Phi for All

A dung-eater like the Egyptian vulture and a bottom-feeder like the catfish, to make an animal so vile no other animal wants to be associated with it. I would call it Kenneth Lay.

Longer arm = better trajectory, to a point. Weight will be a factor. I suggest you cut the U part of the trap at one end (leaving the upright that's attached to the spring), straighten it and then solder or braze a small wire hoop to hold your acorn. Play with the hoop design for best release. Releasing too soon will get you height but not necessarily distance. Releasing too late will just roll it along the floor. I can't think of any way to improve it with rubber bands. Try lengthening that throwing arm for different results. There will have to be a point where the arm is too long and heavy to throw it farther. Google the word "atlatl" and see if that gives you any ideas.

Blood gets its color from red blood cells and is always red. It appears blue in the veins because you're seeing it through veins and skin tissue which diffuse the light. Blood in the veins is a bit darker red than arterial blood which is brighter due to more oxygen. Most cuts drip darker venous blood. If you nick an artery it will spurt bright red in time with your heartbeat. Get help quick.

A beautiful home should be all about how many cars can fit in the garage.

... without getting slapped or losing any fingers.

There will be no Best Waffle category. Seriously, avatars are many things to many people, but they should have meaning for their user and nobody else. If others pick your avatar it's not an avatar.

Staff so far thinks it's great, probably need to be several (not a whole lot) categories. Probably start some nomination threads in GD and then whittle the nominations down so we can post a voting poll later. Should we do this now or wait for summer (end of the school year, end of our year?)? This may help: Look at AzurePhoenix. See the intense yet revealing expression she has, hiding enigmatic thoughts? Now imagine that Azure is looking at the Mona Lisa, trying to match her, enigma for enigma. Now imagine the Mona Lisa's smile falters, just a bit. Her eyes dart to the side, looking for the nearest exit. You know, just in case. You get the picture....

AA.

I'm doing my part. I stopped watching baseball when the players called a strike that cancelled the World Series in 1994. I stopped watching basketball when Charles Barkley announced that he was not a role model for kids and several fellow NBA millionaires agreed with him. And the final straw, the one I thought would crush me, was when the owner of the Denver Broncos announced that after all the years fans showed up (even when the team was crappy) he was going to move the team elsewhere unless we built him a new stadium with tax dollars (even though our baseball team had done the same thing with a bond and even paid it off early). I stopped watching football the same day he made that announcement. I wasn't crushed after all. I found something to fill the gap sports left behind. I rekindled my interest in science. Movie stars and pop stars don't affect my taxes and I can control what my kids see of them. They are also ACTING. Many sports stars behave like jerks, cheat and beat their wives, are fiscal nightmares and still get idolized. They also perpetuate the myth that you can play games, do anything you feel like, act anyway you want and live the high life.

Make sure you keep your wrists and hands away from the touchpad. I think when you activate your mouse you deactivate your keyboard temporarily. You may be brushing it when you use the G, H and backspace keys. Probably not the fix but it would be nice if it were something simple and cheap, no?

Why would you want to horizontally rotate a TV? For people who lean? There are more versatile wall/ceiling mounted designs that have the added benefit of already being on the market and relatively cheap (US$40-75). I can't figure out why the floor stands for plasma TVs are US$700+. It seems astronomically high. Bendy technology and TVs just aren't meant to mix, I'm afraid. Better to have some kind of ball joint on a mounting arm that is very rigid but will move reluctantly under the weight of a 10kg TV. I still think it's such a specialty market there wouldn't be much demand for it.

Mylar is a balloon material. It could be done in mylar with some inner structuring involved. In latex, as swansont mentioned, you'd need differing thicknesses to keep it from... ballooning out in a sphere. If your latex cube had thin edges and thick sides (thickening even more as they get to the center of the side) it might work. Alternatively, you could blow a normal balloon up inside a wooden box, then freeze it with liquid nitrogen and remove the box. Pretty short-lived though, and it violates your "using only balloon material" caveat.

"Sarah! Put your brother's nose back this instant!" "Quick, before the movie starts, somebody tell me how it ends." "I know I marked it FRAGILE, but just kick the box off the back of the truck!" "I'll have a lukewarm latté, please." "This is a pretty interesting employee manual." "I have a coupon for that butterscotch beef toothpaste." "I save my scabs." "I cook everything at 200°F for three or four hours." "Do you like it? It's a hair gel AND a pudding!"

I've used an ARIN whois search on some of the jerks we occasionally get here, but I already know their IP.

Terraform Mars!

Since it was midnight and very dark, I hope he got the right goat. If there is anything the world doesn't need it's another deadbeat da-a-a-a-d.

Hey! Who said he was the only one reading? Not fair! Don't the rest of us deserve to hear what you have to say? I can appreciate your analogy. It really bothers me that so many cultures, including parts of our own, put women in a subservient position. In my experience, I've come to realize that most of my own shortcomings are made up for by my wife, and that when we function as a unit we have a much higher level of competency. I appreciate the fact that women see things differently than men and view it as a benefit and not a detriment. Unfortunately countries are not like families and their processes and reactions are not as simple as we would want them to be. But outrage and condemnation are good things, especially in a democracy. They insure that the future generation will improve the process, refine it and make it more effective for more modern times. Your passion for justice is needed as a powerful tool for progress. I like hearing from young people who are frightened but determined, who haven't given up and become complacent. You show great courage so just remember that bravery is impossible without first being afraid.

They ARE condemning terrorism, the stories are out there. They just aren't front page because that doesn't sell as many papers or boost net revenue for commercial time. What do you do when some American extremist group does something horrible? What did most Americans do when Timothy McVeigh set off a bomb in OKC? They read the story and shook their heads and talked to their friends and neighbors about what a tragedy it was. Did "many" of them get worldwide airtime to condemn it? No. The press picked who got interviewed based on what people wanted to hear so they could sell the news better. Absolutely. I doubt you'd get many people to disagree. Glad to hear it's still you. Just bear in mind that they ARE extremists. If Timothy McVeigh had got hold of a nuke and set it off in Tehran, would you want Muslims to think you were to blame because you're an American and you didn't get on TV to condemn his actions?

Unofficially, there are over a billion and a half Muslims worldwide. If even 1% were bloodthirsty terrorist bombers bent on perverting the intent of their religion there would be 15 million of them after us. Believe me, the active terrorists you see splashed all over the newspapers may barely number in the tens of thousands. It doesn't sound like the Bettina I know to want to kill 100,000 people because a couple of them might be terrorists. Don't get me wrong. I detest terrorism on many levels, the foremost being that our response to it has done nothing but fan the flames. A heavy military response only gains followers for terrorists who are protesting against oppression. Bombs, tanks and planes to fight small terrorist cells is like using a rifle on cockroaches. Secondly, terrorism is ineffective. Terrorism is a propoganda tactic but militarily it is the biggest failure EVER. It has never won the terrorists anything strategic. No policy gets changed because of terrorist attacks (at least not the policies the terrorists were trying to change). If anything it serves only to increase military response, and THAT is what they really want. Terrorism only serves to allow a very small fringe extremist element to gain followers attracted to their seeming sacrifice against a much stronger foe. They thrive on the underdog syndrome and the more we match them hate for hate, the more power and backing they gain. Please understand why it is important for you to stop saying things like, "What I find disgusting about the Islamics is the fact that they try to kill as many women and children as they can thru suicide bombings instead of trying to kill soldiers." Compared to the vast majority, those with terrorist leanings are a tiny minority, but they grow in number as long as people like you keep painting them all with the same brush. You are condemning many people who object to terrorism as much as you do. I doubt that the majority of Muslims would ever hold you, a Caucasian from the US south, responsible for what the KKK has done in the name of Christianity in the past. Feel free to comment on the Islamic terrorists, but please refrain from racist remarks which assume all Islamics are terrorists.

This place has a ton of glow-in-the-dark solutions, including powders you can mix in water. It would be really cool if you could rig an aquarium pump to actually show the glowing stuff moving through the veins. I wonder if you could rig something to turn the pump on and off in time to a heartbeat? If you also had the sound of a heart beat it was timed to it would be totally wicked!

I've seen Christmas and arcade lights that use clear tubing and have lights synced to travel down the length of the tubing. Here's a link for rope lighting that may work for you. Looks kind of pricey to me because of the controller. You might also try running some kind of phosphorescent liquid or paint through clear tubing. That way you get the effect you want when you turn out the lights.

"I'm a leper and proud of it!" "I kind of like sand in my underwear." "The more blades they put in my razor the better I feel about it." "Who took my foot?" "I think paying more for my car than my parents paid for their house makes perfect sense." "I always wanted to hunt for buried treasure. That's why I don't mind cleaning the catbox." "Nothing says 'precision' like a chainsaw."

Please avoid generalizations like this. Like many other extremist movements both religious and secular, the acts of a few should not be blamed on the whole. Certain factions of Islam, like certain factions of Christianity, like certain factions of secular ethnic groups (i.e. White Supremicists), like certain factions of idealogical groups can behave in extreme, violent ways. Just because some anti-abortionists kill Planned Parenthood personnel is it right for me to assume all anti-abortionists feel the same? Just because some white people have hung people because of the color of their skin is it right for me to assume all whites feel the same? Just because some high school students have gone on rampages and shot up their schools and classmates is it right for me to assume all high school students feel the same? I know the news is full of hate and violence and sex. The news is like the Jerry Springer Show. Please don't believe that the people you see sensationalized are representative of the whole. Racism and discrimination are part of the problem, not the solution.

The flow of electrons in the DC current are one-way and continuous, so it's less stressful on whatever it's powering. AC goes back and forth between the source and what it's powering more than 50 times per second. This tends to burn equipment out faster. But DC current can't be stepped up or down, as swansont mentioned. Power stations can send out AC electricity in extremely high voltage to cover long distances and then transform it down for safe use in the home or office. In both AC and DC current, danger is a combination of many factors, including voltage, ameperage and resistance. I've had shocks playing around with furnace transformers and D batteries that were very high in voltage, but very low in amperage (and duration). It has been argued that the added pollution and cost of personal DC generators would be offset by longer lasting electrical equipment. I'm not sure if some of our modern equipment could be made to run off DC current (although computers can run on batteries, and all batteries are DC current). We're also not in a market condition that would survive very long if you only bought one set of light bulbs in your lifetime. Batteries are very interesting as a source of DC current. You should never throw away batteries that are making your flashlight dim or your cassette player sound funny, because those batteries will power a radio or a calculator or a clock for weeks to come.

"It takes just as much talent and effort to lip-sync to a song as it does to actually sing it." "Having big pouty sexy-looking Botox lips is infinitely more important than having the use of my lip muscles for things like facial expression talking and kissing." "I prefer packet ketchup." "Getting a huge tax refund is just smart fiscal management." "Nose piercing is a statement of uniqueness and rebellion. It says, 'I'm different, not like everyone else'." "I'm a purist. Give me a scoop of vanilla, a few M&Ms and some transmission fluid."