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• We kill every person as they reach retirement age.
• We set retirement age to 400,000 years old
• We buck all demographic trends and start having babies like mad.
• We use our clones to work to earn money to pay for our retirement.

In summary, men have fewer, more serious accidents and women have more less serious ones.

Interesting parallel. It is reported by some sources that women attempt suicide more often than men, but men are more successful in their suicide attempts.

right here

My family went out to buy shoes last year. My youngest - 5 year old - daughter wanted 'Yu-gi-oh' sneakers (she liked to watch the show on TV and had the trading card game) and so that is what we got her.

The first time she wore them to school was also the last. Apparently the boys in class embarrassed her and told her girls couldn't wear shoes like that. The shoes have since languished in her closet, she no longer watches the show, and has abandoned the playing cards.

I have tried all sorts of things to get her to wear them to school - boys be damned. But the stigma was too much for her to take, and so the shoes sit unused, unloved and unwanted.

The message was clear - there are certain things that are okay for boys to do, but not okay for girls. By the time she is a woman, she will have had that message reinforced thousands of times in subtle and not-so-subtle ways - through interactions with others, messages in the media, and misinterpretation of 'scientific' studies.

Both my wife and my daughter can run rings around me in Math (of which I have no deep love or interest). My wife learned to love Math early on - her grandmother would get her to count to 1000 when she would visit as a young child. Later her father, who is a mathematician inspired her to learn and see math in everything around her. My oldest daughter is 17 and a scrapper (she would literally get into fights with boys who tried to enforce their world-view upon her - and never lost such battles). She is an A-B student who makes straight A's in Math (she is taking Pre-Calc this year). I hope my little one learns a thing or two from her mother and big sister.

Everyone is an individual with talents they are born with, but also a large opportunity to develop new talents whose limits are only circumscribed by their own determination to follow through. This is how Spud Webb at 5'7" can play in the NBA, and these women suceeded in a field dominated by men.

Hand Cranks stopped being used in the 1930's. Even then, they were no more difficult than a waterwell's crank that women have been using for centuries.

Even though maunal steering only went away in the last 20 years, it only becomes an issue if you are trying to move a car that isn't in motion. Some very weak people might had a hard time parallel parking, but not everyday driving and stopping.

How many volkswagon beatles lined up side by side would be needed to encircle the Earth 12 times as is needed to match the height of stacked A380 planes from here to the moon?

You must not have seen the other article where they gave this number.

Assumptions:
VW Beetle width = 1.6 meters
A380 Height (Tail) = 24.1 meters
Average Moon distance = 384,500,000 meters
Circumference of Earth = 40,075,160 meters

Where:
x = Number of VW Beetles to encircle the Earth 12 times
y = Number of A380s stacked to the Moon

1.6m * x * 12 = 40,075,160 m
x = 40,075,160m / 19.2m
x = 2,087,248 VW Beetles to encircle the Earth 12 times

24.1m * y = 384,500,000m
y = 384,500,000m / 24.1m
y = 15,954,357 A380s stacked to reach the Moon

Therefore, you get these ratios:
x : y = 0.1308262 VW-Twelve-Earth-Circles to A380-Moon-Heights
y : x = 7.6437287 A380-Moon-Heights to VW-Twelve-Earth-Circles

Why can't we have concerts on board these flights, maybe a small club-like atmosphere in the upper decks, make the whole thing a little more interesting ..

That would be swell except for the fact that it would probably jack up the average ticket price by $100 or more. If a single olive in the salad costs $40,000 per year, what you're describing sounds pretty expensive, not to mention a logistics nightmare (they have a big enough challenge with peanuts and wing de-icer).

As for me, I hate flying as much as you do. But I love to travel, and I have very little disposable income. The biggest barrier to me being able to travel is cost, and I don't want to see that barrier get higher just so the flight will suck a little less.

In the days of DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.x, Microsoft introduced the ill-fated MSAV acquired from Central Point Software. Though not particularly noted for its virus detection capabilities, MSAV nonetheless achieved notriety by detecting the then newly introduced Windows 95 operating system as a virus.

It's also apparently possible to get into an Ivy League school without learning to speak.

There is no such thing as a stable job anywhere in the United States today.

No?
Then what is this?

The average physicist salary was $87,000 in 2003. No high tech dip here.

Publish the evidence in Science or Nature with your evidence to support your theories

http://www.lipsticklibrarian.com/blog/archives/000 025.html http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2002/04/2002042 3140855.shtml http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/a/021969.htm None of the stuff on it matches up to reality. It's funny, sure. But it's not real.

Does your phone operate at frequencies from 100 megahertz to 2.4 gigahertz" ?
Yes, 1.9Ghz actually

I can't decide whether to make a "minty fresh" joke or an oral sex joke

Why not do both?

This is no different than simply following the person, except that well you don't have to follow the person around constantly.

Kind of like hiding in the back seat.

I don't object to police using available GPS data to track motor vehicles. Before GPS, if the police needed to locate a commercial driver, they might well have phoned the company and asked where they could find the driver. Now the only difference is that dispatch can give them a much better answer.

Planting an unwarranted tracking device to further an investigation is a whole different sack of bananas.

no expectation of privacy regarding your location as your driving along the road.

Very little. If I am on driving or parked on private property in my own vehicle I would expect reasonable privacy as to both my and my vehicle's location. This seems pretty clear cut but has no real application unless you have 1600 acre ranch...in which case the rules probably don't apply to you anyways.

In addition, there would be times on public roads where I would have, if not a right to privacy, at least some reasonable expectation of it.

Since your location at any given time is public information, so is your speed (that's no problem, we allow radar). By your interpretation, a police department could just hide a GPS in your car and issue speeding tickets until you clued in. Imagine how you would feel about six weeks later when the tickets started arriving from Rest Stop, Alabama.

Additionally, if it is determined that a car's location is public knowledge, that the outside of the vehicle is always a public place and that a tracking bug is a legal way of collecting location information, I could see this becoming popular with other special interest groups: PIs, paparazzi, stalkers, professional criminals, adolescent pranksters, collections agents, nozy neighbours etc.

How about this little piece of strategery http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/graphics/b ush_strategery.jpg?

1. Correlation
2. ...
3. Profit!

See? No Causation to be found in that.

It wasn't AWOL so much as his immediate superiors not caring if he did things that were technically against the rules.

AWOL implies a situation that wasn't present here, he didn't desert.

It seems like his immediate superiors said "sure, go" but his paperwork was denied and no one on either base really cared because they already told him to go.

Does this include their patent for their Jet Powered Surfboard? If I remember correctly they bought this one just so they could display it in their collection of obscure and unusual patents.

To determine time dilation, we look at the lorentz transformation, 1/sqrt(1-(v*v)/(c*c)), where v is the velocity and c is the speed of light. The transformation from the perspective of someone that didn't spin with the earth would be going from 1.00000022295876 to 1.00000022295877, a difference of 1 * 10 to the -14th power. So the time difference is 0.00268 seconds per day and the time dilation is 0.000000000864 seconds per day.

The measurement of 2.68 microseconds/day isn't accurate enough to seem to take time dilation into account, but I would bet it was measured from the perspective of someone that is on earth, therefore it would have already been taken into account anyway. Considering that the time dilation factor is slightly smaller than the accuracy maintained by the government's atomic clocks (10 to the -9th seconds / day), I'd consider it negligible.

Well...With a birth rate of 23.39 / 1000 vs. our 13.9 / 1000, I'd say that they're more successful with women than we are.

I seem to remember it being the TV business, from HST's Generation of Swine.

From the following artical Sealant may be a solution.

http://physics.about.com/od/condensedmatter/a/soft metalwisker.htm

Soft Metal Wiskers

from AIP Physics News
AIP Physics News Update #711
Soft-metal whiskers, tiny metallic protrusions that grow like hair from soft metals, are a problem that can cause electronic short circuits leading, in some cases, to the failure of heart pacemakers, avionic relays, and satellites. What to do with the unwanted whiskers---and, in the first place, understanding how they form---is a problem that's been around for fifty years. Now, researchers at Drexel University have arrived at what they think is an explanation for the cause of whiskers and a potential method for alleviating them. Basically, the whiskers form because of reactions between oxygen and the soft metal such as tin or indium. The reaction results in a volume increase that pushes the whiskers out. The whiskers that form do not have to break off in order to be troublesome; sometimes they cause mischief merely by bridging two neighboring electronic pathways that are supposed to be insulated from each other. The Drexel scientists believe that an oxygen-barrier coating on pertinent surfaces should prevent whiskers from developing. (Barsoum et al. Physical Review Letters, 12 November 2004)

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/053881.htm Orson Scott Card is a flaming mormon and a huge homophobe.

Surely instead you meant:

"Fool me once...shame on...shame on you. ...You fool me...can't get fooled again."

My, my. Are we a bit stingy this fine Thursday afternoon? What makes you think I was "trolling"? That you don't particularly like what I said? Or you just can't handle reality?

Just in case you werent and are a clueless fuck, then allow me to retort..

*chuckle*

I dont think much of the nuclear weapons program

It was India who started that arms race. Of course because you're a clueless fuck [sic] you conveniently ignore that. Not that I care, really. But if you must use that argument, well.

As for the space program,

That's nice. And you need it why again?

And you know what, it fucking works. And we have failsafes in place if something goes wrong. What about yours?

Failsafes [sic], indeed. Mine? Dunno. We don't have any here in Elbonia.

Now thats what make me proud of who I am. We can take care of our own.

ROFL, you sure do!

If you werent.. well ignorance is not curable.

Ignorance is, but stupidity is not. So I guess you're out of luck. Sorry.

Whatever makes you think Jung is any more rational than Freud? Honestly! Maybe his theories tickle you in a more satisfying way, but it's not even remotely scientific. Both of them were cast from the same witch-doctor mold. But you're wrong anyway. The whole parent-cast-as-God thing is classically Freudian.

This is known as Pareto's Principal, a common concept studied in project management. It is also referred to as the 80/20 rule, and was meant to be applied to more than just project management.

However, applied to project management, the 80/20 rule states that 20% of the work will actually take 80% of the time/resources necessary. For more, check http://management.about.com/cs/generalmanagement/a /Pareto081202.htm.

From what I understand, people don't actually take the time to measure the actual performance of their projects, review the results, and learn for the future. That may be why rules like the "80/20" rule often seem mythical - they are untested until you yourself actually implement them.

My 2 cents..

-6d

Here are some German Language sites from a site I set up for a German class at my university. Most of the sites have other languages also. (Would link to it, but don't want to get slashdotted, so I just copied the code over.)

German Language Web Sites

leo.org German-English dictionary. Just enter a German or English word in the Search Term box. Note the 3 symbols following the word entered:Press the1stfor grammar information, the 2nd for definition and sample uses, the 3rd for spoken pronunciation.

german.about.com Everything you ever wanted to know about the German language. Includes grammar and vocabulary guides.

travlang.com Click on the German Flag for German words for travel, shopping, dining, directions, etc. Click on a word for pronunciation.

webgerman.com A collection of links on the German language as well as comics, music, and games in German.

freetranslantion.com Type or paste a word or phrase into the box for a free translation between languages by a computer. The computer translations are somewhat crude, but you can also pay for a human translation.

Actually, no one really knows where hooah came from or even how to exactly spell it.

Here's a link: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/jointservices/a/hoo ah.htm

This article is right on target.

What people really want is a Small consumer gadget that can check e-mail and browse the web, not a PC. Perhaps it would even work for corporate networks in the place of PCs.

I bet even Sun Microsystems might have some plans to dominate this market.

If it wasnt for France and their CIA organization would would have been attack twice in the last 3 years

Thanks for your clear and concise contribution. Oh, and yes, France "secretly kick(s) ass". Whatever...

You might want to read up on the holiday.

It is the French national holiday like the 4th of July is the US national holiday. From the about.com link:
Bastille Day was declared the French national holiday on 6 July 1880, on Benjamin Raspail's recommendation, when the new Republic was firmly entrenched. Bastille Day has such a strong signification for the French because the holiday symbolizes the birth of the Republic. As in the US, where the signing of the Declaration of Independence signaled the start of the American Revolution, in France the storming of the Bastille began the Great Revolution. In both countries, the national holiday thus symbolizes the beginning of a new form of government.

But I'm the fuckwit. Thanks, sport!

Here's some background information:

http://arthritis.about.com/od/cox2inhibitors/a/saf etyreport.htm

A report just released in the December issue of Nature Medicine claims that blocking the COX-2 enzyme interferes with angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels). New blood vessels are imperative to wound and ulcer healing. Cited laboratory study results revealed reduced angiogenesis when rat or human blood cells were treated with either indomethacin (an older NSAID) or by NS-398 (a COX-2 inhibitor). COX-2 and COX-1 are required for healing of the stomach and intestinal lining. This new data raises questions concerning whether selective COX-2 drugs are safer for the gastrointestinal tract than older NSAIDS after all since inhibiting angiogenesis may result in ulcer complications.

http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/djh/ 200412231648DOWJONESDJONLINE000879.htm

FDA is issuing an advisory because of recently released data from controlled clinical trials showing that the Cox-2 selective agents (Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra) may be associated with an increased risk of serious cardiovascular events (heart attack and stroke) especially when they are used for long periods of time or in very high-risk settings (immediately after heart surgery), as the COX-2 enzyme apperas to play a key role in the body's natural ability to combat blood clots," the FDA said in its press release.

That said, the majority of pharmeceudical spam I receive is for Cialias and Viagra, the anti-impotency pills. Does anyone here actually receive spam for Vioxx more frequently than these?

Lincoln noted "Better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt".

Mark Twain must have had Slashdot in mind...
http://quotations.about.com/cs/marktwainquotes/a/b ls_Mark_Twain.htm

#3 teflon, plastics

#1 the computer you're using now -- space exploration pushed the microelectoronics revolution

Not on this planet.

Measuring Earthquake Magnitudes: 'It seems that earthquakes on Earth simply can't get bigger than around Mw = 9.5. (That means the whole premise of the TV series 10.5 is bogus.) A piece of rock can store up only so much strain energy before it ruptures, so the size of a quake depends strictly on how much rock--how many kilometers of fault length--can rupture at once. The Chile Trench, where the 1960 quake occurred, is the longest straight fault in the world. The only way to get more energy is with an asteroid impact.'

US Geological Survey: 'The idea of a "Mega-Quake" - an earthquake of magnitude 10 or larger - while theoretically possible--is very highly unlikely. Earthquake magnitude is based in part on the length of faults -- the longer the fault, the larger the earthquake. The simple truth is that there are no known faults capable of generating a magnitude 10 or larger "mega-quake."'

Nope, purchasers of rifles and shotguns still need to pass the federal NICS instant background check. The main difference between handgun and longgun purchases is most states require you to be a certain age to buy a handgun.

See:

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa010200 a.htm

Here's another one: IBM. Big Blue has been behind so much of the scientific grunt work, a great deal of which has consisted of conceiving of and building experimental scientific equipment [about.com]. yb

Really? Nino Rota was deemed ineligible for the 1972 "Best Music" Oscar for his 'Godfather' score because it sounded too much like the score for 1957's 'Fortunella'... which was written by Nino Rota.

Rota won 2 years later for his 'Godfather: Part II' score. See more here.

<RANT>

The US government is supposed to be representative of the people, not corporations.

</RANT>

Here's another one: IBM. Big Blue has been behind so much of the scientific grunt work, a great deal of which has consisted of conceiving of and building experimental scientific equipment [about.com]. ydy

Earthquake energy statistics from About.com

I also saw the 1,000 MT figure for 9.0 magnitude quakes on other pages. I'm not sure where the discrepancy lies, though perhaps there is a range of energy possible for a given magnitude of quake. Since the possible range for an impact of 2004MN4 is in same order of magnitude, it makes for a fair approximation.

There was a huge earthquake (8.1 on Richter) south of Tasmania 3 days before. It made headlines http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000081&si d=aUIanL7wC_m8&refer=australia/ but fortunately no victims. However if you look at a map of tectonic plates http://geology.about.com/library/bl/maps/blplatesw topoehem.htm/ and compare it with the location of the earthquake http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ you can see it happened at the southern tip of the Indian plate. Now 3 days later on the middle of the eastern edge of the same plate another huge earthquake...looks like plate movement to me.

Some company refuse to do a complete system over haul. They just keep patching and upgrading. Their decade old software.

I did a little researdh Conair was made Y2k compliant with only mirror changes.
http://budgettravel.about.com/library/weekly/aa101 599.htm What i am saying is the software could be a couple decade old and be a rats nest of code. Kobold anyone?

You're not googling hard enough...

The History of the Automobile - Steam Cars

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/102743.htm

Somehow this reminds me of http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/graphics/ran d_computer.jpg/

See this.

Hahaha, you sound bitter, what happened? Did you break the rules and get banned? Nice job on your links

This man is an inspiration to everybody. He is innovative, intelligent, and follows through with his dreams and goals. So tell me why, WHY Dub Bush gets Time's Person of the Year and Rutan does not.

Relax and let history be the judge. Time's Man/Person of the Year has included every US predident going back at least to JFK. They had to do W at some point. How big of an honor can it be, anyway? Hitler was it 1938. See a list here).