Sorry for the lack of posting, I am occupied with other matters. Thank goodness for Tim.
I did make a long and snide post attacking the usual suspects for their feeble attempt to smear Lara Logan and CBS news, but my computer ate it. I leave you to imagine what I might have said.
The Other Steve
I always thought Logan’s Run was a good solution to the Baby Boomer problem.
I vote we implement it at least until the year 2033 when I am ready to retire.
Andrew
Only if all the hot chicks have to wear flimsy togas like in the movie.
dreggas
Death Race 2000 baby, the inspiration for such wonderful games as Carmageddon, just line em up outside the retirement home and racers get points for how many they run over.
scs
My open thread thought for the day is driving safety. I see that singer Brandi(y?) fatally rear-ended her car into someone else recently and also my neighbor’s brother (he was about 30) just died in a car crash as some young guy accidentally crossed the center lane on a two-way road, in the afternoon, and ran into him head on. (He was over-compensating on a curve – but to me that means he was driving too fast)
Why don’t we have more driving safety public service announcements on TV? The driving skills and habits of most people are appalling and a large segment of people show no judgement at all when driving. Car accidents remain one of the largest killers of people in this country.
Chief among these bad skills are tailgating. I cannot STAND tailgaters. Why so many people do it I have no idea. I never do it and have had no accidents ever (knock on wood). I am sure tailgating is probably the number one cause of crashes, besides drunk driving. If you ever see people drive, it’s like they are a flock of sheet with groups of cars all tailing each other, all jammed up on each other, with large free spaces in between the car groups. Well in that large free space between the groups is where I like to drive, without someone riding my butt. If someone insists on tailgating me on the right lane (why they don’t just pass I don’t know) I scoot over to the left lane and slow down so that they pass and then move back to the right. Then the car takes off ahead probably in fear because they think I’m going to run them down. Or if I’m in a a two lane I pull over and let them pass. I will not tolerate tailgating anymore.
Anyway, again, we need PSA’s for this. Maybe those might have reached people like Brandi, and we’d have one more person alive today.
Andrew
scs, I think you have already found the solution to tailgating but you don’t realize it. Once you attach one of your emergency balloons to the car and drive fast, it will be pulled along about 100′ behind the car at highway speed. If someone touches your emergency balloon, then they will know that they are too close.
When are these coming to market?
ThymeZone
Profound. Thanks for that great information.
Bubblegum Tate
I concur. And I further concur about tailgating–that bothers the living shit out of me. I have said many times that the next Californian who learns how to drive will be the first one.
In other news, Bush takes aim at executive salaries. Yeah, uh, color me mighty skeptical that he’s actually sincerely interested in this issue, much less going to do anything about it, but just the simple fact that he acknowledges the massive growth of income inequality (and furthermore that it helps explain why people aren’t exactly thrilled with the economy) puts him well ahead of the wingnuts, who think income inequality doesn’t matter at all and can’t for the life of them figure out why working-class people aren’t ecstatic about the economy.
scs
Youe know “Andrew” I think that is a brilliant idea. So so many uses for the “rescue balloon”.
So how many on here are tailgaters? You know I’ve never actually asked anyone why they do it. Usually if I’m in a car, I’m driving, so I don’t know if the people I know are tailgaters or not, so I’ve never had the opportunity to psychoanalyse one.
Just my guess- ThymeZone is one – judging by his tailgater-like temperament here.
scs
Good going for Bush on the exec salaries. Those are really obscene. There has to be a better way to find good exec material than raiding the same small incestuous pool and ramping up the millions every time they play musical chairs. Maybe an American Idol type show for executives?
scs
Oh wait- we already kind of have one – The Apprentice. We just need to enroll some older people with real corporate experience and better resumes in that show – and voila!- new executives at bargain prices.
Justin Slotman
Anybody got a link to whatever the current Lara Logan smear is? Preferrably one that summarizes it and makes fun of it at the same time, like the post John’s computer ate would have been.
Paul L.
Did You Know We’re Doomed In Ten Years?
I think we should start this year by canceling the Super Bowl and the Oscars to help reduce US carbon dioxide emissions.
You will join me. We got to save the planet.
The Power Is YOURS!
Peace out.
ImJohnGalt
I am not a tailgater, but if I had to guess, tailgaters tailgate because people in America don’t understand that the left lane is the passing lane, and that if there is nobody in front of them they either shouldn’t be in it or had better be going faster than the person behind them.
Driving in Europe is a pleasure – people understand the rules of highway driving.
Punchy
KC just suffered a 35-car pileup. where the hell was this thread yesterday?????
Pb
Because then we’d have to pay more in taxes just to ignore them more often.
I’m in.
Brian Urlacher
You nancy boys are all alike.
Halffasthero
Just a remark on the new Steelers coach posting last week. I didn’t mean to kill the comments with my (slightly) bitter diatribe about the fact that the Vikings were losing their defensive coach to Pittsburg. I will be looking forward to more years of mediocrity (which I have gotten used to) but, admittedly, a chance at head coaching is not going to get passed up by anyone just because the Vikings need a defense.
Good luck to the Steelers next year.
Pb
re:Lara Logan, Terry “Nitpicker” Welch covers it so you don’t have to (via Greenwald):
les
Justin, Sadly No! is on the Logan story too.
Faux News
Don’t forget the orgy room.
Renew! Renew!
The Other Steve
It’s about time he relinquished his own salary.
Pooh
Why do I suspect that now prior to Bush “taking on” executive compensation, SCS thought it was simply good, clean, capitalism at work?
The Other Steve
Slushboxes are evil.
Pooh
And since we are open threading, ladies and gents, the comedy stylings of Joe Biden!
I think the “articulate black guy” thing has been covered pretty well WRT say, Powell…but clean? I suppose he meant as opposed to dirty/crooked, but…
Phillip J. Birmingham
Because you’re driving too goddamn slow!
Rome Again
I’m bound to find out soon. I’ll post the results of the “we’re all gonna die” meter test here.
:p
Pb
Pooh,
But as Daily Kos mentions, a strategically placed comma can make all the difference:
See, that ratchets it down from offensive to stupid–which is pretty good, for Biden! (why the hell is he running, again?)
Rome Again
Unfortunately Pooh, that resembles the attitude of my Delaware-Republican family. Biden has been in Congress since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
Pb
Oh, and as to clean, I’d wager, clean-cut. He’s practically got that baby face thing going on, actually.
dreggas
Yet we still have bush.
As for him taking anything “on” the most he’s taking on is water as he continues to sink. Believing he will do anything about his best buddies in the corporate world making obscene amounts of money of of everyone else’s work is like believing in the tooth fairy.
Rome Again
Because Delaware banking interests want a chance to fuck the American public the way BushCo has. It’s their turn next (or so they think).
Zifnab
Shorter Biden: “Everyone loves the token black guy, but what we need now is leadership.”
TenguPhule
Shorter Paul L: Where is my nuclear flying car and pleasure-bot?!
Because there’s nothing wrong with nuclear power that 10,000 years of decontamination can’t fix.
Pb
Yeah, I’m sure the Bankruptcy Bill (aptly named!) was just the start.
demimondian
What, exactly, do you mean by that, TP? What kind of decontamination are you talking about?
Rome Again
It’s been in the credit cards all along.
Jonathan
All long term motorcyclists know that the way to stay alive is to ride in such a manner that if you were completely invisible, you wouldn’t get hit anyway. If you don’t ride this way then you won’t become a long term motorcyclist, you will become dead.
Part of riding as if invisible is figuring out what the stupidest move anyone close to you could possibly be and then being prepared for that move.
On a good sportbike you can treat cages (cars) as essentially a somewhat mobile obstacle course. You can outbrake, outcorner and vastly outaccelerate virtually any car on the road short of something like a Viper.
People tailgate because just about everyone overestimates their own driving ability and underestimates the stupidity of other drivers. Plus it’s a mostly unconscious attempt to get the person in front of you to speed up.
I’ve driven in the UK and the cops there *will* give you a ticket for blocking the fast lane. Something that is virtually unheard of in the USA.
TenguPhule
old Fuel rods and other assorted waste they still haven’t figured out what to do with yet.
srv
I used to have a “Slower traffic keep right” reverse vinyl across my front windshield in the 80’s. It actually worked pretty well, I think it was almost subconscious. Now you can only get them for death scooters.
My topic for the day would be: Now that the Darrells of the world have lost the war in Iraq, how should they be held accountable?
Jimmy Mack
I wouldn’t mind smearing Lara Logan.
demimondian
But, TP, we *do* know what to do with old fuel rods. The technology to reprocess the dangerous stuff out so that it can be stored safely has been around since the 1940’s. In fact, that’s what Japan does with its spent fuel.
Paul L.
The Global
warmingclimate change problem is paramount and we have to take drastic action and the use of Nuclear will significantly cut greenhouse causing carbon dioxide emissions.BTW, when in the Navy I saw all the safeguards and training required to safely operate a Nuclear fission power plant and I do not believe that it could be done by private individuals unless they have a safer design now. Maybe Pebble Bed Reactors.
I would guess that we would need more than plentiful power (Nuclear or otherwise) for flying cars and pleasure-bots.
And what do you have against pleasure-bots, are you some kind of religious bigot pushing your unenlightened sexual repressions on society?
The Power Is YOURS!
Peace out.
Zifnab
We know Jimmy. That’s why you’re a douche.
Jimmy Mack
Or having her embedded in my unit.
Rome Again
I keep threatening to get a big ass sign that I can just pull out anytime I need it. In my dreams though, I’d have this futuristic red lighted bar sign scrolling sign on the top of my car that says “hey asshole, get out of my way, now”.
Zifnab
… hehe. Embedded in your unit.
Zifnab
Wait, would that make you a lesbian?
ThymeZone
So, she’d be a catheter?
Rome Again
I saw the u, n, and t. Almost missed the i.
Rome Again
Ooooh Rome Again is a very, very bad girl.
ThymeZone
Time for a { pause }
Rome Again
I didn’t give you a heart attack there did I? Sorry if I did.
scs
See I think we’ve hit on it. People tailgate because they think the person in front of them is too slow and some think they will get the people in front to speed up if they do it. I used to jam on the brakes to piss off someone like that but after some guy almost crashed into me, I just started pullling over and letting them pass.
Okay some may think I am a slow driver but I think that I am driving the right speed and everyone else is driving way too fast. Like say for instance when you’re going around curves on two lane or opposing lanes roads – I always slow way down because I find it kind of hard to drive around the curves at faster speeds and still make sure I stay in my lane. I used to think something was wrong with me as the traffic would pile up in back of me, but now the older I get, I see more and more just how many people get in accidents.
I realize that these people are no better at taking curves than I am, they just don’t care as much about crashing. The result is innocent bystanders like my neighbor’s brother dying.
Some people really don’t have a concept of tailgating though. Now that I think about it, I was in the car one time with an acquaintance and he was totally tailgating on a pretty heavily trafficed, fast moving road. I asked him to stop tailgating and he just looked at me in surprise like I was nuts and totally overreacting. He had no concept that what he was doing was tailgating. That’s why I think we need some PSA’s for this. Some people have no clue – and unless someone explains the danger to them – they will do it out of ignorance. It worked for seatbelts.
ThymeZone
Not yet.
Rome Again
Well, I may be one of those people you cited above, but I’m still a careful driver. I haven’t had an accident in over 29 years, and that one was blamed on ice.
Rome Again
Whew! Not ever, you hear me?
ThymeZone
Too late, already had one. Now I’m the subject (along with a few million of my friends) of some fascinating medical articles.
{ milton berle mode }
But I feel like a seventeen year old. Of course, at my age, who can get a seventeen year old?
{ /milton berle mode }
scs
You may be a careful driver, but if for instance a deer runs in front of the car in front of you, and the car in front of you slams on the brakes, you will crash into that car and maybe get killed or kill the person in front of you. If you had left enough room, you would have had time to stop. You can’t cheat physics, no matter how careful a driver you are. Again, that’s why we need PSA’s to combat this kind of ignorant thinking that being a “careful” driver will somehow protect you from tailgating’s effects.
Jane Finch
Best thread line so far.
Rome Again
Well, I don’t tailgate very often these days. I used to as a teenager. If you look at my post, it had nothing to do with tailgating itself (although I understand that was the reason for the post and there was the reason for the confusion), just the “slower traffic stay right” aspect of it.
Jake
Al-Maliki: You kids cut it out!
jaime
RIP Molly Ivins
Rome Again
Thank you for being a voice in the wilderness Molly. We’ll never forget you. Rest in peace.
TenguPhule
The fuel rods are only a small part of it. Granted, the most dangerous too. But all the other radiation contaminated material is the big problem.
Krista
He may have said it first, but the sentiment is all yours, you unrepentant flirt.
And I agree with Jonathan regarding driving as though you’re invisible. I never, ever underestimate the stupidity of other drivers (or of anybody, really), and always drive as though the other drivers can’t see me. If I’m going to pass ’em, I’m passin’ ’em fast. None of this screwing around and only going 1 km/hr faster than the guy I’m passing.
BadTux
Navy reactors have some special considerations. They cannot have a large containment area. They cannot have an expansive water jacket. They cannot have bulky or heavy shielding. They are, fundamentally, less safe than even antiquated first-generation light-water civilian reactors. Furthermore, the design of these reactors dates back to the late 1940’s, and hardly represents the epitomy of modern reactor design.
France gets 97% of its electricity from nuclear or renewable sources, and there’s no reason why the U.S. could not do so too, other than paranoia. Nuclear energy is the only current alternative energy source that has the energy density to support the lifestyle that Americans demand, and modern reactors are far safer than the old 1950’s designs. The French would be happy to sell us lots of their latest design, which is fail-safe short of someone bombing the thing with a bunker buster. And yes, I know the lefty complaints about the American lifestyle, but let’s face it, the average American isn’t going to listen to lefty whining and change his lifestyle, so we might as well put “lifestyle change” out of the picture and deal with reality as it is, not as we’d like it to be. And reality is that nuclear is the only alternative to fossil fuels that’s going to provide high-density electrical generation capacity on a large-scale basis.
(As for the fuel disposal issue, as someone else noted, that’s a problem that’s been solved — except that, since reprocessing the rods results in lots of nice bomb-grade Pu-239, it’s currently not a “politically correct” option, even though the Pu-239 could be used with U-238 to fuel breeder reactors and thus further extend the amount of fissionable fuel available).
srv
Crap. Wish I was at Scholz Garten tonight.
rachel
Here’s something I don’t understand: uranium and all the other radioactive material used in reactors was originally mined from the earth. Would putting it back where we found it when we’re done with it change the net balance of things found in nature that are bad for you?
The Other Steve
Actually you know what the problem is?
It’s that you are in front of them. It doesn’t matter how fast you are going.
A tip a coworker of mine years ago taught me to help get rid of cops on the road. You drive along in the left lane until you got someone tailgating you, then you speed up just a bit past the limit… say 80 in a 70. Then when you have a chance, get over into the right lane.
At this point you can slow back down to say 75 and be safe from being pulled for speeding. The guy who was tailgating you is going to be doing 90 for the next 5 minutes or so and will clear out any cops who might be up ahead.
Repeat as necessary.
There are a lot of people on the road who just can’t stand to have anybody in front of them. doesn’t matter how fast you are going.
Jonathan
Where I live you can do 80 in a 70 zone and get passed quite regularly. I don’t worry about ten mph over the speed limit, it’s only in the rare speed trap that cops will pull you over for less than 10 mph over.
My daughter married the son of the number two man in the local sheriff department. She has been busted for speeding twice now in the county and both times when the officer took her license to write the ticket he would look at the last name and say “are you related to Major H” and my daughter would say “yes, I’m his daughter in law”. She was let go with a verbal warning to slow down both times.
It’s not how fast you go, it’s who you know.
BadTux
What got mined was U-238 with a trace of U-235. If it’s going to be used in a light water reactor (the usual type of reactor for civilian use due to safety reasons ruling out graphite-moderated reactors and heavy water reactors being so expensive to operate), a bunch of the U-238 is then thrown away via mechanical means (since they cannot be chemically seperated, either atom size or atomic weight is used to seperate them via either a membrane chain or a centrifuge chain) to enrich the ore to around 1-5% U-235. This is considerably more radioactive than raw uranium ore, and those radioactive particles are slamming into whatever is around the now-enriched ore at high speed. So anyhow, this thing is put into a nuclear reactor, and a moderator added to slow down the radioactive particles emitting from the U-235 so that they ram into other U-235 or into U-238 atoms rather than simply shooting right on through into never-never land. Some of the U-235 fissions or splits and releases energy as well as creating new highly radioactive isotopes, some of the particles released by this fissioning or splitting in turn ram into U-238 and transmute it to Pu-239 (another highly radioactive element), and, anyhow, you basically end up with a lot of radioactive elements once all this is done with that did not exist in the original ore.
Now, what ends up happening to the fuel rod over time is that you get “damper” elements building up, like U-236 or Pu-240, that don’t fission like U-235 or Pu-239. Instead, they absorb, deflect, or slow down the particles that were intended to fission the lighter isotopes and the output of the reactor slowly fizzles out. The problem is that the fuel rod still has plenty of fissionable material in it — the U-235 and Pu-239 — as well as plenty of U-238 to transmute into more Pu-239 via neutron bombardment, and if you got rid of the “junk” neutron sink isotopes, you could use that U-235 and Pu-239 in a new fuel rod. And some of the other radioactive isotopes created could themselves be used to power a different kind of fission reactor (see “actinide cycle”).
But anyhow, the disposal problem is a little harder than you’d think at first glance because of all that energetic particle slingin’ going on inside a reactor, which is ramming into everything and transmuting it into other isotopes or even other elements, many of which are themselves more radioactive than the source element (i.e., Pu-239 is an order of magnitude more radioactive than its U-238 source element). But anything that’s radioactive enough to present a disposal problem is also radioactive enough to itself be used as fuel. So what we have here is a technological problem that is solvable, not an irresolvable flaw in the notion of nuclear power.