Most drones weigh less than 5kg. They probably wouldn't even dent your leading edge. It would be like a kite strike, I suspect. The shipping weight of a phantom drone is 6.6lbs (3kg)

Also, it would be pretty easy to avoid. I've encountered BIG birds on final, and been able to get around them with ease. Now, birds are pretty predictable (they always dive). However, I've never had a bird strike in 2000 hours of flying cessnas.

Kites are illegal near controlled airports. I could see making it illegal to fly drones there too. I don't think making it necessary to get a pilot's license (like the FAA is planning on doing) makes sense.

On the other hand, I'm a pilot (or was a pilot before the FAA took away my medical certificate) with 2000 hours of time in small aircraft. Other aircraft aren't the problem. They never were. The problem is distraction during busy times, fuel issues (like forgetting to switch tanks,) breaking weather minimums, flocks of birds, etc. The number of midair collisions every year is vanishingly small when compared to the number of operations.

I'm all for increased air safety, but imagine an interaction between a drone and a 747. Unless it is a predator, I suspect the 747 wouldn't even notice it. If you hit one in a small prop plane, it would dent a wing. If it hit the prop, maybe you would have a dented prop that would have to be filed out. They are very light. I would be more afraid of a bird strike, which could take out the windshield.

What a stupid thing to say. Karmashock, probably indian. My daughter is in her third year in engineering, and encounters your attitude ALL the time, I really don't know what is up with indians. All the indians I've known have treated me (a man) with respect. However, at her school, the indian TAs won't help her, and the indian students are either rude or sexually suggestive. So, what does she do? She kicks their asses by actually studying instead of cheating, by finishing group projects on her own that they are too stupid or lazy to do, and cries in her dorm room every night because their stupid attitude has infected her. She has a 4.0 GPA, and now wants to quit engineering with only a year to go. I guess it wasn't 'fun for her'.

My dog, when she was a puppy, had an annoying habit of eating her own poop. The question is, is it nutritious? I suspect putting it through a second time isn't such a bad thing nutritionally, although it is disgusting, obviously. It certainly adversely affected her breath.

Sorry, I don't think that is right. See this link. From the article:

Our cars and trucks are a major cause of global warming. Collectively, they account for nearly one-fifth of all U.S. emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas. About 5 pounds comes from the extraction, production, and delivery of the fuel, while the great bulk of heat-trapping emissions—more than 19 pounds per gallon—comes right out of a car’s tailpipe.

Well, if the point of statistics is to predict things, then causality is immaterial. If you have a list of children, and you have their shoe sizes, you can use the statistic to predict their reading ability. If you are trying to understand the causes of reading ability, you aren't going to pick a statistic that includes shoe sizes. So, the whole 'correlation isn't causation' trope is, in fact, nonsense.

The article is trying to predict bugs based on language. To that end, it doesn't matter if there is causation, it just matters that there is correlation.

And yet the only time workers got even a small raise was under Clinton. Strange.

Look here

The fact is that since republicans have had control of the house, no stimulus (like the two stimulus measures passed under Bush by both parties, or the 2009 stimulus bill) has happened, and nothing but cuts and stupid government shutdowns have occured. The deficit (as a percent of GDP) has gone down every year since the financial meltdown. This means an ailing private sector must take up the slack of the hundreds of thousands of federal and local jobs that have been lost. The republicans have blocked all bills that might have helped, and in fact have been actively hostile to such efforts as extensions to unemployment, and even food stamps.

Also, are you SERIOUSLY trying to blame the financial meltdown on Obama? I mean, why didn't the lack of legislation under Bush have its intended effect, and calm the markets? The invisible hand was apparently too busy bitch slapping bond brokers and people who had their future tied up in 401Ks. Without the bailouts of banks (the TARP, under Bush, passed by the democratic congress) our economy would have crapped its pants. In trying to get stimulus after the near depression, 177 republicans voted against the 2009 stimulus act in the house, and only 3 republican senators (one of whom was Arlen Specter) voted for it. Without that stimulus, we would still be in a depression.

The fact is, republicans brought on the financial meltdown due to lack of oversight, nearly destroying the economy, and have done everything in their power since to keep it fucked, all the while blaming Obama, who wasn't even around (well, he was a Senator) at the time. They should be laughed out of office. Sadly, they have a really good PR firm working for them (FOX news).

I would blame the moron who bought the house. Particularly because he then went in and knocked out all the load bearing walls, slapped some paint on it, and put termite attractant all over the remaining walls. Then, he managed to fuck up any ability to fix it by burning down the town's bank, and skipped town, leaving the new owner, who didn't want it in the first place, to deal with it.

You guys still exist? Seems like most moderate conservatives are democrats these days.

In a democracy, you are supposed to have control (a teeny weeny bit of control) over government. You can't exercise that control unless you keep track of what is going on.

We are having a mid-term election today in the U.S. that is probably going to allow the wrong party to control congress. When I say 'wrong', I mean the party that doesn't have the most popular support. This is the fault of people who don't pay attention. That control will allow them to cement their control of the supreme court, and many lower courts. It will allow them to continue to block legislation that could easily get us out of our current crappy job situation. It will enable them to gut the first step towards a national healthcare service we've been able to make since the 1960s. It will allow them to block meaningful legislation that could help avoid global warming. It will enable them to continue to roll back reproductive rights for women.

One of the nice things about obamacare is the yearly caps on out of pocket expenditures. Even the cheapo policies have these. So, your out of pocket for a year is something like $6500 (not including the premiums.) If you are poor, you get subsidies, so the premiums are not bad. Considering that a typical surgery can cost $250,000, this is pretty good news.

Also, the US price spiral for healthcare seems to be calming down, possibly due to obamacare's vast array of controls.

I want a public option too, but it was not going to get through the democrats in charge, so we ended up with something that is less of a punch in the mouth for healthcare providers, similar to the German system which has been so effective for so long. If the red states would just stop blocking the medicaid expansions for political reasons, we could have a system that actually works for most people.

It still won't be the most cost effective system, and it still won't give us the best outcomes, but it will be better than having people die of cancer because they couldn't afford chemotherapy or surgery, or lose their retirement and house because they refused to just die. And no, they don't do chemotherapy in an emergency room, Mitt.