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Academic records have been a hot button issue for the last few presidential cycles? Kerry, Bush had similar grades at Yale, Comparing the academic record of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush, John McCain's academic record, Gore's Dubious School Record. I personally am not asking, I really don't care to be honest. But it is a fair comparison. Neither candidate is required to provide any such documentation, precedent or not. If you feel you have not been given enough info about a candidate, then vote for the other guy.

Simple math - even back in 2004, the shuttle program had already cost $145 billion. So even if all the subsequent flights had been free, it would still have beenover $1 billion per mission.

Part of this is due to the shuttle never achieving any of its design goals. It was supposed to have a rapid turn-around time (2 weeks), and a usable service life of between 100 and 125 flights per shuttle. The turn-around time obviously was never met, and obviously, the shuttles (Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, Endeavour - I'm leaving out the Enterprise test vehicle, which never made it into space), didn't even average 25% of the original number of missions per vehicle. It was because of these failures that fleet production was stopped at 4, rather than 8, and never did achieve 50 launches per year - it didn't even average 50 launches per decade.

I agree with Stephen Hawking. Blasting messages willy-nilly at possible alien civilizations is foolhardy in the extreme. I have taken the liberty of anticipating and responding to the usual criticisms of this risk management approach below.

We have absolutely no reason to assume that contact with an advanced alien intelligence will be beneficial or that such aliens will be benign. Human history has taught us that, in contact between civilizations where one is technologically advanced compared to the other, the less advanced civilization always comes off worse. Our cuddly CE3K fantasies are just anthropomorphic projections. We have no reason to assume that the contacted aliens will possess human traits like compassion or altruism - in any case, many humans suspend or don't exhibit these. Think wartime atrocities. And we have treated other species on our own planet appallingly. Why should aliens be any nicer than us? The old chestnut "oh but they wouldn't have survived technological adolescence without destroying themselves if they weren't cuddly and nice" is just bollocks and is another anthropomorphic projection.

"Oh but they can't visit us via interstellar travel because it's impractical and too slow". Only according to our limited physics, which can't even reconcile QM with Relativity yet. It's likely there is a better physics and we don't have it yet but they do. Who knows what technology that might allow. Even our own scifi has more imagination that this.

"And our planet/system has nothing they need. It's not economic for them". Another supposition based on - what, exactly? How do we know what they value or what power sources they have? Humans as slaves or pets or pet food or as petri dishes for biological war experiments? How do we know? Humans place high values on some quite low value things. Diamonds are in abundance but we stockpile these to keep the value high.

If we must project onto aliens from our own psyches and earthly experiences, then to be safe we should project from the very worst of these. Our Independence Day, Twilight Zone and Borg/Dalek nightmares need to be considered seriously if we are to adopt a risk management approach. And a risk management approach is wise. It says don't contact them until we know who/what they are.

"They can see us anyway". According to http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1427054 background noise in space might limit the extent our radio transmissions have travelled to a 2 light year radius. Admittedly a better reference than 'Answerbag' might be good.

It is highly possible that most of our transmission are scattered or disrupted or all but destroyed at or around 2 light years out from us.Signal strength drops - at twice a distance away you are talking about 1/4 of the power - at ten times the distance the strength of the signal would only be one hundredth as great.

Even if this is not the case there is a very good chance we have not been spotted.

Actually, the story is often told that Greenland was never green. They called it that to attact more settlement.

I was going to congratulate you on a reasonable post until the bits where you (a) ridiculed the notion that the US was detaining people without trial in cuba, and (b) claimed that all you need to do to get healthcare in the US is show up to a hospital. Unfortunately, this nonsense puts you in exactly the same nut-boat as the lunatic you were trying to shut down.

For the record:

The United States has and currently holds individuals without trial in Cuba.

Here's a patchwork discussion of how to get assistance if you're uninsured and have cancer. Note that hospitals are not required to provide more than stabilization, though many underfunded county hospitals do provide "indigent care". The uninsured have roughly half the five-year survival rate of people who have insurance. Even Medicaid isn't always enough --- several people have been recently been denied organ transplants recently because of state and local budget cuts.

Lesson: respond vigorously to cranks but do not treat it as an opportunity to push your own broken worldview.

Costco also manufactures a lot of the stuff it sells. Everything that is "Kirkland Select" brand is made by them.

Does Costco make stuff itself, or does it contract with others to make the stuff? I bet Costco does not own one factory. Sam's has other companies make it's Member's Mark products, for instance Wrangler makes Member Mark jeans and Duracell makes their batteries. In reply to the question Who makes the kirkland signature private label? Answers.com says "There is no one company. Several companies ranging from Starbucks to Diamond pet food make products that are sold under the Kirkland Signature brand."

Falcon

Columbus thought the world was round, and only because of that he wanted to go to sea...

Can we please please please put an end to this nonsense?

I'm not sure if there is a list. it's apparently common in florida. My company does not allow smoking on the premises and 5 years ago would not hire new smokers if they were dumb enough to admit it (or smelled of smoke I guess).

It's common enough tho...

http://digg.com/news/lifestyle/Employees_getting_fired_for_smoking_or_being_obese
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/42755
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/28/60minutes/main990617.shtml
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/9959391/detail.html
http://businessshrink.biz/psychologyofbusiness/2007/09/27/employees-fired-and-fined-for-smoking-obesity-and-blood-test-results/

Just google "fired for smoking".

At least with water cannons people can see it coming so they know the gloves have come off and its time to run.

And most importantly people can see where the water is coming from, and run away. But microwaves are invisible, and it might be hard for some people to tell the difference between "insanely painful" and "intolerably painful" - since that's the only way to figure out in which direction to NOT run.

Besides, it is well known that microwaves affect eyes before the skin even feels anything. So what are the effects of this weapon on eyesight?

There are thousands of Johnsons in Chicago alone

Huh huh. You said Johnson. Huh huh. Heh heh.

And, in interstellar terms, our radio emissions haven't even traveled very far yet. The signals may well have been swamped and disrupted at just 2 light years: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1427054

In Texas that is not the case. There are other states that are the same.
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/19299

He was propagating a popular myth. :)

John Browning's .50 BMG "Ma Deuce" has been lawfully composting enemy troops for nearly a century. It certainly doesn't cause "unnecessary suffering" as it is much more likely to be immediately fatal.

Some general background on similar myths:

http://www.thegunzone.com/hague.html

More info. The ICRC, being anti-US, objects to API variants on a technicality:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/522209

"However, the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's office has issued a legal opinion that the .50 BMG and even the Raufoss Mk 211 round are legal for use against enemy personnel."

I believe there was a story about Sarah Palin using an unofficial email address when she was governor of Alaska, but that is irrelevant to the question of whether the Obama Administration is more transparent than the Bush Administration.

The key point in that story is that a member of Anonymous, who said he wanted to "derail [Palin's]" campaign," and whose dad happens to be a (Democrat) state representative in Tennessee, hacked into that e-mail address and found that she was using the e-mail address for personal communication and not state business.

That was the "gov.palin@yahoo.com" account, which she used for personal communications. She was actually using "gov.sarah@yahoo.com" for conducting state business and there's boxes of email transcripts to prove it.

Heh. Reminds me of this joke.

"Many residential homes in the US have 100 amp service.

Most have 200. 400 is usually available at extra cost.*"

*citation need

Got it right here, says you're wrong

New construction homes get 200 amp, but even as recent as 2006 builders were providing 100 amp and 200 amp as an upgrade. This electrician in Wisconsin recommends 100 amps for house under 2,000 sq/ft. I don't exactly know date when 200 amp became the standard for new construction but it's clear 100 amp is the norm for your average pre-owned home. 400 amp service for a residence basically doesn't exist unless you have extreme circumstances, like you were dumb enough to buy a 15kW tankless electric water heater (idiot should have bought gas) that's sucking down 130 amps when in use.

I just did a few quick calculations. Assuming humans have 2 square meters of skin, and stood naked in direct sunlight in the best conditions for 8 hours per day, and assuming 5% efficiency for photosynthesis, we would only get enough energy to provide for 11 hours of sleep (250 BTU/hr), 7 hours of sitting still (400 BTU), 4 hours of light work (650 BTU) or 1 hour of heavy work (2400 BTU). We'd still probably need to consume 2/3 or so of our normal caloric intake from food.

Sources:
http://www.solarexpert.com/Heat-theory.html
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/IgorFridman.shtml
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/514275
http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/index.html?quid=1021

Neither you nor the models will be able to reach your you-know-what. Still sure you're happy?

Men love with their eyes, Women love with their ears. As long as you can see, hear and talk you will be OK.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/838059

Let me also direct you to the use of the historical use of the army and National Guard as strike busters.

And let me direct you to Thomas Jefferson's quote on standing armies. He even warned against the "aristocracy of our moneyed corporations". Of course now that we have big government we have the corporate aristocracy as well.

Falcon

I'll take the flame bait: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/2564828.

Looking at them solely as literary works, there are more extant copies of Christian epistles dating to within as few as 50 years of Christ than there for any ancient historical work. So, theology aside, there is greater likelihood that other texts are less corrupt than the Koran/Qur'an (the professed earliest texts of which are written in a dialect that did not appear in the historical record until at least 100 years after the texts were supposedly written).

"an application of computer hardware" is a completely unidiomatic expression; no eductated native speaker would use it. Even if it wasn't, you should learn that certain words used in a specific technical context have a meaning different from their common meaning as used by laymen like yourself.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/application.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_applications
compare with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

http://www.yourdictionary.com/application

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/51745

Do you see word, excel and powerpoint on here? http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8

What does 'arse' has to do with ANYTHING I have said?

One, you claimed that because a word exists, it means you're free to invent meanings for it. When (or if) you grow up you'll lear that it's called "giving a counter example".

Two, everything you said and ever will say is shit, because you're the worst kind of thick bastard - the kind who doesn't realise it.

So on the evidence, it's you that can't speak English, you arrogant little pillock.

I don't normally go in for grammar corrections, but I can't resist here:

1) "pseudo"
2) you are -> you're
3) owned by it -> its (it is -> it's)
4) The quote you attribute to Thomas Jefferson was actually made by Gerald Ford. Nobody imagined "a government big enough to give you everything you want" in Jefferson's day.

I hadn't meant for this to become a Primer on the state of blood and artificial blood products, but considering the importance of the topic... blood is in fact life, and is therefore an issue worth going over thoroughly. The whole synthetic blood discussion is both fascinating and critically important. There simply isn't enough blood available for saving people's lives during disasters and large scale emergencies. That, and blood has a short shelf life so you simply can't build up stocks for the future. Lastly, transfusing blood comes with a raft of serious medical problems including distribution, contamination, typing accidents, rejection, allergies, tainting, and a host of unpleasant interactions that can span the gamut from uncomfortable to fatal. all of this underlines the need for a good synthetic blood alternative.

We're on the verge of amazing new products which will make sudden death or injury due to loss of blood or blood flow a problem of the past. Some of the more interesting work is being done in the following areas;

• Synthetic Heme Containing blood substitutes
  This has been an area of significant research and development. Part of the problem is that the naked HEME molecule is toxic and causes damage to the kidneys (and may also cause problems with the liver and spleen.) As well, until recently, artifical bloods had a serious problem with Nitric Oxide Scavenging resulting in constriction of the blood vessels, increased blood pressure, reduced blood flow, and ultimately tissue damage and death. Interesting work is being done on breakthroughs in both oxygen transport and the design of the vesicles which hold the the transport technologies.
• Perfluorocarbon Emulsions
  You may be familiar with Perfluorocarbons from their use in deep sea diving, As seen in the movie "The Abyss". What you may not know is that Perfuorocarbon Emulsions are one of the leading candidates for a new Synthetic Blood Substitute. The coolest feature of this product, is that the droplets of perfuorocarbon are nano-scopic. Literally hundreds of time smaller than blood cells. When administered they pass through blood clots as easily as crickets would pass through a highway traffic jam. This means, your heart and brain could continue to receive plenty of life giving oxygen even if a clot stopped the blood flow cold. No more death or long term tissue damage from strokes or heart attacks. If this isn't cool I don't know what is!
• Respirocytes
  This is more than a little further off in the future. Its a nano machine designed to store oxygen at around 50 atmospheres, and move freely through the blood stream like super small blood cells. You can read volumous writings and illustrations by nanotechnology advocates Ralph Merckle and Ray Kurzweil on this topic. You can also visit the subject at Wikipedia or see a cool video about them at Youtube. The respirocyte has the same advantages as perfluorocarbon, but will work even if your heart stops. So you have that critical golden hour to get to a hospital with what would certainly otherwise be a fatal condition or injury. Of course by this point, we'd almost certainly have all sorts of other nanotechnology available probably making the whole need for such devices moot. Maybe respirocytes would be the "Po Boy" technology available to those folks who couldn't afford godlike status.

Whatever succeeds in the market place, the future of synthetic blood substitutes is going to save a tremendous numbe

The biggest ruby is just 8.2 lbs, compared to the 403 lbs python.

This got me wondering so I looked it up. Apparently research has shown that it took a volunteer between 550 and 750 milliseconds to begin to understand a pictured object in tests. That's pretty quick, if not light-speed.

Maybe rail travel is just obsolete? Of course the government could tax people and spend a fortune on high tech trains and keep it alive like it does in other countries, but what's the point? Maybe the government should subsidise the horse drawn buggy industry too.

The things to bear in mind is that a 747 flies much faster than this MagLev, around 900 km/h according to Wikipedia vs 500 km/h for this thing. And if you fill all the seats they get 100 miles per gallon per passenger

If airport security were really concerned about our safety they would be required to do The Safety Dance before each flight.

... but on the "races" bit, yes, for the same offense, blacks more often get jail time while whites walk. Justice might be blind, but it ain't colour-blind when it comes to sentencing.

Did it ever occur to you that there were circumstances, such as prior history, that could affect the sentence? The claim that blacks are being unfairly punished is a totally bogus one.

George W. Bush does coke, gets arrested, gets a new drivers' license number "000000005" to hide the arrest, gets a bunch more DUIs ... and hasn't done any jail time yet.

If he were black?

If a school has a disproportionate number of men's sports

And that's why Title IX was introduced.

Do you thing George Bush took advantage of it when he was the head chearleader in school?

Haha - he said "head" ...and ... "cheerleader" ...

Okay, can someone please explain to me w(hy)tf organ, muscle, and connective tissues derived from land animals is called meat, but the same derived from aquatic creatures isn't?

I don't know of anyone in Cobain's current state that can sing.

Actually, there ARE studies showing that kids that grow up in super clean environments have weaker immune systems. The immune system does in fact get "stronger" with exposure to moderate amounts of bacteria and viruses.

Anti-bacterial soap sucks
Anti-bacterial soap sucks
Immune system
More immune and hand-washing

*picks nit*

That is not what mid-engine means. Corvettes are mid-engined cars and have been for decades. Mid-engine to an engineer means the center of gravity is between the front and rear axles. Many shade-tree mechanics who want to build performance trucks build custom crossmembers and engine mounts to move the powertrain's center of gravity back to improve handling and acceleration characteristics. In marketing terms, "mid-engine" has become a colloquialism for rear-mounted engines, but cars such as the Porsche 911 are not mid-engine - the engine's center of gravity is behind the rear axle. The Porsche 928 and 968 were mid-engine despite the engine's being in front of the cabin.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/22317
http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/18872
http://www.honda-acura.net/forums/archive/index.ph p/t-14363.html (scroll down to More&Faster's post at 08-24-02, 10:37 PM)

*picks nit*

That is not what mid-engine means. Corvettes are mid-engined cars and have been for decades. Mid-engine to an engineer means the center of gravity is between the front and rear axles. Many shade-tree mechanics who want to build performance trucks build custom crossmembers and engine mounts to move the powertrain's center of gravity back to improve handling and acceleration characteristics. In marketing terms, "mid-engine" has become a colloquialism for rear-mounted engines, but cars such as the Porsche 911 are not mid-engine - the engine's center of gravity is behind the rear axle. The Porsche 928 and 968 were mid-engine despite the engine's being in front of the cabin.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/22317
http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/18872
http://www.honda-acura.net/forums/archive/index.ph p/t-14363.html (scroll down to More&Faster's post at 08-24-02, 10:37 PM)

Just because you call something a religion doesn't mean it is. Scientology is a money-making scam, nothing more. That is not to say that there aren't any believers, but every scam has its believers.

It's a religion - no mistaking it. A cult too is considered religion. I like this discussion of what a religion is.

> What other nation or organization has a spacecraft capable of servicing Hubble within 24-36 months? SPECTER http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/8073...

Either way, if the black hat is that good, but still risky, you can get insurance for that kind of thing.

You'll always see adverts for "Bonded/Insured"
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/37146

"BONDED - A bonded company has secured funds (controlled by the state) that are available for consumer's claims against the company. This money is directly available to you for various reasons as controlled by a state agency. [ depending on your state ]

INSURED - If the unspeakable happens, it's important that the contractor or company has insurance. In some cases, such as an injury: you as a home owner could be held liable - if the company has no insurance. [ depending on your state ]"

Replace "company" with "person"

My dog ... drags her ass on the ground for no apparent reason; is that a Wiccan thing?

I've been using http://www.answerbag.com/ since 2004 for my Q&A needs.

By chasing #1, you certainly mean #1 by orders of magnitude, right?

I'll forego trying to fit you into a stereotype.

You've never had your GameCube freeze?

• Metroid Prime
• Majora's Mask
• GameCube hardware

• "IANAL. I am a journalist with a paralegal background"
• "First, [Groklaw is] a journalistic enterprise..."

This is a chatlog featuring some idiot. The reason this is not funny is simple: there are a million of this guy, and we've all seen it before.

New recruits have been getting sent out for things like left-handed smoke shifters, buckets of prop wash, pieces of shore line, and similar fool's errands for as long as there have been armies. Gofer jokes and snipe hunts are old as the hills, but it's still funny when you find someone clueless enough to fall for one.

Pranking clueless newbies is a time-honored tradition, and is a necessary rite of passage for the prankee.

Or to use the technical term, the snails slime to death.

Renting is more expensive than leasing because you can halt the contract with short notice.

The difference between renting and leasing. Short version. A lease is a contract. Renting isn't. You can halt a contract if the terms of the contract permit it. (or don't prohibit it in some cases) If you rent without a lease, you can exit the arrangement at will. Because there is the option of leaving a renting-without-lease arrangement early, one would expect renting to be more expensive as the property owner is not assured of the cash flows.

Buying means spending more money to start with.

Usually but it depends on the terms of the sale. I can sell you something in small monthly installments if we agree to it.

Borrowing money to buy instead of leasing would be the obvious choice IF the lender knows that you will succeed. If there is doubt about whether you will succeed with your new company, it will be very expensive to borrow the money to buy the stuff, and then leasing is cheaper.

This usually is true but not always. Lenders never really "know" that you will succeed. That's why we have credit ratings and even those don't always help. Enron had a solid investment grade credit rating, right up until it went bust. Besides, while what you said may be true in general, in reality sometimes one can find really good deals. When leasing is more attractive is usually because it has tax advantages related to depreciation. It also can have cash flow advantages depending on the terms. Whether leasing is preferable to buying depends entirely on the terms of the deal. If someone wants to sell something at a steep discount, no buyer is going to take a lease just because the cost of capital is normally better with leasing.

...and I'm still waiting for my flying car.

Well, assume 800 million computer out there running.
Don't know how reliable this is, it was the first thing I found while googling.
(while looking at that page, take a look at the "previous question" too, quite funny)
Let's underestimate and say that 500 million of those run some form of MS Windows.
Each user uses his computer 1 hour a day (again underestimating I think)
this gives 500 million hours of computer time a day.
Windows lasts (for the sake of simplicity, don't forget a lot of those computer might still use Win9x)
50 hours before Bsod'ing, which gives 10 million Bsod's a day,
so It would take mr Gates 280 centuries.

Conclusion: he must be very old.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/948 http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/93-08-0 96

Essentially there is no difference. Most so-called scripting langauges are turing-complete. Generally, scripting languages are interpreted and more application-specific, while programming languages are compiled and general-purpose. But considering the power of most scripting languages, they can be used for general-purpose programming, so the difference is more in how you use them than in anything else.