FM75

Maybe you should spend some time with wikipedia when you find topics of interest. I remember learning about cloud seeding back in the 1960s - probably 4th - 6th grade science class. It works. It makes it rain. Does it make it rain more than it would have otherwise? Seems that might still be an open question. But perhaps one can change where and when it rains. http://en.wikipedia....er_modification - been done since the 50's - Is governed in some cases legally. Drop ABC news and similar media as your source for science. All you will get is what someone with no science education worth mentioning could do with some abstract or for-press quotes - dumbed down to a sound bite or a few dopey paragraphs. BTW. We already know your opinion about Monsanto. Does it apply to all large companies, or only chemical companies, or just Monsanto? (You don't need to answer that since it is as off-topic as my question...)

Actually neither of us missed "the point". We were discussing a question raised that was on topic. Reminder the topic is [global] climate change and what we can do about it. Whether converting CO2 (and some form of hydrogen) to methane and some form of oxygen might help was on topic. The question was whether CO2, a waste gas produce burning carbon and hydrocarbons in power plants and transportation could be usefully converted to methane to use as a fuel for electric generation or transportation. That question is on topic because increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is believed by many to be a driver for climate change by reducing the amount of incident energy received from the sun that is re-emitted back into space. In other words, there is not a balance between the energy that hits the earth and the energy that leaves the earth. If the balance is positive the earth must get warmer globally, if not locally. It is also on topic because if we could convert the CO2 to methane, there might be a hope that we could achieve energy neutrality. As was pointed out in the answers, it is possible to convert CO2 to methane, but it can't meet the thermodynamic requirement to be energy neutral. So the question has been answered. Chicken farms, and other popular media items do not make the hurdle of being on topic. You were offered the chance to demonstrate by proposing that chicken farms were globally significant but declined to do so for reasons we can only guess at. To be clear about it, we can now settle the chicken farm question. Can chicken farm production of methane be globally significant? What was offered was that some farmer somewhere ran his tractor or farm equipment from [only?] the waste from his chickens. Applying a bit of numeracy here, let's assume that if we could power 1/4 of the US cars on chicken manure, we would consider this globally significant. What would that mean? Well for starters half of the two car families and one quarter of the one car families would need to become chicken farmers. OK, so now what? Now the waste from the chicken is taken care of, but we have chickens that are now waste instead of manure. Look at that! We are able to see, without even using an envelope or pencil, that the question was off topic. We did not even need to resort to knowing how much motor fuel we use each day, nor how many chickens it would take to replace some given percentage of that. All we had to do was ask ourselves a simple question and work out the answer. Not all questions are that easy, because for some we really do need to do the math and research. How else could we have known that the chicken farm solution was off-topic for not scaling? If one does not have the science or math skills to really work out whether an approach is feasible, the best thing is to assume that there are many smart people anxious to start their own company and make their fortunes - and investors willing to fund them to make theirs. If an idea has been published, i.e. you know about it, assume that there are a 1000 people far brighter than you that also know about it, and that one percent of those (10) are out there trying to create a startup to "monetize" the idea - even if the idea won't work!

Correct. It does not constitute scalability. There are probably 25,000 McDonald's franchises in this country. Powering 25,000 cars does make a case for converting a significant percentage of cars to run on waste cooking oil. 25,000 homes on some remote island would be significant. It is not in the US, Canada, or even Mexico. When you use all of a resource for a tiny minority of consumers needing the resource, you have exceeded capacity, before you even started.

We were not discussing garbage that still contained hydrocarbons, but carbon oxides. That can't be converted into methane or any other hydrocarbon without a net LOSS of energy. The smokestacks are hardly irrelevant. The removal of NOx from the exhaust gas is all about prevention of acid rain. They are not relevant to carbon management, but extremely important, nonetheless. As to the non-scaleable technology, that is like fantasy. We like to read it maybe, but it should not be taken seriously. To determine whether your ideas scale, such as methane production from chicken farms, do the research and math to determine how many chickens/farms we could convert, how much that would produce, and compare that to real current usage. Running cars on MacDonald's used cooking oil is typical of "solutions" that don't scale.

At a teaching table, if one makes a bid, then clicks on the bid and supplies an alert, neither the opponents nor the kibs see it. The alert also does not show up in the hand result. It appears to the bidder that everything is fine. The bid is highlighted, you can see it by hovering over it, and change it if you want. I have not confirmed that this is the case during ordinary play.

Mike, Daniel. The key missing part of the picture in both my chemical "equations' and these are the thermodynamic component - energy. Burning carbon, either semi-pure as in coal, or in a hydrocarbon form, methane, ethane, methanol, etc. is exothermic. You get out more energy than it takes to start the reaction - so you can boil water, or move pistons as a result of detaching the hydrogen creating water and carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. In practice, these reactions are usually very hot and are done with the oxygen in air, forming oxides of nitrogen, NOx, as well. Very costly "smokestacks" are used to control the emission of NOx. They are multi-million dollar engineering projects with stacks roughly 5000-6000+ feet long with cross-sections on the order of 15x20 feet. When they work well, they capture tons of gypsum. Design errors can cause them to fail, somewhat catastrophically. The second law of thermodynamics rules out turning the carbon oxides back into fuel without supplying more than the energy gained from creating it in the first place. Once that is clear, it should be obvious that it is a fool's errand to try to envision ways of converting the waste into fuel. You can think of all of the earth's hydrocarbons as a store of some of the solar energy incident on the earth since it was formed. The point about reactions in which hydrogen is a reagent is that free hydrogen just does not exist for a very long time. It reacts strongly with oxygen to form water (exothermically - so getting it back out costs more than what you got when it combined, whether "explosively" or in a controlled reaction as found in a fuel cell). So virtually all of the hydrogen on the planet is in the form of water - the majority, hydrocarbons, and metal hydrides. What makes hydrocarbons so useful as fuels is the high energy density, whether you are measuring the density in volume or mass terms. That is why it is the fuel of choice for transportation. What is sad is that it is so predominant for electric generation. This country built 25% of its generation capacity, for the most part in about 15 years - 1965-1980. Building at that rate for the next 33 even using the technology from 50 years ago, could have put us in a position of generating 75% of our capacity today (That is not just idle speculation, based on wild guesses - France actually did it). Then only a modest amount of peaking power would be required from hydrocarbons.

CO2 + 3 H2 → CH3OH + H2O At the cost of 3 moles of Hydrogen gas for each mole of Carbon Dioxide. Any guess as to whether we can generate Hydrogen, which does not appear in a free form naturally on earth, at 3 times the rate that we generate Carbon dioxide? (Hint, if the answer is yes, NiMH, Lithium Ion, and other standard electric batteries would be well in the rear view mirror of cars driving around with electric motors driven by fuel cells.)

Nice idea. Perhaps just put it up as a public calendar on Google.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61ALthyBwEL._SL1500_.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.amazon.com/Kohler-K-11056-CP-Archer-Vertical-Polished/dp/B001G9AW5W&h=1000&w=1500&sz=36&tbnid=5QYrAshprSGqTM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&zoom=1&usg=__F6905SqwHw-oSo46LzDqIcM3wHA=&docid=PpJeilTo0HnliM&sa=X&ei=oh1XUpaUE-P_4AO7nYCgCw&ved=0CGQQ9QEwAA Should we also be addressing clockwise versus counterclockwise? Frankly, the only thing that bothers me is where it is placed. Behind your shoulder line is truly thoughtless.

For those of you who have bought into the argument that the exchanges will foster competition from insurers, you should give this a read. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-06/exchanges-will-raise-u-s-health-care-costs.html Multiple sources of a product is a necessary condition for competition, but not a sufficient one. There is a reason for the Sherman Anti-trust Act. If we can learn from history, though, it is clear that explicit collusion is not the only route to uncompetitive markets - and that is for markets where people have a choice not to purchase.

Yes, or worse, you intend to send them a private chat, which you do while the popup is there. Then you send the chat to the table. This is a real UX issue. Countless times per day, chat is misdirected. That said, I do not have a solution. Perhaps there simply needs to be different windows for each potential recipient or group of recipients. I have multiple chats open at my job, and invariably somebody will "chat" to a group, when the chat entered was a regular command intended for another open window on his screen.

Exactly! Which is just about identical to their proportion in Congress. So the "gerrymandering" reference really made no sense, since that suggests that they have been somehow given undue influence. Unless you are saying that the folks you disagree with should have been treated via gerrymandering in such a way as to under-represent them. So here is the dynamic from their perspective. They were elected in areas where their views represent the majority of their electorate. They don't believe that the US Government should walk away from its obligations. But they also believe that the US government is spending too much, by taking money out of the pockets of voters AND out of the pockets of people, some yet unborn, in the future. Taxation without representation might once have been tyranny, but today it is just good politics for PROFESSIONAL politicians. Today, the best way to get elected is not to espouse the American Dream, but rather promise (pander) to the broadest electoral base, promising benefits that someone else will pay for. Opium is addictive. OPM (Other People's Money) buys votes. Is not raising the debt ceiling the way to go? You tell me. Sequestering failed to address the biggest underlying problem in government spending (TAXATION - they don't create money, they just take it from the public - hopefully for you OPM), which is the entitlement budget. It also has turned out not to be the horrible problem envisioned. Perhaps it is now time to dig into the major part of the US budget. Beating addiction is painful. Gaining strength is painful - No Pain - No gain. Somebody up-thread said "does any other government have a debt ceiling? I don't think so". Facts are probably better than opinions (thinking). Denmark has a debt ceiling. Effectively the Euro nations did as well, until the weaker ones just ignored it. They are not doing so well right now, and the populace of the countries bailing them out are not happy about it either. The value of the debt ceiling is not important - except that it is written into US law. The error made - politician lawyers are neither mathematicians, nor economists, is that the debt limit should have been some fraction of a macro economic variable such as GDP. But even there, and comparing only to highly developed countries, we are in worse shape than all but Japan (20 years of gloom) and Italy. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/01/28/the-10-countries-with-the-most-debt Forget the surreal label. Propose how we can become a strong nation economically, not borrowing nearly our annual production. We aren't a startup! No, our debt is not like a mortgage where we borrow to make a capital purchase, and pay it back ourselves (not our heirs).

Prediction is hard. Especially about the future. Yogi Berra

80 / 435 = ?

Why? For any of the usual reasons that a girl might kill her sister. There is no reason to believe that there is any causality involved.

If you truly wanted an answer to the question of where the missing card is, without taking into account the bidding or play to that point other than the card discovered, then you might as well have framed it where the 2 was missing. That should make it clear that the vacant points argument is specious, without using information that would take into account the presence of the cards. Added: The other thing here is that the likelihood of the result depends on how many tricks have been played. At trick 13, the missing card is certain to turn up in the other hand. At trick 12 it is 2-1 to be in the other hand unless it would be limited by distribution at that point.

Lots of poker players on The Street. Jimmy Cayne is the only bridge player that comes to mind. I don't think he was known for his success in the stock market. But he was CEO of Bear Stearns when its credit went down the toilet resulting in its failure.

Think about what it would be like if she actually had to navigate!

If I ever see it occur again, will check. I have never seen anything but solid connection. But did not think to look there when I got in.

Happened to me in Chrome (Mac) - several times before it worked. As mentioned, the advertising panel filled just fine.

Nice insight! Thanks.

Good luck. Really easy to use. Create a dropbox folder.Create a small "hi ken" text file in the folder using notepad.Crank up your favorite browser and log into dropbox.Look at your file on the web.Create a new folder - call it "junkdir", for example.Go back into "Explorer" and look at your dropbox folder.You should see your 'hi ken" text file and the junkdir folder.Delete the junkdir folder.Refresh the Dropbox page - it should then be gone.If you have a second computer, download dropbox to it and install it. Soon you will see the "hi ken" text file on it.http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif Once you are comfortable with that, you can share a file or folder with somebody else. You can also get more free storage by inviting others to join. If you have a ton of pictures, you might want to upgrade to much bigger storage. 5GB is pretty nice for normal stuff. It you are outgrowing that, you can get MUCH more for a very nominal fee. And you still won't have to worry about hard drive crashes. (Restoring a hard drive can run you $900-$3,000 or more - even if the restore fails.) So if you are using two computers, you have the files on 2 hard drives in your possession, but if your house burns down and they both melt, you still have it stored across multiple drives on Dropbox servers. (They most likely back up across multiple data centers!)

Requirements for windows 7 http://windows.micro...em-requirements 4 processors, and the speed seems nice. 2GB might not be enough if you want XP mode - if not, can you add more - relatively cheap. What about hard drive? Do you meet the needs there? Check what you use. FWIW - I would recommend setting up DropBox on your machine before doing anything else (if you have not already done so). Move all folders containing "data", documents, pictures, etc. but not applications themselves to the DropBox folder. Your machine could blow up 10 seconds after all of that data synchonizes to the "dropbox" cloud. At that point, you could go buy another computer, set up dropbox, and within a small reasonable time (on a decent internet connection) you will have all of your data back - Even if you bought a Mac! The beauty of that is all of that data is now available between multiple machines if you have them, and even available in some cases on a browser. As to converting - I have been off windows at home for several years - DropBox saved my butt when the PC hard-drive failed. I bought a Mac a couple days later and almost anything I wanted was back - whatever wasn't was my fault for not having it below dropbox folder. (No not PC applications, of course.) But MS Office files worked with Mac MS Office. At work, we went from XP to 7, without any hiccup. It took about 15-30 minutes per desktop, for IT guys to do it. (After you have moved local hard drive files to a network drive.) Once you have done that, your IT department could readily (faster than you) convert you. It might be that they can merely "re-image" your machine to the latest OS that they support, and even install software that you have for which they had group license. That would be your least painful approach. After they give it back, install DropBox, and soon you will have all of your data ready to go. Or you could take the machine that they provide, and reinstall necessary software - sometimes a pain - and then "dropbox" it. Good luck, whatever you do.

Just discuss your concerns with him, play, and have fun. (Unless you are playing rubber bridge to live on - is that even possible?)