StringJunky

@iNowOK. Thanks for your observation. It seems she is up next for election again in 2027. Is that not a very long way away, such that she would be concerned much about that at this point in her tenure? Your point would have had considerable weight had she been up in the near future, I think.

I expected that from you, iNow, I know you are an ideologist. Why is Susan Collins unhappy?

Is it a wise move for Biden to limit the field of potential candidates to black women just because there hasn't been one? Should not the best qualified person be chosen to such an important position, irrespective of gender and ethnicity? If that turns out, after collective deliberation, to be a black woman, then all well and good, but is it a sound way to do this? Is affirmative action not politicizing the process and discriminating against an equally qualified pool of candidates that don't fit that category? Occasional Republican ally of Democratic legislation seems to think so:

I will agree that one should attack the argument and not the poster.

Right, cheers.

It's called 'pragmatism' and having an awareness of our species, and others, fragility in having all our eggs in one basket, Earth. You may feel a sense of permanence in Earth being, even naturally, hospitable for all time without human effects, but that is a bit naive. As for unrealistic, I sense a bit of conservative Ludditism in your approach. There was a time that learned people thought that if you went over 20mph, you wouldn't be able to breathe.

If one caught cancer induced by an aflatoxin, could someones malignancy be directly traced back to it as cause, or has it just been isolated in research experiments as a potential cause? As an example, Koposi's sarcoma is directly attributed to HIV and HHV-8 infection, aren't they?

It seems cooked rice left for too long is an ideal environment for any Bacillus cereus spores that are floating around to germinate into bacteria, and poison you - from the NHS site.

Perhaps it is your choice of news sources that is the problem.

I think ANPR cameras do a better job of speedsters because they calculate average speed between two distant cameras, rather than just the one camera capturing a single speed data point over a short distance. These can be easily circumvented by people familiar with speed camera locations by slowing down just in time. That's more a recipe for accidents and reckless driving because it puts people in two modes: fast and slow. ANPR cameras probably force more people to drive in a more steady fashion because the mental mathematics of getting around them is too difficult to work out in real-time.

I live in a county of about 1m people with 1073 serving officers (2020). That's the lowest ratio in the country. There seem to be cc cameras on all traffic light systems that I've seen in the city. Camera surveillance is very big in the UK, I think. We have about 9000 ANPR and 7000 speed cameras on the roads in the UK (4th highest globally). It might be worth splitting off, Phi. I think the general feeling here, is that they are really more a revenue stream due to there locations, and that's why there are so many. The latter is anecdotal on my part from things I've read in the local and national news. In just London alone there are 500,000 government-run cctv cameras. There's a few more statistics in that quote link. There appears to be a camera, of all types, for every 13 people. Hope that gives you a general idea. I find it interesting how many people are caught commiting crimes by their own camera systems, of whatever sort, and people are buying them like they are going out of fashion; Alexas, car cameras, doorbell cameras, helmet cameras, baby cameras, etc. Mobile phones are also potentially perfect remote government spies, Centralize all that data and Big Brother will truly be here. China is already implementing such an authoritarian nightmare. If you challenge the intrusion, that old chestnut "What have you got to hide?" will be thrown at you. The trail of data you leave behind you now, as you live your life, is endless. Privacy is pretty much a myth now. It's a wide subject of conversation, and I'm definitely off the focus of this thread. We will all become immortal by virtue of our data profile. Happy days.

People fight to preserve what they believe in. My grandfather, and likely many other war veterans would double facepalm your comment. Putin would welcome someone like you... makes his brand of autocratic rule easier to accomplish.

A funny thought: if we go to war with Russia, watch the toilet rolls fly off the shelves first before anything else.

They're the opportunists, trying to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

You probably didn't take the cursor out of the first quote box, due to probably editing it, on to a new line outside it before adding another quote, lLike this:

Here's a BBC explanation on what initiated the change: If drivers are getting away with it, that might be down to the ever diminishing presence of the police on the roads.

A crow's got to eat... They do pick up the dead stuff as well and keep our roads and paths clean of dead animals.

I think 'democracy' is on their "inappropriate thoughts" list as well. The takedown of the Tiannamen protest monuments are presently being removed in Hong Kong.

Yes, the very wealthy could be exempted by their 'tax-efficient' accountants.

My neighbour had the same attitude, that each group was somehow monolithic and distinct. We can only ssume that such persons have roots growing out of their arse and into their seats, with everyone outside their vehicle an infernal obstruction.

A very wealthy cyclist/pedestrian with no motors will pay less towards the upkeep of road infrastructure than a typical salaried/factory worker car driver? Almost everything everyone pays for, some fraction goes to the tax man . Besides, most people are some mix of each transport category.

I suppose, with the new reversed hierarchy, motorists will be more liable in an accident involving pedestrians and cyclists, or cyclists hurt a pedestrian, if they are shown to have not observed it. With the increasing use of in-vehicle cameras, it's probably more enforceable with that sort of evidence likely to be more available now. Even quite a few cyclists have them on their helmets. .False.

It's not adapting for atmospheric effects, since there is none in space. It is for making remote on-site assembly corrections. It's that technique that allows the mirror to be so big. You couldn't fold a large sectional mirror, lauch it, and expect it to be aligned automatically on unfolding to the thickness much less than a human hair without it. Compared to the Earth-based ones, which adapt continuously in real-time at many points, it's relatively crude, but it's made such a big space-based mirror possible.

JWT has adaptive optics, which Hubble doesn't have because it wasn't developed then. Here's a stackexchange post about it: Searching 'telescope adaptive optics' will give you more general info about it. It was originally developed to counter atmospheric effects affecting Earth-based telescopes. It appears to have been adapted for the JWT in a first, for reasons stated in the quote.