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Sure, but DDT is safe to humans. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/710158/posts
"And DDT is extraordinarily safe for humans. Prof Kenneth Mellanby lectured on it for more than 40 years, and during each lecture he would eat a pinch."

And DDT does not hurt wildlife either, bird populations were increasing during the years DDT was in the most widespread use.

more info that is middle of the road:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2428/was-rachel-carson-a-fraud-and-is-ddt-actually-safe-for-humans

It gives me an excuse for a daily gin and tonic!

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1342/will-the-quinine-in-tonic-water-prevent-malaria

You didn't when you were born, but you do now..

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/841/how-do-i-go-about-renouncing-my-u-s-citizenship

My favorite, even recently featured in the movie "Inception", is that we only use 10% of our brains.

Sorry, we use all of it, nature isn't wasteful, the premise that we only use a fraction was invented before modern medicine/science, over a century ago.

The 10 percent statistic has been attributed to the pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910). I haven't been able to confirm that he gave a specific percentage, but he did say "we are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources (The Energies of Men, 1908)."

Get offa my lawn you damned kids!

Just fyi, but this was not due to a 'unique' floppy drive format, but rather a defective floppy drive controller.

The device was sold as being 1.44MB PC compatible, but the floppy drive was unreadable by any other 'standard' 1.44 MB floppy drive.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-10293.html

This might seem trivial to you, but in the days before USB flash drives, it was a major pain in the ass. Toshiba could have avoided the whole thing by just licensing a decent controller, or properly testing the one the use. However, they went for the max profits, and IMHO, deserve all the ill will that they generated

The Straight Dope, in 1987, said:

Demographers have come up with estimates ranging between 69 billion and 110 billion humans.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/413/how-many-people-have-lived-on-earth-since-the-dawn-of-time

Nice try.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1117/can-i-declare-a-no-flight-zone-over-my-house

As long as it's not a candirú fish.

...Apple would be quite as happy to sell you a rotten banana peel as they are to sell you an iPod.

Ah yes, I can see the fanbois now... Telling you that iPeels are the best

Fairtax is a scam whereby the rich don't pay their fair share and the rest of us end up picking up the tab.

Another person who fell for the myth that the wealthy paid little taxes. The Top 1% Pay More Income Tax Than Bottom 90%.

23% sales tax is enough to kill pretty much any economic activity.

Yet you'd have people pay even more in taxes. The tax on the top income in the US is 35% of their salaries, bonuses and business income. And those numbers are from the pseudo (fake) liberal New York Times.

Falcon

Corporations have been considered to be people since the 14th ammendment passed

Not quite. And the Wikipedia article glosses over what really happened, implying that personhood was granted by a court ruling. It wasn't. The 14th amendment was not initially interpreted as granting personhood to corporations. The decisive precedent was set in 1886 - by a court reporter (!), not a judicial decision. See Douglas Rushkoff's Life Inc., pp. 13-14:

. . in 1886, in a legal maneuver that has yet to be conclusively explained, a Supreme Court clerk with documented affinity for corporate interests incorrectly summarized an opinion in the headnotes of the decision on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The clerk wrote, "The defendant corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourtheenth Amendment to the Constitution . . . which forbids a State to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." There was no legal basis for this statement, nor any discussion about it from the justices. From then on, however, corporations were free to claim the rights of personhood. The more precedents that were established, the more embedded the law became. Over the next twenty-five years, 307 Fourteenth Amendment cases went before the Supreme Court. Two hundred eighty-eight of them were brought by corporations claiming their rights an natural persons.

Here are more details about the incident - along with optimism that the courts were chipping away at corporate personhood. That was 2003. Since then as we know the supreme court has confirmed the rights of corporations as persons. I can't think of a better example of the distinction between morality and the law (well, apart from the appalling travesty of Dred Scott, which has a certain malevolent symmetry to this).

See this explanation. phantomfive (GP) was almost correct, except that the movie rating system didn't have any rating more obscene than "X", porn movie advertisers/marketers invented the "XXX" as even more shocking than "X". And because of the "misuse" of X, the MPAA has moved to calling it "NC-17" which is hard to twist into a marketing advantage.

And a year is 365.25 days.

Wow, we have a liberal arts major among us!
At least, you left out the "approximately" from your assertion. A Julian year is 365.25 days, which led to a multi-day error after several centuries. The simple Gregorian year is 365.2425 days, and it's still wrong by almost half a minute. A year measured from the Earth's orbit around the Sun relative to the most distant visible stars is approximately 365.2422 days long. The adjusted Gregorian year is 365.24225 days (FYI, the centuries rule for leap years is inverted for millenial years: year 4000 and 8000 will not be leap years, but year 3000 and 5000 will be), which is only wrong by approximately 4 seconds.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1511/why-do-we-have-leap-years

Very entertaining. I don't know why you're taking medical advice from a physicist though.

NYU - Langone Medical Center
http://www.med.nyu.edu/patientcare/library/article.html?ChunkIID=94085

Children who lived less than 200 meters away from a high voltage power line at birth were 70% more likely to develop leukemia than children who lived more 600 meters away at birth. Children who lived between 200 and 599 meters away from a high voltage power line at birth were 23% more likely to develop leukemia than children who lived more than 600 meters away.

Dr. David Carpenter, MD, Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at University at Albany, SUNY
(Dr. Carpenter is a public health physician trained at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University of New York at Albany)
http://weeksmd.com/?p=3226

There is definitive scientific evidence that exposure to magnetic fields from power lines greater than 4 milligauss (a level significantly less that what is expected to occur near this proposed power line) is associated with an elevated risk of childhood leukemia. Some scientific research indicates an elevated risk at levels of 2 milligauss. A home not near a power line will usually have a level of less than 1 milligauss.

University of Oxford and National Grid owners, Transco
(note: Transco would have an interest to find no correlation between power lines and any ill effects)
http://www.powerlinefacts.com/large_study_links_power_lines_to_leukemia.htm

Comparing the children who had cancer with a control group of 29,000 children without cancer but who lived in comparable districts, found that children whose birth address was within 200 metres of an overhead power line had a 70% increased risk of leukemia. Children living 200 to 600 m away from power lines had a 20% increased risk.

Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,158193,00.html

One of the most telling results was that the cancer risk grew in proportion to the strength of the electromagnetic field. Children with constant exposure to the weakest fields, calculated at less than 1 milligauss (about the same that a coffee maker generates when it is brewing), had the lowest incidence of cancer. Those exposed to fields of 2 milligauss showed a threefold increase in their risk, while children exposed to 3 milligauss showed a fourfold increase in the risk of leukemia. Such a clear progression makes it difficult to argue that factors other than exposure to the electromagnetic field were responsible for the extra cases of leukemia.

The Straight Dope
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2699/electrifying

I'll say this, though. Evidence for a link between EMF exposure and childhood leukemia turns up just often enough that it can't be entirely dismissed.

i'm not kidding

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2482/are-camp-lanterns-radioactive

Perfumes often contain glandular material from animals, even from endangered species, and the perfume manufacturers keep the ingredients secret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civet

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2306/does-civet-come-from-tortured-cats

A more thorough look from the Straight Dope, which also notes that America's Cup yachts travel at 2 to 3 times the speed of the winds propelling them:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2908/how-can-racing-yachts-sail-faster-than-the-wind

Iceboats hare typically clocked in the 50mph+ range, with wind as low as 5 mph, though more typically 10 mph wind. The wing shape of the sail and the angle of apparent wind make the vessel move faster downwind by tacking than going in a straight line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_faster_than_the_wind
http://torontoist.com/2010/01/historicist_sailing_faster_than_the_wind.php
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2908/how-can-racing-yachts-sail-faster-than-the-wind

video of the mentioned BUFC
http://skepticblog.org/2010/05/27/sailing-directly-downwind%E2%80%A6-faster-than-the-wind/

This is a unique solution, but I think is more of a gee wiz than a practical device that will have economic value.

Phil

I guess a simple google search was too hard for you to do before you started trolling.

But hey, everyone loves the little retard forced to sit in regular class with us now that the Special Ed budget has been depleted. It's simply amazing what he will say. (BTW, Ingore the part about god and pay attention to the oil in the lab parts as they are referenced for your enjoyment).

In a time of emergency, the military has the right to take private property and do anything they need to do with it. If the property is CI, that could mean making it to continue to work, or making whatever changes they need to protect it.

If you get in the way, they have the right to shoot you, or arrest you, and hold you (potentially indefinitely).

Hell, the police can do that sort of thing.

The Supreme Court has upheld the federal government's power to commandeer private property

If you refuse to help or surrender your belongings? In jurisdictions having a posse comitatus law, you could be fined and possibly even jailed.

In United States v. Russell the Supreme Court was faced with a claim for three steamers commandeered by military authorities during the Civil War. The Russell court found it obvious that "the taking of such property under such circumstances creates an obligation on the part of the government to reimburse the owner to the full value of the service." The court continued, "private rights, under such extreme and imperious circumstances, must give way for the time to the public good, but the government must make full restitution for the sacrifice." The court concluded that the obligation to make full restitution was based on an implied promise "

The Supreme Court hasn't said what happens if equipment is borrowed and returned damaged, but lower courts have been reluctant to award compensation in such cases.

Courts have refused compensation to people whose property the police damaged while executing arrest warrants or search warrants. They've also refused compensation when police intentionally damaged property in an effort to flush out a suspect.

Sixth, if I'm helping the police and someone else gets injured, can they sue me? There's no clear rule.

Could this RNA technique be applied to the HIV virii family as well

The Romans had no plural for virus. Therefore, the English plural is viruses . For more mistakes with latin not to make, see http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2139/what-is-the-plural-of-penis.

According to this site, most of the deaths happened in the first eight weeks after the blasts, and the total number of deaths for both atom bombs together are estimated to have been around 100000, the same number as in the Tokyo fire bombing.

Ironically, those who survived the first weeks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki have had a longer life expectancy than normal, because they had so much medical attention during their lives after the bombs.

Just as a followup to your point, The Straight Dope had a good article about the "copyright traps" that map makers use:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1058/do-maps-have-copyright-traps-to-permit-detection-of-unauthorized-copies

He made the point that in addition to the copyright traps, some of the errors are a result of maps including "paper streets," streets that were planned but never actually built. And some errors are just pranks. From the article:

"Of course, when it comes to map errors, you can't overlook the possibility of a little good-natured sabotage. Monmonier mentions two prank towns appearing in an official map of Michigan, the edge of which showed portions of the neighboring state of Ohio. Some diehard Wolverine fan in the mapmaking department decided that would be a good place to put the nonexistent towns of "goblu" (Go Blue, get it?) and "beatosu," referring to the University of Michigan's traditional rival Ohio State. If you had to spend all day staring at squiggly lines and benday dots, you'd need some way to let off steam, too."

American expats are the only nationals in the world who have to pay income tax to their country of citizenship

That is only if they want to retain their USA citizenship. They don't have to keep it. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/841/how-do-i-go-about-renouncing-my-u-s-citizenship

Why do you think the GOP is tearing itself apart? Free enterprise is an entirely different religion than Jesusitude. Seriously, read Ayn Rand.

Someone hasn't been paying attention. Have you not heard of Prosperity Theology? (aka God Wants You To Be Rich.) I know you've heard of its proponents, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Joel Olsteen, and pretty much every televangelist out there. This is a group of people that believe that when God wants you to be rich while simultaneously saying "[I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Now they say that "eye of a needle" wasn't actually referring to a needle's eye, but rather some gate, through which camels could pass relatively easily. Why? Jesus was a free market capitalist and anti-communist.

To paraphrase Matt Groening in a Life in Hell strip many years go: Jesus loved the poor so much, that he eliminated the free school lunch program. On the bright side, the poor kids can now lead a prayer in school for anything they want, EVEN FOOD.

You are required to pay royalties for covers and adaptations regardless of whether you use the actual recording

on the flip side, you are apparently allowed to do covers and adaptions regardless of whether the original author wants you to or not. you still have to pay, but they can't stop you from doing it. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/290/must-you-get-permission-to-record-someone-elses-song

The danger of second-hand smoke is IMO bullshit. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2554/does-second-hand-smoke-really-cause-cancer It's a scam we all benefit from, because smokers are nasty, but still.

But even if you believe in that stuff, it doesn't change anything. Again, everyone dies, and almost everyone dies after an expensive bout with cancer or heart trouble. Things that kill you young will tend to reduce your lifetime costs, as well, if that sort of thing seems important.

I'm of the opinion that if you have any (financial) reason to care how expensive your neighbor's healthcare is, the system is broken in the first place.

Cow farts have also increased over the past 100 years, due to the fact that there are more and bigger cows. How do we know global warning is not due to bovine activity? To say nothing of cow, sheep, and termite farts!

I think the phrase is "to nickel and dime."

Being nickelled wasn't all that bad, but the threat of being quartered is really starting to drive people away.

Oh please. Almost all of the laws you listed are at best just taken out of a particular application of a more general law.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1956/whats-the-purpose-of-bags-of-water-hanging-in-restaurants/ The water bag acts as a lens that enhances movement. The flies react to the movement - they stay away.

Calculus is particularly useful for calculating ballistic trajectories.

We've got armadillos in our trousers! (Armadillos in danger of extinction? I doubt it, though they are leprous little buggers... http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1306/is-it-true-that-armadillos-carry-leprosy

Okay, I did some more looking into this. More info e.g. here.

The parent's point (misogynistic ranting aside) is actually correct; many states consider parentage and parental obligations to inhere in genetic parentage. This has nothing to do with the mother's rights vs. the father's; it's about the child's right to support. Which is fair enough as far as it goes, except the legal precedent is obsessed with the child at the expense of the parents (e.g. a case where a 12-year-old who impregnated his babysitter is liable for child support, even though it was statutory rape -- that ruling actually implies that consent to a sexual act is of no relevance whatsoever in determining obligations to the child, which is obviously wrong; there is no better example of a case where a child should be supported by the community/state rather than a 12-year-old...)

Family law is far from just, but it looks like a couple really could sue a female egg donor for child support if they could demonstrate that she was in a better financial position than they were, and they didn't mind that the woman who received the egg would probably lose all parental rights to a "stranger child."

First Google hit I got. You could also try: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1699/was-hitler-a-christian

I've researched the issue before, and stand by the statement that he paid lip service to Christianity because he was, well, a politician, but he privately hated Christianity.

Don't bother with Dvorak. The studies that showed Dvorak to be superior were methodologically suspect, and the reams of anecdotal evidence that Dvorak is superior is largely due to confirmation bias--the people who consciously switched improved largely because they were switching consciously (and trying to improve), and the people who don't see an improvement rarely brag about that.

Instead, a touch-typing program or other class will probably benefit you. A lot of the myths about qwerty keyboards are bogus, and you should see an improvement in your speed because you're spreading the typing load across more fingers and having to move your hands and forearms less than a fast, blind hunt and peck. A little practice on activating your pinkies will probably dovetail nicely with your existing skills, so the improvement will be quick.

Why would anybody bother if it doesn't save them money and they have to attach balloons to cow asses for the rest of their lives?

Just to clear up the myth, the far majority of bovine methane emissions is from burps, not farts. So you could imagine a combination feedbag/balloon capture harness that might be a little more feasible, because it could be at least partially based on current feedbag designs.

In the US, police are allowed to lie. They can take you in to the station for a polite chat, turn the tape recorder on, and lie on tape that they have a witness who swears that he saw you do it. The only thing they can't do is threaten you with extrinsic, coercive consequences if you don't talk.

This is one of the reasons why you should never talk to the police without a lawyer.

In the UK, the situation is slightly worse: Not only can the police lie to you, they can also tell you that you may face consequences at trial if you remain silent. However, as in the US, they cannot threaten you by saying they'll do something unless you answer. For full details, see PACE Code C, particularly section 11.

This is from a newspaper columnist a year ago that says that global warming will not strictly be increasing temperatures, but a shift in overall weather patterns in an area.

http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc20090212.php

Or perhaps not.

You can shatter human flesh frozen in any reasonable way. citation plox

Oh noes! Them pointy-headed scientists have discovered that the Bernoulli effect isn't (entirely) what keeps an airplane in the air! Now we're all going to die the next time we fly!!!U+203C!!!

I have an alergy to sunlight ... when I mentioned to a professional, apparently it's common but not normal and has been diagnosed as an alergy.

No you don't. Get a better professional, or at least spend thirty seconds Googling it.

It's a common genetic condition, probably related to some sort of signal crosstalk between the optic nerve and the nerve that causes sneezes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/527/why-do-some-people-sneeze-when-going-out-into-bright-light

1.) EASILY SKEWED (as in "4/5 dentists chew trident", oh "sure, sure", especially when they're on the corporate payroll (or paid off to say so by said corporation so their "evidence & observation looks good")

and

2.) IS THE SAMPLE SET LARGE & COMPREHENSIVE ENOUGH? (most?? Most are not, period)...

You know, that particular citation has made me wonder in the past, but not enough to actually research it. So, I went off looking for more information and found it.

    The statistic was generated from a July 1976 survey.

    The sample group for this statistic was 1,200 dentists. These dentists were hand picked by the research company, probably with good reason.

    They were asked, what advice would they give gum-chewing patients

    1) sugared gum
    2) sugarless gum
    3) no gum at all.

    Sugarless gum got 85% of the vote. Not terribly surprising. I'd be fairly confident that their time had been paid for, or at very least they were told "This survey is being done for Trident Sugarless Gum." That is only speculation, so hush up.

    17/20 doesn't really sound very good. It just doesn't stick in your head. 4/5 is close enough, even though it reduces your answer to 80% (ahhh, a lie). Since these are marketing folks, I'm sure they pushed all kinds of values past focus groups, until "4 in 5" was accepted as most favorable.

    As the link cites, they're fairly confident that the "sugared gum" answer got at least one response. There's always someone that'll take the obvious wrong answer. If you don't believe that, look at any Slashdot poll. :)

    What they don't say is how many of the 1,200 samples were dropped. I'm sure there were non-responses, and they could have easily added any number of unfavorable answers in as non-responses. Of course, they couldn't have 100% in their favor, so they had to keep some.

Faked - see: Snopes as usual, has the straight dope.

They do? Cecil is going to be pissed.

I know excellent healers of all different stripes who became healers because that is what they love. I also know greedy shits who became dentists because they wanted to make a lot of money.

No, you don't.

Interestingly, dentists have one of the higher suicide rates among the various professions.

No, they don't. For someone who likes to bloviate about what the stupid common masses think, you're awfully eager to repeat things that "everybody knows" like one of them.

The printer manufacturer won't end up spending a penny, and you'll have caused the post office a bit of a hassle, which ultimately means mail for everyone gets a bit more expensive.

10a - a = 9.999... - 0.999...

There's your problem. What makes you think you can take an infinitely long number and ADD or SUBTRACT it to another infinitely long number?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2459/an-infinite-question-why-doesnt-999-1
Algebra
Calculus
et alii ad infinitum...

If you are speaking Latin, the plural of campus is campi. If you are speaking English, it's campuses.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/campus
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Plural_of_campus
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/campi
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-151248.html
http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-cobuild/campus

Both are valid. Campuses is standard, campi is not.

*shrugs*

Well, Indiana already tried to make Pi 3.2 about 112 years ago. So by that measure they are sliding into the pit at a vastly slower rate then the mid-west, which has a considerable head start. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/805/did-a-state-legislature-once-pass-a-law-saying-pi-equals-3