Skye

I guess sapan soni means an engine based around a nitinol element than alternates between austenitic and martensitic forms, then this translational motion is converted into rotational motion mechanically. It would require an electrical supply to function, putting it into competition with conventional electrical motors, which I doubt it would compete with. And anyway, it would have the same existing problems electrical energy storage.

The main reason is that different engines have differing fuel efficiencies in take off/landing and cruising. Piston engines are more efficient at the former, turbofans at the latter. Turboprops are in the middle. So piston engines are used for short ranged, turboprops for medium distance and jet engines for longer distances.

I didn't see the article refer to any stats or trends going back much more than a decade so the reasoning that it's been mismanaged for decades is unsupported.

They haven't generally. Here's income in US counties in 2008: And here's electoral college info from the 2008 Presidential election: Kudos to Wikipedia. Now they're couple of years old, and it's Federal election data rather than State. The problem with State governments though is that the local parties can vary in policies. By comparing State Governors, for example, you'd think that California has been a solid Republican state until recently. Anyway, there's a general correlation between voting for Obama and having rich neighbours, and you can probably stretch that to say there's a correlation between conservative states and poor economic performance. Why? It could just be a fluke. It could just be cultural differences between different states. It could be that the richer states put greater emphasis on the leftist policies like the environment because they can afford to. Interestingly, there's also the better performance of income growth during Democrat rather than Republican Presidencies.

Bin Laden didn't actually claim responsibility until 2004.

Windjammers still carried long distance cargo during the first half of the 20th century. They could be sailed with around 20 crew at around 15 knots, which is similar to modern cargo ships. However they'd do this following the wind along certain routes, and it's still not as reliable as a powered ship. It would be interesting to see what a modern ship design could achieve though.

Rephrased: you have a rally about government spending, where the organisers were taking some inappropriate signs off people, and there's still one in twenty signs mentioning the President's race or religion. On the flip side, there could be a small number of very visible racists who are just tagging along with the tea party movement.

I prefer their fission one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

For all its problems, at least the US has finally made the fusion-powered family car a reality.

Ok, so you're aware that love is studied under some definition and seems to be the result of some biochemical processes? I can't see how that's consistent with post #47. Well I'm aware of religion, like love, being studied a neurological process, but that simply supports religion as a neurological process not religion as a philosophical position.

There's plenty of research on love, particularly related to oxytocin.

Are you weightless in the dark?

In Australia medicine was traditionally a ~6 year undergraduate degree that you entered straight out of high school. Some univerisities have started adding to, or replacing, these courses with four year postgrad degrees. There are no requirements for science subjects in the undergrad courses, they do need to pass the standard test that includes organic chem and physics though. The reasons are mostly commercial, it opens up a larger number of potential students and increases the number of years they'll be paying fees to 7 or 8.

The problem here is cost. MRAPs are meant to be cheap, otherwise you'd buy a APC or AFV. A commercial truck with some steel plate and a light machine gun on the roof is reasonably cheap to build and service. Going beyond that pushes cost into APC/AFV territory, at which point you'd just buy a Stryker or Puma.

The Guardian is a left wing paper. The Times (now owned by News Corp) is traditionally conservative though. It is well respected and is considered a newspaper of record for the UK. I think that news of record generally implies an excellent reputation, because the term newspapers of record originates from the use of certain newspapers as the medium through which public notices, such as product recalls or retractions of libel, were distributed, and that these were typically distinguished high brow broadsheets like the Times, the NYT and La Monde. These papers have a bias, certainly, but are still usually respected across ideological lines for good reporting. I don't think this is the case with the Fox News Channel. The same ideologically people who dislike the Times or the WSJ will of course dislike FNC, but I think FNC gets little respect from moderates, or even many conservatives.

Source? This is a corner case anyway. The number of brain surgeons living in Bondi and collecting unemployment benefits would be statistically meaningless. It should also be noted that Australia is different in having a set unemployment allowance of around $250 a week as opposed to uneployment insurance that depends on previous income. This does bring up an important point, that highly educated people in narrow fields often have high unemployment rates. There a misconception that being a brain surgeon (or whatever highly educated person) means that you should be able to find work fairly easily. In fact the converse is often true as people who have spent around 10 years in tertiary education often have limited unskilled work experience, or work experience at all. They are some of the least employable people of all in a general sense, outside of their very narrow specialisation. And narrow fields often have long periods without job vancancies so surprisingly high unemployment is often the result. In the Australian context this is false on face value, and missing the real point anyway. The government subsidises a large part of most students tuition and does based on a number of places for each course that each university is entitled to. There is a minority of universities that don't get governments subsidies and there is a minority of places in other universities that aren't governments funded. However, mostly the government has ostensible control over what courses universities teach. However the ostensible there is meaningful in that the government is limited by its own stupidity. Certain courses (such as business, some arts and law) are cheap to teach as they require little infrastucture or equipment beyond walls, floors and ceilings, while others (such as science, engineering and medicine) are more expensive as they require more infrastructure and equipment. Funding doesn't reflect costing accurately so, for example, a chemistry department I previously studied in made on a loss on teaching all subjects other than the first year ones. The underfunding of science, engineering, medicine, etc. places is made up for by the over-allocation of business, arts, law, etc. places to balance the books. Sure, if you've got stupid economists. Decent economists recognise study and training as an area of hidden unemployment, especially during recessions. ETA: Sorry for the Australian derailment, but John started it.

That's ok, thanks for clearing it up though. But what is this risk? I’d say in this particular case it’s very low. As a slight diversion, Israel doesn't blockade Lebanon. This isn't because Hezbollah haven't launched rockets from Lebanon, or that Iran is unlikely to try to get weapons to Hezbollah by sea, but mostly because it's just not practical. The risk of Hezbollah being re-armed, and I don’t think this is all that low, is not worth the problems that this would cause. I see this situation, in isolation, as being much the same. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Pioneer, are you trolling or do you really think that Nazi Germany and Israel are comparable?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I was simply talking about whether Israel can still be considered an occupying power of Gaza. However, yeah Gaza is poor and it's been poor for a long time The kind of corruption you talk about was reportedly a factor in Hamas' popularity, since they were seen as less corrupt than Fatah. Hamas is partly responsible for the lack of economic growth in Gaza, since it has a poor relationship with both Egypt and Israel, but then how much of that is also due to Egypt and Israel seeking to damage the legitimacy of Hamas as a governing power? I haven't actually blamed anyone for the situation. There's a difference between saying an operation is a failure and blaming them for the situation. My point though was that this particular shipment was unlikely to contribute to the rocket attacks so protecting against rocket attacks wouldn't be a priority to me. Why is doing nothing in this particular case not an option? Doing something just seems like taking the bait.

Ok, but Israel retained control of Gazan airspace, access to the sea and a strip of land bordering Israel. Those are all reasonable given the attacks coming from Gaza, but they do mean that there are doubts that the disengagement plan actually ended occupation. In terms of what to do, I guess Israel has two main objectives in controlling the borders with Gaza at the moment: stopping rocket attacks and winning a propaganda war. These ships were clearly designed to win a propaganda battle, they had activists, politicians and journalists on board. I think it would have been doubtful from the outset they'd contribute much to rocket attacks. If the IDF thought they could control the situation then they obviously made an error in judgement. If the IDF felt that the number of people on board the ships could get out of control then (with the benefit of hindsight) the government made an error of judgement in proceed.

There are a few things Dershowitz doesn't address, such as whether Israel can still be considered to be an occupying power of Gaza because it retains some control over it and if so would that would affect the ability to blockade Gaza, and I think he is not entirely correct in stating that Israel must stop ships passing through a blockade to maintain its validity. If ships are carrying aid then they ordinarily can pass through a blockade without any effects on its legitimacy. You could also question whether it was reasonable to stop these particular ships since it was unlikely they'd be carrying weapons or materials to make them. However the legal issues are largely irrelevent since they won't be resolved in any court. The boarding was a failure from a planning point of view. And if you think stopping and searching the ships was unecessary to prevent weapons getting into Gaza then the whole incident could have been avoided.

Hey I said The legality of the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt is already contested but nothing will come of it back in post #27 so I'm not guilty of that. But like I said, the legality of the blockade contested, so whether breaching the blockade is illegal or not isn't something everyone is going to agree on. And there was discussion already about whether the boarding was legal anyway because of the distance from the coast.

The problem with this analogy is that a ship is sovereign territory of the country whose flag it flies, in this case apparently Turkey. Illegally boarding a ship isn't simply a policing mistake but can be an act of war, which is why Turkey has said they'll escort further convoys.

The legality of the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt is already contested but nothing will come of it. Regardless, it's a cock up. They had days to plan for the operation and clearly didn't have the ability to control the number of people on board the ships.

Pioneer are you trolling, or are you unable to figure out how a theory of natural selection would lead to selective advantage?

Have any CIA agents actually been outed? If the photos were of the agents that interrogated the defendants then showing a photo of them to the defendant wouldn't out them, as the defendant would already know their appearance.