From what I have heard $17.27/hr to start would be considered to be a livable wage. Add in that the job has health, dental, and pension benefits and it looks pretty good, not to mention that it is a government job so it would be likely that after 20 years you could retire with a full pension.

Doesn't that require a priest or shaman of some sorts?

I do give to Minnesota Public Radio (they carry the BBC world service on 91.1 HD3 FM) but as I live in a area where I can't receive any OTA TV signal I don't give to the local PBS station. I don't watch much video so the little I do watch over netflix (my wife and children watch a substantial amount more) is what I am willing to pay. I listen to about 2 hours a day of radio so there it is worth it.

Would an isolated ground outlet work to eliminate that? This is a real question I don't know but if so at this point it is a non issue.

Probably because it was the military and there was money to spend. The other option was to use what I assume was steel to provide a hardened reinforced structure.

Which is truly sad since commoditization could make good things cheaper if mass produced. I want the future promised where stuff doesn't wear out but most people just want a cheaper one. If Lego can mass produce plastic bits that have tolerances of 2 microns then why can't other manufactures of higher end things do so. I mean people are willing to pay more for quality since for toys Legos aren't cheap but are very well made. Even on the secondary market a major selling point of bulk lots is stating that there are no Mega Blocks.

From what I have read about the MIL-3818B watches they are pretty good for accuracy I don't know if mine is exceptional as you point out it is just one data point. In this case it would be best to assume that it represents an average one since it was basically chosen randomly when purchased at the PX. It may very well be an exceptional example given that it has lasted but these were inexpensive (probably government subsidized) but accurate watches for airmen of that era. The original spec stated the maximum error at +-30 seconds a day but unless something is wrong internally they do much better. My biggest issue with mine is that the tritium on the face has decayed (~12 year half life) so much that they really only glow for a brief time after being exposed to light instead of glowing continuously.

If you need precise timing better than 1.5 minutes/month there are better solutions but for regular life that is close enough. Also I travel for work enough that when adjusting it to new time zones I can snap the time to a stratum 1 time server. The watch is very consistent with it's error as well, like I said it runs 3 seconds (+-1 second) fast per day, and since it has the hack function I could manually compensate by stopping the watch for a few seconds each day.

And that is why I don't shop at Wal*Mart. Not being a watch guy (I do find the mechanical aspects fascinating though) I didn't know that a reasonable watch would be called a chronometer. I have a number of older nice pocket watches I am going to get repaired but I don't expect them to be as accurate because they are much older and while higher end still have a higher mass and fewer jewels.

I find it surprising that as you put it a "modern mechanical (non-chronometer)" watch would be off 5-10 seconds per day given that I own a 49 year old MIL-3818B wrist watch that I had cleaned and repaired a little while ago and from what I can tell it runs pretty consistently 3 seconds (+-1) fast a day when checked against a stratum 1 time source. Granted it is a very good 17 jewel watch (Benrus) but it is almost 50 years old and was my uncle's service watch while in Vietnam so it isn't like it wasn't exposed and probably abused during it's life. I would have thought that watch making would have improved with modern lower friction, lighter weight, and more thermally stable materials. Although given what I see for men's wrist watches it seems they are more jewelry and "look at me" than functional devices.

Except that was the tax paid to support the BBC and was only paid by those who have a TV (assumed to be everyone). Personally I wouldn't mind that situation if we could produce shows of that quality. I like watching the BBC series on Netflix since while there may not be lots of special effects they are well written.

The other nice thing about not having commercials is not being nagged to buy the latest fad toy that will get used a couple of times and then ignored. Also the kids get less gender stereotyping such as kitchen toys are only for girls and don't get the pressure to not be themselves. Both of my boys like playing kitchen, doing crafts, playing with cars and trucks, and being outside. I did have a good laugh on the first day of kindergarten when my oldest went and started playing with the huge kitchen set the class had and made "breakfast" for all the girls playing house in the class.

I don't know if that was an enforced rule or not but I didn't follow it (60/40 blend t-shirts). That was a long time ago and when little I didn't know what most of those things were. As I got older I started thinking for my self and the whole religious thing just didn't make sense to me. After starting to question some things and realizing that it was pretty shitty to think like that I rapidly fell away from it. It was really strange too when I went to church with my grandparents on my father's side (Presbyterian) on the rare occasion I was at their house for the weekend and while their god and Jesus had the same names they were very different from what I was hearing in my regular church. This new Jesus seemed more like a guy who wanted you to not be a dick to other people and help out to make people's lot in life better, not someone who wants you to carry out a crusade for him.

Do you know how much you could sell virgin primordial untouched by humans without any terrestrial pollutants water for? This seems like something that you could dupe people into paying at least $10 a liter for.

Isn't there available LIDAR information available for your area?

I while back I was looking at some for one of the areas that I hunt and it was accurate enough where you could see the ruts in the road where vehicles regularly drove down gravel roads. I can't find it at the moment but it was available in an interactive form online.

But how deep would it have to be to have the volume of a barn megaparsec?