A similar rant I like to use is why in the hell has the internal combustion engine remained unchanged for 50 years?
Boggle. Obviously, you never worked on one. Electronic fuel injection vs. carburetors, just to start. On the other hand, the Otto cycle engine is HOW old? Eventually, the simple things are worked out.
Why can't my car produce 500 horsepower and get 100 mpg?
Because you cannot afford the cars featured on Top Gear (for 500 HP), want to drive faster than a horse trots (for 100 MPG), and are limited by the laws of physics (the join of the two desires). Oh, and anti-pollution gear lowering compression to avoid NOx pollution.
Think of the early ugly honda hybrids with the covered rear tires. Again rejected.
Probably by the first person who looked at it and remembered changing his or her tire on the road when they got a flat. My father's 1968 Bonneville had those, as did the family 1974 Olds 98 that I took over, so it is hardly a Honda innovation, just a pain when changing the tire, and a place for road dirt to collect and rust to start. Replacing the whole car when it rusts is more expensive than the savings by improving the airflow, and requires more fossil fuel.
"Houris" are always female, just like cumhals (female slaves of breeding age) in Ireland. Not specifying the sex of a slave is stupid when they are actual units of commerce. It would be like referring to silver pieces and not specifying whether it was a denarius, a solidus, or a sesterce (or for that matter, not specifying which state issued the coins).
Even a dirty bomb of highly enriched uranium would be very bad.
A dirty bomb of any enrichment of uranium up to 100% U235 would be a silly waste of resources when one could make radioactive isotopes with shorter half-lives, thus more badness for the buck. The only thing sillier would be to use pure bismuth (say, in pepto-bismol), which would remain radioactive for (by the 7 half-lives rule of thumb) almost 2 trillion years (except at such a low level that its radioactivity was not realized until the 1960s).
As to Iran having nothing to lose, convincing every one of their neighbors who can to buy or make their own nuke to keep Iran from trying anything cannot be in Iran's interest. Hell, the Sunni states in the area are even talking about not wiping out Israel until the Iranian threat is neutralized!
Hell even with this extra weight, I still don't frigging float! Sink like a rock.
Probably too much muscle mass:-)
Anyway, to clarify, IIRC the "experts" that I heard said that the chemo that Lance had would have killed a lot of the fat cells, not just depleted them. OTOH, he still has hair, even if he keeps it short, so they might have been just talking out of their asses.
And the people testifying against him. Of course, by testifying, their suspensions are for months, not life, and their records are left as they were, but that could not possibly affect their testimony.
As to the cancer, I have heard medical people claim that by ridding him of almost all his body fat, it made him a better racer. It would ruin him if he was s swimmer, OTOH, because he couldn't take immersion and he probably still does not float, and it might get him in old age because low fat reserves make it harder to get through illnesses, but for now he is in great shape. Except for this USADA thing, of course.
Even better, it should just open a browser to a porn site.
Imagine how well their research will go when all their top scientists are beheaded for being perverts under Islamic Law!
Don't be too sure. All the Al Quaida (sp?) computers are supposedly loaded with porn. After all, if the men get bad thoughts, it is the fault of the whorish Western women (which is why their women wear burkhas, rather than their men getting blinded for looking).
Very true, but what I said about middle-English playwrights being DELIBERATELY anachronistic
Um, Shakespeare was Modern English (even Spencer was). Chaucer was Middle English, as were a number of anonymous religious playwrights (i.e., playwrights of religious plays).
Of course, Boers have no real need to keep which English languages are which, any more than I (native English speaker) need to know the precise details of Afrikaans' language history.
(sex outside of marriage happened but was frowned on)
Among the nobility it was not merely not frowned upon, but actually expected. George I of England *had* to take a mistress, from whom he sneaked away so as to spend more time with his wife who he actually loved, and was considered weird and excessively uxorious for that.
*Reproduction* outside of marriage was frowned upon even among the nobility, so mistresses often had husbands for form's sake, so that unacknowledged bastards still had legal families to ensure their upbringing.
So for example, in Macbeth, Duncan's two sons spend time at the court of Edward the Great, even though Macbeth is set almost two centuries before Edward the Great was even BORN (but Edward was a direct ancestor to Queen Elizabeth - still reigning monarch when Macbeth was written), the passage is a clear case of puckering up to the royal rectum rather than attempting to be historically accurate or believable.
Wrong Edward. First, the only "The Great" among the English is Alfred of Wessex, therefore Edward The Great could not be Longshanks, his son (II) or his grandson (III), and certainly not Pretty-Boy Edward IV of the House Of York (Bess's great grandfather). Second, a number of Saxon Edwards were available -- I think that the Edward mentioned was The Confessor (who would certainly NOT qualify as "Great" in my book, but then I don't get to name them), not one of the Norman (ignoring that he grew up with Norman cousins, rather than with his Danish step family who were also the Kings of England at the time) kings of England.
OTOH, Banquo was almost certainly an invented ancestor of the current Scottish kings, but invented by Hollingshead for his Chronicles, not Shakespeare.
Anyway, lots of English language literature uses anachronistic speech patterns, as a lot of English dialects use accents, words, and speech patterns that other areas consider anachronistic, like North Carolina's triple and quadruple negatives indicating extreme negativity rather than an obscure positive.
The Saudis accidentally stumbled across the solution:
Actually, they didn't. Every so often, the Saudis still have to exterminate their nut jobs who refuse to do their nut-jobbery out of country.
OTOH, Fatah did, when they had to eliminate their Black September group. They just arranged meet and greets with willing young Palestinian ladies and let nature take its course.
Most of the value lost was never there, in the first place, and what was lost was mainly lost due to incompetence, not criminality. That, and depending too much on unreasonable leverage levels as "the new normal." No one decided to loot Iceland's banking system, frex, they just bet everything on red and black and were caught when a run of green zeroes and double zeroes came up (to use a roulette analogy -- couldn't think of a car one).
But on a more serious note, if there was any truth in this, china and india are gonna be a serious problem in the near given their affinity for boy children...
Old news. OTOH, those families that resisted the temptation to have only boys will find that their girl children will become valuable assets. Expect doweries to drop, and actual bride prices being paid, as the demographic imbalance gets its most extreme.
BTW, this modest proposal has a precedent. Fatah eliminated Black September, its worst terrorist subgroup, by arranging for the members to meet nice Palestinian women who were interested in patriotic young men, and letting nature take its course.
Some who only sees unhappily married couples is not looking very hard.
Or looking in the wrong places. Given that lots of (especially young) engineers work too many hours for their own good, and thus cannot spend enough time repairing their family problems, it is hardly surprising that OP hears nothing but bad stories. Since the good family stories have no point of reference to him, when a coworker starts such a story he probably loses interest in an obvious manner, and so the coworkers do not bother him with their good news, producing a further selection bias.
I meant, TRULY arid, as in there isn't enough water to take from other places. And you make a good point, which I chose not to mention, that most water in CA goes to agriculture that in turns produces a substantial amount of food.
There used to be a fairly large town in the middle of Death Valley. With enough economic incentive and/or resources, no amount of aridity will stop people from settling, as Abu Dhabi and Kuwait demonstrate.
If Upper California became as arid as Lower California is, and Oregon and Washington dried up as well, they would just switch to desalination plants and roping icebergs.
California IS arid. LA is habitable only because they take water from everywhere else that they can, even by tunneling through the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Colorado river. Likewise, the Imperial Valley requires massive levels of irrigation from similar sources.
You might remember that he found some, and the French chef agreed that it wasn't bad (not Chateau Mouton Rothschild by any stretch, but good enough for cooking or the table), reluctantly.
The English have had a wine industry using native grapes for around 50 years, now.
Slashdot Mirror
A similar rant I like to use is why in the hell has the internal combustion engine remained unchanged for 50 years?
Boggle. Obviously, you never worked on one. Electronic fuel injection vs. carburetors, just to start. On the other hand, the Otto cycle engine is HOW old? Eventually, the simple things are worked out.
Why can't my car produce 500 horsepower and get 100 mpg?
Because you cannot afford the cars featured on Top Gear (for 500 HP), want to drive faster than a horse trots (for 100 MPG), and are limited by the laws of physics (the join of the two desires). Oh, and anti-pollution gear lowering compression to avoid NOx pollution.
Think of the early ugly honda hybrids with the covered rear tires. Again rejected.
Probably by the first person who looked at it and remembered changing his or her tire on the road when they got a flat. My father's 1968 Bonneville had those, as did the family 1974 Olds 98 that I took over, so it is hardly a Honda innovation, just a pain when changing the tire, and a place for road dirt to collect and rust to start. Replacing the whole car when it rusts is more expensive than the savings by improving the airflow, and requires more fossil fuel.
So, I am going to listen to the entire hour and a half lecture to find about what you are referring?
Let them steal USB drives labelled "Truly Sick Porn" just like we did the last time.
"Houris" are always female, just like cumhals (female slaves of breeding age) in Ireland. Not specifying the sex of a slave is stupid when they are actual units of commerce. It would be like referring to silver pieces and not specifying whether it was a denarius, a solidus, or a sesterce (or for that matter, not specifying which state issued the coins).
Even a dirty bomb of highly enriched uranium would be very bad.
A dirty bomb of any enrichment of uranium up to 100% U235 would be a silly waste of resources when one could make radioactive isotopes with shorter half-lives, thus more badness for the buck. The only thing sillier would be to use pure bismuth (say, in pepto-bismol), which would remain radioactive for (by the 7 half-lives rule of thumb) almost 2 trillion years (except at such a low level that its radioactivity was not realized until the 1960s).
As to Iran having nothing to lose, convincing every one of their neighbors who can to buy or make their own nuke to keep Iran from trying anything cannot be in Iran's interest. Hell, the Sunni states in the area are even talking about not wiping out Israel until the Iranian threat is neutralized!
Hell even with this extra weight, I still don't frigging float! Sink like a rock.
Probably too much muscle mass :-)
Anyway, to clarify, IIRC the "experts" that I heard said that the chemo that Lance had would have killed a lot of the fat cells, not just depleted them. OTOH, he still has hair, even if he keeps it short, so they might have been just talking out of their asses.
Nope, just Armstrong.
And the people testifying against him. Of course, by testifying, their suspensions are for months, not life, and their records are left as they were, but that could not possibly affect their testimony.
As to the cancer, I have heard medical people claim that by ridding him of almost all his body fat, it made him a better racer. It would ruin him if he was s swimmer, OTOH, because he couldn't take immersion and he probably still does not float, and it might get him in old age because low fat reserves make it harder to get through illnesses, but for now he is in great shape. Except for this USADA thing, of course.
Who? I only see one on slashdot. :-)
Seriously, how difficult is it to arrange a burner ID, linked to a burner email ID?
Insufficient Data For A Meaningful Answer
I like QR codes because they are inherently opt-in. Screw the NFC based ad network!
Opt-in? Hah, just you wait! When you'll get your eyePhone, one glance at a QR code and - bamf! - ads are streaming directly into your brain.
Shades of Hugh the Borg! We'll all be spending all our brainpower trying to solve impossible QR codes, created by some misprint.
Of course, that QR codes are inherently opt-in is one of their worst features, at least to those buying the adverts.
Even better, it should just open a browser to a porn site.
Imagine how well their research will go when all their top scientists are beheaded for being perverts under Islamic Law!
Don't be too sure. All the Al Quaida (sp?) computers are supposedly loaded with porn. After all, if the men get bad thoughts, it is the fault of the whorish Western women (which is why their women wear burkhas, rather than their men getting blinded for looking).
Very true, but what I said about middle-English playwrights being DELIBERATELY anachronistic
Um, Shakespeare was Modern English (even Spencer was). Chaucer was Middle English, as were a number of anonymous religious playwrights (i.e., playwrights of religious plays).
Of course, Boers have no real need to keep which English languages are which, any more than I (native English speaker) need to know the precise details of Afrikaans' language history.
(sex outside of marriage happened but was frowned on)
Among the nobility it was not merely not frowned upon, but actually expected. George I of England *had* to take a mistress, from whom he sneaked away so as to spend more time with his wife who he actually loved, and was considered weird and excessively uxorious for that.
*Reproduction* outside of marriage was frowned upon even among the nobility, so mistresses often had husbands for form's sake, so that unacknowledged bastards still had legal families to ensure their upbringing.
A spelling Nazi 500 years ago would have quickly gone insane.
Grammar quibble. Calling a "Spelling Nazi" "insane" is surely redundant.
So for example, in Macbeth, Duncan's two sons spend time at the court of Edward the Great, even though Macbeth is set almost two centuries before Edward the Great was even BORN (but Edward was a direct ancestor to Queen Elizabeth - still reigning monarch when Macbeth was written), the passage is a clear case of puckering up to the royal rectum rather than attempting to be historically accurate or believable.
Wrong Edward. First, the only "The Great" among the English is Alfred of Wessex, therefore Edward The Great could not be Longshanks, his son (II) or his grandson (III), and certainly not Pretty-Boy Edward IV of the House Of York (Bess's great grandfather). Second, a number of Saxon Edwards were available -- I think that the Edward mentioned was The Confessor (who would certainly NOT qualify as "Great" in my book, but then I don't get to name them), not one of the Norman (ignoring that he grew up with Norman cousins, rather than with his Danish step family who were also the Kings of England at the time) kings of England.
OTOH, Banquo was almost certainly an invented ancestor of the current Scottish kings, but invented by Hollingshead for his Chronicles, not Shakespeare.
Anyway, lots of English language literature uses anachronistic speech patterns, as a lot of English dialects use accents, words, and speech patterns that other areas consider anachronistic, like North Carolina's triple and quadruple negatives indicating extreme negativity rather than an obscure positive.
The Saudis accidentally stumbled across the solution:
Actually, they didn't. Every so often, the Saudis still have to exterminate their nut jobs who refuse to do their nut-jobbery out of country.
OTOH, Fatah did, when they had to eliminate their Black September group. They just arranged meet and greets with willing young Palestinian ladies and let nature take its course.
Most of the value lost was never there, in the first place, and what was lost was mainly lost due to incompetence, not criminality. That, and depending too much on unreasonable leverage levels as "the new normal." No one decided to loot Iceland's banking system, frex, they just bet everything on red and black and were caught when a run of green zeroes and double zeroes came up (to use a roulette analogy -- couldn't think of a car one).
But on a more serious note, if there was any truth in this, china and india are gonna be a serious problem in the near given their affinity for boy children...
Old news. OTOH, those families that resisted the temptation to have only boys will find that their girl children will become valuable assets. Expect doweries to drop, and actual bride prices being paid, as the demographic imbalance gets its most extreme.
BTW, this modest proposal has a precedent. Fatah eliminated Black September, its worst terrorist subgroup, by arranging for the members to meet nice Palestinian women who were interested in patriotic young men, and letting nature take its course.
Some who only sees unhappily married couples is not looking very hard.
Or looking in the wrong places. Given that lots of (especially young) engineers work too many hours for their own good, and thus cannot spend enough time repairing their family problems, it is hardly surprising that OP hears nothing but bad stories. Since the good family stories have no point of reference to him, when a coworker starts such a story he probably loses interest in an obvious manner, and so the coworkers do not bother him with their good news, producing a further selection bias.
I meant, TRULY arid, as in there isn't enough water to take from other places. And you make a good point, which I chose not to mention, that most water in CA goes to agriculture that in turns produces a substantial amount of food.
There used to be a fairly large town in the middle of Death Valley. With enough economic incentive and/or resources, no amount of aridity will stop people from settling, as Abu Dhabi and Kuwait demonstrate.
If Upper California became as arid as Lower California is, and Oregon and Washington dried up as well, they would just switch to desalination plants and roping icebergs.
Thor Heyerdahl, is that you?
California IS arid. LA is habitable only because they take water from everywhere else that they can, even by tunneling through the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Colorado river. Likewise, the Imperial Valley requires massive levels of irrigation from similar sources.
You might remember that he found some, and the French chef agreed that it wasn't bad (not Chateau Mouton Rothschild by any stretch, but good enough for cooking or the table), reluctantly.
The English have had a wine industry using native grapes for around 50 years, now.