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London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

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Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#91

Post by eli_gottlieb »

the_af wrote: post #59
ripb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The middle class are damned if they do, damned if they don't by the author's argument. And yet if the middle class ask their representatives to scale back the very same social programs that provide the uber cool, uber cultural working and welfare classes that the author is idolizing here they are demonized in the extreme. Sure, the middle class give the working and welfare class schools, access to universities, free…

The middle class "give" the working class access to universities and free healthcare? Um, what ?

At least in most capitalist countries, the "middle class" is actually the decently-paid subset of the Working Class, in the Marxian sense, whereas the "working class" actually means the outright struggling subset of the Working Class.

Point being, not only do the middle class provide universities and health-care by paying taxes for them, they make up a large portion of the actual professional labor force at those institutions.

I'm very, very left-wing, but having newspapers print long articles more-or-less pointing and laughing at any of the workers who actually keep whole countries running is pretty goddamn insulting, and that includes when they label those workers "middle class" or "hipsters".

Dignity in labor applies to the white-collared, too.

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#92

Post by eli_gottlieb »

swatow wrote: post #80
Apocryphon wrote: post #2

Between white America's appropriation of black American pop culture and the rise of yuppie hipsterdom, this applies just as much to the U.S., doesn't it?

Really it's just Whites who are under attack. When poor or redneck Whites live in their own way, the are characterized as uneducated violent brutes who are in need of education and culture. And yet when middle class Whites act decently, they are attacked for their soullessness and lack of authenticity. They are criticized for being out of touch with poor people, by the same people who heap scorn on poor (White) peopl…

Your comment seems sensible, but then your blog is full of far-right nuttery. Racism and classism are things. Popular racism against white people is actually largely classism: how dare they be rural working class or urban upper-middle class!

Besides which, black people in the USA are under attack in the form of being regularly murdered by officers of the state for no legal reason.

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#93

Post by semi-extrinsic »

darkmighty wrote: post #81
ForHackernews wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar energy is essentially untapped today (relative to output from fossil fuels), and we are in no danger of exhausting the supply of nuclear fuel in the near term.[0] Eventually global energy production will taper off, but I would bet strongly against it being within the next century. [0] http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Uranium...

Yea, there is no "thermodynamic reason" for a limited supply of energy. Even if we started expending too much energy in the atmosphere (say if we found an efficient way to fusion), we could pump this excess heat to space, if it would ever come to such an extreme.

I see that none of you have heard of Carnot efficiency, or even the second law of thermodynamics. Even if we were to get electric energy from magical pink unicorns that produced no heat, the usage of that energy would produce waste heat. And no, you can't just pump heat into space; if we could that would easily solve global warming.

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#94

Post by darkmighty »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #93
darkmighty wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, there is no "thermodynamic reason" for a limited supply of energy. Even if we started expending too much energy in the atmosphere (say if we found an efficient way to fusion), we could pump this excess heat to space, if it would ever come to such an extreme.

I see that none of you have heard of Carnot efficiency, or even the second law of thermodynamics. Even if we were to get electric energy from magical pink unicorns that produced no heat, the usage of that energy would produce waste heat. And no, you can't just pump heat into space; if we could that would easily solve global warming.

Yes you can...

Constructive proof: build a large suspended reflector (mirror), put you power source on it and pump heat from earth to a sphere of any material, which radiates heat into space.

No, this of course can't easily solve global warming due to enormous cost it would have and ludicrous efficiency. It's way cheaper to just absorb less heat from the sun (less CO2).

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#95

Post by walshemj »

sandworm wrote: post #84
walshemj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A GP (family doctor) in the UK earns 5 or 6 times the median wage with a Final Salary Pension

That's my point. Earning a wage 5 or 6 times higher than average is still considered by the OP to be middle class. Something is wrong when the "middle" also includes professionals who earn far higher than average. Western society, particularly London, is too focused on the elites. Everyone who isn't a banker is balled up in the "middle class" catch-all. For instance, a tax break by government to help "the middle clas…

And so would I class is not based on money as one Tory MP said referring to Heseltine, deputy PM at the time – as saying "The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy all his furniture"

Which was toped by an even grander MP who remarked "that is a bit rich coming from someone whose father had to buy his castle"

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#96

Post by keithpeter »

pjc50 wrote: post #88
the_af wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle class cannot give what is not theirs to give. What if the working class stopped working?

Well, what if the middle class stopped working? Have we forgotten the teachers strikes? Admittedly it doesn't have the same immediate effect as the miner's strike turning the lights out. But healthcare and education are very stereotypical middle class occupations.

Trying to organise teachers to strike indefinitely is basically impossible as no teacher wants to damage the chances of their students. So a replay of the miners' strike of the mid 1980s will not happen (and I'm sort of glad about that given the permanent polarisation that action caused in the communities most affected). In the modern UK, an indefinite school teachers' strike would cause significant disruption as most families have both parents working.

My colleagues might manage a token one day strike now and again, but basically that is your lot. What is termed 'action short of a strike' can actually be more effective in certain circumstances. Cutting off the flow of data really bothers the management but the everyday work of the institution continues; students continue to be taught, to have work marked and to receive feedback designed to improve their understanding of the material.

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#97

Post by semi-extrinsic »

darkmighty wrote: post #94
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that none of you have heard of Carnot efficiency, or even the second law of thermodynamics. Even if we were to get electric energy from magical pink unicorns that produced no heat, the usage of that energy would produce waste heat. And no, you can't just pump heat into space; if we could that would easily solve global warming.

Yes you can... Constructive proof: build a large suspended reflector (mirror), put you power source on it and pump heat from earth to a sphere of any material, which radiates heat into space. No, this of course can't easily solve global warming due to enormous cost it would have and ludicrous efficiency. It's way cheaper to just absorb less heat from the sun (less CO2).

Sometimes it's best to do the math before claiming stuff. Now, using thermal radiation from a metal puts your emission spectrum at blackbody radiation around or below 2000 Kelvin, and in that band around 50% of your emitted energy will be absorbed by the atmosphere (thus will not leave earth). Your heat pump going from 293 K to 2000 K will have a laughably low Carnot efficiency (the highest efficiency allowed by thermodynamics): for every Joule of heat you pump from the earth to the sphere, you have to use more than 20 Joules from our magical unicorns. Of these 20 Joules, 10 will be absorbed by the atmosphere and heat the earth. But you have only removed one Joule of heat from the earth. Thus your apparatus is not able to cool the earth, in fact it will be heating the earth by a lot.

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#98

Post by darkmighty »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #97
darkmighty wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can... Constructive proof: build a large suspended reflector (mirror), put you power source on it and pump heat from earth to a sphere of any material, which radiates heat into space. No, this of course can't easily solve global warming due to enormous cost it would have and ludicrous efficiency. It's way cheaper to just absorb less heat from the sun (less CO2).

Sometimes it's best to do the math before claiming stuff. Now, using thermal radiation from a metal puts your emission spectrum at blackbody radiation around or below 2000 Kelvin, and in that band around 50% of your emitted energy will be absorbed by the atmosphere (thus will not leave earth). Your heat pump going from 293 K to 2000 K will have a laughably low Carnot efficiency (the highest efficiency allowed by ther…

Who says the apparatus has to be in the low atmosphere?

What you cite are technical reasons, not thermodynamic. Thermodynamics doesn't disallow the situation, only technical reasons make it difficult.

> Sometimes it's best to do the math before claiming stuff

> I see that none of you have heard of Carnot efficiency

Sometimes it's best to get off your high horse.

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#99

Post by semi-extrinsic »

darkmighty wrote: post #98
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it's best to do the math before claiming stuff. Now, using thermal radiation from a metal puts your emission spectrum at blackbody radiation around or below 2000 Kelvin, and in that band around 50% of your emitted energy will be absorbed by the atmosphere (thus will not leave earth). Your heat pump going from 293 K to 2000 K will have a laughably low Carnot efficiency (the highest efficiency allowed by ther…

Who says the apparatus has to be in the low atmosphere? What you cite are technical reasons, not thermodynamic. Thermodynamics doesn't disallow the situation, only technical reasons make it difficult. > Sometimes it's best to do the math before claiming stuff > I see that none of you have heard of Carnot efficiency Sometimes it's best to get off your high horse.

Alright, thermodynamics + not requiring magic (except the unicorns) then. Thermodynamics has everything to do with it; if it were not for the Carnot limit on heat pump efficiency, your proposed scheme for heat removal would work fine. If it were not for the Carnot limit, we would have no problem growing global energy consumption at 2-3% per year (i.e. exponentially) for a hundred more years.

So, if you put your apparatus anywhere but in the low atmosphere, how do you expect it to pump heat from the low atmosphere (where the heat is)?

I'm not on any high horse, but I'm surprised at how quickly people dismiss this problem as absurd. It's quite obvious if you know some engineering thermodynamics. I think people dismiss it out of cognitive dissonance, since they don't want another unfixable world problem.

Re: London's poor fetish: commodifying working class culture

#100

Post by darkmighty »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #99
darkmighty wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says the apparatus has to be in the low atmosphere? What you cite are technical reasons, not thermodynamic. Thermodynamics doesn't disallow the situation, only technical reasons make it difficult. > Sometimes it's best to do the math before claiming stuff > I see that none of you have heard of Carnot efficiency Sometimes it's best to get off your high horse.

Alright, thermodynamics + not requiring magic (except the unicorns) then. Thermodynamics has everything to do with it; if it were not for the Carnot limit on heat pump efficiency, your proposed scheme for heat removal would work fine. If it were not for the Carnot limit, we would have no problem growing global energy consumption at 2-3% per year (i.e. exponentially) for a hundred more years. So, if you put your appar…

> I'm not on any high horse

> people dismiss it out of cognitive dissonance

Ok then.

You are making a few claims:

1) Thermodynamics imposes a finite limit on the energy consumption on Earth;

Sure, it might be necessary to build a fleet of titanic cooling towers to cool the atmosphere, I don't think we will ever need to do that; but thermodynamics doesn't forbid cooling Earth, hence your claim is false.

That out of the way

2) The direct thermal output of power sources/uses is going to be a problem in the near future

I claim that's also false. In fact, the burden of the proof should be yours when you make such a claim, but let me show why I believe otherwise: (approximate figure from wiki [1])

142 PWh of energy was used worldwide. Solar irradiance is 340000 PWh. It would take almost 200 years of steady 3% growth (or a 240x increase in consumption) to even reach 1% of solar irradiance as internal heat. Even then, the impact of greenhouse gases massively overshadows that.

On top of that, there's no activity requiring exponentially more energy, or evidence that we may continue expanding energy demand for hundreds or years. In fact, if you look at per capita energy consumption vs GDP [2], you can clearly see a saturation of energy needs. Once the developing nations reach this, it seems demand growth is going to slow down. Nothing physical ever maintains an exponential growth for too long.

[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/The-NASA-...

[2] http://www.withouthotair.com/c30/figure242.png

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