Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

The introduction was more of an email hand-off, I think Battelle and I exchanged a couple of mails and that was it.

A bad taste is the right way to characterise that session in San Francisco. I was left feeling that I was completely out of my league in the world of Silicon Valley business.

"siftbot votes that can be reclaimed"

The ability to reclaim votes seems to have gone away. I was actually about to post to sifttalk about it yesterday, but didn't get around to it. And since it specifically came up here, I thought I'd mention it.

Great work again, @dag. Though I admit I was hoping to read more about "K" and Battelle. Did that introduction ever happen? Did Battelle have any good insights for you? Did you get anything other than a bad taste in your mouth from that meeting?

Yes, the screen for the benefit of the audience shows an extreme close-up of Teller's mouth at this point. It does not show (well) his hands or him throwing the apple off stage.
The quickness with which he grabs the apple after a visual gag (while the audience is still laughing), bites, and throws it away, the fact that he doesn't even look at the apple when he grabs it, the introduction of a new prop and gag (flashlight/mouth exam) right after this moment, all look like misdirection to me.
Also... what is he doing with his left hand while eating the apple? I only need one hand to eat an apple.

I'm into series 2 now and really loving the show. Thanks for the introduction, @dag. If you have any other recommendations, I'm all ears.

Interesting and fitting that this is the longest running show on channel 4. Great stuff. It just makes me a little angry at American television.

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.

My justification is simply that it has a good track record. If you are really trying to say that I am unreasonable to assume that all physical laws will remain more or less unchanged for the next five seconds then you demonstrate your own stupidity.

The main problem with your justification is that it is logically fallacious. You're still using circular reasoning. Your evidence that the future will be like the past is the past. Is it correct reasoning to use logical fallacies?

You haven't demonstrated that we need to know anything with absolute certainty. Is there any practical value to it?

Can you show me one instance where knowing that something has been the case in every conceivable instance since the dawn of time is just too vague for you?

Things seem to hum along just fine under the crazy assumption that breathing in and out is the way to go.

Well, the thing is, we live in a world of certainty, not uncertainty. What this means is that you are living a double life of sorts. You are uncertain about everything in theory, but of course you never live that way in practice; you expect everything to continue as it has from the beginning of the Creation. You expect that when you jump up you will come back down again. You expect when you say the words "juniper tree" that the sound waves will carry those words to the other persons ear, and they, using universal rules of logic, will comprehend what you're talking about. You are living according to the ideals of a Christian worldview, but simultaneously denying it with your atheism.

Did you know, for instance, that the idea in science of nature being lawfully ordered is a Christian one? It was supposed by 12 century Christians who believed that the Universe was governed by Gods laws, and that we could suss out these universal laws by investigating secondary causes. Here is some of the history of all of that:

http://bede.org.uk/sciencehistory.htm#introduction

So this world of certainty we live in is based in no small way off of Christian ideals and principles. You could not actually justify any of it unless you invoke an omnipotent God who created and maintains all of these things, and will continue to do so. So, the argument is the impossibility of the contrary, which is not only a denial of the world of certainty that we live in, but also the loss of any basis for rational thought.

In reply to this comment by alien_concept:
And once more for Guy Fawkes and the desperate wish that someone can come along and replicate his gunpowder plot in the modern age! *promote


i wuv joo!

>> ^Payback:

I've yet to meet a woman who enjoys getting her hair pulled while wiggling around on the floor.

I remain hopeful, however...


I know a few. Want an introduction?

Rather an unusual introduction to a track... interesting.

Interesting tribute... but sadly, I can't stand CN these days. It's drowning in shows with uninteresting art styles and nonsensical story, if any. I used to tune in to CN so I can watch things like The Boondocks and Teen Titans... but now... well... with their constant shuffling of airtimes and introductions of boring shows, I just basically stopped tuning in altogether. I'm sure many can easily testify that everything was fine and dandy back in the 1990s and 2000s.

>> ^Unsung_Hero:

>> ^Unsung_Hero:
The title should have read, "3.5 Minutes of Nothing + Liquid nitrogen + 1500 ping pong balls"

Shut up you outspoken A.D.D. science hating tool bag!


Nice self shout down

And yeah, I quite enjoyed the introduction and explanation. Even though the science of it is pretty simple and I already understood how it was going to work, his manner made it fun to watch.

Eh, it's an easy mistake to make. Romney has probably heard that introduction 1000 times by now. Because apparently that kind of swaggering confidence is required of all political candidates here.

I'm just curious why Ryan didn't run for president if he's interested in VP. Surely most republicans would prefer a flipped ticket. Maybe the party leaders learned from the previous administration that it's easier to have a sort of puppet master VP who is the brains behind the operations, but can delegate the PR chores to the president.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^criticalthud:
government really only reflects the mindset of the people.
we're stupid, so we have a stupid government.
but the older generations are REALLY stupid, and they're dying off. so there is reason to be optimistic.

Really? I'm not so sure. I think they were less enlightened, certainly, but what are we doing to prove we're less stupid?>> ^petpeeved:
I may be a simpleton but there really does seem to be a silver bullet to the mess we're in: remove the money incentive from national politics completely, starting with evicting all the lobbyists from Washington, and gutting the amount of money that flows into the political campaign warchests every election.
While I think that's a great idea, I'm very wary of the term "silver bullet". Fact is, that life is complex, and rarely has simple solutions. Economics and politics are an intricate interlocked system. Pulling on one thread alone never works.


there positives and negatives to be sure.
but overall for the species, the introduction of the internet allows a greater flow of information. This both increases overall awareness and allows for new associations to be drawn between bits of information. The overall effect is a palpable positive for intelligence, which despite our misplaced reliance on standardized testing, is heavily dependent on both awareness and the ability to create information associations based on logical connections.

The over 60 crowd is from a different era of both energy availability and access to information.
so i say, be a little patient. our timeline is much more instant - we demand instant change without necessarily being aware of how the tendencies of the species is changing . but in terms of evolution, we are changing rapidly, and the greatest catalyst, global/planet change, is just starting to take hold.

Um, Bill Nye? Do you think that astrologers are really unaware of the precession of the equinoxes?

What do you think that whole "Age of Aquarius" thing was about?

As any basic introduction to astrology--heck, the Wikipedia entry on astrology--will tell you, there are two different ways of calculating the signs: tropical and sidereal. Under sidereal astrology, your sign is based on the actual constellation. Most people who think of themselves as a Sagitarrius really will be a Scorpio under sidereal astrology.

Tropical astrology, the most popular form of astrology in the West, is on the other hand based not on the positions of the constellations, but based on the position of the sun at the equinoxes and solstices. The signs are named after the constellations that were present in them back in the day, but it's not as if the equinoxes occur at different points in the year than they used to.

Whether or not you think astrology is bogus or not, it's probably a good idea to at least read the Wikipedia entry on a subject before you criticize it.

Thanks for voicing my exact sentiments and sharing some of your experiences.

I know concerned parents such as ourselves are probably more likely to have well-adjusted kids, but I still wish there could be some way to really shield their brains from being deformed by all the poison that surrounds them.

In reply to this comment by spoco2:
>> ^lucky760:
I worry often and a lot about how I can possibly keep my sons from being perverted by this society.


Ditto. I think back to me growing up and the sort of soft introduction to adult material. First you'd see topless women in National Geographics, then maybe some 'lad's mags' in the store, nothing naked, just bikini stuff... then you might get hold of a Playboy and see naked women. And back then they were pretty much natural women too (sure, not 'average', but at least not silicon and botox plumped versions).

Then you might get to see some actual porn mags at your 'rough' friend's place...

These days: "Go on web, look up sex in google image search and get inundated with hard, filthy sex"

Yeah, quite concerned. Doing our best to shield our kids from it as much as possible. Plenty of talk about what sex is (we have 3 boys and a girl all under 9), and that side of things (my wife is a midwife, so it kind of comes up a lot), but shielding as much as possible from not just sex on the internet, but also what passes for mainstream music videos these days (I mean, fucking Katy Perry... FUCK).

I'm with you lucky. I have no problem with sex... no problem with masturbation, no problem with porn in and of itself (just what 90% of it has become)... but how engrained it's become and how central and how much it's pushing into the lives of younger and younger kids.

Yeah, it's not good :