When I was a kid, they used to send me this toy catalog for horrible spoiled rich brats (think Sharper Image for toys but much more expensive, it might have been FAO but I don't think so). I don't know why they sent it to me, the most expensive toy I ever bought was a Nerf Blast-A-Ball from the discount rack (awesome!), but near the back it had one of those large VR setups, listed for $75,000. It had a bunch of other cool toys too, like electric cars and stuff.

Anyways, I hope all of the kids whose parents bought them that stuff have since died horribly of cocaine overdoses or crashed their Ferraris into power stations.

The point is, I best this guy could sell it to them and charge $1000 for it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Electricity, short, circuit, power, station' to 'Electricity, short, circuit, power, station, arc, current' - edited by MarineGunrock

nobody said "unregulated nuclear power"

the libertarian principle is that you can't fuck up someone else's life, therefore nuclear power stations must have safety checks and dispose of the waste safely in very expensive underground bunkers. That is true with or without a libertarian government.

I am not totally libertarian, i have a little bit of commie in me somewhere, but anyway, i get annoyed when people say "WAAAHH!! WHAT IF NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS WERE UNREGULATED!!!"

the commie in me knows what happens when you have a "regulated" nuclear power station and diffused communal responsibility so that some doofus can be put in charge of the safety checks, Homer Simpson style. Boom.

the problems i have with libertarian economics are more that there are areas of human existence that are incompatible with pure supply and demand, and those areas should be regulated and supported "unfairly". Otherwise you end up with hyper efficient cheese factories, heavily armed private militias, and no good music or education beyond that which is directly useful to industry.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
^The Battersea Power Station is really cool. Ian McKellan used it in the ending of his version of Richard III.

also put to surreally good use for the film Children of Men

^The Battersea Power Station is really cool. Ian McKellan used it in the ending of his version of Richard III.

That Herb Albert album cover is legendary. I was just over at my friend's place last night, and he has that album framed next to the Johnny Cash album Live at Folsom Prison which is also a pretty awesome cover. Not that it's overly stylized, but knowing it's a close up picture taken at the live prison concert of him sweating and most likely in mid-song makes it all the more cooler.

I really dig the Revolver album cover from The Beatles. It used to be in my father's LP collection when I was a kid, and I always thought it was trippy. And, I really love the Pink Floyd Animals album, because eventhough it appears to be a painting, it's really a photograph. From Wikipedia: "The giant, helium-filled pig seen on the cover was actually flown over Battersea Power Station for the photo shoot."

deathcow: The danger actually is real, as far fetched as it sounds. We actually did it to ourselves back in the 50s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_altitude_nuclear_explosion

Wikipedia has some details on the number of satellites one of the tests fried (or shortened the lives of), and the power station that were damaged, etc. etc.

The currents most likely wouldn't be affected noticably more than the wind is affected by wind power generators.
But just like the poor wind generator preformance, this seems to simply be too expensive an quite frankly ineffective to be of any real use. The way they claim that 40 of these power stations could generate enough electricity for Puerto Rico most likely doesn't take into consideration any other factor than the optimal generation capacity of each of those power stations.

The way they generate electricity is not in question, it seems like a great way to do it. However, if most of it is used to power the process and transport the product to the mainland then it's a lost cause. Would be interesting to hear from someone with knowledge of this and hear how they propose to solve such issues.

U-238 is 138 times more abundant than U-235. U-238 breeder reactors work, but are more expensive to operate than U-235 reactors. Reprocessing spent fuel to extract the half that's unused is currently more expensive than mining fresh uranium. But as oil runs out, energy prices will go up, and more expensive ways of generating energy will expand. Uranium power generation based on breeder reactors could power the world's current rate of energy consumption for at least a thousand years with current proven uranium reserves, but nobody's even bothered to look at more expensive ways of recovering uranium. In the long run solar will have to be part of the solution. The earth receives 4*10^24 Joules of energy per year from the sun, while our worldwide fossil fuel consumption in 2004 was 4*10^20 Joules.

Solar thermal generator plants can store energy via phase change to be more reliable. For example, Solar Tres stores 6,250 tonnes of molten sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate (assuming a density of 3g/ml that's about a 10m x 10m x 20m tank). This is enough to provide a 16 hour buffer for the generator (600 megawatt-hours). So it can generate continuously at peak capacity except in winter. Electricity demand is always higher in summer than in winter, because in the winter your random electrical appliance electricity use supplements your environmental controls (almost all used electricity is converted to heat) while in the summer all of your electricity use works against your environmental controls (generates more heat that your AC has to remove).

If about 0.1% of the surface of the earth were converted to solar power stations, that could supply all of our current energy use. But the rate of consumption is increasing exponentially as population increases exponentially and THAT MUST STOP. Who's going to vote for the global 2-child policy that will probably be necessary to avoid annihilation of the environment and subsequent annihilation of mankind? Mankind needs another big round of moral progress to save itself from itself.

"Uneducated women from poor areas in the world journey to India to learn solar engineering in six months - their curriculum is similar to that of a college degree completed in an average of five years."

I call bullshit. I think these woman do a great job but you can't compare it to college. In the beginning of the clip it's shown how the woman learn their trade. It seems that they basically just learn how to put together color coded parts to build a solar power station. They don't learn anything about the physics and theories behind it which college students do.

the white power station!

How DARE Issy do a revenge post with ANOTHER Power Station song! And then to add insult to injury, she posted an Arcadia tune to boot!

ARRRGH I was going to submit this!!! BOOOO! Tantrum over. ok, upvote!

I've actually tried to find exactly that, but I can't find a good enough copy. The good copy that I DID find had a disabled embed, dammit!

In reply to this comment by my15minutes:
so, toss up their other hit. "Some Like It Hot". that was theirs, right?

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Great cover! ARRRGH I was going to submit this!!! BOOOO! Tantrum over. ok, upvote!

so, toss up their other hit. "Some Like It Hot". that was theirs, right?

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Great cover! ARRRGH I was going to submit this!!! BOOOO! Tantrum over. ok, upvote!

I was actually pretty surprised that you hadn't submitted it by now, knowing how big a fan you are of Duran Duran. I'm glad you recovered from your tantrum.

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Great cover! ARRRGH I was going to submit this!!! BOOOO! Tantrum over. ok, upvote!