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(Your link didn't work.) Nah, that's an old red herring. The adjacent biblical verses say that the vessel was a handsbreath in thickness, so if you measure from the inside you get pretty close to 3.14 depending on your assumptions about cubits, etc. See this mostly secular analysis or this more religiously-oriented site's explanation.

There may be something involving salt as well, but maybe I'm just I'm just thinking about tequila.

A home movie would be private property, and you would discretion over who did or did not see it. If you held the copyright, you could be forced to liscense it out, whether you had any interest in doing so or not.

Compulsory licensing only (AFAIK) applies to already-published musical works. No one can force you to allow them to publish an unpublished musical work, or any non-musical work. So your home movie example is not a good one. Just spreading knowledge of the existence of a work doesn't count as "publishing" either -- the work itself must be presented to the public, usually defined as offered in some way to people you have no direct relationship with.

Also, I don't know if this has changed, but it used to be an inviolable principle that an artist, regardless of what rights he may have signed away, had the right to determine the first publication version of his work. Bob Dylan actually denied a physical license to his own recording company for (if I recall correctly) Mr. Tambourine Man until they got a recording he liked. Meantime the Brothers Four and the Byrds were waiting in the wings with versions of their own; even though the Brothers Four version was finished first, it was the Byrds who got copies to market fastest, making them famous.

(Or so the story goes. See The Straight Dope for the details.)

I personally dislike both compulsory licensing and eminent domain; one way of looking at your property rights is examining the extent to which others are allowed to use your property without your consent, or to forbid you to use it in certain ways.

A penny from a tall building can leave a pretty big crater

Since it seems a lot of people believe this, I'll comment. Because of its shape, a penny flutters like a falling leaf and reaches a terminal velocity too low to do any damage.

See this site for confirmation.

See also Cows with Guns .

And I also found a brief article (from a non-religious website) describing how a Jewish rabbi named Nehemiah in ~150 AD first made the argument that the diameter of the tub was 10 cubits from outer rim to outer rim, whereas the 30 cubit circumference was measured around the inner rim.

I wouldn't consider these "proofs," just provocative re-examinations.

--LP

Sheesh, I love it when people pass around old barbs that are obviously false.
Try this link for the real deal on "legislature makes pi == 3".
Did a state legislature once pass a law saying pi equals 3?
or for the goat-fearful
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_341.html

Come on down here and say that, boy.

in 1897 Representative T.I. Record introduced House Bill 246 suggesting three values for pi: 3.2, 4, and ~3.23. These three figures were based on the work of an amateur mathematician Edward Goodwin. The bill was quickly forwarded to the Committee on Swamp Lands (of course), which then forwarded it to the Committee on Education. This committee gave it a pass, where the House approved it unanimously. The bill made it to the Senate.

Before the Senate could make asses of themselves as well, a professor of mathematics at Purdue named C.A. Waldo, intervened, and it died an embarrassing death.

For a more humorous account, read Cecil Adam's account of this at the Straight Dope.

This turns out to be a mutation of an April Fool's Day joke, as revealed in the font of knowledge.
/.

Here is a discussion of Otzi.

Apparently there was a hoax based around the idea that arrows weren't the only thing coming from behind him.

(read the story, you'll get the joke)

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_229.html

Those Indians were actually pretty slick, since the ones that sold Manhattan for some beads didn't even live there, and were just passing through.

The story's applicability to the Ximian / Microsoft situation is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)
--
PaxTech

First a quick summary (apologies to those who read the article). Historically the billowing shower-curtain theorists have been divided into two camps:

1. Those who appealed to the chimney effect - hot air rising within the shower causes cool air to come in from below. This hypothesis can be readily defeated by taking a cold shower and observing that the curtain billows nonetheless.
2. Those who appealed to the Bernoulli principle - decreased pressure exerted by air in motion - the same physics that allows airplanes to fly and causes two sheets of paper to stick together when you blow between them (try it!). This hypothesis also seemed a bit shaky since (a) the air in a shower never seems to move that fast; and (b) there's a potential confusion of cause and effect going on here (for the shower curtain to billow, clearly something must be happening with the air pressure...).

The same dynamics that causes hurricanes, right there in our very bathrooms! Score one for Schmidt and his finite element approach to a classic problem.

-Renard

First a quick summary (apologies to those who read the article). Historically the billowing shower-curtain theorists have been divided into two camps:

1. Those who appealed to the chimney effect - hot air rising within the shower causes cool air to come in from below. This hypothesis can be readily defeated by taking a cold shower and observing that the curtain billows nonetheless.
2. Those who appealed to the Bernoulli principle - decreased pressure exerted by air in motion - the same physics that allows airplanes to fly and causes two sheets of paper to stick together when you blow between them (try it!). This hypothesis also seemed a bit shaky since (a) the air in a shower never seems to move that fast; and (b) there's a potential confusion of cause and effect going on here (for the shower curtain to billow, clearly something must be happening with the air pressure...).

The same dynamics that causes hurricanes, right there in our very bathrooms! Score one for Schmidt and his finite element approach to a classic problem.

-Renard

Of course not.

But another interesting quote relevant to this article:

"Recognizing a revenue opportunity when they saw one, eight equatorial countries proclaimed in the Bogota Declaration of 1976 that they owned the portion of the geostationary orbit above their territories. They demanded that any nation wishing to place satellites in said orbit first obtain permission from the country beneath. Since the equatorial nations' ability to enforce this claim at the time was approximately zilch, the U.S. and other developed countries said: In your dreams. But you wait. If Ecuador ever perfects that 23,000-mile-range surface-to-space missile, I'll bet negotiations get reopened real quick."

The writing system with the smallest alphabet that is in current use is Hawaiian, with 12 letters. (aeiou hklmnpw) source

A good source for your obscure questions is, as always, the Straight Dope, which answers the "Chinese Typewriter" question here.

Regards,
gleam

NAME: Anna L. Fisher, (M.D.)

NASA Astronaut

PERSONAL DATA:
Born August 24, 1949, in New York City, New York, but considers San Pedro, California, to be her hometown. Married to Dr. William F. Fisher of Dallas, Texas. They have two children. She enjoys snow and water skiing, jogging, flying, scuba diving, reading, photography, and spending time with her daughters.

Not that that proves that no one's ever "done it" in space. Cecil Adams of Straight Dope fame, however, throws water on the idea that anyone ever has "done it".

Actually many constitutional scholars agree that the 2nd Amendment does indeed extend to the individual the right own firearms. Cecil at the Straight Dope has a good discussion on the differing interpretations of the 2nd Amendment here. Personally I believe the 'individual rights' interpretation is more in line with what the founding fathers had in mind, with the first clause (...'regulated militia'...) justifying why they were extending 'the right to bear arms' to indiviuals in the second clause.

You could always look at The Straight Dope page on this subject.

dave

The gap between the rich and poor, worker rights, environmental standards...

Yeah, I'm a stinker, eh?

Surely though you have seen various studies that question the US's supremacy in all sorts of standard of living areas? One has to have lived in a cave over the past decade to avoid health care comparisons. Cecil Adams did some reporting on average work week and vacation days at http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010302.html. The UN makes reports all the time. Various US groups make all sorts of reports.

Even if one disagrees with the conclusions of these types of reports, the mere fact that there are billions of people around the world who have set up their societies differently than the USA should give one pause. The mere fact that there are many countries with obviously similar levels of citizen happiness should show that the USA is not necessarily doing everything the only way possible. The fact that many in the USA do not think that the USA is doing everything the way it should might be considered to be evidence enough.

But this isn't supposed to be a bash of the USA, but rather a bash of the idea that "There is nothing more important than wealth creation." and that "The kind of socialist ideal implied by open source, where no-one makes pits of money is very bad for the country.". There are many "socialist" types of ideals that are good for the country - examples can be drawn from both inside and outside the USA (public infrastructure like roads, public libraries, public education, various forms of taxes and tax support, etc.) People can and do argue about each of these sorts of things, but as a society we have decided that they have significant value.

Wealth creation isn't everything. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, far from it, but it shouldn't be everyone's end goal. If it was, we would all be poorer.

Check out the Straight Dope on green potatoes.

I'm not sure if it qualifies in the same vein as the topic, but in The Straight Dope, there is a question posed as to the details of the Schröedinger's cat analogy, along with a similarly versed response. Quite good, I think.

-TBHiX-
C++ teaches us patience; we teach C++ tolerance. -- my rephrasing of a Buddhist proverb.

I'm not sure if it qualifies in the same vein as the topic, but in The Straight Dope, there is a question posed as to the details of the Schröedinger's cat analogy, along with a similarly versed response. Quite good, I think.

-TBHiX-
C++ teaches us patience; we teach C++ tolerance. -- my rephrasing of a Buddhist proverb.

The failure of Slashdot to spawn an effective online community should not be proof that such cannot exist. Slashdot is actually pretty pathological as online communities go.

Check out the straight dope on this...

It's a rephrasing of the Greek belief that history repeats itself. The only difference is that in modern cultures we believe that by learning from history we can prevent the same mistakes from reoccurring. I sincerely doubt that you would have any luck tracking down the original quoter (or mis-quoter depending on your viewpoint). If you'd like to try, your best bet would be to post it as a question on http://www.straightdope.com. Good luck!

"Eight Miles High" was about drugs, dude.

However, the hoax regarding Glen Campbell's playing the guitar parts has been disproven...

Eric
--

Anyway, I found Cecil Adam's column, Why are rebate checks drawn on obscure banks in the middle of nowhere?, which is a really interesting read.

A few weeks ago I got a check for 25 cents from Illinois Bell. The check was drawn on a bank in Lake Lillian, Minnesota. Do you know how obscure Lake Lillian is? (Of course you do. You know everything. I'm just asking rhetorically.) It's so obscure it's not in the Minnesota key to my road map book, which includes such metropolises as Dundas, population 422. It's so obscure the person I talked to at the Minnesota tourism office couldn't find it on her computer (she said to call back when Jerry gets back from lunch).
[snip]

Paul

ask cecil adams about this.

Click here for $50!

( if you don't know Peoria, in the middle of illinois, is where such fine citizens as Matthew Hale 'hail' from)

Dude you forgot the slant eyes :-)

You know, on the The Straight Dope, when asked the reason why Europeans expanded around the world and other races didn't, they concluded that the factors of the topology of Europe, the multitude of different languages, and defensible terrain, made the Europeans

obnoxious

Get out of my face, you ignorant twit.

Some one please moderate this down to -1x10^-98751234443

According to the Straight Dope, home of all useful knowledge, sending a brick will do no good, as it will simply be discarded by your local post office. Sad, but true.

--

Check out this story at Straight Dope.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_356.html
Somebody already thought of this idea.

Check out this story at Straight Dope.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_356.html
Somebody already thought of this idea.

As discussed in the article yesturday, they don't let you do that. This is the thread with some more info about that. Here is some more info on what can and can't be done.

Sheesh! Cecil Adams has already debunked this claim...you won't bankrupt the bulik mail companies this way, you'll just make the postal works go postal!

Many many MANY people talked about this on your very own website. Why not just read the posts?

Here's the upshot for the lazy: The Post Office used to be required to deliver anything with an address (and conforming to some size/weight/safety restrictions). But in the case of junkmail/magazine-tearouts affixed to bricks and so forth, postal workers generally toss the item in the trash, "According to rule 917.243(b) in the Domestic Mail Manual". Source

Anyway, I still suggest you go through and read the posts yourself, there are a few good links in there (like the Improbable Research item about sending odd items through the mail)
--
MailOne

Unfortunately, the USPS will no longer deliver these. According to rule 917.243(b) in the Domestic Mail Manual, when a business reply card is "improperly used as a label"--e.g., when it's affixed to a brick--the item so labeled may be treated as "waste."

God Bless Cecil Adams.

Unfortunately, the USPS will no longer deliver these. According to rule 917.243(b) in the Domestic Mail Manual, when a business reply card is "improperly used as a label"--e.g., when it's affixed to a brick--the item so labeled may be treated as "waste."

God Bless Cecil Adams.

Empty? No, tape them to hunks of steel or large bricks. Then you cost them a couple of bucks instead of a measly $.30. Apparently some (all?) postmasters will refuse to deliver these, but I suspect that isn't strictly legal. Anyway, it puts pressure on the PO to get things changed as well.

Sorry.

--

The post office will not deliver postage-paid envelopes that are clearly being abused. Read this article from The Straight Dope

Expresso is a dictionary accepted variant. Funny enough, they don't think ficking is a word.

Well, supposedly you can survive a short interval in space without a spacesuit.... the only reference I can find to this on the web quickly is here, but it sounds pretty beliveable to me.

The reason that LA's Red Line was shut down was not because it was bought by GM, but because it failed to make a profit. Check out some facts here

Also, Philly still has streetcars, so I'd say your information is pretty suspect. Berkeley, eh?

They didn't try to PATENT the sound. They tried to TRADEMARK the sound of the engine. And you sure as heck can get a trademark on a specific sound (MGM and the lion roar, NBC and the ding-DING-ding chime). However H-D withdrew their trademark request before it was decided.
Go here for more information.

Bush wants to give a tax cut to those of us who pay taxes. The rich pay the largest share of the taxes in this country, therefore the rich get the largest share of the tax cut.

According to Cecil Adams, the figures in 1992 were approximately as follows: the top 7% of filers (>$75,000) paid 51% of total income tax; the top 3% (>$100,000) paid 40%; the top 0.8% (>$200,000) pay 26%. So, you see, any tax plan that wasn't of the nature "noone who makes less than $x pays any tax" will have to include a fairly substantial tax cut for the wealthy. Because they pay the damn taxes in the first place.

(It might surprise many of you in the Slashdot audience who make the average tech industry salary yet identify with the proletariat -- you are rich.)

Kook9 out.

If you want to believe in creation, that's fine. But don't pretend it's science.

]$`};L(;/proc);[I(;];<C{;};1S[;`\/while=1E1L[`\p roc{>=

Ah, rods... a favorite topic among Art Bell listeners.
I thought Cecil Adams covered this topic well.
Here is the link

You stated, "second-hand smoke is a carcinogen", but there is no compelling evidence for this.

Ever notice how hard it is to see linked text in these "Ask Slashdot" comments? I hate that.

Happy Birthday is still copyrighted and generates royalties of $1 million per year.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

What's even more interesting is how so many of these people use so much precious breath claiming to be part of some ages-old tradition that apparently predates dinosaurs. Seems a bit odd that none of them have ever bothered with so much as cursory research into the subject.

I just have one question: Who's the most gullible, Christians or Wiccans?

Not trolling, not trying to start a flame war. Just expressing my honest opinions and views.