To be completely accurate, the sun doesn't produce any energy, it converts energy from one form (rest mass) to another form (electromagnetic radiation), increasing entropy in the process in keeping with the second law. That conversion process itself requires an input of energy (though one less than the energy output by said process) to initialize and sustain, and that energy is in turn supplied, in the form of kinetic energy, by conversion from yet another form (gravitational potential energy) spontaneously, precisely because of the second law of thermodynamics.

At one time in the history of science, it was thought that all of the energy of the sun was converted more or less directly from gravitational potential energy: a cloud of hydrogen collapses under gravity, converting its potential energy into kinetic energy, rendered macroscopically as temperature, causing the ball of collapsing gas to glow incandescently. The problem was that that process can't last for very long, so the sun (and consequently the whole solar system) would have to be pretty young, relatively (still massively old on a human scale) if that's what's making the sun glow. When we discovered that the Earth itself, and space rocks, are much older than the sun would have to be according to that theory, it required that something else be powering the sun on a longer scale. The introduction of nuclear fusion to the model solved that problem, and nowadays almost nobody even remembers that we once thought the sun was just, in effect, gravity-powered.

I don't know why the hell they went with Oracle.
I'd have taken the job for $201 million dollars.

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You will instantly and consistently get shut down on Wikipedia.

The reason for that is that you are a Truth Crusader. It doesn't matter if you are Right or Wrong. Wikipedia shuts down Truth Crusaders on EITHER sides of any issue by simply declaring that Wikipedia is not a place to debate, or resolve, matters of Truth. Wikipedia pages are not filled with "Truth", Wikipedia content accurately reflects the content of "Verifiable Reliable Sources". If "Reliable Sources" consistently state something which happens to be false then Wikipedia is going to ACCURATELY report that that is what Reliable Sources say.

(Some might comment on the contradiction of "Reliable Sources" which contain false information. The world is an imperfect place, and no one can expect perfection in anything. The definition of "Reliable Source" is a set of criteria that establish a broad class of sources as reasonably reliable in general, independent of the fallibility of any particular source on a particular thing. So yes, a Reliable Source can be wrong, and Wikipedia will accurately reflect that wrong information up until the point when other Reliable Sources correct that information.)

If you want to wage a Truth Crusade exposing the "myths about Auschwitz", then Wikipedia is not the place to do it. Wikipedia does not and will not lead on that subject, nor will it lead on any other subject. Wikipedia follows. Wikipedia follows Reliable Sources. If and when you convince Reliable Sources to expose myths about Auschwitz, Wikipedia will gladly update to accurately report what those Reliable Sources say.

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That sounded like an interesting idea.... for about 30 seconds.
Then I realized that it wouldn't solve anything, it wouldn't improve anything. It would just make things worse. Much worse. People would just start waging war over credibility. When it comes to notability, simple, you dig up three reliable sources on a subject and BAM, YOU WIN! Fight over. Inviting fights over credibility would be a never ending flamefest disaster.

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Correlation does not imply causation, but causation does imply correlation.

If A causes B, then A will also correlate with B. It's only the reverse that's false. (A correlating with B doesn't mean A causes B).

You mean like a gigantic array of mirrors in concentric circles around a couple of 40 story towers?

If I were parachuting or hang gliding I'd avoid something that looked like that without even knowing anything about it.

$360,000

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Except that another place, even another comparable place, would now cost a lot more than $249,999 more than what he paid for his current place.

So if he wants to move to a different but comparable house in a different but comparably priced location, he has to lose a whole lot of money in the process. Meanwhile, people moving frequently to slightly more valuable places continuously over the time he's lived in this one place don't lose anything.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't trust the average juror to weigh a head of lettuce.

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As the kids these days say, "This."

Early Sheldon was a character I really liked, for all the reasons E-Rock pointed out. Other characters had friction with him mostly just because he was an insufferable genius who was always technically correct and looked down on everyone else for not living up to his standards of perfection, and ordinary fallible people find that kind of person hard to get along with because it such a person uncompromisingly highlights their own foibles.

But over the years Sheldon has morphed into a socially retarded asshole -- not just someone who awkwardly doesn't understand how best to interact with other people, but someone who thinks he does and yet is constantly wrong and will never hear anyone who tries to tell him so. He is no longer an insufferable genius who is always technically correct. He is an insufferable idiot who arrogantly insists that he is correct even when he is clearly, blatantly not.

And when a person starts to run roughshod over other people because of their own wrongly self-assessed "superiority", it goes from harmless "shamelessly ability to like himself" to dangerous borderline sociopathy as the AC I'm replying to said.

Unless we want to coin the verb "to police-police", meaning second-order policing, rather than ordinary first order-policing. In which case police-police-police-police(n) police-police(v) police-police-police(n), as you said.

Oh, why did this take me so long to get.

Police-police-police(n) police(v) police-police(n) as police-police(n) police(v) police(n) and police(n) police(v) people.

Unless you've found a way to make "police" an adjective, I think you have one too many iterations of it there. Police(n) [whom] police(n) police(v) [in turn] police(v) [other] police(n).

The buffalo sentence in turn has eight, not five (or your six), iterations. Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) [whom] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison) buffalo(bully) [in turn] buffalo(bully) [other] Buffalo(NY) buffalo(bison).

How exactly is a massive government agency massively overstepping its already questionable legal bounds a result of "you wanted smaller government"? That sounds exactly like a prime example of bigger government and why someone might want a smaller one.

Nope, you misunderstand what the loophole was. It's utterly irrelevant whether or not it's easy to copy the music out.

You need to forget "plain English" and what "makes sense". We're dealing with the law and legalese. You need to think like a computer running into odd code. If a programmer writes "int Two=3;" then you'll get "Two+2=5". You need to obey the definition you're given, even if it clashes with what you think it should mean. You can't just assume Two+2 is supposed to be 4 when the code (or the law) says something different.

This law has a definitions section, and we are concerned with with three key pieces. I'll trim it to the critical bits.

A "digital musical recording" is a material object [...blah blah...]
A "digital musical recording" does not include a material object [...blah blah blah..] in which one or more computer programs are fixed

Therefore, according to the law, MP3 files on a computer hard drive are not "digital musical recordings".

A "digital audio copied recording" is a reproduction in a digital recording format of a digital musical recording [...blah blah...]

Therefore, according to the law, an MP3 player that copies an MP3 off of a computer is not creating a "digital audio copied recording".

A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device [...blah blah...] making a digital audio copied recording

Therefore an MP3 player copying MP3's off a computer is not a "digital audio recording device".

The law only applies to "digital audio recording devices", therefore nothing in the law applies to MP3 players. Unfortunately this shitty law does seem to apply to a car audio system copying music off of CDs. Unless the judge gets "creative" in interpreting the law, it seems to me that car manufacturers are going to have to pay damages for every unit produced so far, are going to have to implement DRM on these car audio systems (preventing them from loading any song that's flagged as already being a copy), and are going to have to pay royalties to the RIAA for each future unit sold.

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