsix

Safe nuclear refers to many different new gen4 reactor units that rely on passive safety instead of engineered safety. The real difference comes with a slight bit of understanding of how nuclear tech works now, and why that isn't optimal.

Let us first consider this, even with current nuclear technology, the amount of people that have died as a direct and indirect result of nuclear is very low per unit energy produced. The only rival is big hydro, even wind and solar have a great deal of risk compared to nuclear as we do it and have done it for years. The main difference is when a nuclear plant fails, everyone hears about it...but when a oil pipeline explodes and kills dozens, or solar panel installers fall off a roof or get electrocuted and dies...it just isn't as interesting.

Pound per pound nuclear is already statistically very safe, but that isn't really what we are talking about, we are talking about what makes them more unsafe compared to new nuclear techs. Well, that has to do with how normal nukes work. So, firstly, normal reactor tech uses solid fuel rods. It isn't a "metal" either, it is uranium dioxide, has the same physical characteristics as ceramic pots you buy in a store. When the fuel fissions, the uranium is transmuted into other, lighter, elements some of which are gases. Over time, these non-fissile elements damage the fuel rod to the point where it can no longer sustain fission and need to be replaced. At this point, they have only burned about 4% of the uranium content, but they are all "used up". So while there are some highly radioactive fission products contained in the fuel rods, the vast majority is just normal uranium, and that isn't very radioactive (you could eat it and not really suffer any radiation effects, now chemical toxicity is a different matter). The vast majority of nuclear waste, as a result of this way of burning uranium, generates huge volumes of waste products that aren't really waste products, just normal uranium.

But this isn't what makes light water reactors unsafe compared to other designs. It is all about the water. Normal reactors use water to both cool the core, extract the heat, and moderate the neutrons to sustain the fission reaction. Water boils at 100c which is far to low a temperature to run a thermal reactor on, you need much higher temps to get power. As a result, nuclear reactors use highly pressurized water to keep it liquid. The pressure is an amazingly high 2200psi or so! This is where the real problem comes in. If pressure is lost catastrophically, the chance to release radioactivity into the environment increases. This is further complicated by the lack of water then cooling the core. Without water, the fission chain reaction that generates the main source of heat in the reactor shuts down, however, the radioactive fission products contained in the fuel rods are very unstable and generate lots of heat. So much heat over time, they end up causing the rods to melt if they aren't supplied with water. This is the "melt down" you always hear about. If you start then spraying water on them after they melt down, it caries away some of those highly radioactive fission products with the steam. This is what happened in Chernobyl, there was also a human element that overdid all their safety equipment, but that just goes to show you the worst case.

The same thing didn't happen in Fukushima. What happened in Fukushima is that coolant was lost to the core and they started to melt down. The tubes which contain the uranium are made from zirconium. At high temps, water and zirconium react to form hydrogen gas. Now modern reactor buildings are designed to trap gases, usually steam, in the event of a reactor breach. In the case of hydrogen, that gas builds up till a spark of some kind happens and causes an explosion. These are the explosions that occurred at Fukushima. Both of the major failures and dangers of current reactors deal with the high pressure water; but water isn't needed to make a reactor run, just this type of reactor.

The fact that reactors have radioactive materials in them isn't really unsafe itself. What is unsafe is reactor designs that create a pressure to push that radioactivity into other areas. A electroplating plant, for example, uses concentrated acids along with high voltage electricity in their fabrication processes. It "sounds" dangerous, and it is in a certain sense, but it is a manageable danger that will most likely only have very localized effects in the event of a catastrophic event. This is due mainly to the fact that there are no forces driving those toxic chemical elements into the surrounding areas...they are just acid baths. The same goes for nuclear materials, they aren't more or less dangerus than gasoline (gas go boom!), if handled properly.

I think one of the best reactor designs in terms of both safety and efficiency are the molten salt reactors. They don't use water as a coolant, and as a result operate at normal preasures. The fuel and coolant is a liquid lithium, fluoride, and beryllium salt instead of water, and the initial fuel is thorium instead of uranium. Since it is a liquid instead of a solid, you can do all sorts of neat things with it, most notably, in case of an emergency, you can just dump all the fuel into a storage tank that is passively cooled then pump it back to the reactor once the issue is resolved. It is a safety feature that doesn't require much engineering, you are just using the ever constant force of gravity. This is what is known as passive safety, it isn't something you have to do, it is something that happens automatically. So in many cases, what they designed is a freeze plug that is being cooled. If that fails for any reason, and you desire a shutdown, the freeze plug melts and the entire contents of the reactor are drained into the tanks and fission stops (fission needs a certain geometry to happen).

So while the reactor will still be as dangerous as any other industrial machine would be...like a blast furnace, it wouldn't pose any threat to the surrounding area. This is boosted by the fact that even if you lost containment AND you had a ruptured emergency storage tank, these liquid salts solidify at temps below 400c, so while they are liquid in the reactor, they quickly solidify outside of it. And another great benefit is they are remarkably stable. Air and water don't really leach anything from them, fluoride and lithium are just so happy binding with things, they don't let go!

The fuel burn up is also really great. You burn up 90% of what you put in, and if you try hard, you can burn up to 99%. So, comparing them to "clean coal" doesn't really give new reactor tech its fair shake. The tech we use was actually sort of denounced by the person who made them, Alvin Weinberg, and he advocated the molten salt reactor instead. I could babble on about this for ages, but I think Kirk Sorensen explains that better than I could...hell most likely the bulk of what I said is said better by him



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

But the real question is why. Why use nuclear and not solar, for instance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

This is the answer. The power of the atom is a MILLION times more dense that fossil fuels...a million! It is a number that is beyond what we can normal grasp as people. Right now, current reactors harness less that 1% of that power because of their reactor design and fuel choice.

And unfortunately, renewables just cost to darn much for how much energy they contribute. In that, they also use WAY more resources to make per unit energy produced. So wind, for example, uses 10x more steal per unit energy contributed than other technologies. It is because renewables is more like energy farming.

http://videosift.com/video/TEDxWarwick-Physics-Constrain-Sustainable-Energy-Options


This is a really great video on that maths behind what makes renewables less than attractive for many countries. But to rap it up, finally, the real benefit is that cheap, clean power is what helps makes nations great. There is an inexorable link with access to energy and financial well being. Poor nations burn coal to try and bridge that gap, but that has a huge health toll. Renewables are way to costly for them per unit energy, they really need other answers. New nuclear could be just that, because it can be made nearly completely safe, very cheap to operate, and easier to manufacture (this means very cheap compared to today's reactors as they are basically huge pressure vessels). If you watch a couple of videos from Kirk and have more questions or problems, let me know, as you can see, I love talking about this stuff Sorry if I gabbed your ear off, but this is the stuff I am going back to school for because I do believe it will change the world. It is the closest thing to free energy we are going to get in the next 20 years.

In reply to this comment by ReverendTed:
Just stumbled onto your profile page and noticed an exchange you had with dag a few months back.
What constitutes "safe nuclear"? Is that a specific type or category of nuclear power?
Without context (which I'm sure I could obtain elsewise with a simple Google search, but I'd rather just ask), it sounds like "clean coal".

I'm not accusing her of any crime. I am speculating. As are you.

Why does it bother you so much that I think there is a possibility she is racist? If she isn't, good for her. If she is, wow, look at that, that is some crazy shit.

Besides, she can be right about hating lawlessness and still be a crazy ass racist. These aren't mutually exclusive points of view.



>> ^chilaxe:

@bareboards2

"I'm just sick of the lawlessness," the 42-year-old Alvin woman said. "They knew their chances of getting caught were slim to none. Those kids would have gotten away with it, celebrated their theft and probably continue to do it." http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/7619201.html#ixzz1QV5iBQ
wJ

@bareboards2

"I'm just sick of the lawlessness," the 42-year-old Alvin woman said. "They knew their chances of getting caught were slim to none. Those kids would have gotten away with it, celebrated their theft and probably continue to do it." http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/7619201.html#ixzz1QV5iBQwJ

OK, Alvin!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'olberman, plant, senate, democrat, greene, felony, dirty tricks' to 'olberman, plant, senate, democrat, alvin greene, felony, dirty tricks' - edited by Throbbin

Tags for this video have been changed from 'alvin, chipmunks, stand up, record player' to 'alvin, chipmunks, stand up, record player, patton oswalt' - edited by lucky760

Anyone else find the way Alvin Stardust says "see you girls" to be a little, shall we say, irksome?