Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.
Then there was the flustered questioning from John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican who was briefly Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence – until he was overwhelmed by his own problematic relationship with the truth on his personal résumé.
“Are either of you here today to assert there was an impeachable offense in that call?” Ratcliffe barked at the two unimpeachable witnesses. “Shout it out – anyone?”
As Taylor tried to explain that it’s for congressmen to answer, Ratcliffe withdrew his own question.
“This is your job,” said Taylor, speaking on behalf of us all. If only Republican members of Congress understood the strange foreign language these career diplomats speak.
There’s a great podcast where Cory Doctorow talks to Sean Carroll, and Doctorow brought up something that I forgot. Piketty showed that wealth accumulates and inequalities widens, until some calamity happens. But what I forgot, is that the more wealth accumulates, the more growth slows. Rich people just don’t spend their money, and that money winds up chasing investments that can’t pay off and creating bubbles etcetera. When the calamity happens that reduces the wealth of rich people and decreases inequality, you get a period of higher growth.
Another reason Warren’s tax on extreme wealth is a good idea.
The Wikipedia guy is trying to start a social network that doesn’t sell your data. I tried to share a link to it to my friends on Facebook, and FB won’t allow a link to it. Shocker.
I stopped being a power computer user 14 years ago. Why do I still use a laptop? I’m seriously thinking about my next computer being a tablet. I found out i can get an unlimited data plan on a tablet. I’m fairly sure now that i’m dropping this laptop soon. I talked to my friend who runs an Apple store, and she said that these days she tells 90% of people to just get a tablet.
Want to spend 19 hrs and 19 minutes cooped up with 300 irritable, bored to tears, sleep deprived, underfed, over stressed people? Qantas has a flight for you.
@Teve: One area where capitalism in theory is at odds with capitalism in practice is how often both giant companies and billionaires are happier with a larger slice of a smaller pie than with a smaller slice of a larger pie.
@Kit: I remember reading about a sociology or psychology study years ago which showed the seemingly counterintuitive notion that the richer a person got, the greedier they became.
It always comes down to use cases. Once a week I’ll hop on my Mac to tackle a few jobs that are simply easier on that platform. But even still, I am constantly picking up my phone wherever it’s interface does the job better.
One thing to keep in mind is that a decent laptop can easily handle everything the average user will throw at it for a good ten years. A tablet from Apple probably only goes five years, and from other manufacturers perhaps three.
One small detail that could tip the balance: writing OTB comments is much easier on a PC because the text box can be resized. I hate the tiny view I’m limited to on a phone!
the richer a person got, the greedier they became.
I imagine that a man like Bloomberg would make for a typical story. In the first half of his life, his fortune grows as a consequence of his business growing. The money’s great, of course, but it’s not the passion. In the second half, he grows old and his interests move to money and the power it confers. And the louder the boneyard beckons, the tighter he grasps the money bag. No one deserves his money, is worthy of it, but he cannot take it with him…
Don Junior’s book Triggered has shot to the top of the NYT best seller list. The dagger symbol next to the title indicates that it’s been purchased in bulk. By the RNC or the Trump campaign or both, I would guess.
We know Junior didn’t write it. But has he read it?
My principle PC is a laptop at this point. While there are many things that a phone and a tablet are useful for, writing blog posts is not one of them, and I also use it for other matters. I still have a desktop tower but I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to
While there are many things that a phone and a tablet are useful for, writing blog posts is not one of them,
Content creators generally need keyboards, large screens, and mice. But tablets are starting to get there. By the time they do, however, I’m afraid that my content “creation” will be limited to the comment section on this site.
at Mach 2 the Concorde burned 1⅓ gallons of fuel per second
Then again (assuming my calculations are correct), that’s about a third of a mile for 100 odd passengers. That doesn’t sound too bad! Wouldn’t that come to 25mpg per head?
@Kit: it was extremely efficient at Mach 2, but extremely inefficient at getting there. I remember reading that it could take a ton or more of fuel just to taxi on the runway, and it averaged something like 13 passenger miles per gallon. but it’s early here on the east coast and Kathy should be along in a few hours to give us a comprehensive and more accurate explanation.
I have seen some people using tablets with attached keyboard accessories, and the Microsoft Surface is kind of an attempt to simulate that, but the other thing I prefer is a larger screen size since it allows me to keep multiple windows and tabs open while I work on stuff for here or for work.
My previous laptop (a Dell that crapped out because of power supply issues, the second time in a decade that’s happened to me so I’ve basically sworn off Dell for now) also had a touchscreen but I almost never used it. Thus, when I got a new laptop I was able to save money by opting for the model that had plenty of storage, a nice big screen, and a big hard drive but lacked the touchscreen I almost never used anyway
it’s early here on the east coast and Kathy should be along in a few hours to give us a comprehensive and more accurate explanation.
🙂
This got me thinking about the Atlas V, which burned 40,000 pounds of fuel per second! I find that difficult to visualize. A bit of digging turned up the nugget that the trip to the moon and back needed about one gallon per mile.
And that got me wondering about this article I glanced at recently where Elon Musk claimed he would need 1,000 rockets for 20 years in order to set up a self-sustaining city on Mars. Not sure what the environmental impact would be back here on Earth…
I prefer is a larger screen size since it allows me to keep multiple windows and tabs open while I work on stuff for here or for work.
Yo tambien, Amigo. Also, as far as this fat fingered fuck is concerned, touchscreens are the spawn of the devil. The last time I was in the hospital, my wife lent her iPad to me. “MY KINGDOM FOR A MOUSE!” Every time she hands me her iPhone, it goes whack-a-doodle just by virtue of my taking it from her hand.
the other thing I prefer is a larger screen size since it allows me to keep multiple windows and tabs open while I work on stuff for here or for work.
Given the number of sources one of your typical posts ties together, a large screen must be essential. Often, these posts are the most comprehensive bar none to be found on a given topic. We probably take you a bit for granted at times, but you really are the beating heart of OTB, Doug!
@Teve: I think it largely has to do with Lord Acton’s dictum, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s been noted elsewhere that, for the ultra-rich, wealth and income are the scorecard, and economic usefulness has nothing to do with it. Ever-rising wealth can easily be translated into greater individual power. Case in point: Trump, Donald J.
@Kit: depends what you use as fuel and how you manufacture it. Remember that the usual fuel is hydrogen and oxygen, which can be produced through electrophoresis.
The major complaint I would have is water is too useful for biological support to piss away as raw material as rocket fuel. Ion thrusters, perhaps?
[This is a “for the record post” and is aimed at non-Trumpers.]
For years Trump has been saying he wants to release his tax returns but cannot because they are being audited. (BS, but sufficient for Trumpers). Now he is literally going to court to keep them from being released.
Tabbed browing has made having multiple sources open at once a lot easier, but I will say I try to keep the number of open tabs as low as possible since it can get confusing.
A friend of mine, meanwhile, once told me that he can typically have 20-30 open tabs in Chrome at once. Yikes.
Remember that the usual fuel is hydrogen and oxygen, which can be produced through electrophoresis.
I thought the fuel was kerosene, but a quick look showed that the latest SpaceX engines use liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Wouldn’t the methane be especially bad for the atmosphere?
Ah, the tablet vs laptop/desktop takes me back to the days fighting the war on Windows 8 (*), may it rot in Hell.
I think we may eventually get a phone, not a tablet, that can be docked in a station, either fixed or portable, with a large screen, large keyboard, and mouse. That way you can use it on the go, and have a serious machine for work and leisure as well.
I had a Nexus 7 tablet which I very much liked, but only as an entertainment device. it was fine for web browsing, email, and games, but I dreaded having to even look up a spreadsheet on it. The screen is nowhere near big enough.
(*) I called it WINDOS, which stands for Windows 8 Is Not a Desktop Operating System.
It’s not easy finding reliable figures for Concorde that are not highly technical. Some claim it used up as much fuel just taxiing to the runway, as a fully loaded 737 on a maximum range trip. But then one would ask “what generation 737?”
Air travel is the most energy intensive regular form of transportation (rockets are worse, but not used regularly). The heavier the plane, the more fuel it needs. The faster it flies, also the more fuel it needs. A turboprop plane, like the ATR, uses comparatively little fuel, but it flies more slowly than a jet and isn’t as big. It can be made bigger (see the C-130 Hercules), but not much faster.
A supersonic jet uses up enormous amounts of fuel to accelerate to top speed and to maintain it, and this cannot change.
What can change is the fuel. Hydrogen would work for jets, but it has plenty of drawbacks from lack of infrastructure to temperature issues, to volume needed. A nuclear reactor would be great energy-wise. but 1) a fission reactor would be too heavy, 2) fusion reactors don’t yet exist and probably will be even heavier, 3) a crash could create fallout or, 4) I’m not clear what happens to a fusion reactor that loses containment; I know there is a volume of hydrogen at very high pressure at extremely high temperature, so I figure nothing good.
Either the use of non-carbon energy sources on land for transportation, industry, and home use will grow large enough for thousands of supersonic planes not to matter much as far as carbon goes, or a cleaner fuel will need to be developed, or some means to offset the emissions will need to be found.
Some airlines offer carbon offsets for sale. I don’t know how effective that is (for all I know it’s just like buying indulgences), but given the costs of air travel, and if the offsets have any benefit at all, they way to make them work is to incorporate them into the fare in a non-optional way, like taxes and fees.
Hydrogen is a popular rocket fuel, but mostly for upper stages. The Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo to the Moon, used hydrogen in the second and third stages. The first, and largest, stage used kerosene. The Shuttle used hydrogen for the main engines (a kind of co-first and second stage), but solid fuel boosters as well. Spaceship One (remember it?), and its eventual Virgin Galactic derivative, over 15 years in the making, use a hybrid rocket motor with a solid propellant and liquid oxygen.
I got hammered yesterday for observing that Ambassador Taylor’s reference to his staff member overhearing a call between Trump and Sondland was the very definition of hearsay. Now let’s talk about how investigations work.
Taylor has signaled to Sondland that there is a witness who will testify that Sondland heard this. That witness is being deposed today and I would bet cash money that his deposition will be public within a week. Now there appears to be a second witness to the same call. Same issue for Sondland.
Once this trap has been set, it will be time for Sondland to give his public testimony. We know he figured only after his deposition that everyone else here intended to tell the whole story and tried to reposition himself to avoid perjury charges. Once he gets back in the witness chair with at least two credible witnesses describing that call, what are his options? If he caves to WH pressure not to testify (as The Bulwark conjectures) in the face of these witnesses, how does that look?
Speaking of Concorde specifically, google “why Concorde failed” and you’ll find a myriad links to opinions and analyses on the matter. The short version:
It debuted soon after the first global oil shock, which made its high (ie expensive) fuel consumption a very big issue. The other factor was the prohibition of supersonic flight over land. This made it a niche plane for certain routes only. Also it exacerbated the fuel situation, as it had to maintain subsonic flight for long periods, rather than accelerating straight to cruising speed (depending on route).
Air France flew the Concorde to Mexico City for a few years(*), via New York. The straight route NYC-MEX is mostly over land, with a short segment over the Gulf of Mexico. Concorde flew out into the Atlantic, then southwest roughly paralleling the coast, then turned west past Florida into the Gulf, and it decelerated to subsonic speed close to land and flew to MEX that way. It was faster than the overland route would have been at subsonic speeds.
All told, about 20 Concordes were built, operated mainly by British Airways and Air France. I say mainly, because at least two other airlines, Braniff and Singapore, leased Concordes for brief periods from BA and operated them.
You know it’s another day at the office, when the reply from tech support to an email requires me to take a few minutes to calm down before I can answer it.
@Kit: It’s conspicuous consumption. Nothing says rich as well as owning something that no one else can even imagine having or wanting. Pie’s gotta be mighty small to do that.
I just saw a writer on twitter say that every Frasier episode has the same plot but it’s still great. Now, I’m big Wodehouse fan. I was sad when I ran out of Bertie and Jeeves stories. I even read the new Sebastian Faulks book. Every Bertie and Jeeves story is essentially the same thing. But they’re so wonderfully done you don’t care. But–I’ve seen a lot of Frasier and I didn’t notice this. Is it true?
BREAKING:
Roger Stone has been found GUILTY.
Because of impeachment this case hasn’t gotten a lot of play…but the testimony, in this trial alone, would have brought down any other President.
I just saw a writer on twitter say that every Frasier episode has the same plot but it’s still great.
Sitcoms start with our heroes in their usual situation, throw up some difficulty, then spend the rest of the episode showing how they get back to their original situation. There are only so many ways to work that.
It’s like Chandler in “Friends” says of Three’s Company: “I think this is the one where there is some sort of misunderstanding.” Or The Brain about Gilligan’s Island, claiming to have watched only one episode: “It was the one where that innocuous dunderhead Gilligan ruined it for everybody.” Pinky then says “I must have missed that one.”
So, what would be the one sentence description of the majority of Frasier’s plots? I suppose most include: Frasier can’t establish a long-term relationship with a woman, he learns to get along with his father, and Niles makes it clear to everyone he is in love with Daphne (and Daphne fails to notice).
Not before Stone offers testimony to the Feds and the Impeachment committees about Dennison.
But if he pardons him then, he can be forced to give up all he knows about Trump, as the 5th amendment wouldn’t apply, but lying to Congress and the FBI would be new crimes. I think.
Really, the Founders and Framers did an awful job providing cover for criminals in high office.
Guardian reports that Roger Stone convicted on all counts. Also, his nutjob buddy Alex Jones reported getting a communication from Stone seeking “prayers” and a pardon. I’m praying that he gets several years in the slammer.
I’m not clear what happens to a fusion reactor that loses containment; I know there is a volume of hydrogen at very high pressure at extremely high temperature, so I figure nothing good.
Beyond damage to the local structure, nothing serious happens. The density of the gas in an operating tokamak (eg, ITER) is a pretty darned good vacuum. If magnetic confinement fails, and the plasma comes in contact with the containment vessel, the plasma is quenched almost instantly. Thermal quench time is measured in milliseconds. ITER is designed to tolerate ~2500 thermal quenches over its operating lifetime. (They’re still working on a solution to the runaway electron problem, but while RE is capable of ruining the vacuum vessel, it poses no danger outside the overall structure.)
The density of the gas in an operating tokamak (eg, ITER) is a pretty darned good vacuum.
It may be a violation of federal truth-in-advertising law to use the words operating and ITER in the same sentence…
ST PAUL-LEZ-DURANCE, France (20 June 2019) – The ITER Council has convened to review the performance of the ITER Project toward First Plasma in 2025. The Council evaluated the progress of manufacturing, construction and installation against established performance metrics and the Revised Construction Strategy approved in June 2018. Project execution to achieve First Plasma is now more than 63% complete.
Fusion is the power of the future, and always will be.
If I were dictator, I’d be spending about $200 Billion on R&D for battery technology. A fusion generator 93 million miles away is giving us all the energy we could want for free, we just haven’t figured out how to store it well.
(And getting that 200B would be easy because i’d put our military on funding parity with China’s)
It may be a violation of federal truth-in-advertising law to use the words operating and ITER in the same sentence…
The Germans got some interesting results with the last version of their stellarator, but that’s down for another year now while they do the next set of upgrades. The neat part of that project for me is that it’s only possible because supercomputers have gotten big and fast enough to solve the magnet-shape optimization problem.
it was the 70’s! The infinite regression was the point!
Yep. There’s a long history of geeky recursion jokes in textbooks, such as having a Glossary entry “Recursion: see Recursion” , or an index entry for recursion giving the page number of the index entry.
@Kit: Just take it as a given that if we’re colonizing Mars 1) conditions on Earth are pretty dismal and 2) people stopped giving a fwk because “we’re gonna colonize Mars; who cares what’s happening here?”
@Teve: Record cold here and in many parts of the country. November is usually a mild, pleasant fall month.
There is talk on the local radio of all these jet contrails and the effects on the weather. They say they are spraying chemicals to cool the temperatures.
@Tyrell: Chemtrails?! Seriously? Chemtrails? You got some seriously fwcked up, Ted Nugent level fwcked up, local radio. Or local radio audience.
If you look you can find pictures of WWII B17s leaving contrails, condensation trails. Condensing water vapor. Water. Think the socialist climatologist take over the world plot goes back to 1944?
@gVOR08: You know what’s really depressing? Thinking about the fact that for every guy like Tyrell, JKB, Guarneri, Paul L. etc, there are millions more that believe the same crap. So much so that they’ll go online and defend it.
We’re hosed. The next several Presidents really need to focus on educating the populace.
Richard Engel
@RichardEngel
·
1h
Massive attacks underway against the kurds in northern syria. No ceasefire. Total nonsenses there is. US military officials tell me they are ashamed, “sickened.” It’s cold now outside. What about the families, and kids, out of their homes?
@OARichardEngel
#AmericanBetrayal
Richard Engel
@RichardEngel
·
1h
The more I talk talk to sources, the more i’m hearing America’s betrayal of the Kurds, and the humiliation, “misogynistic” “squashing” of US ambassador in Ukraine for political motivations makes people think, we, Americans, have become the “bad guys.” Hearing it was gut punch.
There’s a great podcast where Cory Doctorow talks to Sean Carroll, and Doctorow brought up something that I forgot. Piketty showed that wealth accumulates and inequalities widens, until some calamity happens. But what I forgot, is that the more wealth accumulates, the more growth slows. Rich people just don’t spend their money, and that money winds up chasing investments that can’t pay off and creating bubbles etcetera. When the calamity happens that reduces the wealth of rich people and decreases inequality, you get a period of higher growth.
Another reason Warren’s tax on extreme wealth is a good idea.
podcast here
The Wikipedia guy is trying to start a social network that doesn’t sell your data. I tried to share a link to it to my friends on Facebook, and FB won’t allow a link to it. Shocker.
I stopped being a power computer user 14 years ago. Why do I still use a laptop? I’m seriously thinking about my next computer being a tablet. I found out i can get an unlimited data plan on a tablet. I’m fairly sure now that i’m dropping this laptop soon. I talked to my friend who runs an Apple store, and she said that these days she tells 90% of people to just get a tablet.
Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times basically says the same thing.
Want to spend 19 hrs and 19 minutes cooped up with 300 irritable, bored to tears, sleep deprived, underfed, over stressed people? Qantas has a flight for you.
@Teve: One area where capitalism in theory is at odds with capitalism in practice is how often both giant companies and billionaires are happier with a larger slice of a smaller pie than with a smaller slice of a larger pie.
31 countries where the “American dream” is more attainable than the US so sayeth Bidness Insider.
@Kit: I remember reading about a sociology or psychology study years ago which showed the seemingly counterintuitive notion that the richer a person got, the greedier they became.
@Teve: Re: computers
It always comes down to use cases. Once a week I’ll hop on my Mac to tackle a few jobs that are simply easier on that platform. But even still, I am constantly picking up my phone wherever it’s interface does the job better.
One thing to keep in mind is that a decent laptop can easily handle everything the average user will throw at it for a good ten years. A tablet from Apple probably only goes five years, and from other manufacturers perhaps three.
One small detail that could tip the balance: writing OTB comments is much easier on a PC because the text box can be resized. I hate the tiny view I’m limited to on a phone!
@Teve:
I imagine that a man like Bloomberg would make for a typical story. In the first half of his life, his fortune grows as a consequence of his business growing. The money’s great, of course, but it’s not the passion. In the second half, he grows old and his interests move to money and the power it confers. And the louder the boneyard beckons, the tighter he grasps the money bag. No one deserves his money, is worthy of it, but he cannot take it with him…
Don Junior’s book Triggered has shot to the top of the NYT best seller list. The dagger symbol next to the title indicates that it’s been purchased in bulk. By the RNC or the Trump campaign or both, I would guess.
We know Junior didn’t write it. But has he read it?
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is why we need supersonic and hypersonic planes sooner rather than later.
@Kit:
My principle PC is a laptop at this point. While there are many things that a phone and a tablet are useful for, writing blog posts is not one of them, and I also use it for other matters. I still have a desktop tower but I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to
@Doug Mataconis: Didn’t they try that with the Concorde, and it turned out to be commercially unfeasible?
@Doug Mataconis:
The geek in me loves the technology, but I think the planet would be better off without it.
@CSK: at Mach 2 the Concorde burned 1⅓ gallons of fuel per second. 😀 😀 😀
@Teve: No wonder no one could afford tickets.
@Doug Mataconis:
Content creators generally need keyboards, large screens, and mice. But tablets are starting to get there. By the time they do, however, I’m afraid that my content “creation” will be limited to the comment section on this site.
@Teve:
Then again (assuming my calculations are correct), that’s about a third of a mile for 100 odd passengers. That doesn’t sound too bad! Wouldn’t that come to 25mpg per head?
@Kit: it was extremely efficient at Mach 2, but extremely inefficient at getting there. I remember reading that it could take a ton or more of fuel just to taxi on the runway, and it averaged something like 13 passenger miles per gallon. but it’s early here on the east coast and Kathy should be along in a few hours to give us a comprehensive and more accurate explanation.
@Kit:
I have seen some people using tablets with attached keyboard accessories, and the Microsoft Surface is kind of an attempt to simulate that, but the other thing I prefer is a larger screen size since it allows me to keep multiple windows and tabs open while I work on stuff for here or for work.
My previous laptop (a Dell that crapped out because of power supply issues, the second time in a decade that’s happened to me so I’ve basically sworn off Dell for now) also had a touchscreen but I almost never used it. Thus, when I got a new laptop I was able to save money by opting for the model that had plenty of storage, a nice big screen, and a big hard drive but lacked the touchscreen I almost never used anyway
Trump and his party of pollution
@Teve:
🙂
This got me thinking about the Atlas V, which burned 40,000 pounds of fuel per second! I find that difficult to visualize. A bit of digging turned up the nugget that the trip to the moon and back needed about one gallon per mile.
And that got me wondering about this article I glanced at recently where Elon Musk claimed he would need 1,000 rockets for 20 years in order to set up a self-sustaining city on Mars. Not sure what the environmental impact would be back here on Earth…
@Doug Mataconis:
Yo tambien, Amigo. Also, as far as this fat fingered fuck is concerned, touchscreens are the spawn of the devil. The last time I was in the hospital, my wife lent her iPad to me. “MY KINGDOM FOR A MOUSE!” Every time she hands me her iPhone, it goes whack-a-doodle just by virtue of my taking it from her hand.
@Doug Mataconis:
Given the number of sources one of your typical posts ties together, a large screen must be essential. Often, these posts are the most comprehensive bar none to be found on a given topic. We probably take you a bit for granted at times, but you really are the beating heart of OTB, Doug!
@Teve: I think it largely has to do with Lord Acton’s dictum, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s been noted elsewhere that, for the ultra-rich, wealth and income are the scorecard, and economic usefulness has nothing to do with it. Ever-rising wealth can easily be translated into greater individual power. Case in point: Trump, Donald J.
@Kit: depends what you use as fuel and how you manufacture it. Remember that the usual fuel is hydrogen and oxygen, which can be produced through electrophoresis.
The major complaint I would have is water is too useful for biological support to piss away as raw material as rocket fuel. Ion thrusters, perhaps?
[This is a “for the record post” and is aimed at non-Trumpers.]
For years Trump has been saying he wants to release his tax returns but cannot because they are being audited. (BS, but sufficient for Trumpers). Now he is literally going to court to keep them from being released.
@Grumpy realist: ion thrusters are highly efficient but produce minuscule thrust.
@Kit:
Tabbed browing has made having multiple sources open at once a lot easier, but I will say I try to keep the number of open tabs as low as possible since it can get confusing.
A friend of mine, meanwhile, once told me that he can typically have 20-30 open tabs in Chrome at once. Yikes.
@Grumpy realist:
I thought the fuel was kerosene, but a quick look showed that the latest SpaceX engines use liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Wouldn’t the methane be especially bad for the atmosphere?
@Teve:
Since you didn’t share a link or identify it, it’s called WT Social, should anyone care to look it up.
@CSK:
I’m sure he’ll read it as soon as Triggered for Dummies comes out.
@Kathy:
I was tempted to say that he would wait for the film, but on second thought I think he will wait for the video game based on the film.
@Kathy: HA! I’d give that a thousand thumbs up if I could.
@Kit:
Ah, the tablet vs laptop/desktop takes me back to the days fighting the war on Windows 8 (*), may it rot in Hell.
I think we may eventually get a phone, not a tablet, that can be docked in a station, either fixed or portable, with a large screen, large keyboard, and mouse. That way you can use it on the go, and have a serious machine for work and leisure as well.
I had a Nexus 7 tablet which I very much liked, but only as an entertainment device. it was fine for web browsing, email, and games, but I dreaded having to even look up a spreadsheet on it. The screen is nowhere near big enough.
(*) I called it WINDOS, which stands for Windows 8 Is Not a Desktop Operating System.
@Teve:
That’s the curse of a reputation…
It’s not easy finding reliable figures for Concorde that are not highly technical. Some claim it used up as much fuel just taxiing to the runway, as a fully loaded 737 on a maximum range trip. But then one would ask “what generation 737?”
Air travel is the most energy intensive regular form of transportation (rockets are worse, but not used regularly). The heavier the plane, the more fuel it needs. The faster it flies, also the more fuel it needs. A turboprop plane, like the ATR, uses comparatively little fuel, but it flies more slowly than a jet and isn’t as big. It can be made bigger (see the C-130 Hercules), but not much faster.
A supersonic jet uses up enormous amounts of fuel to accelerate to top speed and to maintain it, and this cannot change.
What can change is the fuel. Hydrogen would work for jets, but it has plenty of drawbacks from lack of infrastructure to temperature issues, to volume needed. A nuclear reactor would be great energy-wise. but 1) a fission reactor would be too heavy, 2) fusion reactors don’t yet exist and probably will be even heavier, 3) a crash could create fallout or, 4) I’m not clear what happens to a fusion reactor that loses containment; I know there is a volume of hydrogen at very high pressure at extremely high temperature, so I figure nothing good.
Either the use of non-carbon energy sources on land for transportation, industry, and home use will grow large enough for thousands of supersonic planes not to matter much as far as carbon goes, or a cleaner fuel will need to be developed, or some means to offset the emissions will need to be found.
Some airlines offer carbon offsets for sale. I don’t know how effective that is (for all I know it’s just like buying indulgences), but given the costs of air travel, and if the offsets have any benefit at all, they way to make them work is to incorporate them into the fare in a non-optional way, like taxes and fees.
@Kit:
Hydrogen is a popular rocket fuel, but mostly for upper stages. The Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo to the Moon, used hydrogen in the second and third stages. The first, and largest, stage used kerosene. The Shuttle used hydrogen for the main engines (a kind of co-first and second stage), but solid fuel boosters as well. Spaceship One (remember it?), and its eventual Virgin Galactic derivative, over 15 years in the making, use a hybrid rocket motor with a solid propellant and liquid oxygen.
Thanks Kathy. Yeah here’s the friends link to it. I’m wait-listed but I hate FB.
I got hammered yesterday for observing that Ambassador Taylor’s reference to his staff member overhearing a call between Trump and Sondland was the very definition of hearsay. Now let’s talk about how investigations work.
Taylor has signaled to Sondland that there is a witness who will testify that Sondland heard this. That witness is being deposed today and I would bet cash money that his deposition will be public within a week. Now there appears to be a second witness to the same call. Same issue for Sondland.
Once this trap has been set, it will be time for Sondland to give his public testimony. We know he figured only after his deposition that everyone else here intended to tell the whole story and tried to reposition himself to avoid perjury charges. Once he gets back in the witness chair with at least two credible witnesses describing that call, what are his options? If he caves to WH pressure not to testify (as The Bulwark conjectures) in the face of these witnesses, how does that look?
That is lawyering.
Speaking of Concorde specifically, google “why Concorde failed” and you’ll find a myriad links to opinions and analyses on the matter. The short version:
It debuted soon after the first global oil shock, which made its high (ie expensive) fuel consumption a very big issue. The other factor was the prohibition of supersonic flight over land. This made it a niche plane for certain routes only. Also it exacerbated the fuel situation, as it had to maintain subsonic flight for long periods, rather than accelerating straight to cruising speed (depending on route).
Air France flew the Concorde to Mexico City for a few years(*), via New York. The straight route NYC-MEX is mostly over land, with a short segment over the Gulf of Mexico. Concorde flew out into the Atlantic, then southwest roughly paralleling the coast, then turned west past Florida into the Gulf, and it decelerated to subsonic speed close to land and flew to MEX that way. It was faster than the overland route would have been at subsonic speeds.
All told, about 20 Concordes were built, operated mainly by British Airways and Air France. I say mainly, because at least two other airlines, Braniff and Singapore, leased Concordes for brief periods from BA and operated them.
This ought to be interesting: Trump asks supreme court to block release of his tax returns
You know it’s another day at the office, when the reply from tech support to an email requires me to take a few minutes to calm down before I can answer it.
@Kathy: or maybe GNU WINDOS…
(GNU was/is an operating system that did everything UNIX did but was open source. GNU stood for GNU is Not UNIX. Linux pretty much took over for GNU)
@Kit: It’s conspicuous consumption. Nothing says rich as well as owning something that no one else can even imagine having or wanting. Pie’s gotta be mighty small to do that.
I just saw a writer on twitter say that every Frasier episode has the same plot but it’s still great. Now, I’m big Wodehouse fan. I was sad when I ran out of Bertie and Jeeves stories. I even read the new Sebastian Faulks book. Every Bertie and Jeeves story is essentially the same thing. But they’re so wonderfully done you don’t care. But–I’ve seen a lot of Frasier and I didn’t notice this. Is it true?
According to a lawyer friend, trump is tweeting about the witness while she is testifying and Schiff just asked her what she thought of it.
BREAKING:
Roger Stone has been found GUILTY.
Because of impeachment this case hasn’t gotten a lot of play…but the testimony, in this trial alone, would have brought down any other President.
@Teve:
Sitcoms start with our heroes in their usual situation, throw up some difficulty, then spend the rest of the episode showing how they get back to their original situation. There are only so many ways to work that.
@Teve:
Strictly speaking, no. but many eps are similar.
It’s like Chandler in “Friends” says of Three’s Company: “I think this is the one where there is some sort of misunderstanding.” Or The Brain about Gilligan’s Island, claiming to have watched only one episode: “It was the one where that innocuous dunderhead Gilligan ruined it for everybody.” Pinky then says “I must have missed that one.”
So, what would be the one sentence description of the majority of Frasier’s plots? I suppose most include: Frasier can’t establish a long-term relationship with a woman, he learns to get along with his father, and Niles makes it clear to everyone he is in love with Daphne (and Daphne fails to notice).
That’s hard to boil down to one sentence.
Roger Stone found guilty on 8 out of 7 counts. He was THAT guilty.
@Teve:
LMFAO
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
How long before the Presidential Pardon comes?
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Not before Stone offers testimony to the Feds and the Impeachment committees about Dennison.
But if he pardons him then, he can be forced to give up all he knows about Trump, as the 5th amendment wouldn’t apply, but lying to Congress and the FBI would be new crimes. I think.
Really, the Founders and Framers did an awful job providing cover for criminals in high office.
Guardian reports that Roger Stone convicted on all counts. Also, his nutjob buddy Alex Jones reported getting a communication from Stone seeking “prayers” and a pardon. I’m praying that he gets several years in the slammer.
@Teve: TPM and the Guardian say he is guilty on ALL counts.
Either way, my Fruede is thoroughly schadened this morn.
@Teve: it couldn’t happen to a more reptilian creep.
@Kathy:
Beyond damage to the local structure, nothing serious happens. The density of the gas in an operating tokamak (eg, ITER) is a pretty darned good vacuum. If magnetic confinement fails, and the plasma comes in contact with the containment vessel, the plasma is quenched almost instantly. Thermal quench time is measured in milliseconds. ITER is designed to tolerate ~2500 thermal quenches over its operating lifetime. (They’re still working on a solution to the runaway electron problem, but while RE is capable of ruining the vacuum vessel, it poses no danger outside the overall structure.)
Will Stone be sentenced?
@Kit: Not today.
@Kit: in early Feb., 2020.
@Kathy:
“Not before Stone offers testimony to the Feds and the Impeachment committees about Dennison.”
I think Trump does it before then. He wants Stone unturned.
(I’ll see myself out)
The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History
Nov 4, 2019 JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ
@MarkedMan:
Did they not see the infinite regression?
Recursive Acronym
@Michael Cain:
Oh? That’s good to know.
@Michael Cain:
It may be a violation of federal truth-in-advertising law to use the words operating and ITER in the same sentence…
Fusion is the power of the future, and always will be.
If I were dictator, I’d be spending about $200 Billion on R&D for battery technology. A fusion generator 93 million miles away is giving us all the energy we could want for free, we just haven’t figured out how to store it well.
(And getting that 200B would be easy because i’d put our military on funding parity with China’s)
@DrDaveT:
We may get to zero-point energy before we get fusion.
@DrDaveT:
The Germans got some interesting results with the last version of their stellarator, but that’s down for another year now while they do the next set of upgrades. The neat part of that project for me is that it’s only possible because supercomputers have gotten big and fast enough to solve the magnet-shape optimization problem.
@Michael Cain:
I agree that tokamaks don’t seem like the most likely path to success.
@Kathy: it was the 70’s! The infinite regression was the point!
@MarkedMan:
Yep. There’s a long history of geeky recursion jokes in textbooks, such as having a Glossary entry “Recursion: see Recursion” , or an index entry for recursion giving the page number of the index entry.
@Kit: Just take it as a given that if we’re colonizing Mars 1) conditions on Earth are pretty dismal and 2) people stopped giving a fwk because “we’re gonna colonize Mars; who cares what’s happening here?”
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I’ve got 20 bucks and a round of beers at an OTB meetup that says we ALREADY colonized Mars and ruined it to come here. 😉
@Jax: No bet. But I will buy a round at an OTB meetup if we ever have one. 😛 😀
@Just nutha ignint cracker: If people agree to meet up in Europe, I’ll take the bet and I’ll buy a round.
@Teve: Record cold here and in many parts of the country. November is usually a mild, pleasant fall month.
There is talk on the local radio of all these jet contrails and the effects on the weather. They say they are spraying chemicals to cool the temperatures.
@Tyrell: Chemtrails?! Seriously? Chemtrails? You got some seriously fwcked up, Ted Nugent level fwcked up, local radio. Or local radio audience.
If you look you can find pictures of WWII B17s leaving contrails, condensation trails. Condensing water vapor. Water. Think the socialist climatologist take over the world plot goes back to 1944?
@gVOR08: You know what’s really depressing? Thinking about the fact that for every guy like Tyrell, JKB, Guarneri, Paul L. etc, there are millions more that believe the same crap. So much so that they’ll go online and defend it.
We’re hosed. The next several Presidents really need to focus on educating the populace.