Especially considering the the California Teachers Union outspent everyone of contributions for California elections. These are the same people that make getting rids of child molesters from schools such a difficult task (see news reports about the difficulty in getting rid of truly bad teachers).

It will be interesting to see if the above post gets modded up or down, Reid is at least as much of the problem as the "Tea Party".

That won't work the way you think it would. What you're describing is a line scan, which gives a 2-D image of the container/truck, which has been deployed. A CT scan gives a 3-D image, necessitating some way of moving the x-ray source and detector around the container while the container is moved through.

There are a couple of reasons why the object being scanned is rotated on a turntable rather than the source and detector rotating around the object. First is the high energy X-ray source is friggin' heavy. The second is that having a stationary X-ray beam allows for concentrating the shielding in a relatively small volume and we're talking some pretty serious shielding.

I commute from north of San Diego to about three miles from the hangars - Tustin is not exactly close to San Diego.

Since the lawsuit was filed by the Federal Government, let's carry this a bit further. If any employee of the Federal government (this includes judges) can be shown to have caused harm through malfeasance or negligence, then that employee can be held personally liable for the decision. Think anyone would want to work for the government under those conditions?

The Great Influenza by John M. Barrie goes into great detail how the war time censorship under the Wilson administration resulted in a significantly higher death toll in the US. The so called "Spanish flu" got its name because the Spanish press was not censored, the flu appears to have originated in western Kansas.

Packard built a radial diesel ca 1930, so there's no technical reason that a radial engine couldn't be built. The impediment is that the market for large (2,000 to 3,500 HP) radial diesel engines is not large enough to justify the costs to design and build such a beast. An L-1649 or a DC-7C with radial diesels would be cool, though the pax may not care for 20 hour flights...

Continental has expressed interest in licensing Safran's diesel engine technology for a wider range of output power. The engine is expensive enough that it may take a decade before a significant portion of light aircraft are diesel powered, though the price differential and Jet-A may encourage a fair number of engine swaps. 'Course this still leaves out the folks with big honkin' radial engines...

HP-PA RISC and M68K were both big-endian processors, X86 is little endian. My guess is you were working on an x86.

By the time the X-ray beam goes through the plastic wall between the source and the person being scanned, the X-rays with energies low enough to have significant photo-electric interactions with the primary elements of skin, namely H, C, N & O will have been attenuated. That leaves Rayleigh or Compton scattering for the primary interaction. Keep in mind that the cross-section for 180 degree Compton scattering is fairly constant to close to 50 keV, requiring Z's to be in the mid-20's for significant photo-electric absorption (and this is something that I found out from an astrophysics text book - most physicists, radiologists or oncologists don't seem to care about differential cross-section for Compton scattering).

There have been anecdotes about breasts reconstructed after a mastectomy showing up on backscatter as the silicone fluid attenuates the back scattered photons more than normal tissue.

You apparently don't know the difference between radiation flux and radiation dose. Dose, by definition, takes into account the interaction (or lack thereof) with matter, where a lower interaction rate for a given flux will result in a lower dose. In addition, the dose units "REM" and "Sieverts" also take into account the different biological effects of different radiation - a given energy deposition in tissue from neutrons will have a higher dose than a given energy deposition from gamma rays.

You're also a bit off base about the depth of interaction from the X-rays used in backscatter - after going through a couple of mm of plastic on the backscatter system and through clothing, all of the really low energy X-rays are already attenuated before they reach the skin. The "interaction depth" is not so much from a lack of penetration from the incident X-rays as it is the higher attenuation of the backscattered photons.

Finally, a significant portion of the dose while flying is delivered by muons induced by cosmic rays. While they do have a very long range in matter, they do interact with matter.

With the radiation dose equal to a few minutes of flying at 35,000', use of the system poses less of a risk than the flight.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the Control Data 512's....

I saw the Lost in Space pilot a month ago and all of the news photographers covering the launch at Alpha Control were using Speed Graphics (this was supposed to be October 1997). Then again, the President didn't look at all like Bill Clinton. ;-) With no robot and no Dr. Smith, the pilot was quite a bit more serious than the series.

I've also had quite a bit of experience shooting with a Polaroid model 360, which was a bit like using a scaled down Speed Graphic.

I have a 4 by 5 Calumet stashed in my collection - been a long time since it has been used. It might be fun getting a digital back for the beast.

A long time friend had a C220 for a while along with a collection of lenses. My only experience with a TLR was my parents Argus.