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Science already doesn't work that way. I suggest you do some reading.

The flight crew doesn't have a "need-to-know" whether or not the mission is real or a drill? Give me a fucking break! You've been watching too many movies.

I'm going with the other guy who replied to all of your messages. What makes you an authority on this subject? One of my friends was a nuke troop (MOS code: 2w231) at Whiteman Airforce Base and while she touts the standard line of "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons at...." line, she'd be the first to admit that even the ground crews are damn well aware of what they are handling. Ditto for the pilots.

Protecting our freedoms? I thought it was about stopping terrorist attacks. I mean, so many people have died in America from Osama Bin Laden's terrorism; there have been almost 3,000 deaths this century!

Of course, since over 40,000 people die every year on the highways, I'd like to see some of that "Homeland Security" money go to guard rails and other safety improvements. I'm far more afraid of the cell-phone weilding blonde than the bomb wielding Muslim!

But wait, that's still chicken feed. Osama should be jealous as hell of a far bigger terrorist - RJ Reynolds, whose poison kills over half a million people yearly! the corporate terrorists are truly deadly!

Even Ronald McDonald kicks Osama's ass when it comes to killing Americans. Heart Disease also kills over half a million Americans every year.

Hell, even Bush himself is deadlier to Americans than Osama, since well over 3,000 of the soldiers he sent to Iraq (to destabilize the region and drive gas prices up; he's an oil man. Gas was $1 here when he took office, now it's over three times as high) have died there.

Al Quaida? Shit, the tornado that tore through my home town in 2006 miraculously didn't kill or even seriously injure anyone, but look at the destruction of ONE building! The tree behind my apartment looked like a weed someone had stomped on. I saw twisted girders, trailor homes torn in half, five foot diameter trees uprooted, wood splinters imbedded in concrete. If Osama saw what I saw he'd have given up.

So I completely agree with you. That God damned abomination must go! I think the Congress and Senate who passed it and the President who begged for it and signed it should go as well.

-mcgrew

My question then is, What could they do to make him look any dumber than he already is?

Does it really?

Eudora. Sylpheed. Outlook.

Now tell me, which two of those look most alike?

Does it really?

Eudora. Sylpheed. Outlook.

Now tell me, which two of those look most alike?

Do we know this? I'm no astronomer, so I don't. Just how much can an orbit be altered by a collision? (Or at least, one that doesn't pulverize both objects).

I'm no astronomer either, but we can run some numbers found a la Google and give ourselves some reasonable estimates. Anybody who IS an astronomer is free to correct my numbers, but my intention is merely a "back of the napkin" class estimate.

How fast does an asteroid travel? The average speed of an asteroid is 25km/second. Since I'm am American, to me that's about 15 miles per SECOND.

Earth is 7,926 Miles across. For these figures I'll use 8,000 miles.

Asteroids are somewhere between 1.8 and 4.5 AU from the sun. The earth is 1 AU from the son. Since both orbit the sun, and the average distance of earth from the sun is 0 AU (orbit being roughly circular) let's say that the average distance of an asteroid from Earth is about 2.2 AU. Since earth is 1 AU and that is 93 Million miles, we'll say that the average asteroid is about 93 million * 2.2 miles from the Earth. That's 204.6 million miles from the Earth.

So let's assume that two rocks hit. What are the odds that the asteroid goes out and whacks the Earth, straight away? Well, we'd end up with a 204.6 MILLION MILE RADIUS on the inside of a very large sphere. Using the formula for calculating the surface of a sphere, we get 261,348,480,000,000,000 square miles of area that the asteroid could potentially hit. Compare that to the actual area of Earth to hit (a circle 2*pi*r) =~ 50,000 miles.

In short, you have a 50,000 in 261,348,480,000,000,000, or 1 in 5,226,969,600,000. (one in about 5 trillion)

These are very VERY VERY small odds, even if my back-of-the-napkin calculations are off by several orders of magnitude. Let's give you some idea just how BIG 5 trillion is. There have been about 1 billion seconds since Jan 1, 1972. To wait 1 trillion seconds is to wait about 30,000 years. If asteroids were to collide every SINGLE SECOND it would STILL take over 30,000 YEARS for one to hit the Earth directly.

Now, these figures are rough. They do not take into account orbital mechanics, etc. But even so, the numbers are very small (large as odds against?) indeed.

The Laws.

The store did NOT have any right whatsoever to detain the guy.

Wrong, unfortunately.

Here's a site with links to the laws of all the states concerning shoplifting: link

Basically, in all the states I looked at, merchants can use "reasonable suspicion" as a defense in a civil suit, and they absolutely have the right to detain, using reasonable force, someone suspected of shoplifting.

Now, of course, here comes the catch: did CC reasonably suspect him of shoplifting? In reality, no; he simply refused to let them check his bags as they do for everyone. But they can claim that they did suspect him, and make up something about witnessing what they thought looked like him putting something extra in his bag. When it gets to court, they may very well lose, but that's a lot of time and legal expense for the customer to deal with just to prove he was right and the store was wrong.

The best thing to do is just never shop at CC again, and tell your friends not to shop there either. CC is already going down the tubes financially, as I understand it.

So? Just because a sign exists that claims I give them this consent doesn't mean they can exercise it. A business is owned by private individuals, and nowhere does the law give private individuals the right to arbitrarily search other individuals. Signs like this are just so much bullshit, but the stores count on people being sheep and just accepting it. "Oh look, it's in print and looks official-like, it must be true!"

Unfortunately, I think you're wrong, at least in many or most states. Another poster in this thread posted this helpful link of all the states' laws concerning shoplifting. I read through a bunch of them, both east coast and west coast, and they all seem to allow the merchant and his agents to physically detain suspected shoplifters, using reasonable force. So all they have to do is say they suspect you of shoplifting. And reasonable suspicion is specifically named as a defense in any civil suit brought against the merchant or police, so you probably won't win if you sue them either.

I don't like it either, but that appears to be the law. Personally, I try to avoid crappy stores like Circuit Shitty and Best Buy. I've already had other very negative experiences at both of them (not involving detention or suspected shoplifting, just horrible return policies). I'm not real fond of Fry's either, but sometimes I need something quickly, and while the place feels kinda slimy, I haven't actually had any real problems there. The best thing to do is just stay home and buy everything you can online, especially from reputable merchants like Newegg and Amazon, who both have excellent customer service as well as prices. For those times you just want to go browsing and be among other people, go to the mall. I've never seen the kind of heavy-handed loss-prevention actions at malls that I continually hear about with Best Buy and Circuit Shitty. You can walk around all evening, look at all the freaks, look at the crap in the stores, get some food, and leave without having to worry about some loser with a "security" badge grabbing you and demanding to search you. Or maybe the malls I go to are better than average.

Most states and municipalities have passed laws granting shopkeepers limited privilege to search and detain customers, when they reasonably believe a theft has occurred. List of laws by state. Some laws provide the shopkeeper limited immunity from torts arising from detainment.

The criteria which triggers shopkeeper privilege varies, but generally is centered on whether the store's employees witnessed a theft or other suspicious activity that indicates a theft has taken place (e.g. opening packaged goods, placing goods upon one's self, etc.)

The shopkeeper has a certain amount of leeway. In Ohio, the statute is:

2935.041 Detention, arrest of shoplifters; protection of library, museum and archival institution property, specifically:

(A) A merchant, or his employee or agent, who has probable cause to believe that items offered for sale by a mercantile establishment have been unlawfully taken by a person, may, for the purposes set forth in division (C) of this section, detain the person in a reasonable manner for a reasonable length of time within the mercantile establishment or its immediate vicinity.

(F) Any peace officer may arrest without a warrant any person that he has probable cause to believe has committed any act described in division (B)(1) or (2) of this section or that he has probable cause to believe has committed an unlawful taking in a mercantile establishment. An arrest under this division shall be made within a reasonable time after the commission of the act or unlawful taking.

As to the officer arresting the dude who wouldn't show his license, that's gonna be up to the jury to decide. Watch for the local prosecutor to drop the charges, as a public conciliatory gesture, sign that the police department is hedging against future lawsuit.

To the folks who say "forgive and forget," that the arrestee wasn't harmed or should drop the case - remember that, in most cases, today, the public entity you've just been arrested by is a municipal corporation, and carries many of the protections of a business corporation. Cities generally act as corporations do - to deny wrongdoing, and to put up a lawyer front. That leaves only one way to combat wrongful arrest: sue. The city won't apologize, that's tantamount to admission of wrongdoing. It is up to the arrestee to assert that wrong was done, and prove it in court.

That's how "The System" works. It's become a paper-based RPG - your lawyer versus their lawyer, knight vs. knight.

Most states and municipalities have passed laws granting shopkeepers limited privilege to search and detain customers, when they reasonably believe a theft has occurred. List of laws by state. Some laws provide the shopkeeper limited immunity from torts arising from detainment.

The criteria which triggers shopkeeper privilege varies, but generally is centered on whether the store's employees witnessed a theft or other suspicious activity that indicates a theft has taken place (e.g. opening packaged goods, placing goods upon one's self, etc.)

The shopkeeper has a certain amount of leeway. In Ohio, the statute is:

2935.041 Detention, arrest of shoplifters; protection of library, museum and archival institution property, specifically:

(A) A merchant, or his employee or agent, who has probable cause to believe that items offered for sale by a mercantile establishment have been unlawfully taken by a person, may, for the purposes set forth in division (C) of this section, detain the person in a reasonable manner for a reasonable length of time within the mercantile establishment or its immediate vicinity.

(F) Any peace officer may arrest without a warrant any person that he has probable cause to believe has committed any act described in division (B)(1) or (2) of this section or that he has probable cause to believe has committed an unlawful taking in a mercantile establishment. An arrest under this division shall be made within a reasonable time after the commission of the act or unlawful taking.

As to the officer arresting the dude who wouldn't show his license, that's gonna be up to the jury to decide. Watch for the local prosecutor to drop the charges, as a public conciliatory gesture, sign that the police department is hedging against future lawsuit.

To the folks who say "forgive and forget," that the arrestee wasn't harmed or should drop the case - remember that, in most cases, today, the public entity you've just been arrested by is a municipal corporation, and carries many of the protections of a business corporation. Cities generally act as corporations do - to deny wrongdoing, and to put up a lawyer front. That leaves only one way to combat wrongful arrest: sue. The city won't apologize, that's tantamount to admission of wrongdoing. It is up to the arrestee to assert that wrong was done, and prove it in court.

That's how "The System" works. It's become a paper-based RPG - your lawyer versus their lawyer, knight vs. knight.

... I don't understand why anyone would connect any machine directly to the Internet without some type of hardware firewall.

That is what the Internet is for. You're projecting Windows' problems onto real computers. There is no reason why a router or hardware firewall should be necessary to add security -- they're both computers with instructions and flaws. Increasing the number of hardware pieces increases the number of failure points at the cost of also increasing latency and reducing actual bandwidth.

There are only three reason why a computer needs to be isolated from the Internet:

• There are not enough addresses in the IPV4 space to expand forever. IPV6 fixes that.
• The network administrator's convenience.
• Experience has shown the software provider doesn't know how to write or fix network code. These links can help with that.

There are two kinds of managers out there. There are managers who manage people and there are managers who manage projects. Some positions combine both but not always. From my experience good coders are rarely good at interacting with people, so eventually they are not that good at delegating parts of the projects and end up doing most of the work themselves. I would personally recommend checking out http://management.about.com/ it is a good resource to start with.

Ah, maybe the "pacemaker" story is just another lie. Maybe he really is the Tin Man.

Because sometimes the government is at odds with itself.

http://movies.about.com/od/moviesinproduction/a/op us093004.htm

This was from 2004. Maybe this is the final media push before the movie announcement so that it goes the way of the Simpsons.

An animated comedy starring the popular Opus the Penguin from Berke Breathed's "Bloom County" comic strip.

Director: Berkeley Breathed
Writer(s): Berkeley Breathed
Cast: Not Available

Release Date: December 19, 2008
Official Site: Not Available
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Genre: Animation, Comedy
Rating: Not Available

The problem is, how do you know its the parents making that decision?

You don't. And you don't need to. It's none of your business, and most certainly none of the government's.

So, the government is either allowed to make laws in this regard or they are not. You can't say that it's OK to put age restrictions on purchasing arms, which is explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution by NAME, but not on video games, which are not mentioned. And before you say "freedom of speech", the speech the founders were referring to was political speech, as in, you are allowed to criticize the government. Freedom of expression is not mentioned. For that matter, neither is freedom of commerce. The only way a video game can considered free speech is if it's free, as in beer.

Also, here is what Judge Richard A. Posner said:

'Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low ... It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware. To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.'"

Sounds to me like HE (speaking for the state) is making the final say, not the parents. Do you agree that the state should decide when my children can be exposed to violence?

No, the judge did NOT say that, nor did any of the other judges who shot down these laws. Stop putting words in other people's mouths.
I didn't. I evaluated what the ruling meant. You said that parents have the final say. The result of this law is the exact opposite. Parents do NOT have the final say. The judge himself said parents making that decision would be would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it. Now, if the laws were banning these games completely, he would have a point, but
that was not the case. These laws forced the parents to decide, and he thought parents would over shield their children. That's MY decision, not his!

Unlike you, I comprehended it all. Which is why, for your convenience, I've changed the emphasis to show why it doesn't even approach the conclusiveness you need to be taken seriously on a forum, let alone successfully defend a law in court.
Funny, when I list an article that was written in the '90's, you say it's too old. When I list an article that says the same thing, from 2003, you say it doesn't mean anything. YOU set up the rules by saying that "Rational people do not ignore scientific research". I provided that research. Research, btw, only suggests. Research doesn't "prove", especially when dealing with something as fluid as psychology. For there to be laws in psychology, all people would have to act the same to stimuli, and they don't.
I'm sorry if those with doctorates disagree with what you "think", but a rational person wouldn't let their personal opinions interfere with the years of research that went into these studies.

But, if you don't like my sources, I'll even offer a few more.
HERE (PDF warning)
HERE (update of above, also pdf)
HERE (Last edited 11/9/05)
HERE
and HERE

Of course, there are several more, but a "rational person" would get the idea. Besides, from the looks of the judges

Even with a full choke you are lucky to get anything more than 3-500 feet out of a 12 gauge, the US Marines list the effective range as 50 yards.

By the way, adding fiber is a good way to unclog your pipes.

Sometimes we don't need a PhD to know some obvious facts in life. All of us, including you, know that bullies in school are total retards. Here is one "some kind of evidence" link for you. Perhaps you care to refute it?

People from Spain have too much of a lisp to speak proper Mexican

By common shotgun, you mean something like the Remington 870 which was introduced over 50 years ago and has since become the best-selling, with nearly 10 million sales? This of course being the model the 10th Mountain Division trained with at least until 4 years ago:

http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/armyweapons/a/newar myshotgun.htm

Of course, that was 4 years ago, so things may have changed drastically since that time. Though of course the US military still is thought to actively use these.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_individual_we apons_of_the_U.S._Armed_Forces#Shotguns

For instance, the Air Force does continue to use these for air base defense. Though, you may argue something about it just being the Air Force. Units such as the Marines or Navy Seals using some form of shotgun would probably make a stronger point:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_shotgun

To me, the common shotgun seems like a reasonable selection for militia action.

Endeavour.

http://space.about.com/b/a/256929.htm /NASA = Need Another Spellcheck ASAP

My wife and I buy "soap base" in bulk and use it. It's intended to be mixed with fragrances and coloring (and I suppose resold) but we use it straight. It's very inexpensive, though you have to buy empty dispenser bottles to use it.

Here's the site we order from. There's no "anti-bacteria" chemicals in it, and for people like me who hate fragrances, it's hypo-allergenic without the boutique price. For a gallon, it's 25 cents an ounce. And it should last about two years per person. If you want something with an interesting label, go with Dr. Bronner's.

For those chemists (cooks) out there, soap is easy to make yourself.

Though the payload bay doors were opened without incident, their successful operation provided a clear view of the craft's Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) pods, which showed signs of heat-shield tile damage. Mission Control counted 15 tiles missing from the OMS pods, which contained the vehicles in-orbit thrusters. Houston determined that the missing tiles would not present any problem, but mission controllers did not know if there was extensive tile damage on the orbiter's underside, an area more sensitive to reentry heating.

Major systems tested successfully on first flight of Space Transportation System. Orbiter sustained tile damage on launch and from overpressure wave created by the solid rocket boosters. Subsequent modifications to the water sound suppression system eliminated the problem. A total of sixteen tiles were lost and 148 tiles were damaged.

I'm aware there are video game ratings. Maybe you missed the part I wrote where I said, "holding vendors accountable for sales according to those ratings."

Actually, no. Your knowledge of such issues seem to be about as dated as your lack of knowledge of the fact that the ESRB has been around since 1994.

Really? Here are the first handful of hits in Google when you search for "are video games harmful?":

http://www.apa.org/releases/videogames.html

http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers /freedman.html

http://www.psychologymatters.org/videogames.html

http://www.psychologymatters.org/mediaviolence.htm l

http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/familyresources/a /vidgameviolence.htm

http://www.psu.edu/dept/medialab/research/vgviolen ce.html

You'd better get back to class there, professor.

Sweden, Population 2007: 9,127,058
New York City, Population 2006: 8,214,426


Ooooh, excuse the heck out of me. I mispoke-, I should have said "Most Populous Urban Agglomerations"

http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeograp hy/a/agglomerations.htm :
"Most Populous Urban Agglomerations ...
1. Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan - 33,200,000
2. New York, United States - 17,800,000"

why don't we even have decent broadband in our giant cities?

We do.

(Depending on your definition of "decent broadband")

I would write more, but I'm still on DSL and it will already take long enough for this to upload...

Your entire post was less than 1000 characters. Even bottom-of-the-barrel DSL should take less than a second to upload that.

"yet no one is asking whether it is even physically possible. It's not."

Who are you to declare that interstellar travel is impossible? I could accept an "agnostic" or "weak atheist" type position, but to boldly declare that based on 2007 technology we will never colonize space is myopic. I'd use the example of the US Patent clerk closing the office because everything had already been invented, but that's a myth, along with Bill Gates and "640k ought to be enough for anyone". http://inventors.about.com/library/lessons/bl_appe ndix5.htm

I'm skeptical of Kurzweilists who see never-ending exponential curves and don't bear in mind that past performance is no guarantee of future results. But counting us out is premature. I read your prior post. Your arguments are
1) We can't construct a biosphere.
2) A journey to the nearest star would take 40k years WITH CURRENT TECHNOLOGY, and energy sources would burn out.

I'm not sure if you understand the huge and latent capability humanity has. If you want to get an idea, compare the state of technology at 1939 with that of 1945. Jets, radar, impossible codes cracked, atomic bombs developed, tested, dropped. You are saying that a $200 million failed experiment and our current hundredth-assed effort at space exploration is all we are capable of, all we have in the tank.

No points granted to me? =(
From your reply, I don't think you understood my post completely.
Also, I didn't say you were wrong, just that I didn't agree with that point.
I basically said that labels and studios are the same thing, but to work for different groups.
If a musician doesn't like his label, he can pack up and move to a different label (or finance independently blah blah).
Second, you can't say music stores don't facilitate music listening. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would listen to a lot less music if music stores weren't around. Blah blah vending- you can listen to music at music stores too.
Finally, theater screening isn't necessarily critical to the success of a film. Sure, tehy make wads of cash from it, but they make more from DVD sales and such. Reference, just a quick google search It alomst seems that, like listening to music at music stores, watching movies at a theater is also just sampling so you can decide to buy to keep the movie later.
Once again, your flaw was that you said musicians hate labels, but producers love theaters. Neither of those is wrong, but it's like saying water is wet, but bricks are heavy. They don't equate, and you will confuse people who read that and think they do. (and possibly yourself)

No no no no. That's an obvious cia attempt to misdirect people's attention.

A scientific fact is something real. "Granite is hard" "Water is soft" "Non-saline water freezes at 32 degrees celcius under 15 atmospheres of pressure".

If the globe is warmer (on average or specifically) then that is a fact.
WHY it is warmer will always be a theory.

There are many hypothesis about why we are measuring warmer temperatures.

Right now, in my opinion, there is too much money and political pressure involved to get good science.

anyway...
Definitions:

Theories, Laws, Hypothesis...

They say it well here: http://home.comcast.net/~fsteiger/theory.htm

As used in science, a theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.

Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts. A clear distinction needs to be made between facts (things which can be observed and/or measured) and theories (explanations which correlate and interpret the facts.

A fact is something that is supported by unmistakeable evidence. For example, the Grand Canyon cuts through layers of different kinds of rock, such as the Coconino sandstone, Hermit shale, and Redwall limestone. These rock layers often contain fossils that are found only in certain layers. Those are the facts.

And here: http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawth eory.htm
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is an educated guess, based on observation. Usually, a hypothesis can be supported or refuted through experimentation or more observation. A hypothesis can be disproven, but not proven to be true.

Theory
A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. A theory is valid as long as there is no evidence to dispute it. Therefore, theories can be disproven. Basically, if evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, then the hypothesis can become accepted as a good explanation of a phenomenon. One definition of a theory is to say it's an accepted hypothesis.

Law
A law generalizes a body of observations. At the time it is made, no exceptions have been found to a law. Scientific laws explain things, but they do not describe them. One way to tell a law and a theory apart is to ask if the description gives you a means to explain 'why'.

Example: Consider Newton's Law of Gravity. Newton could use this law to predict the behavior of a dropped object, but he couldn't explain why it happened.

---

I have also read elsewhere that really Newton's "laws" are only called laws because of history. If they were formulated today, they would be called Newton's theory of gravity.

It means Le Chaim, aka T[w]o Life!

The "internet is dangerous!!!!" is like "We must give up our liberty because of teh terrorism!!!!" Do the math: less than 3,000 dead in America this century from Muslim terrorists, while there are half a million from heart attacks and another half million from cancer, and forty thousand from auto accidents every single year! I'd say that Homeland Security money would be better spent on a few guard rails, and maybe if we can outlaw smoking something that slows lung cancer we can outlaw something that causes it? Or at least legalize the one that slows it so the cigarette smokers can legally... oh hell, never mind. This is mainstream media, law and government we're talking about. Logic, reason, and sanity should have nothing to do with the debate.

Well at lease their knot misusing apostrophe's or homonymns.

More seriously, and actually on-topic, with a liberal dose of commas, I'd like to say it's about fucking time! There is no way to physically harm anyone over the internet, short of selling them drugs or cigarettes or booze or something (and yes, I know cigarettes and booze ARE drugs). Your kid is far more likely to be molested by their coach or Priest*, or harmed by a babysitter than some random stranger, let alone a random stranger from the internet.

The "internet is dangerous!!!!" is like "We must give up our liberty because of teh terrorism!!!!" Do the math: less than 3,000 dead in America this century from Muslim terrorists, while there are half a million from heart attacks and another half million from cancer, and forty thousand from auto accidents every single year! I'd say that Homeland Security money would be better spent on a few guard rails, and maybe if we can outlaw smoking something that slows lung cancer we can outlaw something that causes it? Or at least legalize the one that slows it so the cigarette smokers can legally... oh hell, never mind. This is mainstream media, law and government we're talking about. Logic, reason, and sanity should have nothing to do with the debate.

-mcgrew

*Old joke- A Rabbi, a Priest, and a lawyer are on the Titanic when it hits an iceberg. "Save the children!" screams the Rabbi. "Fuck the children!" snarls the lawyer. The Priest exclaims "No time for that!"

• Cancer: 556,902 deaths in 1993 alone thanks to the terrorists at R.J. Reynolds
  
• Heart attacks: 500,000 deaths yearly thanks to the terrorists at McDonald's and Burger King
  
• 36,254 fatal highway crashes in 1994 Thank you, terrorist dumbass drivers
  
• 2974 fatalities from Muslim terrorists this entire century!

20 seconds of googling lead me to this.

There are over a dozen alternatives in your area. Instead of whining, how about doing some research?

Bill Gates looks like Prof. Frink. But no one is laughing at him for his appearance. We respect (or disrespect) him for his accomplishments.

Come on! You've got to be kidding me. I, for one, have laughed at Bill Gates' appearance at least 17,492 times. If you haven't, you must be a lot more mature than me. I present http://z.about.com/d/crime/1/0/P/8/gatesbill.jpg and http://autonomoussource.com/mt-static/images/nerds tud1.jpg and http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41774000/jpg /_41774012_02_group_ap416.jpg.

I do agree that most men (including myself) judge women on their looks more than they do men, but that's because they are men, and (generally) find women more sexually attractive than men. If you speak to gay men, they are generally just as centred on looks as straight men are. The trouble is when men can't get past their initial looks based judgement.

Looked for the smiley but you are wrong (should have stayed with "Windows") :-).

Locks in many forms have been around for a very long time http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blloc k.htm however eventually they do get cracked.

> I think we need to look at the intent of the life as well as the law. If I kill a pregnant woman, I get charge with 2 murders. If I attack a pregnant woman and cause a miscarriage, I get charge with murder.

Not so fast. State laws differ on this, and fetal homicide laws are currently being hijacked by political groups on both sides of the abortion debate to bolster their cases, so referring to them isn't really getting at any sort of deep, shared human intuition.

From http://crime.about.com/od/issues/a/fetalhomicide.h tm
"Currently, 30 states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances."

This means that 20 states do not.

3,000 people have died on American soil this CENTURY from terrorism. Meanwhile, 40,000 people a YEAR die on the highways. Why isn't some of that Homeland Security money going towards safer highways?

God help you if you're exiting highway I-72 onto 6th street in Springfield in the snow. The speed limit drops from 65 mph to 25 mph on the exit ramp, which is a frightening distance high. God help you if you're on Highway 55 going past that ramp when some drunk goes flying over the embankment on top of your car!

Do guard rails cost that much?

Don't get me started on this nation's REAL terrorists - R.J Reynolds and Ronald McDonald. Ronald kills half a million Americans every single year. Osama must be jealous as hell!

-a href-"http://www.mcgrew.info

temperature differential, definition

By maintaining the temperature of the device at a certain temperature at a given ambient temperature, you are creating and maintaining a difference in temperature between two points (a point on the device and a point in the environment) within the volume affected by the cooling system.

So what you just said, besides being overly snarky, was complete and utter nonsense. If you sub in the words for what the words mean, you said, "What you described is achieving a temperature differential, not achieving a temperature differential".

Humpty Dumpty may be able to change the meanings of words as he pleases, and for all I know you might be egg-shaped, but that doesn't mean you can just blather on without regard for what the words mean and expect anyone to agree with what you've said.

The point I was trying to make, my friend, is that although an external HDD could hold more pictures, using an iPod allows one to view the pictures as well, and that would be the storage capacity tradeoff.

Though it might be alright for some, I don't like the trade off of being able to view photos on an external device over the storage capacity of an external hdd. Maybe I didn't make it clear earlier but the reason I want an external hdd is for backup. I can use one to make a backup then store it offsite. I could also take one with me when I go out into the field and take photos when I don't bring my laptop. And I can burn through a lot of film, I've gone through 3 or 4 rolls of 36 exposure film in a day. Shooting digital I'd shoot a lot more as I wouldn't need to think of running out and getting more film, and it's easy enough to delete photos that aren't good, which I don't like doing. Shooting medium format, like a 645 which I hope to get rsn, requires a lot more digital storage.

Why is this parent modded down? I find it very difficult to believe someone was walking 25 miles a day, every day, for an extended period if they had any other obligations. Plus, if this 200 lb woman was really walking 25 miles a day, she would have been burning almost 3000 calories per day just by the walking assuming a brisk 15-minute mile pace (see http://walking.about.com/cs/howtoloseweight/a/howc alburn.htm). There's no way she could be walking this much and not losing wait without eating a very large amount of food.

It was disappointing when Ask bought out Teoma, that was a good search engine.

Yea, I used to use Teoma a lot, when I didn't get a result or not what I was looking for from Google. Another I use a lot also is Mooter. Alta Vista still returns good text search results, though I don't use it much. Another I use, for specific searchs, is About. Actually it was Google that led me to using About. I googled for some archeology and anthropology searchs and Google returned About's Archeology and anthropology section in the top results. Later I googled for something in photogaphy and once again Google returned an About section Photography, in the top spot.