Not to mention that we could do much better using modern materials, computers, and manufacturing. If you sifted through the blueprints, updating everything with modern techniques, you'd end up with an entirely new spacecraft that only superficially resembled the original.
Another reason we don't build another cutty sark today is that we can fill the Cutty Sark's intended role with much better replacements.
I don't see the problem with viewing lift vehicles as commodities. We can purchase a range of lift capacity vehicles from the russians, french, japanese, etc.
If you willing to dish out $500+ per night for a double queen room, then you're probably ok with $13 per night wifi and $32 cheeseburgers (Actual prices from a hilton I stayed at).
I was sent on a short-notice (36 hours) emergency deployment to hawaii a while back; base housing was under construction so we had to stay downtown. I wound up living in the Waikiki Beach Hilton for about 2 months. That sounds great, and for the most part it was, but I was an E-5 living in an environment designed for the very rich. I had a nice view of the beach, yes, but like I said earlier the internet prices were outrageous. It turned out to be much cheaper to find a local t-mobile store and buy a usb wireless internet dongle. A month later I returned it and ultimately wound up paying only for the one month of service with no termination fee (under 30 days trial period).
I wouldn't. Why trust them with my life when they can't even get along in training? Would you?
Here is something most people don't know about gender equality in the military. To get a perfect score on the air force pt test, an 18-year-old would have to perform according to these stats:
Female: 1.5 mile run in under 11:06 42 pushups in one minute 51 situps in one minute (and have a 29.5 inch abdominal circumference, but we'll ignore that)
Male: 1.5 mile run in under 9:36 62 pushups in one minute 55 situps in one minute (32.5 inch waist)
An 18-25 year old woman has to run 1.5 miles at the same speed as a 50-54 year old man and perform the pushups and situps that a 40-44 year old man has to perform. The 50-54 year old woman has to run the 1.5 miles in 14:24 (a light jog) and is required to do 16 pushups and 30 situps. A man of the same age has to perform 39 pushups and 43 situps.
These are the official standards taken from http://www.airforce-pt.com/ although they can be found elsewhere.
This is a test that we have to take twice each year in order to keep our jobs, whether we are in security forces or administration or maintenance. It's not an especially difficult test to pass if you keep in decent shape, however each test results in quite a few failures and marginals. It affects your promotions (pay) and eligibility for airman of the year boards or other decorations. So it's a big deal.
I fix jets. The air force has determined in its wisdom that in order to do my job, I need to ideally be able to do 57 pushups in one minute. If I was a woman, my goal would be 40.
Now, this is either a slap in the face to me (making me work harder for my money) or a slap in the face to women (claiming that they are unable to meet the same fitness goals as men).
One option is to say, "Well, women ARE physically different. They have a right to different fitness standard." And I'd say well then why are they getting paid as much as me or even being allowed to do my job if you are going to state outright that women aren't as strong as men? I'm supposed to be able to carry my wounded buddy; There is no way in hell 90% of the women I work with could carry me, let alone drag me. I have to be this strong to accomplish this task, yet it magically becomes 30% easier when a woman tries to do it? Give me a break.
The other option is to say, "If you make the standards universal, you shut out a majority of the women trying to join the military, which is somehow bad." My response would be, "Good." Not because I don't want women in the military. That's not the issue here. Again, let me say: This is not about whether women deserve to be in the military. They undoubtedly do. However, I would like the woman working beside me to be tough. If that cuts down 50% of the women in the military, so be it. I would have nothing against those women working out, getting in better shape, and reapplying and being accepted.
It goes without saying that this standard should apply to men as well (and it already is).
And in the real world, many women totally smoke the official fitness goals. I watched a woman knock out nearly 100 pushups in a minute. Make the standards universal and let women compete with men as equals. I think it's disrespectful for a woman to have to say, "I get paid as much as my male coworker, and I get equal rank and privileges- and I got them by achieving lower standards than my own father would be held to."
The most efficient solution would be to speed it up at its aphelion or perihelion; you'll get the most bang for your buck in terms of orbital mechanics.
from wikipedia:
Since the Earth is approximately 12,750 km in diameter and moves at approx. 30 km per second in its orbit, it travels a distance of one planetary diameter in about 425 seconds, or slightly over seven minutes. Delaying, or advancing the impactor's arrival by times of this magnitude can, depending on the exact geometry of the impact, cause it to miss the Earth. By the same token, the arrival time of the impactor must be known to this accuracy in order to forecast the impact at all, and to determine how to affect its velocity.
You only need to nudge an asteroid a tiny bit (depending on how far away it is) to produce effective course changes.
When scientists talk about using nukes to move asteroids, they are usually talking about using the enormous heat and other radiation from the blast to ablate one side of the asteroid; this will cause the asteroid to move in the opposite direction (per newton's third law).
So sending atomic bombs (which would be more or less useless against an asteroid anyway... but that is a different story)
It was my understanding that the radiation (heat and nuclear) from a blast near an asteroid would cause rapid ablation of the surface material, enough to change its trajectory. It might take several blasts to achieve a safe heading for the asteroid but it is possible.
I don't think actually attempting to 'blow up' an asteroid has ever been an option.
Go ahead and take this with a grain of salt, since this is only one person's experience.
Here is the timeline of my experience in basic training in the air force (not too long ago):
-Put your bag down! Pick your bag up! (equal response) -Goddammit you need ta march with yer feet hitting the same beat HUP TWO TREE FOR (women win by miles) -You need ta help your bunkmate get 'is SHIT TOGETHER! (men win by a landslide, as the sister flight is already getting into micropolitics) -I want your shirts aligned to the micrometer and I want your marching to be in step to the yottasecond! (by this time, the women are falling into factions) -Graduation is tomorrow, don't f*&^ing embarrass me! (and by now, the women have split into camps while the men have unified)
I agree with what you said up until about 3 weeks into a project. After that, the men catch up on the unified front level and the women fall behind because of the clique thing. I'm not going to say that one side is better since both genders have their strengths, but ask any drill instructor: Women hate each other by the end of boot, and men create life-long bonds. That's generalization but one that fits 90%+ of the people I've known.
But brilliant women who are not passionate about the field are smart enough to tell us all to go fuck ourselves after the first serious flame, because they know nobody should have to put up with that shit.
Since I'm only 27 my perspective might be skewed, but...
All the single guys I know work ungodly hours for little pay. All the single women I know work ungodly hours for little pay. The difference is that the guys work in aerospace and the women work for assisted living facilities. (I should point out that the women earn way more pay than the men...)
I guess the really interesting question is *Why* are the applied sciences/mechanical/IT careers associated with males. Most of the posts here say the same thing: Nerd careers appeal to males. Why? Nursing is a totally nerdy career- there is a lot to memorize, complex physical procedures, etc. Teaching is a totally nerdy career- why are there more females in teaching?
Off the cuff, I'd say that IT and the mechanical arts are more demanding of attention/reward than the traditionally 'female' careers of teaching/nursing/secretarial arts. I might even go as far as to say that instead of women shunning 'technology' careers, men are more likely to shun the 'thankless' careers I mentioned above. Maybe men seek, nay, demand appreciation and public spoils for the hard-gotten sacrifice of becoming skilled at their obscure trade.
That raises the whole question of why teachers/nurses/secretaries don't get the appreciation their jobs deserve, and thus the discussion devolves into so much posturing...
I joined the military. Not only do women get equal pay and equal positions, they don't have to work as hard to get them[1]. Still, the military is comprised mostly of men. Go figure.
They are, in fact, very quiet. I worked a few hundred yards from the runway and unless the wind was blowing just right, I couldn't hear them take off or land. Even up close (30 feet) they are quiet. They are much quieter than the small single-engine plane you might be familiar with flying overhead here in the states. There are also some design features that help to block engine noise and heat signature from the ground. Also, they fly primarily at night for a bunch of reasons, but primarily that our enemies worked at night. I don't know about afghanistan, but in iraq the dust makes it difficult to see a predator at 20k+ ft during the day.
Like I said earlier, I have a good number of hours spent in the control room watching insurgents carry on about their business with no idea that we were watching. I have personally been there watching as the crew followed vehicle tracks leading away from a warm mortar tube, etc and so on. I'd try to find a good video of the predator in action but I'm at work and all the video sites are blocked (yet somehow not/., I think someone in the NCC might be a fan).
On the general topic at hand: I have found that, while ads are getting creepier as to how much they clearly know about you, they are getting to be more useful to me personally.
I keep getting an ad in the facebook sidebar for "Woman looking for bigger guys". What the hell are you implying, facebook?
As an aside, you can get rid of a lot of ads by using an effective hosts file. I still see more ads in opera and safari than I do in FF, but nowhere near the amount that I see on my work PC (with unmodified hosts file).
It's also likely that our SIGINT people could detect these operations and... er... neutralize them. The UAVs are only part of a huge web of intel gathering operations, and even irregularities as minor as our tars pods picking up stuff that our predators never see would be noticed. Like most/. stories about the military, there is a lot going on under the surface that the average reader doesn't know about. Which, when it comes to intel, is a good thing (for us). People should also keep in mind that the UAV field is brand new, relatively speaking. New developments go from the drawing board to the battlefield in record time- there are bound to be misadventures along the course to a fully operational battlefield asset. And while we've had 8 years to fix this, it hasn't been an issue yet.
You have underestimated the capability of U.S. UAVs. If you are being watched, you will not know. You can't hear them, you can't see them, and you can't hide from them. We can see people hiding under tarps or bushes- we can even see where you've been walking or driving, which vehicles have been used lately, and where a mortar has been fired. We can tell if you've been running, and where you have run from. We can see a gun and can tell if it's been fired lately. We can follow fresh tire tracks for miles.
In short, having access to a UAV's video feed would be a huge deal to our opponents. Not to mention that even if you knew there was a UAV overhead, you'd have no way of knowing what it's looking at (sensors have 360 degree coverage but like any camera, it can only look at one thing at a time.
I became a believer in the capabilities of the Predator/Reaper from seeing them in action first-hand.
When I stream from pandora or last.fm, the rate is indeed between 12-20 Kbps. I'm listening right now and since I started paying attention a few minutes ago, the speed has never exceeded 22.0 Kbps.
I've been working on military aircraft for the past 8 years or so. I have gleaned some insights that the average flyer might not have about jet engines. I was not present for this incident:
One little nitpick with your comment (assuming that the gist of it was that composite a/c aren't more dangerous than Al a/c): A pinhole, ok 'small hole', will not kill people. I've worked on aircraft of all sizes and shapes and none of them were air-tight. The cabin air system is perfectly capable of maintaining pressure despite pinholes or small leaks in the airframe. The vinyl decals applied to aircraft are even designed with this in mind- decals placed over pressurized areas are perforated to allow leaking air to escape.
Basically, unless someone in the cabin can feel the 300+ KTAS wind coming through a hole, you'll be fine.
Additionally, the pilots (especially) and the passengers (to a more limited extent) are provided with oxygen in the event of cabin depressurization. You won't die at 30k feet, you'll just wake up at 15k feet before the emergency landing that your woefully underpaid pilots managed to coordinate in the face of anoxia, fear, and task saturation.
1. If you are flying inverted in a 787, you are doing it wrong.
2. All aircraft do this to a greater or lesser degree. Watch a video of a b-52 taking off- the wings literally look like they are flapping.
3. The flexibility of the wings is actually a selling point- it increases the fuel efficiency. Several in-service airliners have very flexible wings; look out the window the next time you fly. 6-8 feet of flex (measured at the wingtip) is not unusual at all.
4. An aluminum wing flexing this much will crack much, much sooner than a graphite wing.
The gist of his statements (that indeed have been pulled out of context) was *not* "if you don't want people to know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it". The correct wording would be more like, "if you don't want people to know what you're doing, you shouldn't do it on a public website that is subject to subpoenas by the gov't."
There's a big difference there, and even I as an advocate of privacy can agree with it.
The Daily Mail (one of the cited sources) has a long tradition of sensationalizing news, libel, and outright fabrication. It also has a decidedly "right wing" bias (I put quotes there because depending on where you live, the DM may not seem right wing at all).
Hard to see why someone would take this opportunity to express their views on british tabloids but there you have it.
You're right, reading a book is fine. Reading for 100+ hours/week, missing days of work, losing touch with you family, etc: That is a sign that something is not ok.
I agree that it's silly to make fun of WoW players when my own hobbies probably seem trivial to others. However, this kind of relativism becomes absurd as the WoW player gives up most parts of their life that make it what we classify as a normal life.
You could say, "Hey, if someone wants to wash their hands all day, that's their business. It's ok to have weird hobbies." But I would say we have a medical term for that: OCD.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention that we could do much better using modern materials, computers, and manufacturing. If you sifted through the blueprints, updating everything with modern techniques, you'd end up with an entirely new spacecraft that only superficially resembled the original.
Another reason we don't build another cutty sark today is that we can fill the Cutty Sark's intended role with much better replacements.
I don't see the problem with viewing lift vehicles as commodities. We can purchase a range of lift capacity vehicles from the russians, french, japanese, etc.
-b
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willingness_to_pay
If you willing to dish out $500+ per night for a double queen room, then you're probably ok with $13 per night wifi and $32 cheeseburgers (Actual prices from a hilton I stayed at).
I was sent on a short-notice (36 hours) emergency deployment to hawaii a while back; base housing was under construction so we had to stay downtown. I wound up living in the Waikiki Beach Hilton for about 2 months. That sounds great, and for the most part it was, but I was an E-5 living in an environment designed for the very rich. I had a nice view of the beach, yes, but like I said earlier the internet prices were outrageous. It turned out to be much cheaper to find a local t-mobile store and buy a usb wireless internet dongle. A month later I returned it and ultimately wound up paying only for the one month of service with no termination fee (under 30 days trial period).
-b
Yikes- I can't imagine what the screen of my phone would look like after I tried to use it in a mcdonalds.
It'd smell like fries for a month.
-b
I wouldn't. Why trust them with my life when they can't even get along in training? Would you?
Here is something most people don't know about gender equality in the military. To get a perfect score on the air force pt test, an 18-year-old would have to perform according to these stats:
Female:
1.5 mile run in under 11:06
42 pushups in one minute
51 situps in one minute
(and have a 29.5 inch abdominal circumference, but we'll ignore that)
Male:
1.5 mile run in under 9:36
62 pushups in one minute
55 situps in one minute
(32.5 inch waist)
An 18-25 year old woman has to run 1.5 miles at the same speed as a 50-54 year old man and perform the pushups and situps that a 40-44 year old man has to perform. The 50-54 year old woman has to run the 1.5 miles in 14:24 (a light jog) and is required to do 16 pushups and 30 situps. A man of the same age has to perform 39 pushups and 43 situps.
These are the official standards taken from http://www.airforce-pt.com/ although they can be found elsewhere.
This is a test that we have to take twice each year in order to keep our jobs, whether we are in security forces or administration or maintenance. It's not an especially difficult test to pass if you keep in decent shape, however each test results in quite a few failures and marginals. It affects your promotions (pay) and eligibility for airman of the year boards or other decorations. So it's a big deal.
I fix jets. The air force has determined in its wisdom that in order to do my job, I need to ideally be able to do 57 pushups in one minute. If I was a woman, my goal would be 40.
Now, this is either a slap in the face to me (making me work harder for my money) or a slap in the face to women (claiming that they are unable to meet the same fitness goals as men).
One option is to say, "Well, women ARE physically different. They have a right to different fitness standard." And I'd say well then why are they getting paid as much as me or even being allowed to do my job if you are going to state outright that women aren't as strong as men? I'm supposed to be able to carry my wounded buddy; There is no way in hell 90% of the women I work with could carry me, let alone drag me. I have to be this strong to accomplish this task, yet it magically becomes 30% easier when a woman tries to do it? Give me a break.
The other option is to say, "If you make the standards universal, you shut out a majority of the women trying to join the military, which is somehow bad." My response would be, "Good." Not because I don't want women in the military. That's not the issue here. Again, let me say: This is not about whether women deserve to be in the military. They undoubtedly do. However, I would like the woman working beside me to be tough. If that cuts down 50% of the women in the military, so be it. I would have nothing against those women working out, getting in better shape, and reapplying and being accepted.
It goes without saying that this standard should apply to men as well (and it already is).
And in the real world, many women totally smoke the official fitness goals. I watched a woman knock out nearly 100 pushups in a minute. Make the standards universal and let women compete with men as equals. I think it's disrespectful for a woman to have to say, "I get paid as much as my male coworker, and I get equal rank and privileges- and I got them by achieving lower standards than my own father would be held to."
-b
The most efficient solution would be to speed it up at its aphelion or perihelion; you'll get the most bang for your buck in terms of orbital mechanics.
from wikipedia:
Since the Earth is approximately 12,750 km in diameter and moves at approx. 30 km per second in its orbit, it travels a distance of one planetary diameter in about 425 seconds, or slightly over seven minutes. Delaying, or advancing the impactor's arrival by times of this magnitude can, depending on the exact geometry of the impact, cause it to miss the Earth. By the same token, the arrival time of the impactor must be known to this accuracy in order to forecast the impact at all, and to determine how to affect its velocity.
You only need to nudge an asteroid a tiny bit (depending on how far away it is) to produce effective course changes.
-b
Your lack of confidence in the nuclear option is... misguided.
http://www.aere.iastate.edu/no_cache/events-seminars/article/article/2806/2506.html
When scientists talk about using nukes to move asteroids, they are usually talking about using the enormous heat and other radiation from the blast to ablate one side of the asteroid; this will cause the asteroid to move in the opposite direction (per newton's third law).
-b
So sending atomic bombs (which would be more or less useless against an asteroid anyway ... but that is a different story)
It was my understanding that the radiation (heat and nuclear) from a blast near an asteroid would cause rapid ablation of the surface material, enough to change its trajectory. It might take several blasts to achieve a safe heading for the asteroid but it is possible.
I don't think actually attempting to 'blow up' an asteroid has ever been an option.
-b
Females tend to help each other to feel good.
Go ahead and take this with a grain of salt, since this is only one person's experience.
Here is the timeline of my experience in basic training in the air force (not too long ago):
-Put your bag down! Pick your bag up! (equal response)
-Goddammit you need ta march with yer feet hitting the same beat HUP TWO TREE FOR (women win by miles)
-You need ta help your bunkmate get 'is SHIT TOGETHER! (men win by a landslide, as the sister flight is already getting into micropolitics)
-I want your shirts aligned to the micrometer and I want your marching to be in step to the yottasecond! (by this time, the women are falling into factions)
-Graduation is tomorrow, don't f*&^ing embarrass me! (and by now, the women have split into camps while the men have unified)
I agree with what you said up until about 3 weeks into a project. After that, the men catch up on the unified front level and the women fall behind because of the clique thing. I'm not going to say that one side is better since both genders have their strengths, but ask any drill instructor: Women hate each other by the end of boot, and men create life-long bonds. That's generalization but one that fits 90%+ of the people I've known.
-b
But brilliant women who are not passionate about the field are smart enough to tell us all to go fuck ourselves after the first serious flame, because they know nobody should have to put up with that shit.
This is understood. The question is "Why?"
-b
Since I'm only 27 my perspective might be skewed, but...
All the single guys I know work ungodly hours for little pay. All the single women I know work ungodly hours for little pay. The difference is that the guys work in aerospace and the women work for assisted living facilities. (I should point out that the women earn way more pay than the men...)
I think there is more to this than bachelorhood.
-b
I guess the really interesting question is *Why* are the applied sciences/mechanical/IT careers associated with males. Most of the posts here say the same thing: Nerd careers appeal to males. Why? Nursing is a totally nerdy career- there is a lot to memorize, complex physical procedures, etc. Teaching is a totally nerdy career- why are there more females in teaching?
Off the cuff, I'd say that IT and the mechanical arts are more demanding of attention/reward than the traditionally 'female' careers of teaching/nursing/secretarial arts. I might even go as far as to say that instead of women shunning 'technology' careers, men are more likely to shun the 'thankless' careers I mentioned above. Maybe men seek, nay, demand appreciation and public spoils for the hard-gotten sacrifice of becoming skilled at their obscure trade.
That raises the whole question of why teachers/nurses/secretaries don't get the appreciation their jobs deserve, and thus the discussion devolves into so much posturing...
I joined the military. Not only do women get equal pay and equal positions, they don't have to work as hard to get them[1]. Still, the military is comprised mostly of men. Go figure.
-b
[1]- http://www.airforce-pt.com/
Perkilo?
They are, in fact, very quiet. I worked a few hundred yards from the runway and unless the wind was blowing just right, I couldn't hear them take off or land. Even up close (30 feet) they are quiet. They are much quieter than the small single-engine plane you might be familiar with flying overhead here in the states. There are also some design features that help to block engine noise and heat signature from the ground. Also, they fly primarily at night for a bunch of reasons, but primarily that our enemies worked at night. I don't know about afghanistan, but in iraq the dust makes it difficult to see a predator at 20k+ ft during the day.
Like I said earlier, I have a good number of hours spent in the control room watching insurgents carry on about their business with no idea that we were watching. I have personally been there watching as the crew followed vehicle tracks leading away from a warm mortar tube, etc and so on. I'd try to find a good video of the predator in action but I'm at work and all the video sites are blocked (yet somehow not /., I think someone in the NCC might be a fan).
-b
On the general topic at hand: I have found that, while ads are getting creepier as to how much they clearly know about you, they are getting to be more useful to me personally.
I keep getting an ad in the facebook sidebar for "Woman looking for bigger guys". What the hell are you implying, facebook?
As an aside, you can get rid of a lot of ads by using an effective hosts file. I still see more ads in opera and safari than I do in FF, but nowhere near the amount that I see on my work PC (with unmodified hosts file).
-b
It's also likely that our SIGINT people could detect these operations and... er... neutralize them. The UAVs are only part of a huge web of intel gathering operations, and even irregularities as minor as our tars pods picking up stuff that our predators never see would be noticed. Like most /. stories about the military, there is a lot going on under the surface that the average reader doesn't know about. Which, when it comes to intel, is a good thing (for us). People should also keep in mind that the UAV field is brand new, relatively speaking. New developments go from the drawing board to the battlefield in record time- there are bound to be misadventures along the course to a fully operational battlefield asset. And while we've had 8 years to fix this, it hasn't been an issue yet.
-b
You have underestimated the capability of U.S. UAVs. If you are being watched, you will not know. You can't hear them, you can't see them, and you can't hide from them. We can see people hiding under tarps or bushes- we can even see where you've been walking or driving, which vehicles have been used lately, and where a mortar has been fired. We can tell if you've been running, and where you have run from. We can see a gun and can tell if it's been fired lately. We can follow fresh tire tracks for miles.
In short, having access to a UAV's video feed would be a huge deal to our opponents. Not to mention that even if you knew there was a UAV overhead, you'd have no way of knowing what it's looking at (sensors have 360 degree coverage but like any camera, it can only look at one thing at a time.
I became a believer in the capabilities of the Predator/Reaper from seeing them in action first-hand.
-b
When I stream from pandora or last.fm, the rate is indeed between 12-20 Kbps. I'm listening right now and since I started paying attention a few minutes ago, the speed has never exceeded 22.0 Kbps.
-b
Heh...
I've been working on military aircraft for the past 8 years or so. I have gleaned some insights that the average flyer might not have about jet engines. I was not present for this incident:
http://www.dauntless-soft.com/PRODUCTS/Freebies/AAEngine/ ...but there are things (that I can't talk about) that happen sometimes... When I fly, the more engines on my aircraft, the better :)
-b
One little nitpick with your comment (assuming that the gist of it was that composite a/c aren't more dangerous than Al a/c): A pinhole, ok 'small hole', will not kill people. I've worked on aircraft of all sizes and shapes and none of them were air-tight. The cabin air system is perfectly capable of maintaining pressure despite pinholes or small leaks in the airframe. The vinyl decals applied to aircraft are even designed with this in mind- decals placed over pressurized areas are perforated to allow leaking air to escape.
Basically, unless someone in the cabin can feel the 300+ KTAS wind coming through a hole, you'll be fine.
Additionally, the pilots (especially) and the passengers (to a more limited extent) are provided with oxygen in the event of cabin depressurization. You won't die at 30k feet, you'll just wake up at 15k feet before the emergency landing that your woefully underpaid pilots managed to coordinate in the face of anoxia, fear, and task saturation.
-b
1. If you are flying inverted in a 787, you are doing it wrong.
2. All aircraft do this to a greater or lesser degree. Watch a video of a b-52 taking off- the wings literally look like they are flapping.
3. The flexibility of the wings is actually a selling point- it increases the fuel efficiency. Several in-service airliners have very flexible wings; look out the window the next time you fly. 6-8 feet of flex (measured at the wingtip) is not unusual at all.
4. An aluminum wing flexing this much will crack much, much sooner than a graphite wing.
-b, 8 years in aerospace maintenance
Your confidence in aluminum is misplaced.
Watch the stress test of the 787's wings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV_V4U0iX4w
I am an aircraft structural maintenance craftsman.
-b
Way ahead of you
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/12/michael_bay_does_that_which_he.html
This is why god doesn't talk to us anymore.
-b
The gist of his statements (that indeed have been pulled out of context) was *not* "if you don't want people to know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it". The correct wording would be more like, "if you don't want people to know what you're doing, you shouldn't do it on a public website that is subject to subpoenas by the gov't."
There's a big difference there, and even I as an advocate of privacy can agree with it.
-b
The Daily Mail (one of the cited sources) has a long tradition of sensationalizing news, libel, and outright fabrication. It also has a decidedly "right wing" bias (I put quotes there because depending on where you live, the DM may not seem right wing at all).
Hard to see why someone would take this opportunity to express their views on british tabloids but there you have it.
-b
You're right, reading a book is fine. Reading for 100+ hours/week, missing days of work, losing touch with you family, etc: That is a sign that something is not ok.
I agree that it's silly to make fun of WoW players when my own hobbies probably seem trivial to others. However, this kind of relativism becomes absurd as the WoW player gives up most parts of their life that make it what we classify as a normal life.
You could say, "Hey, if someone wants to wash their hands all day, that's their business. It's ok to have weird hobbies." But I would say we have a medical term for that: OCD.
-b