Lately I've been reevaluating my predictable sci/techy pro-nuclear stance. I still roll my eyes at folks who don't really know what radiation is but think it's inherently bad, and I still think nuclear power is probably a lesser evil than fossil fuels. But two things I learned this week gave me pause:
And maybe those are both insignificant. But I think they both serve as non-partisan evidence that we can and have semi-permanently altered the planet with each nuclear mistake we've made.
The low-background steel seems to be a factor of nuclear weapon testing rather than nuclear reactors. Even the most ardent of nuclear power supporters don't argue for detonating more nuclear weapons!
Besides, essentially everything people do at any scale has altered the planet in permanent or semi-permanent ways. It is an issue, but it is not an issue unique to nuclear power.
I am convinced that the nuclear power industry remains not only inextricably linked to nuclear WMD programs, but its expansion is in fact driven by the desire for the materials, technology and capability to develop nuclear weapons
Perhaps in places like Iran and Pakistan. For the last few years we've been using old Russian warheads as fuel here in the US, which is the opposite situation.
Yeah, I think you're probably right about that. But there are already some 400 nuclear power plants around the world. As much as I'd rather the Iranians not have one, it's pretty difficult to say "Sure, we have 104 nuclear reactors in the US, but you guys aren't allowed to have any."
Generally I detest font geeks, but I'm going to defend them here. First off: yes it's true that many intellectuals, designers, and hipsters have a genuine prejudice for Comic Sans. Facts need to work a little harder to prove themselves when written in that font. But in a world where we're deluged with typed information from the second we glimpse at our alarm clocks, I think it's okay to have a little prejudice because we need filter out at least some of the noise. Like most stereotypes, the Comic Sans prejudice is based on a grain (beach?) of truth. Can anyone really claim that the percentage of trustworthy Comic Sans based webpages they've seen in their life is equal to the percentage of trustworthy Georgia pages? Sorry. Geocities happened people, and I, for one, will never forget it.
Offhand, do you know of any material that delves deeper into that taboo topic? Sociologically I find it really interesting but like you said, it's not a popular subject.
You can check the DOJ for statistics, but I've found it incredibly hard to find any unbiased analysis.
I was interested in the topic after I saw a DOJ chart that listed crime by race. I had to research myself to find anything really useful, and by research I just mean taking data from DOJ statistics.
The thing is, it's like we live in 2 separate countries, if you're white or asian, America is almost as safe as other first world countries. If you're Black or Hispanic it's much, much more dangerous.
Black Americans are 2 to 3 times more likely to live below the poverty line than white Americans, and the median white household makes about 1.5 times more money than the median black household.
But black Americans are about 8 times more likely to commit a violent crime, and about 6 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime.
I've seen some statistics that show at least a portion could be accounted for by controlling for the increased percentage of black single mothers.
Sounds identical to my first job outta college. I knew that some of the senior neckbeards were just toxic people, but at the same time I knew I was really inexperienced so it was hard not to second guess everything I did. In the end I quit (5 years later) but felt like at least I learned a lot about code and even more about people and how to not run a company. Thicker skin too. (p.s. thanks for posting, your comment was a nice change of pace from the usual pissing contest fare)
You speak like someone who probably hasn't spent a good chunk of their life as a patient. You are correct; the best doctors know the limit of their own knowledge and will respect a knowledgeable patient. I respect my top notch specialists more than anyone on the planet. But those are the best doctors. There are many more average and outright bad doctors, just like any other skilled profession. Some that can't keep their ego in check, some that just aren't very good at deconstructing a complex problem.
One might argue that the "default state" for all forms of property, including my car and dinner plates, is in the public domain. What fundamental law that transcends the Constitution says my car is "mine"? Yeah the Constitution has some base in natural law, but that's subjective western thought too, nothing universal. I agree 100% that IP laws today need tweaking, or scrapping, but GP is right that the philosophical debate over it is an unrelated issue.
Taking your car or movie is a fundamental issue.
Copying your car or movie is not.
Edit: reflecting on my comment I realize everyone, me included, is looking at this wrong. There is a Constitutional issue - Fourth Amendment "secure in papers and effects". Nobody has a right to just look at & act on the contents of your "papers" (now extending to digital video etc), and contractual access thereto must be respected. You may not like the contracts limiting access to something, but you have a natural obligation to respect them. Copyright and patent law were stopgap measures in place for where such controlled access was hard to implement.
Indeed, communists do argue that, and the experiment of basing a society on that theory has been done a number of times. The outcomes have generally been poor.
There is also a physical difference, which has been pointed out many times: if I take your car and dinner plates, you no longer have them. If I make a copy of your data, you still have it.
There is also a contemporary debate about whether the term of ownership for physical property should be for limited times, or whether rent should be charged on physical property. Of course, the debate is not framed this way, it is instead framed in terms of levying property taxes, sales, taxes, and inheritance taxes. This is another example of how framing the debate can affect the outcome.
I don't know much about reverse eng, could someone explain how you can recompile machine code with new compiler flags? And changing getters and setters to be inline?
First, that Fukushima was not as benign as I believed if butterflys are mutating http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120809/srep00570/full/srep00...
Second, and maybe everyone else knew this, but I never knew that we haven't been able to produce low-background steel since 1945 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
And maybe those are both insignificant. But I think they both serve as non-partisan evidence that we can and have semi-permanently altered the planet with each nuclear mistake we've made.