Domain: answers.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to answers.com.
Comments · 2,034
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Re:Unfathonable number
About 6.1 million olympic swimming pools' worth.
At 4385964.912 pints/swimming pool, that's 26 trillion (26,754,385,963,200) Equivalent Guinness Stout Units. About a fortnight's supply.
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Re: Pass a law
http://www.answers.com/Q/Who_c...
"Barack Obama had a Democratic congress for the first year and a half of his presidency" -
Re:Correction for You
I make this distinction because, in recent memory, Bill Clinton has been the only US president who has actually decelerated the increase in US national debt. When he left office [IIRC] he did so leaving his successor, George W. Bush, with a tiny budgetary surplus.
The US government when Clinton was POTUS didn't run a surplus because the government collected more taxes than it spent - it hasn't done that for a long time. Rather it borrowed money from the social security trust fund and spent it. Well it's a bit more complex than that, but that was the net result
:http://www.craigsteiner.us/art...
Notice that while the public debt went down in each of those four years, the intragovernmental holdings went up each year by a far greater amount--and, in turn, the total national debt (which is public debt + intragovernmental holdings) went up. Therein lies the discrepancy.
When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false--as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intragovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).
Update 3/31/2009: The following quote from an article at CBS confirms my explanation of the Myth of the Clinton Surplus, and the entire article essentially substantiates what I wrote.
"Over the past 25 years, the government has gotten used to the fact that Social Security is providing free money to make the rest of the deficit look smaller," said Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Interestingly, this most likely was not even a conscious decision by Clinton. The Social Security Administration is legally required to take all its surpluses and buy U.S. Government securities, and the U.S. Government readily sells those securities--which automatically and immediately becomes intragovernmental holdings. The economy was doing well due to the dot-com bubble and people were earning a lot of money and paying a lot into Social Security. Since Social Security had more money coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was immediately used to buy U.S. Government securities. The government was still running deficits, but since there was so much money coming from excess Social Security contributions there was no need to borrow more money directly from the public. As such, the public debt went down while intragovernmental holdings continued to skyrocket.
The net effect was that the national debt most definitely did not get paid down because we did not have a surplus. The government just covered its deficit by borrowing money from Social Security rather than the public.
The last time the US government ran a true surplus was in the 60's.
https://www.answers.com/Q/When...
Clinton did not have a surplus of $230B in the year 2000 because he had to borrow $246.5 From numerous other off budget funds. Clinton NEVER ran a surplus during his 8 years in office, he just borrowed yearly from different budgets, (primarily the SS budget) to offset the general fund losses. In 2000 the following funds were borrowed which resulted in a $16.5 deficit.
$152.3B from Social Security
$30.9B from Civil Service Retirement Fund
$18.5B from Federal Supplementary Medical insurance Trust Fund
$15.0B from Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund
$9.0B from the Federal Unemployment Trust Fund
$8.2B from Military Retirement Fund
$3.8B from Transportation Trust Funds
$1.8B from Employee Life Insurance & Retirement fund
$7.0B from othersTotal borrowed from off bu
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Re:WOOHOO! So it can cross a river!
The widest river in the world is the Río de la Plata at 140 miles. The cargo ship will have to carry extra battery packs — or burn coal — to make it across.
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Re:Bad Article - Fake News
> A full grown pig is 900 to 1,800 lbs
Are they grey-skinned, water loving with oddly wide mouths? Because I think they may be hippos.1,800 lbs, really? A bit of googling suggests otherwise http://www.answers.com/Q/Whats...
"The world's largest domestic boar was "Big Norm" [...] he was appox, 8 feet long and 1200 lbs" -
Re:Link to The Actual Online Journal
The paper does not discuss the process of injecting 5 teragrams (5 million tonnes) of SO2 into the stratosphere each year but since airliners fly in the lower stratosphere, and a 747-400 can carry 100+ tonnes as payload 50,000 flights a year could do this using planes that were flying SO2 tanks. If one plane could do 10 flights a day then a fleet of only 15 planes could handle the mission.
So 150 flights day, every day, for the next 50 years? Are you sure you can safely shove 100 tonnes of SO2 into a pressurized tank that fits inside a 747? (in other words, what is the volume of 100 tonnes of SO2 compared to the volume of a 747?)
One tonne of CO2 (a rough approximation of SO2) occupies 556 cubic meters
Volume of one ton CO2 = 22730moles × 24.47L/mole = 556200L = 556.2m
Source: http://www.icbe.com/carbondata...
Volume of a Boeing 747 is 150,000 cubic feet:
Source: http://www.answers.com/Q/What_...
In cubic meters, the volume is 4248 cubic meters:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=...
So 100 tonnes of SO2 occupies 556 x 100, or 55,600 cubic meters, 11x the volume of a Boeing 747... We're gonna need a lot more planes.
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It's Hiya, and I don't like its lack of privacy
This is merely a rebranded version of Hiya, which still requires surrendering your entire contact list and conversation metadata to a third party without any masking.
Then again, even if each phone number was stored as a PBKDF2 hash, since there are only 3-4 billion legal phone numbers in the NANPA numbering system (given 370 area codes). I estimate this would take under 45 minutes on a quad-GPU system (divide by the number of nodes in your cluster). I suppose this is a decent hurdle, but not quite good enough to make me happy. Maybe the solution would be to also include the victim's area code's primary state in the hash (which would then require 12-36 hours to break), but then you'd have limited utility when dealing with interstate regions like the DC Metro area or the Tri-State Area.
Security and privacy often butt heads, but I think that the right design can facilitate the right balance. The same goes with security vs freedom (we all know the Ben Franklin quote, right? "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither"). None of these are opposites.
I'd feel a lot better if Hiya had a regular transparency report, but I can't find such a thing.
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Re:management finally getting punished.
If they were inside accomplices then why the need to hack the Windows desktops that performed the SWIFT transactions?
do you not know what an unwitting accomplice is? the internet has answers.
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Re:Yet she got more votes
She didn't lose by voters despising her, she got 2 million more vote,
From what I could gather over here, basically half the people who voted for HC actually voted against Trump and would have preferred any other option if there had been one.
Fake news and propaganda built around the emails certainly helped. We'd regularly read selective misleading quotes here from her emails, hoping nobody actually would go read the full email.
I never read even one of the quotes, because the scandal is not in what the emails contained, the scandal is that a high ranking official breaks the rules in a way that would have landed a soldier or a low ranking official in jail.
he also had his hacker hack actual election related data and one voting machine manufacturer.
So why were these things hackable in the first place? If you can't run your election securely, you have no business running an election. Use paper ballots and hand-counting like the rest of the civilized world does for good reasons.
It's time to get real about elections. There's no point in having a large wall of security around the US, if a foreign power can rig an election and stick a puppet into power to control security. Now you Trump lot insist he's not Putin's puppet, but he certainly did provide political cover for those hacks, he certainly repeated Putin's false propaganda about Aleppo, and he certainly has strong business links to Russia.
Wow so much in there.
a) not everyone who points out what a corrupt person HC is automatically is a "Trump lot"
b) Aleppo is full of propaganda from all sides. European media, for example, regularily uses the word "Syrian rebels", conveniently ignoring that there are non non-islamist fighters left in Aleppo. They also use the word "civilians", conveniently ignoring that even respectable NGOs point out that for all we know, the only civilians left in Aleppos rebel controlled areas are the families of the islamist fighters, who are paid by Daesh to stay there.
c) If a foreign power can rig an election, your election system is fucked up and needs wholesale replacement
d) Your claim that Trump is a puppet, much less Putins puppet, is just words. You are entitled to your opinion, just make it obvious that it's only an opinion.
e) Russia is a huge country with 144 million people. If you're into international business, chances are good you have some business links to Russia. Pretty much all of Wall Street has, for example, but I've not heard anyone call Wall Street "Pro-Putin".
f) if you were really concerned so much about Trump, why you didn't prevent the DNC putting up literally the only imaginable candidate who could possibly lose against him in the election?So if Putin invades a country could we trust the US to follow its agreed defense pacts?
Because Russia is such an aggressor... Wake up to your own countries propaganda, dude.
There is an answer on Yahoo Answers listing 5 countries that Russia invaded between 1890 and 2008, compared to 50 countries invaded or subject of military interventions by the USA in the same time period.
This list of countries invaded by Russia covers a longer time period, and again shows comparatively low aggression compared to most western countries.
this list shows 5 countries in the last 20 years invaded by Russia. A similar list for the USA would have at least 15-20 countries listed.
If you really still believe the tall tale of the Russian aggressiveness, you shouldn't talk about propaganda. You're a textbook example of a propaganda victim.
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Re:yes they should
Sure you can, move to Switzerland and apply for citizenship.
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Re:Whoa
You have to account for voting age population and then only count the legal voters, which is about 207M, which jibes with roughly 74M being under 18 and ineligible potential voters.
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Mozzarella: The MovieThe most popular cheese in the US is Mozzarella because of it's use on pizza. Since it's such a commercial hit with so big a fan base, clearly it deserves a CGI heavy blockbuster production.
Unfortunately there are rumors that a rival film is headed towards a competing release the same summer: Pizza: The Movie. Both projects may be delayed because of impending cross litigation over rights to the original concept. This may help green light the dark horse project that seemed to be going nowhere: The Grilled Cheese Saga. It's complete lack of mozzarella may turn out to be it's saving grace. Given that cheddar is the second most consumed cheese in the US, Grilled Cheese Saga with it's multi-cheese fan appeal could satisfy the market for cheese themed blockbuster entertainment.
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Ok, so SJW are also against alcohol Emoji, right
It's interesting. About twice as many people die from alcohol related issues than guns in the U.S. Per year, yet, the "socially responsible" people who have jumped in the anti-gun bad wagon do not utter one, single peep about this. They do not refuse to make emoji about the topic, and in fact, some seem to be there. Funny how that works. It almost as if there is a large group of people who want to appear to care about things, than really care. Almost...
Before I forget, here are the links proving what I said: http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fac...
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_... -
Re:AM radio antenna systems
on many car antenna systems, you'll see a fine wire that spirals up the outside of the whip; that's the AM broadcast band antenna, not the whip itself.
That's for aerodynamics. It significantly reduces antenna vibration. You can sometimes see spirals on antennas as inductors or for circularly polarized signals, but that's not what you're seeing on a car's radio antenna. The spiral on mine is covered by conductive chrome, so obviously isn't part of the antenna.
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Re:I solved the problem with my long complicated n
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Lord of the Flies
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Re:NIMBY
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_d...
Nitwit. lets see, a worker/owner maybe? at a data center saying its safe. HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHHAAHHAHHAHAA and Microsoft is our friends. -
Re:NIMBY
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_d...
and you have the ball to call me a nitwit? and 10,000 gallons is on the same level of a 2 pint lawnmower fuel tank?/HAHAHAHHAHAH look in the mirror there fellow nitwit. See you are ok with the risk, its not your neighborhood or country i bet. So if your ok with the risk fuck everyone else who isn't is a nitwit. They were not OK with any risk level good for them i say. -
Re:Suburban thinking
The word you're looking for is eminent.
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Re:Who keeps posting this garbage?
Then a thread on Reddit
And if it's on the Internet, it must be true! Sorry, but that's just sloppy thinking.
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Re:Uber does as well, or better
Yes....garbage collectors get jobs through political favors.
Google "Overpaid garbage collectors."
http://globaleconomicanalysis....
http://www.answers.com/Q/Are_N...
http://www.investopedia.com/fi... -
Re:Scientists are government officials too
Evidence? Who needs evidence?
Indeed. Both — anthropogenic global warming and danger of fracking — are not supported by any sort of evidence. Both are a matter of belief and hypothesis — and Pascal's Wager is even cited as an argument.
And if you were in Australia right now
Did you know, kangaroos can postpone pregnancy ? For months and even years? They developed this ability in response to multi-year droughts that would befall their continent every once in a while since times immemorial... Citing "Australia right now" in support of "Global Warming" (also known as "Climate Change") is ridiculous...
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Re:The website states exactly what yeast
I am by no means an expert. I have never made beer myself but have friends that take it very seriously. It's possible to start with a commercial strain and have it evolve into something your own.
Maybe this was a better link to post, although I found the first one more interesting:
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Re:I wish McCain would retire
"That means by 2016, each NFL team will bring in at least $181 million from national TV alone — more than enough by itself for teams to cover their salary cap expenses."
You didn't think it through, did you?
By 2016, when the NFL TV revenue is expected to hit $180 million, the salary cap is expected to hit $160 million.
http://profootballtalk.nbcspor...
We have head coaches making $8 million by themselves (doesn't count against the cap). There are assistant coaches making $1.5 million. With the average team carrying 18 assistant coaches, you see how close the TV revenue and the team payroll really are.
http://a.espncdn.com/nfl/colum...
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_m...
As I said, the TV revenue almost exactly equals payroll for the players, coaches, trainers, etc, maybe some equipment and other expenses.
It's the stadium revenue and merchandising revenue that represents the teams' profits. That is how they differentiate themselves from other teams in terms of profits.
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Thanks for the threat
nice gesture, but the reason this is inadequate may be summed up with the monkey-water-spray experiment.
http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_t...Did I mention that it's anonymous? No lists, no donations, no polls, no canvassing. Just resolve to vote against all incumbents when you're in the voting booth.
Thanks for the threat, but I think everyone here realizes that voting in the US is safe.
Join the boot party: anonymous and safe!
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Re:Churn the pot
nice gesture, but the reason this is inadequate may be summed up with the monkey-water-spray experiment.
http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_t... -
Re:Renewable
this is the breakdown as far as i found:
In a barrel (42gal) of crude you need to divide it into separate parts. These parts are roughly:
Naphta and other condensates that are liquid. 2gal
Kerosene, where most is jet-fuel 4gal
Unleaded gasoline 20gal
Diesel fuel and heating/furnace oil 10gal
Engine oil .5gal
Gear oil .5gal
Grease .5gal
Tar/asphalt 1gal -
Re:Batteries? Seriously?
With numbers like that, the batteries don't sound all that expensive. How many batteries you would need per bus depends on a number of factors. Charge time is a big one.
Well, a quick search shows 260-360 horsepower for buses. An 85 kwh Model S is 362 hp. Now, I know that HP is far from the only factor, torque is as well, which is why buses and other large industrial vehicles tend towards massive diesel engines rather than fairly small gasoline engines that produce more 'power' on paper by the horsepower spec.
Mainly because the smaller engine will tear itself to pieces in short order if asked to do the duty cycle of the bigger engine. Still, electric motors are notoriously tough, but to my thinking a model S drivetrain would be an excellent stand-in as being for hybrid components for a bus.
Now, a Model S manages 265 miles off it's battery with a vehicle that's extremely aerodynamic and only weighing 4,647.3 lbs*.
Meanwhile a bus isn't aerodynamic, and I'm seeing 22, 28, and even 40k pounds.
That gives me electric ranges of 56, 44, and 31 miles of range per 85kwh battery pack, if you figure that lower average speeds allows the battery pack to mostly scale linearly. I'm also seeing 4 mpg for a bus - which would translate to 24 mpg for the model S of you compare the 28k pound 44 mile and multiply by the divider, so it sounds about right.In addition we know that the wheelbase on a Model S is 116" and that the battery fits between the wheels. So a 45' bus should be able to fit at least 4 of them, assuming that with a width of up to 102" you couldn't fit the batteries in sideways.
That's without figuring on stuff like stacking the batteries on top of each other. My conclusion is that there isn't any need for roof mounting, removable seats, or even trailers for extra battery storage. If you want to save the battery weight, simply unmount them and leave the packs back at the station.
*I'll note that for a car the model S is actually pretty heavy, but we're comparing it to a bus here.
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On the value of consensus
"Eat Sh*t - How can 17 quadrillion flies be wrong?"
In order for something to legitimately call "science" it must make falsifiable predictions. These predictions must be falsifiable in practice, not just in concept.The number of people who agree with you DOES NOT MATTER in science. Falsifiable predictions that are correct do.
- Plate Tectonics was ridiculed for 30 years after being proposed in 1912 before becoming widely accepted by the 1960s and dogma by the 1970s.
- Quantum mechanics was dismissed even by some of its greatest luminaries, leading the skeptical Einstein to say, "God does not play dice with the universe." Basically, the "old guard" had to die off before a new generation of scientists came to the fore who accepted quantum mechanics and its counter-intuitive nature.
- The K-T extinction event was widely dismissed, even after finding the Chicxulub crater.
The list of "correct but not widely accepted" goes on and on. Oh, and we can do the converse as well: "widely accepted by not correct." Eugenics, anyone? Phrenology?
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Re:Personal mistakes vs. governmental ones
If the government is providing food directly, such as in the case of school dinners
Yeah, that's a very common fallacy used to justify all sorts of government intervention, which the Constitution nor popular will supports. Other examples include federally-mandated minimum drinking age and speed limits — both forced upon States on pain of lowering their Federal highway-maintenance allowances.
Whatever the government is providing, it is not paid by its money — for it does not have anything, but taxes — it is ours. Unless it is a charity (private or governmental, such as Food Stamps), there is no justification to attach strings to such disbursements.
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Let's look at facts
Number of Gay people - 2.3 % - http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...
Number of blind people - 0.3% - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What...
I know it sucks to be whatever victim you are but do I have to pay for everything? -
Re:Typical
There is a saying: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." You should heed it.
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Re:Pft
I found nothing definitive, but here's what I gather (using US as baseline since we're talking American football):
Women weight: 163 lbs Bench Press (untrained): 80 lbs Bench Press (novice): 90 lbs Men weight: 163 lbs Bench Press (untrained): 135 lbs Bench Press (novice): 175 lbs Linebacker weight: 245 lbs Bench Press: 370 lbsMy results are inconclusive but my best guess is that linebackers are modestly larger and stronger ((26% & 111%) proportionally to average men, versus men to women (18% & 94%).
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
http://www.exrx.net/Testing/We...
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What...
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/... -
Re:ANOTHER DEAD BODY! SWEET JUSTICE!
but in most civilized countries police doesn't deem it necessary to carry guns to protect themselves from the rest of society.
Only if you define 'civilized' as 'most police don't carry guns'. Most police in Europe carry guns. Most police around the world carry guns. The UK and Norway don't get to dominate the stats.
I'm not saying that we don't have problems, I'd LOVE to reform our police and justice systems here in the USA, but routine carrying of arms isn't one of them. My view is if they can't be trusted with a weapon, they can't be trusted to be an officer.
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Re:Joke about lawyers
"... when lawyers aren't kept on a short enough leash"
Here is a typical joke about lawyers in the United States: There was a terrible tragedy. A van carrying 5 lawyers went over a cliff. What was the tragedy? There was room for 1 more lawyer.
The common underlying feeling is that the legal profession in the U.S. is often out of control.
This is interesting: What country in the world has most lawyers per capita? Answer: The United States. There is one lawyer for every 265 Americans.
So the laws of supply and demand say that since the law schools are excreting so many of them the prices should be going down, right? Would that it would be true. Instead, they're uniquely positioned to create more work for themselves by chasing the harmless, the frivolous, and the inane...all which still have to be defended against...producing more work for other lawyers.
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Joke about lawyers
"... when lawyers aren't kept on a short enough leash"
Here is a typical joke about lawyers in the United States: There was a terrible tragedy. A van carrying 5 lawyers went over a cliff. What was the tragedy? There was room for 1 more lawyer.
The common underlying feeling is that the legal profession in the U.S. is often out of control.
This is interesting: What country in the world has most lawyers per capita? Answer: The United States. There is one lawyer for every 265 Americans. -
Re:Trivializing the Holocaust
You're meant to link to a source, not just whine.
You seem to be right though: regarding totals deaths in Nazi death camps: Wikipedia says over three million. This thread on Answers.com says 6.4 million, not including 'labor camps or executions' of Soviet prisoners, and it notes that Many victims of the Holocaust were not killed in camps. I believe 6.4 million includes both death camps and concentration camps, which might explain the greater number than Wikipedia's 3 million for death camps alone.
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Re:UK invented HTTP.
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Re:And that's exactly what I asked for.
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Re:Well with my last bout of Flu...
No. Children, at least, can tolerate fevers up to 108 without long-term effects.
NONSENSE!
108 Fahrenheit is close to certain death or brain damage:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What...WikiAnswers, without a source, is not really a very reliable source of information. "Up to" 108 turns out to be up to 107.6 according to that source. Note that all of the lower temperatures say nothing of brain damage. So, according to your source, you can tolerate temperatures up to 107.6.
Let's try some other sources.
Johns Hopkins:
"Fevers with infections don't cause brain damage. Only body temperatures above 108 F (42 C) can cause brain damage."
"...fevers from infection usually don't go above 103 or 104 F. They rarely go to 105 or 106 F. While the latter are "high" fevers, they are harmless ones."NIH:
"Brain damage from a fever generally will not occur unless the fever is over 107.6 F. Untreated fevers caused by infection will seldom go over 105 F unless the child is overdressed or trapped in a hot place."WebMD:
"High fevers may make your child uncomfortable, but they rarely cause serious problems. There is no medical evidence that fevers from infection cause brain damage. The body limits a fever caused by infection from rising above 106 F."Yes, I know everyone "learned" that fevers above 104 F are bad and should be mitigated. We also learned that different sections of the tongue are responsible for different tastes. Your school textbook probably had a picture of the Bohr model of an atom. It turns out that often the things we learn aren't true.
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Re:Fevers don't kill
Fevers don't kill people.
That is nonsense.
Your fever can go up to roughly 44 celsius, around that temperature you die.
The fever wasn't what caused the problems
Yes, the fever can be the cause of the problem, I sugget to read at least the basics about medicine before writing such nonsense. Simple info: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What...
More complex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...(And I really wonder: it is something you learn in school in latest 4th grade, how can an adult not know the basis about fever?)
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Re:Well with my last bout of Flu...
No. Children, at least, can tolerate fevers up to 108 without long-term effects.
NONSENSE!
108 Fahrenheit is close to certain death or brain damage:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What... -
Re:That doesn't seem right.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2009/05/13/dolphins_are_violent_predators_that_kill_their_own_babies.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_have_been_killed_in_dolphin_attacks
http://feww.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/us-woman-killed-swimming-with-dolphins-in-nz/
http://www.aardvarknyc.com/about/dolphins-rape-people/ -
Re:Furloughed workers
As a former DoD software developer, let's review your comments.
The government employs too many people. We borrow money from China to employ them.
According to the best source of info I could easily find, federal salaries made up just 13.8% of the federal budget as of 2005.
You also neglect some important questions:
- Do we have too many federal employees for the scope of government? I.e., is the problem their efficiency, or the mission?
- If federal employees are getting less done than you'd like, is it because they're lazy/stupid/etc., could part of that be due to the insane set of regulations with which they're required to comply?
Sad as it is, it is too expensive. Federal employees in particular are pretty expensive.
Expensive compared to what? If they don't have to show a profit, etc., then can you objectively demonstrate that they're getting less done than a (potentially) lower-priced contractor?
Also, you fail to mention that there's a very open debate about if / when contractors are a better deal for the government than are civil servants. Partisan thinktanks have no problem making sweeping statements, but organizations specifically charged with reporting truthfully find that there's not enough data.
I hope you're also not going to compare the average salary of all public sector works vs. all private sector workers. Because for the most part, the government doesn't hire people to do low-skilled work. For example, at the military sites that I've been at, things like building cleaning, etc. was mostly done by private contractors.
They don't have to show a profit. They don't have to prove efficiency. They don't have to prove competency. They will simply take what they want from other people until it works.
As opposed to what contractors do? Good grief man, have you ever seen what private sector contractors do? I've seen plenty of silliness and inefficiency in civil servants, but I've seen countless times contractors milking / drawing out contracts, while often getting less done than the civil servants with whom they collaborate.
I suspect you have two basic problems. (1) You're so frustrated with the negative examples you've seen of civil servants, that you simply assume the private sector is more efficient. And (2), you're confusing your complaints regarding the breadth and intrusiveness of the government's self-granted scope, with the quality of work being done by civil servants.
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Re:Sir
RAF? They come from the land that invented plaid.
Are you implying that the RAF comes from the land now known as Austria?
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Re:Popularity of space stuff based on replies
Good points. It is a shame that 82.6% of Americans live in cities and have little chance of seeing much more than the Big Dipper, let alone moons on Jupiter. I'm sure this puts a pretty big damper on telescope tech talk on anything but a specialized forum. Still, talk away and I'll try to learn something.
You can see the moons of Jupiter through a telescope even from the city centre. The moons are damn bright and will punch through light pollution. City lights obliterate galaxies. The brighter nebulae will be visible even from terrible light pollution, but they will be much diminished. However, the real thing that's lost is the sense of awe you get from looking up at a dark sky with the naked eye. Even the most jaded person will STFU and gawp.
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Re:Popularity of space stuff based on replies
Good points. It is a shame that 82.6% of Americans live in cities and have little chance of seeing much more than the Big Dipper, let alone moons on Jupiter. I'm sure this puts a pretty big damper on telescope tech talk on anything but a specialized forum. Still, talk away and I'll try to learn something.
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Re:Tor compromised
The NSA is not permitted to spy on Americans. The Canadian equivalent is not permitted to spy on Canadians. So they spy on each others citizens and exchange information.
I believe you are thinking of the CIA, who is not suppose to operate on domestic grounds. A simplified view is that the NSA is basically the domestic branch of the CIA.
Articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_the_CIA_allowed_to_spy_on_Americans -
Re:More like Gamma-ray devices
The modern classification of x-ray vs. gamma-ray is based on the source of the emission (electron vs. nucleus), not the wavelength. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_gamma_rays_and_X-rays
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Re:yay
No. That's not easy. You stated obvious facts. You didn't explain where they got or stored the fuel or the materials to build the launch apparatus, nor the equipment and manpower to build it. Have you seen the lunar module?
Yes. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_Neil_Armstrong_get_back_from_the_moon
But I give you for originality, among all the different "evidence" proving moon landing was a fake, this theory was actually new to me.