It isn't easy to repeatedly attach the same three bolts to part after part all day long or to operate a machine doing more or less the same.
Many years ago I had a temporary job at a factory that made tools (drill bits, mills, etc.) It was tedious, just as you say - for about 3 days. And then it was smooth. You have whole day to think, for example. You load the blank part into the machine, press the button - and you have, say, 30 seconds of no action; the machine is doing what it's programmed to do. Then it stops, you remove the part and repeat. You don't need to think about it - your mind is free. Other workers, who were there for years, didn't see the repetitive labor as anything special; most labor is like that, whether you mop floors or sail ships or nail boards or solder parts onto a PCB. It is only surprising to a very narrow layer (class) of people who do mostly inventive, original work. But even an SQL coder who is asked to put together another boring VB form for another boring query is not that far apart from a machine operator at a factory.
In my opinion the hardships of repetitive work fade compared to stresses at people-facing positions (I worked that one too, for a month.) I won't even mention agricultural jobs where you literally are standing in a mile-long field and need to work it all, rain or shine, usually in a very non-ergonomic posture:-( Auto workers have cushy jobs, compared to farm workers.
Factory work is worth more money than retail or fast food because it is harder work, plain and simple.
It was more true in 1960's when most of car assembly was done by workers. But today much of that is automated, and a good number of auto workers are only servicing the machines. So the share of hard labor decreases over time. On the other hand, restaurants also changed, in the opposite direction. If I walk into our local Carl's Jr. I see a high intensity of labor - employees are running around with headsets, talking on the radio to one client, punching an order for another and delivering the bag to third one. And those in the kitchen are working even harder. So if I were to choose where the job is easier, it is not so easy to decide. If you have some education you'd be far better off at the auto plant, probably working with computers all day long, in a soft chair. Restaurants don't even have such jobs.
One would come in and say hello, try and convert us to their god, try to enslave us, make us join their military/alliance, warn us about blahblah.
We are those mighty aliens to ants. But we don't come to say hello to an anthill, and we don't try to enslave them, and we don't want them fighting for us. The US Army would be not much interested in recruiting some medieval knights as operators of Predator drones. Why alien civilizations that mastered FTL flight would be interested in us, other than for study? We have nothing to offer them, other than natural viciousness; but that quality is probably quite common, being necessary for survival of species in a competitive environment.
In another 100 years it'll be trivial to build 10^10th times that many.
And the easiest way to accomplish that would be probes that can replicate themselves. So, for example:
A single probe (level 0) is launched to a star. Upon arrival it makes mere 1,000 copies of itself (level 1) and launches them to other stars. Those probes replicate to level 2 (1e6); level 3 yields 1e9 probes, and level 4 produces 1e12 probes, and level 5 produces 1e15 probes. If each generation takes 1 day (not even an hour!) then if you launch the first probe on Monday you will get a complete report on the entire Galaxy by the end of the week.
It would be - inconvenient - for the atheist to encounter an alien believer.
Atheists already encountered thousands of nearly alien believers in strange gods, right here on Earth. Why a believer living on the Moon would be any different, theologically?
Methods perhaps more rigorous and defensible than his own. Someone whose brain and senses might be very different than his own.
This would be an excellent opportunity to gather more data on the subject. Atheists are not necessarily believers in absence of gods; many, if not most, simply conclude that the theory of absence of gods is the one most likely to be true, given the available facts. If the set of facts changes, the conclusion will also be affected.
Some guy (who I would concider rather intelligent) was talking about cell phone waves. He was saying that (wet) grass would reflect cell phone transmissions.
He is correct. What else a conductive surface can do to an incoming wave?
if you were to make a call from a grassy field, you were essentially being bombarded by cell phone waves because "each blade of grass is like a tiny antenna"
Generally no, though a case can be made to show this as true. Why true? Because a 1/4 wavelength vertical, combined with a highly conductive ground plane, will result in a diagram that hugs the ground. This is often the optimal diagram for terrestrial radio links. But this also means that people near ground will be in a stronger EM field than people floating, say, at 45 degree elevation. But from safety POV this does not matter because the phone user is in the near field of the antenna and he is part of the antenna, actually; and the phone's power is not that high anyway.
Supposing someone finished work at 5pm, by the time they've got home, had a shower and some tea, it's 6pm. They then watch TV until 2am?
Probably they count weekends, so that the TV on Sat/Sun is assumed to be on from 9am to midnight. That gives 15 hours daily; and if we assume that on weekdays the TV is on from 6pm to 11pm (5 hours) then the average would be (5*5 + 2*15)/7 = 7.9 hours, very close to the claimed time.
Since Beta has not spent the time and money to comply with licensing, it is able to provide it's services at lesser cost than Alpha. Alpha loses customers to Beta.
Alpha and Beta also have 1000 other reasons to offer different prices:
They are in different locations, paying different taxes
They use different buildings, carrying different loans
They hire different people, resulting in different salaries
They use different tools, resulting in different expenses
They offer slightly different services, resulting in different costs
And so on...
Picking s/w licenses as the only cause of different prices is ridiculous. If the company is using p1rated software then it definitely cuts other corners as well, and at any time that company may go down. The term "fly by night" applies to them, and you deal with them at your own risk.
So, as an example, I can buy a wall clock from a seller on Amazon or Ebay, for minimal price but taking some risk. Maybe the clock will come broken; or maybe it is not what I thought it is; or maybe the seller doesn't take returns. Alternatively, I can go to a large store (like Sears) and buy the same clock there, for more money. But they will bring the clock to me, show it to me, wait while I examine and consider the clock, and package it. And there is hardly any risk, they will take the defective item back with no questions asked.
Just for comparison: I have an AT&T phone at the moment, and I blocked the data connection when I got the phone, right at the store. Now and then I press the "connect" button accidentally, but all I get is a "Connection failed" screen, and no data charges.
16 day later (October 26), they had paid 25% of the loan, all with donations
This is nice; however this alone does not matter. What matters is that 100% of the loan should be paid by a certain date. They still need to collect the remaining 75% and that is not guaranteed because it may well be that they have already collected from almost everyone who was likely to donate.
Good for France, I guess. It is obscure in the USA (see NIMBY.)
Also mass transit cannot carry goods?
Subway, you mean? You must be joking.
What about freight trains? Freight planes? Freight ships?
The USA has very few railways. Freight planes will cost you a fortune (and they already do.) Freight ships can't service most of the territory of the USA (very few rivers.)
Sure, freight buses don't make sense but trucks are pretty much buses for freight.
Yes, and we are back to square one - farmer and his trusty truck. There is no difference if the farmer owns the truck or leases it. Actually no, there is a difference - if he leases it then he needs another vehicle to get to the leasing place and from it, so it's worse on the economy.
Note that the word "farmer" here also means "contractor". Your local plumber, electrician, phone/cable guy, glass installer, roof worker and a whole host of other professions can not even exist without their trucks. These trucks are their mobile workshops, and they are equipped to carry ladders and extra large items (like pipes or whole windows.)
The farmer's truck can't be replaced but those tons of SUVs driven only to work and back can.
The SUVs are irrelevant in the big picture. Yes, they are wasteful, but they will be dropped like hot potato as soon as the gas for them is no longer affordable. The SUV market already took some serious hits, and modern buyers prefer cars like Prius, or at least a conventional car that offers good mileage. One of my friends sold her SUV a month ago and bought a used but efficient small car instead. I personally own a Prius since 2005 and I like it a lot.
What about nuclear, you never hear about state wide blackouts in France.
That's why I said "and other sources". I can't list them all, there are many obscure ways to generate power - using tide, for example.
Blackouts are caused by decrepit infrastructure. It applies to everything - power lines, roads, bridges (which fail every few months, as it seems.) There is no money to fix that, and likely will never be. Politicians are busy pumping money into highly visible projects instead of quietly repaving 1,000,000 miles of roads. Repairs aren't glamorous enough.
Mass transit and railways can't replace everything but they can reduce the need for and use of cars.
On the scale of the USA mass transit will cost more. The density of population is too low. You can't run a bus every 15 minutes to a farm 20 miles away just because a farmer might want, once per week, to go to the city.
Another issue with mass transit is that it only carries people. In the USA cars carry people and cargo, usually lots of it. When that farmer goes to the city he will be back with his truck loaded to the hilt with sacks of fertilizer.
In any case, my argument is not that the USA can't be changed. But it will take so long, and will cost so much, that a whole generation will have to live through the new dark ages.
I don't see any sarcasm in your statement, it is absolutely correct. The USA runs on oil, and though it *could* be reworked to run on coal, solar, hydro and other sources it would take way too long. What do you do with cities that have no jobs within, and nearest jobs are 50-100 miles away? However you put it, oil shortages *will* devastate the existing country.
Very few illegal immigrants are paid cash under the table. Most are paid in the same fashion as legal employees, and have taxes and social security withheld.
Not the types that hang around Home Depot in California. Those expect only cash.
Or we can skip the pointless speculation and use birth control which has been shown to work well in the developed world.
Developed world already has negative population growth, thanks not only to birth control but primarily to extreme costs and liabilities of raising children in their countries.
The other world, OTOH, couldn't care less about birth control because a) people want children, culturally b) people need children to prosper, and c) children are affordable there.
So in the end the "developed world" will be a drop in the ocean of other nations.
Natural water: water found in nature, such as in rivers, streams, lakes and underground. Such water is typically conductive.
I'm aware of the low conductivity of distilled water. That's what they use to cool anodes of high power vacuum tubes. You can have 20-30 kV on one end of the water pipe and wash your hands on another end of the pipe. This is typically used in broadcasting transmitters, up to HF. They have their own water distillers and resistance meters to continuously check for quality of that water. I briefly worked at one of such facilities when I was in University.
The flow of water through the pipe could induce a flow of charge.
The natural water is conductive, so the only way you can get a flow of charges is if you feed an electric current through it, along the axis of the pipe.
On top of that you'd need to use plastic pipes because a steel pipe will shield inside from the outside (and vice versa.)
You also need to ensure that the return "wire" is sufficiently away from the water pipe, or else these two will cancel each other.
Besides, you need some serious magnetic field if you want to detect it with a steel rod. I'd think a compass would be more appropriate.
Well, it depends - Hornady packs 20 or 25 per box, Winchester can give you 300 per box, and Federal will give you 50, just as you said. In my example asking for only a few rounds is extra suspicious, like buying a one-way airplane ticket nowadays. No sensible shooter would buy just a handful of rounds - ten would be good for what, two groups at the range? That won't even warm the barrel up.
What if I'm hunting deer that happen to have body armour on?
That "armored deer" is known as wild pig. Its hide is so rigid that not every bullet can go through it. Hunters have to be very careful while hunting those pigs, and large calibers (or slugs in case of shotguns) are typically required. Wild pigs are a very dangerous game.
So if I am a gun store owner, and I believe someone is going to murder someone, is it illegal for me to sell them bullets?
IANAL, but your belief alone requires you to do something to prevent the murder. Practically, you should call police and give them the facts. As I understand, it is illegal to know about the future crime and keep that knowledge to yourself.
In other words, if the customer says "Ten 9mm rounds, please, I need to accidentally kill my business partner" you certainly shouldn't sell him what he asks for, even if he is joking. Considering the venue, you may well be expected to do a citizen's arrest (many gun store clerks are armed.)
If someone later (after the murder) can show that I knew about the murderer's intention and I sold the bullets anyway, can I be sent to prison?
Most definitely, IMO, as an accomplice. There was a recent case (a week ago) when, IIRC, three street thugs conspired to kill someone; one obtained the gun, another fired it, and third disposed of the weapon. All three got prison terms.
sending humans to Mars is pretty much a 99.99% waste of everyone's resources
Most of what we do is a waste of resources. Why do you go for a walk? Why do you eat at a restaurant? Why do you drive your sports car? Why do you need a hobby? Why do you have a pool in your backyard? Why, in fact, do you have a house that is larger than 100 sq. ft. per person?
In a non-wasteful world people would be confined to cocoons, immobilized (to not waste energy on movement) and fed liquid paste that contains exactly as much energy as they really need, laying still in those cocoons. Of course there would be no entertainment - the lid of the coff^W cocoon is closed after you are born, and won't be opened until you die. Diseases like flu would be impossible in those cocoons, and in any case treating you from an illness would be also a waste of resources, better to just recycle your still living body and make another one (makes sense, isn't it?)
Well wait until you see the next economic tsunami and you see why it is best to have a stable career, albeit low paying.
When the economic tsunami hits it will overturn all boats. Actually, the lowest paid layer of employees in technology companies is laid off first; they are not considered essential.
It's the *current* CFLs that are being cheaply made
Last year I bought a batch of 10 CFLs at OSH. One was dead within minutes, the rest seem to be OK so far. I am satisfied with their warm-up time (<1 min.) and their color temperature also is good enough for the kitchen. Other rooms still use halogen bulbs in recessed fixtures, but I primarily use CFL floor lamps that are bright and efficient. My electric bill is tiny (<$30/mo, incl. one 7kW water heater and a well water pump.)
How is adding software on top of three way switches simpler than proper planning and wiring in the first place?
The wall switch may turn on the overhead light, but when flicked off it will turn off *all* lights in the room, including table lamps etc. There are many ways to program this, and Insteon switches send notifications to the controller when they are operated.
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It isn't easy to repeatedly attach the same three bolts to part after part all day long or to operate a machine doing more or less the same.
Many years ago I had a temporary job at a factory that made tools (drill bits, mills, etc.) It was tedious, just as you say - for about 3 days. And then it was smooth. You have whole day to think, for example. You load the blank part into the machine, press the button - and you have, say, 30 seconds of no action; the machine is doing what it's programmed to do. Then it stops, you remove the part and repeat. You don't need to think about it - your mind is free. Other workers, who were there for years, didn't see the repetitive labor as anything special; most labor is like that, whether you mop floors or sail ships or nail boards or solder parts onto a PCB. It is only surprising to a very narrow layer (class) of people who do mostly inventive, original work. But even an SQL coder who is asked to put together another boring VB form for another boring query is not that far apart from a machine operator at a factory.
In my opinion the hardships of repetitive work fade compared to stresses at people-facing positions (I worked that one too, for a month.) I won't even mention agricultural jobs where you literally are standing in a mile-long field and need to work it all, rain or shine, usually in a very non-ergonomic posture :-( Auto workers have cushy jobs, compared to farm workers.
Factory work is worth more money than retail or fast food because it is harder work, plain and simple.
It was more true in 1960's when most of car assembly was done by workers. But today much of that is automated, and a good number of auto workers are only servicing the machines. So the share of hard labor decreases over time. On the other hand, restaurants also changed, in the opposite direction. If I walk into our local Carl's Jr. I see a high intensity of labor - employees are running around with headsets, talking on the radio to one client, punching an order for another and delivering the bag to third one. And those in the kitchen are working even harder. So if I were to choose where the job is easier, it is not so easy to decide. If you have some education you'd be far better off at the auto plant, probably working with computers all day long, in a soft chair. Restaurants don't even have such jobs.
One would come in and say hello, try and convert us to their god, try to enslave us, make us join their military/alliance, warn us about blahblah.
We are those mighty aliens to ants. But we don't come to say hello to an anthill, and we don't try to enslave them, and we don't want them fighting for us. The US Army would be not much interested in recruiting some medieval knights as operators of Predator drones. Why alien civilizations that mastered FTL flight would be interested in us, other than for study? We have nothing to offer them, other than natural viciousness; but that quality is probably quite common, being necessary for survival of species in a competitive environment.
In another 100 years it'll be trivial to build 10^10th times that many.
And the easiest way to accomplish that would be probes that can replicate themselves. So, for example:
A single probe (level 0) is launched to a star. Upon arrival it makes mere 1,000 copies of itself (level 1) and launches them to other stars. Those probes replicate to level 2 (1e6); level 3 yields 1e9 probes, and level 4 produces 1e12 probes, and level 5 produces 1e15 probes. If each generation takes 1 day (not even an hour!) then if you launch the first probe on Monday you will get a complete report on the entire Galaxy by the end of the week.
It would be - inconvenient - for the atheist to encounter an alien believer.
Atheists already encountered thousands of nearly alien believers in strange gods, right here on Earth. Why a believer living on the Moon would be any different, theologically?
Methods perhaps more rigorous and defensible than his own. Someone whose brain and senses might be very different than his own.
This would be an excellent opportunity to gather more data on the subject. Atheists are not necessarily believers in absence of gods; many, if not most, simply conclude that the theory of absence of gods is the one most likely to be true, given the available facts. If the set of facts changes, the conclusion will also be affected.
Some guy (who I would concider rather intelligent) was talking about cell phone waves. He was saying that (wet) grass would reflect cell phone transmissions.
He is correct. What else a conductive surface can do to an incoming wave?
if you were to make a call from a grassy field, you were essentially being bombarded by cell phone waves because "each blade of grass is like a tiny antenna"
Generally no, though a case can be made to show this as true. Why true? Because a 1/4 wavelength vertical, combined with a highly conductive ground plane, will result in a diagram that hugs the ground. This is often the optimal diagram for terrestrial radio links. But this also means that people near ground will be in a stronger EM field than people floating, say, at 45 degree elevation. But from safety POV this does not matter because the phone user is in the near field of the antenna and he is part of the antenna, actually; and the phone's power is not that high anyway.
Supposing someone finished work at 5pm, by the time they've got home, had a shower and some tea, it's 6pm. They then watch TV until 2am?
Probably they count weekends, so that the TV on Sat/Sun is assumed to be on from 9am to midnight. That gives 15 hours daily; and if we assume that on weekdays the TV is on from 6pm to 11pm (5 hours) then the average would be (5*5 + 2*15)/7 = 7.9 hours, very close to the claimed time.
Since Beta has not spent the time and money to comply with licensing, it is able to provide it's services at lesser cost than Alpha. Alpha loses customers to Beta.
Alpha and Beta also have 1000 other reasons to offer different prices:
Picking s/w licenses as the only cause of different prices is ridiculous. If the company is using p1rated software then it definitely cuts other corners as well, and at any time that company may go down. The term "fly by night" applies to them, and you deal with them at your own risk.
So, as an example, I can buy a wall clock from a seller on Amazon or Ebay, for minimal price but taking some risk. Maybe the clock will come broken; or maybe it is not what I thought it is; or maybe the seller doesn't take returns. Alternatively, I can go to a large store (like Sears) and buy the same clock there, for more money. But they will bring the clock to me, show it to me, wait while I examine and consider the clock, and package it. And there is hardly any risk, they will take the defective item back with no questions asked.
Just for comparison: I have an AT&T phone at the moment, and I blocked the data connection when I got the phone, right at the store. Now and then I press the "connect" button accidentally, but all I get is a "Connection failed" screen, and no data charges.
16 day later (October 26), they had paid 25% of the loan, all with donations
This is nice; however this alone does not matter. What matters is that 100% of the loan should be paid by a certain date. They still need to collect the remaining 75% and that is not guaranteed because it may well be that they have already collected from almost everyone who was likely to donate.
Nuclear isn't obscure in France
Good for France, I guess. It is obscure in the USA (see NIMBY.)
Also mass transit cannot carry goods?
Subway, you mean? You must be joking.
What about freight trains? Freight planes? Freight ships?
The USA has very few railways. Freight planes will cost you a fortune (and they already do.) Freight ships can't service most of the territory of the USA (very few rivers.)
Sure, freight buses don't make sense but trucks are pretty much buses for freight.
Yes, and we are back to square one - farmer and his trusty truck. There is no difference if the farmer owns the truck or leases it. Actually no, there is a difference - if he leases it then he needs another vehicle to get to the leasing place and from it, so it's worse on the economy.
Note that the word "farmer" here also means "contractor". Your local plumber, electrician, phone/cable guy, glass installer, roof worker and a whole host of other professions can not even exist without their trucks. These trucks are their mobile workshops, and they are equipped to carry ladders and extra large items (like pipes or whole windows.)
The farmer's truck can't be replaced but those tons of SUVs driven only to work and back can.
The SUVs are irrelevant in the big picture. Yes, they are wasteful, but they will be dropped like hot potato as soon as the gas for them is no longer affordable. The SUV market already took some serious hits, and modern buyers prefer cars like Prius, or at least a conventional car that offers good mileage. One of my friends sold her SUV a month ago and bought a used but efficient small car instead. I personally own a Prius since 2005 and I like it a lot.
What about nuclear, you never hear about state wide blackouts in France.
That's why I said "and other sources". I can't list them all, there are many obscure ways to generate power - using tide, for example.
Blackouts are caused by decrepit infrastructure. It applies to everything - power lines, roads, bridges (which fail every few months, as it seems.) There is no money to fix that, and likely will never be. Politicians are busy pumping money into highly visible projects instead of quietly repaving 1,000,000 miles of roads. Repairs aren't glamorous enough.
Mass transit and railways can't replace everything but they can reduce the need for and use of cars.
On the scale of the USA mass transit will cost more. The density of population is too low. You can't run a bus every 15 minutes to a farm 20 miles away just because a farmer might want, once per week, to go to the city.
Another issue with mass transit is that it only carries people. In the USA cars carry people and cargo, usually lots of it. When that farmer goes to the city he will be back with his truck loaded to the hilt with sacks of fertilizer.
In any case, my argument is not that the USA can't be changed. But it will take so long, and will cost so much, that a whole generation will have to live through the new dark ages.
I don't see any sarcasm in your statement, it is absolutely correct. The USA runs on oil, and though it *could* be reworked to run on coal, solar, hydro and other sources it would take way too long. What do you do with cities that have no jobs within, and nearest jobs are 50-100 miles away? However you put it, oil shortages *will* devastate the existing country.
Very few illegal immigrants are paid cash under the table. Most are paid in the same fashion as legal employees, and have taxes and social security withheld.
Not the types that hang around Home Depot in California. Those expect only cash.
Or we can skip the pointless speculation and use birth control which has been shown to work well in the developed world.
Developed world already has negative population growth, thanks not only to birth control but primarily to extreme costs and liabilities of raising children in their countries.
The other world, OTOH, couldn't care less about birth control because a) people want children, culturally b) people need children to prosper, and c) children are affordable there. So in the end the "developed world" will be a drop in the ocean of other nations.
Define natural water.
Natural water: water found in nature, such as in rivers, streams, lakes and underground. Such water is typically conductive.
I'm aware of the low conductivity of distilled water. That's what they use to cool anodes of high power vacuum tubes. You can have 20-30 kV on one end of the water pipe and wash your hands on another end of the pipe. This is typically used in broadcasting transmitters, up to HF. They have their own water distillers and resistance meters to continuously check for quality of that water. I briefly worked at one of such facilities when I was in University.
The flow of water through the pipe could induce a flow of charge.
The natural water is conductive, so the only way you can get a flow of charges is if you feed an electric current through it, along the axis of the pipe.
On top of that you'd need to use plastic pipes because a steel pipe will shield inside from the outside (and vice versa.)
You also need to ensure that the return "wire" is sufficiently away from the water pipe, or else these two will cancel each other.
Besides, you need some serious magnetic field if you want to detect it with a steel rod. I'd think a compass would be more appropriate.
9mm rounds are usually sold in boxes of 50
Well, it depends - Hornady packs 20 or 25 per box, Winchester can give you 300 per box, and Federal will give you 50, just as you said. In my example asking for only a few rounds is extra suspicious, like buying a one-way airplane ticket nowadays. No sensible shooter would buy just a handful of rounds - ten would be good for what, two groups at the range? That won't even warm the barrel up.
What if I'm hunting deer that happen to have body armour on?
That "armored deer" is known as wild pig. Its hide is so rigid that not every bullet can go through it. Hunters have to be very careful while hunting those pigs, and large calibers (or slugs in case of shotguns) are typically required. Wild pigs are a very dangerous game.
So if I am a gun store owner, and I believe someone is going to murder someone, is it illegal for me to sell them bullets?
IANAL, but your belief alone requires you to do something to prevent the murder. Practically, you should call police and give them the facts. As I understand, it is illegal to know about the future crime and keep that knowledge to yourself.
In other words, if the customer says "Ten 9mm rounds, please, I need to accidentally kill my business partner" you certainly shouldn't sell him what he asks for, even if he is joking. Considering the venue, you may well be expected to do a citizen's arrest (many gun store clerks are armed.)
If someone later (after the murder) can show that I knew about the murderer's intention and I sold the bullets anyway, can I be sent to prison?
Most definitely, IMO, as an accomplice. There was a recent case (a week ago) when, IIRC, three street thugs conspired to kill someone; one obtained the gun, another fired it, and third disposed of the weapon. All three got prison terms.
sending humans to Mars is pretty much a 99.99% waste of everyone's resources
Most of what we do is a waste of resources. Why do you go for a walk? Why do you eat at a restaurant? Why do you drive your sports car? Why do you need a hobby? Why do you have a pool in your backyard? Why, in fact, do you have a house that is larger than 100 sq. ft. per person?
In a non-wasteful world people would be confined to cocoons, immobilized (to not waste energy on movement) and fed liquid paste that contains exactly as much energy as they really need, laying still in those cocoons. Of course there would be no entertainment - the lid of the coff^W cocoon is closed after you are born, and won't be opened until you die. Diseases like flu would be impossible in those cocoons, and in any case treating you from an illness would be also a waste of resources, better to just recycle your still living body and make another one (makes sense, isn't it?)
I'm sure that those people had constant refuellings with air over the years
I'm sure the air that is sent to replenish supplies at the station is not taken raw from the window of the air pumping station.
Well wait until you see the next economic tsunami and you see why it is best to have a stable career, albeit low paying.
When the economic tsunami hits it will overturn all boats. Actually, the lowest paid layer of employees in technology companies is laid off first; they are not considered essential.
It's the *current* CFLs that are being cheaply made
Last year I bought a batch of 10 CFLs at OSH. One was dead within minutes, the rest seem to be OK so far. I am satisfied with their warm-up time (<1 min.) and their color temperature also is good enough for the kitchen. Other rooms still use halogen bulbs in recessed fixtures, but I primarily use CFL floor lamps that are bright and efficient. My electric bill is tiny (<$30/mo, incl. one 7kW water heater and a well water pump.)
How is adding software on top of three way switches simpler than proper planning and wiring in the first place?
The wall switch may turn on the overhead light, but when flicked off it will turn off *all* lights in the room, including table lamps etc. There are many ways to program this, and Insteon switches send notifications to the controller when they are operated.