So, just for reference, how many times have you guys been brought to alert standby this year? I suspect a number much larger than "2".:) And, I'd suspect some bases are called up more often than others. You wouldn't exactly be called for a suspicious aircraft coming from Mexico towards Los Angeles.:)
if you lock the very reinforced flight door from the crew side and both crewmembers die or become incapacitated, you're pretty much screwed
There was some crappy TV show on recently that showed how to survive a disaster. What if something happened to the pilots (or if terrorists got into the cockpit). Some crappy scenario where someone in the passenger space needed to get into the pilot space because of an emergency.
They suggested taking the drink cart, and loading it up with absolutely as much stuff as you could. If two carts are available, take advantage of both of them. Canned drinks are heavy when you have a few hundred of them on a cart. A good running start, and (they suggested) the door would give way.
I don't really suggest trying it. I'd think it would be more practical to get the fat guy who's taking up 3 seats to rush the door.:)
That's the nice part about books. The authors can diverge from reality as much or as little as they want to.
A modern fighter fell through a hole in time? Would he know who to engage? How long did this last before he ran out of fuel? Where exactly do you pick up JetA during WWI? What happens when he runs out of ammo?
When I was flying out of Daytona for school, I was told, "Don't go over international waters without the proper flight plan, or you WILL have a fighter escort, and you WILL get the bill for their fuel". It was described as flying very slow (flaps down, nose way up, and enough throttle to just barely keep it in the air) The armed escort part isn't that bad. Paying for the fuel would really hurt. Pretty much, straying too far out, and then coming back in was easy to do if you weren't paying attention. If I remember right, you only have to go 10 miles out to be in trouble. I'd suspect (but I never tried it), that the military has a buffer where they just track and ignore you.
A few airlines (a very few) have cockpit radio piped back to the seats. The flights where I've heard it, it's always been more interesting than listing to the radio. There's always chatter of some sort. It's not idle chatter, but normal communications.
If I recall correctly, there's a selector knob above the pilots, so they can choose between PA, Radio, or Intercom (between pilots). The better excuse would have been that they left it switched to the wrong one.
I once heard the "We're on final approach and will be at the gate in Houston in about 15 minutes", where they had the radio selector set wrong. That got a laugh out of the other pilots, who started mocking him, and asking if they really needed to go to Houston. That lasted for about a minute. ATC encouraged them to behave, without berating anyone.
They really should have at least had one ear on, so they could hear if ATC wanted to tell them something. Imagine that, getting instructions from the ground. Hmmm, "Hey guys, big storm ahead, change your heading to 180", or "Clear the airspace, aircraft in distress coming through" Oh wait, THEY were the aircraft in distress, off course, with no radio response.
Now, that would be a cool trick. He's been dead since 1961. Are you a medium, or can you just hear him rolling over in his grave every time I post with that tagline on?:) If you're channeling the dead, can you ask Tesla to step up, I'd love to spend some time talking to him. Well, him or George Carlin. Whoever can come by.:)
I was just trying to find something with a Foxnews URL, that was at least close to the topic, regardless of the spin.
But, you can look at it more logically. The good folks at FoxNews are always either heavily biased, or completely wrong. So, an article stating the EotW isn't coming is therefore incorrect.:)
I can tell I've been up just a little too long. I spun through an amazing variety of imagery in my head. It was just enough to make me fall out of my chair.
Cat in a plexiglass box, with a pump pulling 22 in/hg vacuum.
Cat in an upright bagless vacuum cleaner. (even in my imagination, it's a tight fit)
Cat in an airlock on the ISS. Explosive decompression follows.
Cat in an airlock on the ISS. Slow decompression follows, slowly.
Space Cat! Flying through space. Oh, this cat would like a vacuum, wouldn't it?
So, Slashdot Entertainment, Slashdot Idle, will be gone.(1) lolcats will be exterminated. Twitter will flutter away quietly. 4chan will have imploded. FoxNews will have outfoxed themselves with a false prediction of the collapse of the intertubewebnet (off by 30 days at that!), and the newsroom will spend the following days blaming the liberals, but no one outside the newsroom will know due to the demise of the Internet. (3):)
New industries will boom. People will rediscover interpersonal interaction. Bars will thrive on singles night (as a million lonely Slashdotters hit the streets in their pathetic attempts to get laid, that will fail on or off the 'net.) (5)
I wouldn't stress too much. The future has already reported in to say the Internet is alive, well, and serving it's designed purpose. (6)
He missed out on the concepts of erosion also. Rain, winds, tides, and... oh, what are those called... those pesky living things all over the earth with the silly concept that they are the most important species on the planet and can modify it any time they want to suit their needs. Oh ya, humans. They'd fill in a crater as a landfill, or to build a new housing development, or a new highway. They have no respect for anything.
I thought the mutation would be a given, due to the radiation specifically mentioned in the article.:) I'll assume the ejection of the earth debris, now known as "The Moon" had something resembling an atmosphere, water, and gravity at least for a period while the worms adapted to their new environment.:)
Cryptozoology meets xenobiology! Wheee!
Cryptoxenozoology? Time to doctor up a new Wikipedia page for a new study. I have a terrible urge to make up a fully accredited university just so I can get a degree in Cryptoxenozoology. Bah, those damned Astrobiologists won't have anything on me!:)
Um..No I go from my cube to my bike to my apartment with my wife. The windows are normally open and I have a great view of the mountains. We spend our vacations camping (as in tents, fire and bacon, not FSPs) I couldn't live with DVD's because I've figured out the end by the first five minus of most films. You might be able to handle it but it would drive me nuts. -- We are the Borg...
Sorry I had to quote the whole thing, but I had to bold it appropriately. Wouldn't Borg not have emotions, nor care about the pesky things like what the view looks like.
Or more based in reality, wouldn't someone who's enough of a Sci Fi fan to quote a secondary species of a spinoff of a long running show, be stereotypically locked in a darkened room with computer and TV, and not much else. Well, caffeine and nicotine are other predominant items, but.... I just quit smoking.
Nope, the US phenomenon is that it's a country full of litigious bastards. The American civil court system has evolved into a system where anyone can sue anyone else for anything they want for as much as they want. Once it's in the court system, it's a gamble to if you're going to win or lose. If you're in front of a judge only, you have a 50/50 shot at a fair trial. If you're in front of a jury, all fairness is out the window, and it's up to which slimy lawyer can present their side of the case better. A good ambulance chaser can make it so you can spill a hot cup of coffee on yourself, and sue (and win against) a multibillion dollar corp for making it too hot, the top not secured well enough, etc, etc, even though they'd been serving their coffee that way for about half a century, and billions of cups had been served the same way up until that time.
A bit more topical, if a guy flirts with a girl in an office here... Wait, I have to stop there, to show the insanity. flirting can be construed as any sort of communication. It's not in how he means it, it's in how SHE takes it. Case in point, which was discussed a couple weeks ago between some friends (one of whom was involved as a witness). The guy said "you look nice today". All witnesses confirmed that. No physical contact. No strange facial or other physical movements. No implication other than the girl involved looked nice. She didn't sue the guy, since he barely made enough to pay his bills. She sued the company. Her lawyer took the case on contingency (he only made money when he wins). After a year in court, the company finally settled for $2,000,000. Why? Because a guy said "you look nice today" to a girl. Why does it work? Because anyone can sue anyone.
If you can keep it in court long enough, one side or the other may just settle. If you can get a jury trial, it's a coin toss.
This, coming from a guy sitting in his mothers basement, with the lights dimmed, so his visible universe exists within the bubble of the dim glow of his monitors?
Who are we kidding? Most of us work in cube farms or datacenters (or both). In either one, the only way we'd ever see a freakin' rock pool would be to Google It.
You go from your isolated work environment, to your mode of transport where you're exposed to a primarily utilitarian environment (i.e., roads), to our (for most of us) utilitarian homes. People survive very nicely like this.
Give me a room with a desk, bed, couch, TV (and a serious supply of DVD's), a supply of food more than long enough for the duration, or a sustainable supply (i.e., hydroponic garden), and the algae pit for a nice fresh supply of oxygen, and I'd be more than content.
It's possible to have an Internet connection. They'd just need to simulate a serious lag. Probably limit it to FidoNet style email and FREQ, and accept the fact that any communications may get there eventually, but don't hold your breath.
If you get a sufficiently sized group with at least one person of each sex, and they are confined in a space long enough (like a simulated spaceship), there will be sex going on soon enough.
Hell, they've made all kinds of laws about sex in the workplace. Anyone who's ever worked in an office should be able to recount their sexual harassment training. Regardless of the training, office romances start, and some of them never leave the office for the cheap model down the street.
(memories flashing back of the copy room; break room, CEO's desk after hours.... oh, I could go on...)
Just because they're nerds (ya, ya, we all are, because most of us would volunteer to go) doesn't mean that they don't get a twichin' below the belt, and naughty things happen. After the first few hundred days, even the ugly people would start lookin' good.:) You may not want to see the porno of that though.
Are your numbers off on the excuse too? You averaged 33.34mph? A 800 mile highway trip should be easily accomplished in 13.3 hours, considering 3 fuel stops. If it was 400 miles each way, that wasn't the best plan, to drive 6 hours to spend 12, and turn right around. Always leave relaxation time at your destinations.:)
Do you really want a full evaluation of which networks have done how much damage towards spewing false information to keep their ratings up? Aw, who am I kidding, that's traditional for virtually all media outlets.
But hey, we all know Fox has done a better job at misreporting than any of their peers for several years now.:)
Hey now, scare mongering doesn't work if people figure out that it's only there to scare people.
Nope, this isn't the 1918 influenza pandemic. This is a cold, that will make an awful lot of people sick, just like happens every year, and some people will die, just like every year. The chances are really in your favor, unless there are other circumstances for the individual to consider, that you may feel like you want to die, like when you're really sick any year, but the odds of death or permanent injury are insanely small. There's a higher risk of death from a slip and fall accident in the home, or from an auto accident.
But hey, the gov't says we should be scared, Fox News says we should be scared, I'm shaking in my shoes.
But, that's not the scenario that we're in. We're looking at billions for the vaccines, and tens or hundreds saved. Not thousands. not millions. With the incomplete testing done, and many assumptions being made (hey, it's similar to something else, it oughta act the same).
According to the CDC, the vaccine can cause Guillain-Barré Syndrome in 1 of 100,000 treated, or roughly 3,000 people in the United States (by the 2008 US Census population estimate).
The CDC also shows a relationship between egg allergies and possibly fatal side effects from the vaccination. They simply state that if you have an egg allergy, do NOT take the vaccine. That's approx 2.5% of the population under 5 years old. That's ok, the population under 5yo is only 21,000,000 (again, 2008 US Census est), which would bring the possible death toll to 525,000.
So, we're up to 528,000 possibly dead from the vaccine.
The CDC also indicates "Life-threatening allergic reactions to vaccines are very rare. If they do occur, it is usually within a few minutes to a few hours after the shot is given." No numbers are included here, and I wasn't able to find any.
"Very rare" is a wonderful number. They use the same term for the Yellow Fever vaccine, which is estimated to be fatal in 1 in 400,000.
The US has started using a combined number in reporting H1N1 cases, so their national number of 928 doesn't give a good indication of how many were really H1N1 related. Still, 928 untreated and dead, versus hundreds of thousands who could die from the vaccine (a small percentage of the total population, but still more than necessary) makes for an unjustified number.
I'm not gathering these numbers from any fear mongering source. I've researched these numbers from trustworthy sources (hmm, like the CDC themselves). The answer of "shut up and trust the government" is never a good answer. Question everything, and you won't be made a fool of. Well, in this case, you may not end up dead from the cure.
I may have seen the same thing, except it was a concept when I saw it. They had done the balloon trip a few times, and the airplane was their next plan. I didn't know that they had done it. Unfortunately, I don't have the link either.
Google is your friend, and can help you find the answer. Ok, maybe not a specific answer, but pretty damned close.:)
I suggest 10 24' diameter balloons, with breakaway tethers should one pop (no need to carry the extra weight of a dead balloon). If that can launch a compact car into LEO, it should be able to take a 6 year old high enough where you won't have to hear him scream. Well, at least until hypoxia kicks in, then it doesn't matter.
Make sure you strap a camera to him, a little something like the Blair Witch Project, except in the daylight, with the only backdrop being the sky. Well, you may have the incidental aircraft in the background. I think a 6 year old and 10 24' balloons may ruin a perfectly good flight. What exactly put that Airbus A320 down in the Hudson? I think the whole bird thing was just a conspiracy to cover up the fact that it was a flock of school kids tethered to weather balloons with cameras strapped to their asses. Oh, imagine the bad press when you have to admit that your A320 just ingested a flock of school children in the engines. Oh, and the mess on the ground. I'd hate to be walking down the street just to get splattered by that. I thought it was nasty when PETA threw red paint on me for wearing a leather jacket? That would just be disgusting.
And as a side note, based on those numbers, it would take about 80 24' diameter helium balloons to lift a 40' city bus. *THAT* would be something hilarious to see, but I'd hate to be under the landing zone. You know eventually they'll pop or leak. Some famous guy said "what comes up must come down", but I think he may have been full of shit. A flying 40' city bus could leave a little bit of a crater. I don't want to think of the logistics of filling the 80 balloons simultaneously though. That's a lot of helium. Just imagine if you got on the bus thinking "Oh, I'm just going to work", and then find that your bus is heading up towards 100,000 feet, and the driver keeps saying "Sir, please stay behind the white line." White line my ass, I'm on a flying bus!
Maybe sometimes you shouldn't ask the questions, because they may be answered and then some.:)
Actually, this was adjusted years ago. Unfortunately, it isn't to the advantage of the Internet at large. "Internationalized Domain Names" are allowed, and translated with some fuzzy methods. If the domain itself can have UTF-8 characters in it, why not other components of the URL?
I won't be pleased with the whole thing until until computers start shipping with full UTF-8 (or UTF-16, or UTF-32) keyboards, where I can fluently touch type between different character sets without switching codepages or whatever. Oh, that won't happen any time soon, will it. Not without one mighty big keyboard.:)
Slashdot Mirror
So, just for reference, how many times have you guys been brought to alert standby this year? I suspect a number much larger than "2". :) And, I'd suspect some bases are called up more often than others. You wouldn't exactly be called for a suspicious aircraft coming from Mexico towards Los Angeles. :)
There was some crappy TV show on recently that showed how to survive a disaster. What if something happened to the pilots (or if terrorists got into the cockpit). Some crappy scenario where someone in the passenger space needed to get into the pilot space because of an emergency.
They suggested taking the drink cart, and loading it up with absolutely as much stuff as you could. If two carts are available, take advantage of both of them. Canned drinks are heavy when you have a few hundred of them on a cart. A good running start, and (they suggested) the door would give way.
I don't really suggest trying it. I'd think it would be more practical to get the fat guy who's taking up 3 seats to rush the door. :)
That's the nice part about books. The authors can diverge from reality as much or as little as they want to.
A modern fighter fell through a hole in time? Would he know who to engage? How long did this last before he ran out of fuel? Where exactly do you pick up JetA during WWI? What happens when he runs out of ammo?
When I was flying out of Daytona for school, I was told, "Don't go over international waters without the proper flight plan, or you WILL have a fighter escort, and you WILL get the bill for their fuel". It was described as flying very slow (flaps down, nose way up, and enough throttle to just barely keep it in the air) The armed escort part isn't that bad. Paying for the fuel would really hurt. Pretty much, straying too far out, and then coming back in was easy to do if you weren't paying attention. If I remember right, you only have to go 10 miles out to be in trouble. I'd suspect (but I never tried it), that the military has a buffer where they just track and ignore you.
A few airlines (a very few) have cockpit radio piped back to the seats. The flights where I've heard it, it's always been more interesting than listing to the radio. There's always chatter of some sort. It's not idle chatter, but normal communications.
If I recall correctly, there's a selector knob above the pilots, so they can choose between PA, Radio, or Intercom (between pilots). The better excuse would have been that they left it switched to the wrong one.
I once heard the "We're on final approach and will be at the gate in Houston in about 15 minutes", where they had the radio selector set wrong. That got a laugh out of the other pilots, who started mocking him, and asking if they really needed to go to Houston. That lasted for about a minute. ATC encouraged them to behave, without berating anyone.
They really should have at least had one ear on, so they could hear if ATC wanted to tell them something. Imagine that, getting instructions from the ground. Hmmm, "Hey guys, big storm ahead, change your heading to 180", or "Clear the airspace, aircraft in distress coming through" Oh wait, THEY were the aircraft in distress, off course, with no radio response.
Now, that would be a cool trick. He's been dead since 1961. Are you a medium, or can you just hear him rolling over in his grave every time I post with that tagline on? :) If you're channeling the dead, can you ask Tesla to step up, I'd love to spend some time talking to him. Well, him or George Carlin. Whoever can come by. :)
Wow, I've had people suggest +1, -1, but never a +! . Is that "plus not", or "plus exclamation"? :)
I was just trying to find something with a Foxnews URL, that was at least close to the topic, regardless of the spin.
But, you can look at it more logically. The good folks at FoxNews are always either heavily biased, or completely wrong. So, an article stating the EotW isn't coming is therefore incorrect. :)
I can tell I've been up just a little too long. I spun through an amazing variety of imagery in my head. It was just enough to make me fall out of my chair.
Cat in a plexiglass box, with a pump pulling 22 in/hg vacuum.
Cat in an upright bagless vacuum cleaner. (even in my imagination, it's a tight fit)
Cat in an airlock on the ISS. Explosive decompression follows.
Cat in an airlock on the ISS. Slow decompression follows, slowly.
Space Cat! Flying through space. Oh, this cat would like a vacuum, wouldn't it?
Ha! Cat in a box!
Sorry. :)
So, Slashdot Entertainment, Slashdot Idle, will be gone.(1) lolcats will be exterminated. Twitter will flutter away quietly. 4chan will have imploded. FoxNews will have outfoxed themselves with a false prediction of the collapse of the intertubewebnet (off by 30 days at that!), and the newsroom will spend the following days blaming the liberals, but no one outside the newsroom will know due to the demise of the Internet. (3) :)
New industries will boom. People will rediscover interpersonal interaction. Bars will thrive on singles night (as a million lonely Slashdotters hit the streets in their pathetic attempts to get laid, that will fail on or off the 'net.) (5)
I wouldn't stress too much. The future has already reported in to say the Internet is alive, well, and serving it's designed purpose. (6)
Footnotes:
1) It went poof, and everyone moved on peacefully
2) This space was intentionally left blank.
3) This actually has been happening for 2 weeks, but no one has noticed. Check back in 16 days.
4) 404 - Footnote not found. The FRL you requested was not found. Please check the number and dial again.
5) Who am I to argue with a Slashdot story on the subject?
6) Confirmed report from the relatively distant future
He missed out on the concepts of erosion also. Rain, winds, tides, and... oh, what are those called... those pesky living things all over the earth with the silly concept that they are the most important species on the planet and can modify it any time they want to suit their needs. Oh ya, humans. They'd fill in a crater as a landfill, or to build a new housing development, or a new highway. They have no respect for anything.
I thought the mutation would be a given, due to the radiation specifically mentioned in the article. :) I'll assume the ejection of the earth debris, now known as "The Moon" had something resembling an atmosphere, water, and gravity at least for a period while the worms adapted to their new environment. :)
Cryptozoology meets xenobiology! Wheee!
Cryptoxenozoology? Time to doctor up a new Wikipedia page for a new study. I have a terrible urge to make up a fully accredited university just so I can get a degree in Cryptoxenozoology. Bah, those damned Astrobiologists won't have anything on me! :)
Sorry I had to quote the whole thing, but I had to bold it appropriately. Wouldn't Borg not have emotions, nor care about the pesky things like what the view looks like.
Or more based in reality, wouldn't someone who's enough of a Sci Fi fan to quote a secondary species of a spinoff of a long running show, be stereotypically locked in a darkened room with computer and TV, and not much else. Well, caffeine and nicotine are other predominant items, but.... I just quit smoking.
--
Nomen mihi Legio est, quia multi sumus.
Nope, the US phenomenon is that it's a country full of litigious bastards. The American civil court system has evolved into a system where anyone can sue anyone else for anything they want for as much as they want. Once it's in the court system, it's a gamble to if you're going to win or lose. If you're in front of a judge only, you have a 50/50 shot at a fair trial. If you're in front of a jury, all fairness is out the window, and it's up to which slimy lawyer can present their side of the case better. A good ambulance chaser can make it so you can spill a hot cup of coffee on yourself, and sue (and win against) a multibillion dollar corp for making it too hot, the top not secured well enough, etc, etc, even though they'd been serving their coffee that way for about half a century, and billions of cups had been served the same way up until that time.
A bit more topical, if a guy flirts with a girl in an office here... Wait, I have to stop there, to show the insanity. flirting can be construed as any sort of communication. It's not in how he means it, it's in how SHE takes it. Case in point, which was discussed a couple weeks ago between some friends (one of whom was involved as a witness). The guy said "you look nice today". All witnesses confirmed that. No physical contact. No strange facial or other physical movements. No implication other than the girl involved looked nice. She didn't sue the guy, since he barely made enough to pay his bills. She sued the company. Her lawyer took the case on contingency (he only made money when he wins). After a year in court, the company finally settled for $2,000,000. Why? Because a guy said "you look nice today" to a girl. Why does it work? Because anyone can sue anyone.
If you can keep it in court long enough, one side or the other may just settle. If you can get a jury trial, it's a coin toss.
Where do you live? I want to move there.
This, coming from a guy sitting in his mothers basement, with the lights dimmed, so his visible universe exists within the bubble of the dim glow of his monitors?
Who are we kidding? Most of us work in cube farms or datacenters (or both). In either one, the only way we'd ever see a freakin' rock pool would be to Google It.
You go from your isolated work environment, to your mode of transport where you're exposed to a primarily utilitarian environment (i.e., roads), to our (for most of us) utilitarian homes. People survive very nicely like this.
Give me a room with a desk, bed, couch, TV (and a serious supply of DVD's), a supply of food more than long enough for the duration, or a sustainable supply (i.e., hydroponic garden), and the algae pit for a nice fresh supply of oxygen, and I'd be more than content.
It's possible to have an Internet connection. They'd just need to simulate a serious lag. Probably limit it to FidoNet style email and FREQ, and accept the fact that any communications may get there eventually, but don't hold your breath.
I hereby invoke Rule #34.
Please cease this thread, there's nothing new to discuss. We've all already seen it before.
But just in case, please provide links.
(and this is just for fun)
Psst. Wanna know a secret?
If you get a sufficiently sized group with at least one person of each sex, and they are confined in a space long enough (like a simulated spaceship), there will be sex going on soon enough.
Hell, they've made all kinds of laws about sex in the workplace. Anyone who's ever worked in an office should be able to recount their sexual harassment training. Regardless of the training, office romances start, and some of them never leave the office for the cheap model down the street.
(memories flashing back of the copy room; break room, CEO's desk after hours.... oh, I could go on...)
Just because they're nerds (ya, ya, we all are, because most of us would volunteer to go) doesn't mean that they don't get a twichin' below the belt, and naughty things happen. After the first few hundred days, even the ugly people would start lookin' good. :) You may not want to see the porno of that though.
Are your numbers off on the excuse too? You averaged 33.34mph? A 800 mile highway trip should be easily accomplished in 13.3 hours, considering 3 fuel stops. If it was 400 miles each way, that wasn't the best plan, to drive 6 hours to spend 12, and turn right around. Always leave relaxation time at your destinations. :)
Do you really want a full evaluation of which networks have done how much damage towards spewing false information to keep their ratings up? Aw, who am I kidding, that's traditional for virtually all media outlets.
But hey, we all know Fox has done a better job at misreporting than any of their peers for several years now. :)
Hey now, scare mongering doesn't work if people figure out that it's only there to scare people.
Nope, this isn't the 1918 influenza pandemic. This is a cold, that will make an awful lot of people sick, just like happens every year, and some people will die, just like every year. The chances are really in your favor, unless there are other circumstances for the individual to consider, that you may feel like you want to die, like when you're really sick any year, but the odds of death or permanent injury are insanely small. There's a higher risk of death from a slip and fall accident in the home, or from an auto accident.
But hey, the gov't says we should be scared, Fox News says we should be scared, I'm shaking in my shoes.
But, that's not the scenario that we're in. We're looking at billions for the vaccines, and tens or hundreds saved. Not thousands. not millions. With the incomplete testing done, and many assumptions being made (hey, it's similar to something else, it oughta act the same).
According to the CDC, the vaccine can cause Guillain-Barré Syndrome in 1 of 100,000 treated, or roughly 3,000 people in the United States (by the 2008 US Census population estimate).
The CDC also shows a relationship between egg allergies and possibly fatal side effects from the vaccination. They simply state that if you have an egg allergy, do NOT take the vaccine. That's approx 2.5% of the population under 5 years old. That's ok, the population under 5yo is only 21,000,000 (again, 2008 US Census est), which would bring the possible death toll to 525,000.
So, we're up to 528,000 possibly dead from the vaccine.
The CDC also indicates "Life-threatening allergic reactions to vaccines are very rare. If they do occur, it is usually within a few minutes to a few hours after the shot is given." No numbers are included here, and I wasn't able to find any.
"Very rare" is a wonderful number. They use the same term for the Yellow Fever vaccine, which is estimated to be fatal in 1 in 400,000.
The US has started using a combined number in reporting H1N1 cases, so their national number of 928 doesn't give a good indication of how many were really H1N1 related. Still, 928 untreated and dead, versus hundreds of thousands who could die from the vaccine (a small percentage of the total population, but still more than necessary) makes for an unjustified number.
I'm not gathering these numbers from any fear mongering source. I've researched these numbers from trustworthy sources (hmm, like the CDC themselves). The answer of "shut up and trust the government" is never a good answer. Question everything, and you won't be made a fool of. Well, in this case, you may not end up dead from the cure.
I may have seen the same thing, except it was a concept when I saw it. They had done the balloon trip a few times, and the airplane was their next plan. I didn't know that they had done it. Unfortunately, I don't have the link either.
I say send a UAV up with it. Float it up, and then see how far you can fly/glide from 100k feet. :)
Ahh, the ways we could piss off the FAA. I know some of the regulations, and that's half of why I haven't built half the stuff I want to. :)
Google is your friend, and can help you find the answer. Ok, maybe not a specific answer, but pretty damned close. :)
I suggest 10 24' diameter balloons, with breakaway tethers should one pop (no need to carry the extra weight of a dead balloon). If that can launch a compact car into LEO, it should be able to take a 6 year old high enough where you won't have to hear him scream. Well, at least until hypoxia kicks in, then it doesn't matter.
Make sure you strap a camera to him, a little something like the Blair Witch Project, except in the daylight, with the only backdrop being the sky. Well, you may have the incidental aircraft in the background. I think a 6 year old and 10 24' balloons may ruin a perfectly good flight. What exactly put that Airbus A320 down in the Hudson? I think the whole bird thing was just a conspiracy to cover up the fact that it was a flock of school kids tethered to weather balloons with cameras strapped to their asses. Oh, imagine the bad press when you have to admit that your A320 just ingested a flock of school children in the engines. Oh, and the mess on the ground. I'd hate to be walking down the street just to get splattered by that. I thought it was nasty when PETA threw red paint on me for wearing a leather jacket? That would just be disgusting.
And as a side note, based on those numbers, it would take about 80 24' diameter helium balloons to lift a 40' city bus. *THAT* would be something hilarious to see, but I'd hate to be under the landing zone. You know eventually they'll pop or leak. Some famous guy said "what comes up must come down", but I think he may have been full of shit. A flying 40' city bus could leave a little bit of a crater. I don't want to think of the logistics of filling the 80 balloons simultaneously though. That's a lot of helium. Just imagine if you got on the bus thinking "Oh, I'm just going to work", and then find that your bus is heading up towards 100,000 feet, and the driver keeps saying "Sir, please stay behind the white line." White line my ass, I'm on a flying bus!
Maybe sometimes you shouldn't ask the questions, because they may be answered and then some. :)
Actually, this was adjusted years ago. Unfortunately, it isn't to the advantage of the Internet at large. "Internationalized Domain Names" are allowed, and translated with some fuzzy methods. If the domain itself can have UTF-8 characters in it, why not other components of the URL?
I won't be pleased with the whole thing until until computers start shipping with full UTF-8 (or UTF-16, or UTF-32) keyboards, where I can fluently touch type between different character sets without switching codepages or whatever. Oh, that won't happen any time soon, will it. Not without one mighty big keyboard. :)