Posts by Jon Tocker 305 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2007
all the "it'll never work, electric cars sux0r!!!" comments but fortunately the energy company's name is "Dong" and that's taken the conversation down a different track.
Good - the "I fill my car up at the refinery so I can safely ignore the energy and pollution costs of the petroleum distribution network and slag off electric vehicles based on the energy losses in the grid" brigade were getting repetitive and boring.
As were my rebuttals.
Nexox: Electric cars, even battery-powered ones, *can* do 160mph and better - the Eliica can do 230mph (too bad about the US$250K price tag, though)
As the battery technology improves and infrastructure is put in place, there's no reason not to have personal EVs capable of decent speeds - you'll just have to charge up (Altair's NanoSafe (nano-titanide) batteries can burst-charge in 10 minutes while you have a coffee at the outlet) or replace batteries more frequently - and there's your incentive: do you really want to stop at a battery-change station (in Denmark's proposed case) or at a burst charge outlet every few kms? Do you really want to go so fast on the open road that you deplete your batteries before you get to the next charge/swap point?
Also, I've have more than a little experience with pulse-width-modulated battery electrics and I can delightedy inform you that as your batteries start to get low, your vehicle's top speed drops. That means you may well set off at 100mph but wind up crawling to the nearest battery swap at 10mph with a stream of irate drivers behind you who, not wishing to waste their batteries by blasting their horns, are gesturing obscenely and frequently at you.
Once people learn that you can't just fill up and fang off at 120mph for 200 miles, you'll get people driving to minimise the time they spend at "enforced" reduced speed or waiting at burst-charge stations.
The Danes need to resurrect a tram system in their towns and cities and have lighter electric buses (no batteries) as public transport. Then, they could have the electric cars fitted out to pick up electricity from the tram system's power lines and they could drive in the cities (well, on any tram route) without using the on-board batteries, reserving their charge for venturing off the grid or between towns.
You don't use UK farmland.
You set the entire Third World into biofuel production and freight the fuel to the First World countries. Of course, massive starvation will wipe out most the populations of the Third World nations (as there will not be enough food crops to go around) but the heavily reduced populations (all working to produce biofuel crops) can be easily fed through the existing networks such as World Vision and similar charities, especially since there will be no need to waste money on any more education than is required to effectively grow biofuel crops.
The Third World nations will benefit from having their famine-stricken populations reduced to a manageable few and the ultra-rich "slebs" can jet-set around the world secure in the knowledge that their lifestyles and food supplies are safe.
Oh, wait a minute, the current NZ govt is rapidly pushing us into Third World status. Forget I mentioned it...
@"...electric car...that sounds like a V8..."
Why be anonymous? A brilliant observation like yours should be properly attributed. You've come up with another EV bonus I hadn't thought of: the buggers'll have to turn down their blasted sound systems if they want to get better than 3-5km on a single charge.
Oh, and the bit about the Third World etc above is called "satire", before all the PC lunatics start frothing at the mouth. Oops, too late, they started frothing a third of the way through the first paragraph. The fire-proof jacket on the left, please.
"Which is why stuff like this usually looks at CO2 emissions, not pounds and pence. On that basis, even the worst Chelsea tractor produces less emissions than an EV powered by a two-year-old battery."
All the "well to wheel" life cycle assessments I've seen show even coal- or natural gas-fired power stations combined with an EV produce less "green-house gas" emissions than even very efficient petrol or diesel ICVs, so I do not know how you can make your assertion that the worst Urban Assault Vehicles produce less emissions.
I do agree that fuel taxes and artificial price-hiking shit on the parts of suppliers and distributors skew the maths somewhat but our dear govt here in NZ currently penalises EV drivers to the tune of bloody-near $100 per year in vehicle registration fees and you can bet that the price of electricity would go up if significant numbers of people eschewed paying petrol tax and bought EVs - the thieving Mongrels of Parliament don't like having their revenue diminished (quality child-porn and "P" ("pure" methamphetamine) aren't cheap, I guess).
What we really need an X-Prize for is some system that forces people to car pool, buy a scooter or motorbike, walk or use public transport instead of driving to and from work every day *by themselves* in their car, van or bloody-great SUV. That'd probably deal to a large amount of the problems with emission and dwindling oil reserves right away as well as cut congestion dramatically. Another X Prize for creating a car that cannot be tampered with by bloody boi racers (like drilling holes in the exhaust system to "make it sound mean as").
One great thing about an EV: you won't get people ruining its performance and emission controls by drilling holes in its exhaust system. Boi racers would hate 'em because they don't sound loud enough (so they wouldn't buy them) - then they'll hate them even more when some bloke in a Tesla shoots silently past their buggered-up old Subaru (with the noisy exhaust) and leaves them in the dust.
And when it comes to calculating the lifecycle assessment of the power stations they even have to factor in "CO2 equivalent" of hydro electric stations due to land being flooded and unable to absorb CO2.
TCO:
When you consider that the modern high-energy-density batteries used by EVs are pretty much 100% recyclable (that's the figure quoted for all the ones I've seen) and that electric motors are good for *millions* of kilometres rather than tens or even (low) hundreds of *thousands* for the best internal combustion engines, then battery-electric vehicles start coming out quite a bit better than internal combustion cars in the TCO sweeps as well.
PROVIDING PEOPLE RECYCLE APPROPRIATELY! Incentives such as serious discounts on replacement battery packs (when the batteries have reached their maximum number of recharge cycles) in exchange for the old ones (remember the "Swap-a-crate" days of glass beer bottles?) - I hesitate to support the "leasing" of battery packs as proposed by some EV companies to ensure the old ones are returned, but if that's what it takes to prevent people from just dumping them in landfills...
The big killers are all the emotionally retarded people who have to have a brand new car every year to prove their penis is large enough - but they're a problem irrespective of the fuel the vehicle uses.
Put in place incentives to ensure the batteries are recycled and the electric motors from decommissioned vehicles are given a quick overhaul (check the brushes and bearings etc) and recycled out into the latest and most stylish vehicle bodies.
An IC engine is very mechanically complex and experiences a lot of wear on thousands of components. Reconditioning is an expensive and energy-consuming process. Rewinding an electric motor is a relatively simple task, so even if something goes seriously wrong and the windings all melt down, it's easily recycled.
The Pulse Width Modulators and other electronics required for an electric vehicle are energy efficient and long-lasting. In their most basic form (ignoring the posh ones that have programmable energy curves etc), they are less complicated to manufacture than the on-board computers boasted by most modern fuel-efficient IC vehicles. "Zero motorcycles" have a programmable PWM controller you can plug into your *own* computer's USB port and use a simple radio-button-and-checkbox interface to change the bike's performance - see how far you get trying to interface your BMW's computer with your PC...
Given less-complicated and longer-lasting motors, less-complicated electronics, fewer sensors and battery costs (manufacture and mining of resources) being defrayed by a proper recycling programme, the TCO of battery electric vehicles should be comparable with or lower than IC vehicles - hard to say yet as no one has gone into the level of production with battery EVs that they have with ICVs.
I've deliberately ignored the bodies of the vehicle as they would be comparable in both production costs and lifespan - especially these days with the widespread use of plastics, carbon fibre and other lightweight materials in modern ICVs to lower the weight and improve fuel economy.
The reason I'm talking almost exclusively about battery-powered EVs is because the fuel cell EVs are nowhere near the level of sophistication of battery EVs currently - the fuel cells are heavy and weak, they still have to carry batteries to act as a buffer and they require a fuel tank. Also hydrogen (either gaseous or chemically stored and released by catalyst) is crap energy at storage, not even matching the humble, antiquated Sealed Lead Acid deep cycle batteries for energy density, let alone coming near Li-ion or the new "nano-titanide" cells (which apparently are capable of withstanding repeated high amperage burst charges - 10 minutes to recharge your car).
Currently, the big cost is the battery pack but that will come down as a by-product of bulk manufacturing and demand.
Over recent years, it has been demonstrated that battery-powered EVs can outperform ICVs on acceleration, torque and power, and they can be built for speed or distance driving. With burst-charge-capable batteries and a proper recharging infrastructure (as widespread as current service stations), the main disadvantage to battery EVs (lower range if you opt for high speed) is mitigated.
It won't happen overnight - but nor did the petrol powered vehicles we take for granted today. Once upon a time, a horse could go faster and further and "refuel" pretty much anywhere while "gas buggies" were limited in range and speed and cost shit-loads of cash.
Ever heard of "well to wheel" calculations and comparisons? Obviously not, from the twaddle you wrote. Try googling them and learn before you open your mouths or post comments.
In simple terms: a "well to wheel" calculation factors in the energy costs of a fuel from the source (well) to the actual output (wheel) and includes (in the case of fossil fuels) the energy required to pump the crude from the ground, transport it (in diesel-powered tanker trucks or boats usually) to the refinery, crack it (electricity required, here) into usable fuels and then transport them to the distributors (diesel-powered trucks again), pump them into the vehicles and how much energy is used/wasted in the vehicle's engine.
When the pro-electric crowd say "electricity costs less, pollutes less" they are talking in terms of *Well to Wheel* calculations, not just perceived cost and pollution savings in the vehicle itself.
Grow some brain cells and sit down and work it out one day.
Even factoring in coal-fueled power plants, the efficiency and pollution levels for electricity generation are lower than those of petrol or diesel-powered vehicles (one "engine" running at optimum output (optimum efficiency) continuously with a large exhaust management system to reduce the pollution compared with thousands of engines running at varying degrees of efficiency with exhaust systems in various states of repair); the losses in transmission of electricity do not amount to anything near the energy cost of transporting fuel from the refinery to the service station and the efficiency of electric motor systems far surpass the efficiency of internal combustion engines.
And as others have stated, not all electricity is produced in coal-fired plants. We get a lot of ours in NZ from hydro power. We also have geothermal and wind plants. Natural gas and coal-fired plants are only small contributors to our electricity.
Frankly, the best thing to do with the dwindling oil reserves - if people are insistent on burning them - is to take the "hybrid vehicle" to its extreme and build petrol or diesel-fueled power plants right next to the refineries (so the fuel does not need to be transported by road - a short pipeline would suffice) - huge batteries of super-efficient combustion engines, all running at the best efficiency you can get, driving the generators and exhausting through the most efficient carbon capture and scrubbing exhaust system you can build. Pump the electricity thus generated into the grid to be distributed by wire (no more diesel-fueled tankers) to people's homes to charge up their electric cars.
Excellent line.
I have the small kids, so I'm aware of The Night Garden.
My surmise, from as little observation as possible without actually moving into my own flat or destroying the television, is that the programme creators have an early-evening cannabis habit.
And an early-morning one.
And mid-morning, lunchtime, mid-afternoon and late-evening ones and frequent all-night sessions.
Disney is the reason that, one day, someone is going to nuke the entire USA out of existence, figuring the deaths of millions of wonderful, and mostly innocent, citizens to be "a small price to pay" to dispose of the evil that is Disney.
Every story Disney touches is turned to shit. When will people learn: "DO NOT sell the film rights to your stuff to Disney!"
As a kid, I used to love the Famous Five books but grew out of them pretty fast when I twigged how contrived and simplistic the plots were (never mind the racism, classism and sexism; they were just plain formulaic) - but not even predigested-pap-in-a-can crap like TFF deserves to be Disneyed!
For my money, Comic Book's "Five go Mad in Dorset" and "Five go Mad on Mescaline" were brilliant, having captured the repeated "plot" elements of the books brilliantly.
More than adequate for despatching some[thing|one].
Even when fired from a pistol with a lower muzzle velocity than from the typical .22 rifle.
I've personally despatched a number of animals quickly and humanely at a variety of distances with a .22 rifle and if someone pointed a .22 rifle or pistol at me I would certainly consider my life was in danger.
Lots of people have died believing the myth that "it's ONLY a .22"
Now:
"...set the controls to /up yours, Asimov/" Definitely one of the best lines I've read lately.
Shit, it was exciting enough when I was a teen and merely one colony (on the move of its own volition) decided to take a rest in the midst of our school. 440 colonies worth of bees (minus a relative few that didn't survive the crash) would look bloody impressive.
Good that they worked to safely remove them - our stupid Principal got someone in to kill the colony at our school (rather than waiting for it to move on by itself or getting an apiarist to come and capture the queen) because it was "a risk to students' lives" (and spraying cyanide powder over the swarm was not?)
Quite right re the motorbikes. I ride a motorbike myself, a little Yamaha XT225 "chicken chaser" which is small, light, economical on the fuel, very manoeuvrable around town, easy to park and can even manage a little over the open road speed limit should I want to take a ride out of town. For that bike, I require a motorcycle licence. My flatmate has a little moped which is even lighter and more economical and all you need is a car licence to ride it.
I commute to and from work on my chook chaser, fair weather or foul, and shamelessly (but carefully) lane-split between scores of cars - most leaving the same approximate location in the 'burbs, most heading for the CBD and most have only the driver in them. So we have scores of people inefficiently shifting a ton or more of metal between the burbs and the CBD in order to move one relatively small human.
Sadly, Hamilton has only three free motorcycle parks in or near the CBD and if you ride into town most nights the one close to all the clubs and pubs is invariably being used by some immigrant taxi driver as an unofficial taxi stand to get drunk fares. Regrettably, the law does not allow us to punch the park-stealing shit in the face and the Shitty Council does not enforce the "Motorcycles Only" restriction. Park your car or bike in a marked taxi stand for thirty seconds and you'll get a parking fine and be beaten up by half a dozen taxi drivers.
Pan our POV south to our fair capital, Wellington, and you find not only a reliable electric rail system (called "the Unit") from the outlying townships into Wellington Central but an electric tram network through Wellington and every 4th or 5th parking slot in the CBD is given over to free motorcycle parking - rigorously enforced.
And those bike parks are *used*! Dozens of bikes standing side by side denoting dozens of people who elected not to bring an unnecessary ton+ of metal into town.
The Unit and the trams are also used. They also have longer-range buses between the burbs and the CBD that enjoy a good trade. Wellington is not as crowded as London or New York or even Sydney, but its crowded enough that people actually look for solutions for transport and the council is forward thinking enough to supply the infrastructure - public transport, motorcycle parking and reserved "express" lanes.
Even as far out of Wellington as Plimmerton there are lanes reserved for buses, taxis, cars containing more than 2 people and motorcycles. All the arrogant greedy pricks travelling alone in a car have to crawl along in the slow lane while the public transport, car poolers and bikes flow past them - and good fucking job, too.
Seriously. You don't need a ton of sedan or 2.5 tons of SUV to move merely one person 6km from the 'burbs to the CBD.
OK, we bikers are not stupid, we do understand that car drivers are pansies who can't stand getting their wittle clothes wet when it rains but, for fuck's sake, there are buses available and it doesn't take much to organise a car pool with your neighbours - they can't ALL be frothing maniacal axe-murderers.
Little city cars like the ones in the article could be of some use in some locations if the system was set up properly but not everywhere would be suited to such a system.
A system like Wellington has where there are incentives to car pool, use public transport or ride a bike is far more portable and scaleable - they could even do it here in Hamiltscum if the Council members pulled their heads out of their arses.
Most towns have multiple lanes on major roads - usually all packed with cars crawling along and their single occupants getting infuriated with all the traffic and not realising they're part of the problem. Those who have elected to car pool or are taking the car because they have three kids to get to school/kindy/day-care on the way are stuck in the same mess. The real bikes are lane-splitting with varying degrees of care, the mopeds are in the bicycle lanes and the buses are caught in the middle of the mess.
That's how it is in Hamilscum, anyway, YMMV.
It wouldn't be difficult to nominate one lane for public transport, car poolers and bikes and leave the remaining lane(s) for the selfish pricks to fight over.
Turn every 4th or 5th roadside carparking slot into free motorcycle parking (of course, our thieving council would have to put up the prices on the remaining metered parks as they wouldn't be able to handle losing the revenue from the reassigned parking slots) and you're well on the way to less congestion, improved traffic flow and lower pollution as people rush to car pool, use the bus or get a moped.
That could be done to pretty much any moderate to enormous city anywhere in the world. No need for any fancy "revolutionising" through implementing shopping-trolley cars and the necessary infrastructure, just a bit of reorganisation of the existing infrastructure - lanes and parking slots.
Instruct your parking wardens and police to enforce the parking/lane usage mercilessly and it'd be a nice little earner for the first few months - until people learned to obey the rules for the sake of their wallets. The fines should pay for the new signage and road markings within a couple of weeks...
NOI Not Catherine Tate!!
So twenty finalists who need to include a few socially inept people to seriously cock up and be laughed at, a couple of blowhards that hate each other and one really obnoxious, spiteful fuckwit for the mandatory "Is this the most hated (wo)man in the USA?" crap on adverts for the show.
Lots of silly challenges interspersed with confession cam shots, backstabbing sessions and tearful exits - and the obnoxious fuckwit is not allowed to be kicked off until nearly the end of the series as their nasty antics and bitchiness are the only reasons people tune in.
So we can add food shortages due to crop failure to the "Top Ten Things To Look Forward To In 2020" list.
The apiarists are attacking the problem incorrectly, wittering on about food crops as if TPTB actually give a shit about the population.
If they want to get results, they just need to tell the fucktards in the govt that you can't grow BIOFUEL crops without bees to pollinate them and they'll have a 25-million-quid research grant by lunchtime.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned - I have been drug trafficking."
"OK, my son, say five Hail Marys and put 15% of your take in the Poor Box."
Like the tale about the priest who starts confessional in the morning, first caller is an attractive young woman who confesses to sins of the flesh with Tommy Wilson.
He tells her to say five Hail Marys and put 10 quid in the Poor Box.
The next caller is another attractive woman confessing the same sin and gets the same penance.
After five of these in a row, the priest is getting somewhat concerned and, by the end of the day after a couple of dozen of his female parishioners have all confessed to sins of the flesh with Tommy Wilson, he figures he should be locating this Tommy Wilson and having a word with him about his single-handed tarnishing of the virtue of the women of the parish.
The Poor Box is fair bulging by this stage.
He's just about to shut up the confessional and head out when the door opens again and a young man slips onto the bench.
"Yes, my son?" the priest asks.
"Good evening, Father," says the young man, "my name is Tommy Wilson, either you split the contents of the Poor Box with me or I take my cock to another parish"
Because if they hadn't, they'd likely be beaten to a pulp by others here.
Alzheimers is not fun for the sufferers or those who care for the sufferers. I saw my grandfather - who was a man I really admired for his wit and intellect - reduced to rubble by that disease and now another whose wit and intellect I admire is going to be similarly affected.
The only thing I feel more than my sadness at Pterry's plight right now, is my anger at the petty little shits who have belittled him and his donation.
@Unbe****inglieveable:
Good on ya, cobber. You've managed to convey what I wanted to say but with fewer obscenities and less vitriol.
To Pterry if you're reading this thread:
All the best, mate, and don't let petty little twats get you down.
Can't wait til we get that here - there are a number of people whom I could report just to fuck their year up! See how they like having the fuzz crawl up their arses with a microscope all due to one anonymous call (from an unregistered PAYG mobile, of course) - that'll teach them to let their cat shit in my yard or play their music too loud. Fucking Christian songs, too!
In all seriousness: that's the sort of shit that's likely to happen - TPTB typify the old adage "those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." Have they learned nothing from the various witch hunts (both actual and figurative) over the centuries? Don't like someone? Just point the finger of accusation and the "professionals" (the Inquisition, the Witch-Finders, the House UnAmerican Activities Commitee, the Gestapo, the Stasi, the Met) will investigate.
Even if the person does not wind up incarcerated or dead, you've certainly "given the bastard something to think about"...
Too pretty, too ugly, too old, too crabby - "she's a witch!" Ha ha, now she's being dragged out and humiliated in public, put to "the test"... Oh, she died, mustn't have been a witch after all. Look, that one lived, burn her!
I hate that prick, see how he likes a 4am wake-up call and "Kommen Sie mit uns" at the point of a snub-nosed P-38K, that'll fix the little fucker!
Way to go, UK! Great community spirit in the proud tradition of INGSOC!
And I can see our fucking retarded government following suit (despite the fact we've only had one act of terrorism in our country's history and that was done by the French) as they invariably do when it comes to dumb-arsed schemes from other Nations - it's a Kiwi Politician thing: look at the biggest stupidity happening elsewhere and adopt it.
And of course, the sheeple will lap it up - some other way to dob in your neighbours if you don't like 'em because it gets a bit repetitious phoning up Child Youth and Family Services with wild allegations about child abuse or dobbing in your dole-bludging neighbours with allegations of benefit fraud (besides, the pricks might not have kids or might not be on the dole so it would be nice to have someone other than CYFS or Social Welfare you can call to make their lives a misery.)
@The Other Steve:
Great points well made! Now we just need a hot-line to dob in those neighbours who own a motor vehicle as they are more dangerous than the terrorists hiding in our midst.
I have never been on a plane or bus that thas been hi-jacked by terrorists, I have never lost a family member or friend to terrorism. In short, no terrorist organisation has directly touched my life.
But the government and the airlines, with their knee-jerk "we have to appear to be doing something even though a five-year-old can see it's not going to make a bit of difference" reactions have affected my life directly and adversely.
I've personally lost more friends and family to accidents than terrorist action has taken in New Zealand and the government says we should be scared and that airlines must increase security to the point that everyone boarding a plane is inconvenienced.
I'm not looking forward to measures akin to the Mets' Orwellian Wet Dream being adopted here. The more I see what is going on around the world under the guise of "counter-terrorism", the more I dread what sort of world my children will be growing up in.
Quite right, bro.
And you don't even need as much as Plan B.
A while back there was a hyped up big scare here in New Zealand when postal workers found a mysterious white powder in a couple of envelopes - the worry was that it might have been Anthrax and it caused Nationwide alerts, decontamination procedures, hospitalisation of those who'd come in contact with the white powder and a media frenzy for a while.
How much would that have cost? Probably around a (NZ) dollar per letter including postage, the envelope and some random white powder. No one was actually harmed but the panic it caused, hyped up by the Allies of Terror (media and politicians), was enough to satisfy anyone intent on spreading fear. That was over just a couple of them.
It's got to the point that no one even has to die. Some numpty makes a "car bomb" with no chance whatsoever of actually detonating and the papers and news reports are full of "if it had gone off it could have [insert hyberbolic description of carnage here]" and screaming about near misses and calamity-barely-averted etc etc.
Whatever happened to the days when the terrorists actually had to KILL people to spread panic? Since when does "what if it had been a real car bomb/thermonuclear device/vial of cultured Bubonic" justify a nationwide furore?
And now its "Jeez, what if They try to emulate the superpowers and build fiendishly complicated devices, better sound the klaxons and send out the press releases!"
If I were the terrorists, I'd charge the media royalties every time they linked the name of my organisation to the actions of some nutter or to wild speculations about what we *might* do if we ever got out hands on a portable disintegrator ray and then use the enormous revenue that would create to retire to the Bahamas - after all, it's not like the terrorists actually have to lift a finger these days, they might as well kick off their shoes, stick their feet up and order a banana Daiquiri.
In New Zealand in1982, a rather disaffected young punk rocker named Neil Roberts blew himself up in an attempt to destroy the Wanganui Computer Centre (the repository of our police records at the time). All he managed to achieve was to make a bit of a mess for people to clean up.
Back then, most of the country just laughed and said "what a fucking idiot".
These days there'd be six months of "Oh noes! He might have destroyed us all and plunged us into the Dark Ages" and speculations that he might have connections with Al Qaeda because one of the guys in his class was a Muslim (or knew a Muslim).
Jeez, what if he'd built a rocket launcher out of some lengths of pipe and left-over Guy Fawkes' Night rockets! Calamity!
"You don't have to HIT the target to produce terror, especially not with the current pack of 'bravehearts' in the UK government. Set off a grenade on the doorstep of No 10 within minutes of the PM leaving will cause enough panic, especially within the protection squads, to ensure that the PM's life is buggered up good stile."
And that's precisely the reason that I do not fear that terrorists are going to start building UAVs.
What is the cost of said handgrenade (or a similarly-sized C4 or diesel-and-fertiliser bomb) compared with a budget DIY UAV?
All the fanciful crap about Terrorist-controlled RoboWarriors and home-made Nukular (sic) bombs that the military big-wigs come out with to justify their budgets - and you can bet most of the budget doesn't go anywhere near countermeasures against such things because a) they know there's no point and b) they really wanted the money to buy caviar, Bollinger '67, Havana cigars and child pornography anyway - might make a great plot for a movie or the next series of "24" but in reality a suicide bomber hitting a civilian target and causing lots of casualties or scoring even a "near miss" on a political or military target is going to create the requisite amount of fear and outlandish headlines for far less effort and expense.
Tell you what, let's get together over drinks and make a small wager - we'll each start with a 250 quid budget and pick a separate town each. You can build a UAV and target whomever you feel would create the most panic and I'll make do with "low tech" methods - the one who causes the least panic and terrifying headlines within a month has to buy the other a drink.
I'm just kidding, obviously, but I hope you take the point: 250-quid expended on relatively low tech is going to give a lot more, as the USAians say, "bang for your buck" than the same amount spent on one leetle UAV.
That hypothetical grenade-sized charge on the doortep of No. 10 does not need to be delivered by even a rubber-band-powered toy plane, let alone a GPS-guided plane/helicopter/pulse-jet-enginned rocket. A home-made mortar is far simpler, as is an unguided rocket (all you need is line-of-sight for that and some means of concealing it up until you deploy it) or you could get someone to throw it or strap it to their chest and charge...
They won't succeed, of course - but as you point out, they don't have to.
"Two platoon of squaddies with rifles and 2 GPMG's tried to shoot down a radio controlled aircraft flying backwards and forwards along their trench, they never hit it once!"
There's the problem right there. Should've used a couple of dozen seasoned duck hunters with shotguns.
Only problem would be when their dog brings the damned thing to them with the timer on the C4 still ticking...
Err, yeah, the camo jacket with the 12ga shells and duck call in the pocket, mate...
Sure, forget the difficulty of hitting the PM or the Prez or any other easily-replaced waste of oxygen. Politicians are like hydra - cut off a head and another 2 will fill the gap.
Terrorists - especially Middle Eastern ones, anyway - tend to favour easy civilian targets that will get the population scared, such as buses, theatres, footy matches etc (we all sleep easy in our beds when it's only scum^H^H^H^H politicians likely to get killed but if there's a chance we'll get blown up taking the bus to work or enjoying the match it becomes a threat) .
However: As has been stated over and over: why spend out that kind of money and expend that much effort when you can target civilians a lot more cheaply and easily.
For the kind of money it would take to build a simple UAV - even a small one with a tiny payload designed to create havoc at the local footy match - you can hand deliver (courtesy of a ready supply of willing human agents) a much larger payload to said footy match or a lot of small payloads to different locations around the country and really get people shitting themselves.
The terrorists most likely want to get the best value for money, not waste $$$ on model vehicles and guidance systems when they can sink their resources into more ordnance and get more/bigger bangs. Remember, they're bankrolling it themselves, not using tax-payer funding - only large governments can afford to throw away large amounts of cash on sparkly toys.
Of course, the various Military-Industrial Complexes have to hype up the possibilities of Terrorists(tm) using such tech to convince the various morons^H^H^H^H^H^H politicians to ante up funding for their own UAVs and diverse anti-guided missile junk. The last thing the MICs want is for the governments to think that the terrorists are a minor threat. They design and build high-tech battlefield weapons that would be ideal in an out-and-out conflict with, say, the USSR but the "Commie Bastards" are actually mostly playing nice so the only option is to spin things to convey the impression that its only a matter of time before the "Terrorists" develop hostile UAVs and sophisticated killer robots.
Never mind that the terrorists are never going to engage the military in a conventional fashion where UAVs, killer robots and sophisticated countermeasures are advantageous, just hype up the "potential threat" and shout "terrorists" often enough and the governments will buy anything being touted as the latest magic bullet in the "War On Terror (tm)".
And for the politicians it has the advantage of looking like you're taking the threat seriously and doing everything you can, "exploring every possibility", "preparing for every contingency" etc etc and you can say - after someone boards a packed subway car wearing "clothing by Dupont" - "well, we tried everything we could to prevent it happening."
While I agree that a small UAV or a swarm of them would be devastating if used on unprotected civilian mobs, the likelihood of anyone, other than the World's large military forces, wasting their money on them is infinitesimally small.
Perhaps, as a member of the public (and therefore more likely to be targetted by TERRORISTS!!!!!!!! than the local military base or our Prime Minister) I should take to carrying a shotgun loaded with buckshot around with me so I can defend myself (and all those around me) from any R/C planes that might be terrorist-built UAVs. There was an R/C plane buzzing around the park next to my house a few weekends ago - must've been something wrong with the GPS co-ords as it seemed to be circling as if lost. Also the payload failed to go off but next time I'd better break out the Mossberg and deal to it for the sake of my kids...
Cheers for a great article, Lewis.
Some careless twat of a janitor leaves his cheese-and-egg sandwich and thermos in the middle of the thing so that when they switch it on flukish conditions cause it to function as a stable fusion generator, pumping out more energy than the initial charge they put in it (and remains pumping out power after they shut off the power feed to it) so the whole "renewable power source" argument gets consigned to the scrap-heap for good.
Hey, it might happen... Bell was merely trying to make a more responsive telegraph when he accidentally revolutionised our lives.
is how the FBI managed to find New Zealand in the first place - in addition to the difficulty the FBI traditionally has finding its own arse with both hands, citizens of the USA are renowned for thinking we're "up by Greenland or something".
The kid probably though he was safe from detection because "no one's heard of New Zealand, let alone Whitianga".
Whitianga, Cybercrime Centre of New Zealand! Shit, I didn't even know they had a functioning telephone exchange up that way. Last I heard, their data infrastructure relied on an acoustic link - made from two tin cans and a length of string. Telecon^Hm recently announced they plan to install an optical network up that way but they haven't decided on whether it will be semaphore or smoke signals.
I managed to narrow my choices down to:
But one thing's sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible. (Detective - Plan 9 from Outer Space)
Bomb, this is Lt. Doolittle. You are not to detonate in the bomb bay. I repeat, you are NOT to detonate in the bomb bay! (Dark Star)
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. (HAL 9000 - 2001: A Space Odyssey)
Sorry, miss. I was giving myself an oil-job. (Robby the Robot - Forbidden Planet)
Roads? Where we're going we don't need... roads. (Emmet Brown - Back to the Future)
Be afraid. Be very afraid. (Ronnie - The Fly)
We came, we saw, we kicked its ass! (Dr. Peter Venkman - Ghostbusters)
Gort! Klaatu barada nikto! (Helen Benson - The Day The Earth Stood Still)
Come quietly or there will be... trouble. (Robocop)
Flash, Flash, I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth! (Dale Arden - Flash Gordon)
Negative, I am a meat popsicle. (Korben Dallas - The Fifth Element)
It's alive! (Henry Frankenstein - Frankenstein)
Would've been seriously disappointed if the "It's ALIVE!" quote had not been nominated.
Another 5 minutes to get it down to a tie-breaker between Dale Arden and Korben Dallas. Hmmmm, brilliant non sequitur or excellent "I don't give a fuck" smart-arse reply?
Quite a dilemma!
I can't believe you haven't got "Now a real killer, when he picked up the ZF-1, would've immediately asked about the little red button on the bottom of the gun." (Zorq) from /The Fifth Element/, jeez you guys suck! <evil grin>
Great selection of brilliant quotes, guys. The movies I'm now prompted to watch again exceed the time I have to watch them in a weekend.
@ Timbo:
and also the environmental control systems inside the capsule as humans tend to have a lower tolerance of temperature and pressure extremes than most inert lifeless cargo.
@ Phreaky:
what is your reality? That we have unlimited resources here on Earth? That some "magic bullet" will be developed next week that provides us with clean unlimited power and enables us to shake of our dependance on the rapidly dwindling fossil fuels (without deforesting our planet or replacing food crops with biofuel crops)? That God will take pity on us and intervene, returning the world to its pristine original state (hopefully not the state with the methane atmosphere and all the volcanoes) but still leaving us all our cars, consumer electronics and disposable junk? That somehow half the world's population will quietly disappear and leave more resources for the rest of us? That overnight we, as a species, will quit being a pack of greedy pricks that absolutely have to drive alone in our SUVs to and from work every day?
The reality - as agreed upon by scientists (who wildly disagree on global warming/climate change and what needs to be done), and by the observations of anyone with common sense - is that we are on one small rock in space that has finite resources and that a large number of them are running out. This reality has prompted a lot of debate and argument ofver what has caused it, what is going to happen and what is the best way to progress from here.
The reality is also: limitations on solar panels markedly decrease when in orbit above the Earth's atmosphere, the solar system is filled with other rocks that also have resources and space exploration has historically had useful spin-off in the Earthbound world.
There are those of us who do not stick our heads in the sand and say "She'll be right mate, it's just scaremongering, we'll just keep on the way we are going." There are those of us with no desire to return to living in caves in the dark or see half the World starve to death due to hare-brained biofuel schemes. I'm one of those who sees serious exploitation of our local solar system as our best option for power and resources - and "Star Wars" has absolutely nothing to do with it.
We have big business moguls - traditionally maligned as doing nothing but living playboy lifestyles while the rest of the World lives in relative poverty - doing what they can to come up with serious low-impact renewable means of getting us into space and making it a viable concern and you dismiss it as "Star Wars fantasies". I'm interested in hearing what you have done for the betterment of humankind and the future of our existence on this planet that puts you in a position to demean their efforts.
Frankly, I'm not rich or famous, I can't personally do a lot more for the future of humankind than what I already do - ensuring my drain on fossil fuels is minimised (I ride a 250cc motorcycle rather than drive a 3-litre SUV), working in an industry that is involved in the betterment of individuals (education sector) and raising my kids to make considered decisions.
However, I am not going to get all "sour grapes" over someone who has the resources to go for grander schemes than I can manage.
So Webster: throw away your Teflon-coated pots and pans, your ball-point pens, your computer and all the other "Star Wars"-derived crap that is obviously of no practical use. The rest of us will embrace the possibility that improved technology and using other resources off-planet will enable us to, as Dr Jerry Pournelle puts it, "Survive With Style".
Hans, I gather you have failed to see a connection between "Killer robots could become the weapon of choice for militants ... falling costs would soon make robots a realistic option for extremist groups" (with references to the fact that the USA already uses them so "How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act?") and the hypothetical "Robot Arms Race" (in reaction to the USA's extensive use of killer robots) he proposed earlier in a piece of sensationalist crap entitled "Robot wars ARE a reality" (my emphasis).
Both talk of an escalation in the use of killer robots due to the USA's use of them, albeit at different stages - the latter describing an earlier DIY "cruise missile" (presumably short range) made from readily available model airplanes, the former comment describing future [anthropo|zoo]morphic killer robots targeting generous kiddies - *his* blatant sensationalism, not mine, Page's, or anyone else's.
Despite the different dates of his pronouncements and the levels of technology, both are the *same scenario*: The "Axis of Evil" (tm) retaliates against the USA's use of robotic killers by building their own, resulting in an arms race.
Sorry you missed the obvious common denominator.
His prating on about the robotic arms race is completely ludicrous for the reason mentioned by so many here: when targeting *civilian* populations, there are far *cheaper* ways of getting *better* results.
Of what benefit is an autonomous model plane or car packed with a relatively small amount of explosive when they have people willing to walk into the heart of the "enemy" carrying enough explosives to take out a restaurant?
Don't want to die? An innocuous-looking package containing a timer and a few kilos of C4 can be carried into pretty much any public building and left there by someone who is not likely to look suspicious - and 240 quid's worth of explosives (say ten quid for the timer) would make a hell of a bang.
The robots, so beloved of the USA, are best suited to the "traditional" theatre of war - troops vs the population of whatever place the USA is invading today. The robots offer no advantage to the theatre of "terrorism" - they do not blend in with the crowd, they are expensive, they do not carry enough ordnance, they cannot target to the degree of accuracy exhibited by the average 5-year-old. Any killer robot capable of walking into a packed movie theatre unnoticed and triggering several sticks of dynamite is going to be way too sophisticated and expensive to waste.
The only countries who would be interested in killer robots are those who engage in *traditional* warfare so they can supplement their frontline troops. If Russia, China, Japan or Korea were to go up against the USA in some sort of new Cold War, I could see the possibility of an arm's race with regard to military robots designed to improve their chances on a high-tech battlefield.
And it won't be crude 250-quid model planes with a fistful of C4, it'll be things very much like the Predators and Reapers etc in every respect: heavily armed and designed to target military hard targets, made by countries rich in technical expertise.
Even then, I don't see a lot of use in the military for an anthropomorphic killer robot when humans are far superior anthropomorphic killers - best leave the robots to "hover and stare", fly into or over targets and release missiles, crawl on tracks or wheels through debris-filled streets etc.
For the terrorists to become interested in using high-tech robotic solutions, they would have to change their tactics from "surprise attacks on civilian populations" to "out-and-out warfare conventional on military targets and troops", but this does not stop Sharkey from raising the spectre of terrorism and linking it to levels of sophistication that not even the US military has need for (not one of the US robots looks remotely humanoid and all are purpose-designed to fulfil their functions.)
So: not "unrelated stories", Hans, and not a "strawman". Sharkey is leaping on the terrorist bandwagon and spouting fanciful garbage about an "arms race" that will not eventuate between the West and the terrorists and using imagery designed to shock and inflame sensibilities (innocent and kindly little girls mown down by souless killing machines).
"So far I see that the most ridicule comes from the corner of people assuming that "robot" means some Terminator, or SW-style war-droid, or at least some sophisticated robo-tank.
Counter-point: the Roomba is a robot. The V1 was, more or less, a robot, and it didn't even have a computer. A mechanical arm with a drill is an "industrial robot". Anything that can perform a task autonomously without human intervention is a "robot".
Basically methinks the whole problem is one of communication. The good professor uses one (perfectly good) definition of "robot", while the leering public has images of HK-47 floating through their head."
To be fair to the "leering public" you malign so readily, the "good professor" was the one to suggest that these kill robots might result in "...a little girl being zapped because she points her ice cream at a robot to share" thus suggesting they would look sufficiently humanoid - or at least zoomorphic - to prompt a child to share its ice cream. Dunno about your kids, but my two-year-old daughter, although quite generous, has never once offered her bottle or food to my motorcycle, the vacuum cleaner or a food processor - I'm pretty confident she would not offer to share anything with a military-grade autonomous tank or a home-made GPS-guided V1. (Incidentally, she's not likely to think a 20-foot-tall Autobot is the Tooth Fairy, either...)
If there are visions of SW/Terminator style killbots floating in people's heads, the "good" Professor Sharkey put them there.
As for Sharkey's rant about the "real dangers" of "robot elderly carers, child minders, nurses, soldiers and police... mobile robot surveillance" - if you're stupid enough to buy your robotic helpers from Al Qaeda or the IRA etc, you fucking-well deserve what you get!
As to the practicality of it all, while a fleet of your GPS-guided pulse-jet planes packed with C4 might be the bee-knees for military targets, the "beauty" (if you will) of terrorism is that the targets are usually average civilians (rather than those who're paid to take the risks and have all their best stuff protected by missile-defense systems) and thus the "terror" is: ANYONE could be a target, not just the military.
For very little money and effort (no need to circumvent military-grade protection) you get to cause maximum carnage and disruption and leave a large chunk of the population terrified to go to work or the movies.
Why spend even 250 quid building a simple autonomous killer when a molotov cocktail costs only a few bucks (just lob a couple off a tallish building into the crowd below) and you get to drink the contents of the boittle before you turn it into a weapon, a parcel bomb with a simple timed fuse or even some form of advanced trigger (vibration, radio control etc) is relatively cheap and holds more explosives than you can cram into a DIY V1, the not-so-smart-bomb (explosive vest) is precision guided and carries a lot of explosives for a fraction of the price - and all of them extremely effective on civilian targets and likely to create wide-spread panic. Far more effective than a self-guiding plane which may do a modicum of damage to a building.
Personally, I don't wander around terrified that some terrorist has parked a bus packed with C4 and steel ball-bearings outside my place of work, why should I worry about a home-made UAV with a "warhead" the size of a hand grenade?
I don't see anyone building an autonomous wheeled or tracked killer robot capable of even the appalling accuracy of the original Cylons for 250 quid, let alone something capable of accurately targeting enough fleeing fleshies to count as a serious "weapon of terror". Graham Bartlett's "spray and pray" example is quite right. A lot of effort and expense when you could blow up a crowded movie theatre - killing and maiming more people and spreading a lot more fear and uncertainty - for a hell of a lot less effort and money.
If you had enough resources and finance to build an autonomous machine capable of the driving skills and shooting accuracy of the average drive-by, you would be able to kill, maim and scare just as many people as a drive-by would - the same amount spent on "traditional" terrorism would equate to a LENGTHY "reign of terror" that would kill or maim thousands and terrify millions.
Prof Sharkey is a self-publishing twat whose true fear is that he will fade into obscurity and miss out on any lucrative TV contracts that might be going, so has to spew out disjointed (from vaguely plausible 250-quid autonomous-vehicles to fanciful malignant robobutlers in a single bound) sensationalist crap to keep his name at the forefront of everyone's minds. "Fuck, I'm running out of the money I made doing Robot Wars, what'll I do? I know, jump on the "Terrorism" Bandwagon, why should Big Business be the only ones making money from it?"
I can put off packing for a few billion years at least.
I bloody HATE moving.
Rob, when can you organise to show me 'round some of your Titanian properties - just because I can afford to put off the tidying and packing doesn't mean I intend to miss out on the best sites...
"Is this another example of marketing wonks over-extending their reach? "
None of the information they listed as being accessible is out of the scope of any utility that supplies on a "use now, pay later" basis - especially an energy supplier: credit information, payment history, income in some cases, bank account numbers (probably enough to steal from them, eh Jazzer :> ), addresses for supply and billing, contact phone numbers, whether they have a dog (not mentioned in the article but standard for every electricity/gas supplier I've ever known), social security number (from what I've read, every business in the USA seems to require that) and, yes, medical information - like "relies on respirator - DO NOT, under any circumstances, switch off their power no matter how far behind they get". (A woman actually died in New Zealand because the power company cut off her electricity, thus shutting down her oxygen machine - and left her family "to grieve in the dark".)
All of that, and possibly more, information LONG before the room-temperature-IQ marketroids start gathering "demographic information" to better assist them in bombarding the client-base with targetted advertising.
Sadly, even with information limited to what is necessary to conduct business (safely, without killing anyone) the potential for abuse by unscrupulous (or just plain nosey) employees is quite high. "Demographic surveys" conducted by some mag-biting barketroid are a whole different can of worms on top of that.
As has been mentioned: Where are their audit trails? Where are the differential access levels to ensure only those who need the data have access to it?
Unfortunately, while charity begins at home, IT security begins next door so many organisations have no proper Information security policies worth a cup of cold puke and everyone down to the janitor has full access to the client database.
The average company is loath to spend money on IT. Upgrading the staff PCs is a low-enough priority, without "wasting money" on determining who needs what access, locking the system down to provide only the appropriate access, setting up audit trails and checking for inappropriate access. Most use outside contractors and the head bean-counter decides that the profit margin is best served by only getting the contractor to throw in a server, cable up a few PCs and printers and make a few generic accounts. Then it gets handed over to an under-paid employee with no formal IT training to create other login accounts as required.
Then something like this happens or the government sends out a team of professional IT auditors (as per the relevant Act) and, surprise, surprise, they find the security is attrocious and the system has been abused for years.
Then, like as not, that same bean-counter (untouched by any semblance of accountability) skimps on the funding again at the behest of the shareholders (also untouched by accountability) when it comes to bringing the system up to compliance.
So long as large amounts of data are held by companies whose primary concern is delivering increased profits to the owners/shareholders rather than delivering quality service and peace-of-mind to their clients, we will have major problems like this.
Tightening up the database and keeping access logs will not prevent unscrupulous staff from misusing information - but it will limit the scope of what they do by ensuring they only ever do something major once (before finding themselves on the client database of the local Welfare organisation...)
Who the fuck needs to worry about intruders?
Great posts. I think you will find the "we don't want no steenking electric cars (because they haven't got the "wank factor" of a really loud exhaust)" crowd invariably "forget" to factor in the production/distribution costs of the fossil fuels (and the production/distribution costs of the electricity used to produce and distribute the fossil fuels - the refineries don't work by candle light or hamsters in treadmills) because their arguments get "shot to shit" when you start talking about diesel-powered tankers and ships etc and how much the local refinery spends on its 'leccy bill each month...
Better to pretend we live in a world where refined petrol and diesel materialise at the bowsers and the fossil-fuel vehicles really aren't that much worse for the environment than those "gay electric vehicles that have superior power and torque but don't make a satisfyingly loud noise doing so."
Or perhaps, in their view, crude oil is lovingly spooned from the ground by hand and carried in milk pails to the refinery where it is "cracked" by hitting it with small hammers by candle light (natural beeswax candles and ecofriendly renewable-resource (cotton) wicks) and then carried by foot in other pails to the service station where it is poured into the tanks ready to be pumped by hand into the cars.
I seriously wonder how much electricity we'd save if we were to shut down all the fuel refineries and fuel pumps. I've never been inside a fuel refinery but the one I've seen was way bigger than the milk factory my dad worked at (comparable industry in some areas as both involve lengthy processes to extract things out of a liquid raw material and consume vast amounts of electricity in the process) and *that* was an enormous drain on the grid - so I dare say shutting an even-larger refinery down would free up a lot of electricity for the domestic (personal electric vehicles and home use) market.
Would the "demand for electricity" really increase "that much" if we were to all go electric and ditch fossil fuels?
How far would a months' electricity consumption of the Marsden Point refinery get a battery-powered electric car?
BTW, we use a lot of hydroelectric power here so the costs and impacts of mining/transporting coal is an issue of only a small percentager of our power plants. We also use geothermal, wind and natural gas.
OK, the batteries don't just materialise and their production has an impact but they are recyclable, petrol and diesel are not. The electric motors also take less resources and energy to manufacture than infernal combustion engines (which also require at least one electric motor and its close cousin, the alternator) and they have longer lives. Anyone added up the energy costs of their car's regular services and part replacements? Or worked out the costs of the decreasing efficiency if they don't get their cars serviced?
When you start looking into total amounts of energy expended and divide it by the number of kilometres travelled electric cars come out as very cost-effective in addition to having better performance than infernal combustion vehicles (don't believe me? if IC engines are so great, why are most trains pure electric or diesel-electric hybrids? Pure diesel trains are inferior relics and I've never heard of one running on petrol...)
I flatted with a "Jim" who was a master in the secret Korean art of Sinanju and knew death touches etc etc - anyone who has read the "Destroyer" pulp novels would recognise every word he uttered about his training and his teacher.
He was also an powerfully psychic and had one many a psionic battle against extremely powerful psychics.
His brother was also a "Jim" who claimed to be a trained Ninja and wandered around everywhere with a pouch containing the largest shurikens I've ever seen - machined from the front sprockets of a couple of bicycles so they were damned near a foot across and weighed quite a bit. Odd, considering shuriken are small, light concealable and designed to distract rather than kill (unless tipped with poison).
He used to hang out with another "Jim" who was the greatest street fighter in town (can't've been because I later met another "Jim" who was...) and had raced Formula 1 class for years (despite not being old enough to have held an F1 licence for a year) and played me a tape which he said was by his band (I actually had the same album at home, a professional cover band playing popular tunes so the record label could cash in on their popularity...)
I seem to have met a few "Jims" over the years - if only I'd had access to a couple of risers at the time.
"Does it look different if it has a different name pinned on it?"
That lengthy poem I abridged makes that point - you can use any euphemism you like *as often as you like* provided you don't actually use ONE PARTICULAR word for it.
Feel free to rabbit on for hours at a time about pussies, vaginas and the like but, as the poem puts it in the relevant section:
"Beware the affront
Of aping the Saxon
Don't call it a..."
Say "cunt" just once and you've somehow managed to offend the masses in less than a second when three hours of talking about "pussy" has failed to.
Apparently saying it (and other "naughty" Saxon words) is a sign of a "limited vocabulary". Just got to love the IRONY of being told my vocabulary is "limited" by people who consciously CHOOSE NOT TO SAY "certain" words.
Nah, mate, no fucking limits here.
Then they'll turn around and say "using such language is a sign of low intelligence" in the baldest attempt ever to force you to adhere to *their* standards out of a desire to prove to them you are intelligent. Frequently used when there's a large audience so that they can "shame you" in front of others.
The appropriate response in such cases is generally "well, I was going to call you an 'alopecic slubbertigullion with the cognitive abilities of a concussed simian' but I figured you wouldn't understand that so I settled for 'stupid bald cunt', OK?"
"Banish the use of the four-letter-word
Whose meanings are never obscure
The Angles and Saxons, those bawdy old birds
Were vulgar, obscene and impure
But cherish the use of the weak-kneed phrase
That never quite says what you mean
You had better be known for your hypocrite ways
Than vulgar, impure or obscene."
<LENGTHY verses - alluding to (but studiously not mentioning) shit, piss, fart, cunt and fuck - snipped>
"So banish the words the Elizabeth used
When she was a queen on her throne
The modern maid's virtue is easily bruised
By the four-letter words when used all alone
Let your morals be loose as an Alderman's vest
So long as the words that you use are obscure
Today not the DEEDS but the WORDS are the test
Of the vulgar, obscene and impure"
The above was penned by the editor of an American newspaper as a protest against the printing restrictions on certain words.
For Fuck's sake, Middle America. Stop moaning about SUPPOSEDLY "offensive words" and stop your TRULY offensive wars.
Brits: get off your moral High Horses - you have just as rigid restrictions on certain words being broadcast at certain times and you were also part of GWB's "Coallition of The Willing [to Invade a Sovereign Nation and Murder its Populace]".
There are things out there that are a lot more obscene than words can ever be - "cunt" was a perfectly acceptable word for that part of the female anatomy until those filthy French river pirates killed the Saxon King (Alfred) and decreed that all Saxon words were vulgar and French was the only "civilised" language. In due course, "English" reasserted itself but retained a lot of French words and this stupid puritanical distaste for those Saxon words that refer to certain parts of anatomy ("hand" and "foot" were still deemed acceptable) and biological functions.
Now "cunt" (M.E. "cunte", O.N. "kunta", L. "cunnus" - uncertain meaning, possibly "gash" or "slit") is rejected as "a negative connotation" but "vagina" which means "sheath" or "scabbard" (typical Doctors' arrogance, naming a part of the WOMAN's anatomy based on what MEN use it for!) is not a negative connotation. So, calling it (possibly) a "slit" is unacceptable, but effectively calling it "something to stick my cock in" is acceptable.
Funny how "Thou shalt not murder" gets a place in the original Ten Commandments these "Moral" people profess to follow while "don't use profane language" is merely one of the thousands of little laws mentioned elsewhere (along with things like "don't eat pig meat" and other biblical laws the "Moral Few" are quite happy to ignore) - yet they're on their high horse about some woman publically quoting a play that happens to use a word that was once (to the Saxons) no more offensive than "hand" or "foot" while their sons and daughters "do God's work" murdering Muslims.
Murder Muslims - but don't use any "dirty" words while doing it.
"Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say Grace" ("Eve of Destruction", Barry McGuire)
... make its own way to the local service station and fill itself up when it "gets hungry"?
If not, then having personnel refuel a fleet (flock? Gaggle/Skein/Murder?) of these things every hour of air time is going to get costly in time, effort and wages.
I bet they want it purely for the "intimidation" value - nothing says "we're serious about using technology to catch dangerous drivers" more than having several thousand dollars worth of airborne spy hovering above the road - too bad that the departmental budget would be pretty-much cleaned out.
Whatever they invest in these things, they would get a lot more coverage if that money were spent on far less showy and less complicated devices - like cameras on poles.
FFS, a traditional ground-based Dalek body equipped with a camera would suffice if they really wanted it to "be mobile and look high-tech".
I gather she's always wanted to be Marilyn and it must be a real boost for her to learn that ONE person on this planet thinks they look alike.
I agree with Blubster. Who IS this twit? Some dork living in his mum's basement and studying 1950s movie stars at Uni?
Perhaps he should do a post-grad degree on the history of motor vehicle design to avoid similar mistakes.
Had a similar experience years ago with an air rifle and received a very light tap when the .177 slug came back at me. It surprised the hell out of me as I wasn't expecting it. Never experienced it with any of my more powerful firearms so far.
To the AC who can smell cow-pats: I suggest the origin of the smell is a lot closer to you than your computer. I get seriously annoyed by those who obviously know no more about firearms than what they've learned from watching Hollywood movies trying to pass themselves off as experts on the topic.
The fire chief did say "I felt something like being hit in the stomach and assumed it was the /percussion/ from the discharged firearm," (my emphasis on "percussion") which suggests it was not a particularly substantial impact so the projectile (or a fragment thereof) was probably already robbed of most its energy prior to striking him.
Milan and gWA.45 are quite correct: in this case, he probably would have been no worse than bruised even if the DVD were not in the way.
He was just plain lucky. If he'd been in a position to take a skimming ricochet of less than 180 degrees (such as gWA.45 mentioned) or the projectile had impacted with less objects en route, he would probably be in hospital getting fragments of projectile and DVD removed from his guts.
>>"By any other arrangement, four people would have been unhappy instead of two."
(Alfred Lord Tennyson, commenting on the marriage of Carlyle vs. Welsh)<<
Excellent quote but what if the bloke concerned were to locate himself a non-smoking (and thereby unlikely to trigger his psychotic episodes) girlfriend and the girl were to locate a smoking (and thereby likely to be accepting of her habit) boyfriend - no one would need to become powder coated or arrested.
For the record, I do not smoke inside non-smokers homes out of respect for them.
Were a non-smoker to disrespect me enough to empty a fire extinguisher of any sort over me, they would *need* to be taken from the scene - most likely to the nearest emergency proctologist...
From what I've read (disclaimer: it may have been discredited or nullified elsewhere by now) there's more to this producing-a-living-creature thing than just a few handfuls of DNA - prions (proteins that tell other proteins how to "fold" into the right (or occasionally wrong) "shape", so far as I am aware) and other "bits 'n' bobs" in the host egg and in the womb play their part in shaping and modifying the growing embryo (so an in vitro embryo implanted in a surrogate mother will not be a true genetic offspring of the original egg and sperm donors in the same way that an in vitro embryo implanted in the egg donor's womb would be).
This would mean that cloned animals - unless the original mother were used as the host and she had been somehow regressed back to the point she was when the original animal was conceived and lots of Powerful JuJu were employed to make all the conditions the same as when the original was conceived (and then that things progress exactly as before despite what Chaos Theory would have us expect) - the cloned animal is not remotely an accurate clone of the original - and that's LONG before we get to nurture-related aspects and the clones not having the original markings as the original.
Even using the original mother as a host would not guarantee the same results.
So, this "clone" will pass a DNA test to prove it has the same actual DNA strands but what has been done with them will be totally different.
@How to make $149,750 profit...
If she's shelling out 150K to get it cloned, you can guarantee she'll get it independently DNA tested to ensure the same genetic material was used - however it will be "cooked" and raised wrong so it won't be remotely like what she is hoping for.
and carry it on me so that the next time some volunteer pedestrian-botherer waves some printed matter at me and tries to make me feel guilty for not donating to (nor signing up and making regular donations to) their worthy cause of "land rights for gay black whales" or whatever, I can wave it under their nose and say "You're all a pack of loonies, fuck off before I douse your bicycle with hydrocarbons and set fire to it."
Had some great laughs at a lot of the posts - still have images in my head of some poor sod of a keeper trying to keep two randy elephants apart...
OUCH!
As for Erica Martin, if she really wants to be of help to animals, I understand that one of the biggest problems facing cheetahs in the wild is that they're so fucked after chasing down their prey they don't have the energy to eat it immediately, nor the strength to defend it - thus they end up getting their food stolen by hyenas and they don't get to replenish the energy they expended making the kill.
What Erica - and many others like her - can do to help is to provide a nice, low-energy-outlay meal for the cheetahs. As there's no way she could run as fast as a healthy gazelle, the cheetah should have ample energy after killing her to eat AND smack down any hyenas that come sniffing about. WIN-WIN situation - for the wild cheetahs and us...
She's probably a vegan and Nature only has one use for herbivores....
just to launch the inflatable test stations. You only need man-rated rockets to get the punters up there once the foothold has been established - so he has a while to get the Atlas V's brought up to spec or an alternative built.
Good on him.
The likes of him and Branson should be applauded for their attempts to Get Things Done. Despite what those with their heads in the sand might think, we've got to get a foothold in space and start using it for energy and resources or we're screwed down here. The more people and agencies (NASA, ESA etc) working towards that end, the better.
Donating his billions to "the poor" might help a few people now, but spending his billions on space research, habitation etc will continue to benefit future generations.
OK, so he hopes to turn a buck or two with it and make a profit - but that will not invalidate the usefulness of whatever technology comes out of his quest. And frankly, if it came down to the wire and only the likes of Bigelow and Branson had the capability (using their commercial enterprises) to put power stations in space and harvest minerals from asteroids, I'd merely be glad there was someone up there capable of doing it - what's the difference between paying them and paying my local power company?
Ohhhhhhhh, yes it is!
Hey, you started it!
Seriously? I lost interest in Minder towards the end of the Waterman years when Terry was behaving too much like Arfur's willing lackey and not telling Arfur to stick his dodgy schemes. Didn't bovver wiv the new Minder after Waterman left, doubt I'll be bovvered wiv this new one eivver...
The whole charm of the programme was the interactions between Arfur and Terry in the earlier seasons.
I certainly hope you had your tongue in your cheek and were being sarcastic in your post.
The USA is as much of a "nanny state" as the UK - and your "Bill of Rights" and much vaunted "2nd Amendment" (to which you alluded in your post) have done precisely "fuck all" to prevent the establishment of the "Patriot Act", the monitoring of electronic communications without warrant and the NSA being directed to spy on other agencies within the USA (amongst other breaches of your basic freedoms).
Your Constitution and your Bill of Rights are the second and third biggest jokes on the planet - right after the phrase: "The Land of The Free".
Go on, take out your 2nd-Amendment-guaranteed firearm and see if it makes the Patriot Act and GW Bush's other unilateral breaches of your civil liberties magically go away.
Regrettably, the "nanny state" thing is slipping insidiously throughout the entire "Western World", fuelled by "terrorism" scaremongering - UK, USA, Europe, even here in New Zealand.
"Pre-empting".
They KNOW it's only a matter of time before one of the twitchy morons in their staggeringly-large number of ARMED Law Enforcement/Security/Military/Espionage agencies throws a spasm and accidentally blows away some harmless pregnant white chick who has a Southern accent so broad you could actually carve bits off it and sell it to the clinically "under-accented".
So they are releasing advisories about "explosive preggy bellies" and "using people who look and sound American" NOW to cover their arses against any backlash later.
@ I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects:
Speak for yourself, I personally wouldn't give the bastard the steam off my turds.
@ "Good to see... " by AC:
"But why disguise yourself as a pregnant women (max explosive carrying capacity circa 10lbs) when you can disguise yourself as an average American and smuggle 200lbs of explosives under a golf shirt?"
That'll be the next preemptive "advisory" based on "no specific, credible intelligence" to cover them should they accidentally blow away some poor lard-arse frantically huffing his way through a crowded public area to get to the doughnut stand - the cops are likely to become quite intimidated by a large bulky mass bearing down upon where they are gathered...
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