Yes. Then I realize that old people haven't changed... When I was 10, people in their 40s looked aged, people in their 60s looked very old and frail, and people in their 80s looked like something from a horror movie.

Now that I'm in my 30s, I find people in their 40s don't look so old. And people in their 60s don't look all that much different with the exception of some white/grey hair and a few more blemishes on their skin.

While individual houses may be designed to handle up to 200 amps, do you really think the distribution system is designed to handle every house drawing their maximum possible (200 amp) load all at the same time?

So go eat some hogwash yourself...

How do you like them photons?

Let me put it this way:

I work in a high technology company that makes a lot of software.

If our source code got into the hands of the competition, it would set them back a few decades.

They would run into so many bugs without knowing the 'workarounds' (or just flat out what to avoid), they wouldn't know what hit them.

Considering the crap that American car companies design, I think the Chinese are probably just trying to figure out what NOT to do.

I kind of equate it to buying a $50 t-shirt with some designer name printed across the front. Basically you're a walking billboard.

I fully agree with your statement. However, the funny thing is that many people prefer to have a designer name printed across the front (and gladly over-pay for the privilege)!

It's like branding christians as violent extremists because of what has happened in northern Ireland.

Aside from Ireland, Christians ARE violent extremists. (I suspect that is why they are so critical of Muslims.)

Let's see:
- Spanish Inquisition (ahem!)
- Holy Wars (WTF!)
- Forced modern-day conversion during 'chairity' work.
- Forced religious conversion by the sword (Constantine)
- Repression of women, even in religious services (Catholics)
- Intertanglement with political government. I have heard many Christian priests dictate to their congregation that particular political propositions be supported or rejected...
- Belief that their organizational leader is completely infallible. [Hence the above must have been sanctioned by God]

I generally support religious freedom. But if we decide to get rid of it, I hope all of Christianity and Islam are banned together.

As an aside, people think Scientologists are crazy, but are Christians any better? Look critically at the stories from the Bible. Look critically at what is believed to happen during consecreation (during mass)... Hey, if everyone believes it then everyone else must be insane!

As for me, i was raised Christian and executed in Christian schools...

Survey after survey has shown that people would much rather take a train (where they can get on easily, walk around during travel, not get slapped suddenly into their seats for an impromptu ride on the biggest roller coaster on the planet, drink a beer or eat a sandwich for a reasonable price, not have to wait in long lines for a restroom, and "land" within a short cab ride of their actual destination) than suffer through the growing indignities of air travel. Even adding in proper security screening, it's still no contest.

I recently visited Paris and Tokyo. To my surprise, both had extremely convenient trains. In paris, the Taxis stand is about 100m from the actual tracks -- no security, no lines, etc... Just walk up from the road, onto the train, and sit in your seat.

Why isn't air travel this easy? Can a 200km/h train stop that much faster than a plan can land? After my train experiences, air travel seems more like a convoluted torture scheme than a service.

Even in Tokyo, it was still convenient -- no security, no long lines, no overbooking.

However, on one of my international flights, they canceled my outgoing flight (not-weather-related) and overbooked the return *international flight* back to the US. [They only flew about once per day, so this was a substantial delay to passengers]. I had to spend almost double just to get on another flight for the same day [I was flying for work]

I would think that in any other industry, the willful selling of items which do not exist (or be delivered/fulfilled) would be a civil (and possibly criminal) offense, why the hell do airlines get away with this? (It would only make sense to me if people did not buy tickets ahead of time or frequently missed their flight. So instead of fixing their system, they over-sell to make up for the seats they failed to fill [by running on-time] in the first place? WTF!)

Near where I live, it is easier to drive >200 miles (at 60mph) to a neighboring big city instead of taking a *direct flight* there. [something is seriously wrong with this picture!]. Not counting the time traveling to/from the airport, just the air-travel related part would be slower (security, boarding, unboarding, baggage claim, etc)

I find that other countries seem to understand that learning math, science, engineering, are important. Being able to produce/create something is the way to sustain one's self.

One cannot expect to make their income by feeding off of others (US lawyers) or exploiting others (US healthcare).

If I'm not mistaken, in the mid 1980s, only 10%-20% of our oil consumption came from the Middle East (or maybe anywhere outside the US).

As a large percentage of our oil consumption goes toward transportation, we probably could have been completely independent of foreign oil if we wanted to within a very short time.

But sadly, the automotive industry (and general public) weren't very motivated to make more fuel efficient cars. [I don't see the replacement of station-wagons with SUVs to be much of an improvement. ]

The benefit of this system is, of course, that oil companies aren't exposed to devastating liability; instead, the liability is spread across he entire oil industry. This is also the problem: no individual oil company has an adequate economic incentive to avoid risky behavior

Sounds just like the banks...

So, sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean as this is expected to dump per month.

148 oil tankers were sunk during WW2. There was no ecological collapse as a result.

I have to ask you, how many millimeters of oil in your drinking water is acceptable for you to drink?

How many millimeters of crude oil would you like in your fried salt-water fish?

How many millimeters are required to affect cancer rates?

In the same way that a wall is more secure than a door. It has less features to start with.

And taken to its final conclusion:

A completely open space is more secure than a wall. It doesn't provide barrier behind which an intruder can hide.

It took 3.5 billion years for life on earth to go from self replicating molecules to us, which is about 25% of the total age of the entire universe

Aside from general human evolution, even recent human technological development is a mere moment in time...

I think about 200 years ago, radio communication pretty much didn't exist. [While spark-gap transmitters were an amazing achievement, I suspect alien cultures would assume such transmissions to be electrical storms or noise].

Due to their simplicity, it seems to me that our basic AM and FM radio transmissions (from the past ~50-75 years) would be recognizable...

Today, would an alien civilization be able to detect and decode spread-spectrum signals? [I think not!] What about our encrypted wireless networks, cell phones, etc? Basic DMT/OFDM transmissions might be recognizable as being artificial (they are easy to see in the frequency domain), but I doubt they could be decoded.

Assuming human civilization doesn't destroy itself, how complex are things going to be in 200 years from now?

Also, our electrical technology is based on the materials and minerals we use to make electrical components (PCB boards, oscillators, etc)... Alien civilizations would very likely have a much different composition of minerals/etc on their planet... Even if they developed electrical technology, they might operate in entirely different frequency ranges (e.g. very low frequencies or very high frequencies). Their atmosphere might also enhance/inhibit radio propagation.

And even they are are similar to us, they may have similar arguments as the above and just give up...

Hey, don't assume that all North Americans get it! (We're not all that weird)

This is clearly a Canadian form of "humour"...

Frankly, I simply cannot trust ANYONE anymore. Understand that I have seen infections start after people visited CNN.com, Foxnews.com, MSNBC.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, Amazon, and MANY MANY MANY other major news/social/other sites that serve banner ads from 3rd party vendors. (or from a poorly secured internal ad server)

I bet the people in question visited FoxNews.com first... It probably gave them a virus that made it appear as if the other websites (especially MSNBC.com) were serving viruses.

Block FoxNews.com in your DNS server and your worries will be done.