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I do leave my computer on 24/7. However, being I moved to an area that is predominantly powered with clean energy, it's likely my computer use has far less environmental impact than your limited use. Doesn't detract from your overall point, just adds something else to consider.

http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=...
http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=...
(Arizona does get kudos for being predominantly nuclear powered, though)

http://economics.about.com/od/...
As you can see, gas price does in fact affect driving, and thus emissions. Though, I'm not an intellectually dishonest person, and will gladly emit that cars aren't the major driver of CO2 emissions.

No- that's not accurate. Clean burning doesn't get you past combustion byproducts. In this instance, carbon dioxide, which is still very fatal in concentration. He just didn't stay there long enough ;)
To add to that, clean burning doesn't mean not much CO2, it means not much other nasty pollutants. CO2 is still a very really problem, however.

Localized disasters can be a real problem at times. Ask the okies, and the states that tried to handle their flux during the dust bowl. Could you imagine if climate change rendered mesoamerica uninhabitable? Where do you think those people are going? Hopefully you guys got your wall with machine guns, right?

The economy can adapt to the needs of the environment and our aggregate needs as a people. The climate didn't collapse when tetraethyllead was outlawed, it didn't collapse when CFCs were, it didn't collapse when sulfur emissions were regulated, it didn't collapse when companies were no longer allowed to dump shit in rivers.

I thank you for trying to point out a mistake, but your explanation is not very enlightening. Please allow me to post a more thorough one I found.

"Another logical term widely misused by careless speakers is 'begging the question.' This is often thought to mean raising (or forcing) the question. It doesn't. To beg the question is to presuppose the conclusion in one's argument, thus to reason circularly. . . .

"I imagine that people began using the phrase improperly because 'this begs the question' seems to mean that this begs us--asks us earnestly, entreats us--to raise and consider the question.

"The actual origin of the phrase seems to come from a mistranslation of the Latin phrase the medieval logicians used to refer to an argument that assumes its own conclusion: petitio principii. This is fairly literally translated as 'assuming the starting point.' But 'petitio' also means 'begging' (whence the English word 'petition')."
(Robert M. Martin, There Are Two Errors in the the Title of This Book: A Sourcebook of Philosophical Puzzles, Paradoxes and Problems, 2nd ed. Broadview Press, 2002)

http://grammar.about.com/od/ab...

no landfills are very dry. to avoid contaminating local water they tend to have a 500 year plastic liner, and what little moisture is there from the garbage itself. i know they put off methane but that is largely from organics not plastics.
sorry i was lazy that day here is a link http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/biodegradable.htm

Water is typically considered to be theuniversal solvent rather than the 'ultimate' solvent. But the chemical reactions might take millennia. It's more likely that degradation is due to a combination of bacteria and perhaps UV light or other reactive chemical processes.

You're so right, states with the highest rates of gun ownership have 60% more suicides total and 4-10x the gun suicide rate. Interesting data, I was really not aware.

Yeah, but now look at the states in question and tell me what else they have in common. Seems to me like people who live in those states also want to kill themselves more often. And I can see why.

And that, of course, misses the forest for the trees. Because I doubt that NN occurs on "Business class" connections any more than they occur on "Consumer class" connections. And even if they did, the very notion that only businesses should see the sort of neutrality that comes with an Internet Service Provider smacks in the face any concept of fairness which is a cornerstone of contracts. This notion that a contract has very vague terms allowing an ISP to do whatever it pleases by the letter of the contract is absurd precisely because it's a lopsided vagueness.

You seem unfamiliar with the legal system in general as this type of conduct is practiced the world over since the dawn of lawyers. The very intent of the legalese these contracts espouse is deception. I in no way approve of this practice but to deny its efficacy is simply denial.

To expound on my previous post. Last mile ISP's like Comcast use a business model to oversell a finite resource much like a time share condo in a resort town except the ISP customers don't have to book their internet access in advance. They protect themselves legally by placing conditional statements in their contracts with their customers absolving them of any LEGAL expectations the customer has. This has been very lucrative as 90% of their customers have consistently used less than 10% of their allotted bandwidth at any given time. This has been gradually changing as content streaming has become more mainstream and accessible to the less technically inclined. Up to this point NN isn't even part of the equation. Where it becomes paramount is when Comcast is knowingly causing the degradation of its customers internet experience by refusing to address issues on its own network caused by the increase in traffic through its peer partners AND instead extorting the companies that provide the content Comcast's customers are requesting.

Virtually everyone from that generation is dead or beyond any political influence

Except for the politicians that take trips to a shrine which contains war criminals, and various anti-korean sentiment and some pretty skewed views of the sexual enslavement (a.k.a comfort women) of foreign nationals during the Japanese invasion.

No. It just means you really are an ass, and thus probably don't have Asperger's.

Stop claiming you know anything about diagnosis.

Which webmail providers support downloading of new messages while online to read while offline?

Gmail

To be fair, there really are solid scientific hypotheses that are consistent with known physical laws that allow time travel -- it's just we have no reason to believe these physics are more real than the simpler alternatives which don't allow time travel, other than wishful thinking.

Examples:
http://physics.about.com/od/ti...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

From the Wikipedia article:

The theory of general relativity predicts that if traversable wormholes exist, they could allow time travel.

The two keys here are:

1. Traversible wormholes are not proven to exist or be possible (this requires matter with a negative energy density, also not proven to exist).
2. The assumption that general relativity remains a sufficient description of reality in the close vicinity of something so exotic as a traversable wormhole. Wikipedia mentions this by going on to mention quantum effects ruining the wormhole a couple paragraphs later.

http://desktoppub.about.com/od...

Once an idiot...

Too bad the general public is too apathetic to see how completely retarded patenting a common mathematical symbol is when the dam thing has been in use for THOUSANDS of years prior.

This is about trademarks, not patents. You're ignorant thinking that trademarks have a limited lifespan -- they are forever.

ATHEISM IS NOT A BELIEF! it is a lack of belief. atheists also do not believe in unicorns or faeries, either. they simply don't feel that worth mentioning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

http://atheism.about.com/od/de...

According to http://www.merriam-webster.com... a yeoman is

:a person who owns and cultivates a small farm;
specifically : one belonging to a class of English freeholders below the gentry

The gentry is the nobility. So a yeoman is a small farmer, a free man, not a serf living on a noble landlord's property, and a lot of farmers in the US South were large farmers, with large plantations. Washington was a yeoman, when the war for independence was over, he told the others he was going back to his farm. King George to this said that Washington is the greatest man alive, as the top military person, he could have been emperor of the US, like Julius Caesar, instead he handed over power to an elected body of government. He was eventually recalled as president, and started the tradition of changing presidents every 4 years. Btw, Isaac Newton was also a yeoman farmer, and the small income he derived from his farm let him devote his time to what he devoted it to. The term yeoman farmer in general does not mean slave keeping plantation owner, though in the South plantations dominated as farms. And yes, a lot of the early founding fathers were hypocrites, proclaiming all men are created equal, but only freeing their own slaves upon death, and one of them said they will be punished badly in afterlife for their hypocrisy, I can't track it down right now who.

A whole lot of people have a good side and a dark side to them, people like Michael Jackson, or a lot of catholic bishops, and probably a lot of stars and politicians too, like Bill Clinton. The tabloids keep track of such things in detail. I sit here and bitch about a lot of things, sounding like I'm sitting on a high horse, but it's not like I don't have issues, or a darker side to me. Though some of the darker side stories about celebrities are invented, and do not have basis in reality, like the one at http://urbanlegends.about.com/... or I'd put even Michael Jackson or the catholics bishops in that category, false allegations, but you can never be absolutely sure about these things.

The "knowledge" is no longer useful or monetizable in a world where a 20$ GPS device can do a better job and an internet connected device can do a perfect job, taking congestion into account etc.

You obviously did not read my post. No computer or device can match a human being when the you ask complicated questions like "the pub with the yellow sign off chancery lane", Google Maps or Siri or whatever are just not good enough yet.

Try asking Google maps to directions to "Nazi Dog" from any place in london, it is useless and shows you nothing. Here is a link to what a cabbie would be able to tell you: http://golondon.about.com/od/l...

Weird yes, but this is the sort of stuff you have to learn to be a cabbie.

The flaw is as followed: the summary is missing a crucial step, which would read as such: "6. Profits!".

They are missing an even more fundamental step: "0. Define consciousness." The definition they give, "a property of a physical system, its 'integrated information'," is a definition that I have never heard before, and I doubt most people would agree with. Before you try to explain something, you need to have a definition that people accept, and you have to also have a consensus that the phenomenon actual exists. There is some evidence that consciousness is an illusion, and that people make decisions unconsciously, and then rationalize them after the fact. Arguing about "consciousness" is like arguing about "free will" or arguing about whether people have a soul.

You've gotta admit that your initial comment wasn't very clear. "thyroid treated children in germany".

It's well known that the Soviet authorities fucked up by not issuing iodine tablets in the days immediately following the accident (as iodine 131 has a half life of 8 days you better get on the job fast. Poland did and saw no increase in thyroid cancer after the accident).

Genuine paleolithic people would have eaten anything edible that was worth the effort / risk of obtaining around them - animals, bugs, reptiles, fish, birds, eggs, shellfish, seeds, nuts (incl chestnuts), roots, starchy tubers, berries, fruit, fungus and even grain. Presumably their physical activity was higher than ours too and thus their calorific intake would have been higher to maintain the same weight. There is evidence of that they ground up grain and other starches, presumably because they were nutritious.

Maybe paleo "works" but only the same way other diets work.

And what does that have to do with the fact the land belongs to the Arabs?
THEY inherit from their fathers and grandfathers, there were very few Jews and they did not own 94% of the land as of 1946
The Jewish people of Europe inherit NOTHING because there is no uninterrupted possession by Jews.Get over it. The Muslims, btw, did not 'cleanse' Palestine. Rome did that BEFORE the Christians. When the Crusades seized Jerusalem, THEY killed off the local jews by burning the synagogues.
I suggest you read a history of the Jews and Saladin, who deposed the murderous Crusaders.
Asian history covering Saladin
As Dhimmi, so long as they paid taxes, did not insult Islam or attempt to convert Muslims the Jews were free to come and go as they would

You mean like they did in Northern VA with the Hot Lane project?

The 95 Express Lanes project was part of that. Control of the tax payer built and maintained interstate I95/395 HOV lanes that has been in place for over 30 years was turned over to a private company for profit business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
http://dc.about.com/od/transpo...

Oddly most areas that have done this are not actually making money which will lead to a very interesting dilemma in a few years. No doubt, at the tax payers expense.

http://www.theatlanticcities.c...

The reference is the person who wrote the article.

And here is a reputable link from a reputable scientist saying you and your random, nobody links are wrong:
http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingswork/f/What-Is-Gorilla-Glass.htm

What might make golf more accessible is building smaller 9-hole courses heavy on par-threes with more forgiving hazards and flatter greens. Less of a time commitment, cheaper due to faster turnover... Change the name somewhat (Golf-lite? Softgolf?) so as to defuse objections from people who want to maintain âoepure golfâ(TM)sâ identity as is.

They have those already, generally called executive courses. The one in my neighborhood has 18 holes for $15 (or 9 for $9), will rent you clubs for $3 and a cart for $3.50. It's dead flat and has minimal hazards - just enough so you know what a hazard is.

http://frugalliving.about.com/...
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...

Leafy greens especially are really important to preventing many diseases. Cabbage is a fairly cheap one. You can steam the cabbage while cooking the rice. Dandelions are a terrific source of healthy greens (if they have not been sprayed with weedkiller etc.). It's crazy that people have been taught to hate healthy Dandelions.

Our stainless steel "Miracle" rice cooker with a steamer attachment was one of our best kitchen investments ($70) as it does not have Teflon as most rice cookers do, but we worked up to it from cheaper Teflon ones.

Without good food, the mind and body can go into a downward spiral of low energy and depression -- thus a cycle of poverty. Hunter/gathers are more than 100 different types of food over the course of a year. Getting calories in not enough -- you need micronutrients too, and that means a diversity of foods -- but they don't have to be expensive foods.

Of course, so many sick care schemes (Medicaid, Medicare, "health" insurance) will pay for expensive drugs and surgeries but won;t pay for good food to avoid drugs and surgeries. It doesn't help that stressed-out people tend to bulk up on calories as an ages old survival mechanism, not knowing where the next meal may be coming from. This is all made worse by US farm policy:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes....
"Thanks to lobbying, Congress chooses to subsidize foods that weâ(TM)re supposed to eat less of."

Watch out for additives in bullion that might cause headaches and such. Lots of bad headaches could make it hard to keep a job or graduate from college.

Beans are also cheaper to buy dried than canned -- except you need to know how to prepare them and have a place to cook them and the electricity or gas too cook them, which together may not be possible for many students.

People need a healthy source of fat, too -- something lacking in what you outline. The brain is mostly fat, so it is no wonder on low fat (or poor fat) diets that people can get messed up mentally. Nuts can be one, but they tend to be expensive and they may be lacking in Omegas 3s. Eggs might be a good cheap choice of fat including some Omega-3s for many people; some other sources:
http://www.self.com/blogs/flas...

Eating vegetarian in general is healthier and cheaper. So is buying the right things in bulk, maybe splitting big purchases with others.

We also got a lot of value from a $100 blender to do smoothies from frozen fruit -- but that is beyond very cheap (although still cheaper and much healthier than a carton of ice cream).

Still, something like a "basic income" may be a needed as a general solution to poverty. The problem with a lot of frugal advice is that it forces people to take on various risks (like health risks of lack of vegetables, or safety risk of a cheap car, or assault risk in a bad neighborhood, and so on). Or it entails doing a lot of time consuming things that prevent more productive activities. Your advice though is very time-saving and practical, which is why I like it (except for quibbles on some of the above points as far as long-term living).

Simplified tax filings (ie, tax authorities tell you what they think you owe, so you don't inadvertently misfile and get penalized for it or worse, get an audit notification on what could have been sorted out before the filing date) - this is what other countries do, and I hear it's really awesome. Found it here:

Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: Obama will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return.

I hope Intuit's lobbying doesn't screw this up. This is one Obama promise I'd like to see implemented.

The problem lies, in part, with what I guess you could call the aesthetic of multitasking. We love to think that we're good at it, but -- as research has proven over and over [warning: first link is a pdf download] -- we are actually really shitty at it. The same is true of driving. I remember as a kid riding in my dad's car, how he would try to change the channel on the radio, or do something with the A/C, and immediately start veering the car off the road. At stoplights, the minute he stopped thinking about it, his foot came off the brake and the car would roll out into the intersection.

I don't think fixing cars or cell phones is going to get to the root of the problem. The root is that people think they can do more than one thing at a time and not trip over their own damn feet. Since changing the culture seems out of the question, no amount of technological fixes is going to save us from trying to do more than we're cognitively equipped to do.

Unless you claim that story happend more than 40 years ago, I'd call BS.

Animals in the kitchen would be a reason to close a restaurant over here, too. even a flowerpot with fresh basil next to the stove might be a point in an audit. (soil contamination)

And I don't think food standards are higher in the US. What they may be seen as a possible higher hygienic standard only lead to more than questionable chemicals allowed in US food. Or use of irradiation.

The most absurd difference IMHO can be found here: http://io9.com/americans-why-d... Two completly valid ways to reduce salmonella infections from raw eggs, but completly diametral and uncompatible. (tldr: US eggs need to be kept in the fridge as washing of the "natural" salmonellas also removes the protection from further salmonella infection)

Gonzales who said habeus corpus wasn't really a right

So did Abraham Lincoln...

Who said that torture was OK?

For the umpteenth time: waterboarding is not torture. At most, it is "torture-lite" — anything, from which the subject walks away without bodily harm, does not qualify.

Sorry, but pretty much anybody from the Bush era (and quite honestly a bunch who are still in Washington) has no business working at a place which has a privacy policy.

First of all, Obama's era is only worse in this regard. I understand — and share — your contempt for all government officials, because, regardless of the party they all tend to buy into the "government knows better" concept. But a company with a privacy policy must be able to balance users' privacy with the government's requests (and demands) for cooperation.

The Fed doesn't require car insurance. However, most if not all states require vehicle owners to carry some sort of liability insurance. http://personalinsure.about.co...

"She is but 14 years old"
"And younger than her are happy mothers made"

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliette.

That's Renaissance England

By the way, even a cursory glance at Wikipedia would demonstrate your error regarding Shakespeare's time:

Still, in most of Northwestern Europe, marriage at very early ages was rare. One thousand marriage certificates from 1619 to 1660 in the Archdiocese of Canterbury show that only one bride was 13 years of age, four were 15, twelve were 16, and seventeen were 17 years of age while the other 966 brides were at least 19 years of age at marriage. And the Church dictated that both the bride and groom must be at least 21 years of age to marry without the consent of their families; in the certificates, the most common age for the brides is 22 years. For the grooms 24 years is the most common age, with average ages of 24 years for the brides and 27 for the grooms. While European noblewomen married early, they were a small minority and the marriage certificates from Canterbury show that even among nobility it was very rare to marry women off at very early ages.

Keep in mind that Romeo and Juliet, while written by an Englishman, was set in Italy. The lines you quoted were probably meant to be either a joke or intended to shock the audience, as a jab at young aristocratic marriage ages (which were particularly associated with Catholic countries like Italy).

and it remained common until the early 20th century. The REAL reason it changed was World War 1- with most of the young men gone to war for several years, women had to take over the work-force and do so without many potential suitors around.

Also, after poking around a bit, I discovered my previous post was slightly in error at least for the U.S. -- the lowest median age for first marriage according to census data, apparently occurred in 1956, with women marrying then on average at age 20.1 years.

So the theory about WWI -- not true either.

It will! That's an effect called regression to the mean.

Firmly believing you don't have the flu will, in all likelihood, cure your flu in two days to two weeks!

Or rather, believing in not having the flu will likely cause you to misdiagnose flu symptoms as being something unrelated to flu, thereby curing the flu in no-time.
"I have no flu because those flu-like symptoms have nothing to do with the flu because I have no flu."

I did not know that medicine was about believing...

It's called the placebo effect, and it's quite unreasonably effective.

So, I'll start believing that i do not have the flu. Let's see if this works.

It will! That's an effect called regression to the mean.

Firmly believing you don't have the flu will, in all likelihood, cure your flu in two days to two weeks!

Sorting proponents into governments that test them is the penetration of the Enlightenment into the social sciences. This allows the social sciences to progress beyond "correlation doesn't imply causation" to perform ethical experiments on human subjects that, because there are experimental control groups, permits much stronger inference of causal laws in human ecologies (human societies) than do mere ecological correlations.

So what's not to like about locales, like the Mozilla Foundation or Google or even Silicon Valley, excluding from their midst those who are incompatible with the social experiment that most people want to perform on themselves? After all, it is only by consent of the governed that a jurisdiction can be deemed legitimate.

Here's the problem:

In the modern zeitgeist it is considered the moral equivalent of Satanism to practice what is called "the politics of exclusion". Why? Because it "discriminates".

These fuzzy tropes forget one thing, however -- and it is something that anyone who is involved in technology should understand in their gut:

It is only by "excluding" various hypotheses that we can "discriminate" between truth and falsehood in the real world.

But no one wants to admit that their religion might be false -- including those whose religion is the de facto state religion that enforces "inclusion" and prohibits "discrimination".

Especially when the civil union would give the same legal protections as marriage.

No. You are in grievous error. Civil unions do not grant the same protections as civil marriage. They are a second-class sort of union, and are far more discriminatory than merely not being permitted to sit in the front of the bus.

As a society, and therefore it's government, has a vested interest in the perpetuety of said society...doesn't it make sense that a government would put a union generally considered capable of procreation a class higher than one that can't? The US is having a hard enough time getting current citizens to birth at replacement rates to the point of importing third worlders, and now you want to incentivize GAURANTEED barren pairings at the same level as potential fecund ones? Doesn't make sense unless, like is commonly suggested, the leftist goal is actually to destroy America.

Especially when the civil union would give the same legal protections as marriage.

No. You are in grievous error. Civil unions do not grant the same protections as civil marriage. They are a second-class sort of union, and are far more discriminatory than merely not being permitted to sit in the front of the bus.

I know, I know...citation, citation.

a) I'm not your !@#$% google. I've already read and researched this crap. It's not my responsibility to deal with your laziness.

b) quick google and you'll find your citations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/hi...

http://geography.about.com/od/...

Otherwise known as "reframing". This isn't a new concept, but it is interesting that it's being taught to executives.

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

http://changingminds.org/techn...

http://stress.about.com/od/pos...

http://www.psychologytoday.com...

It is dangerous to challenge people's irrational faith in the god-like powers of their doctors. Over the years I've been forced to realize that there is surprisingly little practical difference between medieval and "modern" medicine. There are definitely areas that have had incredible improvements, but the field *as a whole* is still largely based on belief, or on unscientific empirical evidence. The entire practice of allergy medicine shows that entire fields are still based on magical principles (I was rather surprised to discover that there is no scientific basis for allergy testing or the subsequent "treatments", but you won't see it lumped in with "alternative medicine").

For the people reading this who think that any questioning of "modern" medicine is an endorsement of quakery, I think Edgar Allan Poe put it best in "Never Bet the Devil Your Head", "The homoeopathists did not give him little enough physic, and what little they did give him he hesitated to take." http://classiclit.about.com/li...

Amount of flouride in drinking water? 0.7 to 1.2 ppm
Amount of fluoride in mouthwash? 225 ppm


So drinking an ounce of mouthwash is equivalent to drinking between 188 and 321 ounces of water. In standard 8 ounce glasses of water that would be between 23.5 and 40 glasses of water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://thyroid.about.com/libra...


So you may have a point if you drink a couple of gallons of tap water a day. I am going to guess that you don't though, so I would recommend that you drink your 8 glasses of water a day and don't drink your mouthwash.

here

Good to know England is once again fighting to keep the world safe from those who advocate the violent overthrow of the lawful government.

...despite the picture you paint of a horrible dystopia, things were just fine.

It wasn't a "horrible dystopia". It was just an earlier time with more primitive technology which I have no desire to return to for a very slight improvement in the quality of voice calls. (which BTW I can still get if I use a POTS line) I rarely have any meaningful difficulty understanding the person on the other end of the line now and I can communicate a lot of other ways besides.

We managed to communicate with each other...

Far less efficiently than we do today. Sure we managed but it is easy to forget how limiting it was. Try it sometime. Turn off your cell phone and only communicate with a landline phone from your house. No internet, no text, no voicemail. If you don't come screaming back to the 21st century you are either on vacation or you are a luddite. :-)

And if you didn't make long-distance or out-of-country calls (because you didn't need to very often), you didn't have to pay those costs, so your monthly bill was quite small.

People didn't make those calls because it was too expensive to make them. It is a chicken and egg problem. You don't make the calls because it is too expensive and it doesn't get cheaper because you aren't making the calls. Furthermore all telecommunications were controlled by a single monopoly with very limited incentive to make things cheaper or better for customers. AT&T kept the long distance business after the breakup because that was where the money was at the time. The explosion in telecommunication services available mostly came after the breakup of AT&T. While it's hardly a utopia, I certainly get a lot more per dollar than I did 40 years ago.

I pay a monthly fee that's ten times that of the bad old days for services I need only occasionally, if at all, because I'm given no other choice.

"Ten times"? "No other choice"? Nonsense. First off I'm certain you are not accounting for inflation. $1 in 1975 is equivalent in purchasing power to $4.35 in 2014. Second, if you are going to compare, compare the cost of voice service only. You can get voice service on a cell phone for as little as $10/month in some places which is equivalent to $2.30 in 1975 once you account for inflation. If you tell me your phone bill was $2.30 in 1975 for nationwide calling I'm going to call you a liar.

A) The point under discussion was security on the way out, not on the way in. Since you were just passing through, perhaps airport security was given a heads up to look for something specific to your flight? You did say you were coming from Amsterdam, after all. Arriving into KL from Hong Kong, my flight had no additional screening, and immigration procedures into and out of Malaysia are the easiest I have ever dealt with in any country (you don't fill in any paperwork, they take it all off of your passport matched up with flight manifests). For reference, I am at about 1.8M air miles (not including all the free trips I took) and in the process of filling up my 4th extended passport (where they add an additional 24 pages). Regardless, concourse security at KLIA was the laxest I have ever experienced post-9/11 anywhere in the world I have traveled.

B) You must not have flown into KL International airport, there are zero mountains within 30 kilometers of the airport (and those are big hills, more than mountains) and zero mountains on any approach path that doesn't try to land at 90 degrees from the airport (typically an unhealthy approach to any runway). Or maybe you have a different concept of what is a mountain from me.

C) Those hard landings are not uncommon when pilots allow the ALS to land the plane with even mild wind shear present. Or poor pilots blame the ALS, at least.

D) Drug trafficking means possession with the intent to sell. Mere possession of small quantities of heroin or marijuana is rarely considered trafficking, even in Malaysia.

Since you can't do it anymore in reality, find a flight simulator that models the old Hong Kong airport runway approaches, or find YouTube videos that show airplanes passing at close to the same levels as high rise building while performing 40-60 degree turns to line up with the runway (there used to be a rooftop restaurant famous for plane watchers) on the top of mountains, then having to dive down rapidly to not overshoot the runway (a low fuel, passenger loaded 747 at 225 tonnes needs roughly 1675 meters of runway to land by the book IIRC, and the longest runway at Kai Tak was 1664 meters and those 747s were landing all day long), frequently while crabbing heavily to deal with heavy cross-winds. I can say I miss that experience... now. Ex-Navy pilots said it was the closest thing to trying to land a 747 on an aircraft carrier with a cross wind that they could imagine. Wikipedia has a good explanation of various approaches.

This article states that like New Hampshire, Texas makes up for its lack of an individual income tax with higher property tax, which the landlord ends up passing on to the tenant.

Having lived in Massachusetts and recently moved to New Hampshire, I can say that the lack of income tax and sales tax and lower insurance much more than makes up for the property tax which, frankly as a percentage isn't much more than MA and dollar-wise lower due to lower property prices. My rent is the same for a much larger and nicer place with a garage compared to the relative dump I had in the suburbs of Boston.

Austin is still something of a deal, since compared to California, you get about 25% of your salary back through not paying income taxes

This article states that like New Hampshire, Texas makes up for its lack of an individual income tax with higher property tax, which the landlord ends up passing on to the tenant.

Takking a photo in public should be freakishly illegal in a "modern, developed country"?

Reductio ad absurdum - we're not talking about the practice of innocuous picture-taking, we're talking about onerous collection of personal data into a for-profit database.

And, FWIW, go try and take some public photos of, say, a courthouse, or better yet, a power station. You'll discover the "public photography" double standard rather quickly, I assure you.

Also, here's a short article regarding the legal implications of taking pictures in select public places.

Thank you.

One of my favourite things is being told what the Atkins diet is by people who haven't read the book but might have observed someone eating pork rinds for lunch who is "doing atkins."

In his book Atkins urges readers to eat their vegetables with a emphasis on leafy greens. If you don't know that then either read his book for yourself or go back to watching the big bang theory and leave me alone.

As to Atkins' death, LMGTFY: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=atkins+de...
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
http://www.snopes.com/medical/...

You might be surprised as to how much "road attention" you lose performing such a simple maneuver.

Yes I would be surprised. And I wouldn't take your word for it. Especially as you example is of taking your eyes off the road, not a long press of a button that is already at your fingertip.

Yea, too bad there's not a plethora of existing studies that show how non-visual distractions are just as bad (if not worse, in some cases) as vision-based ones, huh?

http://www.scientificamerican....

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://mentalhealth.about.com/...

http://www.motherjones.com/kev...

In late 1969, a potential client from Japan called Busicom, asked to have twelve custom chips designed. Separate chips for keyboard scanning, display control, printer control and other functions for a Busicom-manufactured calculator.

Intel did not have the manpower for the job but they did have the brainpower to come up with a solution. Intel engineer, Ted Hoff decided that Intel could build one chip to do the work of twelve. Intel and Busicom agreed and funded the new programmable, general-purpose logic chip.

Federico Faggin headed the design team along with Ted Hoff and Stanley Mazor, who wrote the software for the new chip. Nine months later, a revolution was born. At 1/8th inch wide by 1/6th inch long and consisting of 2,300 MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) transistors, the baby chip had as much power as the ENIAC, which had filled 3,000 cubic feet with 18,000 vacuum tubes.

actually there already is one

http://islam.about.com/od/heal...