Slashdot Mirror
Transparent Aluminium
Lynx writes "As the german magazine Spiegel reports, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies have developed a transparent tile made from aluminium oxide pellets baked at 1200C. The material is very hard, and could be used as bulletproof windows." Use the fish.
Jesus christ dude how many times a story do you post??
we eat salt all the time
But, of course, that hasn't stopped radical environmentalists from proposing a ban on "all use of compounds containing chlorine".
Time to circulate the "ban DHMO" petition again, I think.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
On how much I have to say.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
the last thing I was between me and a bullet is a sheet of something that will shatter with countless sharp edges to cut me to ribbons
:)
actually the last thing I would want is the second bullet
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
* Note: in my opinion this was one of the clear ways to distinguish a geek from a nerd in the 70's and early 80's. Geeks read Marvel books like X-Men and Spiderman, and nerds read DC books like Superman and Wonder Woman. Of course this whole distinction changed when the Dark Knight series came out. Being a devoted Frank Miller fan, that was enough for me to become at least publisher neutral when it came to comics
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I think you've done it.
You finally found something where Taco's signature applies.
Pants are optional, but recommended for you
There are at least two different ways to think about overpopulation. The first is pure density, so many people in so many square miles. That's what you are talking about.
Then there's the birthrate. I believe the us birthrate is something like 2.0(I could be wrong about the exact figure, but I know the sense is right), which means 2 babies born for every 2 people in the country. Some quick thought will realize that this is not enough for population replacement. The replacement birthrate is something like 2.4 live births for every 2 people in the population, because you have people who die before they reproduce, childless couples, etc. In the past 100 years or so, the trend has been that the the more developed the country is, the lower the birth rate. So while a particular county may have a very high population density, the people there are not reproducting at a rate that can sustain that population. The population is sustained through immagration (hence Buchannan's book where he advocates all the white folks getting busy getting busy and pumping out more white kids.) Generally speaking, the more educated you are, the fewer kids you have.
Plus, San Mateo has enough resources available to feed its population. This is not always the case in what are called 3rd world countries.
So while San Mateo has more people per square mile, those people all have a higher standard of living and their population is stable. They aren't necessarily overpopulated for their geographic area. Meanwhile, in a 3rd world country the population is increasing while the standard of living and education is not.
Personally, I think it wouldn't be a bad idea if a random sampling of half the population of the planet never had kids and those that remained had only 1 or 2 kids. Random would remove all possibility of bias. There are too damn many people everywhere.
> the original name of the element was 'Aluminum', but in England they felt it should follow most of the other elements and end in ium, so they changed it to allow a 2nd spelling
e ments/aluminium/history.html).
In English "aluminium" isn't just an allowable second spelling, it is the standard spelling. It's also the internationally agreed IUPAC spelling. (And yes "aluminum" was used before "aluminium". Full history at http://www.webelements.com/webelements/scholar/el
rant
I thought Slashdot was an American site. In America we say a-LOO-mi-num...and ketchup.
Again, it depends. The birth/death rate is another way of looking at it, but it doesn't necessarily take into account recent rapid immagration. Or the fact that only a small percentage of people in a population are capable of giving birth at any one time.
Let's say there's an island with 1000 people on it.
If the island is suddenly discovered and a lot of people move in, say 1000 immagrants (50/50 split) are more likely to be younger (say under 50) and so they move in and have children. If the immagrants only have 1 child a piece after moving there, the death rate remains the same or goes up slightly (due to accidents), where the birth rate doubles. But the island's population will not grow that much over time because the new people do not replace themselves.
Fun with statistics!