I don't know what to believe any more. First I hear the ice poles are shrinking, and now I hear the icecaps are actually expanding in range.
Entirely possible. Imagine an Antarctic locality where temperature is -30C, precipitation is 6" per year -- and then changes to -25C, with precipitation 6.5" per year. Net effect, accumulation of mass; what becomes important is when and where this effect occurs.
Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever.
If I cut your comment short, it's exactly correct. Much of if appears to be Fossil Water, which is non-renewable, being a geological legacy much like oil.
Let's see what happens when China gets a man (or woman) on the moon.
Speaking of China-- their Science Fiction and Fantasy has taken a bent towards time-travel recently, with an explosion of interest in the subject -- to the point where the government banned the topic from television. Perhaps a reaction to the breakneck pace of cultural and economic change, or simple escapism towards imagined golden ages?
YOKOSUKA, Japan -- The half-century-old, oil-fueled power generators here had been idle for more than a year when, a day after the nuclear accident in March, orders came from Tokyo Electric Power headquarters to fire them up. "They asked me how long it would take," said Masatake Koseki, head of the Yokosuka plant, which is 40 miles south of Tokyo and run by Tokyo Electric. "The facilities are old, so I told them six months. But they said, 'No, you must ready them by summer to prepare for an energy shortage.' "
Now, at summer’s peak, Yokosuka’s two fuel-oil and two gas turbines are cranking out a total of 900,000 kilowatts of electricity -- and an abundance of fumes.
While un-economical on a per-BTU basis, oil has a logistics advantage when shipping to remote locations (one of the reasons why Hawaii still gets a portion of their electricity from oil-fired generators). On the whole, Japan's oil imports actually aren't projected to rise that much -- but a big portion of that is due to the increased power-generation imports being offset by reductions caused by their general economic slowdown. Not really a good situation for them.
As far as I can tell, it's an Atmospheric Water Generator", of which many designs have been developed. Hooked up to a wind turbine. So, the next question...
Suppose instead of using your wind generator to make water, you tap it and sell the electricity. Would it be cheaper to use the earnings from your electricity sales and buy water (say, from someone running a more efficient AWG, doing desalinization, or piping it in from a remote source), vs running the machine directly?
Or, to flip it around, would it be cheaper just to run the condensing portion of this machine, using purchased electricity -- and skip the wind turbine entirely? While your wind is "free", if you take the dollar amount you'd spend on purchased electricity (over a period equal to the lifespan of the turbine) vs the capital cost and maintenance of the turbine), do you spend less or more? Keep in mind that costs paid up front are worth "more" than periodic payments, since you are paying an opportunity cost when you could be investing that capital elsewhere.
The problems have always come with fixtures that enclose or partially enclose the CFL -- with fixtures like that, I've seen as little as a week out of a light run a few hours per week. PAR-60 recessed CFLs are a waste of money -- I've had none last longer than six months, one fixture ate 3 in six months and the incandescent replacement has being going strong for at least 2 years.
I haven't had good experiences with the cheap CFL floodlights either, but I had a good quality Sylvania CFL floodlight that lasted over a decade, bought from Hechinger's just before they went out of business.
The lamp was used for daily service from dusk to bedtime, in a recessed ceiling fixture. Its design was different from type common these days (spiral bulb inside of an outer PAR-shaped glass bulb), instead using a trio of narrow U-tubes mounted axially in the center of an open parabolic shroud; unfortunately I don't think they make that design anymore. Anyway, aside from the difference in quality of the drive electronics (which seems very good for Sylvania bulbs), I think the fully-enclosed design causes thermal problems that contributed to a short lifespan.
along with a fatalistic epidemiologist(suggestions for an appropriate national stereotype welcome).
Russian. Definitely Russian -- in certain sciences (and mathematics, too) it's become almost stereotypical, thanks to huge influx that occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And how do you define who are the "highest performing students" in the first place? Isn't that what the test is for? Are the "highest performing students" the ones that gave the "correctly wrong" answers in previous tests?
Ah, you've just hit upon a fundamental point in any sort of test (be it a scholastic test or a medical diagnostic test) -- your variable definition / case definition. It is this factor that your measurement instrument (your exam or laboratory test) seeks to quantify (and there are various ways to correlate how well it does, using tests like Cronbach's Alpha). And yes, it can be anything you like, including being able to answer "correctly wrong" -- what matters is that you can justify your definition, and that it has utility towards whatever purpose you're seeking to achieve.
That being said, "correctly wrong-ness" would be an example of a poorly chosen variable to measure, even if we leave aside the issues of how useful or justify-able it is; it's a variable with some odd behavior that makes it difficult to work with. Because when you start looking at parameters of students you might want to study (for instance, "how well they predict the behavior of a test-tube microbial ecosystem's behavior vs. their correctly-wrongness-metric", or "how much students will eventually earn in an engineering career vs. their prior correctly-wrongness-metric"), you'll find that the tail of your "correctly-wrongness" metric splits into two groups that have very little in common with each other -- in reality, this being the students on the opposite sides of the bell-curve; too knowledgeable to answer incorrectly-right, and the students too dumb.
Because what you've done, is that while your subjects have fundamental characteristics that could have allowed you to sort them along one dimension, you've picked a variable that ends up splitting them into a pseudo-categorical sort, where two very different types of subjects end up in the same category.
If you read TFA, you'll find that this isn't assuming that student's won't know something yet - it is defining a predator as an organism that gets its nutrients from consuming another organism (meaning a cow is a predictor [sic]).
Now here's where it gets complicated -- the cow only consumes part of the other organism (the blades being essentially expendable, with the core of the grass-organism being the meristem and roots). Is an organism that only consumes a piece of it's prey still a predator?
Well, yes. Consider the cookie-cutter shark, or Lepidophagous fishes, which consume the tissues of their prey -- but the prey generally survives the attack. That being said, such organisms would not be considered "True Predators", but "Grazing Predators" (Mosquitos also fit into this category).
So what about parasites, which eat their "prey" in tiny bits too? Sometimes it can be a subtle line between parasitism and grazing predation (for instance, the gradient between a scabies mite, a flea, and a mosquito). And then there are symbiotic relationships where one member feeds off the other (yet both benefit), but can sometimes blur into parasitism when the exchange is unequal.
Anyway, going back to the original definition in the test ("Predator—An organism that obtains nutrients from other organisms."), it could be said a fetus/infant is a predator. Now that I think of it, it could be argued whether or not it counts when a plant acquires nutrients from a decaying organism, so just about the only organisms which don't meet the broadest sense of this definition are Lithotrophic microorganisms that feed on minerals.
They admitted he was right about the answers, but said they don't expect 5th graders to realize they were right. For this reason they marked them wrong.
Some of the problematic questions given as examples are close to techno-babble -- ie, the more you know about the topic, the less sense it makes. I'd venture a guess that the FCAT likely has not been through any sort of rigorous analysis of its test design (let alone the question of test content).
Even without knowing anything about the content, you can learn a lot about a measurement instrument's internal validity by doing analysis on the students' results. One particular technique that would be applicable in this case -- upon examining the particular students that got a disputed question wrong (or right) , was it the highest-performing students that tended to get it wrong, or the lowest? (This type of analysis assumes that the test is valid overall, with occasionally invalid questions).
Yet, for some reason, computers and electronics will start working better when I get close to them. It's almost like they know that I am ready, willing, and eager to take them apart and that I'm carrying a screwdriver. It's even the machines that I haven't seen before.
Whoa, you too? I've sometimes gotten that feeling as well, when a friend has been trying to get a piece of equipment working for the last hour, and I come up and it "magically" starts working when I lay my hands on it, before doing anything.
Maybe I should try seeing if I have the power to exorcise a Flashback-infected Mac or something. "The power of Steve compels you! The power of Steve compels you!"
Forgive me for posting anonymously. I have some comments I'd like to make, but for practical reasons I'd rather not attach my name.
I am a graduate-level student who has been a life-long agnostic, pretty close to an atheist. Last year, I began hanging out with a Christian religious group. At first it was for the free food (which is excellent, much better in quality and quantity than any other organization on campus I've tried. Apparently they get funding from Christian donors), but over time I've come to enjoy the companionship and philosophical discussions -- I just have to sit through the occasional anti-abortion presentation and such. I make no effort to hide my religious stance, and to them, I have become something of the "token disbeliever" in the group.
To me, religion is irrational, verging on madness. But what I have come to realize is that their "madness" is stronger than our rationality. Compared to their peers, they are more likely to form relationships and to marry -- it's how eHarmony manages such high levels of marriage out of their dating arrangements (try signing up for their service and identify yourself as an agnostic or atheist, and see how far you get through the vetting process). Their strong bonds allow them to coordinate effectively and gather/distribute resources (like the donor network that funds their free food), allowing them to host events and bring in speakers at a much more often than that of other student organizations, including some really big-shot speakers on non-religious topics that have drawn quite a few listeners from outside their group. They network very effectively, forming relationships with Christians they bring on-campus, including some rather highly accomplished individuals (think CEO-level) who serve as mentors.
It would offend them for me to say that Religion was invented (or worse, to say it memetically evolved), but increasingly I can see the benefits for why it would have been so. I still can't force myself to Believe, but at this point, I am seriously considering converting sheer practical benefits (hence why I'm posting anonymously).
Well, alleged abduction -- North Korea claims he defected willingly (which I suppose is somehow congruent with his later death in a political prisoner camp).
I had a professor at my med school relate an interesting encounter she had with a patient, who was diagnosed with a Branchial Cyst.
They took a biopsy , and my professor explained to the patient what his condition was, that it was an evolutionary remnant of a gill arch. At that point the patient became very indignant, insisting that evolution was nonsense and that God would heal him. He walked out and they were unable to contact him again, which is a shame because the pathologist found pre-cancerous changes in the sample.
wow, links to US and British sites, how trustworthy. Meanwhile real people who have been to DPRK report a completely different situation. Like tourists or exchange students, they are even some blogs on the net, stop being a pathetic brainwashed tool and educate yourself.
PYONGYANG, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) regrets the death of a South Korean tourist killed by a DPRK soldier but the woman should take full responsibility for the incident, a DPRK spokesman said Saturday.
South Korean government should take full responsibilities, make an apology to the DPRK and promise that a similar incident would never happen again, said the spokesman for the DPRK Guidance Bureau for Comprehensive Development of Scenic Spots.
I even linked to a mainland China news source instead. Happy?
he would hire elite apple assasins to kill these supposed security researchers to stop the bad news
You fools, don't you realize Steve Jobs himself was the elite apple assassin?
Concealed under his black shinobi-shzoku-turtleneck was a lethal array of ninja weapons; many an unlucky Samsung executive or uncooperative tech-journalist has met their end at his hands, dispatched by a Firewire-cable garrot or iShuriken (they're like regular Shuriken, but with patented rounded corners). Gates himself has only survived thanks to the vigilant guard of his hulking 'roid-enhanced genetically engineered gorilla henchman.
He was a shinobi of un-matched caliber, until his fateful battle against Google-fu masters Page and Brin, when he was felled by the Pancreas Death-Strike technique.
Although the sensitivies for film and sensors have been improving, dental head CTs (which are much higher dose) have become increasingly common. While dental CTs are intended for special situations involving complex procedures, I've head of them being used in routine care as well, and it'd be interesting to know if it off-sets doage reductions elsewhere.
If you have friends or family living in the US willing to assist, perhaps you could one up at their house and run your VPN for free? I've been wondering how well a ordinary consumer-level router (preferably one of the higher-end consumer routers) running TomatoVPN or similar firmware would work for this purpose.
Of course, it goes without saying that you need to be considerate of their bandwidth (residential service upload bandwidth is usually quite limited), and their provider's TOS and such.
That's pretty much the situation they have in some parts of China today (although supposedly it's getting better, slowly). They actually have pretty good environmental protection laws on the books, but the environmental ministry itself has relatively little power -- so enforcement tends to be at the whim of the wealthy and powerful, depending on whether it is benefiting or costing them in any particular situation.
"a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test."
Just wait till we finally reach a double of atmospheric CO2 values, at which point we'll get to see if the predictions Svante Arrhenius made in the late 19th / early 20th century pan out.
If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4 degrees; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8 degrees. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4 degrees; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8 degrees. Although the sea, by absorbing carbonic acid, acts as a regulator of huge capacity, which takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid, we yet recognize that the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.
Ah yeah. I used to name my ship "Ferengi Hammer", just to mess with people running automated trading scripts (which would scan for the word "Ferengi" as a way to identify an encounter with one).
and the spam was still unbearable, until we threw in a Barracuda.
I prefer sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads as my preferred method for executing captured spammers. But if Barracudas do it for you, well that's a start.</PINKY>
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what to believe any more. First I hear the ice poles are shrinking, and now I hear the icecaps are actually expanding in range.
Entirely possible. Imagine an Antarctic locality where temperature is -30C, precipitation is 6" per year -- and then changes to -25C, with precipitation 6.5" per year. Net effect, accumulation of mass; what becomes important is when and where this effect occurs.
Exactly. When you pump water out of the ground it's gone forever.
If I cut your comment short, it's exactly correct. Much of if appears to be Fossil Water, which is non-renewable, being a geological legacy much like oil.
Let's see what happens when China gets a man (or woman) on the moon.
Speaking of China-- their Science Fiction and Fantasy has taken a bent towards time-travel recently, with an explosion of interest in the subject -- to the point where the government banned the topic from television. Perhaps a reaction to the breakneck pace of cultural and economic change, or simple escapism towards imagined golden ages?
They will certainly not use oil to generate electricity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/business/energy-environment/quake-in-japan-is-causing-a-costly-shift-to-fossil-fuels.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
YOKOSUKA, Japan -- The half-century-old, oil-fueled power generators here had been idle for more than a year when, a day after the nuclear accident in March, orders came from Tokyo Electric Power headquarters to fire them up. "They asked me how long it would take," said Masatake Koseki, head of the Yokosuka plant, which is 40 miles south of Tokyo and run by Tokyo Electric. "The facilities are old, so I told them six months. But they said, 'No, you must ready them by summer to prepare for an energy shortage.' "
Now, at summer’s peak, Yokosuka’s two fuel-oil and two gas turbines are cranking out a total of 900,000 kilowatts of electricity -- and an abundance of fumes.
While un-economical on a per-BTU basis, oil has a logistics advantage when shipping to remote locations (one of the reasons why Hawaii still gets a portion of their electricity from oil-fired generators). On the whole, Japan's oil imports actually aren't projected to rise that much -- but a big portion of that is due to the increased power-generation imports being offset by reductions caused by their general economic slowdown. Not really a good situation for them.
As far as I can tell, it's an Atmospheric Water Generator", of which many designs have been developed. Hooked up to a wind turbine. So, the next question...
Suppose instead of using your wind generator to make water, you tap it and sell the electricity. Would it be cheaper to use the earnings from your electricity sales and buy water (say, from someone running a more efficient AWG, doing desalinization, or piping it in from a remote source), vs running the machine directly?
Or, to flip it around, would it be cheaper just to run the condensing portion of this machine, using purchased electricity -- and skip the wind turbine entirely? While your wind is "free", if you take the dollar amount you'd spend on purchased electricity (over a period equal to the lifespan of the turbine) vs the capital cost and maintenance of the turbine), do you spend less or more? Keep in mind that costs paid up front are worth "more" than periodic payments, since you are paying an opportunity cost when you could be investing that capital elsewhere.
The problems have always come with fixtures that enclose or partially enclose the CFL -- with fixtures like that, I've seen as little as a week out of a light run a few hours per week. PAR-60 recessed CFLs are a waste of money -- I've had none last longer than six months, one fixture ate 3 in six months and the incandescent replacement has being going strong for at least 2 years.
I haven't had good experiences with the cheap CFL floodlights either, but I had a good quality Sylvania CFL floodlight that lasted over a decade, bought from Hechinger's just before they went out of business.
The lamp was used for daily service from dusk to bedtime, in a recessed ceiling fixture. Its design was different from type common these days (spiral bulb inside of an outer PAR-shaped glass bulb), instead using a trio of narrow U-tubes mounted axially in the center of an open parabolic shroud; unfortunately I don't think they make that design anymore. Anyway, aside from the difference in quality of the drive electronics (which seems very good for Sylvania bulbs), I think the fully-enclosed design causes thermal problems that contributed to a short lifespan.
along with a fatalistic epidemiologist(suggestions for an appropriate national stereotype welcome).
Russian. Definitely Russian -- in certain sciences (and mathematics, too) it's become almost stereotypical, thanks to huge influx that occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Did they limit their study to only "normal" circulating variants you'd find in a population of typical, healthy subjects? Or was any consideration given to very rare variants?
http://jmg.highwire.org/content/18/6/410.full.pdf
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(70)91848-9/abstract
Who needs Science when you've got "Sciencyness"?
And how do you define who are the "highest performing students" in the first place? Isn't that what the test is for? Are the "highest performing students" the ones that gave the "correctly wrong" answers in previous tests?
Ah, you've just hit upon a fundamental point in any sort of test (be it a scholastic test or a medical diagnostic test) -- your variable definition / case definition. It is this factor that your measurement instrument (your exam or laboratory test) seeks to quantify (and there are various ways to correlate how well it does, using tests like Cronbach's Alpha). And yes, it can be anything you like, including being able to answer "correctly wrong" -- what matters is that you can justify your definition, and that it has utility towards whatever purpose you're seeking to achieve.
That being said, "correctly wrong-ness" would be an example of a poorly chosen variable to measure, even if we leave aside the issues of how useful or justify-able it is; it's a variable with some odd behavior that makes it difficult to work with. Because when you start looking at parameters of students you might want to study (for instance, "how well they predict the behavior of a test-tube microbial ecosystem's behavior vs. their correctly-wrongness-metric", or "how much students will eventually earn in an engineering career vs. their prior correctly-wrongness-metric"), you'll find that the tail of your "correctly-wrongness" metric splits into two groups that have very little in common with each other -- in reality, this being the students on the opposite sides of the bell-curve; too knowledgeable to answer incorrectly-right, and the students too dumb.
Because what you've done, is that while your subjects have fundamental characteristics that could have allowed you to sort them along one dimension, you've picked a variable that ends up splitting them into a pseudo-categorical sort, where two very different types of subjects end up in the same category.
If you read TFA, you'll find that this isn't assuming that student's won't know something yet - it is defining a predator as an organism that gets its nutrients from consuming another organism (meaning a cow is a predictor [sic]).
Now here's where it gets complicated -- the cow only consumes part of the other organism (the blades being essentially expendable, with the core of the grass-organism being the meristem and roots). Is an organism that only consumes a piece of it's prey still a predator?
Well, yes. Consider the cookie-cutter shark, or Lepidophagous fishes, which consume the tissues of their prey -- but the prey generally survives the attack. That being said, such organisms would not be considered "True Predators", but "Grazing Predators" (Mosquitos also fit into this category).
So what about parasites, which eat their "prey" in tiny bits too? Sometimes it can be a subtle line between parasitism and grazing predation (for instance, the gradient between a scabies mite, a flea, and a mosquito). And then there are symbiotic relationships where one member feeds off the other (yet both benefit), but can sometimes blur into parasitism when the exchange is unequal.
Anyway, going back to the original definition in the test ("Predator—An organism that obtains nutrients from other organisms."), it could be said a fetus/infant is a predator. Now that I think of it, it could be argued whether or not it counts when a plant acquires nutrients from a decaying organism, so just about the only organisms which don't meet the broadest sense of this definition are Lithotrophic microorganisms that feed on minerals.
They admitted he was right about the answers, but said they don't expect 5th graders to realize they were right. For this reason they marked them wrong.
Some of the problematic questions given as examples are close to techno-babble -- ie, the more you know about the topic, the less sense it makes. I'd venture a guess that the FCAT likely has not been through any sort of rigorous analysis of its test design (let alone the question of test content).
Even without knowing anything about the content, you can learn a lot about a measurement instrument's internal validity by doing analysis on the students' results. One particular technique that would be applicable in this case -- upon examining the particular students that got a disputed question wrong (or right) , was it the highest-performing students that tended to get it wrong, or the lowest? (This type of analysis assumes that the test is valid overall, with occasionally invalid questions).
Yet, for some reason, computers and electronics will start working better when I get close to them. It's almost like they know that I am ready, willing, and eager to take them apart and that I'm carrying a screwdriver. It's even the machines that I haven't seen before.
Whoa, you too? I've sometimes gotten that feeling as well, when a friend has been trying to get a piece of equipment working for the last hour, and I come up and it "magically" starts working when I lay my hands on it, before doing anything.
Maybe I should try seeing if I have the power to exorcise a Flashback-infected Mac or something. "The power of Steve compels you! The power of Steve compels you!"
Forgive me for posting anonymously. I have some comments I'd like to make, but for practical reasons I'd rather not attach my name.
I am a graduate-level student who has been a life-long agnostic, pretty close to an atheist. Last year, I began hanging out with a Christian religious group. At first it was for the free food (which is excellent, much better in quality and quantity than any other organization on campus I've tried. Apparently they get funding from Christian donors), but over time I've come to enjoy the companionship and philosophical discussions -- I just have to sit through the occasional anti-abortion presentation and such. I make no effort to hide my religious stance, and to them, I have become something of the "token disbeliever" in the group.
To me, religion is irrational, verging on madness. But what I have come to realize is that their "madness" is stronger than our rationality. Compared to their peers, they are more likely to form relationships and to marry -- it's how eHarmony manages such high levels of marriage out of their dating arrangements (try signing up for their service and identify yourself as an agnostic or atheist, and see how far you get through the vetting process). Their strong bonds allow them to coordinate effectively and gather/distribute resources (like the donor network that funds their free food), allowing them to host events and bring in speakers at a much more often than that of other student organizations, including some really big-shot speakers on non-religious topics that have drawn quite a few listeners from outside their group. They network very effectively, forming relationships with Christians they bring on-campus, including some rather highly accomplished individuals (think CEO-level) who serve as mentors.
It would offend them for me to say that Religion was invented (or worse, to say it memetically evolved), but increasingly I can see the benefits for why it would have been so. I still can't force myself to Believe, but at this point, I am seriously considering converting sheer practical benefits (hence why I'm posting anonymously).
Since this is News for Nerds, North Korea's abduction of MIT Student Jae Hwan Lee might be relevant.
Well, alleged abduction -- North Korea claims he defected willingly (which I suppose is somehow congruent with his later death in a political prisoner camp).
I had a professor at my med school relate an interesting encounter she had with a patient, who was diagnosed with a Branchial Cyst.
They took a biopsy , and my professor explained to the patient what his condition was, that it was an evolutionary remnant of a gill arch. At that point the patient became very indignant, insisting that evolution was nonsense and that God would heal him. He walked out and they were unable to contact him again, which is a shame because the pathologist found pre-cancerous changes in the sample.
wow, links to US and British sites, how trustworthy. Meanwhile real people who have been to DPRK report a completely different situation. Like tourists or exchange students, they are even some blogs on the net, stop being a pathetic brainwashed tool and educate yourself.
Just don't wander off the beaten path:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/12/content_8536078.htm
PYONGYANG, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) regrets the death of a South Korean tourist killed by a DPRK soldier but the woman should take full responsibility for the incident, a DPRK spokesman said Saturday.
South Korean government should take full responsibilities, make an apology to the DPRK and promise that a similar incident would never happen again, said the spokesman for the DPRK Guidance Bureau for Comprehensive Development of Scenic Spots.
I even linked to a mainland China news source instead. Happy?
the quicker the roads wear out...
As a engineering rule of thumb, road damage is roughly proportional to the 4th power of axle weight:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating
he would hire elite apple assasins to kill these supposed security researchers to stop the bad news
You fools, don't you realize Steve Jobs himself was the elite apple assassin?
Concealed under his black shinobi-shzoku-turtleneck was a lethal array of ninja weapons; many an unlucky Samsung executive or uncooperative tech-journalist has met their end at his hands, dispatched by a Firewire-cable garrot or iShuriken (they're like regular Shuriken, but with patented rounded corners). Gates himself has only survived thanks to the vigilant guard of his hulking 'roid-enhanced genetically engineered gorilla henchman.
He was a shinobi of un-matched caliber, until his fateful battle against Google-fu masters Page and Brin, when he was felled by the Pancreas Death-Strike technique.
Although the sensitivies for film and sensors have been improving, dental head CTs (which are much higher dose) have become increasingly common. While dental CTs are intended for special situations involving complex procedures, I've head of them being used in routine care as well, and it'd be interesting to know if it off-sets doage reductions elsewhere.
cheap
If you have friends or family living in the US willing to assist, perhaps you could one up at their house and run your VPN for free? I've been wondering how well a ordinary consumer-level router (preferably one of the higher-end consumer routers) running TomatoVPN or similar firmware would work for this purpose.
Of course, it goes without saying that you need to be considerate of their bandwidth (residential service upload bandwidth is usually quite limited), and their provider's TOS and such.
That's pretty much the situation they have in some parts of China today (although supposedly it's getting better, slowly). They actually have pretty good environmental protection laws on the books, but the environmental ministry itself has relatively little power -- so enforcement tends to be at the whim of the wealthy and powerful, depending on whether it is benefiting or costing them in any particular situation.
"a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test."
Just wait till we finally reach a double of atmospheric CO2 values, at which point we'll get to see if the predictions Svante Arrhenius made in the late 19th / early 20th century pan out.
If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4 degrees; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8 degrees. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4 degrees; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8 degrees.
Although the sea, by absorbing carbonic acid, acts as a regulator of huge capacity, which takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid, we yet recognize that the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.
And "trade wars".
Ah yeah. I used to name my ship "Ferengi Hammer", just to mess with people running automated trading scripts (which would scan for the word "Ferengi" as a way to identify an encounter with one).
and the spam was still unbearable, until we threw in a Barracuda.
I prefer sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads as my preferred method for executing captured spammers. But if Barracudas do it for you, well that's a start.</PINKY>