Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?
- Thread starter Flunklesnarkin_sl
- Start date
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Adebisi
Clump of Cells
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Dude, decolonialize your mind. Ain't no way a kilogram of a solid weighs as much as a kilogram of a gas.
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You have hereby earned 7,000 warning points and are exiled to the Shaw for the next 9 years.
Tripamang
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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A group has developed a way of making refinable crude oil directly from wet sewage. They've licensed the tech and they're planning to build a test plant in vancouver. Curiously they don't mention farm manure.
Fuel from sewage is the future—and it's closer than you think
Fuel from sewage is the future—and it's closer than you think
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iannis
Musty Nester
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Mmmm. I dunno why. Human sewage is treated, and they do mention "from the wastewater treatment plant". Animal manure is supposed to be treated or contained, but... well. I guess sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.
If you could turn pigshit into oil then I guess that's probably a net positive.
But after reading the article it's actually a drop in the ocean. They're saying 30million barrels per year for America. Sounds good... except we're using 15-20 million per day.
Every little bit helps, of course, and it may have more functional use as a way to recycle farm waste. But it is honestly a very little bit.
If you could turn pigshit into oil then I guess that's probably a net positive.
But after reading the article it's actually a drop in the ocean. They're saying 30million barrels per year for America. Sounds good... except we're using 15-20 million per day.
Every little bit helps, of course, and it may have more functional use as a way to recycle farm waste. But it is honestly a very little bit.
Tripamang
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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I see the positive in that you might make sewage treatment less costly which would encourage building more of them. A disturbing amount of raw sewage is dumped into rivers and oceans, even by first world countries.
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Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Skanda
I'm Amod too!
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We could start with general science subjects, which Lumie Jr.'s anti-Vax retardation does not fall under.
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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How fucked is scientific research going to be? I have no idea how funding goes, but I keep seeing shit about brain drain (and honestly, the Canadians seem to be anxious to poach top US researchers).
I don't want to get into hard politics, but I have no idea how funding for science goes.
I don't want to get into hard politics, but I have no idea how funding for science goes.
iannis
Musty Nester
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Government grants and contracts, where the government is involved. Otherwise it's engineers, doctors, pre-docs and post-docs, and private corporations.
The American university has been like a civ building for a few generations. You plunk one down and immediately get +2 research. But then it's started to move to +1 research / +1 gold. And we have to be a little bit concerned that it's going to become +2 gold if the trend continues.
We're still a pretty solid research leader. The 3d Printer came out of Raleigh, North Carolina. I mean who would have thunk it, right? You'd expect that to have come out of MIT or Silicon Valley. But nope, it didn't. Buuut, the world is changing. Technology has improved. Universities don't have a stranglehold on the means of production anymore and that is not entirely a bad thing. I do not fully understand the problems but I do know they're complex. A dilution into the social sciences probably doesn't help, but neither does the prevailing academic policy of "publishing quotas". Feynman once said that when Einstein stopped teaching it was the end of his productive career. A lot of research goes on under the auspices of DoD contracts as well.
The Canadians, or frankly anyone not us, will always be anxious to poach productive researchers. Brain drain should always be a concern. It's more an indication that the rest of the world is becoming more stable, more affluent, and free than it is an indication that we are becoming less so.
The American university has been like a civ building for a few generations. You plunk one down and immediately get +2 research. But then it's started to move to +1 research / +1 gold. And we have to be a little bit concerned that it's going to become +2 gold if the trend continues.
We're still a pretty solid research leader. The 3d Printer came out of Raleigh, North Carolina. I mean who would have thunk it, right? You'd expect that to have come out of MIT or Silicon Valley. But nope, it didn't. Buuut, the world is changing. Technology has improved. Universities don't have a stranglehold on the means of production anymore and that is not entirely a bad thing. I do not fully understand the problems but I do know they're complex. A dilution into the social sciences probably doesn't help, but neither does the prevailing academic policy of "publishing quotas". Feynman once said that when Einstein stopped teaching it was the end of his productive career. A lot of research goes on under the auspices of DoD contracts as well.
The Canadians, or frankly anyone not us, will always be anxious to poach productive researchers. Brain drain should always be a concern. It's more an indication that the rest of the world is becoming more stable, more affluent, and free than it is an indication that we are becoming less so.
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Do you think the same level of funding will exist in the next few years? Are most of the programs funded for multiple years at a time?