<t>mdubuque: sometimes in a democracy we can have hideous outcomes?The hideous realities took place when the states were not run as democracies (most commonly they were run as a form of dictatorship). This is not a European-centric observation: Imperial Japan in the 1930s springs immediately to mind...

<t>mdubuque: I feel comfortable at the present time saying that the lack of fatalities from TMI, given this shocking error, was at least partially attributable to sheer luck.Erm. Aren't almost all events at least partially attributable to sheer luck...?I'm not going to advocate fission over any othe...

[repeat post]

<t>mdubuque: [thermonuclear explosions not being possible] are we sure that this is impossible in a pebble bed reactor as well?Yes, I am unequivocally positive that this is impossible.mdubuque: Their calculations were off by orders of magnitude. That made everybody involved in the decisionmaking les...

<t>Fusion is still very much in development, and has shown extremely limited commercial potential. I do not regard it as a candidate source for power generation; throughout this post I am only referring to conventional and pebble bed fission technologies.mdubuque: I don't know that the only catastro...

DCFC: Have you read Larry Niven's idea for nuclear waste disposal ?Are you referring to his idea that it could be minted into a currency?

<t>DCFC: No one does this well. Perhaps this is a good thing...I think it a good thing. I notice a correlation between how near someone is to having the ability to wield an absolute power, and the amount of difficulty that person has in actually wielding the power without consensus. I'm not just thi...

<t>mdubuque: That's why I hedged my bet with the word "apparently".OK, fair enough. If you come across the numbers I'd like to see them.It is important to separate two questions, that I suspect have been deliberately mixed together. Firstly: is Social Security sick? I think the answer is "yes!". Sec...

Quotefree adj. informal we think you’re stupid

mdubuque: Apparently we have enough to pay benefits until something like 2045.Do you have data for this assertion? To make my position plain, I happen to (currently) agree with DCFC....

Cuchulainn: from the Dutch paper "Financiele Dagblad" (like FT or Wall Stree jrnl), 11 January 2005, orig. from Mannfred Weidmann Bank of AustriaThanks for the reference.

Cuchulainn: More on this topic of zeal ...Interesting statistics, but I missed their source?

<t>zerdna: yogis methodically tested this stuff for several thousand years on much more subjects than all studies reported in peer reviewed magazines ever used put together.Peer review is often better than nothing; but large scale testing, measurement of outcomes, subsequent modification according t...

<t>Marsden: Hmm... Not sure how to take your latest comment, Sliggy.The final paragraph of my previous post was intended to be a throwaway joke written in a spirit of goodwill, in the hope it might raise a smile for someone amongst a multilingual group of people (after all, we have Britons, American...

<t>Marsden: The OED is correct, at least regarding British English.Please re-read the definition that I quoted and disregard my comments in the later paragraphs; I am an irrelevant single data point in age, social background etc.. My fault, I muddied the issue.Oh, and say something. I want to hear y...