The Rule of Thumb has to do with using, for example, "Jim and me" or "Jim and I." To determine which is appropriate, cover up "Jim and" and see if it still sounds correct. If it doesn't use the other one.
It was called the Rule of Thumb when I was in grade school and I know kids who are in grade school or middle school now who have been taught it.
Sometimes I think I'd be happy if they could just learn the Rule of Thumb, but then I see the rest of their writing and know that it won't make up for the rest of it.
I work with all levels from the help desk to the executives. We have no technical writers, but I wish we did. I review documentation on a regular basis both for projects to which I'm assigned and those of which I'm just aware. Sometimes it's a simple scan to fix the most egregious grammatical errors, but they can't even maintain consistent styling, something that is trivial in Word. I've seen some of their barely-readable resumes, and I wonder how they got hired in the first place.
I've been thinking of posting Bob the Angry Flower in the break room. Maybe that will wake them up a bit. I'd post something from The Oatmeal, but that's probably not appropriate for the environment.
I mentioned those because I see them most often. But the problems run the entire range: run-on sentences (I thought we learned about those in second grade), misused hyphens, lack of commas, and overuse of commas and apostrophes are just a few. The one that seems to be the current rage is the replacement of the period to end a sentence with the ellipsis, often to an extreme degree. I tried pasting an example here, but the 25 dots in one case and 17 dots in another case triggered the junk filter. The author of that particular message is the worst offender, but it's slowly spreading through the workplace.
You may be one of the rare few that can truly tax Word's grammar checker but the overwhelming majority of people who believe that it's useless are flat wrong. I see this at work basically every day. I work with people who have degrees and should be able to write fairly well (at least well enough to not lose a grade on grammar) but neither properly capitalize nor know the common homonyms. There is also the unnecessary capitalization of words because people think they're acronyms: I see "WEB" and "FOB" (access tokens) all the time. That the lose/loose problem is spilling into the workplace is an even bigger sign of the problem. I'd love to be able to blame it on the new Internet generation, but as I see it among older professionals who don't really spend much time online, I suspect it's just something working its way through the culture.
I don't flag it for people because it starts arguments more often than not. That doesn't stop me from cringing when I read e-mail from people who should know better, especially when they're sending out formal notices that really should go through grammar checks before being sent.
I favor umpires that have a tighter definition of delay of game. It's one thing to pin a runner on base, but quite another to do that five times in a row.
I know that MLB is trying to not let it get out of hand, limiting its use to post-season and only certain kinds of calls. I understand what they're trying to do, but I still don't think it's appropriate in baseball.
There's a difference between understanding what the ball is doing and playing the game as it happens. Recording what's happening is good for umpires to be able to view their mistakes after the game and correct their misinterpretations over time, but like many (most?) other baseball fans, I don't want it affecting the game as it happens.
I go with my fiancee to the local Ultraluxe which has a 21+ section. It's an extra charge, but we go to the matinees for $9 total per person. The wide leather seats are in pairs with rotating table surfaces on the outer arms and the total seating of the theater is a few dozen instead of a couple of hundred. In the 21+ theaters, there's someone to take an order for snacks or some light fare, sodas, beer, and/or wine, with delivery just about the time the trailers start. It's cash-only in the theater, unfortunately, but that's a small price to pay for the convenience. If you get there early, there's also a 21+ section where you can just hang out, order food and coffee, and wait in something other than a line.
We have no children, but they have plenty of programs for people who do, including one where the lighting is kept low but not off, sound is quieter than normal movies, and changing tables are set up for parents with kids still in diapers. You know what you're dealing with going in. This is a company that gets it.
Not necessarily. I ran into this recently trying to help someone figure out how to deal with her condo HOA. For condos, the association owns the exterior structure and the FCC regs do allow prohibiting mounting dishes to a common area. The roof may be considered a common area (it's outlined in the FAQ), especially if it's visible to other areas, which hers is. Some of her neighbors were able to mount theirs on patios which, while visible, are private access specific to the unit to which they're attached, which the FCC considers to be allowable. In my case, it wasn't an option because her house is in the way of the signal from the patio from one side and a nearly vertical hill is in the way on the other.
For HOAs where the homes are all stand-alone, you're right. For those with common areas and shared structures, it can get murky.
But none have docked with another vehicle (or at least a station) in orbit. That's the first here: a government agency is allowing a completely private craft to dock with a space station. Such docking may--and hopefully will--become commonplace with at least SpaceX and Orbital Sciences providing cargo runs (the first ISS mission for Orbital Sciences is scheduled for the fall).
In the past, the vehicles have been turned over to NASA (or other relevant space agency) whereas here, SpaceX has maintained ownership of the launch vehicle and capsule. It's one of the reasons that NASA has been so paranoid over the launch is because it has less direct control of it.
A simpleinertial navigation system helps on the fine navigation, and Google already has tech that compares what the camera sees to its databases to tell you where you are, what's around, and so forth.
Navigation is easy. Collision avoidance is hard and the part that most people care about when it comes to self-driving cars.
Incidentally, any time you suspect someone is using a GPS jammer, take note of the plates or the commercial ID number and report it. The FCC is sensitive to their use and the fines are unpleasant.
Gross navigation is handled by GPS and fine navigation uses cameras and other sensors to figure out what to do locally or if GPS fails. It has to factor in other cars, after all.
Gamma ray bursts are not objects themselves, but the result of the death of a supermassive star (or more rarely the merging of two neutron stars) and last no more than a few minutes, though most last under one minute. The energy output is considerable, but it's larger than you listed, putting out more energy than the sun ever will over the course of 10 billion years (from initial formation through red giant). We really don't want a nearby one pointed at us.
On the totally unrelated topic of your signature, I prefer the following version: "Set a man a fire, and he'll be warm for the night. Set a man afire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The prince wasn't entirely uninjured as he appeared in public immediately after with a bandaged hand and possibly a limp, but you're right that the lethal force was absorbed by the assassin's body. Like the underwear bomber and the shoe bomber, it's really hard to get a reliable bomb of any size hidden on or in a person and be able to do a significant amount of damage.
How did you like it? I've been wondering about it, and I've gotten the book-reading bug back after losing it for a few years. It's been on the list to check out for a while, but I've not even looked at it at a book store.
I also like Michio Kaku and appreciate what he's done to make science more accessible, but he can make other scientists look bad because his speculation is rarely put in context. I know people who think that Neil deGrasse Tyson (to pick one) lacks vision because he doesn't go as far out as Kaku does. There's a difference between Kaku's speculation about what might be and the grounded reality of presenters such as deGrasse-Tyson: both of them are great presenters, but Kaku's delivery can suggest some very unrealistic chances of what the future may bring.
United Flight 232 is proof of that. While 111 were killed, 185 people survived the crash (including the cockpit crew), including 125 people who had only minor injuries and 13 people who survived without injury. From the Wikipedia article:
The tip of the right wing hit the runway first, spilling fuel, which ignited immediately. The tail section broke off from the force of the impact, and the rest of the aircraft bounced several times, shedding the landing gear and engine nacelles and breaking the fuselage into several main pieces. On the final impact, the right wing was sheared off and the main part of the aircraft skidded sideways, rolled over on to its back, and slid to a stop upside-down in a corn field to the right of Runway 22.
The article also notes that "[m]any passengers were able to walk out through the ruptures to the structure."
It's not quite what you were looking for--no cartwheeling of the fuselage--but it's proof that an airplane crash that results in the effective destruction of an aircraft can be survivable.
I challenge the MPAA to file suit against him. He sent 300,000 DVDs which were probably watched by several times that many people, and it's all verifiable. Contrast that to file sharing suits where an individual user might be sued for making a few movies available to be downloaded a relatively few times from which MPAA has claimed huge losses from each individual user.
Evidence suggests that the Boston Massacre was an accident, not an attempt by the British to oppress a crowd. A crowd brought out by the arrogance of one British soldier turned ugly and the British soldiers lost their discipline, opening fire almost randomly and against the orders of the officer on the scene who was standing in front of his men when they started firing. The propaganda battle was won handily by those who would soon clamor for independence, but in reality the colonists were at least as much to blame for what happened.
The 2004 Russian airline bombing where two women boarded separate planes and detonated bombs minutes apart come to mind.
Iraq and Afghanistan have both seen the use of female bombers. Iraq also saw the use of mentally handicapped children as bomb carriers (detonated remotely) because soldiers and police didn't believe at first that anyone would put one on them.
Terrorists did it in Russia last year, or at least close enough to make the point. It killed 37 and injured 173 when it was set off in the baggage claim area. Had it been set off in the security lines, the casualties might have been greater.
We thought that in California. It just makes them start looking to their next job that much sooner. The path goes like something this: 1. City council (maybe county board of supervisors) 2. Minor statewide elected position (such as Board of Equalization) 3. Assembly or Senate 4. Senate or Assembly (whichever one they didn't do in Step 3) 5. Large city mayor 6. Congress or political appointment
They pretty much just bounce around, dragging their incompetence with them. When they stick around in one spot, there's an institutional knowledge that comes with it, which includes knowing that they're going to have to get along with the other people around them for a long time. I'd rather the fiefdoms that come with being in the Assembly or House for 30 years than them constantly trying to make a name for themselves in the current position so they have a better shot at the next position.
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The Rule of Thumb has to do with using, for example, "Jim and me" or "Jim and I." To determine which is appropriate, cover up "Jim and" and see if it still sounds correct. If it doesn't use the other one.
It was called the Rule of Thumb when I was in grade school and I know kids who are in grade school or middle school now who have been taught it.
Sometimes I think I'd be happy if they could just learn the Rule of Thumb, but then I see the rest of their writing and know that it won't make up for the rest of it.
I work with all levels from the help desk to the executives. We have no technical writers, but I wish we did. I review documentation on a regular basis both for projects to which I'm assigned and those of which I'm just aware. Sometimes it's a simple scan to fix the most egregious grammatical errors, but they can't even maintain consistent styling, something that is trivial in Word. I've seen some of their barely-readable resumes, and I wonder how they got hired in the first place.
I've been thinking of posting Bob the Angry Flower in the break room. Maybe that will wake them up a bit. I'd post something from The Oatmeal, but that's probably not appropriate for the environment.
I mentioned those because I see them most often. But the problems run the entire range: run-on sentences (I thought we learned about those in second grade), misused hyphens, lack of commas, and overuse of commas and apostrophes are just a few. The one that seems to be the current rage is the replacement of the period to end a sentence with the ellipsis, often to an extreme degree. I tried pasting an example here, but the 25 dots in one case and 17 dots in another case triggered the junk filter. The author of that particular message is the worst offender, but it's slowly spreading through the workplace.
You may be one of the rare few that can truly tax Word's grammar checker but the overwhelming majority of people who believe that it's useless are flat wrong. I see this at work basically every day. I work with people who have degrees and should be able to write fairly well (at least well enough to not lose a grade on grammar) but neither properly capitalize nor know the common homonyms. There is also the unnecessary capitalization of words because people think they're acronyms: I see "WEB" and "FOB" (access tokens) all the time. That the lose/loose problem is spilling into the workplace is an even bigger sign of the problem. I'd love to be able to blame it on the new Internet generation, but as I see it among older professionals who don't really spend much time online, I suspect it's just something working its way through the culture.
I don't flag it for people because it starts arguments more often than not. That doesn't stop me from cringing when I read e-mail from people who should know better, especially when they're sending out formal notices that really should go through grammar checks before being sent.
I favor umpires that have a tighter definition of delay of game. It's one thing to pin a runner on base, but quite another to do that five times in a row.
I know that MLB is trying to not let it get out of hand, limiting its use to post-season and only certain kinds of calls. I understand what they're trying to do, but I still don't think it's appropriate in baseball.
And yes, the sig is a reference to GPB. :)
There's a difference between understanding what the ball is doing and playing the game as it happens. Recording what's happening is good for umpires to be able to view their mistakes after the game and correct their misinterpretations over time, but like many (most?) other baseball fans, I don't want it affecting the game as it happens.
I go with my fiancee to the local Ultraluxe which has a 21+ section. It's an extra charge, but we go to the matinees for $9 total per person. The wide leather seats are in pairs with rotating table surfaces on the outer arms and the total seating of the theater is a few dozen instead of a couple of hundred. In the 21+ theaters, there's someone to take an order for snacks or some light fare, sodas, beer, and/or wine, with delivery just about the time the trailers start. It's cash-only in the theater, unfortunately, but that's a small price to pay for the convenience. If you get there early, there's also a 21+ section where you can just hang out, order food and coffee, and wait in something other than a line.
We have no children, but they have plenty of programs for people who do, including one where the lighting is kept low but not off, sound is quieter than normal movies, and changing tables are set up for parents with kids still in diapers. You know what you're dealing with going in. This is a company that gets it.
Rifling marks change over time and a new barrel throws it all out anyway.
Most of the technical ideas for tracking weapons are easily circumvented, particularly by organized criminal elements.
Not necessarily. I ran into this recently trying to help someone figure out how to deal with her condo HOA. For condos, the association owns the exterior structure and the FCC regs do allow prohibiting mounting dishes to a common area. The roof may be considered a common area (it's outlined in the FAQ), especially if it's visible to other areas, which hers is. Some of her neighbors were able to mount theirs on patios which, while visible, are private access specific to the unit to which they're attached, which the FCC considers to be allowable. In my case, it wasn't an option because her house is in the way of the signal from the patio from one side and a nearly vertical hill is in the way on the other.
For HOAs where the homes are all stand-alone, you're right. For those with common areas and shared structures, it can get murky.
But none have docked with another vehicle (or at least a station) in orbit. That's the first here: a government agency is allowing a completely private craft to dock with a space station. Such docking may--and hopefully will--become commonplace with at least SpaceX and Orbital Sciences providing cargo runs (the first ISS mission for Orbital Sciences is scheduled for the fall).
In the past, the vehicles have been turned over to NASA (or other relevant space agency) whereas here, SpaceX has maintained ownership of the launch vehicle and capsule. It's one of the reasons that NASA has been so paranoid over the launch is because it has less direct control of it.
A simpleinertial navigation system helps on the fine navigation, and Google already has tech that compares what the camera sees to its databases to tell you where you are, what's around, and so forth.
Navigation is easy. Collision avoidance is hard and the part that most people care about when it comes to self-driving cars.
Incidentally, any time you suspect someone is using a GPS jammer, take note of the plates or the commercial ID number and report it. The FCC is sensitive to their use and the fines are unpleasant.
Gross navigation is handled by GPS and fine navigation uses cameras and other sensors to figure out what to do locally or if GPS fails. It has to factor in other cars, after all.
Gamma ray bursts are not objects themselves, but the result of the death of a supermassive star (or more rarely the merging of two neutron stars) and last no more than a few minutes, though most last under one minute. The energy output is considerable, but it's larger than you listed, putting out more energy than the sun ever will over the course of 10 billion years (from initial formation through red giant). We really don't want a nearby one pointed at us.
On the totally unrelated topic of your signature, I prefer the following version: "Set a man a fire, and he'll be warm for the night. Set a man afire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The prince wasn't entirely uninjured as he appeared in public immediately after with a bandaged hand and possibly a limp, but you're right that the lethal force was absorbed by the assassin's body. Like the underwear bomber and the shoe bomber, it's really hard to get a reliable bomb of any size hidden on or in a person and be able to do a significant amount of damage.
That's actually one of the best name suggestions I've seen. It would certainly open up some interesting new logo possibilities.
How did you like it? I've been wondering about it, and I've gotten the book-reading bug back after losing it for a few years. It's been on the list to check out for a while, but I've not even looked at it at a book store.
I also like Michio Kaku and appreciate what he's done to make science more accessible, but he can make other scientists look bad because his speculation is rarely put in context. I know people who think that Neil deGrasse Tyson (to pick one) lacks vision because he doesn't go as far out as Kaku does. There's a difference between Kaku's speculation about what might be and the grounded reality of presenters such as deGrasse-Tyson: both of them are great presenters, but Kaku's delivery can suggest some very unrealistic chances of what the future may bring.
United Flight 232 is proof of that. While 111 were killed, 185 people survived the crash (including the cockpit crew), including 125 people who had only minor injuries and 13 people who survived without injury. From the Wikipedia article:
The article also notes that "[m]any passengers were able to walk out through the ruptures to the structure."
It's not quite what you were looking for--no cartwheeling of the fuselage--but it's proof that an airplane crash that results in the effective destruction of an aircraft can be survivable.
I challenge the MPAA to file suit against him. He sent 300,000 DVDs which were probably watched by several times that many people, and it's all verifiable. Contrast that to file sharing suits where an individual user might be sued for making a few movies available to be downloaded a relatively few times from which MPAA has claimed huge losses from each individual user.
Evidence suggests that the Boston Massacre was an accident, not an attempt by the British to oppress a crowd. A crowd brought out by the arrogance of one British soldier turned ugly and the British soldiers lost their discipline, opening fire almost randomly and against the orders of the officer on the scene who was standing in front of his men when they started firing. The propaganda battle was won handily by those who would soon clamor for independence, but in reality the colonists were at least as much to blame for what happened.
The 2004 Russian airline bombing where two women boarded separate planes and detonated bombs minutes apart come to mind.
Iraq and Afghanistan have both seen the use of female bombers. Iraq also saw the use of mentally handicapped children as bomb carriers (detonated remotely) because soldiers and police didn't believe at first that anyone would put one on them.
Terrorists did it in Russia last year, or at least close enough to make the point. It killed 37 and injured 173 when it was set off in the baggage claim area. Had it been set off in the security lines, the casualties might have been greater.
We thought that in California. It just makes them start looking to their next job that much sooner. The path goes like something this:
1. City council (maybe county board of supervisors)
2. Minor statewide elected position (such as Board of Equalization)
3. Assembly or Senate
4. Senate or Assembly (whichever one they didn't do in Step 3)
5. Large city mayor
6. Congress or political appointment
They pretty much just bounce around, dragging their incompetence with them. When they stick around in one spot, there's an institutional knowledge that comes with it, which includes knowing that they're going to have to get along with the other people around them for a long time. I'd rather the fiefdoms that come with being in the Assembly or House for 30 years than them constantly trying to make a name for themselves in the current position so they have a better shot at the next position.