Today I Learned

[Buzz Bloom]

Fracking adds about 300 million dollars a DAY to the US economy.

Hi @Hornbein:

Does the $3M per day include the costs of dealing with environmental aside effects?

One of the peculiarities of commonly used economic statistics, e.g., GDP, is that negatives like making an environmental mess that requires expensive clean-up adds to the GDP, if the clean-up actually ever happens. If illness is caused, then the costs of corresponding medical care is also added to the GDP.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[BornCane]

Today I learned

that Adolf Hitler had a nephew that fought in the U.S Navy in WW2

 

[collinsmark]

I may be mis-remembering this, but I believe there was a time when a byte was 9 bits including a parity bit.

I think you are thinking of older systems where 7 bits of a byte were used information along with a single parity bit. Total bits in a byte are/were still 8, regardless of how they were used.

By the way, the original ASCII table was made in this way. Since there were only 7 bits of information, there were $2^7 = 128$ entries in the table.

The extended ASCII table replaces the parity bit with another bit of information, allowing for 256 entries.

 

[Hornbein]

Hi @Hornbein:

Does the $3M per day include the costs of dealing with environmental aside effects?

One of the peculiarities of commonly used economic statistics, e.g., GDP, is that negatives like making an environmental mess that requires expensive clean-up adds to the GDP, if the clean-up actually ever happens. If illness is caused, then the costs of corresponding medical care is also added to the GDP.

Regards,
Buzz

Hey, I just work here.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Where are those costs not included? Every opponent of nuclear power makes sure they get overestimated as much as possible.

Hi mfb:

I think I may have misunderstood what you posted, or you misunderstood what fresh_42 said.

I understand that fresh_42 was referring to the fact that nuclear waste material has never been safely and permanently disposed of, because it is way too expensive to do this. No matter how much the industry overestimates their costs, which are to be paid for by the rates their customers pay, the future costs of dealing with the accumulated wastes is definitely NOT included.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Today I learned that one of Scott Walker's predecessors as governor of Wisconsin suggested a new slogan for the state's vehicle license plates.

Hi @jtbell:

I think you misread the article you cited. It said that a contest was held to select a new slogan, but the governor rejected the suggestion for the cheese slogan.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[einswine]

Today i learned that Wolfgang Pauli developed a close relationship with Carl Jung, and both delved into the esoteric and mystical world

Both developed an obsession with the number 137

How can such a logical mind like Pauli become friends with such a crackpot as Carl Jung

I think that had to do with the zeitgeist of Western Culture at that time. And which made seeing the possibility of a connection between aspects of QM and Jung's Synchronicity more natural than it would seem today. Organized religion had become less relevant and a spiritualistic mysticism had become common among both the upper and middle classes. It was accepted at the highest levels of the social hierarchy and it partly shaped Nazi philosophy. Ouija boards and séances were still every where after WWI. Science was at a kind of turning point with the rise of the new physics. And science new a lot less then and a lot less seemed certain about what might or might not be possible.

I think the same will eventually be said of this time :)

My 2 cents.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

According to conference in Davos, 2 million people will lose their jobs because of robotisation in next 5 years.

Hi @Sophia:

John K. Galbraith's book The End of Normal (2014) discusses this.

A few decades ago new technology might end an industry, or change its processes, and thereby end its jobs, but the new technology also led to a new industry with new jobs, or just new jobs in the current industry. That now happens less and less.

Nowadays fewer or less skilled (with lower salaries) or no new jobs are created by new technology. The benefits of the new technology are: (a) reduction by a relatively small amount the costs of goods to many who use the products, and (b) substantial increases in unearned income to stock-holders and salaries to CEO's and other high corporate executives. The down side is lost incomes to many, reducing the population of those able to buy the products of the new technology.

My interpretation of Galbraith's message is that fixing the economic problems created by new technology will require radical changes in the way the economic system functions, and the way the benefits of new technology are distributed.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

It's been my experience, that incidental toxic/deadly "things", in reasonable quantities, can safely be ignored.

Hi @OmCheeto:

Even if the FDA does an excellent job putting maximum allowable limits on each of various "bad" compounds in foods, testing to determine acceptable limits is not done for combinations of "bad" things.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

I gathered that much, but the 'why' behind it is beyond my comprehension... and I really doubt I'm learning THAT today... I think it would require a semester or two.

Instead of a sphere, a similar result is easier to conceptualize for an infinite line from -∞ to +∞, and using an infinite number of components.

Decompose the line into the segments ... [-n-1,-n) ... [-1,0) [0,1) ... [n,n+1) ...
let every other segment be put into set A, and put all other segments into set B.
Concatenate all the segments in A together, end to end, to for a line which is the same as the original line.
Do the same for the segments in set B.
The result is what was originally one line has been formed into two lines.

It is clearly much more difficult to visualize the corresponding result with the sphere and only a finite number of pieces.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[OmCheeto]

Hi @OmCheeto:

Even if the FDA does an excellent job putting maximum allowable limits on each of various "bad" compounds in foods, testing to determine acceptable limits is not done for combinations of "bad" things.

Regards,
Buzz

That's kind of what I implied the other day, in another thread.

ps. Happy belated anniversary, @Buzz Bloom .

 

[einswine]

My interpretation of Galbraith's message is that fixing the economic problems created by new technology will require radical changes in the way the economic system functions, and the way the benefits of new technology are distributed.

There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. In not too many years there will be none. Truck drivers will be replaced by truck minders but there will be fewer of them and minders will make much less. And then it gets worse as this will be happening in almost every commercial domain. I think it is a safe assumption that without a major black swan event technology will eventually break capitalism.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

without a major black swan event technology will eventually break capitalism.

Hi @einswine:

I agree with your sentiments, but I think the "black swan event" metaphor is flawed. One of the properties of a "black swan event" is that it is a surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory​

It doesn't seem plausible to me that a solution to fix the economic problem can happen as a surprise, if it can happen at all. It will require a political process.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[mfb]

@Buzz Bloom: Where is the point in warming up all those months old discussions? And could you please do this in one post, not in 20?

I understand that fresh_42 was referring to the fact that nuclear waste material has never been safely and permanently disposed of, because it is way too expensive to do this.

There are permanent nuclear waste storages for low and medium radioactive materials. Highly activated waste can be stored permanently as well, but keeping it on the surface is actually safer today. So where is the problem?

the future costs of dealing with the accumulated wastes is definitely NOT included.

Of course it is.

 

[einswine]

Hi @einswine:

I agree with your sentiments, but I think the "black swan event" metaphor is flawed. One of the properties of a "black swan event" is that it is a surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory​

It doesn't seem plausible to me that a solution to fix the economic problem can happen as a surprise, if it can happen at all. It will require a political process.

Regards,
Buzz

Sorry I was not clear. Black swan was meant as something that would bring an end to technological progress. Say a small accidental nuclear war between Pakistan and India that triggered a mini nuclear winter that caused 2 consecutive years of crop losses.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Where is the point in warming up all those months old discussions? And could you please do this in one post, not in 20?

Hi @mfb:

I apologize if I did something inappropriate. I started reading through the thread at the beginning because I found the posts interesting. There are now 1170 posts. I responded to a post when I thought I had something to contribute that might be of interest to the poster. It never occurred to me to try to accumulate these responses into a batch. Why do you advise that as a better mode of response in such situations?

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

There are permanent nuclear waste storages for low and medium radioactive materials. Highly activated waste can be stored permanently as well, but keeping it on the surface is actually safer today. So where is the problem?
Of course it is.

Hi @mfb

My remarks about nuclear wastes were based on a variety of sources, but the following two are good representatives.

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-waste#.Vu__aubvmM8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
​

Your post motivated me to do some more looking, and I found the following quite recent article.

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-year-old-nuclear-problem-storage-safer.html​

I get the impression that you were not referring to this very new waste management technology in your post. Is this correct?

The two earlier links seem to me to make a good case that up to the now the methods used have serious flaws. Can you cite some references that show this to be incorrect?

Assuming that the new technology described in the third article actually can solve the waste problem, It seems most likely that using this new technology has not been included in the industry cost estimates since it is so new.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Hornbein]

Today I learned that Crosby, Still, and Nash needed to get a guitar player. Jimi Hendrix said no, so they settled for Neil Young.

I also learned that Richard Nixon's first job was as a carnival barker.

 

[mfb]

It never occurred to me to try to accumulate these responses into a batch. Why do you advise that as a better mode of response in such situations?

It doesn't create an unnecessary overhead of posts.

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-waste#.Vu__aubvmM8

That site looks heavily biased.

Wikipedia is a good way to look for references, but it is not a good reference on its own.

I get the impression that you were not referring to this very new waste management technology in your post. Is this correct?

I was not referring to any specific step of the whole chain of waste processing.

The two earlier links seem to me to make a good case that up to the now the methods used have serious flaws.

Which serious flaws do you mean, and what would be their effects?

Assuming that the new technology described in the third article actually can solve the waste problem

That's now how it works. The new method can improve one of the many steps involved in waste processing.

It seems most likely that using this new technology has not been included in the industry cost estimates since it is so new.

And every new method will make the same level of processing cheaper, or lead to better processing, otherwise it is not used.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

That site looks heavily biased.
Wikipedia is a good way to look for references, but it is not a good reference on its own.

Hi mfb:

I agree that my research skills are not very good, and my choice of references may be flawed. That is why I asked if you could cite some better references that show that current technology is doing a good job.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[jtbell]

I'd like to remind people of Greg's rule from the very first post in this thread:

Keep commentary to a minimum and just LIKE posts.

I don't think he intended this thread to turn into a series of extended discussions.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

I don't think he intended this thread to turn into a series of extended discussions.

Hi jtbell:

Thanks for the reminder. I will try to avoid discussion in this thread in the future. I will instead start another thread to discuss whatever issue that seems to require some discussion.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Borg]

There is an online poll to determine the name for a new UK polar ship.
TIL, that the leading name with 27,000 votes is Boaty McBoatface.

 

[Ibix]

We were discussing this at work. Apparently there was an interview about it on the radio the other day with the First Lord of the Admiralty. Apparently he was pretty good natured about it. His only worry was that there's a tradition of the crew giving a nickname to ships, and he did express some concern as to what nickname it would end up with...

So, yesterday I learned that the First Lord of the Admiralty is not the stuffed shirt his title makes him sound like.

 

[PeroK]

We were discussing this at work. Apparently there was an interview about it on the radio the other day with the First Lord of the Admiralty. Apparently he was pretty good natured about it. His only worry was that there's a tradition of the crew giving a nickname to ships, and he did express some concern as to what nickname it would end up with...

So, yesterday I learned that the First Lord of the Admiralty is not the stuffed shirt his title makes him sound like.

It's the title "First Sea Lord" that always makes me laugh!

 

[Hornbein]

It's the title "First Sea Lord" that always makes me laugh!

In Malay the First Sea Lord is Lakshman. That Rama's buddy in the Ramayana legend.

Lakshman

 

[zoobyshoe]

Today I learned that the first person ever caught for an automotive speeding infraction was British:

This infraction was committed by Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent. Mr. Arnold was traveling in a 2 mph zone (yes, 2 mph) and was going a breakneck 8 mph. The fine he received was for 1 shilling.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index...axi-driver-in-an-electric-car-on-may-20-1899/

 

[Astronuc]

TIL it may be illegal to collect rain water in Colorado from one's roof, unless one own's senior water rights.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/22/3762378/colorado-rain-barrel-law/

In Colorado . . . . , one mundane drought-fighting tool remains illegal: using rain barrels to catch rainwater from roofs for use in gardens.

Colorado is one of many states that operate under a prior appropriation system whereby people with “senior” water rights get access before those with “junior” water rights. In a water-constrained world, they argue, there won’t be enough to go around. And senior water right holders are worried that urban farmers and lawn-lovers will impinge on their allocations by collecting rain off their roofs.

What's behind the fight over legalizing rain barrels in Colorado
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29627611/whats-behind-fight-over-legalizing-rain-barrels-colorado

Legalizing household rain barrels in Colorado is pitting conservation-minded Democrats against Republicans determined to defend water rights. The two-session standoff, however, has a handful of legal experts wondering why there's a fight.

None of them could point to a statute that specifically says rain barrels are illegal. Arguments on both sides depend on a broad legal interpretation that says you http://water.state.co.us/SurfaceWater/SWRights/Pages/RainwaterGraywater.aspx without a water right, even if you put it back in the ground to water a garden a few feet away.

Republicans want to make sure rain barrels don't put a crack in state water law and ensure that those with the oldest and most expensive water rights get their fair share before those with no rights get a drop.

 

[Hornbein]

Today I learned that David Crosby was Melissa Etheridge's sperm donor, though Julie Cypher actually bore the two children.

 

[Docscientist]

Today I learned if I really want to do something,I must go out and start doing it instead of contemplating about it.

 

[jim hardy]

Today I learned if I really want to do something,I must go out and start doing it instead of contemplating about it.

 

[Ibix]

Today I learned that owls are surprisingly light, that their feathers are very soft, and that some of them are quite territorial about their perches. Also that the smallest ones are about six inches tall and the largest nearly three feet.

In related news, it is possible to recognise a nerd in a very short space of time, even if his particular field of nerdery is very different from one's own.

 

[Sophia]

Today I learned (no, I was reminded) how much I suck at Math This was caused by reading some threads here like beautiful equations and biggest number. I looked there and I was like

 

[Hornbein]

Today I learned (no, I was reminded) how much I suck at Math This was caused by reading some threads here like beautiful equations and biggest number. I looked there and I was like

This is how I feel about it.

 

[Docscientist]

View attachment 97885

I don't procrastinate.I just fear failures.I think what if I fail in doing something that I want to do if at all I get to go out and do it.
I should have been more precise.