Unless it comes from the mammary gland of a mammal then by definition it is not milk. If it comes from a plant then it is juice. They use the term "milk" to describe certain types of juices that are sort of white in color (or made artificially so) but they are not and never will be milk. This is nothing but marketing bullshit intended to confuse customers into believing they are somehow substitute products when they aren't and do not share the same properties.
To be clear - soy "milk", almond "milk", coconut "milk", and any other plant derived product that purports to be a milk substitute is not milk and should not be described as milk. Coloring it white does not turn it into milk. Just because you can use it in some of the same applications as milk does not make it milk.
The achievement is that due to adaptive optics, an earth based telescope can deliver pictures as sharp or sharper than a space based telescope.
Close. What it proves is that we have advanced technology enough that an Earth based telescope can deliver pictures sharper than the Hubble. One cannot generalize this to all space based telescopes since we are now capable of creating space telescopes that exceed the capabilities of Hubble. Remember Hubble was launched in 1990 so it's basically 1980s technology and things have progressed since then.
...and take pictures of the Apollo landing sites. That should shut a few mouths.
Even if that were possible, no it would not. People who believe in conspiracy theories have no interest in actual evidence.
In any case it's a moot discussion because it isn't possible. The moon is too far away for any technology we currently possess to take images of the Apollo landing sites from the surface of the Earth or low Earth orbit. The smallest resolvable object is still many tens of meters across - far too large to see something as small as the Apollo lander. The entire landing sites would fit basically inside of a single pixel or close to it.
IIRC the mirror was ground with gravity present. Then under zero G conditions it sprung back to an unanticipated shape.
Your recollection is incorrect. It was ground very precisely to the wrong shape due to some incorrectly assembled testing equipment. The problem was actually noted prior to launch but the test results were ignored. Gravity or the lack thereof had no relationship to the problem with the shape of the mirror. It was simply made to the wrong specifications and then final testing failed to catch the problem.
Bidirectional vehicles make good sense for deliveries, I've posted about that here before.
Not unless you change an awful lot of existing infrastructure which was designed for vehicles that don't generally back up. Sure there are cases where it makes sense but a lot more where it doesn't. It's an utterly useless feature on the roads and arguably an unnecessary one when driving up to a loading dock though certainly more useful there. And if you design infrastructure to deal with mostly-forward driving vehicles then it renders the issue moot. Given that virtually all vehicles are going to be designed to not be bi-directional for the foreseeable future the infrastructure is going to be designed with that as the dominant paradigm.
Basically the question to ask is whether this bi-directional capability solves any economically significant problem. I'm not convinced that the economic benefit would be larger than the added cost of making vehicles work in two directions (more sensors, more complicated drive train, etc) and the infrastructure upgrades required.
A secretive Australian startup called Zoox (an abbreviation of zooxanthellae, the algae that helps fuel coral reef growth) is working on an autonomous vehicle that is unlike any other.
So a "secretive" company nobody has ever heard, located in a location not renowned for technology or automobiles, of is allegedly working on a vehicle with features nobody asked for, using technology that isn't ready for public consumption in a market against much better funded and experienced competition? Do I have that right?
Tests usually are scheduled immediately. I had a same-day MRI several years ago, so even MRIs can be done fairly fast.
And when that happens you (or your insurance company) pays through the nose for that capability. It's not different than any manufacturing production system. You can have it fast, cheap, or good. Pick two. If you want fast turnaround you can get it but the staff and equipment to do that doesn't come cheaply.
Think about the economics of it. MRI machines cost millions of dollars and have roughly fixed operating costs meaning they cost roughly the same amount no matter how many patients actually utilize the machine. If you can get in tomorrow that means the machine has excess capacity. That means to recoup their money that have to charge a larger amount of money per procedure - fixed $ divided by number of patients. The larger the denominator the lower the costs. If you have fewer machines that are fully utilized then you don't have to charge as much per patient but the average wait time is going to be longer. Keeping quality constant, you can have lower costs and longer wait times or faster turnaround at higher cost. Canada has chosen longer wait times in exchange for lower costs. The US has chosen substantially higher costs in exchange for shorter wait times.
I've never heard of anybody waiting weeks for any test around here, but a friend of mine in Canada waited three months for an MRI.
Depends on the test but generally you are right. And we pay through the nose for that capability even when we don't actually need it. We have too many MRI machines so everyone has to charge more because we aren't fully utilizing very many of them. Then of course there is the fact that because we don't have a single payer system which can enforce reasonable rates the hospitals tend to try to rip the eyes out of patients because they can.
People avoid the ER because of the long wait and the sketchy characters who frequent the place.
The long wait in the ED directly contradicts that statement. It's like Yogi Berra's old saying "nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded".
Most people in the US get their health insurance either from their employer, or from the Obamacare exchanges.
You seem to have forgotten Medicare and Medicaid which cover just over 1/3 of all Americans including basically everyone over the age of 65. About half get their coverage through their work and the remainder with coverage get it through private individual health plans. Then there are several million who lack coverage altogether which should (but doesn't seem to) embarrass the hell out of us.
I think it states: "Maybe we should be less concerned with what may or may not have happened 13.8 billion years ago and start focusing on what's immediately around us.
No you make and argument about what astrophysicists do and then say they should be worried about doing what the folks at NASA and SpaceX are doing as if they somehow are wasting their time. Those are not mutually exclusive activities. So you haven't made a useful point here.
Like going back to the moon and performing experiments there before playing around with sending people on a one-way trip to Mars."
The people who are concerned with what happened 13.8 billion years ago are not the same people who are sending people to Mars. That's like arguing that someone who is really good at cooking should take up farming because they both happen to involve food. It's a stupid argument by someone who doesn't understand either profession adequately.
You may want to bone up on your reading comprehension skills.
Once you stop conflating concepts we can discuss my reading comprehension.
I mean it is too broad. It could include million of pebbles in unstable orbits. Or ice cubes slowly "orbiting" each other in the Kuiper belt.
So what? I don't say that to be snide (seriously) but why does it objectively matter where it is a small number or a big number so long as the definition is a useful one? If the most useful definition of a planet or a moon results in millions of them I don't see that as a problem. I'm open to categories that have small numbers of objects in them but there has to be a useful reason to make the distinction.
There could be countless rocks orbiting earth too. When there was one moon, and then five, we knew what the word meant. Now it is too open and never-ending.
The universe is under no obligation to conform to what you think is convenient. We're in a universe that is billions of light years in diameter with almost countless galaxies and stars and you are worried about there being a lot of pebbles surrounding some large rocks in an insignificant star system?
Yep. That's why I said "sorry, Mars". They are only temporary rocks. Phobos will be gone in a few million years, while the seven "real" moons will be there for billions at least.
Any planet with a sufficient number of moons is probably going to have some with unstable orbits. Again I'm not hearing any principled reason why we shouldn't define that as a moon. I hear what you are saying but your argument seems to be based on what you find comfortable and familiar rather than from objective differences between categories of objects.
If we can demote planets (Ceres too was once counted as a planet), it is time to tighten up the definition of moon.
Exactly what do you think is loose about the definition? I'm not opposed to the idea but what do you find confusing or misleading about the current definition?
We should be redefining things with some regularity as we learn more. We probably should have different categories for different types of planets. Jupiter is a far different sort of object than Earth. Pluto and Eris probably are a separate category of object as well. Call them a planet if you like (I don't care) but then you have to say what kind of planet. Otherwise it's like saying a lion and your house cat are the same thing when they clearly are not.
Jupiter has four moons, and a bunch of rocks making up a 1/300 of one percent of the total mass in orbit. And Mars, sorry.
If my count is right at least 13 of Jupiter's moons are larger than either of the moons of Mars. Relative size definitions don't really make much sense. Absolute size definitions seem to be pretty arbitrary. How would you propose changing the definition to account for something not currently accounted for?
That astrophysicists and astronomers are always explaining how the universe began, how it works, how many stars there are, where black holes are, estimating the numbers of "Earth-like" planets there are and how many likely support life... and then they discover 12 more moons around Jupiter or some other enormous hole in the knowledge of our own galactic neighborhood.
And what exactly is your point? Little tiny hard to see dark things that are far away are hard to see. News at 11.
Hell, they can't even determine with any real accuracy the number of stars in the Milky Way.
It's a little hard to get an exact count when you have an immensely bright galactic core blocking your view of much of the galaxy. It's actually easier to count the stars in other galaxies because we can see more of them. Again, what exactly is your point?
Maybe we should be less concerned with what may or may not have happened 13.8 billion years ago and start focusing on what's immediately around us.
Thanks for setting the astrophysics community straight. I'm sure they'll be grateful for your help because you clearly know what's important to their jobs more than they do.
Like going back to the moon and performing experiments there before playing around with sending people on a one-way trip to Mars.
You have no idea what astrophysicists and astronomers actually do, do you? Here's a tip. They aren't the ones sending people to the moon or to mars. You might not want to get your job descriptions confused or you might seem ignorant in public.
Actually no you can't. In most places of the world you can sign what you want but your rights doesn't magically disappear.
You're talking legal theory. I'm talking real world outcomes. In theory you are right. In practice you are routinely incorrect. A right that you voluntarily give up or that you cannot defend in a court room is de-facto a right you don't have. There also is the problem of rights being defined in such a way that they no longer have any meaning. For example let's take the 4th amendment right "against unreasonable searches and seizures". The key word there is "unreasonable" because all they have to do to take the teeth out of that right is to define unreasonable to be something that doesn't really protect you.
Their argument misses the incredible one-sided nature of contracting parties which is precisely why many countries defend people's rights in the face of worthless legalese.
Agreed. It's not just being one sided. A one sided contract isn't a problem if you have alternatives. If all the other options are equally one sided then it's not like you have an alternative. There are plenty of industries where literally every viable option requires forced arbitration so your options are either waive your right to a trial or give up whatever it is you are trying to do. For example good luck buying a new car without some sort of arbitration clause being thrown in the contract these days. Doesn't matter what dealer you go to since they all do it. And why wouldn't they? They don't need the business of any single customer so there is a clear power imbalance. This is where government is supposed to step in and help but our government doesn't generally do that because too many of our citizens have delusions about rugged independence and that regulations are always bad.
Sure you can and people do it all the time. You can voluntarily give up your rights if you want to - you just cannot be forced by a court into doing so. A right that is not exercised or that cannot be exercised is a right that is given away. A right that you cannot defend is a right you effectively do not have. Slavery was outlawed in the 1860s but for all practical purposes black people didn't even gain even the semblance of equal rights for another hundred years. They couldn't defend their rights so they were taken away from them.
I'm not sure what batshit insane supreme court sitting decided you can force arbitration on people.
Their argument is that it isn't forced. Their argument is that you agreed to the contract of your own free will. It's a bullshit argument because it only holds if you have realistic alternatives or are willing to live like a hermit. Good luck getting a cell phone from any vendor without signing a forced arbitration agreement.
Also, Catholicism and American GOP conservatism don't really align, other than perhaps on abortion.
Not true at all nor that simple. A majority of white catholics have voted republican in every presidential election since 2000 roughly 55-65% so clearly there is alignment there. The hispanic catholics on the other hand vote democrat rather strongly - about 70% of them. This probably has less to do with religion and more to do with race since the republican party has systematically driven away voters who aren't white. Also the majority of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court are catholic. (Clarence, Roberts, Alito)
The prosperity gospel is not a Catholic idea.
Really? Have you seen the amount of gold leaf in the Vatican? Not exactly a monument to austerity and modest living. Get real. While I hesitate to paint with to broad a brush in many cases, I feel entirely comfortable saying that they catholic church is VERY comfortable with money. They might not be as gauche about it as some of their evangelical counterparts but make no mistake that they care about money a LOT.
The Catholic Church abhors the death penalty.
That has not been their policy for most of their history nor is it their official position even today. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the death penalty is permissible in certain cases if the "guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined". Never mind the crusades, the inquisition, countless religious wars, executions of heretics, etc... The catholic church has a long and storied history of support for capital punishment.
The current Pope is very left-liberal as far as wealth concentration and the environment.
No he is not. He's just not as ridiculously far right as the previous popes but don't make the mistake of thinking he's some left leaning hippie. I know a lot of people like him but let's not pretend he's really changing how the catholic church operates or what they stand for. He's at most shaving off some of the pointy bits.
Sure, resort fees and parking should be made clear if they are optional or rolled in for ease (perhaps an "all-included" price) but tax is not part of the price,
Tax absolutely is part of the price because they won't sell it to you unless you pay it. Taxes are an expense to the vendor just like any other. If you have an issue with the amount of tax then take that up with your elected representatives. The place for that fight isn't on the receipt.
it is extra money stolen by a third party.
Ahh, I get it. You're one of those loonies who actually believes taxes are theft and that somehow our society would be possible without them. Explain to me how we get roads, police, schools, first responders, a military, health care for everyone, a judicial system, public parks, etc without those taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes then go live off in the wilderness as a hermit. When you decide that sucks and want to live in a civilized society with the rest of us then pay your taxes and shut up about it.
The customer should be made aware of this.
You seriously think that people in the US aren't aware of how much they pay in taxes? They are freakin' obsessed with that information.
The tax should be on the reciept and you should be able to ask the seller what the tax is before buying the product, but it should not be on the price advertised for the product.
Exactly. If I want to know the tax being charged for some reason (and there are good reasons to want to know this sometimes) then that information should be available. Possibly even itemized. But the advertised price of the product should be the all-in amount of money it will take for me to own it. Any other number is nothing but misleading bullshit.
It seems logical in a place prone to get hit at least once if not more a summer by a hurricane that there should be an emphasis on burying the lines, particularly the high voltage transmission backbone lines.
Puerto Rico get hit by a hurricaine about every three years on average.
As for burying lines, it's a fine idea but an expensive one. Burying lines costs about 5X as much per mile just to lay the lines. And maintenance becomes an issue when you have to dig to solve a problem. Remember that Puerto Rico has a lot of financial problems so spending extra to bury the lines is going to be difficult for purely financial reasons if nothing else.
Why not deliver a portable solar system to each in the interim until the grid can be repaired?
Who is going to pay for it? That's the problem with all of this. Puerto Rico is broke and gets little help from the US government despite every citizen of Puerto Rico being a US citizen.
Puerto Rico was failed by the USA -- no reason for them to seek closer ties to Washington as a state.
You mean except for actually being able to have a voice and a vote in Congress? (5 or 6 congressional seats and two senate seats) Plus they would get to vote for President. They were failed by the current administration and congress because they lack a voice and a vote.
Frankly, independence and membership in CARICOM might be a better solution, with a visa reciprocity agreement with the USA
Won't happen. Frankly Puerto Rico should have petitioned to become a state a long time ago. I understand why they haven't but remaining an unincorporated territory of the US seems like a bad plan given recent events.
I thought we weren't supposed to punish children for sins of the father, or the mother, or other family members.
There are plenty of countries where such niceties do not apply. There also are countries where women are executed because they had the audacity to get raped and thus soil the family name. Plenty of places will punish your family for your behavior regardless of the objective morality of doing so.
We were supposed to punish people for their own sins only.
That's a nice sentiment that doesn't really happen even in the US. Heck if you were so foolish as to be born to parents that were poor and a minority then chances are very high you are going to have trouble getting into a good college. If you inherited dark skin from your parents you'll get harassed by the TSA and police when you travel. Oh we don't explicitly punish people for what their parents or children have done. We do it on the down low or informally so that we can retain a good conscience about the whole thing.
I have learned to research it when I plan my vacations so it’s not a problem, just annoying.
It is annoying but it is also a problem. It permits de-facto false advertising of prices. The price should be the price. Taxes, fees, markups, etc should all be rolled in, whatever they happen to be. I don't really care what the tax is in your jurisdiction - I just care what the out the door price is and that is what I should be able to compare. If this makes businesses under the jurisdiction of some local government less competitive then they should petition to have the taxes reduced.
The U.S. government should not allow companies to manipulate, trick, and otherwise abuse customers.
They shouldn't but they routinely do. The love to hide behind the fiction that many contracts are somehow not one sided and abusive because they are theoretically (though not really) optional.
It is shocking and extremely unpleasant to see how much dishonesty there is in U.S. advertising, and the extreme weakness of the U.S. government in preventing abuse.
Well, one party has been trying to do something about it, albeit meekly and in a pathetically limited way. The other party screams loudly that regulation is the devil no matter how sane the regulation might actually be and works tirelessly to permit companies to behave as badly as possible. End result is that we get screwed unless we are rich enough to fight the system.
I'm sorry, but dealing with minor contamination like this can't be as expensive as digging it out of the ground and then processing it.
A) Where did you get the idea that it is a minor problem? Cite your sources. B) Why couldn't it be more expensive? Chemistry doesn't really care about your preconceived notions. C) Digging things out of the ground is routinely cheaper than recycling old material for many applications. No reason it couldn't be the case here.
The coolants and lubricants are almost certainly not petroleum based either. So cleanup could be as simple as soap and water.
Cooling and lubricating fluids are not the big problems. You get alloy contamination from the cutting tools, carbon contamination, and oxygen contamination all of which are either challenging or energy intensive to address. Probably some others I'm not familiar with too. It's typically hard to remove certain alloy contamination unless there is a difference in vapor pressure. There also are challenges with combining scrap feedstocks for recycling because it complicates the process. A lot (over 50%) of titanium that is recycled cannot be purified sufficiently and so is lost to the cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
This has been a pet peeve of mine for ages.
Unless it comes from the mammary gland of a mammal then by definition it is not milk. If it comes from a plant then it is juice. They use the term "milk" to describe certain types of juices that are sort of white in color (or made artificially so) but they are not and never will be milk. This is nothing but marketing bullshit intended to confuse customers into believing they are somehow substitute products when they aren't and do not share the same properties.
To be clear - soy "milk", almond "milk", coconut "milk", and any other plant derived product that purports to be a milk substitute is not milk and should not be described as milk. Coloring it white does not turn it into milk. Just because you can use it in some of the same applications as milk does not make it milk.
The achievement is that due to adaptive optics, an earth based telescope can deliver pictures as sharp or sharper than a space based telescope.
Close. What it proves is that we have advanced technology enough that an Earth based telescope can deliver pictures sharper than the Hubble. One cannot generalize this to all space based telescopes since we are now capable of creating space telescopes that exceed the capabilities of Hubble. Remember Hubble was launched in 1990 so it's basically 1980s technology and things have progressed since then.
...and take pictures of the Apollo landing sites. That should shut a few mouths.
Even if that were possible, no it would not. People who believe in conspiracy theories have no interest in actual evidence.
In any case it's a moot discussion because it isn't possible. The moon is too far away for any technology we currently possess to take images of the Apollo landing sites from the surface of the Earth or low Earth orbit. The smallest resolvable object is still many tens of meters across - far too large to see something as small as the Apollo lander. The entire landing sites would fit basically inside of a single pixel or close to it.
IIRC the mirror was ground with gravity present. Then under zero G conditions it sprung back to an unanticipated shape.
Your recollection is incorrect. It was ground very precisely to the wrong shape due to some incorrectly assembled testing equipment. The problem was actually noted prior to launch but the test results were ignored. Gravity or the lack thereof had no relationship to the problem with the shape of the mirror. It was simply made to the wrong specifications and then final testing failed to catch the problem.
Bidirectional vehicles make good sense for deliveries, I've posted about that here before.
Not unless you change an awful lot of existing infrastructure which was designed for vehicles that don't generally back up. Sure there are cases where it makes sense but a lot more where it doesn't. It's an utterly useless feature on the roads and arguably an unnecessary one when driving up to a loading dock though certainly more useful there. And if you design infrastructure to deal with mostly-forward driving vehicles then it renders the issue moot. Given that virtually all vehicles are going to be designed to not be bi-directional for the foreseeable future the infrastructure is going to be designed with that as the dominant paradigm.
Basically the question to ask is whether this bi-directional capability solves any economically significant problem. I'm not convinced that the economic benefit would be larger than the added cost of making vehicles work in two directions (more sensors, more complicated drive train, etc) and the infrastructure upgrades required.
A secretive Australian startup called Zoox (an abbreviation of zooxanthellae, the algae that helps fuel coral reef growth) is working on an autonomous vehicle that is unlike any other.
So a "secretive" company nobody has ever heard, located in a location not renowned for technology or automobiles, of is allegedly working on a vehicle with features nobody asked for, using technology that isn't ready for public consumption in a market against much better funded and experienced competition? Do I have that right?
I smell someone fishing for gullible investors.
Tests usually are scheduled immediately. I had a same-day MRI several years ago, so even MRIs can be done fairly fast.
And when that happens you (or your insurance company) pays through the nose for that capability. It's not different than any manufacturing production system. You can have it fast, cheap, or good. Pick two. If you want fast turnaround you can get it but the staff and equipment to do that doesn't come cheaply.
Think about the economics of it. MRI machines cost millions of dollars and have roughly fixed operating costs meaning they cost roughly the same amount no matter how many patients actually utilize the machine. If you can get in tomorrow that means the machine has excess capacity. That means to recoup their money that have to charge a larger amount of money per procedure - fixed $ divided by number of patients. The larger the denominator the lower the costs. If you have fewer machines that are fully utilized then you don't have to charge as much per patient but the average wait time is going to be longer. Keeping quality constant, you can have lower costs and longer wait times or faster turnaround at higher cost. Canada has chosen longer wait times in exchange for lower costs. The US has chosen substantially higher costs in exchange for shorter wait times.
I've never heard of anybody waiting weeks for any test around here, but a friend of mine in Canada waited three months for an MRI.
Depends on the test but generally you are right. And we pay through the nose for that capability even when we don't actually need it. We have too many MRI machines so everyone has to charge more because we aren't fully utilizing very many of them. Then of course there is the fact that because we don't have a single payer system which can enforce reasonable rates the hospitals tend to try to rip the eyes out of patients because they can.
People avoid the ER because of the long wait and the sketchy characters who frequent the place.
The long wait in the ED directly contradicts that statement. It's like Yogi Berra's old saying "nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded".
Most people in the US get their health insurance either from their employer, or from the Obamacare exchanges.
You seem to have forgotten Medicare and Medicaid which cover just over 1/3 of all Americans including basically everyone over the age of 65. About half get their coverage through their work and the remainder with coverage get it through private individual health plans. Then there are several million who lack coverage altogether which should (but doesn't seem to) embarrass the hell out of us.
I think it states: "Maybe we should be less concerned with what may or may not have happened 13.8 billion years ago and start focusing on what's immediately around us.
No you make and argument about what astrophysicists do and then say they should be worried about doing what the folks at NASA and SpaceX are doing as if they somehow are wasting their time. Those are not mutually exclusive activities. So you haven't made a useful point here.
Like going back to the moon and performing experiments there before playing around with sending people on a one-way trip to Mars."
The people who are concerned with what happened 13.8 billion years ago are not the same people who are sending people to Mars. That's like arguing that someone who is really good at cooking should take up farming because they both happen to involve food. It's a stupid argument by someone who doesn't understand either profession adequately.
You may want to bone up on your reading comprehension skills.
Once you stop conflating concepts we can discuss my reading comprehension.
I mean it is too broad. It could include million of pebbles in unstable orbits. Or ice cubes slowly "orbiting" each other in the Kuiper belt.
So what? I don't say that to be snide (seriously) but why does it objectively matter where it is a small number or a big number so long as the definition is a useful one? If the most useful definition of a planet or a moon results in millions of them I don't see that as a problem. I'm open to categories that have small numbers of objects in them but there has to be a useful reason to make the distinction.
There could be countless rocks orbiting earth too. When there was one moon, and then five, we knew what the word meant. Now it is too open and never-ending.
The universe is under no obligation to conform to what you think is convenient. We're in a universe that is billions of light years in diameter with almost countless galaxies and stars and you are worried about there being a lot of pebbles surrounding some large rocks in an insignificant star system?
Yep. That's why I said "sorry, Mars". They are only temporary rocks. Phobos will be gone in a few million years, while the seven "real" moons will be there for billions at least.
Any planet with a sufficient number of moons is probably going to have some with unstable orbits. Again I'm not hearing any principled reason why we shouldn't define that as a moon. I hear what you are saying but your argument seems to be based on what you find comfortable and familiar rather than from objective differences between categories of objects.
If we can demote planets (Ceres too was once counted as a planet), it is time to tighten up the definition of moon.
Exactly what do you think is loose about the definition? I'm not opposed to the idea but what do you find confusing or misleading about the current definition?
We should be redefining things with some regularity as we learn more. We probably should have different categories for different types of planets. Jupiter is a far different sort of object than Earth. Pluto and Eris probably are a separate category of object as well. Call them a planet if you like (I don't care) but then you have to say what kind of planet. Otherwise it's like saying a lion and your house cat are the same thing when they clearly are not.
Jupiter has four moons, and a bunch of rocks making up a 1/300 of one percent of the total mass in orbit. And Mars, sorry.
If my count is right at least 13 of Jupiter's moons are larger than either of the moons of Mars. Relative size definitions don't really make much sense. Absolute size definitions seem to be pretty arbitrary. How would you propose changing the definition to account for something not currently accounted for?
That astrophysicists and astronomers are always explaining how the universe began, how it works, how many stars there are, where black holes are, estimating the numbers of "Earth-like" planets there are and how many likely support life... and then they discover 12 more moons around Jupiter or some other enormous hole in the knowledge of our own galactic neighborhood.
And what exactly is your point? Little tiny hard to see dark things that are far away are hard to see. News at 11.
Hell, they can't even determine with any real accuracy the number of stars in the Milky Way.
It's a little hard to get an exact count when you have an immensely bright galactic core blocking your view of much of the galaxy. It's actually easier to count the stars in other galaxies because we can see more of them. Again, what exactly is your point?
Maybe we should be less concerned with what may or may not have happened 13.8 billion years ago and start focusing on what's immediately around us.
Thanks for setting the astrophysics community straight. I'm sure they'll be grateful for your help because you clearly know what's important to their jobs more than they do.
Like going back to the moon and performing experiments there before playing around with sending people on a one-way trip to Mars.
You have no idea what astrophysicists and astronomers actually do, do you? Here's a tip. They aren't the ones sending people to the moon or to mars. You might not want to get your job descriptions confused or you might seem ignorant in public.
Actually no you can't. In most places of the world you can sign what you want but your rights doesn't magically disappear.
You're talking legal theory. I'm talking real world outcomes. In theory you are right. In practice you are routinely incorrect. A right that you voluntarily give up or that you cannot defend in a court room is de-facto a right you don't have. There also is the problem of rights being defined in such a way that they no longer have any meaning. For example let's take the 4th amendment right "against unreasonable searches and seizures". The key word there is "unreasonable" because all they have to do to take the teeth out of that right is to define unreasonable to be something that doesn't really protect you.
Their argument misses the incredible one-sided nature of contracting parties which is precisely why many countries defend people's rights in the face of worthless legalese.
Agreed. It's not just being one sided. A one sided contract isn't a problem if you have alternatives. If all the other options are equally one sided then it's not like you have an alternative. There are plenty of industries where literally every viable option requires forced arbitration so your options are either waive your right to a trial or give up whatever it is you are trying to do. For example good luck buying a new car without some sort of arbitration clause being thrown in the contract these days. Doesn't matter what dealer you go to since they all do it. And why wouldn't they? They don't need the business of any single customer so there is a clear power imbalance. This is where government is supposed to step in and help but our government doesn't generally do that because too many of our citizens have delusions about rugged independence and that regulations are always bad.
FTFY. You can't sign away your rights.
Sure you can and people do it all the time. You can voluntarily give up your rights if you want to - you just cannot be forced by a court into doing so. A right that is not exercised or that cannot be exercised is a right that is given away. A right that you cannot defend is a right you effectively do not have. Slavery was outlawed in the 1860s but for all practical purposes black people didn't even gain even the semblance of equal rights for another hundred years. They couldn't defend their rights so they were taken away from them.
I'm not sure what batshit insane supreme court sitting decided you can force arbitration on people.
Their argument is that it isn't forced. Their argument is that you agreed to the contract of your own free will. It's a bullshit argument because it only holds if you have realistic alternatives or are willing to live like a hermit. Good luck getting a cell phone from any vendor without signing a forced arbitration agreement.
Also, Catholicism and American GOP conservatism don't really align, other than perhaps on abortion.
Not true at all nor that simple. A majority of white catholics have voted republican in every presidential election since 2000 roughly 55-65% so clearly there is alignment there. The hispanic catholics on the other hand vote democrat rather strongly - about 70% of them. This probably has less to do with religion and more to do with race since the republican party has systematically driven away voters who aren't white. Also the majority of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court are catholic. (Clarence, Roberts, Alito)
The prosperity gospel is not a Catholic idea.
Really? Have you seen the amount of gold leaf in the Vatican? Not exactly a monument to austerity and modest living. Get real. While I hesitate to paint with to broad a brush in many cases, I feel entirely comfortable saying that they catholic church is VERY comfortable with money. They might not be as gauche about it as some of their evangelical counterparts but make no mistake that they care about money a LOT.
The Catholic Church abhors the death penalty.
That has not been their policy for most of their history nor is it their official position even today. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the death penalty is permissible in certain cases if the "guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined". Never mind the crusades, the inquisition, countless religious wars, executions of heretics, etc... The catholic church has a long and storied history of support for capital punishment.
The current Pope is very left-liberal as far as wealth concentration and the environment.
No he is not. He's just not as ridiculously far right as the previous popes but don't make the mistake of thinking he's some left leaning hippie. I know a lot of people like him but let's not pretend he's really changing how the catholic church operates or what they stand for. He's at most shaving off some of the pointy bits.
Sure, resort fees and parking should be made clear if they are optional or rolled in for ease (perhaps an "all-included" price) but tax is not part of the price,
Tax absolutely is part of the price because they won't sell it to you unless you pay it. Taxes are an expense to the vendor just like any other. If you have an issue with the amount of tax then take that up with your elected representatives. The place for that fight isn't on the receipt.
it is extra money stolen by a third party.
Ahh, I get it. You're one of those loonies who actually believes taxes are theft and that somehow our society would be possible without them. Explain to me how we get roads, police, schools, first responders, a military, health care for everyone, a judicial system, public parks, etc without those taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes then go live off in the wilderness as a hermit. When you decide that sucks and want to live in a civilized society with the rest of us then pay your taxes and shut up about it.
The customer should be made aware of this.
You seriously think that people in the US aren't aware of how much they pay in taxes? They are freakin' obsessed with that information.
The tax should be on the reciept and you should be able to ask the seller what the tax is before buying the product, but it should not be on the price advertised for the product.
Exactly. If I want to know the tax being charged for some reason (and there are good reasons to want to know this sometimes) then that information should be available. Possibly even itemized. But the advertised price of the product should be the all-in amount of money it will take for me to own it. Any other number is nothing but misleading bullshit.
It seems logical in a place prone to get hit at least once if not more a summer by a hurricane that there should be an emphasis on burying the lines, particularly the high voltage transmission backbone lines.
Puerto Rico get hit by a hurricaine about every three years on average.
As for burying lines, it's a fine idea but an expensive one. Burying lines costs about 5X as much per mile just to lay the lines. And maintenance becomes an issue when you have to dig to solve a problem. Remember that Puerto Rico has a lot of financial problems so spending extra to bury the lines is going to be difficult for purely financial reasons if nothing else.
Why not deliver a portable solar system to each in the interim until the grid can be repaired?
Who is going to pay for it? That's the problem with all of this. Puerto Rico is broke and gets little help from the US government despite every citizen of Puerto Rico being a US citizen.
Puerto Rico was failed by the USA -- no reason for them to seek closer ties to Washington as a state.
You mean except for actually being able to have a voice and a vote in Congress? (5 or 6 congressional seats and two senate seats) Plus they would get to vote for President. They were failed by the current administration and congress because they lack a voice and a vote.
Frankly, independence and membership in CARICOM might be a better solution, with a visa reciprocity agreement with the USA
Won't happen. Frankly Puerto Rico should have petitioned to become a state a long time ago. I understand why they haven't but remaining an unincorporated territory of the US seems like a bad plan given recent events.
I thought we weren't supposed to punish children for sins of the father, or the mother, or other family members.
There are plenty of countries where such niceties do not apply. There also are countries where women are executed because they had the audacity to get raped and thus soil the family name. Plenty of places will punish your family for your behavior regardless of the objective morality of doing so.
We were supposed to punish people for their own sins only.
That's a nice sentiment that doesn't really happen even in the US. Heck if you were so foolish as to be born to parents that were poor and a minority then chances are very high you are going to have trouble getting into a good college. If you inherited dark skin from your parents you'll get harassed by the TSA and police when you travel. Oh we don't explicitly punish people for what their parents or children have done. We do it on the down low or informally so that we can retain a good conscience about the whole thing.
I have learned to research it when I plan my vacations so it’s not a problem, just annoying.
It is annoying but it is also a problem. It permits de-facto false advertising of prices. The price should be the price. Taxes, fees, markups, etc should all be rolled in, whatever they happen to be. I don't really care what the tax is in your jurisdiction - I just care what the out the door price is and that is what I should be able to compare. If this makes businesses under the jurisdiction of some local government less competitive then they should petition to have the taxes reduced.
The U.S. government should not allow companies to manipulate, trick, and otherwise abuse customers.
They shouldn't but they routinely do. The love to hide behind the fiction that many contracts are somehow not one sided and abusive because they are theoretically (though not really) optional.
It is shocking and extremely unpleasant to see how much dishonesty there is in U.S. advertising, and the extreme weakness of the U.S. government in preventing abuse.
Well, one party has been trying to do something about it, albeit meekly and in a pathetically limited way. The other party screams loudly that regulation is the devil no matter how sane the regulation might actually be and works tirelessly to permit companies to behave as badly as possible. End result is that we get screwed unless we are rich enough to fight the system.
I'm sorry, but dealing with minor contamination like this can't be as expensive as digging it out of the ground and then processing it.
A) Where did you get the idea that it is a minor problem? Cite your sources.
B) Why couldn't it be more expensive? Chemistry doesn't really care about your preconceived notions.
C) Digging things out of the ground is routinely cheaper than recycling old material for many applications. No reason it couldn't be the case here.
The coolants and lubricants are almost certainly not petroleum based either. So cleanup could be as simple as soap and water.
Cooling and lubricating fluids are not the big problems. You get alloy contamination from the cutting tools, carbon contamination, and oxygen contamination all of which are either challenging or energy intensive to address. Probably some others I'm not familiar with too. It's typically hard to remove certain alloy contamination unless there is a difference in vapor pressure. There also are challenges with combining scrap feedstocks for recycling because it complicates the process. A lot (over 50%) of titanium that is recycled cannot be purified sufficiently and so is lost to the cycle.