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  1. Motive on Laser Strikes On Aircraft Becoming Epidemic · · Score: 1

    No motive mentioned. The guy was probably annoyed by the stupid helicopter hovering over a residential area at night. Stop doing that and the problem is solved. Bad city planning is often a cause of crime, which is why there is so much of it in America. And why does a ship need a helicopter escort? If it's so important, they should make the ship wait until morning. That will never happen of course, because it would cost the shipper money. Screw the people living in town. If you ask me, the helicopter pilot was the one who should be in jail.

  2. Re:series of tubes on Astronomers Search For Dyson Spheres of Alien Civilizations · · Score: 1

    In fact the best way to look for aliens capable of mega-engineering (like Dyson spheres) would be too look for telltale flares of vast quantities of infrared radiation. But there aren't any around.

  3. Re:context interpretation on Gold Artifact To Orbit Earth In Hope of Alien Retrieval · · Score: 1

    Also why show pictures of a wind hose or a crystal?

  4. Spelling on Gottfrid Svartholm Warg Arrested In Cambodia · · Score: 1

    Phnom Penh

  5. Statistics on FAA To Reevaluate Inflight Electronic Device Use · · Score: 1

    If it were likely that "accidental" cell phone use would crash airplanes it already would have happened. It doesn't even have to be very likely for a ban on bringing cell phones on planes. They even ban carry on shampoo. The whole thing is a farce.

  6. Re:Some church schools excel in science ... on Kentucky Lawmakers Shocked To Find Evolution In Biology Tests · · Score: 1

    This isn't really true. Nice story though. Georges Lemaître proposed a similar idea but didn't provide enough scientific detail to really discuss.

  7. Re:Hmmm... on Saudi Arabia Objects To Proposed .gay gTLD, Among Others · · Score: 1

    Didn't find any reference to Saudi Arabia in your link.

  8. The Right Stuff on US Freezes Nuclear Power Plant Permits Because of Waste Issues · · Score: 1

    Comments about how "stupid" the operators of Fukushima or Chernobyl were remind me of that story in "The Right Stuff" about how the the pilots always reassure their wives that flying isn't dangerous if you are a good pilot. Every time a good pilot gets killed they deal with the cognitive dissonance by saying it was pilot error and pinning it on his personality in some complicated, technically detailed narrative.

  9. Re:Those of us who live along coastal cities... on Koch Bros Study Finds Global Warming Is Real And Man-Made · · Score: 1

    Nonsense. High food prices help the very poor because the poorest people in the world are primary producers.

  10. Re:Now he joins "The Skeptical Environmentalist" on Koch Bros Study Finds Global Warming Is Real And Man-Made · · Score: 1

    Actually the problem is you can't insure a nuke. The Fukushima cleanup is going to cost $300bn or so. No company in the world can have that kind of risk on its balance sheet.

  11. Re:Now he joins "The Skeptical Environmentalist" on Koch Bros Study Finds Global Warming Is Real And Man-Made · · Score: 1

    Actually China has been contributing more to CO2 reduction than any other country.

  12. Road on The 300 km/h Superbus · · Score: 1

    You'd need a dedicated road for this. Might as well build a train.

  13. Re:Maybe on U.S. Gas Prices Continue To Fall · · Score: 1

    It is traded in dollars because the dollar is the reserve currency, not because most of the world's wealth is in the US. It isn't. The US economy is smaller than the EU economy.

  14. Re:Ethiopia's been like this for decades on Ethiopia Criminalizes VoIP Services · · Score: 1

    They used to tell this story about the Soviet Union.

  15. Re:Is his last name Ray or Ra? on 350-Year-Old Newton's Puzzle Solved By 16-Year-Old · · Score: 1

    If his name is Raj the Germans will pronounce it Ray.

  16. Re:Predicting the next 100 posts on The Mathematics of Obesity · · Score: 1

    That said, it really is amazing how much fatter Americans are than Europeans. And Europeans have plenty to eat. Another point is that Mexicans are fat, though the country is not very rich. So whatever the math says, it is not about availability alone. Also I have lived in Europe for some time and I'm much thinner than my similarly aged siblings who live in the US.

  17. Re:Sauropods V Cows on Methane Producing Dinosaurs May Have Changed Climate · · Score: 1

    Obviously sauropods didn't eat grass because there was none around, but your comment makes sense. Methane production is strongly dependent n diet and mopdern feeds are highly inefficient. There are plenty of research projects around to reduce methane production for economic reasons.

  18. Re:Misconstrued Article on Methane Producing Dinosaurs May Have Changed Climate · · Score: 1

    True but Co2 fixing has become more efficient, see the C4 carbon fixing grasses (which appeared much later of course, there was no grass in those days).

  19. Re:junk science on Methane Producing Dinosaurs May Have Changed Climate · · Score: 1

    Yes, the individual questions of how big the animals were, how many there were and how fast their metabolism was and how efficient their digestion was are subordinate to the combined question of their aggregate plant consumption. But maybe there is a correlation between size and digestion efficiency.

  20. Re:Yay for science! on Stone-Throwing Chimp Back In the News With Better Plan · · Score: 1

    There's no real evidence (at least in this article) that the chimp has emotional problems, or is at all unhappy or blames the visitors for his imprisonment. Maybe he's just doing it for the hell of it.

  21. Re:This can't be right on Microsoft Makes Ambitious Carbon Neutral Pledge · · Score: 1

    Buying cheap is BS? I thought it was the capitalist way.

  22. Re:This can't be right on Microsoft Makes Ambitious Carbon Neutral Pledge · · Score: 1

    Do you have and evidence to support your claim? Or are you just inventing this? I don't see any theoretical reason why we could be net carbon neutral, or even net sequesterers.

  23. Re:Not if you look at the whole picture on Microsoft Makes Ambitious Carbon Neutral Pledge · · Score: 1

    I presume this applies to their own server farms.

  24. Re:I don't see how this is possible. on Microsoft Makes Ambitious Carbon Neutral Pledge · · Score: 1

    Well it reduces you heating bill so yes.

  25. Re:Not only that... on Some USAF Pilots Refuse To Fly F-22 Raptor · · Score: 1
    Military containment was an economic benefit to the Soviets because it kept them from wasting money on foreign adventures. Our failure to contain them in Afghanistan is what led to their downfall.

    Economic containment was largely irrelevant because they didn't want to trade with the West and couldn't leverage the benefits of trade anyway.