I had never seen so many homeless people in my life before I visited the US. It's shocking... there's so many of them.
I'm Australian and sure we have some homeless people here but they are pretty rare. You might see two or three of them around the place every now and again. In the US though it seems the problem is orders of magnitude worse.
Actually Australian rents are astronomical. As in "up there with Japan" expensive.
Not to do with a lack of space, but the rapid growth of our population (due mostly to immigration) combined with relatively slow releases of land for development and a shortage of builders... i.e. we can't build houses/apartments quick enough to satisfy the number of new people! Demand >> supply and hence rents are insane.
I don't think the average American realises just how cheap rent is in the US compared to MOST other countries.
I pay $1400 a month for a (very) small 2 bedroom apartment in one of the 'worst' parts of a mid-sized Australian city. And that is way below market value (I rent from a friend who gives me a bit of a discount since he knows I'm a decent guy and won't trash the place). If I moved, the cheapest other place I could find within 5km would be ~$1500 and probably worse than what I have now.
OTOH, my wife is American and what she paid for a place area in the US per MONTH is less than I pay for a similar place here per WEEK. American rent is soooo, soooo, sooo cheap. Even NY and SF is nowhere near the rents you pay in most Australian (or Japanese, or European) cities (unless you want to live way at the outskirts of the city and spend 2 hours a day on a train/in a car).
Yeah I can relate to that. I travel between the US and Australia a LOT and quite a few times I've managed to have something I shouldn't have snatched off me once I arrive in Australia, even though it should have been found on the earlier US domestic legs. Australian immigration and customs are damn good at their job compared to most countries (mostly because it has had to, due to Australia being so isolated and not having many of the diseases and pests that everywhere else has, rather than terrorism).
Actually, the US sought advice from the Australians post 9/11 on how to improve their immigration record keeping systems (Australia is one of the few countries that has a full immigration form and check when LEAVING the country as well as entering... most just have it on entering, although the US now has that US-VISIT thing which requires you to submit something on leaving).
Funnily enough, the Australian customs and immigration seems to go quicker and smoother than the US one, even though it's just as in-depth these days. I think they've had longer to get used to it and their airports are more setup for it. Where as some US airports seem really chaotic (LAX springs to mind... you land and there are random TSA agents rudely yelling at everyone to get in this line or that line and scurrying around like they don't have a clue what's going on).
Mod parent up. AuDA are in fact a bunch of retards for many reasons, but this is not one of them. Simply, the domain as registered did not originally meet the criteria for a.com.au domain (a valid, registered Australian business).
Didn't know they got around this by actually registering a business called STEPHENCONROY. That is pretty funny:)
Weird. My bank is the opposite... it's constantly sending letters asking me to increase my limit.
"Increase your credit limit to $X, all you have to do is sign the pre-filled form below and send it back to us in this pre-stamped envelope. Omg!"
I only have one credit card and I barely ever use it. I've never come close to having a balance on it even a quarter of its limit, and even then, it gets paid off in a matter of days after the charge, so the balance for 99.99% of the time is zero. Yet the limit on this card is $18,000 and climbing. I must be their most least profitable customer ever - yet they seem to think giving me a bigger credit is going to somehow turn me into a big spender? Hmmm...
(Disclaimer: not American... so banks here probably aren't quite as wary as US banks of bad debt, given events over the last 2 years)
Given the same conditions. Temperatures (particularly at night) are significantly colder if there is a ground cover of snow, than if there isn't (because as you said, snow is a thermal insulator that keeps the heat in the ground, and thus out of the air). Read the 'forecast discussion' on any NOAA forecast for an area that has a good snow cover and a clear, still night and they often mention things like "bumped temps down a few degrees from guidance, due to snow cover".
The effect during the day will also be to reduce or delay heating (and thus reduce Tmax). Snow (water) has a very high specific heat capacity. That is, snow covered ground can absorb a crapload more heat from the sun before it starts radiating significant amounts of that heat back to the air, than ground can. Furthermore the white colour of snow reflects more incidental radiation from the sun that brownish ground would.
So all things being equal, the GP is correct - no snow on the ground will raise temps a bit compared to what they would have been in the same situation with snow cover.
I once looked it up, and 15 cargo ships produce as much greenhouse gas as all the cars in the world combined.
As much as I despise the phrase... lolwut?
Just think about that for a second. Use your sense of natural intuition, your common sense, your sense of proportions and orders of magnitude. Does that statement seem even remotely plausible. That 15 ships emit the same volume of GHGs as a billion cars?
For the record, what you are thinking of is this: http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1020063_pollution-perspective-one-giant-cargo-ship-emits-as-much-as-50-million-cars...which is talking about the volume of ~pollution~ (e.g. sulfur, particulates, other 'dirty' stuff etc), not greenhouse gas emissions (most GHGs aren't dirty and cannot really be called pollutants, as they occur naturally in decent concentrations anyway). When we are talking about pollution (rather than GHG emissions), modern cars are in fact very clean indeed due to the tough emissions standards in most countries in the last several decades.
Having said that shipping is still a substantial slice of the greenhouse gas pie (the above article attributes 3-4% influence to total anthropogenic GHGs). But it's nowhere near the huge difference between cars and ships as you make out.
Ditto here. I'm Australian but have moved to the US in recent years. I had never seen anything like a 4-way stop in my life before, and I find them bizarre to this day.
In Australia you either have a 2-way stop (with the stop signs being on the less 'major' of the two roads that meet); or A roundabout (in the case where both roads are roughly equally busy)
Roundabouts work far more efficiently than 4-way stops anyway and essentially serve the same purpose.
Almost every McDonalds in Australia is a McCafe now (the cafe culture here is huge and far predates the cafe culture spawned by Starbucks in the US). And they actually do make pretty good coffee and pastries and stuff...
Some do (although not many in the US I admit). Most recent one I passed through with free wifi was Wellington airport in New Zealand. Most major airports in the US and Australia though seem to make you pay for it.
Oh it's free in Singapore airport too provided you give them your Singapore National ID number or whatever it is (or passport number if you are a foreigner).
Hey thanks for asking this... I always wondered that myself lol.
And the answer Gilmoure gave is different than what I 'guessed' it meant. I always thought it was more of a 'sarcastic' clap (I'm only clapping because I have to, not because I actually thought it was any good).
Although I admit this is a response deserving of a 'whoosh...', people tend to eat and drink things y'know? Your weight varies by a good +/- 1 kg throughout a typical day.
I am a dual US-Australian citizen and regularly transfer money between my Australian and US banks. It costs me a whopping 50 cents and takes 3-4 business days.
EFT from source account to a clearing house (e.g. Xetrade). They convert the currency. They pay it on to the other country, again via EFT. The only fee is because my bank happens to charge 50 cents per EFT. With some other banks it would be completely free.
Much better than either wire transfer (20-30 bucks) or a cheque (slow and most banks charge huge fees for cashing foreign cheques).
I suppose theoretically that is a problem... but in practice I've NEVER run into it (coming from someone who has never used or even really seen a cheque in their life. If you're going to someone's random garage sale or something, you know to bring cash. Everyone else (i.e. everyone who is an actual retailer) has a EFT/debit/credit card swipe thingy.
In Australia all you need to know is the person's bank account number. You don't even really need their name... you can give the account you send money to a "name", but that's really just what you are choosing to call it in your little online banking address book. The only thing used in the actual transfer is the account number (or more accurately, the BSB and account number... BSB is the first 6 digits of the number and specifies the Bank, State and Branch at which the account is held).
Indeed. Cheques are essentially dead in Australia (and most other countries). I've never had a cheque account. Neither has anyone else I know. But the first time I visited the US, I saw people paying for stuff at a supermarket with a cheque, and I was amazed. I barely knew what a cheque even was, to be honest... I don't think I've even ~seen~ a cheque in over 15 years here in Australia.
EFTPOS (EFT at the Point of Sale, aka. debit cards) has replaced cheques for retail purposes. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a store in Australia that accepted a cheque now.
As for "paying random people", you just go onto your bank's website, click "transfer", enter their account name and account number, and click 'Send'. They'll receive the money almost instantly if they are with the same bank, otherwise it's usually the next business day. Very handy actually because once you send money to someone the first time, they are added to your little 'address book' on the bank site and you can pay them with about 2 clicks from then on. This is also how things like rent is usually paid.
Wow even when it says "for those too lazy to RTFA" in the summary, people still ignore it.
He tried putting it in neutral. He tried turning the ignition off. He tried all manner of brake pumping. Pretty much, he tried everything that you could conceivably try.
Yeah that one is bizarre. People from non-English speaking backgrounds can't understand the classification labels/stickers? That doesn't seem to be a problem for movies/videos/books/any other classified material...
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I had never seen so many homeless people in my life before I visited the US. It's shocking ... there's so many of them.
I'm Australian and sure we have some homeless people here but they are pretty rare. You might see two or three of them around the place every now and again. In the US though it seems the problem is orders of magnitude worse.
Actually Australian rents are astronomical. As in "up there with Japan" expensive.
Not to do with a lack of space, but the rapid growth of our population (due mostly to immigration) combined with relatively slow releases of land for development and a shortage of builders ... i.e. we can't build houses/apartments quick enough to satisfy the number of new people! Demand >> supply and hence rents are insane.
I don't think the average American realises just how cheap rent is in the US compared to MOST other countries.
I pay $1400 a month for a (very) small 2 bedroom apartment in one of the 'worst' parts of a mid-sized Australian city. And that is way below market value (I rent from a friend who gives me a bit of a discount since he knows I'm a decent guy and won't trash the place). If I moved, the cheapest other place I could find within 5km would be ~$1500 and probably worse than what I have now.
OTOH, my wife is American and what she paid for a place area in the US per MONTH is less than I pay for a similar place here per WEEK. American rent is soooo, soooo, sooo cheap. Even NY and SF is nowhere near the rents you pay in most Australian (or Japanese, or European) cities (unless you want to live way at the outskirts of the city and spend 2 hours a day on a train/in a car).
Yeah I can relate to that. I travel between the US and Australia a LOT and quite a few times I've managed to have something I shouldn't have snatched off me once I arrive in Australia, even though it should have been found on the earlier US domestic legs. Australian immigration and customs are damn good at their job compared to most countries (mostly because it has had to, due to Australia being so isolated and not having many of the diseases and pests that everywhere else has, rather than terrorism).
Actually, the US sought advice from the Australians post 9/11 on how to improve their immigration record keeping systems (Australia is one of the few countries that has a full immigration form and check when LEAVING the country as well as entering ... most just have it on entering, although the US now has that US-VISIT thing which requires you to submit something on leaving).
Funnily enough, the Australian customs and immigration seems to go quicker and smoother than the US one, even though it's just as in-depth these days. I think they've had longer to get used to it and their airports are more setup for it. Where as some US airports seem really chaotic (LAX springs to mind ... you land and there are random TSA agents rudely yelling at everyone to get in this line or that line and scurrying around like they don't have a clue what's going on).
Yes. That's me.
Believe it or not, I'm actually married now to someone I met on Sim City (talker.com:8200 if I remember correctly), hahaha.
Mod parent up. AuDA are in fact a bunch of retards for many reasons, but this is not one of them. Simply, the domain as registered did not originally meet the criteria for a .com.au domain (a valid, registered Australian business).
Didn't know they got around this by actually registering a business called STEPHENCONROY. That is pretty funny :)
Weird. My bank is the opposite ... it's constantly sending letters asking me to increase my limit.
"Increase your credit limit to $X, all you have to do is sign the pre-filled form below and send it back to us in this pre-stamped envelope. Omg!"
I only have one credit card and I barely ever use it. I've never come close to having a balance on it even a quarter of its limit, and even then, it gets paid off in a matter of days after the charge, so the balance for 99.99% of the time is zero. Yet the limit on this card is $18,000 and climbing. I must be their most least profitable customer ever - yet they seem to think giving me a bigger credit is going to somehow turn me into a big spender? Hmmm...
(Disclaimer: not American ... so banks here probably aren't quite as wary as US banks of bad debt, given events over the last 2 years)
Indeed. Doesn't work for me either ... at least using a standard connection.
Thank God for my employer having a VPN with an end-point in the US though ;)
Given the same conditions. Temperatures (particularly at night) are significantly colder if there is a ground cover of snow, than if there isn't (because as you said, snow is a thermal insulator that keeps the heat in the ground, and thus out of the air). Read the 'forecast discussion' on any NOAA forecast for an area that has a good snow cover and a clear, still night and they often mention things like "bumped temps down a few degrees from guidance, due to snow cover".
The effect during the day will also be to reduce or delay heating (and thus reduce Tmax). Snow (water) has a very high specific heat capacity. That is, snow covered ground can absorb a crapload more heat from the sun before it starts radiating significant amounts of that heat back to the air, than ground can. Furthermore the white colour of snow reflects more incidental radiation from the sun that brownish ground would.
So all things being equal, the GP is correct - no snow on the ground will raise temps a bit compared to what they would have been in the same situation with snow cover.
I once looked it up, and 15 cargo ships produce as much greenhouse gas as all the cars in the world combined.
As much as I despise the phrase ... lolwut?
Just think about that for a second. Use your sense of natural intuition, your common sense, your sense of proportions and orders of magnitude. Does that statement seem even remotely plausible. That 15 ships emit the same volume of GHGs as a billion cars?
For the record, what you are thinking of is this: http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1020063_pollution-perspective-one-giant-cargo-ship-emits-as-much-as-50-million-cars ...which is talking about the volume of ~pollution~ (e.g. sulfur, particulates, other 'dirty' stuff etc), not greenhouse gas emissions (most GHGs aren't dirty and cannot really be called pollutants, as they occur naturally in decent concentrations anyway). When we are talking about pollution (rather than GHG emissions), modern cars are in fact very clean indeed due to the tough emissions standards in most countries in the last several decades.
Having said that shipping is still a substantial slice of the greenhouse gas pie (the above article attributes 3-4% influence to total anthropogenic GHGs). But it's nowhere near the huge difference between cars and ships as you make out.
Ditto here. I'm Australian but have moved to the US in recent years. I had never seen anything like a 4-way stop in my life before, and I find them bizarre to this day.
In Australia you either have a 2-way stop (with the stop signs being on the less 'major' of the two roads that meet); or
A roundabout (in the case where both roads are roughly equally busy)
Roundabouts work far more efficiently than 4-way stops anyway and essentially serve the same purpose.
Almost every McDonalds in Australia is a McCafe now (the cafe culture here is huge and far predates the cafe culture spawned by Starbucks in the US). And they actually do make pretty good coffee and pastries and stuff...
Some do (although not many in the US I admit). Most recent one I passed through with free wifi was Wellington airport in New Zealand. Most major airports in the US and Australia though seem to make you pay for it.
Oh it's free in Singapore airport too provided you give them your Singapore National ID number or whatever it is (or passport number if you are a foreigner).
Hey thanks for asking this ... I always wondered that myself lol.
And the answer Gilmoure gave is different than what I 'guessed' it meant. I always thought it was more of a 'sarcastic' clap (I'm only clapping because I have to, not because I actually thought it was any good).
Silly American slang >
What? I'm not American and I say 'movie'. I never say 'film'.
Perhaps where you live, what you said is true. But that is not "everyone outside America".
Although I admit this is a response deserving of a 'whoosh...', people tend to eat and drink things y'know? Your weight varies by a good +/- 1 kg throughout a typical day.
Damn you ... I was going to post that as soon as I saw the headline. You beat me to it! :(
I am a dual US-Australian citizen and regularly transfer money between my Australian and US banks. It costs me a whopping 50 cents and takes 3-4 business days.
EFT from source account to a clearing house (e.g. Xetrade). They convert the currency. They pay it on to the other country, again via EFT. The only fee is because my bank happens to charge 50 cents per EFT. With some other banks it would be completely free.
Much better than either wire transfer (20-30 bucks) or a cheque (slow and most banks charge huge fees for cashing foreign cheques).
Funny you should mention this. I did purchase my last car with cash.
$20,000 sounds like a reasonable amount of money, but it's only like a half an inch thick wad (in 100s of course). I was disappointed. :)
I suppose theoretically that is a problem ... but in practice I've NEVER run into it (coming from someone who has never used or even really seen a cheque in their life. If you're going to someone's random garage sale or something, you know to bring cash. Everyone else (i.e. everyone who is an actual retailer) has a EFT/debit/credit card swipe thingy.
In Australia all you need to know is the person's bank account number. You don't even really need their name ... you can give the account you send money to a "name", but that's really just what you are choosing to call it in your little online banking address book. The only thing used in the actual transfer is the account number (or more accurately, the BSB and account number ... BSB is the first 6 digits of the number and specifies the Bank, State and Branch at which the account is held).
Indeed. Cheques are essentially dead in Australia (and most other countries). I've never had a cheque account. Neither has anyone else I know. But the first time I visited the US, I saw people paying for stuff at a supermarket with a cheque, and I was amazed. I barely knew what a cheque even was, to be honest ... I don't think I've even ~seen~ a cheque in over 15 years here in Australia.
EFTPOS (EFT at the Point of Sale, aka. debit cards) has replaced cheques for retail purposes. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a store in Australia that accepted a cheque now.
As for "paying random people", you just go onto your bank's website, click "transfer", enter their account name and account number, and click 'Send'. They'll receive the money almost instantly if they are with the same bank, otherwise it's usually the next business day. Very handy actually because once you send money to someone the first time, they are added to your little 'address book' on the bank site and you can pay them with about 2 clicks from then on. This is also how things like rent is usually paid.
Wow even when it says "for those too lazy to RTFA" in the summary, people still ignore it.
He tried putting it in neutral. He tried turning the ignition off. He tried all manner of brake pumping. Pretty much, he tried everything that you could conceivably try.
Ah OK. You're right.
But let's face it ... enforcement of that in a non-commercial context is zero. :)
Yeah that one is bizarre. People from non-English speaking backgrounds can't understand the classification labels/stickers? That doesn't seem to be a problem for movies/videos/books/any other classified material...