If Nasa had been up front about the shuttle's limitations, it probably never would have been approved
But this is not explanation or even apology - this is the essence! Once you start being deceitful, you have to continue doing so - the pretense must be kept alive by steady flow of bulshit. That does not square well with developing safe reliable economical dependable space vehicle. If NASA top guys sold congress a balooney shuttle project, it is their fault, not the fault of congresmen. You may dislike these elected politicians but they actualy represent the taxpayers and NASA brass does not. Supression of diasgreeable information from engineers by NASA management (to save money, reduce delays or to improve the agency image) is exactly what brought the two shuttles down! It was the discrepancy between the original grandiose promises and the technical reality. The technical problems needs to be identified and fixed, not supressed for sake of PR. Problem with the manned space flights is that is a very overprized shabby science done for sake of institutional legacy. Guys from JPL should take over NASA, the Washington NASA brass should be retired.
It is hard to buy a large quantity of boron-free graphite. But plastics are known to be excellent moderators. Enuf of these cubes and with some natural(non-enriched)uranium and the agents of international terrorism could build their own nuclear reactor, even here in US!
The surface would be just as smooth if the hydrocarbons froze into waxy stuff like parafine. Waxes flow over time (try to prop a thin long candle horizontaly for few weeks to see how it bends) so the craters would get filled not only by melt after impact but also by creep-flow of the solid.
KGB and few other east-european agencies were training their high-profile spies to beat lie detector since mid 50s. They have them hooked on a lie detector and trained them to have "embarassed" response on an emotionaly neutral question. This way the baseline (neutral response) was set high enough to cover a real response. But method took some training and it was not fail-proof (some agents got nervous or tired in a real interrogation, and were less apt at faking their response)
Nuclear fission isn't evil. It isn't especially dangerous. It won't mutate your kids
I knew it, one cannot trust nuclear technology or a government agency. I mutated my kids in the lab for a fraction of the cost (all done by myself, Igor only helped to mix the chemicals)
And perpetum mobile is even cheaper and cleaner. Self-sustaining, zero imision, made from wood and other natural materials. If the government funded a research program on 1/10 the scale of the Manhattan project into perpetum mobile, we would have won our war on thermodynamics.
No - but it can be attached to leather goddesses. (The are terrible. The only concievable defense against them are tit-seeking missiles.)
Re:Doesn't produce own proteins outside of a cell
on
A Truly Alive Virus
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· Score: 1
Mimivirus does contain a lot of weird, weird stuff for a virus, including a number of DNA repair proteins, and truly bizarre, protein folding chaperones and a proline cis-trans isomerase. Doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, but it'll be interesting to find out why it has them
Mimi is packed for a long trip. He knows, where he has his towel.
1) This is simple, non-contact method but it relies on a spectral signature general for nitramines and nitro-aromatics. Some chemicals used in parfumery (artificial musk scent) have nitro groups - so there will be false positives.
2) This method will not work for acetonperoxide (the super-unstable explosive prefered by Palestinian suicide bombers and the wannabe shoe-bomber Reid - because acetonperoxide does not contain any nitros) and for fertilizer bombs (no volatile nitroorganics there).
3)Also, this detection method can be fooled by masking the narrow fluorescence signature of nitro explosives by adding other chemicals with broad fluorescence to confuse the instrument into thinking "this is a false positive". All it takes for the bad guys to get hold of the detection device and experiment with some common household, drugstore or paintshop materials to find the right stuff to spray onto their luggage making it immune for this detection. It may well be that a laundry softener or moskyto repellent can threw this techique off.
4) The currently used swab-tests/mass spectrometry analysis at the airports recognize very characteristic ion mass (of the parent molecule and its fragments) - the signal pattern unique for each explosive, so this masspec method is harder to fool and less likely to give false positives.
1)Very useful. I think simple test kits can be made - much like the pregnancy test strips - for consumers to check all kinds of stuff. ("Test your partner within 20 minutes") Or at least for the grocery/fast food stores to use on the stuff they are selling. 2)Fluorescence, not flourescence. (Americans also cannot spel aluminium.)
About a month or two ago, some fishermen off the coast of Alaska found a penguin. This is the first record of a penguin in the Northern Hemisphere. The fishermen hauled in their nets and there he was! The species was identified as a Humboldt Penguin. These penguins live at the southern tip of Chile and Argentina, about 8,000 to 9,000 miles away from home. Audubon Society
Doing something bad gives instant recognition and bragging rights. He was not in it for getting his rent paid. (He is just making excuses now.) The best punisment would be to sue his ass in the next few years - a civil lawsuit for financial damages so that his posessions could be taken away and then criminal charges to plea-bargain him into working for feds (as a form of comunity service). He could be useful for catching people like him.
Whats the difference between building a porn site and a site for any old company? As long as they're not promoting anything illegal or dangerous who cares what your clients do?
You are exaggerating wildly. I work with sodium azide frequently and it is not terribly dangerous or poisonous material. Extremely toxic is stuff that will make you ill (dead) from ingestion/inhalation of tiny amounts - like from having few whifs of vapor, licking your fingers or spilling few drops on your sleeve. Or something that accumulates over repeated exposure. If the tox from rat scales to human, 27mg/kg 50% mortality means that a grown man (80kg) would have to ingest something like 2g of the stuff for having a 50% chance of getting stiff. It is hard to ingest such amount without doing it on purpose. You can find much worse stuff than azide in a normal lab.
As far as not using metalic spatulas for sodium azide, this is way overboard. Copper and other heavy metal azides are very impact sensitive but their formation because of stainless steel spatula is not an issue. Bulk storage (preferably not in a metal drum) is another thing.
Every bottle of chemicals in US has wildly exaggerated warnings because of manufacturers liability. Acetylosalicylic acid (=aspirin) has warning: toxic-target nerves, thyroid. Benzaldehyde (food and fragrance almond flavor, present in cherry cola, soap and champoo) is labeled highly toxic if you buy it as chemical. Bottle of pure sand has warning "this material is known to state of California to cause cancer" etc.
You should see the size of plaster waste mountains currently produced by power plants because of required sulfur dioxide removal from emissions. (The shitiest brown coal has maybe 1% of sulfur) The sulfur dioxide removal process uses a lot of limestone powder which makes the people living near the plants and limestone quaries not happy - dust, transpotration noise, etc. And the whole damned thing is not only dirty but also quite expensive to run.
Now you would want to sequest CO2 as well - by using ground silicates (considerably harder to grind than than limestone) in more than hundred times larger quantities.
Basic chemistry should not be used to prop up a wishful thinking.
1)Czech Budweiser is sold in US as "Czechvar" (at Trader's Joe, I think) because of the trademark dispute. It is strong and good. Bit on the sweeter side amongst lagers.
2) There is Hydrogen-"carbonated" beer available in Japan. You voice will sound very funny high for short while if you breathe a low viscosity gas like hydrogen or helium. The purpose of hydrogen in this beer is to alow guys singing the woman parts in Karaoke.
Slashdot Mirror
the locals are trying to make this thing go away faster (it limps, it jerks, it runs over their bunnies)
Geeks have brain. Here's what is lacking:
If Nasa had been up front about the shuttle's limitations, it probably never would have been approved
But this is not explanation or even apology - this is the essence! Once you start being deceitful, you have to continue doing so - the pretense must be kept alive by steady flow of bulshit. That does not square well with developing safe reliable economical dependable space vehicle. If NASA top guys sold congress a balooney shuttle project, it is their fault, not the fault of congresmen. You may dislike these elected politicians but they actualy represent the taxpayers and NASA brass does not. Supression of diasgreeable information from engineers by NASA management (to save money, reduce delays or to improve the agency image) is exactly what brought the two shuttles down! It was the discrepancy between the original grandiose promises and the technical reality. The technical problems needs to be identified and fixed, not supressed for sake of PR. Problem with the manned space flights is that is a very overprized shabby science done for sake of institutional legacy. Guys from JPL should take over NASA, the Washington NASA brass should be retired.
It is hard to buy a large quantity of boron-free graphite. But plastics are known to be excellent moderators. Enuf of these cubes and with some natural(non-enriched)uranium and the agents of international terrorism could build their own nuclear reactor, even here in US!
The surface would be just as smooth if the hydrocarbons froze into waxy stuff like parafine. Waxes flow over time (try to prop a thin long candle horizontaly for few weeks to see how it bends) so the craters would get filled not only by melt after impact but also by creep-flow of the solid.
And the other real possibility is that Tucson suburbs are populated by retired aliens.
There's a trend developing here in Quebec (since about 2 years) where dumb (absurd and bad) humor = good humor... Is it the same way everywhere else?
By everywhere else - do you actualy mean the rest of Canada?
seriously, I have friends that do collect lame and unfunny humor - and the stuff can be pretty hillarious
KGB and few other east-european agencies were training their high-profile spies to beat lie detector since mid 50s. They have them hooked on a lie detector and trained them to have "embarassed" response on an emotionaly neutral question. This way the baseline (neutral response) was set high enough to cover a real response. But method took some training and it was not fail-proof (some agents got nervous or tired in a real interrogation, and were less apt at faking their response)
Nuclear fission isn't evil. It isn't especially dangerous. It won't mutate your kids
I knew it, one cannot trust nuclear technology or a government agency. I mutated my kids in the lab for a fraction of the cost (all done by myself, Igor only helped to mix the chemicals)
And perpetum mobile is even cheaper and cleaner. Self-sustaining, zero imision, made from wood and other natural materials. If the government funded a research program on 1/10 the scale of the Manhattan project into perpetum mobile, we would have won our war on thermodynamics.
Any other programmers/computer people find that they can play poker better than the average person because of their computer experience?"
A geek can play above average in a poker game against computer because he can easily read the machine facial expression
No - but it can be attached to leather goddesses. (The are terrible. The only concievable defense against them are tit-seeking missiles.)
Mimivirus does contain a lot of weird, weird stuff for a virus, including a number of DNA repair proteins, and truly bizarre, protein folding chaperones and a proline cis-trans isomerase. Doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, but it'll be interesting to find out why it has them
Mimi is packed for a long trip. He knows, where he has his towel.
1) This is simple, non-contact method but it relies on a spectral signature general for nitramines and nitro-aromatics. Some chemicals used in parfumery (artificial musk scent) have nitro groups - so there will be false positives.
2) This method will not work for acetonperoxide (the super-unstable explosive prefered by Palestinian suicide bombers and the wannabe shoe-bomber Reid - because acetonperoxide does not contain any nitros) and for fertilizer bombs (no volatile nitroorganics there).
3)Also, this detection method can be fooled by masking the narrow fluorescence signature of nitro explosives by adding other chemicals with broad fluorescence to confuse the instrument into thinking "this is a false positive". All it takes for the bad guys to get hold of the detection device and experiment with some common household, drugstore or paintshop materials to find the right stuff to spray onto their luggage making it immune for this detection. It may well be that a laundry softener or moskyto repellent can threw this techique off.
4) The currently used swab-tests/mass spectrometry analysis at the airports recognize very characteristic ion mass (of the parent molecule and its fragments) - the signal pattern unique for each explosive, so this masspec method is harder to fool and less likely to give false positives.
1)Very useful. I think simple test kits can be made - much like the pregnancy test strips - for consumers to check all kinds of stuff. ("Test your partner within 20 minutes")
Or at least for the grocery/fast food stores to use on the stuff they are selling.
2)Fluorescence, not flourescence. (Americans also cannot spel aluminium.)
"You will have good luck this year - a magnificent satellite will soon land in your home too"
About a month or two ago, some fishermen off the coast of Alaska found a penguin. This is the first record of a penguin in the Northern Hemisphere. The fishermen hauled in their nets and there he was! The species was identified as a Humboldt Penguin. These penguins live at the southern tip of Chile and Argentina, about 8,000 to 9,000 miles away from home.
Audubon Society
...electrocuted blonde in a bathtub?
Doing something bad gives instant recognition and bragging rights. He was not in it for getting his rent paid. (He is just making excuses now.)
The best punisment would be to sue his ass in the next few years - a civil lawsuit for financial damages so that his posessions could be taken away and then criminal charges to plea-bargain him into working for feds (as a form of comunity service). He could be useful for catching people like him.
a heavy-duty vibrator can kill ya
no shower, pls. It hurts the symbiosis.
(I suspect my apparment is a superorganism too.)
You are exaggerating wildly. I work with sodium azide frequently and it is not terribly dangerous or poisonous material.
Extremely toxic is stuff that will make you ill (dead) from ingestion/inhalation of tiny amounts - like from having few whifs of vapor, licking your fingers or spilling few drops on your sleeve. Or something that accumulates over repeated exposure. If the tox from rat scales to human, 27mg/kg 50% mortality means that a grown man (80kg) would have to ingest something like 2g of the stuff for having a 50% chance of getting stiff. It is hard to ingest such amount without doing it on purpose. You can find much worse stuff than azide in a normal lab.
As far as not using metalic spatulas for sodium azide, this is way overboard. Copper and other heavy metal azides are very impact sensitive but their formation because of stainless steel spatula is not an issue. Bulk storage (preferably not in a metal drum) is another thing.
Every bottle of chemicals in US has wildly exaggerated warnings because of manufacturers liability. Acetylosalicylic acid (=aspirin) has warning: toxic-target nerves, thyroid. Benzaldehyde (food and fragrance almond flavor, present in cherry cola, soap and champoo) is labeled highly toxic if you buy it as chemical. Bottle of pure sand has warning "this material is known to state of California to cause cancer" etc.
how about biodiesel from whale oil?
Silicates up yours.
You should see the size of plaster waste mountains currently produced by power plants because of required sulfur dioxide removal from emissions. (The shitiest brown coal has maybe 1% of sulfur) The sulfur dioxide removal process uses a lot of limestone powder which makes the people living near the plants and limestone quaries not happy - dust, transpotration noise, etc. And the whole damned thing is not only dirty but also quite expensive to run.
Now you would want to sequest CO2 as well - by using ground silicates (considerably harder to grind than than limestone) in more than hundred times larger quantities.
Basic chemistry should not be used to prop up a wishful thinking.
1)Czech Budweiser is sold in US as "Czechvar" (at Trader's Joe, I think) because of the trademark dispute. It is strong and good. Bit on the sweeter side amongst lagers.
2) There is Hydrogen-"carbonated" beer available in Japan. You voice will sound very funny high for short while if you breathe a low viscosity gas like hydrogen or helium. The purpose of hydrogen in this beer is to alow guys singing the woman parts in Karaoke.