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I think I need to go do some laundry...
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i couldn't decide whether to laugh out loud or take a good long drink... maybe both.
Funniest blog entry in a long time!
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there is a small addendum to that story of the 5 failed safeties (out of six) .. unfortunately i never could find independent confirmation except in the book of a very respected austrian journaillist ... but perhaps a blogger can help ..
that incident prompted the US government to start a masive research project to improve the safeties in nuclear devices .. the results of this research project were quickly incorporated in the existing bombs .. AND .. here it comes:
the results were also supposedly leaked to the government of the CCCP because of the fear that a similar accident in russia could perhaps start an accidental war ..
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Very cool, Anonymous! Wish I had that info when I did the piece -- would have been a great addition. I, for one, am packing my beans and heading for the hills .. and that's NOT taking into account the technological 'expertise' of countries like Russia, France, Pakistan, India (shudder)
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you are my FUD-bitch, you spread the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt and I reap the rewards of blowing more carbon with less efficiency.
Lets see a page about all the poor little children that died before we discovered polio vaccines.
How about a page about how many people die in car accidents every year oh, 40,000+ is to overwhelming for you.
Get a life and appreciate what we DO have - safe thermonuclear power, safe lands to live in from having thermonuclear warheads.
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...that's one way to look at things
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I do kinda hate to break it to you, but a drop, collision, or even explosion won't create the nuclear fission/fusion explosion that is the worry about nuclear weapons. The basic idea of a fission explosion is wrapping a sphere with explosives so the sphere will implode quickly enough that it will explode. Thermonuclear added more stages to create a bigger secondary explosion. But the difficultly in creating a spherical implosion is what prevents the average terrorist from making one. The Rosenburgs were executed when they passed secrets dealing with this to the Russian. That same difficulty is what prevents an accidental nuclear explosion.
Don't spread FUD. There are very legitimate fears you sort of addressed: Random weapons-grade materials and pre-made bombs missing, and the possibility of the conventional explosives spreading radioactive particles that really could cause alot of death. Plutonium has a lethal toxicity easily ranked in the parts per billion.
So there is definately legitimate concerns - just don't blow them to far out of porportion. I'd hate to see you have to get sued to pay alot of people's laundry bills.
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The only way to set off a fission bomb is for the outer shell of conventional warheads to all detonate within a few microseconds of each other. This just wont happen in the case of a drop or some other mishap. These devices require finely tuned electronic circuits to initiate simultaneous detonation.
I like your government-bashing energy, but please use it somewhere where the government is actually at fault.
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Great stuff! It's staggering to think about all these near-misses...
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My dad dropped a nuclear bomb while loading it on a plane on a Turkish runway during the Vietnam War. It rolled down the runway before they caught up to it. The officer who saw it said not to tell any one, because such accidents make it all the way to the president.
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"Luckily for the crew they managed to drop their bombs, which fell 8,000 feet, landing with a bang off the coast of British Columbia"
So that's why BC Bud grows so fast... :p
Great entry, and I don't think it's spreading of fear as much as it is sharing of information. Thank you.
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You make a good point--accidents do happen.
But your post is alarmist. It's clear that you're trying to maximize fear. I don't think that's very responsible, and it shows a clear misunderstanding of the technologies you discuss.
The public's fear of the atom is reminiscent of the fear of electricity in the late 19th and early 20th century. Why don't you write a post about the dangers of electricity and associated accidents?
We're not going to be driving hydrogen cars tomorrow. Get used to the fact that harnessing the power of the atom is the most promising way forward /right now/.
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I worked with one of the guys on the crew at the silo near Little Rock, AR, and he tells a bit of a different story.
Basically, someone dropped a huge wrench from the top of the silo, and as it bounced between the wall and the missile, it punctured the fuel tank. As the rocket fuel leaked out, the tank lost pressure and the rocket finally lost its support, crumpled, and exploded.
But this didn't happen suddenly. The leak took hours and hours to hit that critical drop in pressure. They evac'd the silo and everyone near it, but said nothing to the people living just miles away.
Still just as scary, though...
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Number of accidental nuclear explosions: 0
This is like saying a society is violent and dangerous because people get angry, even if the murder rate is zero.
BTW: Bombs decay and become non fissionable over time, especially if they are banged around and older than 15 years. So the fear mongering over the one's out there isn't even founded in reality.
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this article shows a complete lack of understanding of how nuclear warheads work, as well as a blatant misuse of the word "thermonuclear" (that only applies to fusion, not fission). It's completely inaccurate to imply that any of those had a chance of going off.
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You couldn't be more wrong on the story about two bombs landing in waterlogged famrland. A quick internet search reveals thatwhile two weapons were lost when the plane malfunctioned, the second one is not out there going "tick tick tick". In fact, they found the impact crater the bomb made and recovered a substantial portion of the material from the bomb after digging up to 22'. Heavy rainfall forced the abandonment of the recovery and the Air Force bought the land to prevent further digging. See this link for a factual description of events, it's much than this bullshit.
http://www.ibiblio.org/bomb/hansen_doc.html
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As JJ said, it is extremely difficult for a nuclear or thermonuclear weapon to go off accidentally. Unless every segment of the explosive shell is triggered simultaneously to create a uniform implosion wave that smoothly compresses your fissionable core to supercriticality, you're going to just get a messy conventional explosion that tosses fissionable material around. (Worst case is a fizzle where you get momentary criticality and a yield equivalent to a few tons.) Any weapon that's been sitting underwater for any length of time is going to be in much too bad a shape to have any meaningful risk of fission detonation.
This refers to implosion weapons, of course -- uranium-gun weapons are more rugged and mechanically straightforward, but they're also inefficient and have not been a part of the US arsenal for many decades.
Accidental detonation of a fusion weapon is even more vastly unlikely, since it requires a clean and efficient detonation of the fission primary to reach the temperatures necessary to initiate a fusion burn in the deuterium fuel.
Two other points: David Kraft, if only we had safe thermonuclear energy! So far the only way anyone's figured out to get more energy out a fusion reaction than you put in is a bomb, and the practical applications are limited. We've got plenty of (more or less safe) nuclear power, but no thermonuclear.
And, regarding leaking safeguard technology to the Soviets: certainly sounds plausible enough. I know that after PAL (Permissive Action Link) technology was developed in the US to prevent unauthorized launch or detonation of weapons, it was quite intentionally leaked to the Soviet Union, and to China when they began to develop their arsenal. The idea was to minimize the chance of a rogue military commander launching his weapons at the U.S. without authorization.
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Thank you for these great comments. I've updated the article, see above.
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Thanks to all of you great folks for your fun and/or informative comments on my little piece on nuclear weapon boo-boos. I especially appreciate the technical info that’s been put out, especially since I’m a writer and not an engineer. Avi is quite correct to place an amendment to the piece about how unlikely an actual nuclear detonation is. I also just learned (thanks Jon) that the supposedly “tick, tick, ticking” bomb that was dropped on North Carolina was recovered – though that it impacted at 700 mph doesn’t make me feel any better.
However (and didn’t you know this was coming) I still feel the spirit of the piece is still very much intact. I am not anti-government, anti-military, anti-nuclear, anti-America, or anti-much-of-anything: I just wanted to share with folks who are into odd and unusual history that there have been a considerable number of pants-staining mistakes made regarding the most dangerous device ever created.
Or, to put it in bad movie language: “I don't know what's scarier, losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it,” from Broken Arrow, starring the world’s favorite Scientologist, John Travolta.
In a follow-up piece I’ll be talking about something REALLY scary: screw-ups involving biological and chemical weapons.
Ciao,
M.Christian
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Don't forget the Palomares incident..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomares_H-Bomb_Incident
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Wow ... as scary as the article itself is, I can't believe the sheer naivete of the comments here. The people who've said either that losing nukes is no biggie, or that nuclear power is safe, need to do more research &/or seek professional help.
Nukes are not candy. Once lost, they can easily fall into the hands of unsavoury folks ... or simply leak extremely dangerous & long-lived isotopes into the environment. Explode, no - but they can still kill.
We have yet to invent a foolproof storage system for n-waste, & I doubt any such system is even physically possible. Wind, tidal & solar are all cheap & clean alternatives. We have no excuses left for continuing to neglect them in 2007.
Go tell former residents of Chernobyl how "safe" nuclear power is - they'll be relieved to hear it - the ones not dead of cancer yet, that is. The immediate death toll from that ONE accident is unknown, but indirect deaths from carcinomas likely number in the millions.
We need to avoid use of a technology that's both deadly & obscenely expensive, while we still can.
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jim, no one has said that losing nukes is "no biggie". Most of these are reasonable comments pointing out that fears of a nuclear explosion from dropping a warhead are unfounded.
And before you cast stones, you should get your own facts straight. Regarding Chernobyl, you say "The immediate death toll from that ONE accident is unknown, but indirect deaths from carcinomas likely number in the millions."
Rubbish. While certainly a horrible tragedy that should never have happened, the death toll is estimated to be
less than 10,000.
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Your "glowing" test area is nothing more than a broad, largely empty desert valley with some roads and an old farm house. Of course, if you know the history of it, it really is amazing, but at first glance it is nothing much to look at.
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I love the whiners crying "waa FUD waa". Wonder how many "terrists" would love to get their hands on one, just for the scrap inside? You FUD-monkeys would shit your panties if one was found on your block.
Cool article. Made the FUD wieners weep.
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I loved reading all of this. My husband worked at Ellsworth with the trailers & equipment they use to load & repair the B-1b Lancer. Not nuke carrying capable right now, but in 24hrs they can convert the whole fleet back to being able to carry nukes. :P
Bombs in general, information & such is interesting to me at the moment, My husband is going through EOD school here at Eglin AFB. For those of you who do not know what EOD is, it is Explosive Ordinance Disposal. Them guys who disarm those roadside bombs, IEDs and all that sort of stuff.
So I get to hear about the various things he can tell me, without breaking the rules. Interesting to say the very least!
Avi, maybe one of your folks who do articles or yourself could do one specifically on our EOD troops?
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My favorite "Oops..." was during the early days of the hydrogen bomb, when they were massive devices.
A bomber parked on the apron at an Air Force base in Alaska was undergoing some minor maintenance when a short released the shackles on a fusion device.
The bomb crashed through the bomb bay doors and partially embedded itself in the tarmac. Making recovery a bit difficult. They knew where it was, but how do you pry a multi-tonne hydrogen bomb out of the pavement? (Very carefully. :-)
I have a short article on fission and fusion weapons here:
http://www.dcr.net/~stickmak/JOHT/joht17bang.htm
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At first I was thinking::
"Ha, I'll just live up in the space station......"
But noooooooo..... Than I read the other article about one-in-a-million collisions. Now I'm not so much thinking as building an underground facility to survive.
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I backed into a bomb with a front-end loader. It fell into a ditch and we drove away...FAST lolol
PSSST: dont tell anyone
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I love a good story of lost nukes just waiting to go off, it reminds me of the countless horrible ways you could die each second. It just goes to show you should stop spending 40 minutes picking an outfit or scrubbing one little spot on your sink or warring about all toughs little things because why your doing that. Tick, tick,tick, tick.... BOOM!
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Is anyone else terrified at the thought of all of our deserts covered in solar panels? Although the areas are not productive for humans, they are an important ecosystem and we should not assume that it's useless land we can manipulate in any way without harming it!
But yay green energy!
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I'm a sevillian and I think the Solucar plant is a great idea. We have more than 300 sunny days in the year and someone has done something with all that sun :D
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There is an interesting concept of building a 'subsurface-lake power station' in the North Sea off the Dutch coast. More info
here.
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Great images, but I'm confused as to why you placed a nuclear power plant under the "bad" energy sources -- nuclear power is one of the better choices; you get more bang for your buck, and it's far cleaner than coal (which puts out more radiation than nuclear). New pebble bed reactors make a meltdown literally impossible.
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We sould support and make people support green enery immediately. We are about to cross the critical point that we can't go back.
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Gadren... will have to give nuclear energy it's own article one day.
Thanks your comments, guys
That sub-surface lake is interesting...
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Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and State energy offices, State Taxes and more...
http://www.eredux.com/states/
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A bit more about the Solar Tower project in Australia. It is quite different to the other examples given, in that it has no mirrors and heating of water to steam.
It relies on a large green-house-like heating area to heat air that then flows inwards, past wind turbines and up a 1km-tall chimney (the tower).
See
this summary and
this CNN story
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Rob Roy - many thanks for this link. This will appear in our next Energy post.
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This posting is awesome! I did not know that so many other non traditional ways of alternate energy have been explored ..
Creating Wealth via Stocks
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wonderful work... never knew that so much initiative s been taken! the solar mirror panel thing is wow!
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There's a big difference between tidal and wave power.
All your pictures show tidal systems NOT wave systems.
Tidal would seem to be the far better bet because it is totally predictable and doesn't require some kind of reciprocating device to make it work: A conventional axial turbine is perfect
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The panels used with the solar tower are not photovoltaic solar collectors, they are simply steel reflectors mounted on motors which rotate them to follow the sun (heliostatic). The cost of 600 PV panels of THAT size would be pretty damn high, and the idea is to reflect sunlight, not absorb it.
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Am I the only one who's major concern was that Austin Powers got credit for tractor beams...
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Wow, it's very interisting article... Alternative energy in future... I hope, the new energy can save environment
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Fantastic! There are many ideas of alternative energy resources. Great job!
<a href="http://alternativesolarenergy.co.cc/> Alternative Solar Energy</a>
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I dont see anything artistic in spencer tunick's works..
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From one of the pixels,
As a pixel in Spencer's work many times now I can say Spencer is very much trying to show the humanity of the models, though not the individuality-except in his portraits of individuals.
To read accounts by those of us who pose, to see more of Spencer's work, including some of his lesser known individual portraits, come to http://www.spencertunickforum.org
Roger
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I'm impressed. I work for a photography company, and you know how much of a pain in the butt it is to get a class of high school seniors to form something as simple as a 0 or a 7?
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No kidding... I have the same problem trying to line up two of my little boys.
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Of course, if we're talking flip cards, there's always the classic
Caltech Rose Bowl Prank.
Incidentally, I highly recommend the book
Legends of Caltech and its sequel
More Legends of Caltech. Utterly chock-full of various pranks, as well as an apparent guide to those scriptwriters who created
Real Genius.
Though I have to say that the ones a particular friend of the family was involved in were not written up, probably because nobody would break silence, and so there must be many more pranks which have never made it into print.
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Check this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X76ZIGQgBWg
Another amazing coordinated koreans.
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Air Force Photo: The other side of the story: On a hot Sat (our day off) we were told to put on white T shirts and fall out. We were marched to the drill field and told were to stand...and that is all. Some guy in a tower took our photos. Some time later these photos were for sale in the BX. Where we told anything...NO, did we get any free photos...NO were we even thanked...of course not we were all Pvt's. Pvt James R. Garrity, Sq BN 4, Fl 2100, Lackland AFB, Tex...some 61 years ago...of ya it was very hot out
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If you like this you should realy see this Dutch commercial! Check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Uw7zLeacc
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Oh come on, zxr!! If you're going to criticise Tunic's work, give us some sort of an argument and explain why - then we can have a debate about it. As it is, you sound as though you expect Tunic to curl up and dissolve just because you have spoken! Personally, i think his cheeky works are fantastic and the fact that they goad people enough to get him arrested is illustration enough that he is making some kind of impact. This kind of re-evaluation and change in perception of the human body sounds very positive to me - all about appreciating humanity for what it is and not succumbing to the illusions. So here's to him!
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Mystery animal #1 is a porcupine. Not sure about the other two!
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The first one is indeed a porcupine, the second is a Cantor’s giant softshell turtle (Pelochelys cantorii), the third is a newborn rhino.
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You guys know that the picture of the elephant in the waterfall is really from the "Jungle Cruise" at DisneyLand. It's not real.
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2 guesses as to the mystery animals:
giant soft shell turtle, or terrapin?
baby black rhino
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I knew I recognized that elephant from somewhere!
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The rhino baby is a Sumatran, not a black.
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the third is a sumatran rhino!!!
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Mystery animal #2 )))
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see the pic with a cat licking a mouse? look at the shadow of the mouse. now look at the shadow of the cat :)
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...fails to mention the possible adverse effects that such high-powered installations can have on weather and atmospheric patterns.
Perhaps because there really aren't any: "The intensity of the HF signal in the ionosphere is less than 3 microwatts per cm2, tens of thousands of times less than the Sun's natural electromagnetic radiation reaching the earth and hundreds of times less than even the normal random variations in intensity of the Sun's natural ultraviolet (UV) energy which creates the ionosphere."
And the total power is 3.6MW; at least two radio transmitters have been 2.5MW, and commercial radio in the US, on the high end, can exceed 100KW.
Given the aggregate of the radio output worldwide, I wouldn't worry about one 3.6MW array hurting the environment - they don't mention it on the website because there's no reason to believe it does so in any way.
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Great info, Sigivald...
Thank you.
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That first picture looks like it comes straight out of a Myst game.p
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The Goofy sticking-out-tongue emoticon above was completely unintentional ;-0
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It's the damn C&C Tesla Coils all over again! Yargh!
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"discussing it's possible use as a nefarious weapon"
its.
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These are amazing! The only gripe I have is that you appear to have caught the disease that makes people, when they're sharing superb photos, feel that viewers will click out if there aren't some "funny" captions.
Trust me, you don't need "funny" captions!
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See the Russian site in Google Earth. Use this co-ordinate:
55°55'25.66"N
36°49'8.99"E
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Wow Jim
this is impressive. Nothing escapes all-seeing eye.
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You know, that picture of Tesla sitting in the middle of the room with all the electricity surrounding him is a double exposure. Nobody would survive something like that.
And that giant Tesla Coil near the bottom was going to power the entire world, until Tesla ran out of funds for complicated reasons. (Partly due to the fact that they thought he was mad.) He swore to his dying day that it would've worked. He turned it on just before it was destroyed despite the fact that it was incomplete and it created an aurora in the sky. Makes you wonder...
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Actually theres nothing particularly dangerous about high voltages - the spark that happens occasionally when you touch a car or doorhandle an be in excess of 30,000 volts. As my electronics teacher used to say, "Its the Volts that make your hair stand on end, but its the Amps that kill you" Mr. Tesla would have been quite save so long as the amperage was low enough. The sparks are spectacular but mostly harmless. Better to worry about the carcinogenic ozone given off.
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Found it on Google maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps?om=1&ll=55.924195,36.819756&spn=0.008704,0.007575&t=k&z=18
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I always thought electronic plants where creepy .... but nw i know i'm not the only one
XD
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"It's the Volts that jolts, but the Mils that kills"!
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Anyone who says something like "Volts jolt but amps kill" hasn't a clue what they're talking about. Ohms law says that volts and amps and proportional to each other by resistance. When producing voltages, current is limited by resistance. In terms of personal safety, current is limited by the resistance of the body which is not nearly high enough to protect you against any level of high voltage.
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i would really like to know the truth about tesla and his discoveries... but they're mostly gone...
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Nice pictures you got there mate, interesting post too, really got me thinking about Tesla again.
Appreciate it.
Steve
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Real Alien Footage right in front of our eyes and we choose not to recognize it , great post!
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It sounds like you are probably using the Google custom domains feature. I had a lot of problems with this trying to move my site about six months ago, but I did it again recently and it was a piece of cake. I'll adjust my link to your site with the new URL. Thanks again for all of the great posts!
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Yes this was quite a smooth transition. So far so good.
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Love the "life's too short for the wrong job" ads! So well crafted.
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"Ad for paints, quite impossible to pass by" is actually a Nationwide Insurance ad.
Like "get insurance before a billboard of a huge can of paint suddenly becomes REAL and tips over and spills on your building and cars".. sort of.
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I link you
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Great ads, we see how fresh new ideas can grab the eye. Can't wait to see what's next for dinner with ads campaigns, we have seen some pretty good stuff in the last 2-3 years!
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this is a really nice collection you have here, been looking for print ads and your has most of the coolest. :)
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"QUANTUM SHOT" #225
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9 Comments:
How could you forget easily the best online advertising campaign yet: Reebok's Terry Tate, Office Linebacker
Then again, not all offices are stressful:
http://www.vimeo.com/173714
aww.. that's so cute. and they're hiring!
This one is the best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKtSlWKfbHM
Yes!!
I updated the post.
What about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeTuQDJDqdM
that one clip of "worst first day at work" that's from a scifi show called "dead like me" it's a rather interesting show
Don't forget the biggest difference between prison and your cubicle -
In prison, you never get to leave and go home. you have no freedom, no possessions, no money, and no choice in where you live or what you eat. And no one particularly cares if you are terrorized, molested, or beaten - or if you die from anything anyone does to you.
@Roger, The same can be said for those that live hand-to-mouth. I'm not sure which is worse, being incarcerated, or living with an illusion of freedom. In reality, many people live where they can afford, not where they want. They eat what they can afford, not what they want. They have no money after spending for the above. A huge number, at least in the USA, don't have health insurance because they can't afford it. And in reality, nobody cares if they "are terrorized, molested, or beaten - or if you die from anything anyone does to you."
Thankfully I'm no longer in that position. But I paid my dues in a cheap two room flat with a hot plate and a roommate back in the days when macaroni and cheese was on sale for 10 for US$1 and Top Ramin was dirt cheap by the case. My roommate got a months worth of food stamps, for one, and we thought we'd died and gone to heaven. Not everything rosy in the "free" world either.
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