npts2020

Well, I for one certainly hope you are right.

I liked Jimmy Durante but wouldn't know where to get any of his actual stand-up routines other than what was on tv.

Problem is that Apple has two things going for it. Firstly, the primary requirements for becoming a Supreme Court nominee the past couple of decades, has been views in favor of enhanced Presidential powers and favorableness toward corporate activities (forget all of the abortion and civil rights hand-waving). Secondly, I am not sure how versed in the technology most of the justices are to even realize many of the implications of their decision in this matter, most people in their age demographic know very little about things like this.

For decades now I have been under the impression that early Earth's atmosphere was mostly methane and ammonia. In addition to being different composition, the Martian atmosphere is much less dense than early Earth. Having said that, some of the life forms (I am thinking some archaeons, there might be others) that exist under extreme conditions on this planet could concievably live under some Martian conditions as well. Mars does not have the gravity to be able to hold an atmosphere such as exists on Earth, however......

I wonder how many collisions like that we can have before whole regions of space are basically unusable for satellites?

The main problem with the experiment is that nothing ever launched from earth by humans has even remotely come close to going far enough to arrive at any known black hole. Even the fastest spacecraft launchable in the near future would take decades (maybe even centuries) to arrive at the nearest one.

That is kind of what graphite lubricants do. It would be possible to construct the rod out of a diamond and IMO should last longer than one constructed from most other materials so long as there is little vibration or shock (diamonds are notoriously brittle). It would not last forever though, think about a diamond needle on a turntable.

Ah, that does complicate things a bit. I could imagine placing the tray on something like a turntableto rotate the glasses under the spigot but can see no simpler way of doing what you want to do without bringing robotics into the picture.

I had to vote other since my most relevant formal education has been mechanical/nuclear engineering. (I knew if I held out long enough someone would make another category.) Aside to ajb; Mathematicians were only doing what their society says they should be doing, making as much money as they can. In a culture where laissez faire capitalism is considered the ideal, I think anyone trying to assign blame needs to look hard into a mirror. For every part of the current financial crisis from the housing bubble to Bernie Madoff there were warnings well ahead of when things turned sour, the problem is that everybody seemed to be maximizing profits so those with any authority to control things, did not act. It seems as if you wish to assess blame there is plenty of it to go around.

Scientific or not I think there ought to be somewhere to discuss economic principles at this site. IMO much of economics is as aimed at obfuscation as much as explaining anything and it would be a worthwhile exercise for those here that are interested to parse out. Just my 2 cents. To the OP; how could such a thing be made to happen?

If I was building it, I would use an electric eye (light beam) that gets broken when you place the glass under the spigot. Then have the dispenser pump out a specific amount with settings for two or three size servings (if required).

IMO that is doubtful. If the measuring device is releasing energy (heat) it has to be releasing it to somewhere i.e. the medium surrounding your measuring device, thereby raising its temperature some incremental amount above absolute zero.

Rolling rods are frequently used as bearings, few things are as efficient. AFAIK any modification (besides making them ball bearings possibly) would make them less efficient.

What other possible "value" could the fed get besides rights to use/publish the work it funds? I wonder if this law would supercede eminent domain and who actually "owns" the results of government financed research?

I read the entire bill and would be hard pressed to give the exact portion of the bill this is in but IIRC the money was for non-citizen veterans like Filipinos or Mexicans (not specifically Viet Nam vets) who served in and are now retired from U.S. Armed Forces. I would not say if the amount was correct or not.

I think it is ironic that those who attach the most conditions for loaning money, don't want any conditions attached to their borrowing it.

In America we celebrate Darwin's birthday every year (just most call it Abraham Lincoln's birthday:D). Lincoln and Darwin were born the same day. Happy 200th to both.

Save some of that cold up and send it down here in July or August.

Depends if you want to blame those culpable or just blame someone, eh?

I have failed every one of those "find the number in the bubbles" tests I have ever taken (at least half a dozen that I can remember). I seem to see the wrong number or none at all about 75%-90% of the time (unless I stare at them for a long time but then I am not identifying the number by color), yet I can match colors for touch-up painting. I have never been able to figure out the difference between what I see and what a normally visioned person sees since it never seems to make much difference, just that the bubble tests say that it is different. The pictures of what a normal person sees and different forms of color-blind people are a good case in point. The one of a normal person's idea of a rainbow looks, well, normal, the other pictures are oddly colored.

A few posts ago someone asked about pork in the bailout. Unfortunately, I think the most pork is in the very area that will also create the most jobs, transportation. We are going to spend hundreds of billions (I'm sure trillions over the next decade) of dollars trying to prop up both mass transit and an antiquated highway system and likely devote to little for either. We need to combine the two systems, automate them, and power them from renewable sources. IMO there is little the government can do in the short term that will help in the long term other than create conditions for future economic stability. At present there is no way to get around instability as long as the pipelines we use for energy and other raw materials are insecure from political strife, sabotage, exhaustion, manipulation etc. Seeing as our transportation system is one of the biggest consumers of resources in the world, automation and powering with wind and solar energy would go a long way toward addressing this problem. Just my two cents. BTW I see nothing that is any more "pork" in this bill than was "pork" in the previous bailout bill..........why can't I get this bacon smell off my fingers?....

Thor Heyerdahl anyone?

Mathematicians too, aren't they the ones who were hired by Wall Street to set up a Ponzi scam, I mean derivative market?

Drunk driving is not quite the same thing. Charles Barkley was in the news for a DUI incident but I find it hard to believe that anyone would have given a picture of him chugging from a whiskey bottle (except maybe to comment about someone with that much money not affording a glass) a moments pause.

Well, it seems like most regulations are made to address someone or something's "safety" issue. Isn't that one of the reasons America is considered to be a mixed economy? "Managed" can mean anything from a few safety regulations to all economic activity being controlled by the state. IMO the less "managed" an economy is, the better, so long as those participating in that economy are not abrogating the rights of everyone else while doing so. In a perfect world laissez faire might be a good system, unfortunately we are left with trying to figure out how to apply it, if at all, to our real, imperfect world.