Hm, isn't that this whole 'sun-will-have-a-big-flare-that-kills-the-routers' thing?

Except... that isn't as much about man's impact on the climate as the sun's impact on the earth in general. Or maybe our over-dependance upon the information super-highway.

Hmm... TCP/IP over a solfeggio...

"Do, a deer, a female deer..."

hmm ... the idea of solfeggio-encoding *anything* sounds appealing. Break it down into Base 7 (or base 11, if you want to include chromatics) and then render using the solfeggio syllables. Bonus points for inserting invalid syllables (such as "fu") which must be stripped out during decoding.

Now I want to stop everything and write a program that does this encoding and then sings it for you.

Hrm... how does one introduce base 11 in solfeggio? Were there alternative syllables for the 'black' notes?

*tappity tip tap tap*

Uh uh:


http://openmusictheory.com/chromaticSolfege.html

Basically, for the sharpened note, change the vowel portion to 'i'. So:

do di re ri mi fa fi sol si la li ti do

But if you're doing 'minor' solfeggio, it changes, and the 'flattened' note gets an 'e' for the vowel:

do di re me mi fa fi sol le la te ti do

Ugh. This system feels convoluted, although I guess I see where they're coming from. But it wouldn't be very straightforward for solfeggio-encoding software. And there's already precedent for base 7 encoding in software engineering (where the 8th bit might have been used for parity, so only 7 bits were available), so I'd go with the straightforward non-chromatic solfeggio encoding.

Maybe when I get home, I'll write some utterly pointless software to solfeggio-encode binary files so you can literally sing to an executable you've compiled in whatever key you want.

This is why I like you so much. Your brain has the same kind of damage mine does :)

*grin*

I need to remember to do this.

Then sing an encoded message to my vocal instructor, who will torture me with instructions to use the next octave up or something.

There's a lot of chatter about Gen 4 nuclear energy lately. For those of you just getting up to speed: Gen 4 plants literally cannot melt down, and they consume the nuclear waste from the old-style nuclear plants as fuel.

Learn more by searching your favorite internets for the #GreenNuclearDeal hash tag. Even the notorious mega-criminal Bill Gates has put his mindshare and funding behind it.

The reason this is a big deal is because it's beneficial regardless of which side of the climate debate you're on. If you're a realist who knows that the economy depends on cheap, clean, plentiful energy, Gen 4 nuclear provides it. If you still believe the global warming myth, Gen 4 nuclear is carbon neutral. There's nothing to dislike about it, no matter who you are.

What happens next will tell us who actually wants clean and plentiful renewable energy, and who was just using it as a bargaining chip for some other motive.

Did they actually say that? The way I heard it was that nuclear power was going to make electricity too cheap to meter (kind of like domestic landline telephone service is now). That's why all-electric homes were the big trend of the era.

That probably would have become reality if a few people hadn't freaked out and went all anti-nuclear. All things considered, even the "unsafe" reactors have a terrific safety record. Gen 4 doesn't even have the same risks, because the plants literally cannot melt down -- if you don't actively continue running the reactor it just kind of comes to a stop. And they consume the waste from older reactors as fuel. There's no downside.

A few people have started to notice. I think it's the answer. Bill Gates agrees, and since I'm smarter than Bill Gates, I hereby approve of it too, so listen to me.

If the electric car people want a transition away from fossil fuels, we need an energy source that is both sustainable *and* plentiful. Wind and solar can be part of the mix but they don't scale and don't have consistent output. We need nuclear, and lots of it.

(Disclosure: I live downwind of an older nuclear power plant. And, I am a person who worries A LOT. Guess what I *don't* spend a single moment worrying about?)

Of course you don't worry about it. If it all goes to hell, you won't be around to worry.

Actually no, if that plant were to vent radiation it wouldn't be a clean kill; I'd get very sick and die slowly. And it's still nowhere near the top of things I worry about.

Gen 4 nuclear has been in the news for a little while now, and people are starting to notice. Predictably, the people in favor of it are those who actually want us to have large amounts of clean energy, and the people against it are those who were really just using "teh climate!!!1" as a bargaining chip for their own agenda. Suddenly they want us to think about Chernobyl again.

Most of the criticisms I see regarding generation 4 nuclear reactors involve the fact that people make mistakes.

Which is true, of course. We do. And machines fall apart. Or have human programmers.

But then, that's how it has always been, even with our current power production methods. So I guess the concern isn't that humans make mistakes, really.
I guess the concern is that the consequences for those mistakes seem more dire where nuclear reactors are concerned.

I dunno... seems like a nuclear reactor that mitigates as much of the human error as relates to these kinds of mistakes as possible should be welcomed.
I guess people simply have cold feet on the topic, given the older technologies that didn't work too well, and the human errors that lead to some pretty awful problems (Japan and Russia, in particular).

Human errors and tsunamis..

"All suffused with an incandescent glow..."

- Tom Lehrer

We'll all go together when we go...

I guess the concern is that the consequences for those mistakes seem

more dire where nuclear reactors are concerned.

Imagine a world where some of the people believe that the continued use of hydrocarbon fuels will cause enough climate change to render the planet uninhabitable.
I know, that's a ridiculous concept, but stay with me here.

What's worse? Global catastrophe, or an occasional localized nuclear accident (most of which are now avoidable through better technology) ? Nuclear already creates a fraction of the casualties, per unit of energy generated, compared to oil, gas, and coal.

Consider that solar and wind cannot scale to meet our current energy needs, and we simply can't afford *not* to scale up on nuclear.

I dunno... seems like a nuclear reactor that mitigates as much of the

human error as relates to these kinds of mistakes as possible should be

welcomed.
I guess people simply have cold feet on the topic, given the older
technologies that didn't work too well, and the human errors that lead

to some pretty awful problems (Japan and Russia, in particular).

Yes. This.

The latest reactor designs are simply incapable of the kind of failure modes experienced at TMI and Fukushima. It's difficult to comment on Chernobyl because they were deliberately operating that reactor outside of its design specification, with some of the safety mechanisms disabled, so they kind of had it coming.

So let's use Fukushima as an example. The tsunami didn't destroy the reactor, or the containment building. It rendered the plant's control mechanisms inoperable, including the external diesel generators that supplied power *into* the plant to keep it running when it wasn't generating power. The control rods couldn't drop, and the reactor went supercritical. This simply cannot happen in a Gen 4 reactor. When the reaction is not sustained by positive action from the operators, it just sort of cruises to a thermal stop.