CaptainPanic

Well... current mag-lev technology has trouble to change lanes. The entire track must physically move. It might be expensive if you need to physically move the road in stead of having a traffic light at each crossroads.

Well... the open-minded Dutch do exactly the same. Immigrants are no longer received with open arms. They are accused of stealing our jobs and destroying our Dutch culture (which is all said using euphemisms). I strongly believe that the immigrants themselves can determine how they are received. If you have a pro-active attitude, and you try to immediately learn a language, and if you are trying to make new friends (rather than waiting until other people invite you), then it's all quite easy. Immigrants must remember that the locals already have a life, they don't think they need new friends. And yes, I counted Finland as part of Scandinavia. People in Finland are just shy. Give them a beer, put them in a sauna, and they melt. Talk a bit about sauna in a forest at a lake, and they might even invite you. It's really not as bad as you paint the picture there. It happens that I've been there a couple of times, and I made friends pretty easy. But, you have to adapt to the culture before you can truly integrate...

From my own experience at home (Netherlands), a democracy does not become more democratic when more money is spent on the elections. The adds usually have to get a message across in 30 seconds. This leads to a simplified explanation of the problem (which is good for populist politicians) and to a one-liner as solution. As it happens, that is exactly what is happening in the news and even in parliament too. The more info we get, the worse the quality. In the flood of information, only screaming and shouting works. - You can blame the media for this as well as the politicians. What people need is a better structure in the information that we get. In stead, we just get more of it.

How does the salt get into the sea? That's the question you want to answer.

What is the added benefit of a superconductor? It is basically a wire with 0 resistance... that's it, isn't it? So, compared to a copper wire, it just saves some electricity, if you are running electricity through it. If you work on a small scale system, which is used for evacuation (something that hopefully doesn't happen 10 times per day), why would you want to save energy? Super conductors at room temperature don't exist. All of them need some sort of cooling - so superconductors actually consume energy if the system is idle! For any evacuation system, I suggest good old copper wire, so that the system can completely shut down if it is not operating...

We know that a helium filled party balloon rises, so it is lighter than air. This enables us to estimate the weight of the balloon itself: it cannot be heavier than the air it displaces. If the balloon (the plastic) is heavier than the weight of the volume of air, then filling it with helium would not cause it to go up. Let's assume a worst case scenario where the balloon is exactly as heavy as the air it contains: this effectively means that a massive stack of balloons weights at most twice that of normal air. So, that would be the equivalent of 2 bars of pressure (or 2E5 Pa, or 2E4 kg/m2)! You must make sure that the balloons exert a similar pressure all over your body (on all sides: top, bottom, front, back, sides). If it is distributed perfectly, you can withstand massive pressures! We know that a person can survive 2 bars of pressure: if you swim at 10 meters depth (using diving equipment) you can have a really nice time to check out all the fish that live there. No harm will come to you if you avoid the sharks. My conclusion: if you were to fill up the atmosphere with balloons, we would not die from the weight itself... although I am certain that the fact that you suddenly have to breathe 50% latex cannot be healthy.

The pi-based-system is uses "radians". It is totally functional, and widely used.

I'm a little puzzled over the definition of "fact" when we are discussing astronomical phenomena. "Fact" is not the same as "most accepted explanation". About 400 years ago, it was widely accepted that the earth is flat. However, I would not go as far as saying that it was a fact that 400 years ago the earth was flat. This statement was triggered by: And then you quote some text, which starts with a sentence which clearly does not give a fact, but merely a suggestion. http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_sources/blackholes.html I am not certian what we should do with this "fact". I suggest that when you tell others to show facts, that at least you do so yourself. That I don't understand. If I fill my bathtub, and then empty it. The water will spin at the drain. There is a large acceleration near the center, but I have seen no evidence of a black hole near that particular rotating system. (This is no proof though, since you cannot see black holes). The stars that are present in a galaxy all add to the massive gravitational field... the center of mass of the whole galaxy lies in its center (duh), so logically, that is what all stars rotate around. But it is not necessary for any rotation to have a heavy mass in the middle... as long as the center of mass is in the middle (which it always is, by definition). This point I have no idea about... is there any proof (not models that just appear to cover some observations) that a black hole creates X-ray radiation? Anyway, all sentences in this article have words that clearly indicate that we're not so sure how things work: "suggest", "probably", "presumably" etc.

Any heat rising is indeed through convection. In other words: in absence of molecules, molecules cannot go up. That sounds a little silly, but that's what it comes down to. Heat doesn't rise itself, it's the fact that the gas (its molecules) is heated. Hot gas expands, (gets a lower density). The lower density gas rises. Cold gas, with higher density, will fall. That's also why you cannot take a hot air balloon up into space. For your information, light bulbs have low pressure inert gas (nitrogen or neon for example) inside the bulb, but no absolute vacuum, so there will be some convection inside the bulb.

I fear that the main problem here is the lack of purpose. Young people never saw a real problem. Unemployment is the biggest problem now. That may sound like a massive problem, but it's rather tiny compared to hunger, war or the plague, to name a few. I may generalize now, but I believe that kids with a troubled youth grow up with a sense of purpose (if they manage to get out of their youth without too much trauma - I'm not saying a trauma is a good thing to have, so save your flaming). Whatever the kids/youth do, their effort is just not going to make a big impact. The system won't change. We're already rich, so that isn't gonna change either. We're not "rebuilding the country" or something like that. So, in stead, we're making ourselves happy. We're becoming more and more individuals. Anyway, besides possessing things and becoming rich, what else is there to achieve? It's not only the goal of the individual, but also of each country and even the whole world. If the economy doesn't grow, it's bad. What do you expect of kids that grow up in such a place? I can't really blame the kids. But it's not all as bad as it sounds. There is a second category: kids that know damn well what's going on. But kids are pragmatic. They go with the flow. Being different is done in silence, inside your own head... Some of the kids who seem part of the whole thing really aren't. They're just smart enough not to say that out loud.

Work has units of "Joule". Power has units of "Joule/second" (="Watt"). Work = Force * distance Power = energy/time Power = Work * velocity Since these are probably all vectors, it's all simplified a bit. But if you do a dimensional analysis it will hold.

That's another shock to me. You can really go to jail for a year without ever having had a trial?? Wow. That's weird. I'm not 100% sure anymore now about the system here, but I think that over here you always get a trial. Haven't been into contact with that system too much myself, and I also didn't study law, so I'm not exactly an expert. Anyway, interesting stuff, this. Of course they count. That's the whole point! Why shouldn't they vote?? How bad can it be when someone casts his/her vote in a democracy?? I mean, that's the whole idea, isn't it?

I know... that's why I started that paragraph with "If" and ended it with "But it's not gonna happen."... I assume you mean that the energy stored in the batteries could power the country for an attosecond. The power output as used in the walkman (a few Watts at most) cannot even power a toothbrush.

I have a problem with this statement. This is the one I replied to, and I apologize for not quoting it the last time. This post seems to suggest that the power output changes, which is not true. The horsepowers do not change if you add a gearbox to it. The torque does. This I agree with... so we all agree, which is beautiful, and we can move on into the weekend p.s. I don't see a mistake in my previous post... I think the above post by YT totally agrees with mine... so linguistically I don't understand YT's opening sentence (it seems to suggest disagreement)?

Power is expressed in watt, or kilowatt, or if you really have to, in horsepowers. A 12 HP engine (about 9 kilowatt) will generate 12 HP on the other end of whatever gearbox you put in between. It's torque that changes... Just have a look at the wikipedia websites of torque and power to see the units. You can do the conversion from one end to the other pretty easily. If the power really changed, then I'd be the first to invest in a Sony Walkman, a bunch of pulleys (the mother of all gearboxes, or MOAG) and power my country with it (the current market needs about 104 GW, or 141 million horsepowers in electricity). But it's not gonna happen.

Funny to read that people would like to emigrate to "see something new". That's a reason for a holiday, not to emigrate. Emigrations is, imho, rather permanent... not 3 weeks, not even 3 months or 3 years, but more like 30 years. It means building up a new life, breaking bonds with the old life. Most posts in this thread don't seem to realize that. Most posts are about "where would you like to work for a couple of months"? I'd emigrate to Scandinavia because they have a great economy, which is mostly technology based. There is a lot of space for everybody. It is similar enough to what I am used to, so I am sure I can settle there... I wouldn't go mad within a month from the culture shock. Canada could be neat too, for pretty much the same reasons. I guess I like the cold better than the warm climates. And New Zealand? Well... it's a little far away from everything else. You get kinda stuck there with no possibilities for short cheap holidays I'd love to check out China and Japan though... but I am not sure I have the patience to live there for very long... and if I don't go mad there, they'd probably kick me out for being the rude and blunt person I am.

Hmm... I'm a bit shocked to read that apparently about 1 in every 40 adults have committed a crime that has put them in jail for a year or more (that's sort of the wikipedia definition here - good enough for me, I am not going to study US law). Are Americans such evil people?? I think it's plain wrong if 1 in every 40 adults in a country cannot vote because of actions they have done in the past. I understand if people are put in prison, because they cannot be trusted walking around in freedom, or if they get a fine so they learn that something is not tolerated. But there is no danger for society to let these people vote. There is no way that they can disrupt the voting system. p.s. the reason I made a separate thread for this is that in the other thread there will be little discussion, just a list of facts. Here, I am hoping for some discussion.

Thanks a lot for all the answers. I understand the system a lot better now. These details, which I think are very important, are totally neglected in main stream media in the Netherlands(well, I can't blame our media, the presidential election is the most important for us). The US system is quite different from our own.

The ultimate goal is whatever you make it. Probably differs from person to person and from organization to organization. You could look up the mission statement of NASA and ESA (and all the other space agencies) to see what they are up to. As far as I am concerned, the ultimate goal is intergalactic domination, with me as your evil tyrant.

10 kilograms of rice and 3 buckets to divide it in is not going to feed the world, because it's not an infinite amount of food.

I'm puzzled what the following text means. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_United_States#Eligibility Can someone explain what this means? I thought that "eligible" meant that you are available for a political position, and other people can vote for you. But I seem to understand from the quote above that 5.3 million people are not allowed to cast their vote at all? Can someone explain the text in more simple words? I don't seem to understand. (I found this bit of information when searching for the answers to the questions in the post I put up just a minute ago. It seemed too much off topic to include it in that post.) I'm hoping that these people just cannot be elected themselves, but that they can still cast their vote. If not... normally to change the voting ystem, you need to change the constitution. It's a big thing. But now, all you need to do is change a small law that gets people convicted of something, and *whoop*, some people are not allowed to vote anymore!

I've heard that Americans can vote for more than just the president. You're also voting for a part of the house of representatives and senate (which together form the congress)? Is that a separate vote? (I mean, can you vote for a republican in the house of representatives, an independent in the senate, and Obama for president or something like that)? And if you are registered as a republican voter, can you still vote for a democrat? I've never understood why, in the primary elections, all democrats don't become a member of the republicans, and then vote for the softie-republican? Or why all republicans don't become a democrat member and vote for the hardliner-democrat? Can you be member of both republicans and democrats? Lots of questions, I know. I'm just interested. And I couldn't find the answers on google/wikipedia easily. US elections have never mattered as much as these do. The US elections get more coverage on Dutch TV than our own elections normally get.

The money spent on medical costs is irrelevant when compared to the amount of money saved on pensions and healthcare for the healthy but really old people. It's a myth that smokers cost society a lot of money.

This is just speculation, but it might be that the "fuel savings" in this case originate from the fact that turboprops generally fly at lower speeds... therefore saving fuel.

Because this asteroid will pass near to the earth several times before the potential doomsday, it should be relatively easy to get access to the asteroid. We can get some satellite on its surface years before 2036. My preferred plan is to plant a big nuke on it when it passes, and detonate it far away from earth. Trust me, I'm an expert (at Asteroids on the old atari)