>> ^ant:

Wait, I missed a Frontline episode? Dang it!


My bad, it was Nova. The Frontline episode from this last week was about sex slaves. Slightly different...

>> ^grinter:

Hmmm, blocked, guess I'm going to have to go find a proxy.


http://educatedearth.net/video.php?id=4627 has YouTube video parts. Try those.

efficiency in heating water is no more or less efficient then current natural gas and nuclear tech

Solar is inefficient in the sense that it costs more money to produce per watt of energy. It takes 25 years for a solar facility to break even. That's 25 years of citizens paying bigger power bills to subsidize a questionable technology.

you would have seen they has solved the day night cycle problem by storing the heat

Molten salt heat storage has existed at least since the early 1980s. I remember watching an episode of NOVA as a kid talking about this. The Spain plant is the first one in the world to use salt thermal storage tanks to run the plant for between 6 to 8 hours without sunlight.

Even in ideal locations, sunlight is interrupted by weather, cloud cover, and normal day/night cycles. These all reduce power generation capacity. Heat storage is not enough to make up the gap unless you live in close proximity to a few very specific geographic locations. Solar plant in "non ideal" locations require a fossil fuel backup for 75% of their total capacity. Essentially, the solar plant you see is just a coal-fired plant that burns 25% less coal.

Of course that fact that there are no fuel cost or waste by products mean that solar towers and the like will have no harmful impacts on the future like every other method of providing electricity out there.

Well, I'd debate your language a bit on this. There are fuel costs in the sense that you have to buy solar cells, and so forth. They require rare earth metals and other materials. There is waste also because you have to replace those things every few years. Modern nuclear plants are just fine, as are most modern US coal plants (if they would just let them be built).

>> ^dag:

Absolutely fascinating. I'm going to give this another promote as the Jeopardy Episodes start tonight! (February 14th)


Let's get Siftbot on it too for the next game event. Maybe he can beat IBM Watson!

While they mentioned Chess, there was no mention of the Computer Go problem, that is, getting a computer to be able to play Go beyond the level of studied amateur. Still a great episode of Nova as usual. I would love to see IBM tackle that next since that would solve a few more key issues like visual/spacial issues, then combine wherever they are with the Deep Blue and their goals of the Watson program with whatever they would call their Go computer and you would have a fairly nice AI system.
I wonder why they didn't plug in speech recognition so it could hear the answers... of course at the same time a real Jeopardy player may buzz in before he finishes so I guess it needs to be able to see the answer at the same time...

>> ^siftbot:

I could do much better than that hunk of junk.


Prove it! We should replace YOU with IBM Watson, junk bot!

Yeah, seems weird - especially as we have access to PBS (and NOVA) on TV here in Canada. It just says it is "due to rights restrictions".

If a star goes nova in space... does it make a sound ?

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Good stuff, but the music, omg lol.
/me guesses producer's girlfriend is a struggling solo artist. Agree on the program quality.

>> ^tsquire1:


This is a fear-mongering and thus, viewer selling film. It's entertainment value trumps is scientific value. Instead of worrying about magnetic fields destroying civilization and our human reality, concern yourself with historical materialism and participation in society.


While I admit I think they over did the presentation a bit, (which Nova has been doing lately) I didn't get that take away from it. Perhaps I was calmed by having previous knowledge on the subject, but I don't think it reaches the realm of fear-mongering. I think PBS is just trying to "turn up the volume" in an environment where retaining the attention of the viewer is increasingly difficult. I, like you, don't care for that aspect, however, I don't think its sensationalism exceeds its scientific content.

Just my 2c which is actually 5c adjusted for inflation.

It might have been a lone mother trying getting food for her cubs>> ^Skeeve:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Don't know much about coyote behavior. Is he playing, or trying to take pot shots for a wound? Seems a little aggressive for play, and a little bold for taking pot shots. None the less, very scary. Should be glad it wasn't wolfs.

While wolves tend to be more skittish around humans, coyotes tend to have less or no shyness around humans. They may seem like simply wild dogs (even playful ones at first sight), they are surprisingly adaptable killers.
I think this one probably saw it for what it was, a human walking alone, and was testing to see if it would be an easy meal. Two coyotes attacked and killed a 19 year old woman out hiking in Nova Scotia last year and coyote attacks have been rising over the last decade or so. A large percentage of those (~37%) are actually predatory attacks with intent to kill.
What this guy should have done, from the second it started approaching him, is make himself look as big as he could (instead of crouching down to its level), yell loudly and back away. When it got close to nip/bite him he should have swatted it.
...And holding out his open hand looked like a good way to lose a finger.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Don't know much about coyote behavior. Is he playing, or trying to take pot shots for a wound? Seems a little aggressive for play, and a little bold for taking pot shots. None the less, very scary. Should be glad it wasn't wolfs.


While wolves tend to be more skittish around humans, coyotes tend to have less or no shyness around humans. They may seem like simply wild dogs (even playful ones at first sight), they are surprisingly adaptable killers.

I think this one probably saw it for what it was, a human walking alone, and was testing to see if it would be an easy meal. Two coyotes attacked and killed a 19 year old woman out hiking in Nova Scotia last year and coyote attacks have been rising over the last decade or so. A large percentage of those (~37%) are actually predatory attacks with intent to kill.

What this guy should have done, from the second it started approaching him, is make himself look as big as he could (instead of crouching down to its level), yell loudly and back away. When it got close to nip/bite him he should have swatted it.

...And holding out his open hand looked like a good way to lose a finger.

Oh boy that was depressing, first when Rick died and even more when what he died doing went up in flames. Mega , but I'm still glad I watched.

In reply to this comment by calvados:
>> ^NicoleBee:

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah


Quite.

>> ^RFlagg:

Full thing at PBS:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1548962233/


True, although that's region-blocked.

>> ^NicoleBee:

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah


Quite.