FlyingRhenquest

You'd lose a lot to resistance anyway. Unless you had a superconducting network under the whole thing, and that'd require a lot of liquid nitrogen at the moment and probably be even more expensive than copper. And if an earthquake or something compromised your system, all the liquid nitrogen would leak out and your superconducting network would suddenly become not so superconducting anymore. Which I imagine would be something of a bummer. It would also be a bummer to breach a superconducting network with a backhoe... Still, if you could work out a way for cars to tap an electrical grid while at the same time not frying pedestrians, birds, deer, etc, you could eliminate the batteries off electric cars or maybe only have enough for a few miles of operation for traversing non-wired areas. Eliminate the cost of the batteries, meter the electricity from the road and the technology would look pretty attractive. Combine that with a bunch of nuclear reactors to generate the electricity and that'd be a huge chunk of greenhouse gasses we generate that would just be gone. There are safer proposed reactor designs that would prevent scenes like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, as well as ones that would produce a lot less waste than current reactors (Most of which were designed and built decades ago.) I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

If the universe had any sort of sense of humor, next year it'd be alligators. "Oh yeah, we sorted out that heart disease thing. Now it's alligators." I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Nearly every day for 7 years I had a breakfast burrito at the IBM cafeteria at their site here. This typically consisted of eggs, potatoes, tomatoes and green chili, wrapped in a flour tortilla and covered with more green chili. I never got tired of them and still miss them. Even when I try to make one, it never comes out the same. I've recently had a suggestion to get my flour tortillas from a tortilla factory, though. So I'll just have to find one, whip up another batch of green chili and try again! Usually I just get a poppy seed roll and some coffee. The hotel I stayed at in Romania put up quite a spread for breakfast. I don't know if it was Romanian breakfast items or what they thought western folk would like for breakfast, but it was very nice. They'd have a big bowl of yogurt, various kinds of cereal (but no milk, I gathered they expected you to use the yogurt,) some very salty cheese, and some fruit and vegetables. It actually seemed like pretty healthy fare, too. I kind of liked it. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

For homes it seems you can save at least some money from your electric bill. Cars are a bit harder nut to crack. No matter what you do, gasoline still always looks like the least expensive possible solution. There was a price point for gas below which a plug-in hybrid would not save you any money, or would cost more than you'd save in gasoline over the life of the vehicle. I think it was around $3 a gallon. At that price it also becomes economical to develop oil shale. Below that price, it's not worth it. I think LNG would actually be less expensive too, and would probably remain that way right up until everyone moved to it. Damn economics... I've wondered if you could really get jiggy with it, build up a network of nuclear reactors and build an induction charging system into the entire nationwide road system. If you could eliminate the weight of the batteries, or mostly eliminate it, as well as eliminate the range problem, electric cars would actually look like a very viable solution. That would involve a massive engineering effort -- maybe as hard as putting a man on the moon, I reckon. It'd also involve some potentially "bad" solutions since the tree huggers get worked up about nuclear things. It'd take a lot of work, and these days we choose these problems because they are easy, not because they are hard. So *shrug*. Next up: Nation-wide water network on the scale of the Interstate Highway System... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I think we have another winter storm coming if I'm not mistaken. It snowed like... something that snows a LOT... for a couple hours this afternoon, then the sun came out again. That's down here on the plains, and the mountains usually get a lot more. So it should be pretty nice by the time you get here! Have you ever considered speedriding? If I'd known that was an option 10 years ago or so, I'd have been a lot more interested in skiing. I always said I didn't want to ski because I'm the sort of person who'd go over a cliff for the adrenaline rush. Seems like that's exactly what you want to do when speedriding. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

How long was that technology kept out of the market? Why aren't more electric cars being sold? Do they cost more to produce?? Do manufacturers think we WANT to keep paying for fuel?? Think about fuel-less motorcycles... Why are SO FEW models available?? Is it harder to make than a fuel-less car?? Somehow I think the answer is no. Maybe I've been mislead and there are other valid reasons why these haven't been rolled out before, but forgive my cynicism if I think A LOT of people have a vested interest in continued fuel consumption... It took several iterations of battery technology to get to the point they are now. Laptops and cell phones drove that. Before that, batteries were unable to hold a charge or be recharged fast enough, and had issues with a memory effect where if they were partially discharged and then recharged, they wouldn't hold as much charge when recharged. It does cost significantly more to make a hybrid, rechargeable hybrid or fully electric vehicle. The materials used to make those batteries don't come cheap, and they're not light. Getting a combination of a car that's light enough, safe enough to conform to any given country's safety regulations and still carrying a load of enough batteries to get any sort of range turns out to be a difficult problem to crack. If you leave out any of those parameters, the challenge gets a lot easier. It's VERY easy to make a car that will get 100 miles a gallon. It's not so easy to make a car that will get 100 miles a gallon and also have its driver survive in a head-on collision with an SUV. The crumple zones are also known as "the driver." Then you have the chicken-and-egg problem of fueling stations being available. They're just now deploying rapid-charging stations for electric vehicles, but you're looking at having to plug it in for half an hour to get to an 80% full charge. That'd work pretty well for commuting around town, not so much if you want to do a road trip. If you wanted to do Denver to Seattle, having to stop and charge as often as you'd have to would add an extra day to your trip. A lot of people DO have a vested interest in continued fuel consumption. Those same people are branching out into alternative fuels, solar and battery technology. The reason we were on gasoline so long was that gasoline was cheapest. OPEC contrived to keep it cheap enough that people wouldn't be driven to conservation or alternative fuels. Demand has now increased to the point where OPEC can no longer keep the prices low, and sources of energy that weren't economical to develop before are now becoming so. Who do you think is developing those? The same energy companies you used to buy your gasoline from is who! Don't think it's going to ever get less expensive. A "cheap" hybrid or electric car will set you back more than double what a comparable gasoline engine car will. Any fuel savings you realize from it will be offset by the increased cost of the car and the environmental impact of disposing of the batteries at the end of its life. Solar cells will save you money over their lifetime, but the first few years of savings will be consumed by installing the cells and retrofitting your house for DC current. A hypothetical "Mr Fusion" would create radioactive waste. Fusion creates loose neutrons, and loose neutrons require shielding. After a while, all those neutrons pinging into the shielding makes the shielding radioactive (I'm not a nuclear engineer but I play one on TV.) Nothing is really free. It's very easy to see how pure economics is driving these systems, even if it's not completely evident who all the players are. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

You realize if you do this, you're most likely going to go out of a plane at some point, right? It's statistically impossible to visit that many drop zones and not have this happen. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

NO! IT IS THE WRONG KIND OF PUPPY! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Still looking for a girl who'd prefer a large, properly formatted data file... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Well yeah, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone play Careful with that Axe, Eugene on the radio either. I always associate it more with Relics, because I was always too busy mucking about with Disc 2 of Ummagumma. I like good covers. Camper Van Beethoven did a good cover of Interstellar Overdrive on one of their albums (Though I forget which one at the moment.) They also did a fantastic cover of Tusk. It's actually my favorite version of Tusk. Sadly, you can't buy it separately as an MP3, you have to buy their entire Tusk album, and other than Tusk, the rest of the album is crap (I don't know about Fleetwood Mac's version, I don't think I can imagine them sucking quite that much.) Frank Zappa apparently also played with Pink Floyd for Interstellar Overdrive, and I like his cover of Stairway to Heaven more than Zeppelin's original version. Go figure. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

This early in the season, you might be able to get a Cessna trip on Friday. Or maybe on the King Air, if it's really nice. It's been in the 60s the last couple days. A bit windy today. I only did one jump today (5 yesterday :-) but the landing area is all mud from last week's snow melting. The weather is intermittently perfect all winter -- we had some really nice jumps in January, but they mostly just run Friday, Saturday and Sunday right now. The sun's staying up past 6, though, and we're starting to get into the nice weather. So if you're tired of skiing by Friday and the forecast looks nice, come on down! If it's nice, I'll be out there. I don't mind the Cessna but I'd really like to get back in the King Air again. She's a fine plane, and I haven't seen her in a few months. I'm starting to miss her! If it's 45 and windy, just keep skiing heh heh heh. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

very sorry you broke something...heal quick. But....when someone is "working on a plane" it might be best for the mechanic, the owner and all future passengers... If the A&P person is Not disturbed...at ALL... ..much less "helped"...ya' Know??? time & place for everything sorta thing... jmy

You gonna come visit us at Mile Hi? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've talked to a couple of new skydivers recently who have been freaked out specifically by this video. Somehow they miss the safety discussion and fixate on the malfunction. This puts me in the unfortunate position of having to give a new skydiver advice on skydiving, which is really something I shouldn't be doing. I'm pretty sure "Yeah, don't do that. If you see something like that over you, cut it away." is reasonably sound advice, though. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I went to a Floyd concert back when I was in college. I'm told I had a very good time. I saw them in Madison in the early 90s (94?) Awesome show. I have the 1st Box set on CD. I listen to it every so often. But I prefer "Animals" or "Wish You Were Here" over DSM. Oddly, Ummagumma has always been my favorite album of theirs. It's the big gothic soundscapes they create. No one ever talks about Ummagumma, though, or plays anything off it on the radio. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

What would you rather have? A puppy, a flower from your sweetie, or a large, properly formatted data file? Well here I have a large, properly formatted data file! I turned the GPS logger on my phone on before yesterday's skydiving and kept it on me all day. I haven't got around to analyzing the results yet, but it looks promising in Google Earth. I can find my skydives pretty easily in the raw data, too, so I don't think I'll have a problem writing a program to analyze the results. I'm fleshing out a design to do it in a reusable, useful manner rather than just a one-off program. I think I want to tweak some of my other data objects for KML output and stuff. Keep in mind that altitudes are in meters for KML and GPX. You can watch the tracks pretty clearly on the time slider in Google Earth, too. If you modify the time slider options you can slow the animation down a bit. You can see where the plane goes out, the skydive happens almost instantly at the rate I was playing it, and then back to the hangar. You can also see the pause where I hang out and get lunch. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yup! Royalty wants to save a little money buying my old gear? Well if they'd free up those millions the poor guy can't get out of his country, he could afford to buy new gear! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

You can have innovative additions to technology that exists, though. The iPhone was "just a cellphone," but it changed our thinking about phones (and that you could sell a phone that was good for just about everything EXCEPT making phone calls! ) The concepts behind Google Glass are three decades old now, but it takes that company to drive consumer acceptance of the idea. One of the early concepts with wearable computers was that an on-board camera could do facial recognition and bring up pertinent details about the person you're looking at. Potentially you could strike up a conversation with a complete stranger as if you'd known them for years. It takes a lot of pre-existing technological components to bring us this thing we have never seen before. Another thing discussed was leaving virtual tags in a digital overlay of the world for future people to see. Originally it was discussed using IR transmitters to provide your location, but now it could be done with GPS and "the cloud." You could have a blog people could only see at a bus stop, or something. Previously you needed a can of spray paint for that. Not really new, but we haven't done it in that form before. The Internet may have been innovative, but networking came around in the 70's. It wasn't until the early 90's when several different technologies came together that the average consumer became aware of it. A few people don't think this was the best thing to happen to the Internet (see "The Eternal September",) but the things that has enabled clearly changed the world. 3D printing is clearly both innovative and potentially as much of a game-changer as the internet was. If you need an object, just add raw materials and print the object. Maybe a coffee mug. Some guy over on deviant art is experimenting with 3D printed fractals. Here's One. Actually if you search that site for "3D Print", you can see some pretty amazing things people are already using the technology for. I visit deviant art daily, because I see amazing conceptual art there frequently enough that it's worth the time. Another thing about innovation is that frequently something happens and the general public isn't aware of it for some time. Just because we don't notice that we're innovating, doesn't mean we're not. All it really takes is an idea. As you might tell from late-nite TV advertising, most of our ideas are crap. I'd guess upwards of 99%. But a world-changer could happen at any moment, usually by accident. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Is he going to send it to his brother, who's a prince in Nigeria? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Some of those chemicals are now legal in Colorado! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Well we DO have the technology to build a flying car, but we don't have the technology yet to build a flying car that people can fly the way people drive. It's not really that useful if you have to fly it out of an airport, have a pilot's license to do so and follow the rigorous FAA maintenance schedule because you can't coast to the side of the road if the engine stops in your flying car. So there's not much point -- you can buy a used Cessna for less than I paid for my not-flying car, if you want that. A couple of companies are experimenting with self-driving cars right now. That's more along the lines of what they were talking about in those 1950s-era newsreels, when they were talking about "the future." That's also one of the key components that you need if you're going to make a viable flying car, which really is the benchmark of "the future" when people imagined it. Missions to other planets are now routine. We used to imagine they'd be manned. That's actually kind of odd because we used to imagine robots would be more capable than robots actually are now. But you can't tell me innovation has died when we send a robot with a freaking laser to another planet. Sure, we could send a robot to Mars in the 70's, but all it could really do is sit there. With our recent work in genetic engineering, I think it's very likely that we'll see cures for cancer, AIDs and many other diseases within the next 10-20 years. We're starting to play with nanotechnology, too. Our early steps are not really recognizable as such, but they're already beginning to have an impact on our lives. Once the field takes off, it's literally unimaginable where it will take the species. It's harder now to be an inventor in the sense that Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson were inventors. A lot of the fruit that a self-taught person with a big imagination could pick have been picked. It seems like these days you need a team working toward a goal. Even so, you still see individuals accomplishing big things. In my field, Linus Torvalds planted the seed that became Linux. Sure, it's seen thousands of contributors since he posted it, but he wrote the kernel of an entire freaking operating system on his own. Notch wrote Minecraft and made a couple million dollars for himself almost overnight. Richard Stallman has cranked out a ridiculous amount of software both on his own and by directing teams. And have you seen what they're doing with 3D printing? You can design a 3D object with a CAD program and print that object, and upload your file so others can print it too. They're talking about eventually being able to print organs with 3D printers. Although it's a bit harder for an individual to innovate now, it's a bit easier for them to learn. You can go out on youtube and search on The Royal Institution or Sixtysymbols and find all manner of science lectures online. I've recently sat through a couple of hour-long chemistry lectures and several shorter lectures on nuclear physics and general relativity. The Khan academy is trying to put a basic education up on youtube. If you can sit some kids in a village in Africa around a communal computer and give them a good education, that's a game changer right there. So yeah, I'd say we're still doing stuff, it's just harder to notice with successive iterations of iPhones coming out. Even there, the cars I'm driving today are a LOT more reliable than the ones my parents used to get. The beater car I got with 140K miles on it is more reliable than a car Dad got new in the 80's. This is not something we'd easily notice because it looks like a car, but its guts are nothing like early or even recent automobiles. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah, her ass seems to have a crack in it too! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon album. I think I'm going to have to dig it up and play it tonight! I haven't listened to it all the way through in years. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

As the spin starts.... "Oh no you don't you Fucking Bitch!" "Stop sniveling and open, y'bastard!" I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Why's opening the reserve terrify you? It's just another parachute. Do you check your hackey on the ground? And on the plane? I'm making sure that thing's still there every, like, 3 minutes. Do practice touches in the air too, if you're worried about it. Have a practice touch jump. Just don't lose track of altitude while doing practice touches! We all wrestled with fear at your level, don't think you're the only one. Just study your mistake, learn from it, and don't make it again! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?