[TheForge] Slack tank...POL OT

[peter fels & phoebe palmer]

On 12/21/2010 7:56 PM, Andrew Vida wrote:
>
> peter fels&  phoebe palmer wrote:
>
>
>> Long odds...fusion has been 20 years away as long as i can
>> remember...and that's with major funding.
> 	That is not the same approach as LENR.
Yeah, i got that part..But the science behind making hot fusion happen 
is  much more developed,
much better understood and the theoretical underpinnings are much more 
credible.
After the Stanley and Ponds fiasco..funding and talent to work on cold 
fusion tends to be real thin.
The results i've seen claimed for the process were feeble at best.
>>>> Does bring up unfortunate memories of " Clean, safe too cheap to
>>>> meter"
>>> There would be no more meters. Each home would have its own.  SMall
>>>   communities might agree to purchase a larger unit for service.
Right...The

"Clean, safe too cheap to meter" was what PG&E kept repeatedly trumpeted
when they wanted to build the big Diablo Canyon nuke plant.
Of course , rates keep rising and PG&E has ducked out of the final clean-up liability.
Oh yeah...and the radioactive waste keeps piling up in those huge steel tanks ,
on an earthquake fault,next to the ocean, where the coast keeps eroding.

Do you really expect folks to properly dispose of radioactive tritium?
They can't dispose of insecticides and drain oil reliably.


>> I'd be delighted...seems very improbable.
> 	So did flight in 1902, and going to the moon, and portable telephones
> with greater computing power than a 370 mainframe.  Just consider the
> practically endless litany of things that seemed improbable and even
> impossible... until someone did them.
>
> 	If the Storms are in fact detecting statistically significant
> difference in the tritium populations, reactions must be happening.
> This is what they claim and Mrs. Storm's specialty at Los Alamos was
> tritium detection.  Unless they are lying, LENR is fact.  The remaining
> question as I said is whether it can be rendered practical as an energy
> source.  I suspect it can be.  These sorts of obstacles has a long
> history of falling to engineering ingenuity.
Even if they can reproducibly demonstrate a tiny trace of tritium,after 
all these years of work, there is no indication that
a small, reliable power source might possibly be developed from that.
Again, i'd be pleased to be proved wrong.
>> The morality is much more ill defined in most cases.
> Bayer knowingly sold HIV contaminated vaccines.  Quite a few people died
> from it.  I'd call that morally unambiguous in the extreme.
Again " In most cases"
> 	We now have at least one company (Monsanto??) attempting to secure IP
> and other property rights to YOUR DNA.  And mine.  And Bruce's, though
> for the life of me I can't figure out why they want his.
Tee hee. It wasn't Monsanto, but one of the  bio-techs that had 
patented  genes involved in breast cancer.
And they recently lost that one in court. Fortunately.
>> I think the majority are as amoral as is economically practicable.
> 	That is not necessarily a bad thing.  It can become that.
Not necessarily bad for corporations..but tends to be hard on other 
corporations and people around them.
>>> That may avail them nothing.  People would be behind such
>>> technology 101%  I suspect the tide would be so great that the only
>>> way to stop it would be through government initiated violence,
>>> which is not out of the question, but perhaps not very likely.
>>> They, too, have their limits - particularly if "kill them all" is
>>> not on the menu.
>> I sure would like that, but think it's another pipe dream, most
>> likely.
> 	We don't yet know.  You may be right, but just imagine if you're not. :)
I have 2 independent friends( don't know each other)..one's a metal 
sculptor/welder...the other a very good mechanic
(exotic cars...splendid diagnostician)..and both think they've 
discovered something akin to nearly free energy sources.
Both ideas violate the second law of thermodynamics so far as i can see. 
I wish them luck and hope i am wrong.
>>> Agreed, but there are paradigm shifts that simply cannot be put off
>>>   forever.  As was once observed, there is nothing so powerful as an
>>> idea whose time has come. :)
>> An admirable ideal Andy.
> 	Hey, no matter how bad things get one needs to have something positive
> to hold on to. Otherwise, why go on another day?
Speaking as a depressive type...aaaah, hold this for another day ( grin)
>
>>> Obnoxious?  Not to my knowledge.  Quite the gentlemanly sort as I
>>> have gathered.
>> I'd read that he was a pretentious, self important, intolerant
>> stuffed shirt who was hell on his underlings. That doesn't matter in
>> the long run of course.
> 	News to me, but for all I know may be true.  Never met the man.
Only his ideas matter now.
>> Some of the regulations are justifiable.
> I have no problem with placing certain regulations on CORPORATIONS.  I
> object to regulating individual free choice where action brings no harm
> to others.  Harm yourself all you want if that floats your boat, just
> leave non-consenting third parties in peace.
Change that to consenting and i'll agree.

>> I grew up in LA and remember riding to school with my eyes and lungs
>>   burning. my asthma appearing, tears streaming down our kiddie faces
>> and air the color of a paper grocery sack with 100' visibility.
> 	I remember taking a week in Yosemite.  The minute we dropped down the
> Canyon into LA my eyes started burning.  My friend Gary lived in San
> Bernardino when he was little.  The air was WAY worse than LA.  He said
> they could not run further than about 1/4 of a block and they would be
> spitting up a lung.  I remember what that valley was like in 76.
> Couldn't see shit and it stank and burned your eyes and nose at times.
This was back in the 50s..by 76 things had improved i think..though i'd 
fled by then.
But my point is that it was the draconian, interfering, widely protested 
air pollution laws
that made that difference. It imposed expensive smog requirements on 
individual's cars.
>> I remember going to the 22 st landing in San Pedro and seeing nothing
>> at all alive in or above the water, save the big rats.
If you go there now, the rocks and pilings are luxuriantly covered with 
sea life.
> I remember being stoned as hell in San Pedro and hanging with the surfer
> creatures on the beach at night.  That was a night to remember. :)
Teehee...I remember the early surfers at malibu with their balsa wood 
boards and no sissy wet suits.
Y' know, there used to be a run of silver salmon up Malibu creek!
>> Does the above qualify as the social costs you recently dismissed?
> 	No.  Those are the costs to individuals and it serves us best to
> remember it and dispense with all this "social" bullshit.  Keep it real
> and don't attribute material reality to insubstantial abstractions.
> That keeps it grounded in what is real and who really gets hurt.
> "Society" is nothing but an abstract concept.  Society has no rights, no
> interests, no possessions, no feelings because, like "government" it has
> no material reality.  People are real - flesh, blood, mind.  That is
> what is hurt.  I so despise this foolish abuse of language - it causes
> SO many problems.
When most of the folks under a government are demonstrably hurt by an 
entity's actions...then the "social" abstraction
is a useful concept. Otherwise what? Would you have every individual taking
each coal burning power plant to court and dunning them for their % of 
the person's mercury burden?
Your position above just isn't practical given this nation's population 
density and need to deal with other nations.
>>> Still leaves the problem of centralized sourcing of energy, which
>>> should come to an end as soon as technically practical to do so.
>>> Imagine the millions of miles of transmission facilities coming
>>> down forever.  Sounds good to me.
>> Sounds good, alternative energy efforts lean that direction, but it
>> ain't gonna be soon.
> 	YOu may be right,  but we don't really know that.  Sometimes shit
> happens suddenly and the next thing you know the world is on its ear.
Yup, and we don't know what it , or they will be..good or bad or more 
probably a mixture.
>    I
> so would love to see it happen in this case.  True energy independence
> would alter the world the most since perhaps the invention of the
> wheel... or even sex. :)
More hyperbole than i'll cheer for...but it sure would help.
Just plain old cheap, plentiful, non destructive energy would satisfy 
me..grin.
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