How to get the Infrastructure for Fuel Cells in Less than 3 Years.

Pretty big goal, go from being near the bottom of the heap of industrialized nations in terms of renewables to the top considering our massive size. Many people are going to say this cannot be done, but I know it can through economic tax incentives.

Every year, we send billions of dollars to the Middle East, funding terrorism, and causing environmental problems (go to LA and smell the sweet air) by burning more fossil fuels than any other nation, except maybe China. Fossil Fuels are dirty, there is a limited amount in the world and are only in certain regions despite being demanded by every country. The high demand and decreasing supply will inevitably lead to us running out in 50-100 years (estimation). So, we need to use another fuel source that will last for hundreds of years. Fortunately, this already exists and the principle behind this technology was discovered by Schönbein in 1838. This is of course the fuel cell. I know how we can have fuel cells be able to run across America by 2015 and stop giving billions of dollars to big oil every month.

What we do is give tax breaks to owners of gas stations that install hydrogen pumps. If they can save money by installing the pumps and tanks than they will do it. Once the pumps are in, they will be able to attract business from people with fuel cells from all over the country and we will have energy independence and terrorists will stop getting our oil money. The major part to this is that the hydrogen could be produced on-site. In an October 2006 publication by the Department of Energy, Hydrogen Production, it ends by saying that developing technology to create the fuel for electric cars was going to be available in the near-future.

The only question is how do we produce the fuel cells? The answer is in two steps: on-site hydrogen production and on-site electricity production to offset the shock to the grid.

1. It is possible and almost feasible to get the hydrogen by splitting water molecules with electricity which gives you the hydrogen you need to fuel cars. On-site tanks could store the hydrogen like they currently store fossil fuels which is as easily and quickly dispensed as gasoline.
2. The amount of energy to split a water molecule is large. It would be a large shock to the grid to be developing that much hydrogen on our current aging grid. On top of roofs nothing is produced. The elements are kept out of the house and then nothing else is done. If there were tax credits for everyone who puts solar panels on their roofs than there would be enough surplus power to power the splitting of water atoms at fuel stations. Then once people have the solar panels on their roofs saving them money on electricity, that would also stimulate the economy.

Now that the  question of power has been addressed, how do we get the infrastructure for such a massive amount of space so that one can do a road trip from any two points in the Contiguous United States (and Continental once Canada improves their infrastructure) in a short period of time? The answer is economical and simple. We already have it. We have enough gas stations throughout America that if they all got the proper incentive to install hydrogen pumps than people could quickly phase out fossil fuels. If the Federal Government gave tax incentives of a 100% tax break over two years to owners of fuel stations who successfully install water splitters, hydrogen tanks, and hydrogen pumps, we could have all the infrastructure we need in three years after the start of the program. We will have our energy become sustainable and destroy our carbon footprints.

We are Americans. Our country is the greatest nation on Earth. The first nation to have the radical ideals of freedom of religion, speech, press, and other radical ideals. We are a leader of the world and if we make a radical change across a continent the rest of the world will follow. It is in our power to become greater. Let's do it now. Let's end our addiction to foreign oil with a fuel source that will not run out until the Earth is absorbed into the Sun.

My analysis into the illegal immigration issue.

Immigration is a contentious issue for Americans. Arguments made for having stricter borders include:

1.               They come in and use services without paying back.

2.               They don't have to pay income tax.

3.               We have to pay for it when they get sick.

These are the economical issues and can all be fixed by changing both the tax system and the immigration process. If it was easier for people to become American citizens they would come and pay their taxes like everyone else. Since strict citizenship requirements are doing more harm than good because of illegal immigrant's realistic fear of taken advantage of, the current citizenship requirements that are not necessary should be relaxed because all they are doing is causing this major contentious issue. The major change that should be done to solve this issue is to end the immigrtion lottery. The immigration lottery limits the number of immigrants from each part of the world. This makes farm laborers have to come illegally to fill jobs that otherwise would not be filled. takeourjobs.com shows that Americans don't want to be farm laborers. Also, a lot of people who are sometimes put into this category are drug dealers. They should not be counted in the statistics because they go across the border a lot bringing drugs in and money out. So they are another issue.

Other issues include:

1. Undocumented farm workers can't go to anyone to report abuse for fear of being deported. They are a third class.
2. Crime. Some people classified as illegal immigrants create crimes when they are here, mainly members of drug cartels. This can be be stopped by fighting the drug trade in schools through harsher punishments towards those who distribute drugs illegally and legalizing the consumption and licensed selling of less dangerous drugs that give them fast cash to increase production and distribution. They shouldn't be fought as if they are criminals, which they are, they should be fought as if they were businessmen too. This will do the following effects:
1. The amount of demand for drugs would go down and it would be less profitable to sell drugs in High Schools which will cripple the Cartels from the power they currently had. There is no expensive military intervention required.
3. More dangerous crossing points. If it was easier to come across legally than the drug cartels would be the only ones coming across the border illegally.
4. Racism is a major topic since Arizona's bill has been passed. You can't tell an immigrant from someone who hasn't moved since before that area was given to us in 1848. It is ineffective and racist.
5. Limits on immigrants to America. This only makes the problem bigger because people come despite that law. It causes more harm than good, so it should be removed.
6. Habeas Corpus is REQUIRED to be respected by the Constitution.
7. Green cards should be easier for Illegal Immigrants to acquire because they are here anyways and they don't want to go back to Drug-ridden areas for good reason.
8. Some requirements for green cards should be removed: polygamy, and failing to make payments should be given an extension of one year or six months because of the decreased fear and increased income permanent residency creates.

However, I am sure the most important reasons for people coming to America from Latin America are these: People in Latin America are being killed because of the drug violence from the cartels. Jobs are also a lot harder to find and don't pay as much as in the USA. The way to have fewer people immigrate to the United States of America from Latin America is to fight the drug trade in the schools and have harsh and strict punishments for marketing drugs to people in public High schools and to make drugs temporarily legal and sold to adults in stores. This is the lesser of two evils because:

1. As it is now, people can get as much of the dangerous drugs as they want. They will pay high prices for them and the money will go to the cultivators and drug lords. By legalizing dangerous drugs temporarily, they will be easier to get, but the amount of money that is made on them will be far less. Some money will also go to the government which means that when the people use the drug they will be paying for rehabilitation and it will no longer be lucrative for the cartels. It is evil, but the lesser of two evils.

Another factor in the issue is that the process for becoming an American is long and unnecessarily complicated. It takes a long time and trees of paper work to finish applying for a green card or visa. It is so long that some people, like one of my friend's friends, was deported because his lawyer forgot one piece of paperwork. He is now in Mexico and his family is still in Washington. I am certain that he is not alone with this issue, the process must be simplified so innocent people like him can get what they want and continue to be productive members of society. The only reason for not simplifying this would be that people don't want Hispanics coming to America, and that is racism which is against the modern fabric of every just nation.

Google Street View

Debates over technology can be very interesting and this issue is very good and hot!
I must side with Google on taking pictures of every street in the world for the following reasons:

1. Tourism will boom when we can see everything. Planning trips becomes easier because you know exactly what the place you are going to looks like.
2. We have had satellite imagery for the entire world for decades. Street view cameras blur names, faces (which is so effective it even blurs signs of faces), and numbers, protecting privacy, and when there is offensive imagery  the image is either not put on or promptly removed.

This is clear to me that it is no threat to privacy with Google's effective blurring of sensitive information. So I must say that it is no realistic threat to privacy.

Wikipedia: Why It's altruism has built it up to become a diverse and accurate source for academia

Introduction/Thesis

Wikipedia is an excellent source that can and should be used by students. It has risen to the same level of the most respected academic references that are written by scholars by the efforts of millions of people across the world doing research for a single cause in every language.

Detail Offered Compared to Other Major Sources

By allowing people to add information as they learn it, wikipedia has become the largest and most up to date depository of knowledge ever. (Crovitz)

Ease of Use

    Wikipedia has several ways to delve into a subject. The most obvious is the search bar at the top-right corner of the page. Type in the name of the article and you will most of the time be automatically be sent to that page. This is the easiest way to do research and works for almost everything.
    Beyond that, there are other ways to retrieve specific information that can be useful when doing specific research. Portals give the most important links for popular topics. Categories are given at the bottom of every article with links to all articles dealing with a subject, from a year to a small field of science. Lists are given on every subject to existing articles and articles that still need to be created. Timelines are given on the most important events of all history. Another way to research bringing a total of six ways to search is the alphabetical list of all entries on each wikipedia.
    The most original way to use Wikipedia is via portal. Portals give the links to the most important articles on the subject making an excellent jumping off point to new research. Wikipedia allows people to get to articles specific to a small field quickly. These pages can then be used by students to quickly understand what their professors are saying through their concise language (Research by using Wikipedia).
    Thew most popular source that schools use, Proquest, has some major disadvantages to Wikipedia. Proquest gives the original texts on some but not all documents. Most of the time it does not include the sources that the author from “scholarly journals” used. Wikipedia always gives links to the original sources and the best site for that document. It may include that documents sources in its own links on popular articles. Wikipedia’s final advantage is that it’s free. Proquest is extremely expensive for academia and designed by “experts” (Comparing experience of proquest and wikipedia while writing this paper).

Accuracy via Linus’ Law AKA Open Source vs. Closed Source Websites

Wikipedia is closely related to the Linux philosophy known as Linus’ Law. Linus’ Law states: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” This is the same way that Science papers are produced. (Russel Kay) A scientist starts an experiment and other scientists look for errors to help their friend and science which fixes all issues with the experiments. It has worked for over a hundred years and is how the Linux operating systems function, which has bade them as powerful as the expensive Apple and Microsoft operating systems. Wikipedia is no different. (Kutter)
    Perhaps the accuracy of Wikipedia is proven when academics occasionally test Wikipedia’s self-correcting  mechanism of Linus’ Law. According to Diane Skiba, A.J. Jacobs uploaded an article to Wikipedia with 15 deliberate errors. In 3 days volunteers had fixed all but one minor error.
    People watch Wikipedia’s pages to cancel bad edits and vandalism. Anyone can look at recent changes on the left hand side of the main page and see all the recent edits in reverse chronological order. Because the most popular languages have millions of users with somebody always combing the wiki, this makes vandalizing pages pointless. Another thing, scholarly sources on the internet will often have little information and have few links to check their sources. Wikipedia fixes these problems by having a lot of detail and all important pages have links so more information can be found quickly. (Experience while writing this paper)
    When compared to Britannica on random articles; Wikipedia hs four mistakes per article as opposed to Brittanica’s three (Brittanica). Since Wikipedia is fully written by volunteers this is an impressive statistic. This makes it practically equal.

Impact on the Publishing Industry

    The impact on publishing corporations is probably the biggest reason publishing houses are in a media war with Wikipedia. Having information on all important subjects makes basic research in printed sources wasteful of people’s time. This combined with the accuracy of Wikipedia decreases sales of books which is why Wikipedia’s competitiveness shrinks the sales of book companies. The only option they have is to go to a media war saying how Wikipedia is inaccurate by lying how it’s greatest strength is a weakness.

Accessibility

    Wikipedia has articles in 276 languages making it accessible to everyone who has a computer and can read. Wikipediai s free of use. It follows the freedom of information philosophy. (Wikipedia Statistics page)
    Encyclopedia Britannica is only in English. It is also expensive to purchase and unless you are a member of a library that has subscribed to it, you won’t be able to use it. (Experience while writing this paper.)

Usefulness as a Student

As a student, Wikipedia is a great source when learning a new subject. It’s articles are clear, concise, and well written. It presents every subject as if you have never been exposed to it, making it an excellent jumping off point on a new subject. (Interview with friends)
    Wikipedia gives students the best sites on every subject they will touch as an undergraduate student. This is superior to Google because Google doesn’t filter between accurate sources and inaccrate sources without some very specific searches. The websites presented on Wikipedia are often academic, giving reliable information. (See the page for “Bacteriophage” which includes links to four universities, a trend among science pages) This is also superior to sites you pay for because they are harder and take more time to navigate. (Crovitz; Original research)
    Wikipedia is also being used as a teaching mechanism in the classroom. Instead of writing identical papers on a common subject, students create accounts and add to Wikipedia’s information in some classrooms (Goodman).

Works Cited

Baytiyeh, Hoyta, and Jay Pfaffman. “Volunteers in Wikipedia: Why the Community Matters.”
    Ebsco. Web. 15 Nov. 2010

Black, Erik W. “Wikipedia and academic peer review: wikipedia as a recognized medium for scholarly publication?”
    Online Information Review. 32.1 (2008): 73. Platinum Periodicals, Proquest. Web. 17 Nov. 2010

Crovitz, D., and Smoot, W. “Wikipedia: Friend, Not Foe.” English Journal 98.3 (2009): 91-97/
    Platinum Periodicals, Proquest. Web. 16 Nov. 2010.

Goodman, R.. “STUDENTS CONTRIBUTE TO A GLOBAL COMMUNITY THROUGH IMPROVEMENT OF WIKIPEDIA.”
    The American Biology Teacher 70.3 (2008): 138-138. Research Library.

Russell Kay. “It’s the law!” Computerworld 12 Aug. 2002: Platinum Periodicals, Proquest. Web. 19 Nov. 2010.

Proquest. Web. 18 Nov. 2010

Skiba, Diane J. “Open Source: Will You Follow the Cathedral of the Bazaar Model?”
    Ebsco. Web. 15 Nov. 2010

Spence, Des. “A Wicked Encyclopaedia.”
    Proquest. 19 Sept. 2009. Web. 16 Nov. 2010

“Britannica attacks.” Nature 440. 7084 (2006): 582. Platinum Periodicals, ProQuest. Web. 17 Nov. 2010.

The Non-Political, Biological, Constitutional, and Economical Argument for Universal Health Care

As a scientist with a grasp of basic economic principles, I am in favor of universal health care. There is a clear correlation between access to health care and overall health. In Northern Australia you are in the humid tropics and everyone is healthy for the most part. Go to the same latitude in Africa and you lose all the health care Australians have and people's livelihoods decrease greatly. This is both a cause and an effect that keeps people not working and lowers life expectancy. I am going to prove the following, 1. Why Health Care is a Public Good, 2. Why Health Care is a prerequisite to a all around high standard of living, 3. Why Health Care is a human right and every member of society needs to have access, and 4. Why Health Care can only be fully implemented with Governmental Intervention.

1. Why Health Care is a Public Good
To define public good, a public good is in this tense is "non-rival – one person consuming them does not stop another person consuming them;" It is non rival because people are only going to have the amount of health care that they require,  there are enough resources to provide for, and over-treatment is not a major concern. Because who actually enjoys going to the doctor?

Furthermore, because of Germ theory, when someone is sick in the middle of a large crowd the bacteria and viruses that the person is infected with spread to other people. If we have one person in society carrying a virus that people are not immune to, and other people get the virus, we are risking an outbreak. In the United States of America, to allow someone to put other people at risk of contagious diseases, especially susceptible people's health violates a core American value, the right to life without which all other rights are pointless. (Declaration of Independence Paragraph II) This is proof that our founding father's would agree that we need to protect all people from things outside of their control. It is more dangerous than drugs because life-threatening heroin doesn't spread like wildfire, viruses do. Another thing, many people continue to go to work after they get sick and don't stay home and take medicine allowing them to get better here in America. Because of this, no matter what the official rates are for illness, they are going to be too low because Americans are not taught Germ Theory. This makes American statistics for illness the minimum because the actual numbers are much higher. Also, economically, when you are sick if you go to work your efficiency is going to be cut significantly because it is harder to do tasks. /This means that true universal health care is economical stimulation.

This proves that someone's not getting health care harms everyone else's health care, no matter what their income level, race, sex, or social class is, making someone not have access to health care inherently immoral.

2. Why Health Care is a Prerequisite to a Standard of Living.
If you are sickly, your standard of living is going to drop. Economically, you are going to be less productive, even if you are going to work. You will not be able to get things done that have to be done and if your illness is contagious the standard of living of people around you is also going to drop. If you look at the standard of living on the Human Development Index, the lowest countries have sporadic health care services at best, and the countries at the very top of the list all have Universal Health Care. If someone is not sick, and not around people who are sick, than the illness will drop and people will lead better lives.

3. Why Health Care is a Human Right and Every Member of Society Needs to Have Access.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by Eleanor Roosevelt and others, lists fundamental human rights that are followed by all free nations. It is based on equality and includes parts of life that are not taken away from people in the United States of America, such as freedom of speech, religion, petition, and other rights. However, if you are dead, these rights are not worth anything. You need to be alive to enjoy these good concepts, and if a person doesn't have access to health care they are unable to enjoy every human right. This makes is a foundation for everything we do in life in our world and a prerequisite to everything in society.

4. Why Health Care Can Only be Fully Implemented with Governmental Intervention.
The first thing people learn about corporations in any economics class is what firms exist to do. They exist to make a profit. People go into business to make money and only a few major businessmen continue to care about what happens to others. The owner is in business to make money to live his/her own life. (Mankiw) This makes it so that if it is not profitable to give someone health care a corporation is not going to. This means that if ordinary people do not have health insurance or have their health care paid for by taxes (like Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Japan and Taiwan to an extent) they will not receive health care, making it so that you have a large segment of the population that will not have access, giving a huge pool of people for disease to grow and mutate in, threatening an epidemic.

An option for people to have their health care, the current American  method, is to have health insurance industries offer people insurance. If there are competing companies the prices are going to stay low and the people at the top will make money and everyone will be happy. This should work, but often doesn't. Companies often out compete each other forcing out the competition and then rise their prices giving their owners record profits leaving people who don't qualify for Medicare struggling to make ends meet (dropping standards of living for no moral reason) OR going without health care (which as I proved in point 3 doesn't just affect the people without coverage). Both are unacceptable and not the fault of the people who are now at risk. This is why if we are to do the American option, there will need to be a governmental self-sustaining public health insurance option for people to buy into if they choose to. This will prevent large corporations from taking advantage of innocent people and to not do so goes against the fundamental American principle our Founding Fathers believed in, that all people are created equal and we all have a right to life. This would work.

Another option is universal health care from the government. People pay sales taxes, and then everyone has paid for their use of the public good. It prevents outbreaks in Northern Europe and Canada making their standard of living exceed ours by international standards, and follows the American principle of everyone being equal. Like anything, there is an equilibrium that must be achieved in order for it to work, which is why when I talked to a friend from British Columbia he told me about how there was reform to their system around 2006 that took the existing system and crossed out the problems of long waiting lines that had been an unexpected symptom during PM Trudeau's term. They fixed it and it is now far superior to America's system using cost-benefit analysis.

I am not a Capitalist. I am not a Communist. I am not a Socialist. I am a Utilitarian. I look at the options to find the system that will work the best for the largest amount of people and then support it after analysis.

MMR Scandal regarding fake link to autism

kReading the news, I saw the unsurprising link to autism given by the corrupt "scientist" Wakefield. Nice summary is given here: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/01/mmr-scandal-first-flawed-now-f.html

Now, in my opinion, making such a fraudulent, corrupt, misleading, and potentially life-threatening lie about one of the best vaccinations in the world is attempted murder and should be charged as such. People not getting their MMR vaccine based on this unnecessarily puts them in harms way and destroys herd immunity for the people who can not get the vaccination. This threatens their lives from three of the world's most dangerous viruses. He should be charged as such. If I was the judge or lawmaker I would say the appropriate punishment would include the following:

1. Annulment of all licenses and degrees.
2. Life in prison.
3. He may have the option to be killed if he doesn't want to spend forty years in prison, and I say the just way to do it would be through lethal injection of all three, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella followed by solitary confinement.

I feel like anything less would not be enough. Attempted murder is attempted murder, no matter what the motivation. Potentially creating a huge group of young people becoming that sick is nothing else.

Things the Tea Party is Deliberately Forgetting

The Tea Party is in power now. Their ideas about how economics work are about to be tested and they are going to be the people doing everything for the next two years. Here are some reminders of past Tea party movements in American History and how they ended up.

1. Reconstruction. After the South was completely brutalized by the Civil War they had no infrastructure, no industry, and no economy. Their was nothing to get the economy started and the Republicans decided to jump-start the economy. They built infrastructure, rebuilt Atlanta, Montgomery, and other southern cities so that Americans could have the infrastructure of the north. This went on from 1866-1877, 11 years. Then the Democrats came to power under President Rutherford B. Hayes. The South which once was as industrial as the North has not been the same economically since. The only major project after reconstruction was of course the Tennessee Valley Authority bringing power to rural people and jobs to one of the country's most impoverished states.
2. The Great Depression. People overspent and overlent until people didn't have enough money to keep the money flowing. President Herbert Hoover comes to power and seven months later Black Friday happens and the economy is in depression. He holds fast to the modern Tea Party's belief in Laissez-faire, that the government should be as far from the economy as it possibly could. The economy continued to shrink for the next four years until the Keynesian (the economic philosophy that government can boost the economy through spending) Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt bring on the New Deal creating jobs for people, keeping their resumes up to date and making the decelerating economy speed up for the first time in four years. The process was long, a good six years until WW2 created more jobs continuing the New Deal's good work. Some people would say that it was World War 2 that ended the depression. But may I ask the question, where would the United States have got the money to wage war on Germany, Japan, and Italy in 1933?????
3. 1970s. During the 1970s big oil hiked the price up quickly once President Carter entered office and made the economy slow because we were (and still are) addicted to petroleum as was proved then. Reagan was elected following the Iran-Contra affair and Big Oil decreased the cost of gasoline. This is a different reason from the past two examples and may be discarded because of different reasons for the beginning and end.
4. 2008. People overspent and overlent until people didn't have enough money to keep the money flowing. President Obama entered office and proposed legislation that was strong and would move the economy out quickly. Republicans viciously amended the legislation to the level of vandalism until the bills were barely powerful enough to do anything, blamed it on the Democrats, and then say it is the Democrats fault that the economy is not back to 2000 levels. They win in the 2010 election and expect the laissez-faire of President Herbert Hover to work in 2011.

Here are the reasons for why laissez-faire economics did not and will not work now in order of importance:

1. It assumes that a populace whose vast majority (I estimate about 98% to be generous) do not understand what money is will act appropriately to bring the economy back to the levels required.
2. It assumes that businesses are going to take risks that are almost guaranteed to fail with the first point will continue to expand and manufacture when they are in the red.
3. It assumes that these two things are going to happen with practically no insurance, security, or any guarantee of money coming back to their investments. Basically, the economy is at a standstill at best, actually it is more likely to go into free-fall like the period of 1929-1933.

Here are the reasons why Keynesian Economics works:

1. It gives businesses (large and small if it is done correctly) some extra cash to keep their employees so they can still be involved in the economy during a rough patch. It allows them to not have to cut jobs which makes unemployment better and then the economy more stable.
2. It keeps banks open and stocks decent which make it so people don't lose their investments and continue to be productive members of society and active members of the economy. This also makes the rough patch smaller.
3. It gives jobs the now smaller number of people who are out of work, which keeps people employed which is an essential part to any economy. This keeps the economy flowing with more people active.

These concepts are all based on the truth as seen by history and is agreed upon by any economist even President Bush's economic advisers.