I'd like much better accuracy than 99.9%. Getting one vote in every thousand wrong (0.1%) can easily alter a close election. The standard for a tabulator should be a 100% accurate reflection of the input. Of course, you also need to make sure that the input mechanism (i.e., pen on paper, punched out card, touchscreen, etc.) is unambiguous and easy to use.
Not a very effective way to reduce dependence on oil, though. Right now, it takes about 6 gallons of oil to produce a quantity of hydrogen with the same energy content as 1 gallon of oil.
A story like this should be a wake-up call to those states that are using touchscreen voting machines with no paper trail. A memory card can fail--there needs to be redundancy in the system! It is fortunate that this particular case is one where the original ballots still exist.
Also, redundant memory cards would not be sufficient. The redundancy should be such that a single type of failure (i.e., a power surge that fries a memory chip) can't defeat the redundancy.
Now that I'm thinking about this, I wonder what poll workers are trained to do if there is a fire? Are they supposed to grab the ballot box as they run out of the building?
... and use that resulting power to reduce the likleyhood of Israeli hegemony in the region.
This is clearly flamebait. Israel has no desire for hegemony over the Middle East. They would like, more than anything else, to be left alone by their neighbors.
I did read the parent comment, and I was correcting the parent's error. In fluid mechanics, the Euler equations specifically refer to the inviscid momentum equations (it's a vector equation, so it's really three equations, hence the plural). Whether the fluid is compressible or not enters through conservation of mass, which is seperate from the Euler equations but is used with them to solve specific problems.
rho * (dU/dt) = - grad p + rho*B (d rho/dt) = 0 div U = 0
The second and third equations in this list are not exactly part of the Euler equations in fluid mechanics. The first equation is the proper momentum equation if p is pressure and B is a body force, but the proper continuity (conservation of mass) equation is
div(rho*U) = 0.
This is more general as it allows for compressible fluids. The second equation above is an incompressiblity requirement, which combined with the more general continuity equation yields the third equation above.
The Euler equations in fluid mechanics are for inviscid flow (no viscosity). There is no requirement for incompressibility. In fact, the most common use of these Euler equations is for computation of compressible flows (that don't involve or aim to resolve boundary layers).
The relative importance of viscosity in a flow is indicated by the dimensionless quantity Reynolds number
Re = rho*U*L/mu
where rho is the fluid density, U is the characteristic flow speed, L is the characteristic length scale, and mu is the fluid viscosity. A large Reynolds number indicates that viscous forces are less significant than other forces. One way to achieve large Reynolds number is through high flow speeds, which can also lead to a large Mach number (generally, flows with Mach number > 0.3 are considered compressible).
The US constitution, in Article 1, section 2, requires the direct election of members of the house of representatives by the people. The state legislatures get to decide the manner, time and place for the elections, though Congress can overrule them. I don't think it would be possible to convince a federal court that a random drawing qualifies under the constitution as an election.
This wouldn't be constitutional. Because the house of representatives is intended to be representative of the people--not of the states, as the senate is--representatives need to be directly elected by the people. This is the same reason that there is no mechanism other than a special election for replacing a representative who becomes unable (or unwilling) to serve due to death, illness, or resignation. This constitutional requirement is a current (minor) cause of concern because there is no mechanism to quickly reconstitute the house of representatives if a large number of members are killed or disabled at once, as might occur in a terrorist attack on the capitol.
On a seperate issue, as is mentioned in many of the other comments on this page, our nation is best served by INFORMED voters. While career politicians may not be ideal, a randomly selected member of the house of representatives is far less likely to be well informed on a broad range of issues.
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I'd like much better accuracy than 99.9%. Getting one vote in every thousand wrong (0.1%) can easily alter a close election. The standard for a tabulator should be a 100% accurate reflection of the input. Of course, you also need to make sure that the input mechanism (i.e., pen on paper, punched out card, touchscreen, etc.) is unambiguous and easy to use.
Not a very effective way to reduce dependence on oil, though. Right now, it takes about 6 gallons of oil to produce a quantity of hydrogen with the same energy content as 1 gallon of oil.
Why wasn't this mod'ed off-topic? There is a dedicated place for this type of discussion today http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/ 02/1413214&tid=219.
A story like this should be a wake-up call to those states that are using touchscreen voting machines with no paper trail. A memory card can fail--there needs to be redundancy in the system! It is fortunate that this particular case is one where the original ballots still exist.
Also, redundant memory cards would not be sufficient. The redundancy should be such that a single type of failure (i.e., a power surge that fries a memory chip) can't defeat the redundancy.
Now that I'm thinking about this, I wonder what poll workers are trained to do if there is a fire? Are they supposed to grab the ballot box as they run out of the building?
How did this get mod'ed up so high?
... and use that resulting power to reduce the likleyhood of Israeli hegemony in the region.
This is clearly flamebait. Israel has no desire for hegemony over the Middle East. They would like, more than anything else, to be left alone by their neighbors.
If Kerry is going to get faulty intelligence, I'd rather it be on baseball scores than on, say, whether a country should be invaded.
The Bernoulii equation relates pressure and energy on a streamline, the Euler equations express the conservation of momentum for an inviscid fluid.
a tionofInviscidMotion.html
See http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/EulersEqu
I forgot one thing. The first equation
rho * (dU/dt) = - grad p + rho*B
has a small notation error. It should be written
rho * (DU/Dt) = - grad p + rho*B
with a convective derivative, where
D()/Dt = d()/dt + u.grad()
I did read the parent comment, and I was correcting the parent's error. In fluid mechanics, the Euler equations specifically refer to the inviscid momentum equations (it's a vector equation, so it's really three equations, hence the plural). Whether the fluid is compressible or not enters through conservation of mass, which is seperate from the Euler equations but is used with them to solve specific problems.
(d rho/dt) = 0
div U = 0
The second and third equations in this list are not exactly part of the Euler equations in fluid mechanics. The first equation is the proper momentum equation if p is pressure and B is a body force, but the proper continuity (conservation of mass) equation is
div(rho*U) = 0.
This is more general as it allows for compressible fluids. The second equation above is an incompressiblity requirement, which combined with the more general continuity equation yields the third equation above.
The relative importance of viscosity in a flow is indicated by the dimensionless quantity Reynolds number
Re = rho*U*L/mu
where rho is the fluid density, U is the characteristic flow speed, L is the characteristic length scale, and mu is the fluid viscosity. A large Reynolds number indicates that viscous forces are less significant than other forces. One way to achieve large Reynolds number is through high flow speeds, which can also lead to a large Mach number (generally, flows with Mach number > 0.3 are considered compressible).
The US constitution, in Article 1, section 2, requires the direct election of members of the house of representatives by the people. The state legislatures get to decide the manner, time and place for the elections, though Congress can overrule them. I don't think it would be possible to convince a federal court that a random drawing qualifies under the constitution as an election.
This wouldn't be constitutional. Because the house of representatives is intended to be representative of the people--not of the states, as the senate is--representatives need to be directly elected by the people. This is the same reason that there is no mechanism other than a special election for replacing a representative who becomes unable (or unwilling) to serve due to death, illness, or resignation. This constitutional requirement is a current (minor) cause of concern because there is no mechanism to quickly reconstitute the house of representatives if a large number of members are killed or disabled at once, as might occur in a terrorist attack on the capitol.
On a seperate issue, as is mentioned in many of the other comments on this page, our nation is best served by INFORMED voters. While career politicians may not be ideal, a randomly selected member of the house of representatives is far less likely to be well informed on a broad range of issues.