http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PTUY16CkS-k
this is worth watching, I am no economic expert, but from what I understand from this clip, america is very fucked up. Even if its only half as bad as the clip makes out it still is very bad.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Another fucking war....Libya
Another fucking war, again with no clear goals or mandates. Sure the UN has put out gobbledygook, but when you break it down it has no meaning. As usual. It will probably be like the second, illegal, Gulf War, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction...but when the search for them petered out the Coalition Of the Willing, (How is THAT for a self serving, grandiose, religious smelling moniker?), they'll change the motive to "Regime Change".
If regime change were the true driving force, then there would be a few more countries ahead of OIL RICH Libya, Sudan and Rwanda come to mind...but wait, these countries don't have oil to protect!!! Who gives a fuck about genocide? Not the west...Well that's my rant.
If regime change were the true driving force, then there would be a few more countries ahead of OIL RICH Libya, Sudan and Rwanda come to mind...but wait, these countries don't have oil to protect!!! Who gives a fuck about genocide? Not the west...Well that's my rant.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Nuclear power and deep water drilling
I am a power engineer, we used to be called stationary engineers but that wasn't grandiose enough so we changed it to power engineering. In a former life I was a marine engineer. What I want to make clear is that I am a "feet on the ground, tool in the hand" type of engineer.
The engineers I have trouble with are the "ring" engineer. That is an engineer with formal education from a secondary school such as a university or college and when they graduate they get a ring. I have huge problems with these people, or most of them anyways.
Math is there universe. If it works out on paper its good. Period. 30 years ago if you had doubts about the end result they would haul out there slide rule and wave it in your face like some medieval dagger and explain how you are wrong.....and we, the grunts would slink away.
Today if we question something the wave their calculator or palm pilot at us explaining how we are wrong, then twitter to the world how they beat yet another knuckle dragger back.
Now we come to the title of the post. Nuclear Power and deep, Deep Water Drilling.
The gist of the following is simply this:
"Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it."
Yeah, we can build a nuke plant, and we can drill very, very deep but honestly, with those two endeavors we are at the absolute limits of our technology. And when something goes wrong, new technology has to be developed to fight it. Just look at how many months it took to slow the leak down, let alone plug it! And don't get me wrong on the clean up, gee, lets add a toxin to break up the oil....never mind what this shit will do to whats left of the sea life in the area.....fucking engineers and their inbred cousin scientists.I know the last huge oil fiasco is not in the news any more, that is only because big business did not want the media reporting it any more, believe me when I say there is still a huge disaster on the eastern seaboard of the USA
Now, I am a huge proponent of nuclear power. I think its the only answer we presently have to counter our dependency on fossil fuels. I don't think we should have nuclear power plants at this moment though.
My reasoning is this; We do not have the technology to make them safe enough yet. We do not have exotic materials to make the technology to make it safe enough. it will be a long, expensive process to develop this.
First off, we have to develop a substitute for steel reinforces concrete, that shit flakes away after a few decades, lets call the new material "futurecrete". Futurecrete will have to be synthetic of course, hopefully one big molecular construct that can withstand massive shocks, such as earthquakes, explosives, originating both externally and internally, resist chemical deterioration and obviously be dense enough to contain radiation.
Of course nothing like this exists so we should not have a reactor on line until we do.
Oh, lets not forget about the nuclear waste....other that making weapons, armour plating vehicles (duh!) with it at ammunition for Gatling guns (Can you spell Gulf War Syndrome...I can...r a d i a t i o n p o i s o n i n g).
Of course we won't get rid of our nuke plants, here in Canada I think they supply like 20% of our power, and one at Chalk River creates medical isotopes. But lets not build any more until some thing like futurecrete come along.
Oh, not all design engineer are bad, there is a school in Great Britain that has the graduates make their own rings fro the remains of a centuries old bridge, reminding them that good engineering makes good products.
And in Quebec, a school has its graduates make their rings from the remain of a suspension bridge the collapsed shortly after it was commissioned as a reminder to be diligent out their engineering.....I like the dose of humility in that lesson.
Allan
The engineers I have trouble with are the "ring" engineer. That is an engineer with formal education from a secondary school such as a university or college and when they graduate they get a ring. I have huge problems with these people, or most of them anyways.
Math is there universe. If it works out on paper its good. Period. 30 years ago if you had doubts about the end result they would haul out there slide rule and wave it in your face like some medieval dagger and explain how you are wrong.....and we, the grunts would slink away.
Today if we question something the wave their calculator or palm pilot at us explaining how we are wrong, then twitter to the world how they beat yet another knuckle dragger back.
Now we come to the title of the post. Nuclear Power and deep, Deep Water Drilling.
The gist of the following is simply this:
"Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it."
Yeah, we can build a nuke plant, and we can drill very, very deep but honestly, with those two endeavors we are at the absolute limits of our technology. And when something goes wrong, new technology has to be developed to fight it. Just look at how many months it took to slow the leak down, let alone plug it! And don't get me wrong on the clean up, gee, lets add a toxin to break up the oil....never mind what this shit will do to whats left of the sea life in the area.....fucking engineers and their inbred cousin scientists.I know the last huge oil fiasco is not in the news any more, that is only because big business did not want the media reporting it any more, believe me when I say there is still a huge disaster on the eastern seaboard of the USA
Now, I am a huge proponent of nuclear power. I think its the only answer we presently have to counter our dependency on fossil fuels. I don't think we should have nuclear power plants at this moment though.
My reasoning is this; We do not have the technology to make them safe enough yet. We do not have exotic materials to make the technology to make it safe enough. it will be a long, expensive process to develop this.
First off, we have to develop a substitute for steel reinforces concrete, that shit flakes away after a few decades, lets call the new material "futurecrete". Futurecrete will have to be synthetic of course, hopefully one big molecular construct that can withstand massive shocks, such as earthquakes, explosives, originating both externally and internally, resist chemical deterioration and obviously be dense enough to contain radiation.
Of course nothing like this exists so we should not have a reactor on line until we do.
Oh, lets not forget about the nuclear waste....other that making weapons, armour plating vehicles (duh!) with it at ammunition for Gatling guns (Can you spell Gulf War Syndrome...I can...r a d i a t i o n p o i s o n i n g).
Of course we won't get rid of our nuke plants, here in Canada I think they supply like 20% of our power, and one at Chalk River creates medical isotopes. But lets not build any more until some thing like futurecrete come along.
Oh, not all design engineer are bad, there is a school in Great Britain that has the graduates make their own rings fro the remains of a centuries old bridge, reminding them that good engineering makes good products.
And in Quebec, a school has its graduates make their rings from the remain of a suspension bridge the collapsed shortly after it was commissioned as a reminder to be diligent out their engineering.....I like the dose of humility in that lesson.
Allan
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