In California, the risk of igniting vapors is mitigated by the fact that the pumps are also required to have vapor-recovery systems to reduce air pollution. Whenever you pump gasoline into the tank, an equal volume of air (containing fumes) has to be displaced. With vapor recovery systems, the gas station captures those fumes instead of letting them escape into the atmosphere. So, what is good for the environment is also good for safety.
Actually, the vapor recovery system requirement was rescinded a couple years ago. The problem with it was that, while in theory it should have reduced the amount of potential atmospheric gasoline vapor pollution, in practice it made it worse. There was no way to design a recovery system that wasnt prone to becoming filled up with liquid gasoline, as the suction from the system would actually pull out small splashes liquid that would have otherwise just drained into the tank via gravity. When a recovery hose filled up like that, the gas would stay there till the next customer compressed the boot when sticking the nozzle in the tank. The compression opens the valve on the recovery system but, since the vacuum can't start until fuel is dispensed, the trapped gasoline comes pouring out around the fill hole on the car, running down the fender and onto the ground. This spilled liquid gasoline was a far greater hazard than the vapor escaping from the tank, so they decided the recovery system was worse than nothing and removed the requirement.
...there are very many dociumented cases, with eyewitness accounts, worldwide.
Please be kind enough to link us to some of the documentation.
Heh. Even if he could, it wouldn't MEAN anything. A "documented case with eyewitness accounts" requires only that someone wrote it down when someone else said "I seen it with my own eyes: that dude talked on his cell phone and then the gas nozzle caught fire". I always find it amusing when people equate an eyewitness account with scientific proof. Heck, I know a crazy homeless guy who will swear that he's seen the meter maids putting "radio controlled tracking devices" on cars. (whatever THAT means!)
I wonder how many people here who vehemently assert that WiFi should not be allowed to interfere with over-the-air TV broadcasts are the same people who were saying "screw the ham radio geeks; we need Broadband over Power Line"?
With regard to solving th problem of interference, the argument of "switch to a different amateur band" could be equally applied here as "switch to a different TV channel"...
The problem there is that you cannot get rid of small errors just by averaging. This was the crux of Lorenz' discovery-- that minor inaccuracies turn into major inaccuracies after a certain number of iterations, no matter how you scale it.
Did they check the temperature or humidity at the time?
Did they try different seat material and different material for the driver's clothes? After all, this has a large effect on how much static electricity is generated, and how much static electricity can be stored in the driver's clothing.
They were demonstrating under what conditions static electricity could ignite gasoline vapor. They did try different materials for both seat cover and clothing. They picked a combination that had the highest potential for generating a spark. Gasoline fires like this are a relatively rare occurance, so it makes sense that, in order to test whether it's possible, one must reproduce the relatively rare extreme conditions.
What they were demonstrating, really, was what it takes to ignite gasoline vapor under ideal conditions: essentially, "what kind of spark is necessary".
A key hitting the pavement correctly will generate a spark. Have you ever seen them cut a key?
Keys don't spark when you cut them. My boss is a locksmith. I've cut perhaps 150,000 keys over the last ten years. The only time I've ever seen a spark come off a key is when I'm taking the burrs off a steel safe deposit box key using a bench grinder. Steel on stone at 6000rpm makes sparks, but brass (be it nickel plated or not) is too soft to spark.
I have actually seen someone smoking while filling a lawn mower from a can. I wonder how many times he got away with it before disaster struck. Never seen it at a filling station though.
As a young lad working at a gas station I often changed out broken filler nozzles on the pumps with a lit cigarette dangling from my mouth. Not entirely safe, but gasoline is only explosive under specific conditions. Perversely, so long as the cigarette is close to your nose (i.e. in your mouth) you'll have plenty of warning before the gasoline vapor around it before reaches 1.5%, which is what it needs to even be capable of exploding. I certainly wouldn't do it anymore, but at the time I was an immortal 17 year old with a little knowledge of basic physics. It wasn't until later that I learned about "7 sigma" events...
Having gone through security on an air force base, I do know they check, for the most part, expecially after 9/11.
Yeah, they're a whole lot better now than they used to be. The incident with the switched badges happened in '90. Things were a little slack all around for a couple years there between the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Iraq invading Kuwait. I was trained as a russian linguist specializing in analysis of soviet radio communication, so my job was pretty much made obsolete when it became apparent that the Red Army was NEVER going to come pouring through the Fulda Gap into West Germany. Things got "better" after Desert Storm and I imagine things got a LOT more squared away post-9/11...
The problem that the laws against Mail Fraud is supposed to address is not that Customs might get a little more money, but people shipping broken valuables, declaring the value of them as something outrageous, and demanding compensation on the receiving end when a broken item arrives. Whether or not customs got more money isn't the problem, its that he lied on a government form for the purposes of defrauding. The fact that it wasn't a government or a company that was targeted changes nothing.
It's not fraud until he makes a claim of damages and tries to get compensation. "Overstating" the value is only an issue when you're trying to get a third party (e.g. insurance company) to pay.
As a noun, yeah, they're off their nut. "redacted document" would be better. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say eliding is a form of redaction.
One VP took a picture of his dog and pasted it on a badge. Next morning flashed it at the guard and walked through with no problem.
When I was in the army as an intelligence analyst at an air force base, we had to go through a fancy turnstile every morning where an air force guard would take our badge, look at it, look at our face, look back at the badge, then give it back and let us through. One day my roommate and I were walking down the hall inside the secure building when a master sergeant stopped us, pointing out that our badges were switched. We'd long suspected that the guards at the gate just went through the motions of checking faces, but this proved they weren't looking AT ALL, because I am white and my roommate was black! We brought this to the attention of the major in charge of security. THe guards were a lot more diligent thereafter.
Scammer will get the last laugh as seller will soon be going to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for mail fraud.
Except that there's not law in either the UK or USA that says you have to send a REAL powerbook to someone who DIDN'T pay you for it. He pretends to pay, you pretend to send him a real computer.
Umm... the post office makes no pretense of being an anonymous service, unlike these so-called "free speech" p2p networks.
Anonymity isn't the argument here, culpability is. If a burglar walks across my lawn to get to my neighbor's house, I'm not an accomplice to burglary. If the post office delivers a letter containing a death threat, they're not an accomplice to that, either. Likewise, if someone temporarily stores a portion of a copyrighted work on my computer without my knowledge, I am not guilty of copyright infringement.
It wasn't until the 17th century that forks started becoming common on the tables of Europe, and later in North America.
I must add to this frenzy of cutlery tangents! The rounded-end knife replaced the pointy dagger-like knife at the table in the 17th century as well. Cardinal Richelieu was so disgusted by courtier's habit of picking their teeth with the pointy knives after dinner that he ordered a set of knives made with rounded ends.
Where I live, people are trying to ban large pig iron "bull bars" on the front of vehicles, on the argument that it causes the body of a child to fold at the waist when being hit at 40mph, greatly increasing the speed at which the head of the pedestrian rotates down into the bonnet.
an adult will do the same thing, but with fractured femurs as well.
That's absurd! Trying to mitigate injury in a 40mph ped vs. car incident is like requiring the orchestra to keep playing while the Titanic sinks. Why not mandate bumper mounted PILLOWS? It makes as much sense...
What area of the country is this, again? I live in Los Angeles, and if a *tan* car came up behind me with flashing lights, I wouldn't pull over. Unless your vehicle is explicitly a Black and White, I will not bother to even think you are a cop car. I would, however, probably phone my local PD just to be sure.
I've seen tan-and-white, blue-and-white, and ALL-white CHP cars along the side of the 101 between Camarillo and Woodland Hills, handing out speeding tickets, for the last 10 years or so. I think they only use black-and-white cars "in the city" though.
assuming the "job" requires something to effectively kill other humans operating and the enemy vehicle they operate while showering the area in radiation.
Actually, the radiation from DU is fairly minimal-- 40% less than that of naturally occurring uranium, since the less stable U-235 is processed out. The half-life of U-238(DU) is 4.5 billion years.
The full story is that 3 guys were driving around in the M992 when the heater started up and wouldn't stop... [etc.]
The human errors inherent in that diaster should be obvious.
This is true. Being that it's a diesel fueled heater, those dingbats should have pulled the breakers and shut the fuelcock. I just wanted to point out that not every '992 will go up in smoke if the crew merely leaves the heater on. Particularly not now, since they've replaced nearly every armored vehicle heater with the new A-20...
The full story is that 3 guys were driving around in the M992 when the heater started up and wouldn't stop... [etc.]
The human errors inherent in that diaster should be obvious.
This is true. Being that it's a diesel fueled heater, those dingbats should have pulled the breakers and shut the fuelcock. I just wanted to point out that not every '992 will go up in smoke if the crew merely leaves the heater on. Particularly not now, since they've replaced nearly every armored vehicle heater with the new A-20...
I can understand the need for a good military, but to spend this much money for it.
Personally I think it would be better spent if invested in medical research
Believe it or not, the military is responsible for a lot of modern medicine, particularly advanced treatments for traumatic injuries.
The bizarre thing in this article here is that the four-slit experiment is somehow radically new, whereas the article cheerfully (and incorrectly) explains the two-slit pattern as being commonplace.
Apparently we don't detect 'parallel universes' until we do the four-slit experiment.
To me this looks like a variation of "these go to eleven". Stay tuned for the EIGHT slit experiment that proves the existence of god.
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Actually, the vapor recovery system requirement was rescinded a couple years ago. The problem with it was that, while in theory it should have reduced the amount of potential atmospheric gasoline vapor pollution, in practice it made it worse. There was no way to design a recovery system that wasnt prone to becoming filled up with liquid gasoline, as the suction from the system would actually pull out small splashes liquid that would have otherwise just drained into the tank via gravity. When a recovery hose filled up like that, the gas would stay there till the next customer compressed the boot when sticking the nozzle in the tank. The compression opens the valve on the recovery system but, since the vacuum can't start until fuel is dispensed, the trapped gasoline comes pouring out around the fill hole on the car, running down the fender and onto the ground. This spilled liquid gasoline was a far greater hazard than the vapor escaping from the tank, so they decided the recovery system was worse than nothing and removed the requirement.
Please be kind enough to link us to some of the documentation.
Heh. Even if he could, it wouldn't MEAN anything. A "documented case with eyewitness accounts" requires only that someone wrote it down when someone else said "I seen it with my own eyes: that dude talked on his cell phone and then the gas nozzle caught fire". I always find it amusing when people equate an eyewitness account with scientific proof. Heck, I know a crazy homeless guy who will swear that he's seen the meter maids putting "radio controlled tracking devices" on cars. (whatever THAT means!)
With regard to solving th problem of interference, the argument of "switch to a different amateur band" could be equally applied here as "switch to a different TV channel"...
The problem there is that you cannot get rid of small errors just by averaging. This was the crux of Lorenz' discovery-- that minor inaccuracies turn into major inaccuracies after a certain number of iterations, no matter how you scale it.
"Climate" is an aggregate form of "weather". The input may not look the same, but the two are inextricably linked.
They were demonstrating under what conditions static electricity could ignite gasoline vapor. They did try different materials for both seat cover and clothing. They picked a combination that had the highest potential for generating a spark. Gasoline fires like this are a relatively rare occurance, so it makes sense that, in order to test whether it's possible, one must reproduce the relatively rare extreme conditions.
What they were demonstrating, really, was what it takes to ignite gasoline vapor under ideal conditions: essentially, "what kind of spark is necessary".
A key hitting the pavement correctly will generate a spark. Have you ever seen them cut a key? Keys don't spark when you cut them. My boss is a locksmith. I've cut perhaps 150,000 keys over the last ten years. The only time I've ever seen a spark come off a key is when I'm taking the burrs off a steel safe deposit box key using a bench grinder. Steel on stone at 6000rpm makes sparks, but brass (be it nickel plated or not) is too soft to spark.
As a young lad working at a gas station I often changed out broken filler nozzles on the pumps with a lit cigarette dangling from my mouth. Not entirely safe, but gasoline is only explosive under specific conditions. Perversely, so long as the cigarette is close to your nose (i.e. in your mouth) you'll have plenty of warning before the gasoline vapor around it before reaches 1.5%, which is what it needs to even be capable of exploding. I certainly wouldn't do it anymore, but at the time I was an immortal 17 year old with a little knowledge of basic physics. It wasn't until later that I learned about "7 sigma" events...
Yeah, they're a whole lot better now than they used to be. The incident with the switched badges happened in '90. Things were a little slack all around for a couple years there between the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Iraq invading Kuwait. I was trained as a russian linguist specializing in analysis of soviet radio communication, so my job was pretty much made obsolete when it became apparent that the Red Army was NEVER going to come pouring through the Fulda Gap into West Germany. Things got "better" after Desert Storm and I imagine things got a LOT more squared away post-9/11...
It's not fraud until he makes a claim of damages and tries to get compensation. "Overstating" the value is only an issue when you're trying to get a third party (e.g. insurance company) to pay.
As a noun, yeah, they're off their nut. "redacted document" would be better. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say eliding is a form of redaction.
When I was in the army as an intelligence analyst at an air force base, we had to go through a fancy turnstile every morning where an air force guard would take our badge, look at it, look at our face, look back at the badge, then give it back and let us through. One day my roommate and I were walking down the hall inside the secure building when a master sergeant stopped us, pointing out that our badges were switched. We'd long suspected that the guards at the gate just went through the motions of checking faces, but this proved they weren't looking AT ALL, because I am white and my roommate was black! We brought this to the attention of the major in charge of security. THe guards were a lot more diligent thereafter.
Except that there's not law in either the UK or USA that says you have to send a REAL powerbook to someone who DIDN'T pay you for it. He pretends to pay, you pretend to send him a real computer.
Anonymity isn't the argument here, culpability is. If a burglar walks across my lawn to get to my neighbor's house, I'm not an accomplice to burglary. If the post office delivers a letter containing a death threat, they're not an accomplice to that, either. Likewise, if someone temporarily stores a portion of a copyrighted work on my computer without my knowledge, I am not guilty of copyright infringement.
Bah! 6,272,640 square inches to the acre! A rectangle 3630 inches by 12^3 inches. Plain as the nose on your face, man! (heh)
I must add to this frenzy of cutlery tangents! The rounded-end knife replaced the pointy dagger-like knife at the table in the 17th century as well. Cardinal Richelieu was so disgusted by courtier's habit of picking their teeth with the pointy knives after dinner that he ordered a set of knives made with rounded ends.
That's absurd! Trying to mitigate injury in a 40mph ped vs. car incident is like requiring the orchestra to keep playing while the Titanic sinks. Why not mandate bumper mounted PILLOWS? It makes as much sense...
I've seen tan-and-white, blue-and-white, and ALL-white CHP cars along the side of the 101 between Camarillo and Woodland Hills, handing out speeding tickets, for the last 10 years or so. I think they only use black-and-white cars "in the city" though.
Actually, the radiation from DU is fairly minimal-- 40% less than that of naturally occurring uranium, since the less stable U-235 is processed out. The half-life of U-238(DU) is 4.5 billion years.
The human errors inherent in that diaster should be obvious.
This is true. Being that it's a diesel fueled heater, those dingbats should have pulled the breakers and shut the fuelcock. I just wanted to point out that not every '992 will go up in smoke if the crew merely leaves the heater on. Particularly not now, since they've replaced nearly every armored vehicle heater with the new A-20...
The human errors inherent in that diaster should be obvious.
This is true. Being that it's a diesel fueled heater, those dingbats should have pulled the breakers and shut the fuelcock. I just wanted to point out that not every '992 will go up in smoke if the crew merely leaves the heater on. Particularly not now, since they've replaced nearly every armored vehicle heater with the new A-20...
Believe it or not, the military is responsible for a lot of modern medicine, particularly advanced treatments for traumatic injuries.
"a defective heater in an M992 ammunition carrier loaded with 155mm artillery shells caught on fire". Nobody "left the heater on", it malfunctioned.
To me this looks like a variation of "these go to eleven". Stay tuned for the EIGHT slit experiment that proves the existence of god.
Mr. Yewbert, give me your agonizer!