A side note: the M1A2 is already a hybrid electric vehicle. :) The fuel economy is just very, very bad.
If the constituency most directly affected were a bit more violent (maybe active militancy and a fake impression of being violent might suffice?) I bet such bills wouldn't be introduced.
Currently they (apparently, Rob Harris is the main troll in state congress) know that nobody will go after them. As long as it has no chance of passage, they can troll all they want. But that could change if someone thinks they have a chance of passing it.
Needless to say, a politician shouldn't be playing with fire to start with. A politician should be an adult person with the welfare of their constituency clear in mind. Not a joke on legs for telling to the Taliban.
In most cases, it is true, but it might depend on technologies used. If you let water flash into steam underground, that's going to produce pressure waves and vibration.
Geothermal makese sense on high latitudes (see Iceland for example) where heat is desirable even if electricity can't be extracted.
Where you cannot drill deep enough (a Finnish company tried a 5 kilometer borehole and didn't hit good enough heat) - artificial geothermal (thermal storage in large underground caverns) still makes sense, but not for electricity production. Just storing heat extracted from the environment during summer.
If drilling should get cheaper (e.g. those MIT guys declaring that they have a practical and reliable maser drilling rig), accessing good enough heat may be possible in places where it's not worthwhile currently.
In some locations, production of geothermal energy can be combined with extracting dissolved chemicals - e.g. some borehole may produce a lot of dissolved lithium salts. No point in letting lithium back underground, better to put it aside.
All useful information.
I would add some notes. They are somewhat haphazard, I apologize, it's 3 at night here. :)
In a protest setting, where police might use non-lethal weapons, protective equipment can save the day repeatedly. It also protects well enough against thugs with clubs.
But if lethal weapons are used, even the best armor often fails and everyone is too fragile, despite having armor. Generally, in such conditions, other factors (awareness, coordination, range) determine outcomes.
Generally, quite soon after armor has proven useful, an age-old pattern emerges: competing factions erect barricades. At that point, much depends on what the population thought before that - whether the population is willing to support and supply protesters, or maybe even sabotage attempts to suppress them. If the population is "meh, it's not my fight", for a protester, that is bad news.
Needless to say, it's best if peaceful mass protest can occur before this stage, and show great numbers. Srdja Popovic (whose colleagues helped remove Milosevic in Serbia, but it took them ages and required external help) makes several good points in Blueprint for Revolution. If a protest has no risk of violence, grannies and people with kids show up. Critical mass is shown and vital communication lines are established this way, police are aware that they will lose popularity fast if they initiate violence. Various factions will try to propose leaders, leaders will try to propose strategies and tactics. However, mass protest could lose momentum or fragment into non-cooperating factions. One way to protect a movement against loss of momentum is to build an organization that gathers resources and funnels them into the struggle, and to have achievable waypoints before a distant final goal. This way lies politics.
Another way out of mass protest is for protesters to attempt subverting power structures at a rapid pace - typically after gaining confidence of having overwhelming numbers, something which the phase of peaceful mass protest seeks to demonstrate. This way lies revolution, with a far greater risk of violence. It's best not to go there without really having overwhelming numbers, and a clear message of how chaos will be short in duration (most populations in a tumultous situation desperately look for a message of how chaos will be over, and it's best if a rotten government ain't the only place offering one).
Given some amount of time (testing, certification, etc) - propeller-electric commercial airliners will be available with 100% certainty.
The heater model they depict looks good.
- not capable of producing carbon monoxide
- high probability of self-extinguishing when pushed over
- reduced chance of causing burns
It looks neat and might help in emergencies or special conditions, but if one takes a look at the wattage, sadly... 50 kW is very limited power. Probably not good for widespread use.
The helium-filled S500 blimp ascended to 500 meters above ground in the city of Jingmen, generating power at a rate of over 50 kW, according to Beijing SAWES Energy Technology Co Ltd, one of the developers of the system.
I agree. Often enough, some leader figure (even a really bad one) getting assassinated doesn't change the situation for better.
There's been a case where a high-profile assassination gave countries excuse to start a chain reaction of wars (Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip -> World War I). Arguably, they were ready to start it anyway and another spark might have lit a similar fire.
Regardless, if a woodworker from Germany contacted me through a time machine and asked for blueprints for a remote audio system (to check if a moustached dictator is holding a speech before pushing the button), I would send him schematics and wish luck. Sometimes the outcome of going straight ahead points to bloody conflict, and a pre-emptive strike against the driver of conflict is clearly justifiable even if it may not help.
Once upon a time - a rare exception to the rule - an assassination seems to have hit right and fixed things. When dictator Franco had become old and frail in Spain, most of state matters were handled by his prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco. His personal connections held many things together - he was considered irreplaceable. And his departure was accepted with relief by many:
The assassination enjoyed the tacit approval of many Spaniards, who joked about Carrero being Spain's first astronaut.[13]
If a remarakably evil person has become irreplaceable and most people would accept that person going with a bang, then (and likely only then) assassinating a person can achieve an outcome of changing systems. If a man is replaceable, it won't help much.
I did't cry for the CEO, but also didn't cheer for the assassin. I don't know if he was the assassin. Cops seem to think so, but I can't double-check.
If the assassin's motive was revenge for someone's misery or avoidable death, the motive is understandable. People sometimes make such decisions for similar reasons since time unknown.
If the assassin's political complaint was that the US ranked fourty second in life expectancy among countries, despite ranking first in expense per capita - that is likely true, and should be a big deal as long as it remains so.
(Obviously, it won't automatically improve from offing a health insurance CEO - many of them are indirectly responsible for many person-years of needless suffering or loss of lives, but there is a socio-economic framework which ensures that their positions get repopulated with their kind of people, so one getting killed can only highlight the problem.)
To any statist wanting to fix their state, I would recommend a tax-based a single-payer healthcare system in an eyeblink.
To other anarchists, I don't think I'd have to explain the benefits of solidarity and collective bargaining. They're obvious.
As for the US: not a chance within the next 4 years.
Additional note: per UK. :) The predicted effect, either in meters or millions of cars, is if the UK inhabitants currently eating a high-meat diet switched to a low-meat diet.
They say that people who don't build battery banks while wearing a sweater will cry about the lack of battery banks in double fur coats. :)
Since today was possibly the last "sweater" weekend here, morning frost is a reality and snow has fallen 500 km northwards...
...I decided that I would be among the first and not the second group. :)
Coincidence has given me an almost unused (43 000 km driven) battery bank of a Mitsubishi i-MIEV (a crap car, don't buy unless you are an EV mechanic).
But in my house, there is already a 24V battery bank made of Nissan Leaf cells and I'm worried about lack of space and fire hazard (if lithium batteries burn, you typically need tons of water to make them do anything else - I have only one ton and pumping it requires that same battery bank).
So I decided that I'd build a new 48V battery bank outside my house, start it up with the MIEV cells and maybe migrate the Leaf cells there later too, after checking and reassembly.
However, winters are cold here and MIEV cells (as I mentioned, the car is crap) lose 30% of their capacity when cold. It thus follows that I must keep my battery warm in winter - and later on, cool in summer. This requires energy. Spending less energy on battery care allows using more energy for useful things. :)
Thus it follows that I need a battery enclosure. :) It must have wheels so construction bureaucrats can be waved away with an explanation (a generator on wheels doesn't need a building permit either). And it must have thermal insulation.
The insulation is PIR foam, 10 cm thick. Maybe I'll make some parts even thicker. The wheeled platform was salvaged from a bankrupt boat factory, I don't know its original purpose. The bottom plywood is 20 mm waterproof ply, and the top layer (PIR is very delicate, don't put batteries directly on PIR) is 9 mm waterproof ply.
The design I stole from an anarchist squat which existed in 2009, where styrofoam was used for a similar purpose, with the difference that squatters used lead acid batteries and their battery room was indoors (now it's advisable to imagine the sound of clattering teeth, it was cold there in winter).
Inside the box, there will be:
- balancers / equalizers
- some DC heating ribbon
- a thermostat or a microcontroller-driven thermometer + relay
- a circulation fan (thermal stratification is bad)
- battery monitors with an alarm function
- a smoke alarm
Since PIR aborsbs sound, the piezo buzzers of the alarm devices will have to be unsoldered and brought to a plastic box on the surface of the enclosure. :)
The arrangement of cells has been chosen to provide access from outside, get a reasonable ratio between volume and surface (avoid flat shape) and to minimize the cutting of materials (several sides are made of PIR sheet cut to length only).
Some more pictures:
- Main tools for working with PIR
- Test fitting
- Closing up
- Securing with fiber tape (you can tow a car with a roll of it)
End result of today's work:
2
Soomes (Vantaas) rajatakse maa alla maailma suurim soojushoidla mahuga 90 GWh
(www.vantaanenergia.fi)
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BBC is doing a good job - the names of corrupt individuals will be exposed permanently. They deserve a bit more, though, but I hope courts can give them that. In an ideal world, maybe even Tata Group will improve its organizational culture...
Mr. Denli sounds like a person whom one should hire if one wants to know that a product won't fall apart.