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Technically knowledgeable people often give very poor names to their efforts.

I thought "Stack Overflow" was great branding for a website aimed at helping programmers solve technical problems. It's a distinctive, cheeky in-reference understood by its intended audience. (And honestly, it didn't hurt that most developers enjoy being made to feel clever about themselves.) That's what a brand is suppose to do, and it partially* explains their overwhelming success. And hey, much better branding choice than ExpertSexChange.com!

*Of course, branding is just one of many things they did right. They also filled a unique niche, understood their community (because it was started by programmers, for programmers), and made the site super-easy to use by (here comes the important part...) NOT crapping over the UI with a fake paywall that sought rent for years' worth good-faith user contributions. However, they are sort of starting to be dicks about subjective questions (such as help with API choices, etc.). That may provide a niche for a new competitor to fill...

Why not just write "Second biggest"?

Well, this site agrees with you: http://grammar.about.com/od/mo...

"Write out ordinal numbers when they contain just one word: third prize, tenth in line, sixtieth anniversary, fifteenth birthday. Use numerals for the others: the 52nd state, the 21st Amendment."

(But they also say:
"Do not use the ordinal (th, st, rd, nd) form of numbers when writing the complete date: January 15 is the date for the examination. However, you may use the ordinal suffixes if you use only the day: The 15th is the date for the examination. . . .
which sounds weird to me.. January 15 vs 15th.)

Success is always attributed to the extraordinary skill and foresight of the winner: http://psychology.about.com/od.... Queue the endless blogs and Forbes' deep analysis heaping accolades on Jan and his demonstrable $16B greatness. Good on Jan for striking it lucky, spare a thought for the thousands, just as worthy, that the dice did not favor, nothing more nothing less.

Summary: Yuppie WASP thinks he knows the solution to poverty: If they would only get of their lazy bums, they wouldn't be poor anymore!

How are so who are so uninformed about the nature of poverty in the US so confident in their deluded opinions? (Wait, I know, it's because Republican rhetoric about government "entitlements.")

I'd argue that if you have exploited to the fullest the "free education" you get in the US to age 18, never done drugs nor become addicted to alcohol, etc, and neither fathered/mothered a child until you had a stable job and income post-highschool then there's no way you're working minimum-wage jobs for any sustained period of time.

If you would argue that, you'd either be a moron or someone who is so uninformed as to be totally unqualified to speak on the topic.

Education in the US is not created equal. Try being born in the inner city where the high school has a 15% graduation rate (half that of the city average) and even those who do graduate often fail to understand 7th grade level algebra. Now add on to this an alcoholic mother who kicks you out of the house whenever she gets drunk, forcing you to either 1.) spend the night with your drug dealing uncle, 2.) spend the night at a shelter where someone is stabbed to death roughly once a month, or 3.) sleep on the street. Are you going to graduate from high school?

This is not a hypothetical story. I am describing an actual person that I knew back when I volunteered with the social work department at an inner city hospital.

Let's say that you beat the odds that are overwhelmingly against you and graduate from high school. If you are like the young man that I knew, you have never even heard of the SAT. Your high school's average SAT is below 1000 (on the 2400 scale). And those that do go to a local HBCU with only a 30% graduation rate and absolutely horrendous job placement. Trade school is a more reasonable alternative, but you can't afford the tuition and financial aid for trade school is basically non-existent.

Your only option at this point is to go for jobs that will take people with a high school diploma, but you live in a city where unemployment is 147% that of the rest of the state. Odds are that the best you will be able to get is a part time job at the local McDonald's. If you work hard, in three or four years, you might work your way up to assistant manager and make a whopping $10/hr.

This will barely be enough to pay for your rent (usually about $700/month for a single bedroom, perhaps $600 after rental assistance), let alone enough to save up for an education or to pay for the cost of raising children.

If you see any way to escape this situation through hard work, please let me know. If there were any bad choices made here that resulted in their just deserts, please let me know.

Now, if you have a cellphone, and cable, kids, and you smoke, and own a house...that $24,000 starts to get pretty thin. But then, you're already living better than 2/3rds of the people on the planet, not bad for "being poor"?

1.) A lot of the people I knew back when I volunteered with social work would have killed to make $24,000 a year. The average income of the people I worked with was probably closer to $10k - $15k per year because most people were unable to find anything but part time work. 2.) Let's pretend that it is easy to make $24k/yr. So poor people in the US on average live better than sub-Saharan Africans and we call that progress? The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. We absolutely should not be comparing ourselves to the lowest 2/3rd that still

First, Star Trek meets circa 2000 Earthlings (YouTube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

On your question, I guess there is a big difference between "wants" and "needs". It's true they shade into each other though, so it is not black and white. It also depends on context and culture.
http://frugalliving.about.com/...

Also, they could easily give that guy his own star ship on a Holodeck (or via some direct brain stimulation that would be even cheaper), and he may never have noticed unless they told him (as with Moriarity in "Ship in a Bottle"). Of course, if the universe is a simulation, we all may be in that situation already:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...
http://www.simulation-argument...

So we get that little bonus.
We inveted your language. We get that little bonus.
France invented your democratic process. They get that little bonus.
Scotland invented the TV, they get that little bonus. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth
I think the mormon's invented the useful TV....

Well, partly. Much as I love Philo T. Farnsworth:

inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Television.htm

But, actually, Scottland has a decent claim. From that universal reference source, Wikipedia (and if you don't like what they say, write something else!):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television

"On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge's Department Store in London.[7] AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted halftone still images of transparencies in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Francis Jenkins transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, D.C., using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.[8][9]

However, if television is defined as the live transmission of moving images with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking, Baird had not yet achieved moving images for his scanner worked at only five images per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion, usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.[citation needed] Then on January 26, 1926 Baird gave what is widely recognized as being the world's first demonstration of a working television system, to members of the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter from The Times, at his laboratory in 22 Frith Street, Soho, London.[10] Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disk embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face.

In 1927, Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles (705 km) of telephone line between London and Glasgow..."

Farnsworth's first demo was September 1927, by the way, so all of this precedes his public demo.

You don't (annoy the CC company). Of course, they like reliable payers who carry some balance, but I wouldn't be surprised if you said "you must choose to keep only those card holders who always pay in full or only everyone else" (and normalize the numbers so the spend&pay amounts are the same), they'd choose you (and me).

I'm afraid you have that completely backwards. A person who pays off their credit card in full, on time, pays no interest, and generates low (or even negative) revenue for the CC company. That is very annoying to the CC company and the person is, in industry parlance, a deadbeat .

Sure, there's a little less potential for income ...

Nup. A hell of a lot less actual income.

"Why look at trillion dollar deficits that are destroying the economy"

That is truly begging the question. Assumes facts not in evidence. Actually, assumes facts that are contrary to a lot of evidence:

- FY2014 deficit will be $300-500bn, and forecasted to be in the higher end of that range for the next 4 years.
- That's 3% of GDP and falling.
- Evidence shows that advanced nations are in a macro-economic liquidity trap.
- Evidence shows that governmental deficit spending in a liquidity trap has a positive multiplier to GDP.
- Evidence shows that "Expansionary austerity" is not a thing, in that austere economic policies have not caused economic expansion in the countries that have tried them. Even former cheerleaders of austerity have admitted those policies have not worked.
---
Sources:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44715-OptionsForReducingDeficit-2_1.pdf
http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/tp/US_Federal_Budget.htm)

... but they absolutely practiced destruction of all "non-atheist" structures and people in the past No, they did not,

Uh... yes they did.

See also: Falun Gong, and Tibet.

History. Stop revising it.

Why don't you take a look at the nutrition contents between them, especially: sodium, saturated fat, fiber, vitamin C, and on from there. You might want to track down a reference showing other nutrients as well. Also, keep in mind the serving size.

Ramen Noodles, Beef
Potatoes, Microwaved, Cooked In Skin, Flesh

Why don't you take a look at the nutrition contents between them, especially: sodium, saturated fat, fiber, vitamin C, and on from there. You might want to track down a reference showing other nutrients as well. Also, keep in mind the serving size.

Ramen Noodles, Beef
Potatoes, Microwaved, Cooked In Skin, Flesh

One thing I've wondered about of late is the reliability of evidence collected on the internet.

We've heard cases where someone was arrested because they admitted to something on Twitter, or had a picture of themselves doing something wrong on Facebook, and so on.

Absent any other evidence, is admission of guilt on the internet sufficient to convict someone in ideal circumstances?

Does anyone here with legal knowledge know the answer?

(I understand that you can get convicted of anything for any reason, and even for no reason, but I'm wondering about theory here. What's the situation, given an honest judge and correct representation?)

(And no, I'm not seeking legal advice on the internet since I'm not accused of a crime.)

Some examples of late: picture of teenager holding a beer (or holding a joint) leads to alcohol/drug charges, tweeting that you were driving drunk, and so on.

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/republicans/a/Chris-Christie-Jokes.htm

That's right, radioactive bananas, every single one of them is radioactive.

http://chemistry.about.com/b/2011/07/10/bananas-are-radioactive.htm

Full list of radiologic materials found in nature

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

Publishers have started to configure digital restrictions management for e-books to "wear out" after being lent 26 times. See articles on About, BoingBoing, and The Digital Shift.

That works well for pre-1923 works but not for anything newer because publishers demand to derive revenue from patrons' use of the works. For example, a publisher might sell a 26-pack of two-week rentals for a particular e-book to a county library, and the county library doesn't want to "waste" these rentals on people who happen not to live within the area that pays property tax to the county that funds the library.

As I recall, MS made the decision to save money by not including codec licenses with every Windows install. Instead, they want you to purchase the media pack upgrade - a pretty sour move, I'll agree.

Just one more reason to hate Windows 8, along with the fact that if something goes wrong and you need to boot Safe Mode: good luck.

If you're familiar with previous versions of Windows like Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP, you may remember that you could force the loading of what was then called the Advanced Boot Options menu by pressing F8. This is no longer possible in Windows 8.

In fact, even the widely publicized SHIFT+F8 option, which supposedly works to force Advanced Startup Options to appear (and ultimately Startup Settings and Safe Mode), only works on very slow computers. The amount of time that Windows 8 looks for SHIFT+F8 is so small on most Windows 8 devices and PCs that it borders on impossible to get it to work.

Now to add to the "If dogs ran the world" internet meme [*], if dogs could do architecture, the orientation of the bathroom would be decided first, before anything else.

(holy, err, shit: I looked up "feng shui bathroom" and not only do those clowns talk about bathrooms, the first hit says "Bathrooms do tend to leak energy, as well as easily accumulate lower vibrations". Appropriately, that load of, well, shit, comes from "about.com").

[*] OK OK I know that the Internet is really made of cats but before the feline coup d'etat the dogs had staked out their claim for the internet ur-meme.

Even people that claim to be "educated" fail at science.

Last I checked, "Science" and "The Scientific Method" had numerous requirements. If you wish to claim that humans evolved from other primates, or dogs evolved from another species, or cats from another, we lack proof. This is why "Evolution" is called a "Theory".

Actually, no. An idea without proof is a "hypothesis." When you get evidence that confirms the hypothesis, it becomes a theory. No matter how much evidence piles up, it never graduates to anything else in practice. A scientific theory is only upheld if it is a way of explaining a set of observations. the more observations a theory fits or "explains", the more powerful and well supported the theory is. In this case, the facts are that people keep digging up fossils out of the ground. They can date those fossils by using many dating techniques, and can determine that they are very old. that the younger fossils show up higher in the strata than the older ones. When they put some of the fossils together to get a good idea of the animals they came from, it seems the animals are different at different times (the remains and fossils you find at different depths are from different kinds of animals.) There are for examples, many identified versions of dog-like animals, that aren't exactly dogs in the fossil record ( http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/otherprehistoriclife/a/Prehistoric-Dogs-The-Story-Of-Dog-Evolution.htm ), cats that aren't exactly cats ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felidae#Fossil_felids ) and yes different types of monkeys/gorillas/humans that aren't exactly like the ones we see walking about today ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fossil_primates. ) These different types of animals show up in the same place at different times, based on their depth in the fossil record.

There is also that in many parts of the world there are species that are similar to, but different from other species which are in neighbouring areas but separated by barriers such as mountains or large bodies of water. Classic example here is the Galapagos Finches. They don't look like finches from the mainland, they are all different on each island, with the differences suiting type of food available. There is also the fact that humans have been able to make dog breeds over relatively short periods of time, selective breeding clearly can alter skeletal characteristics.

There is also the strange poverty of designs in large animals. They have the same types of skeletons, same number of appendages and limbs, and innumerable common features that lead to groupings of animals into hierarchies of similarity. Once genetics were discovered, these hierarchies of similarity were found to be reflected in the degree of similarity of species genomic variation. Humans have genes that are 98% identical to those of chimpanzees, but only 50% identical to those of bananas.

but we can go beyond fossils, taxonomies, and genetics into innumerable examples from the living world that make perfect sense through an evolutionary lens. take a look at this: ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22848088 ) where it shows how there are hundreds of different species of fig, and each one or two has a corresponding single species of wasp that pollinates it. Or the fact that our eye design (same design used in all animals with a backbone) is "backwards" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye#Evolutionary_baggage ) in that nerve fibres pass in front of the retina and all go to the centre whe

This is a bit of jingoistic propraganda originating from the US during that time. It doesn't bother me, but the lack of self-reflection on it that it's still parroted does.

One should keep in mind Jesse Owens was treated worse upon returning to American than he was in Germany. In his own words.

"Hitler didn't snub me -- it was [FDR] who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." - Jesse Owens, quoted in Triumph, a book about the 1936 Olympics by Jeremy Schaap

Guy went back to the states, had to stay in different hotel rooms or not served at all, unlike Europe, still treated like a "nigger".

http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth10.htm

Which brings us to another Olympic myth. It is often stated that Jesse Owens' four gold medals humiliated Hitler by proving to the world that Nazi claims of Aryan superiority were a lie. But Hitler and the Nazis were far from unhappy with the Olympic results. Not only did Germany win far more medals than any other country at the 1936 Olympics, but the Nazis had pulled off the huge public relations coup that Olympic opponents had predicted, casting Germany and the Nazis, falsely, in a positive light. In the long run, Owens' victories turned out to be only a minor embarrassment for Nazi Germany.

Well, I'll admit that the train is, in fact, in communication with a central server that controls the trains. I guess that makes them remote-controlled. I'll even admit that humans monitor the performance of the train system. However, humans only drive the trains in exceptional circumstances. I've seen it happen a few times, and you can watch up close because there is no enclosed space or seat for the driver. They just unlock the cabinet that's in the passenger compartment and tell the control center that they're taking over using their handheld radio. This is what it looks like.

As it happens, I toured the control center with my son's cub pack (younger than scouts). I asked if they employed more or fewer monitors/controllers than a system with human-driven trains. They said they had about the same number. There were less than 10 people in the control center, including supervisors and the tour guide with a few to several dozen trains running at any one time on two lines.

During the last transit strike, the trains kept running with a normal schedule. Driverless. Really, truly. Nobody there. Crickets.

You could say that the entire system is a robot (rather than each individual train), but I don't think these trains are drones under any meaningful definition. They are not driven by people. They are autonomous machines monitored by people, and the monitoring is about as rigorous as for the New York Subway.

Just out of curiosity, what's morally wrong with smoking pot?

I think pot should be legal, but I know many pot smokers and my observation is that it makes them apathetic and stupid. There is scientific evidence to back this up. I believe that every person should live up to their potential, and work to make the world better. You aren't going to do that if you are intentionally making yourself stupider.

The typical gun murder is of a family member.

No, the typical gun murder is a gang shooting. 80% according to the CDC.
http://usconservatives.about.com/od/capitalpunishment/a/Putting-Gun-Death-Statistics-In-Perspective.htm

It's not about the guns, it's about the lack of social services, and the crime and poverty that breeds. We may have the laxest gun laws, but we're also the ONLY industrialized nation without public healthcare for example. If your options are buying a gun and selling drugs vs. working two jobs and still starving, which one would YOU pick?

The Jewish Ten Commandments are Jewish. The Roman Catholic ones differ, as do the Protestant ones: http://atheism.about.com/od/tencommandments/a/prot_cath.htm .

Most motorcycles use more fuel than a car.

not true. Comparing apples to apples (i.e. no hybrids or electrics), bikes are going to use less gasoline per distance traveled than a car.

-- I have cars that are performance cars and they can handle this easily. I've driven them all my life, I know HOW to handle them too.

Hahahaha, and I bet you call it a porsh

Porsche is a two syllable word

http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa020401b.htm

What is the correct pronunciation of Porsche? While the “proper” way to pronounce some German terms in English may be debatable, this isn't one of them. Porsche is a family name, and the family members pronounce their surname PORSH-uh, not PORSH! Same for the car. You don't say NYKE for Nike, so don't be lazy and leave off the e in Porsche! Porsche's U.S. TV commercials pronounce the name correctly and so should you.

Spoken like someone who has never dealt with one Government department, let alone two.

Its *much* worse when you let them get involved in the development, Billions of $ wasted on programs that don't do what they should.

Here is a nice list of Billions $ in failed software projects.

http://defense.about.com/od/prodinnovate/a/Government-Software-Project-Failures.htm

And a nice little one close to home for me, 8 years and 1.25 Billion $ on payroll software.. Thanks IBM

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/health-payroll-costs-to-hit-125-billion-20120606-1zvub.html

Elon Musk should be looking at Ford management and asking himself what they know about making and selling cars that he doesn't.

That's a brilliant Idea! They could introduce a "Tesla Pinto", and have the cars actually explode and kill people, just like Ford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_tank_defect

And then they could ask for a bailout from the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) like Ford Credit did (and on which they still owe money to the Fed): http://useconomy.about.com/od/criticalssues/a/auto_bailout.htm ...on second thought, perhaps Ford is not the best role model after all.

Hardwired to seek high calorie foods? OK eat a spoon of unsweetened peanut butter. Or drink some olive oil. Or chew on some low sugar biltong. Does that help? :)

The real problem is sugar is addictive for many people - sugar high, then crash, then want more sugar, repeat till obese. I'm lucky that I'd prefer biltong or good beef jerky to candy, or >80% cocoa chocolate. Except that biltong and good quality high cocoa chocolate bars are a lot more expensive... So I end up not snacking much.

By the way there's some research indicating that alcohlics tend to like sweet stuff: http://alcoholism.about.com/library/weekly/aa001218a.htm

Age on a C.V?! Who does that. No one.

That's true in America. But in much of the world (including most of Europe), a CV is expected to include one's age, marital status, and number of children.

A European employer may also expect to receive a photograph, from which the applicant's race, weight, and physical attractiveness can be judged.

More information here: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/cvadvice/qt/cveurope.htm

The landfill itself seems to be the bigger problem. Everything takes ages to decompose, not only plastic:

http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/biodegradable.htm

Maybe we'll eventually have sewer-like vacuum tubes for solid trash, but until then I don't see plastic bags disappearing. They're needed for storage and transportation.

Many folks would be wrong then.

Why? Because for biologists, there is no relevant difference between microevolution and macroevolution. Both happen in the same way and for the same reasons, so there is no real reason to differentiate them. When biologists do use different terms, it is simply for descriptive reasons. When creationists use the terms, however, it is for ontological reasons — this means that they are trying to describe two fundamentally different processes. The essence of what constitutes microevolution is, for creationists, different from the essence of what constitutes macroevolution. Creationists act as if there is some magic line between microevolution and macroevolution, but no such line exists as far as science is concerned. Macroevolution is merely the result of a lot of microevolution over a long period of time.

Evolution Explained - Micro vs Macro

The first pilot (Wilbur Wright) ended up fine. But the second one did get himself involved in a fatal plane crash within his first few years.

You keep saying the same thing as if it will somehow be true. Drop the points of consumers using the technology. Go read the Wiki page on Air Bags. Whether they were being used by consumers, or not, is not relevant to the development of the technology. The technology had to be developed to a usable point before they could be sold and used and before the government could mandate their installation.

The Government did _not_ develop the technology, none of it. The government did not improve the technology, none of it. Private market did that all before the mandates. In addition to the Wiki page, this is a nice summary reference. If you look at Mercedes mass adoption in the 80s, you see it beats the US adoption outside of experimental work.

In 1971, the Ford car company built an experimental airbag fleet. General Motors tested airbags on the 1973 model Chevrolet automobile that were only sold for government use. The 1973, Oldsmobile Toronado was the first car with a passenger air bag intended for sale to the public. General Motors later offered an option to the general public of driver side airbags in full-sized Oldsmobile's and Buick's in 1975 and 1976 respectively. Cadillacs were available with driver and passenger airbags options during those same years. Early airbags system had design issues resulting in fatalities caused solely by the airbags.

Airbags were offered once again as an option on the 1984 Ford Tempo automobile. By 1988, Chrysler became the first company to offer air bag restraint systems as standard equipment. In 1994, TRW began production of the first gas-inflated airbag. They are now mandatory in all cars since 1998.

Your date of the Government mandating the technology is off by over 2 decades. You also notice about a decade of no air bags mostly related to safety since Air Bags were killing people. In the early 80s, Mercedes was offering air-bags while US automakers were not. This shows very obviously that improving the technology was being done by many companies in many locations. Not because of the Government, but because of the market.

A candle, match, or lighter will not work in zero gravity without artificial convection (such as a fan).

May I direct you to: Can a Candle Burn in Zero Gravity?

(The short answer is "yes, but strangely.")

See also: Video (shot with a Russian potato) of a candle burning on Mir.

Really?
Ford's Cruise Control Switch Fires
Spontaneously Combusting Jeeps

Wow. All these bizarre electric car fires are a big deal. Soon, we're going to see a weird new kind of insurance called Vehicle Fire Insurance. Also, car manufacturers are going to have to start installing these new-fangled firewalls into cars.

Well on the path to rivaling Baghdad Bob. http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljoke-iraqinfominister.htm

Even the National Organization for Marriage, an extremely anti-gay organization...

Is that really true? I don't think so. As far as I know they only want to maintain the definition of marriage that has existed in all the states only what, 10-15 years ago? That is the same definition that existed since well before the republic was formed.

No, they are decidedly anti-gay. I can remember an extended interview with one of their leaders where he described a vast gay/liberal conspiracy to destroy American culture starting with the destruction of marriage. He blamed the increase of heterosexual divorce on the corrupting influence of gay culture. Actually, now that I think on it, he held up his own life as an example of just that -- his own parents were divorced, and blamed gay people for causing that divorce.

I've grown so used to hearing the outrageous that I'm pretty inured to most idiocies, but this guy had me floored. Not since W's "disassemble" comment have I been more stunned by something I've heard on national media.

Engineers are among the most unbiased people you will find.

Sorry to burst your bubble:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/extremist-engineers
http://atheism.about.com/b/2009/08/04/engineers-terrorism-and-creationism.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jan/02/extremism-engineering
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html?_r=0

You on the other hand strike me as someone who has read far too much people who have no education in mechanical engineering related to power generation and just shoot off beautiful political slogans. Most of which aren't rooted in reality, but are based on wishful thinking, which is why there's a massive coal build up going on in "we're transitioning to wind!" Germany. Because people cannot face reality, and instead base large plans on wishful thinking. Which ends up doing the exact opposite of what it's supposed to achieve.

Finished? Nice strawman. As a scientist, I'm merely debating technicalities. I do have an opinion on sustainable energy, of course, but it's quite nuanced. You will see below that it's very different from what you're assuming it is.

My opinion? Stop the bullshit, quickly push research into fission, build thorium reactors and update the current older generation nuclear plants to modern standards to avoid Fukushima-style failures. At the same time massively overfund the material research facility in Japan that is working on solving the fusion's material problems to expedite functional deuterium-tritium fusion reactor's arrival.

As mentioned in our other discussion, material science is not what is holding fusion back. I don't understand where that bizarre materials obsession of yours comes from - are your family members working on materials, perhaps?

Anyhow, the exact thing you're accusing me of actually apply to you. Yes, funding for fusion research should be a multiple of what it is now, but I'm not so naive as to think this alone (coupled with building fission plants based on not-yet-mature technology) will solve all our problems overnight. Fusion still has significant fundamental milestones to pass, and no-one can predict when that will happen. What can be reasonably predicted is that from the reaching of these milestones onwards, it will be 30 more years before a significant fraction of the world's energy needs are met by fusion; that's just how things go in any kind of industry (ask your family members). So we need something in the intervening time. Thorium is not ready for prime-time either (though I could see it beating fusion), and its economic profitability is unclear. What's ready for prime time are some of the newer generation uranium-based fission reactors, but the political and financial (including insurance) costs are not as favorable as they were in in the nuclear boom period. Compared to that, alternative energy sources are available right now, and are advancing at a steady and rapid pace. If you compare their complete lifecycle cost to the current lifecycle cost of a new nuclear plants, they're pretty close. They each have their weak spots, but those are largely complementary, so from a pure availability perspective, an all-of

If he's earning less than about $100k/year, he won't have to pay or evade any US taxes. He will have to submit a tax return though.
http://taxes.about.com/od/taxhelp/a/ForeignIncome.htm

However, some people say we have already passed "peak coal", especially with the fact that newer plants burn the crappy, lignite coal as opposed to better grades.

I don't think that's an accurate statement. Lignite is more expensive to move because it's heavier (due to moisture), so most plants that burn it are built near lignite mines so they have easy access. Since lignite is big in Texas, it makes sense that some new Texas plants would burn lignite, but I don't think most new plants in the US burn lignite. Power River Basin sub-bituminous coal is the primary coal used in the US with 40% coming from that area. Lignite, as a whole, isn't close to just the PRB area's production:
"Approximately 7 percent of coal mined in the U.S. is lignite."
http://energy.about.com/od/Coal/a/Lignite.htm

According to the article summery, the claim is that the files were taken specifically because they didn't know if the TSA would allow her to have them.

She said she asked Bosch [the investigator heading the raid] why they took the files. He responded that they needed to run them by TSA to make sure it was 'legitimate' for her to have them. '"Legitimate" for me to have my own notes?' she said incredulously

So evidently, they did read the notes and knew they had nothing to do with the purchase/maintenance/use of guns.

This entire fiasco leaves the impression that the warrant was a bogus excuse to get at the notes and discover who the sources were. From what I can tell, resisting arrest is not even a disqualifying crime in Maryland so her husband wouldn't be bared from owning or possessing a firearm anyways. Perhaps it is something in the new gun law just passed by that would imply the older convictions would be grandfathered in.

An interesting fact about firing squads is one person has a blank.

"One of the sharpshooters is secretly armed with a blank round, which means that each shooter can rest comfortably in the knowledge that there is a 20% chance that she never shot the prisoner."
Firing Squad History

Strange how much effort we put into trying to relieve the guilt of those carrying out the murderous orders of the state.

An interesting fact about firing squads is one person has a blank.

"One of the sharpshooters is secretly armed with a blank round, which means that each shooter can rest comfortably in the knowledge that there is a 20% chance that she never shot the prisoner."
Firing Squad History

>> NSA monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders

And nothing of value was gained.

Only 35? Im surprised that out of the 196-ish countries in the world, only 34 of them are considered as bad or worse than Germany.

Perhaps Dubya was trying to let Merkel know at that G8 dinner party in 2006 — one way or another — maybe not that night, and maybe not by him, but someday, she was going to get "tapped" by a US President.

Haven't been watching OS X for the past three or 4 years, right?

I found this in about .5 secs on Google.

http://useconomy.about.com/od/usdebtanddeficit/a/National-Debt-by-Year.htm

Look at the dates again. Obama has been in office over 5 years now. Those obama years are included in that 11 trillion. What i tried to do was be realistic with portions of debt increase under obama that could clearly be attributed to bush policies like the war and tax cuts as well as a bailout.

  I'm posting from my phone so it is a little dificult pasting links but all this is easily availible with a google search. The site above is a good place to start and provides some explainations to some of the increases.

"Technically, using your loan money for ‘alternative’ purposes may not be illegal." http://banking.about.com/od/loans/a/loanuses.htm

Not a very authoratative source, but I've not seen anything to indicate that using a "student loan" for investment is necessarily illegal. Maybe you have more specific knowledge of some specific programs where it is, but given the (Admittedly weak) results from my search, it isn't strictly illegal to do so.