For two months last fall, Eric Simons secretly took up residence inside the Internet giant's Palo Alto, Calif., campus, eating free food, enjoying gym access, and building a startup in the process.

nosoupforyou · 2 days

Therefore, the LENR situation and outlook is the following:

Something real is happening.

The weak interaction theories suggest what the physics might be.

There are efforts ongoing to explore the validity of the theories.

There are continuing Edisonian efforts to produce "devices" mainly for heat or in some cases transmutations.

There are efforts to "certify" such devices.

NASA LaRC has begun LENR design studies guided by the Weak Interaction Theory

Well. I'm quite shocked/pleased that an official NASA site is making such statements about LENR, but could somebody smart elaborate more on this article and what conclusions/hopes we could draw from it?

scousethrowaway · 2 days

That was an interesting read. I myself actually do consider myself a bit of a Marxist, but have long been against old notions of the "worker's state" and centralized hierarchical political parties and whatnot. However, I do think this notion that the very idea of the proletariat is to be fought against is interested, although it needs more development than this essay did.

Although, I'm not sure there was adequate discussion on the underlying rationale of why Marxists tend to focus on the worker as the revolutionary agent. As far as I know, the rationale behind this is simply that what is defined as "the worker" is contingent on whether the individual contributes her labor to working the means of production in order to survive, and that this seizure of the means of production is the crucial step toward revolutionizing society and the political economy. After all, if we accept that political power is derived from economic power, then it is logical to take steps to seize this economic power, which seems to entail that we look to workers (of course, the modern definition of a "worker" is much more loose than what it was back in Marx's day). I don't see any real way around that, even if it, on some level, "accepts" the hierarchy that stems from capitalism.

Furthermore, I am unsure about accepting the idea that since revolutionaries are being born from all classes of society, that we should no longer look to the working class. After all, hasn't this always been the case? Many revolutionaries throughout history have been born from the middle-class. But this doesn't disavow the necessity of seizing or creating an economic base, with entails some kind of revolutionizing of the working class--even if this isn't specific to the working class of the factory.

darohitster · 3 days

Elaborate?

Nokavi · 5 days

The leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA, an...interesting bunch, to say the least. They very much favor the personality cult around him, and follow some kind of formulation of the Maoist ideology.

I went to a talk by Carl Dix, one of the higher-ups in in the RCP, where he discussed how the US is currently in the mid-phases of a genocide against blacks in the country, through what could be referred to as the prison-industrial complex (although he stated numerous times that the term was a distraction from the inherency of the system to capitalism). It was a good speech, but it got kind of odd at the end when he started talking about how the way out was to follow Avakian, and how Avakian was a genius and "knew the path forward to socialism." Again, personality cult. But whatever works, I guess--the RCP is quite organized, and they seem to be starting up a fairly sizable campaign against mass incarceration.

juancamdingo · 5 days

For some reason, I thought the title meant that they found an actual living and breathing turtle that was this size, not a fossil. Quite the letdown.

Why does it seem that animals back in the day, circa tens of millions of years ago, were all much much bigger than their present day descendants?

-EDIT- Probably should have read the whole article. Thanks fellas

dgodon · 6 days

Err, did you not read the article? It gives a brief argument for why its dead.

In fact, we have been giving up on desegregation for a long time. In 1974, the Supreme Court rejected a metropolitan integration plan, leaving the increasingly black cities to fend for themselves. A generation later, public schools that had been ordered to integrate in the 1960s and 1970s became segregated once again, this time with the blessing of a new generation of justices. And five years ago, a splintered court delivered the coup de grâce when it decreed that a school district couldn’t voluntarily opt for the most modest kind of integration — giving parents a choice of which school their children would attend and treating race as a tiebreaker in deciding which children would go to the most popular schools.

DonManuel · 6 days

"New nuclear" as in "new old nuclear"--no surprise that the first nuclear plants of the Gen III+ design are going to run into unexpected costs and problems.

More interesting would be whats happening in China--they're building more reactors than any other nation, so provided that the experience in building and manufacturing is somehow diffused to other nations and companies, we will certainly see the cost go down somewhat through this decade.

[Insert final obligatory comment about LFTRs].

luckyburns · 6 days

Nice science-fiction idea, but I can't even begin to imagine how expensive this would be. And not to mention who would pay for this--a joint venture between the US and China?

Seems like it would be way more cost-effective (and green) to put forth that money into further development of bio-fuels for aircraft and R&D for engine efficiency.

minersrevolt · 6 days

....what kind of terrible title is this?

davidreiss666 · 6 days

I agree, but also recognize that technical solutions usually depend on political-economic momentum--without funding and support, technical solutions would not come about.

davidreiss666 · 6 days

Wasn't there a speaker series sponsored by Google a while back, where one of the running themes was that the smartest people in the world were now being paid to write spam filters and figure out how to make people click on ads, rather than devising energy solutions or building space-ships? Seems to be along the lines of the thesis of this interview, that social media is killing actual innovation that Silicon Valley is famous for.

phileconomicus · 6 days

Nice read.

Although I take some grievance with his portrayal of the "solution" to climate change being mediated through a temporary suspension of democracy. I think there is an argument to be made that rather, the solution will be done through a more radical extension of democracy, past the contemporary norm of republican-parliamentary governance. The argument would run that current forms of parliamentary politics are too easily exploitable by economic elites to maintain their hegemony of industry--and subsequently, be shielded from the affects of climate change and ecological catastrophes even more so than the typical Global North consumer. Indeed, some lines of Marxist thought might even hold that climate change will create some very nice situations for the expansion of global capital and the power and profits of current economic elites, through the increasing population of displaced and desperate populations, and increased ease of access to resource-rich regions. For example, that the Arctic is now being rushed to by various nations for exploitation and oil extraction only recently possible due to the melting Arctic ice.

Thus, a better solution than some kind of eco-fascism in the name of the future would be for a more revolutionary and democratic seizure of economic and political power, such that decisions are made by those with more of a stake in the climate-change game.

ademu5 · 7 days

I hate LabView too, but its pretty darn useful for setting up complex controls systems. For example, I'm using it for controls on an experimental "nuclear test reactor" of sorts for my univeristy

mojoe1185 · 7 days

I agree--and hope that this thread encourages those who do have engaging thoughts to comment more!

mojoe1185 · 7 days

I subscribe to get links--I'm here to read, and don't feel like I have all that much to contribute to in terms of commenting on the articles or discussions.

secaa23 · 7 days

Fair enough! Which is why I wish there was a good, qualitative way to measure the performance of elite managers like Chancellors. One can hope...

secaa23 · 9 days

Or he won't, and...nothing, since there's no real system of accountability for the Regents, Presidents, and Chancellors.

secaa23 · 9 days

I left out athletics on purpose, since most of them lose the school money. Take Cal for example.

And I do too have a fairly good idea what the Chancellor and the rest of the Regents do! Most of their work is managerial work--doing the finances, hiring new people, deciding on tuition fees, constructing new buildings, that sort of stuff. You can see for yourself on their official homepage, and get even more basic information if you go to the link about the sub-committees the Board of Regents is made up of.

And now to be clear, I agree that comparing the 6% tuition hike with the hiring of a new Chancellor is silly. With the current structure of the University, a Chancellor is necessary. The reason for my scathing comment about the Chancellor and the Regents stems from a general look at the situation, one where the Regents (political appointees by the Governor, btw) are doing a worse than shoddy job of maintaining the quality of the UC. Some are even looting the investment funds and whatnot, which is partially composed of tuition fees.

One-Year Club	ComboLinker 2011-12-07
Verified Email

darohitster

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login