May 14
arbeck commented on Welcome News for People Who Like Foods That Taste Good.
@14
The lower life expectancy was almost entirely caused by infant mortality and disease. If you made it to adult hood you actually stood a pretty good chance of living to be old as long as you didn't contract an illness. Diets weren't actually much of a problem.
The point I'm making though is that people are blaming processed food and our modern diets for our salt intake when our salt intake was actually much higher long ago.
The lower life expectancy was almost entirely caused by infant mortality and disease. If you made it to adult hood you actually stood a pretty good chance of living to be old as long as you didn't contract an illness. Diets weren't actually much of a problem.
The point I'm making though is that people are blaming processed food and our modern diets for our salt intake when our salt intake was actually much higher long ago.
May 14
arbeck commented on Welcome News for People Who Like Foods That Taste Good.
Anyone with half a brain has realized that most people are not sensitive to salt levels at all. The body can get rid of the excess salt just fine. If most people were sensitive our ancestors would all have been dead. Imagine what people ate hundreds of years ago before refrigeration. Pickles, preserves, salted and fermented vegetables, salted meat, salt cod. They consumed tons of salt. It's only in the modern age of refrigeration and transportation that allowed us to always have fresh food that the amount of salt we consume has lowered.
May 14
arbeck commented on Welcome News for People Who Like Foods That Taste Good.
@rob
if you aren't adding salt to rice or pasta or vegetables I don't ever want to eat anything you eat.
if you aren't adding salt to rice or pasta or vegetables I don't ever want to eat anything you eat.
May 13
arbeck commented on Someday You'll Be Complaining About How Slow Your Old 4G LTE Phone Is.
There are a lot of problems with this. First of all the 28GHz band is already being used in the USA so it will have to be re-purposed and the license holders compensated if you want to roll out this technology.
Secondly, we are bumping up the laws of physics. There is only so much data a wireless signal can carry. It's fine to have a theoretically high top end throughput, but the more people who start to use the signal the more the speeds slow. For a real world example, when I first got Verizon LTE it was faster than my home cable modem. But by the time the iPhone 5 came out, the speeds were often no longer any faster than the old 3G on AT&T.
Secondly, we are bumping up the laws of physics. There is only so much data a wireless signal can carry. It's fine to have a theoretically high top end throughput, but the more people who start to use the signal the more the speeds slow. For a real world example, when I first got Verizon LTE it was faster than my home cable modem. But by the time the iPhone 5 came out, the speeds were often no longer any faster than the old 3G on AT&T.
May 10
arbeck commented on Hansen Ups Offer for Sacramento Kings. Again..
It's a win win for Hansen. It makes it harder for the owners to accept the lower offer. Every owner just had the value of their team go up from this offer. It also leaves the NBA open for a huge lawsuit if they force the Maloofs to take a lower offer. The NBA does not want to try to defend their anti trust exemption in court.
May 10
arbeck commented on Tesla the Beautiful.
@fnarf
The CO2 production from mining the lithium is no worse than CO2 production from drilling and moving oil/coal/natural gas around. And moving electricity around is much easier and efficient than moving gasoline and oil around.
The Tesla already provides 300 mile per charge. Even without quick charging capabilities that's enough for a lot of people even if we don't improve energy storage tech (and we will).
The global transmission of power is a solved problem. We have an energy grid. It works. It can be improved and will be, but it's not a problem that need solving. And our power plants are getting more efficient every year. Coal power plants are being decommissioned and being replaced with more efficient plants.
Electric cars are the future, they've already reached a point that is good enough (though not yet cheap enough) for a lot of people. We don't need any breakthroughs (other than price) to make them the default option for a lot of people. Plus improving the electric car also improves parallel hybrid systems, which are the best option for the situations where range is more of a problem. Even without a breakthrough, I'd wager in 50 years most cars will be electric. And if there is a breakthrough with super capacitors or battery tech, it might happen even quicker.
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The CO2 production from mining the lithium is no worse than CO2 production from drilling and moving oil/coal/natural gas around. And moving electricity around is much easier and efficient than moving gasoline and oil around.
The Tesla already provides 300 mile per charge. Even without quick charging capabilities that's enough for a lot of people even if we don't improve energy storage tech (and we will).
The global transmission of power is a solved problem. We have an energy grid. It works. It can be improved and will be, but it's not a problem that need solving. And our power plants are getting more efficient every year. Coal power plants are being decommissioned and being replaced with more efficient plants.
Electric cars are the future, they've already reached a point that is good enough (though not yet cheap enough) for a lot of people. We don't need any breakthroughs (other than price) to make them the default option for a lot of people. Plus improving the electric car also improves parallel hybrid systems, which are the best option for the situations where range is more of a problem. Even without a breakthrough, I'd wager in 50 years most cars will be electric. And if there is a breakthrough with super capacitors or battery tech, it might happen even quicker.
May 10
arbeck commented on Tesla the Beautiful.
@Fnarf
You are confusing all pollutants with the main pollutant we need to worry about which is CO2. Just for grins I'll show my work. A gallon of gas produces around 20lbs of C02. It's a little less if there is ethanol involved, a little more if it's diesel. If you drive 1000 miles and get 30 miles to the gallon, you have just added about 300kg of CO2 to the atmosphere. A Tesla has an 85KWh battery pack and can travel about 300 Miles on a charge. That means you'd need 283.33KWh to travel 1000 miles. As of 2000 the average US coal power plant (the worst C02 generator of all power plants) produces 1,029 kg CO2 per MWh. So worst case scenario if all the C02 generated by the power plants to charge the Tesla it would add 291Kg of CO2 to the atmosphere. So a Tesla being charged by a year 2000 coal power plant already beats a car getting 30MPG. Since coal only provides 42% of the power in the US and the other methods of power generation produce less C02 per MWh, the Tesla comes out far ahead.
And as the power plants get better, all the electric cars get better instantly. Our cars are getting slightly more efficient (though a ton of the efficiencies are getting eaten by the quest for more power and heavier safer cars). But the biggest problem is that the average age of a car in the US is around 11 years. That means it will be a decade before the average car gets all those new technologies.
And before you ask, yes I'm aware of the transmission losses in the power grid, but I'm sure that's more than made up for by the extra gas burned to deliver the fuel to all the far flung gas stations.
Not all batteries are going to require Lithium. That's what we're using now, but the energy storage mechanism doesn't matter much in the long run. Plus, there are tons of asteroids floating around with Lithium if we need more (can't say that about oil). Plus a newly discovered Lithium site in Wyoming could fill demand for a very long time (http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/26/427163…).
More...
You are confusing all pollutants with the main pollutant we need to worry about which is CO2. Just for grins I'll show my work. A gallon of gas produces around 20lbs of C02. It's a little less if there is ethanol involved, a little more if it's diesel. If you drive 1000 miles and get 30 miles to the gallon, you have just added about 300kg of CO2 to the atmosphere. A Tesla has an 85KWh battery pack and can travel about 300 Miles on a charge. That means you'd need 283.33KWh to travel 1000 miles. As of 2000 the average US coal power plant (the worst C02 generator of all power plants) produces 1,029 kg CO2 per MWh. So worst case scenario if all the C02 generated by the power plants to charge the Tesla it would add 291Kg of CO2 to the atmosphere. So a Tesla being charged by a year 2000 coal power plant already beats a car getting 30MPG. Since coal only provides 42% of the power in the US and the other methods of power generation produce less C02 per MWh, the Tesla comes out far ahead.
And as the power plants get better, all the electric cars get better instantly. Our cars are getting slightly more efficient (though a ton of the efficiencies are getting eaten by the quest for more power and heavier safer cars). But the biggest problem is that the average age of a car in the US is around 11 years. That means it will be a decade before the average car gets all those new technologies.
And before you ask, yes I'm aware of the transmission losses in the power grid, but I'm sure that's more than made up for by the extra gas burned to deliver the fuel to all the far flung gas stations.
Not all batteries are going to require Lithium. That's what we're using now, but the energy storage mechanism doesn't matter much in the long run. Plus, there are tons of asteroids floating around with Lithium if we need more (can't say that about oil). Plus a newly discovered Lithium site in Wyoming could fill demand for a very long time (http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/26/427163…).
May 10
arbeck commented on Tesla the Beautiful.
@Fnarf
I'm pretty sure the pollution emitted from one coal plant to produce the electricity to run 1000 cars 1000 miles is LESS than the pollution generated from 1000 ICE cars travelling 1000 miles. It's simply much easier to put pollution control on one big plant (and operate it at peak efficiency) than to do it over millions of cars. Plus, any efficiencies made in the power generation and transmission (solar, wind, nuclear, smart grids, etc) are instantly propagated to all the electric vehicles. The best ICE tech (direct injection and computerized fuel management) are still decades of being in the majority of cars in the road.
Electric cars are the future. We just haven't agreed on the energy storage mechanism yet. Right now we are using Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer batteries. That's probably not the future. Tesla is at about the peak energy storage densities for those techs, and they don't quite have enough density yet. Unless a rapid charge infrastructure becomes wide spread, those simply won't cut it. But there are new battery tech's possible. There are super capacitors. There are fuel cells. The energy storage mechanism doesn't change the fact that they are all electric cars. It's even likely that our ICE cars are going to be parallel hybrid cars like the Volt with the ICE just on board to generate electricity for electric motors.
More...
I'm pretty sure the pollution emitted from one coal plant to produce the electricity to run 1000 cars 1000 miles is LESS than the pollution generated from 1000 ICE cars travelling 1000 miles. It's simply much easier to put pollution control on one big plant (and operate it at peak efficiency) than to do it over millions of cars. Plus, any efficiencies made in the power generation and transmission (solar, wind, nuclear, smart grids, etc) are instantly propagated to all the electric vehicles. The best ICE tech (direct injection and computerized fuel management) are still decades of being in the majority of cars in the road.
Electric cars are the future. We just haven't agreed on the energy storage mechanism yet. Right now we are using Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer batteries. That's probably not the future. Tesla is at about the peak energy storage densities for those techs, and they don't quite have enough density yet. Unless a rapid charge infrastructure becomes wide spread, those simply won't cut it. But there are new battery tech's possible. There are super capacitors. There are fuel cells. The energy storage mechanism doesn't change the fact that they are all electric cars. It's even likely that our ICE cars are going to be parallel hybrid cars like the Volt with the ICE just on board to generate electricity for electric motors.
May 2
arbeck commented on Tim Burgess: If Only All Women Were as Good as His Daughters, There Wouldn't Be a Wage Gap.
@wxPDX
I don't doubt that there is sexism and subtle pushing that keeps girls out of higher paying fields. The problem is that you have to tackle that problem early, starting in elementary school. That's not a problem that the mayor can tackle. And the statistic in Seattle isn't because of any city policy.
I don't doubt that there is sexism and subtle pushing that keeps girls out of higher paying fields. The problem is that you have to tackle that problem early, starting in elementary school. That's not a problem that the mayor can tackle. And the statistic in Seattle isn't because of any city policy.
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FX also is going to a program of bringing back the miniseries. They realize that not every show needs multiple seasons. And letting story tellers plan out a good arc over a set number of episodes is a great way to attract great talent.