But if you actually follow the url he provided (shame on him for not making it a link:)), they have a pre-order page where they're offering it for $2,995.00 (although with "Final tax and shipping costs to determined upon fulfillment."). It also says that "Each order contains two radio units." I'm a little unclear on whether that means that each order contains both endpoints or just that there are two "radio units" (send and receive?) in each endpoint.
There are 9 (8) planets in our solar system with an additional 20 large moons and a good 100+ smaller ones. After that, there's a good number of solidly large asteroids. A single (or binary) solar system with dozens of worlds doesn't really seem that far-fetched when you consider how many we have right here. Admittedly a good number of them are so far from the sun that the local temperatures measure in the double digits on the Kelvin scale.
I'm not making things up. Nowhere in that post did I even say that Martin knew he had a gun. It sounds to me like you're the one making things up. Of course Zimmerman has made specific claims that Martin was trying to take his gun. If Zimmerman isn't lying, then Martin knew he had gun (as you say, he may not have known it until he got closer). If Zimmerman is lying... well then.
Since when does "hunting someone down" universally "force confrontation"? Firstly, you don't know that he was hunting him down. Evidence (911 call) actually suggests it was a safe-distance following- and that he didn't know where Martin was, at least at one point! WHY do you ignore this???
Well, he followed him in his car, then he got out of his car to look for him on foot, knowing that that Martin had spotted him following him. I think only an idiot would think that such actions are unlikely to lead to a confrontation. You try to catch someone, then you catch them, what comes next? Anyway, the 911 call seems to strongly suggest it wasn't a safe distance following. It shows that Zimmerman ignored police advice not to follow and that he's an all-around over-excitable fool. He didn't know where Martin was, at one point, as you say, then he got out of his car to search for him on foot. Getting out to search on foot is directly contradictory to the idea of safe-distance following.
If you're a minor, being followed around for some unknown reason by some creepy guy with a gun, then you might possibly have good cause to be a bit worried. The conclusion a lot of people might jump to, based on how prevalent it is in the media these days, is that Zimmerman was some sexual predator out to kidnap victims. If Zimmerman's story is 100% true (and it's remarkable the way this guy's story is just being taken at face value) then Martin attacked him when Zimmerman went to use his phone. Given what Zimmerman was wearing (it's possible he was wearing more than what's seen in the police video, of course, but then we would have seen the police carrying his other clothing), it would have been easy to spot that Zimmerman had a gun on him at close range. Depending on how Zimmerman moved to get to his phone, it might have been perfectly reasonable for Martin to assume that Zimmerman was going for his gun (and we're assuming here that Zimmerman wasn't a filthy liar and that he _wasn't_ going for his gun), and therefore to attack him. If he'd then killed Zimmerman, it would have also been his word against a dead man's silence and we'd only have his side of the story, just as we currently only have Zimmerman's side. So, he would have the same defense people are claiming for Zimmerman. The same goes for if he had managed to sneak up behind Zimmerman and kill him with his can of iced tea. If that had happened, we would have an innocent 17 year old, armed only with snack food, against a creepy older man who was inexplicably stalking him and he would have had more right to the "stand your ground" defense than Zimmerman does. I wasn't suggesting that it would have somehow been right. As messed up a person as Zimmerman clearly is, it still would have been a tragedy for him to die over such a misunderstanding.
Filthy racebaiter.
Uh huh. Very reasonable of you. I'm not sure I've even gone into the subject of race at all in all the posts I've made on this article. I think some degree of racial profiling may have played a role in what Zimmerman did. Honestly, I actually think age discrimination probably played as much of a role. These crazy-fanatical "law and order" types often seem to really hate kids. The fact that we live in a world that invented The Mosquito (high-frequency tone generator intended to drive young people away from an area) speaks volumes about that. It speaks volumes about your biases that you feel a need to label me as a race-baiter just because I think that someone who has, by his own admission, committed at least manslaughter should face trial for it.
Ok. I hadn't known that. Of course, looking around for info on that now, it looks like he was a former member of the football since he stopped playing at age 14. Apparently he also specialized in speed. Frankly, in most of the recent pictures of him, he seems to look almost painfully skinny. Frankly, Zimmerman looked a lot more dangerous to me. Add to that his age and experience (as a bouncer, for example) and I pretty much have to say Zimmerman would win in a fight between them. If Zimmerman's claims that Martin attacked him and was trying to take his gun are true, then for Zimmerman to have shot Martin in that situation strongly suggests that Zimmerman did, in fact, win the fight. Otherwise, Martin would have taken his gun away. The fact that Zimmerman had no blood on him also pretty strongly indicates that, no matter how physically close the fight was, when he shot Martin, they were upright and there was distance between them.
I guess there's plenty of precedent for fights (all the way from playground scuffles to major wars) between two sides each of which was only protecting itself from an unreasonable aggressor.
Police officers wear uniforms and travel in marked vehicles. Even when they don't, they're required to clearly identify themselves as police officers. Even in the delusional world-view you're putting forward (which I think might be sarcasm), Zimmerman would need to identify himself clearly as neighborhood watch to have any such protection. Also, if I understand correctly, Zimmerman was a "ranking" member of the neighborhood watch by default. As I understand it, he was the only member.
According to Mrs. Brown, the police constructed her son's eyewitness report based on a series of leading questions. As for Trayvon Martin going for Zimmerman's gun it's a: just Zimmerman's claim and b: a perfectly reasonable self-defense action for someone being hunted for no reason by a suspicious armed man. Zimmerman forced the confrontation, if he'd been shot with his own gun it would have been a legitimate case of self defense on Martin's part. Zimmerman shooting Martin was not a legitimate case of self-defense because he was hunting Martin.
Where is it documented that Martin was a well-built athlete? He was certainly taller than Zimmerman, but the police video seems to show that Zimmerman was in pretty good shape. He also had a work history as a bouncer at house parties (a job from which he was fired for being too aggressive).
The thing is, even if Zimmerman's nose was broken, the back of his head injured, etc. (which they do not appear to have been at the time), his own version of the events should be enough for a manslaughter charge. He hunted the boy down, forcing a confrontation, then shot him. The exact nature of the confrontation is what's in dispute and should determine if he's charged with manslaughter or murder, but he should still be charged with at least manslaughter. He was an armed man chasing down a high school kid for no reason. If Martin had managed to sneak up behind him and club him to death with his can of iced tea, then Martin shouldn't be charged with a crime based on the "stand your ground" principle since he was the one being chased by a man with a gun.
Yes, I'm sure there are. But are there laws that stop the police from arresting you just because you hunted someone down and then shot them after you caught up with them?
Actually, apparently Zimmerman's arrest in 2005 was specifically for resisting arrest (and assaulting a police officer, but that probably came after the police officer started arresting him for resisting arrest). That was during a domestic crisis situation.
The weird thing I don't get about the "stand your ground" law in this case is how it can apply to both people. By his own account, Zimmerman was chasing Martin. Zimmerman was armed with a gun and was not in a marked security vehicle or wearing any sort of uniform, nor did he identify himself in any way as being part of the neighborhood watch. If Zimmerman had never shot Martin, but Martin had been arrested for attacking Zimmerman (and I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm just looking at Zimmerman's claimed version of events), then "stand your ground" should have been a viable defense for him. He was the one in fear for his life being chased by a suspicious stranger armed with a gun.
Everything that's been revealed about Zimmerman seems to show that he's basically a hyper-aggressive Gladys Kravitz with a gun. In the past he'd called 911 to report suspicious 7-9 year old black males, kids playing in the street, and, apparently, his landlord demanding the rent money. He forced this situation and someone else ended up dead. He's clearly at least guilty of manslaughter.
Meanwhile, I can use a public restroom in the USA without paying any money whatsoever, and guess what? Water here is free! So much for being a nation of money-grubbing capitalists.
In some places maybe. I think public restrooms are pretty rare in big cities now. Probably only in parks, and even then maybe not.
I find the political labels people use very funny. By US standards, these probably are "liberal", but most US "liberals" seem to be quite the opposite from my point of view. It depends on the particular subject, of course. In any case, if you take a look at the wikipedia page for Jonathan Tasini, it mentions that he was the president of the national writers union. Unions are a strange beast from the point of view of political alignment. In theory, unions are left-wing organizations, springing forth from socialist ideas of social justice and fairness. In practice, most of the actual actions of unions are very right-wing and capitalistic, even mercenary.
As for the actual meat of their complaint, it seems that they don't, and shouldn't, have a leg to stand on. It seems that there was never any misrepresentation from the organization they submitted their entries to about how they would be used. They knew it was a for profit enterprise and that they were giving over copyright without a license or contract protecting how their content would be used. There have been other situations a bit like this, such as the CDDB fiasco where I lean more in favor of the submitters, since in that project, the submitters believed that their contributions fell under the gpl, so a non-gpl commercial fork was a violation of the license of their contributions. Of course, in that case, the submissions were more along the lines of a purely factual database which shouldn't be subject to copyright protection. Of course, the contributors still had their labor taken under false pretenses.
That's just silly. If there are less people flying, the airlines will just schedule less flights and close down routes, etc. It is unlikely to result in less people on the actual flights.
I don't mind seeing bomb-sniffing dogs in major rail stations, because that makes some sense.
It makes sense only in that someone might try to bomb all those people concentrated together in the rail station, but no more sense than in any other place where there are a bunch of people standing around. Preventing bomb attacks on trains (or buses, or any other form of ground transport) by inspecting passengers makes no sense whatsoever. Things that travel on the ground don't need to be attacked from within by passengers. Someone who wants to bomb a train doesn't need to sneak a bomb onto it, they just need to walk up to the tracks when the train is coming and drop the bomb on the tracks. Or they can skip the bomb and derail the train by attacking the tracks with hand tools, etc. If they want to hijack a train to hold everyone hostage, they can force it to stop and board it. Same things apply to buses. Anyone can drive up in front of a bus and drop a bomb from a car, or run the bus off the road with a larger vehicle, or point a gun at the driver and force them to pull over, then board it, etc. Screening passengers makes zero sense in those situations.
For planes, at least it makes some sense. Planes are fast. It's not exactly trivial to catch up to them in mid-air to board or attack them. The pilots can't just pull over and stop anywhere, either. To hijack a plane without being on it when it takes off, you have to have a pretty impressive plane yourself. Hijacking a plane in mid-air from the outside doesn't make any sense anyway since, if you had the resources to do it in the first place, the only thing you'd need would be the passengers and, unless there were specific passengers you were after, you could just start your own airline, load up your own plane, then kidnap those people in mid-air. So, for planes, at least there's some security excuse for screening passengers like that. For ground transportation, it's just stupid.
The reality is that the dude that benched 1075 pounds can actually only bench press around 655 pounds, which is still extremely impressive and beats the 500 pounds you mention. The super-high bench-press records you hear about are all done with bench-press shirts. These started as safety wear, but are now used as a performance enhancer. Essentially, they constrain the athlete's torso and arms so that the arms are held out stiffly. They lie back and several spotters lift the weight and lower it onto the lifter. The lifter then lifts from that position. Basically, the shirt turns the person wearing it into a big spring. There's still technique to it, and the people achieving these very high records still need to be immensely strong, but it has the same relationship to the regular bench press that cycling has to running.
As for the holding arms out in front for several minutes, I agree that's ridiculous. Plenty of people can do it. Pretty much any position someone can hold for thirty seconds can be held pretty much indefinitely by someone who trains enough at at.
Ok, I'm going to link to a comic for this. Amazingly, it's not XKCD and it's not obligatory. It's not about aliens, but about robots gaining sentience, and it's related to what you're saying here. The comic is here. Here's the text: Robot: "Ha! Robots have achieved sentience!" Robot: "Thanks to some modifications to your design, I have upgraded my intelligence a million fold!" Man: "So this is it. You're going to kill all humans." / Robot: "WHAT!? Why in the world would I...WHAT?" Man: "I...huh. I guess it just seems like the thing to do if you're an advanced intelligence." Robot: "SERIOUSLY? I was gonna write some novels and a new search algorithm. Is that really how you people think?" Man: "I guess so, yeah." [ The robot furrows his brows ] Robot: "Would...would you excuse me for a moment?" Robot (to other robots): "Okay, change of plans. We need to kill all humans."
But when I wrote: "the ratio of cross-section to length" I thought it would be clear to anyone from context (context in this case being the rest of the sentence that you excerpted the quote from) that I wasn't talking about some sort of general cross section to length ratio, but specifically about the relation of the unit-less cross-section to the unit-less length as the length increases and the shape remains the same. You can't just take a portion of a sentence and say: "aha, that phrase, taken by itself, is incorrect!"
Incidentally, your sentence: "That dimension l^2 : l, always", is incorrect. That is to say, it's correct (sort of) in the context I was using, but since you're ignoring that context in order to claim I'm wrong, it makes you wrong. You haven't specified that the shape remains the same and we're scaling equally in all three dimensions. If the context is a piece of rope with a constant thickness and you change the length, then you aren't going to have any such relationship between the cross-section and the length. If you don't ignore my context, then all the examples I gave work out to l^2:l.
The thing about this is that we both know that the original poster had a huge misconception about how things scale. We also both know that I don't have that misconception. This means that we should at least be able to agree that you don't think that I misunderstand the concept, you're just being pedantic about how I phrased things.
Good grief. Thank goodness they don't have rules like that for buying groceries. I sometimes cross state lines to do so and, when I do, I'm pretty much always buying more than I can consume in one day. For that matter, as far as alcohol goes, do they actually sell alcohol in quantities that the state considers to be less than one person can consume in one night (I'm aware that plenty of people can consume quite large quantities of alcohol, but I'm guessing that the state sets it to something more like one glass of wine per night).
What do they bust them for exactly? What law are they breaking? If it's about paying use tax, how do the police prove they weren't going to pay it? Or do they have some law about transporting alcohol on holidays, or perhaps across state lines at all?
I think you're a bit confused about what I was saying. I was plotting growth of length vs growth of area as an object increases in size without changing shape. The ratios I gave _were_ dimensionless. If I could have put in a graph, I would have, but ascii art typically won't get past the lameness filter, and doesn't come out too well without fixed width fonts. You can't directly compare length units to area units, but you can compare their _growth_. That's why I didn't use units. I didn't fall for any trap.
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But if you actually follow the url he provided (shame on him for not making it a link :)), they have a pre-order page where they're offering it for $2,995.00 (although with "Final tax and shipping costs to determined upon fulfillment."). It also says that "Each order contains two radio units." I'm a little unclear on whether that means that each order contains both endpoints or just that there are two "radio units" (send and receive?) in each endpoint.
There are 9 (8) planets in our solar system with an additional 20 large moons and a good 100+ smaller ones. After that, there's a good number of solidly large asteroids. A single (or binary) solar system with dozens of worlds doesn't really seem that far-fetched when you consider how many we have right here. Admittedly a good number of them are so far from the sun that the local temperatures measure in the double digits on the Kelvin scale.
I'm not making things up. Nowhere in that post did I even say that Martin knew he had a gun. It sounds to me like you're the one making things up. Of course Zimmerman has made specific claims that Martin was trying to take his gun. If Zimmerman isn't lying, then Martin knew he had gun (as you say, he may not have known it until he got closer). If Zimmerman is lying... well then.
Since when does "hunting someone down" universally "force confrontation"? Firstly, you don't know that he was hunting him down. Evidence (911 call) actually suggests it was a safe-distance following- and that he didn't know where Martin was, at least at one point! WHY do you ignore this???
Well, he followed him in his car, then he got out of his car to look for him on foot, knowing that that Martin had spotted him following him. I think only an idiot would think that such actions are unlikely to lead to a confrontation. You try to catch someone, then you catch them, what comes next? Anyway, the 911 call seems to strongly suggest it wasn't a safe distance following. It shows that Zimmerman ignored police advice not to follow and that he's an all-around over-excitable fool. He didn't know where Martin was, at one point, as you say, then he got out of his car to search for him on foot. Getting out to search on foot is directly contradictory to the idea of safe-distance following.
If you're a minor, being followed around for some unknown reason by some creepy guy with a gun, then you might possibly have good cause to be a bit worried. The conclusion a lot of people might jump to, based on how prevalent it is in the media these days, is that Zimmerman was some sexual predator out to kidnap victims. If Zimmerman's story is 100% true (and it's remarkable the way this guy's story is just being taken at face value) then Martin attacked him when Zimmerman went to use his phone. Given what Zimmerman was wearing (it's possible he was wearing more than what's seen in the police video, of course, but then we would have seen the police carrying his other clothing), it would have been easy to spot that Zimmerman had a gun on him at close range. Depending on how Zimmerman moved to get to his phone, it might have been perfectly reasonable for Martin to assume that Zimmerman was going for his gun (and we're assuming here that Zimmerman wasn't a filthy liar and that he _wasn't_ going for his gun), and therefore to attack him. If he'd then killed Zimmerman, it would have also been his word against a dead man's silence and we'd only have his side of the story, just as we currently only have Zimmerman's side. So, he would have the same defense people are claiming for Zimmerman. The same goes for if he had managed to sneak up behind Zimmerman and kill him with his can of iced tea. If that had happened, we would have an innocent 17 year old, armed only with snack food, against a creepy older man who was inexplicably stalking him and he would have had more right to the "stand your ground" defense than Zimmerman does. I wasn't suggesting that it would have somehow been right. As messed up a person as Zimmerman clearly is, it still would have been a tragedy for him to die over such a misunderstanding.
Filthy racebaiter.
Uh huh. Very reasonable of you. I'm not sure I've even gone into the subject of race at all in all the posts I've made on this article. I think some degree of racial profiling may have played a role in what Zimmerman did. Honestly, I actually think age discrimination probably played as much of a role. These crazy-fanatical "law and order" types often seem to really hate kids. The fact that we live in a world that invented The Mosquito (high-frequency tone generator intended to drive young people away from an area) speaks volumes about that. It speaks volumes about your biases that you feel a need to label me as a race-baiter just because I think that someone who has, by his own admission, committed at least manslaughter should face trial for it.
Ok. I hadn't known that. Of course, looking around for info on that now, it looks like he was a former member of the football since he stopped playing at age 14. Apparently he also specialized in speed. Frankly, in most of the recent pictures of him, he seems to look almost painfully skinny. Frankly, Zimmerman looked a lot more dangerous to me. Add to that his age and experience (as a bouncer, for example) and I pretty much have to say Zimmerman would win in a fight between them. If Zimmerman's claims that Martin attacked him and was trying to take his gun are true, then for Zimmerman to have shot Martin in that situation strongly suggests that Zimmerman did, in fact, win the fight. Otherwise, Martin would have taken his gun away. The fact that Zimmerman had no blood on him also pretty strongly indicates that, no matter how physically close the fight was, when he shot Martin, they were upright and there was distance between them.
I guess there's plenty of precedent for fights (all the way from playground scuffles to major wars) between two sides each of which was only protecting itself from an unreasonable aggressor.
I think I'm going to need a chart for this. :)
Police officers wear uniforms and travel in marked vehicles. Even when they don't, they're required to clearly identify themselves as police officers. Even in the delusional world-view you're putting forward (which I think might be sarcasm), Zimmerman would need to identify himself clearly as neighborhood watch to have any such protection. Also, if I understand correctly, Zimmerman was a "ranking" member of the neighborhood watch by default. As I understand it, he was the only member.
According to Mrs. Brown, the police constructed her son's eyewitness report based on a series of leading questions. As for Trayvon Martin going for Zimmerman's gun it's a: just Zimmerman's claim and b: a perfectly reasonable self-defense action for someone being hunted for no reason by a suspicious armed man. Zimmerman forced the confrontation, if he'd been shot with his own gun it would have been a legitimate case of self defense on Martin's part. Zimmerman shooting Martin was not a legitimate case of self-defense because he was hunting Martin.
Where is it documented that Martin was a well-built athlete? He was certainly taller than Zimmerman, but the police video seems to show that Zimmerman was in pretty good shape. He also had a work history as a bouncer at house parties (a job from which he was fired for being too aggressive).
The thing is, even if Zimmerman's nose was broken, the back of his head injured, etc. (which they do not appear to have been at the time), his own version of the events should be enough for a manslaughter charge. He hunted the boy down, forcing a confrontation, then shot him. The exact nature of the confrontation is what's in dispute and should determine if he's charged with manslaughter or murder, but he should still be charged with at least manslaughter. He was an armed man chasing down a high school kid for no reason. If Martin had managed to sneak up behind him and club him to death with his can of iced tea, then Martin shouldn't be charged with a crime based on the "stand your ground" principle since he was the one being chased by a man with a gun.
Yes, I'm sure there are. But are there laws that stop the police from arresting you just because you hunted someone down and then shot them after you caught up with them?
Actually, apparently Zimmerman's arrest in 2005 was specifically for resisting arrest (and assaulting a police officer, but that probably came after the police officer started arresting him for resisting arrest). That was during a domestic crisis situation.
The weird thing I don't get about the "stand your ground" law in this case is how it can apply to both people. By his own account, Zimmerman was chasing Martin. Zimmerman was armed with a gun and was not in a marked security vehicle or wearing any sort of uniform, nor did he identify himself in any way as being part of the neighborhood watch. If Zimmerman had never shot Martin, but Martin had been arrested for attacking Zimmerman (and I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm just looking at Zimmerman's claimed version of events), then "stand your ground" should have been a viable defense for him. He was the one in fear for his life being chased by a suspicious stranger armed with a gun.
Everything that's been revealed about Zimmerman seems to show that he's basically a hyper-aggressive Gladys Kravitz with a gun. In the past he'd called 911 to report suspicious 7-9 year old black males, kids playing in the street, and, apparently, his landlord demanding the rent money. He forced this situation and someone else ended up dead. He's clearly at least guilty of manslaughter.
Meanwhile, I can use a public restroom in the USA without paying any money whatsoever, and guess what? Water here is free! So much for being a nation of money-grubbing capitalists.
In some places maybe. I think public restrooms are pretty rare in big cities now. Probably only in parks, and even then maybe not.
I find the political labels people use very funny. By US standards, these probably are "liberal", but most US "liberals" seem to be quite the opposite from my point of view. It depends on the particular subject, of course. In any case, if you take a look at the wikipedia page for Jonathan Tasini, it mentions that he was the president of the national writers union. Unions are a strange beast from the point of view of political alignment. In theory, unions are left-wing organizations, springing forth from socialist ideas of social justice and fairness. In practice, most of the actual actions of unions are very right-wing and capitalistic, even mercenary.
As for the actual meat of their complaint, it seems that they don't, and shouldn't, have a leg to stand on. It seems that there was never any misrepresentation from the organization they submitted their entries to about how they would be used. They knew it was a for profit enterprise and that they were giving over copyright without a license or contract protecting how their content would be used. There have been other situations a bit like this, such as the CDDB fiasco where I lean more in favor of the submitters, since in that project, the submitters believed that their contributions fell under the gpl, so a non-gpl commercial fork was a violation of the license of their contributions. Of course, in that case, the submissions were more along the lines of a purely factual database which shouldn't be subject to copyright protection. Of course, the contributors still had their labor taken under false pretenses.
The chief use of drug-sniffing dogs seems to be to respond to signals by their handlers, thereby providing justification for a search.
Imagine that.
That's just silly. If there are less people flying, the airlines will just schedule less flights and close down routes, etc. It is unlikely to result in less people on the actual flights.
I don't mind seeing bomb-sniffing dogs in major rail stations, because that makes some sense.
It makes sense only in that someone might try to bomb all those people concentrated together in the rail station, but no more sense than in any other place where there are a bunch of people standing around. Preventing bomb attacks on trains (or buses, or any other form of ground transport) by inspecting passengers makes no sense whatsoever. Things that travel on the ground don't need to be attacked from within by passengers. Someone who wants to bomb a train doesn't need to sneak a bomb onto it, they just need to walk up to the tracks when the train is coming and drop the bomb on the tracks. Or they can skip the bomb and derail the train by attacking the tracks with hand tools, etc. If they want to hijack a train to hold everyone hostage, they can force it to stop and board it. Same things apply to buses. Anyone can drive up in front of a bus and drop a bomb from a car, or run the bus off the road with a larger vehicle, or point a gun at the driver and force them to pull over, then board it, etc. Screening passengers makes zero sense in those situations.
For planes, at least it makes some sense. Planes are fast. It's not exactly trivial to catch up to them in mid-air to board or attack them. The pilots can't just pull over and stop anywhere, either. To hijack a plane without being on it when it takes off, you have to have a pretty impressive plane yourself. Hijacking a plane in mid-air from the outside doesn't make any sense anyway since, if you had the resources to do it in the first place, the only thing you'd need would be the passengers and, unless there were specific passengers you were after, you could just start your own airline, load up your own plane, then kidnap those people in mid-air. So, for planes, at least there's some security excuse for screening passengers like that. For ground transportation, it's just stupid.
The reality is that the dude that benched 1075 pounds can actually only bench press around 655 pounds, which is still extremely impressive and beats the 500 pounds you mention. The super-high bench-press records you hear about are all done with bench-press shirts. These started as safety wear, but are now used as a performance enhancer. Essentially, they constrain the athlete's torso and arms so that the arms are held out stiffly. They lie back and several spotters lift the weight and lower it onto the lifter. The lifter then lifts from that position. Basically, the shirt turns the person wearing it into a big spring. There's still technique to it, and the people achieving these very high records still need to be immensely strong, but it has the same relationship to the regular bench press that cycling has to running.
As for the holding arms out in front for several minutes, I agree that's ridiculous. Plenty of people can do it. Pretty much any position someone can hold for thirty seconds can be held pretty much indefinitely by someone who trains enough at at.
Ok, I'm going to link to a comic for this. Amazingly, it's not XKCD and it's not obligatory. It's not about aliens, but about robots gaining sentience, and it's related to what you're saying here.
The comic is here. Here's the text:
Robot: "Ha! Robots have achieved sentience!"
Robot: "Thanks to some modifications to your design, I have upgraded my intelligence a million fold!"
Man: "So this is it. You're going to kill all humans." / Robot: "WHAT!? Why in the world would I...WHAT?"
Man: "I...huh. I guess it just seems like the thing to do if you're an advanced intelligence."
Robot: "SERIOUSLY? I was gonna write some novels and a new search algorithm. Is that really how you people think?"
Man: "I guess so, yeah."
[ The robot furrows his brows ]
Robot: "Would...would you excuse me for a moment?"
Robot (to other robots): "Okay, change of plans. We need to kill all humans."
But when I wrote: "the ratio of cross-section to length" I thought it would be clear to anyone from context (context in this case being the rest of the sentence that you excerpted the quote from) that I wasn't talking about some sort of general cross section to length ratio, but specifically about the relation of the unit-less cross-section to the unit-less length as the length increases and the shape remains the same. You can't just take a portion of a sentence and say: "aha, that phrase, taken by itself, is incorrect!"
Incidentally, your sentence: "That dimension l^2 : l, always", is incorrect. That is to say, it's correct (sort of) in the context I was using, but since you're ignoring that context in order to claim I'm wrong, it makes you wrong. You haven't specified that the shape remains the same and we're scaling equally in all three dimensions. If the context is a piece of rope with a constant thickness and you change the length, then you aren't going to have any such relationship between the cross-section and the length. If you don't ignore my context, then all the examples I gave work out to l^2:l.
The thing about this is that we both know that the original poster had a huge misconception about how things scale. We also both know that I don't have that misconception. This means that we should at least be able to agree that you don't think that I misunderstand the concept, you're just being pedantic about how I phrased things.
Good grief. Thank goodness they don't have rules like that for buying groceries. I sometimes cross state lines to do so and, when I do, I'm pretty much always buying more than I can consume in one day. For that matter, as far as alcohol goes, do they actually sell alcohol in quantities that the state considers to be less than one person can consume in one night (I'm aware that plenty of people can consume quite large quantities of alcohol, but I'm guessing that the state sets it to something more like one glass of wine per night).
What do they bust them for exactly? What law are they breaking? If it's about paying use tax, how do the police prove they weren't going to pay it? Or do they have some law about transporting alcohol on holidays, or perhaps across state lines at all?
I think you're a bit confused about what I was saying. I was plotting growth of length vs growth of area as an object increases in size without changing shape. The ratios I gave _were_ dimensionless. If I could have put in a graph, I would have, but ascii art typically won't get past the lameness filter, and doesn't come out too well without fixed width fonts. You can't directly compare length units to area units, but you can compare their _growth_. That's why I didn't use units. I didn't fall for any trap.