quote:

Originally posted by shake:

quote:

Originally posted by Trogdor:
That $300 million is aimed directly at the crackpots. If you want better batteries as soon as possible, immediately distribute that money to college programs with research specific to battery design.

Don't offer it as a reward.

You senile old bastard.

I don't know trog. The benefit of a reward is that if no one succeeds, you don't have to pay. Most institutions i've dealt with change their priority once they receive funding from the original goal of the project to the goal of securing more funding.

Granted, there's some of that. But when your pipes freeze and break, do you just put an ad in the paper offering $300 to anyone who can fix it?

Or do you call a plumber?

The guy who buttcracks his neighbors while working on his truck in the street is not going to blunder into new storage technology and that's exactly the sort McCain's idea will attract.

It's an incredibly dumb idea.

The scary bit is if McCain or his proxies accept the claims of the '200% efficiency' snake-oil salesmen or their slightly more sophisticated brethren.

quote:

Originally posted by Trogdor:
The guy who buttcracks his neighbors while working on his truck in the street is not going to blunder into new storage technology and that's exactly the sort McCain's idea will attract.

You do realise that plumbers have been statistically shown to provide nearly 38% of coinslot-related exposure, second only to bricklayers, which is indeed where we get the term "brickie's cleavage."

Trouble is, wouldn't funding before the invention be the very definition of Communism?

I've long been in favour of more women in the trades

Because you're more inclined to let a woman in you tradesman's entrance?

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:

quote:

Originally posted by Trogdor:
The guy who buttcracks his neighbors while working on his truck in the street is not going to blunder into new storage technology and that's exactly the sort McCain's idea will attract.

You do realise that plumbers have been statistically shown to provide nearly 38% of coinslot-related exposure, second only to bricklayers, which is indeed where we get the term "brickie's cleavage."

Trouble is, wouldn't funding before the invention be the very definition of Communism?

No. Communism would be not allowing the market to provide the reward, but the state provide it instead. Capitalism is funding (usually underfunding) research institutions to create a marketable product.

But the religious right in the USA has made science and scientific institutions the enemy, because those institutions have not found we all descended from Noah's sons. The Republican Party, under the influence of the religious right, has simply chosen Communism over Science as the lesser of two evils.

I saw the gene splicers (or whatever they're called) in the universities and labs over there on a documentary that was on a few months back. Something like $300,000 apiece. And a little sticker on the side saying that the US government has forbidden the use of this machine, because you can use it to manipulate stem cells beyond god's will.

No wonder they don't wanna give the money to research institutes. Damn hippies will spend it on infidel tech.

You're right, though, about the Commie influences. The ideology over science is the very definition of Lysenkoism.

I gotta move to Australia.

two Aussies and a guy in Wyoming are better pundits than anything my tv ever shows me.

Prizes to encourage technological achievement have worked in the past - the navigational chronometer and canned foods are examples - but in this case it won't work. What kind of inducement is $300mil when securing the patent on the thing is worth billions already?

I was just thinking that.

300m is chump change compared to what you'd make withholding that technology.

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
two Aussies and a guy in Wyoming are better pundits than anything my tv ever shows me.

Fair warning, Steve Irwin had what was coming to him, and don't think you won't end up the same if you dick around like that, too.

Though if you're in a place where the wildlife can kill you - the bush, the Territory, the Reef, Melbourne - you're experiencing the REAL Australia. Maybe not so much Melbourne, as I'm sure the place has a fucking Tiffany's, but, yeah, gangland killing's are part and parcel.

Contrary to popular belief, I like Yanks coming Down Under, as the ones who view the world as a place to visit and enjoy and they like to think that there're other countries that have things to offer, besides oil and contitutionally viable torture.

Elderly poms, there's a different fucking story. SORRY, BUT DESPITE WHAT IMPRESSION YOU GARNERED BACK HOME, A CUP OF TEA AND A BURGER WILL NOT SET YOU BACK THE EQUIVALENT OF A MERE FIVE PENCE. STOP WHINGING.

I met Steve and his family in 2002.

Can't say they didn't see it coming.

To bring things slightly back on topic...Change we can believe in - - - none at all

Supreme Court Idiocy

Supreme Court Overturns Exxon Valdez Penalty

I mean, I work in the industry and I don't think environmental penalties should be ruinous. BUT THEY SHOULD BE PENALTIES!

Everyone needs to play by the rules. That's why they're fucking called rules.

This is an outrageous decision. Politically, it should be the death knell for the McCain campaign.... if American voters are smart enough to see the connection.

Yeah, it's infuriating.

All they did was tie it up in litigation until the public, like a beast with no memory at all, forgot.

Quadrupling that penalty would have been fair, measured, and would not have hurt EXXON or its shareholders one damn bit.

Penalty should have been raised to $10 billion.

They cut it to half a billion.

It's an insult to me, personally, as someone who goes out of his way to run a cleaner operation than is required.

That's okay EXXON. Revel in your victory. You're morons.

There will be a backlash from this that will take you down.

And I'll cheer them on.

record oil profits 6 years running, a perpetual war-on...It's not even like they needed the money.