CaptainPanic

The one with the strongest weapons / army. (And no, I haven't read any of your posts).

No. Never. I live in a pretty average Dutch town of about 100k people. We have quite a standard distribution of wealth (rich and poor neighborhoods)... I have lived in two other cities in the Netherlands as well... But none of the incidents that you describe ever happened to me in my life.

Whatever you come up with, you must realize that a tsunami is not ordinary water. It is highly turbulent water, filled with construction material, cars, trees, waterfalls, waves and perhaps even rocks and structures that are not washed away (houses, hills, trees). Your barge must withstand a high velocity (50 km/h) direct impact with such heavy materials. It will be tossed around and all sides (bottom, front, back and sides) will receive a heavy beating. I would certainly NOT choose plywood for a construction material. I would go with a fibreglass reinforced material, or a strong plastic (polycarbonate for example). If it has to be safe, it won't be cheap.

Why would you pay someone else so that you can be less educated? In my world, I pay to be receive education, not to avoid it. I can only think of 2 reasons to use such a cheat: 1. You honestly tried hard to do the homework, but you can't. And failure is not an option. Then maybe, for once, you can consider this. 2. You are sure that within the very near future you will drop the subject of the homework anyway, and you will never ever need it again. This does not go for all the topics at highschool - you will need them all one day - and therefore you must study them all... including music, French (or any other language), and all the other stupid courses you get.

I dreamed about work last night... And I'll be damned... here I am. I kinda forgot the details though. Most likely the dream contained some bizarre and highly unlikely events.

Looking at earth, I would say that life is extremely contageous. Therefore, it is likely to spread everywhere it can.

Getting angry at the scientists who gave a (not 100% guarantee but a) warning for a tsunami - and then not listening the next time... I dunno, is that material for a mass-Darwin Award? I think so.

I apologize beforehand for the next remark. But, during a crisis like this, the population grows faster than the dollars, though. Read more cold statistics here: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/Haiti-POPULATION.html

I don't understand point #3: If any organization sues you, even if they cannot ever win it and the reason is silly - will you give up privacy data to avoid the lawsuit, or will you only give the data stored if the continuity of LFN is at risk? To me, it sounds like a very easy way to get info: just sue the forum, and get the info.

Crime: terrorism Defendant: the Engineer Means: plenty - defendant has a Masters degree in technology Motive: defendant is unsatisfied with the performance of the system - defendant sees opportunities for improvement Opportunity: Defendant has extensive knowledge of infrastructure and safety procedures. Defendant has a professional ability to identify opportunities. The court rules that the Engineer is guilty as charged. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means,_motive,_and_opportunity Luckily, society can't do without engineers... so we're not at risk of being imprisoned soon. The most dangerous terrorists engineers are arguably also the most needed. I am, like insane_alien, a chemical engineer. Without us, chemical factories, power plants and such important infrastructure comes to a complete stop. But, logically, we also have knowledge of these things, so we can also destroy it by deliberate mismanagement. I object to the point that terrorists are always fundamentalist religious people. Maybe they should pay us more? (Damn, this sounds a lot like extortion! Sorry! But after hearing how much bankers and financial people make, I really think I need to get more... but I'd like to get it in an honorable and fair way). If you're an unemployed engineer, you must be a nut. At least in Western Europe, there is a shortage of engineers even in times of crisis.

Externet is right. A significant part of the exhaust gases are going sideways. A nozzle must be designed for a specific surrounding pressure (atmospheric rockets have a different nozzle design than rockets for outer space). If you use a barrel, this problem should be overcome. Obviously, you might get friction instead though. This website (wikipedia) shows formulas and pictures of different nozzles. This website (aero.org) seems even better.

Newton, Navier and Stokes didn't invent the airplane. The Wright brothers did. We'll have to wait and see when the theoretical physics is turned into applied physics by inventors.

.zip it.

I bet there are reports that show that interesting programs with a high density of new information are: 1. boring to most people, get low number of people that watch it 2. expensive So, logically, the programs become cheaper and it pays to repeat the same topic in a different presentation a few times.

Surprising that wind power scores so low... is tha because it's 2nd choice for everyone after solar, or because people really oppose it? For me, wind is a good 2nd option.

If cooperation is required for success, a leader will stand up, and actually lead with authority. However, the authority may be given to the leader by the others - it's not necessary that a leader takes control. Control can also be received. I admit that the leadership you describe works fine - especially at a music festival or a fun day out on the beach. But I wouldn't try to build any large infrastructure with such a form of leadership, and I also believe that traffic would be rather messy if people would just follow any set of rules they wished on any particular day and time. But perhaps we touch on something nice here: different types and styles of leadership are required at different times. And I believe that many people largely do agree with the system we work in, but occasionally we dislike parts of it. And in many cases, we would like to see leadership by good example, or leadership by suggestion - rather than a repressive form of leadership which leads by threatening with punishments. It's good to have punishments for murderers... but why have punishments for things almost everybody does (like for example going through a red light in the middle of the night at a totally deserted crossroad)? Most "anarchists" probably don't want anarchy - they just want more freedom.

Have a lol cat... and all our snow. I don't need it.

Simple. We need leaders. Always, everywhere. And we also have leaders always and everywhere. The simplest task involving multiple people will have a leader. Families have a leader (often the father). At work you have a boss. Sport, you have a coach. Teamsports, the team has a captain. Construction teams have a hierarchy. Universities have a professor. Anarchy will always fail, because the anarchists will appoint a leader themselves too, sooner or later. They already have a leader within their own little social group. Then later, the leaders of the small groups will probably meet... until there is a system, democratic or not. Ultimately, anarchy will always evolve into order. Because we are human. I believe the anarchists we see sometimes simply dislike the existing system... which means people would rather have no system than this system.

There is no reason at all that this moderate area widens at the polar regions. It would be just as wide or narrow as anywhere. Looking at the planets in our solar system, you can pretty much choose an atmosphere. Unless you plan to write the entire history of the formation of your fictional solar system, there is no reason to have anything different that earth. However, I would propose that you assume the presence of a magnetic field. Theories I have heard for the existance of Earth's atmoshpere are closely linked to the magnetic field. Mars has no magnetic field, and nearly no atmosphere. You only have 1 horizon, and it goes 360 degrees around you (unless it's blocked by something). It will look the same as any twilight here on earth. One side has the sun, and some light. Other side is already quite dark. The thinner the atmosphere you choose, the more abrupt the transition will be. And you cannot see the Vignette zone from the hot or cold hemisphere... just like you cannot see further than about 30 km on earth... the rest is over the horizon. Like any other planet. One side dark, one side bright. Depending on where you are in space, you can see more of the dark side, or more of the bright side. You can choose the colors yourself... I dunno. Hidden under a giant ice cap on one side, with glaciers extending from it I guess? You can choose if you want plate tectonics (continents moving, creating volcanoes and earthquakes)... or to have a more calm place. This is an interesting one. One side will have huge cooling. Like our poles. The other side massive heating. On the hot side, air (or whatever gas is in the atmosphere) will heat up, and rise. If there is any water, this will condense, and you will get rain - most likely lots of it. In the center of the hot side, there will the the rain forest kinda weather... except that you don't get the rain in the afternoon, but all day long. On the other side, it will cool and drop down. Clear skies where you can see the stars (since it's the dark side). In between those two areas, you can have multiple transitions from wet to dry, like here on earth... with those zones getting colder as you move closer to the dark side. And I would think it's likely that you get very stable weather types... easy job for the weather man. In the Vignette zone, it's probably windy all the time. Not sure if it's wet or dry. I wonder if you would have any coriolis effect with such slow rotation of the planet... Storms may just be linear winds with turbulence... and randomness. I doubt there is any coriolis effect at all. But there will be winds / storms which transfer heat from the hot to the cold side... Further answers can only be given if you sketch some oceans and continents. And even then, weather is amazingly difficult to predict, so it would all be guesses. [edit] Thanks for editing, lol. Mods, can my post be moved too? (I'll report it to the mods.) And can this thread then be closed and/or deleted?

If the disease can be transmitted by air, then a shotgun is the last thing you need... If there is a barrier (like glass) between you and the sick person, you'll just destroy the containment. If there is no barrier, you're too late anyway. If the disease cannot be transmitted by air, then you have nothing to fear... assuming sick people won't run after you like zombies do. Please note that in zombie movies you have to get bitten, and zombies actively and relentlessly chase people, which justifies the use of close-range violence against them... Diseases usually don't work that way. So, my answer to your question is: never

You seem upset. I thought it was normal that politicians lie about the things they do? Make promises, pretend interest and involvement, and then do whatever you want until 3 months before the next elections... that's democracy, isn't it? Even in a free democratic country like the Netherlands, I have completely lost my faith and trust in our system. The government constantly breaks promises and spreads lies. It's just that, in line with what Churchill once said, the current situation is still better than any other I can imagine.

The second x second x second in itself means very little. But in combination with other things it can be useful, like Bignose explained in the post just above this one. Typically, the second x second x second, and all kinds of other weird units are found in constants and in intermediate solutions or derivations. The final outcome of any calculation will be something tangible again. Take for example the Stefan-Boltzmann constant: [math]\sigma = 5.670 400(40) \times 10^{-8}\ \textrm{W}\,\textrm{m}^{-2}\,\textrm{K}^{-4}.[/math] It has weird units that mean little to me. If you take the unit apart and only look to he Kelvin to the power 4, it means even less. But in combination with a formula, it is correct and necessary.

I have read some "climategate" discussions... I think it is relatively easy to keep spamming the same misinformation on news forums (where people don't really care about scientific methods). You may have to manually create some accounts, but then the bots can do the rest automatically.

You just have to pump CO2 into the top of the bottle. If you leave the bottle closed, CO2 in the liquid is going to reach equilibrium with the gas inside the bottle. So, whatever you do, you will always lose some CO2. The only way to prevent that, is to have CO2 already in the gas phase (the little we have in our air is not enough).

Reading some of the threads on this forum and other forums, and also following computer developments a bit, I start to wonder lately if some threads are created by really stupid people, or quite smart bots? Are the bots nearly passing the Turing test, or are people actually failing the Turing test? Especially posts later in a thread can be absolutely disastrously off topic indicating a complete failure to understand anything at all. Some posts convince me of the need of a certain intelligence (or sobriety!) check before activating an account on this forum Would that be controversial? Sooner or later, we will enter a time where computers can start spamming forums without users noticing immediately... and once they do, forums will be flooded by them soon after.