You're absolutely right. But your neighbors were also allowed and encouraged to slap a kid across the face for his indiscretions. If more of this were done today we'd be facing far fewer problems.
I have to admit, it's quite embarrassing to see people in that theater get so excited about this. It's neat, but it's far from being something so profound to Star Wars canon that it make sense for people to go nuts about it. It isn't even actual assembly, it's Luke poking at the hilt with exaggerated sound effects added.
I'd argue that it's as ridiculous as people getting worked up over the winner of American Idol. But then, that's just me.
This is what we get when we have a society that values the celebrity and athlete more highly than anything else. This is what we get when parents think socializing is more important than good academics. And ultimately a lot of the blame falls on the teachers as well, for not doing their job properly.
Americans seem to think throwing money at our schools will fix everything. They also seem obsessed with small class sizes. That's something I've always found utterly ridiculous considering in Asia you'll routinely find classes with 30+ students and they are better educated than American students in a class half the size. Too much of our educational system has gotten too obsessed catering to the slowest kid in the class and making things fun. So instead of trying to bring the slow kids up to speed we're instead slowing the rest of the class down.
Although I think the argument is quite a stretch I'll still argue, so what? If the US were to abandon it's position someone would quickly move in to fill the vacuum. At this point that would most likely be China.
For all the legitimate problems anyone might have towards the US I'd still much prefer it be the US being imperialistic than pretty much any other nation out there. How many "empires" can claim that the nations they've occupied have benefited so greatly as those under American "dominion". Japan, Germany and South Korea all have thriving economies and are generally free nations. Hell, at this point you could argue they're better off than the US is. If it hadn't been for public opinion forcing the US to withdraw from Vietnam it's possible that nation might have fared well. Iraq and Afghanistan are a bit of a different situation because we're dealing with very different ideologies and a very different political climate.
The fact is that many nations, including all of Europe are extremely reliant on America's economic, political and military might. If our government decreed that they were going to abandon their military and take isolationist policies there would be massive uproar from the rest of the world. A lot of nations can enjoy tiny defense spending because they know they've got the US to back them up if push came to shove.
The simple reality is that we're still not living in a global one-nation utopia. We've still got very competitive nations fighting for the top spot. Chinese are far more ambitious and nationalistic than most Americans and as other nations rise in influence they're going to be aiming for that spot as well. So why is it unreasonable for Americans to want to maintain their position in the world? It's better for us and one advantage the US still has is their general altruism. It's far from perfect, but it's still better than the competition. I'm not suggesting we should be focused on conflict and getting into every little war we can fight. We should be dealing with everyone openly and peacefully as much as possible. But it's also reasonable to ensure our supremacy on the global stage, at least until such time as it becomes irrelevant or abusive.
When I'm watching something I enjoy, that happens to have good video quality, one of the things always in the back of my mind is the desire for better video quality. It may be that I'm more of a visual person but I really don't have patience for poor video quality. Obviously, if I don't have a choice I can tolerate it when I'm watching something I actually want to see. But even then, I'm not willing to put up with it too long. And of course, it also depends on what level of quality we're talking about.
Most people seem to have fairly low standards. Haven't there been studies that have demonstrated that most young people actually prefer the crappy audio quality present with compressed audio? That's another thing I can't stand.
Portugal has distinct geographic advantages which allows them to benefit from renewable energy sources. Many parts of the country fairly mountainous. So there are countless ideal locations for wind turbines and there are already a ton out there. But what the article fails to mention is that the majority of Portugal's power generation actually comes from hydroelectric.
In fact, in a region much of my family hails from there has been talk, for decades, of building a dam. It looks like it's finally going through and it's going to have a fairly profound affect on the area. I mean that negatively, people losing land and it possibly changing the nature of commerce in the area. A concern I've been hearing for years is that dams increase humidity. From personal observation summers seemed dryer when I visited as a kid to more recently. They get a lot of the hazy humidity I experience in the states. One of the concerns is that it affects the quality of grapes for wine production but admittedly I've seen no evidence to support that.
One thing that's certain is that it hasn't made electricity any cheaper. And from the way people talk, it seems to have gotten a good bit more expensive. But again, Portugal is ideally situation. They've got consistent strong winds blowing off the ocean and mountains. Perfect for wind turbines and they could easily set up tidal generation along the coast. It also helps that a lot of people have left the countryside for the cities. There have been some moving back, but there's still plenty of land, even if a lot of it is farmland, to erect turbines or sacrifice for reservoirs. The country is also quite small making it rather easy to keep the grid up-to-date.
The US is a far larger country and not every state has ideal geography for renewable energy. Certain areas are far too densely populated to realistically build anything like this. In my area there was furor over something as simple as how to run power lines across a few counties. And really, while individual states are comparable to any European nation the fact is that they've come to be far too dependent on the federal government. They don't have the resources or sufficiently knowledgeable state employees to be able to be able to do any of this for themselves. Hell, a a bunch of trees go down and a city will run to FEMA asking handouts.
The NIMBY crowds seem to be much stronger in the US than in most other countries. Choose from the right checklist of concerns, historical preservation or environmental issues, and you can block anything or at least put it in limbo. I'm not sure if it's because other governments walk all over their citizens with impunity, which in some cases they seem to, or if the people can look beyond their self-centered and unrealistic desires to protect their communities from change.
The fact that they didn't reinvent what works is the best part of the game. There are games that really only need graphical updates and this is one of them. I'm tired of developers having to reinvent a game with every sequel. And given the competitive nature of Starcraft it makes sense they would be reluctant to tamper with the formula.
As for the other problems, it's really par for the course in this day and age. Is anyone surprised they dropped LAN support? For all the clamor how many people would actually ever take advantage of LAN? When it comes down to it, if you're not happy with the changes, or lack thereof, don't buy the game. What you don't do is buy the game, knowing the problems exist, and then complain after the fact.
The stock price may have not reflected earnings in Yahoo's case, but it did reflect something that would have a very profound impact on the company.
The stock market is sometimes based on nonsense, but a ton of factors come into play. There are times when the value does reflect profit but it still doesn't reflect the true health of the company.
Company X cuts costs and lays off staff to meet profit expectations. Company X managed to exceed expectations. Company X's stock value rises.
The problem is that the company hasn't actually increased income. They haven't changed their business to address whatever issues they were facing. They've simply adjusted perception. So profit isn't everything.
I accept that this is not directly related to the story but what the hell is an "instructable"?
I can understand that something obvious like "instructions" was taken so they had to come up with something catchy. Would it really be so brand-defeating to just type "these instructions"? Do I have to be bashed in the head, reminded about the fact that I'm visiting a site called "instructable"?
By the way, why are the balloons in one spot different colors? Does this thing actually work properly?
This sounds to me like it's venturing into perpetual motion machine territory. Also, if this technology were eventually to become realistic and practical I'm curious to know what the impact would be on the environment given that such vehicles would be drawing their fuel directly from the air. I could be wrong, but it seems like the impact could be significantly worse than anything today's vehicles might do.
Regardless of whether or not this story is BS, which I'm rather certain it is, I fail to see why it would be catastrophic to the human race to learn that extraterrestrials do exist, assuming they're not bent on our destruction. It would undoubtedly have profound implications on humanity, but I have a hard time believing that it would provoke mass panic.
Additionally, why would such an event instill doubts in religion? Any logical religious person would simply see this as a sign that god is even more awesome than they had imagined. And if the aliens have their own religion it wouldn't render Earth religions any less relevant. Unless they had conclusive, irrefutable evidence about how the existence of God and the nature of the universe. But then it wouldn't be religion, it would simply be fact.
Undoubtedly there would be some initial resistance, there might be some limited panic, some threat of violence but for the most part I think it would be a very enlightening experience for humanity. But then again, what aliens would want to meet us? Spend 15 minutes on Youtube and Earth ends up looking like the toilet of the universe. Some would probably even consider us a threat to the universe, worthy of destroying.
I realize that everyone is different, but I've been on 18 hour flights and I've managed just fine. Now with the vast array of portable devices, noise cancellation headphones and being able to choose from a wider selection of videos it's really that bad. I'm not going to say it's a wonderful experience, but it's gotten a lot easier to tune out such long trips. It's a hell of a lot better than being stuck on a passenger ship for a month.
That said, I'll take speed over amenities any time. I'd much rather have a supersonic transport that would cut a flight to Asia down to even 10 hours as opposed to being stuck on some airship for 2 or 3 days as it plods across the sky. How much can an airship realistically carry anyway?
I can tolerate an 18 hour flight because I'm traveling to the other side of the world. I would never tolerate an 18 hour flight across the US.
They wont be able to bypass ports. First of all, any possible recipient of cargo would have to have a docking bay for these massive airships and people capable of handling them. And more importantly, they're always going to have to deal with customs. No nation will feel comfortable about having a giant airship floating over their airspace carrying unknown cargo. And ultimately, how much can these things carry anyway? Their cargo carrying abilities must be minuscule compared to any ocean-going cargo ship; miniscule to the point of uselessness.
Conceptually, I think airships are cool. But their time has come and gone. As surveillance platforms they're likely too easy to spot in the daytime and existing UAVs and satellites already perform the same role with more flexibility and speed. They don't work for cargo and are far too slow as transportation. And that's not to mention they're slow moving obstacles for all other, much faster-moving aircraft. Perhaps they might work as floating solar-power generation platforms except that then you're still dealing with maintenance, power transmission, protection from storms and keeping them stationary. I suppose if we start suffering from serious fuel shortages they may provide an alternative form of fuel efficient air travel.
What I'm curious to know is how many congressmen and congress women are profiting from this sort of thing. Let them partake in the benefits of this sort of trading and they'll be disinclined to raise a stink about it. As far as anyone is concerned they're merely invested in the stock market like the rest of us.
I don't foresee anything ever being done about this, they barely did anything at all about the financial bubble from a few years ago.
The city in which I live has outrageously high property and vehicle tax. The saving grace is that property is valued lower than surrounding areas so the actual taxes paid are somewhat comparable. Vehicle tax, however is even higher than in some wealthy towns in the region. So what do a lot of people do? Register their cars out of state. A friend who worked at a dealer for a while told me that on a regular basis someone will ask to have their car registered out of state. Supposedly there are city employees responsible for finding these tax dodgers but they obviously aren't doing their job particularly. In my immediate area there are several people with out of state plates who apparently haven't been caught in at least a year.
I believe the government is overtaxing us. I'm convinced high taxes will never help the economy. That said, the law is the law and I fully support the government going after people who haven't followed proper procedure and are dodging taxes.
I can't help but thing that trams, light rail or subways wouldn't be more practical and far, far safer solutions. Supposedly this thing is supposed to be a cheaper solution than light rail but somehow is expected to keep roads free for regular traffic unlike a tram. But I can see tons of problems with this.
There's the challenge of making the vehicle safe and reliable. It will have to withstand impacts without collapsing. Imagine it gets hit at speed and comes down on a bunch of cars. Apparently one safety feature is that in the event of an accident the sides pop open and turn into a ramp depositing passengers into the midst of traffic. Additionally, what kind of complex system of machinery is required to channel power from the main body down to the wheels and keep this thing moving at a reasonable speed. Or will they mount the motors down at the wheels? But by doing that you're going to have these bulky nacelles speeding along the road, potentially occupying a full two lanes of traffic.
I also like the obstacles drivers have to contend with. These loops will remind truck drivers they wont fit under the vehicle and apparently other drivers will have to be especially attentive to avoid bashing into one. And considering they're mounted at regular intervals a driver will have to play slalom to get out from under them. How are they going to deal with intersections? If they're given their own light cycle the rest of traffic is going to be disruptive.
It's an awful, poorly conceived idea on every level trying to solve problems that already have solutions. I will give them credit, however, in that at least they're being creative and ambitious. That's something that seems to be sorely lacking in the US. Americans were coming up with quite a few wacky ideas of their own decades ago. But at least they were doing something.
The FBI's page has a section on copyrights which links to the DOJ website. There's a section that discuss the use of seals and logos. Nowhere does it state that the unauthorized use of these marks will result in fines or imprisonment. It merely states that permission must be requested before using them. I'd say the risk of imprisonment comes if you use the seal to pass yourself as an FBI agent, but then that's another matter altogether.
The fact that the Wikipedia site features an SVG of the seal may be a little problematic. It makes it trivial to print high quality copies of the thing. I did a quick search of Google Images and while plenty of seals came up, none were anywhere near the quality of this one on Wikipedia. But the solution seems simple, replace it and a somewhat smaller JPG. But even then, it's a minor issue, someone with patience and skill could sit down in Illustrator and recreate the thing.
Despite all this, given that this is a government agency and Wikipedia an informational site what rules govern this case? I fail to see how the FBI has any case at all.
It's a great idea, but the execution is absolutely awful. The guy clearly spent time getting the angle of the contemporary photos right, but was completely sloppy with his production work. It looks like he got lazy, or he's not particularly good with Photoshop. Instead of just going with messy fades, he should have cropped the imposed images with more precision, so that it looked like those old scenes were more integrated as opposed to being merely superimposed. It would have been more striking and would have given these compositions are more otherworldly feel. Although, my personal preference would have been to shoot the new scenes in black and white and then composed the two together so that they blended more seamlessly, like the two time periods had become one.
I agree with you in principle. It's one of the reasons I haven't gotten an e-reader despite having considering getting one.
That said, the printing costs are almost certain marginal at best, for paperbacks in particular. It's single color requiring a bare minimum of print management; they just have to ensure the content is pretty much centered on the page. It's also printed on the cheapest paper stock available; it's probably a step above newsprint. A good portion of the printing expense probably goes to the cover and even then it's basic CMYK with no special colors and usually printed on one side only. And finally, the print runs tend to be so large that the cost per book is minuscule.
A quick search online has revealed that a rough cost per book for a run of 10,000 books, which is quite low, is $1 per book. That's for self-publishing. The price for a big publishing company is undoubtedly cheaper, I'd say probably as low as 50 cents, and maybe cheaper for larger runs. Hardcover is undoubtedly more expensive to produce but then even is the cost quadruples you're still looking at only $2 per book.
The vast majority of the cost goes to the writer, editing and marketing. And profit, obviously, both to the publisher, distributor and retailer. Every paperback I've seen runs $10-$15, at least in recent years because prices have definitely been going up. I haven't looked at book prices for e-Readers so I can't say what the problem is. Are they charging a set price, $10, for example, across the board? I would say a much bigger issue are the extortionist prices being charged for college textbooks. Do something about that.
Easy to say, much harder to do. Those troops stationed around the world aren't there solely for the sake of the US. Germany, Japan, South Korea and many others might piss and moan about American presence but the simple fact is that if the US suddenly decided to pull out there would be massive uproar. American military presence around the world ensures continued relevance as a world power. Someone would inevitably fill the vacuum left by the US, most likely China. And despite all the problems, the World is better off with the US filling this role. And the fact that the US is slowly eroding its relevance in so many other ways we probably need this more than ever.
This situation, unfortunately, places the burden of military spending on the US. So many other nations can get away with spending so little because they're fully aware that if they were faced with attack the US almost certainly would move in to defend them.
I'm not clear on what is meant by pleasant but stressful experiences. Do they mean physically or emotionally stressful. According to the article the rats which have had sex are less stressful. So where does the stress come in? Were they stressful beforehand and sex simply alleviated that?
But then if it's a stressful but pleasant activity that causes brain growth then that would imply any pleasing activity should produce the same result. Playing video games, sports, mountain climbing, etc should all be able to produce the same results. Presumably masturbation would work too.
It sounds to me like they're stating the obvious. You'll feel better if you do something enjoyable.
Re:Clearly, these rats don't pay child support.
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Sex Boosts Brain Growth
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think academic performance comes down to upbringing, not race. Although races might place different levels of importance on some things. The asian kid got straight As and never saw action because his parents demanded he excel in school and didn't allow him to socialize. Once you socialize too much grades inevitably suffer. Asians are no smarter than anyone else. Live in Asia for a while and you'll be cured of that misconception. It's like foreign kids who excel in college. They do well because they specifically came to the US to study and are appreciative of the opportunity.
Americans, on the other hand, don't appreciate what they have and are in school to study. And worse, in certain communities positive role models and discipline are seriously lacking. And there's too much of an anti-establishment attitude. The ability is there, it's just totally wasted. I'd say sexual activity is more of symptom than a cause.
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You're absolutely right. But your neighbors were also allowed and encouraged to slap a kid across the face for his indiscretions. If more of this were done today we'd be facing far fewer problems.
I have to admit, it's quite embarrassing to see people in that theater get so excited about this. It's neat, but it's far from being something so profound to Star Wars canon that it make sense for people to go nuts about it. It isn't even actual assembly, it's Luke poking at the hilt with exaggerated sound effects added.
I'd argue that it's as ridiculous as people getting worked up over the winner of American Idol. But then, that's just me.
I've thought the same thing myself. I can peruse the toy isle as much as I like. Sometimes it's my daughter who gets impatient with me!
This is what we get when we have a society that values the celebrity and athlete more highly than anything else. This is what we get when parents think socializing is more important than good academics. And ultimately a lot of the blame falls on the teachers as well, for not doing their job properly.
Americans seem to think throwing money at our schools will fix everything. They also seem obsessed with small class sizes. That's something I've always found utterly ridiculous considering in Asia you'll routinely find classes with 30+ students and they are better educated than American students in a class half the size. Too much of our educational system has gotten too obsessed catering to the slowest kid in the class and making things fun. So instead of trying to bring the slow kids up to speed we're instead slowing the rest of the class down.
Although I think the argument is quite a stretch I'll still argue, so what? If the US were to abandon it's position someone would quickly move in to fill the vacuum. At this point that would most likely be China.
For all the legitimate problems anyone might have towards the US I'd still much prefer it be the US being imperialistic than pretty much any other nation out there. How many "empires" can claim that the nations they've occupied have benefited so greatly as those under American "dominion". Japan, Germany and South Korea all have thriving economies and are generally free nations. Hell, at this point you could argue they're better off than the US is. If it hadn't been for public opinion forcing the US to withdraw from Vietnam it's possible that nation might have fared well. Iraq and Afghanistan are a bit of a different situation because we're dealing with very different ideologies and a very different political climate.
The fact is that many nations, including all of Europe are extremely reliant on America's economic, political and military might. If our government decreed that they were going to abandon their military and take isolationist policies there would be massive uproar from the rest of the world. A lot of nations can enjoy tiny defense spending because they know they've got the US to back them up if push came to shove.
The simple reality is that we're still not living in a global one-nation utopia. We've still got very competitive nations fighting for the top spot. Chinese are far more ambitious and nationalistic than most Americans and as other nations rise in influence they're going to be aiming for that spot as well. So why is it unreasonable for Americans to want to maintain their position in the world? It's better for us and one advantage the US still has is their general altruism. It's far from perfect, but it's still better than the competition. I'm not suggesting we should be focused on conflict and getting into every little war we can fight. We should be dealing with everyone openly and peacefully as much as possible. But it's also reasonable to ensure our supremacy on the global stage, at least until such time as it becomes irrelevant or abusive.
When I'm watching something I enjoy, that happens to have good video quality, one of the things always in the back of my mind is the desire for better video quality. It may be that I'm more of a visual person but I really don't have patience for poor video quality. Obviously, if I don't have a choice I can tolerate it when I'm watching something I actually want to see. But even then, I'm not willing to put up with it too long. And of course, it also depends on what level of quality we're talking about.
Most people seem to have fairly low standards. Haven't there been studies that have demonstrated that most young people actually prefer the crappy audio quality present with compressed audio? That's another thing I can't stand.
Portugal has distinct geographic advantages which allows them to benefit from renewable energy sources. Many parts of the country fairly mountainous. So there are countless ideal locations for wind turbines and there are already a ton out there. But what the article fails to mention is that the majority of Portugal's power generation actually comes from hydroelectric.
In fact, in a region much of my family hails from there has been talk, for decades, of building a dam. It looks like it's finally going through and it's going to have a fairly profound affect on the area. I mean that negatively, people losing land and it possibly changing the nature of commerce in the area. A concern I've been hearing for years is that dams increase humidity. From personal observation summers seemed dryer when I visited as a kid to more recently. They get a lot of the hazy humidity I experience in the states. One of the concerns is that it affects the quality of grapes for wine production but admittedly I've seen no evidence to support that.
One thing that's certain is that it hasn't made electricity any cheaper. And from the way people talk, it seems to have gotten a good bit more expensive. But again, Portugal is ideally situation. They've got consistent strong winds blowing off the ocean and mountains. Perfect for wind turbines and they could easily set up tidal generation along the coast. It also helps that a lot of people have left the countryside for the cities. There have been some moving back, but there's still plenty of land, even if a lot of it is farmland, to erect turbines or sacrifice for reservoirs. The country is also quite small making it rather easy to keep the grid up-to-date.
The US is a far larger country and not every state has ideal geography for renewable energy. Certain areas are far too densely populated to realistically build anything like this. In my area there was furor over something as simple as how to run power lines across a few counties. And really, while individual states are comparable to any European nation the fact is that they've come to be far too dependent on the federal government. They don't have the resources or sufficiently knowledgeable state employees to be able to be able to do any of this for themselves. Hell, a a bunch of trees go down and a city will run to FEMA asking handouts.
The NIMBY crowds seem to be much stronger in the US than in most other countries. Choose from the right checklist of concerns, historical preservation or environmental issues, and you can block anything or at least put it in limbo. I'm not sure if it's because other governments walk all over their citizens with impunity, which in some cases they seem to, or if the people can look beyond their self-centered and unrealistic desires to protect their communities from change.
The fact that they didn't reinvent what works is the best part of the game. There are games that really only need graphical updates and this is one of them. I'm tired of developers having to reinvent a game with every sequel. And given the competitive nature of Starcraft it makes sense they would be reluctant to tamper with the formula.
As for the other problems, it's really par for the course in this day and age. Is anyone surprised they dropped LAN support? For all the clamor how many people would actually ever take advantage of LAN? When it comes down to it, if you're not happy with the changes, or lack thereof, don't buy the game. What you don't do is buy the game, knowing the problems exist, and then complain after the fact.
The stock price may have not reflected earnings in Yahoo's case, but it did reflect something that would have a very profound impact on the company.
The stock market is sometimes based on nonsense, but a ton of factors come into play. There are times when the value does reflect profit but it still doesn't reflect the true health of the company.
Company X cuts costs and lays off staff to meet profit expectations.
Company X managed to exceed expectations.
Company X's stock value rises.
The problem is that the company hasn't actually increased income. They haven't changed their business to address whatever issues they were facing. They've simply adjusted perception. So profit isn't everything.
I accept that this is not directly related to the story but what the hell is an "instructable"?
I can understand that something obvious like "instructions" was taken so they had to come up with something catchy. Would it really be so brand-defeating to just type "these instructions"? Do I have to be bashed in the head, reminded about the fact that I'm visiting a site called "instructable"?
By the way, why are the balloons in one spot different colors? Does this thing actually work properly?
This sounds to me like it's venturing into perpetual motion machine territory. Also, if this technology were eventually to become realistic and practical I'm curious to know what the impact would be on the environment given that such vehicles would be drawing their fuel directly from the air. I could be wrong, but it seems like the impact could be significantly worse than anything today's vehicles might do.
I just looked up "often" in the dictionary. The definition provides reads, "frequently, many times".
I'd say you're unclear on the definition of often.
10%-15% may be more often than expected, but by no stretch of the imagination is it often.
Regardless of whether or not this story is BS, which I'm rather certain it is, I fail to see why it would be catastrophic to the human race to learn that extraterrestrials do exist, assuming they're not bent on our destruction. It would undoubtedly have profound implications on humanity, but I have a hard time believing that it would provoke mass panic.
Additionally, why would such an event instill doubts in religion? Any logical religious person would simply see this as a sign that god is even more awesome than they had imagined. And if the aliens have their own religion it wouldn't render Earth religions any less relevant. Unless they had conclusive, irrefutable evidence about how the existence of God and the nature of the universe. But then it wouldn't be religion, it would simply be fact.
Undoubtedly there would be some initial resistance, there might be some limited panic, some threat of violence but for the most part I think it would be a very enlightening experience for humanity. But then again, what aliens would want to meet us? Spend 15 minutes on Youtube and Earth ends up looking like the toilet of the universe. Some would probably even consider us a threat to the universe, worthy of destroying.
I realize that everyone is different, but I've been on 18 hour flights and I've managed just fine. Now with the vast array of portable devices, noise cancellation headphones and being able to choose from a wider selection of videos it's really that bad. I'm not going to say it's a wonderful experience, but it's gotten a lot easier to tune out such long trips. It's a hell of a lot better than being stuck on a passenger ship for a month.
That said, I'll take speed over amenities any time. I'd much rather have a supersonic transport that would cut a flight to Asia down to even 10 hours as opposed to being stuck on some airship for 2 or 3 days as it plods across the sky. How much can an airship realistically carry anyway?
I can tolerate an 18 hour flight because I'm traveling to the other side of the world. I would never tolerate an 18 hour flight across the US.
They wont be able to bypass ports. First of all, any possible recipient of cargo would have to have a docking bay for these massive airships and people capable of handling them. And more importantly, they're always going to have to deal with customs. No nation will feel comfortable about having a giant airship floating over their airspace carrying unknown cargo. And ultimately, how much can these things carry anyway? Their cargo carrying abilities must be minuscule compared to any ocean-going cargo ship; miniscule to the point of uselessness.
Conceptually, I think airships are cool. But their time has come and gone. As surveillance platforms they're likely too easy to spot in the daytime and existing UAVs and satellites already perform the same role with more flexibility and speed. They don't work for cargo and are far too slow as transportation. And that's not to mention they're slow moving obstacles for all other, much faster-moving aircraft. Perhaps they might work as floating solar-power generation platforms except that then you're still dealing with maintenance, power transmission, protection from storms and keeping them stationary. I suppose if we start suffering from serious fuel shortages they may provide an alternative form of fuel efficient air travel.
The claims of thermite paint being the cause of the explosion has been debunked. Mythbusters featured one of the better known debunking.
What I'm curious to know is how many congressmen and congress women are profiting from this sort of thing. Let them partake in the benefits of this sort of trading and they'll be disinclined to raise a stink about it. As far as anyone is concerned they're merely invested in the stock market like the rest of us.
I don't foresee anything ever being done about this, they barely did anything at all about the financial bubble from a few years ago.
The city in which I live has outrageously high property and vehicle tax. The saving grace is that property is valued lower than surrounding areas so the actual taxes paid are somewhat comparable. Vehicle tax, however is even higher than in some wealthy towns in the region. So what do a lot of people do? Register their cars out of state. A friend who worked at a dealer for a while told me that on a regular basis someone will ask to have their car registered out of state. Supposedly there are city employees responsible for finding these tax dodgers but they obviously aren't doing their job particularly. In my immediate area there are several people with out of state plates who apparently haven't been caught in at least a year.
I believe the government is overtaxing us. I'm convinced high taxes will never help the economy. That said, the law is the law and I fully support the government going after people who haven't followed proper procedure and are dodging taxes.
I can't help but thing that trams, light rail or subways wouldn't be more practical and far, far safer solutions. Supposedly this thing is supposed to be a cheaper solution than light rail but somehow is expected to keep roads free for regular traffic unlike a tram. But I can see tons of problems with this.
There's the challenge of making the vehicle safe and reliable. It will have to withstand impacts without collapsing. Imagine it gets hit at speed and comes down on a bunch of cars. Apparently one safety feature is that in the event of an accident the sides pop open and turn into a ramp depositing passengers into the midst of traffic. Additionally, what kind of complex system of machinery is required to channel power from the main body down to the wheels and keep this thing moving at a reasonable speed. Or will they mount the motors down at the wheels? But by doing that you're going to have these bulky nacelles speeding along the road, potentially occupying a full two lanes of traffic.
I also like the obstacles drivers have to contend with. These loops will remind truck drivers they wont fit under the vehicle and apparently other drivers will have to be especially attentive to avoid bashing into one. And considering they're mounted at regular intervals a driver will have to play slalom to get out from under them. How are they going to deal with intersections? If they're given their own light cycle the rest of traffic is going to be disruptive.
It's an awful, poorly conceived idea on every level trying to solve problems that already have solutions. I will give them credit, however, in that at least they're being creative and ambitious. That's something that seems to be sorely lacking in the US. Americans were coming up with quite a few wacky ideas of their own decades ago. But at least they were doing something.
The FBI's page has a section on copyrights which links to the DOJ website. There's a section that discuss the use of seals and logos. Nowhere does it state that the unauthorized use of these marks will result in fines or imprisonment. It merely states that permission must be requested before using them. I'd say the risk of imprisonment comes if you use the seal to pass yourself as an FBI agent, but then that's another matter altogether.
The fact that the Wikipedia site features an SVG of the seal may be a little problematic. It makes it trivial to print high quality copies of the thing. I did a quick search of Google Images and while plenty of seals came up, none were anywhere near the quality of this one on Wikipedia. But the solution seems simple, replace it and a somewhat smaller JPG. But even then, it's a minor issue, someone with patience and skill could sit down in Illustrator and recreate the thing.
Despite all this, given that this is a government agency and Wikipedia an informational site what rules govern this case? I fail to see how the FBI has any case at all.
It's a great idea, but the execution is absolutely awful. The guy clearly spent time getting the angle of the contemporary photos right, but was completely sloppy with his production work. It looks like he got lazy, or he's not particularly good with Photoshop. Instead of just going with messy fades, he should have cropped the imposed images with more precision, so that it looked like those old scenes were more integrated as opposed to being merely superimposed. It would have been more striking and would have given these compositions are more otherworldly feel. Although, my personal preference would have been to shoot the new scenes in black and white and then composed the two together so that they blended more seamlessly, like the two time periods had become one.
I agree with you in principle. It's one of the reasons I haven't gotten an e-reader despite having considering getting one.
That said, the printing costs are almost certain marginal at best, for paperbacks in particular. It's single color requiring a bare minimum of print management; they just have to ensure the content is pretty much centered on the page. It's also printed on the cheapest paper stock available; it's probably a step above newsprint. A good portion of the printing expense probably goes to the cover and even then it's basic CMYK with no special colors and usually printed on one side only. And finally, the print runs tend to be so large that the cost per book is minuscule.
A quick search online has revealed that a rough cost per book for a run of 10,000 books, which is quite low, is $1 per book. That's for self-publishing. The price for a big publishing company is undoubtedly cheaper, I'd say probably as low as 50 cents, and maybe cheaper for larger runs. Hardcover is undoubtedly more expensive to produce but then even is the cost quadruples you're still looking at only $2 per book.
The vast majority of the cost goes to the writer, editing and marketing. And profit, obviously, both to the publisher, distributor and retailer. Every paperback I've seen runs $10-$15, at least in recent years because prices have definitely been going up. I haven't looked at book prices for e-Readers so I can't say what the problem is. Are they charging a set price, $10, for example, across the board? I would say a much bigger issue are the extortionist prices being charged for college textbooks. Do something about that.
Easy to say, much harder to do. Those troops stationed around the world aren't there solely for the sake of the US. Germany, Japan, South Korea and many others might piss and moan about American presence but the simple fact is that if the US suddenly decided to pull out there would be massive uproar. American military presence around the world ensures continued relevance as a world power. Someone would inevitably fill the vacuum left by the US, most likely China. And despite all the problems, the World is better off with the US filling this role. And the fact that the US is slowly eroding its relevance in so many other ways we probably need this more than ever.
This situation, unfortunately, places the burden of military spending on the US. So many other nations can get away with spending so little because they're fully aware that if they were faced with attack the US almost certainly would move in to defend them.
I'm not clear on what is meant by pleasant but stressful experiences. Do they mean physically or emotionally stressful. According to the article the rats which have had sex are less stressful. So where does the stress come in? Were they stressful beforehand and sex simply alleviated that?
But then if it's a stressful but pleasant activity that causes brain growth then that would imply any pleasing activity should produce the same result. Playing video games, sports, mountain climbing, etc should all be able to produce the same results. Presumably masturbation would work too.
It sounds to me like they're stating the obvious. You'll feel better if you do something enjoyable.
I think academic performance comes down to upbringing, not race. Although races might place different levels of importance on some things. The asian kid got straight As and never saw action because his parents demanded he excel in school and didn't allow him to socialize. Once you socialize too much grades inevitably suffer. Asians are no smarter than anyone else. Live in Asia for a while and you'll be cured of that misconception. It's like foreign kids who excel in college. They do well because they specifically came to the US to study and are appreciative of the opportunity.
Americans, on the other hand, don't appreciate what they have and are in school to study. And worse, in certain communities positive role models and discipline are seriously lacking. And there's too much of an anti-establishment attitude. The ability is there, it's just totally wasted. I'd say sexual activity is more of symptom than a cause.