If a firefighter had gone in to save those animals and been injured, he would have been just as out of luck as those homeowners were.

Their worker's insurance won't cover them if they're not "on the job," which they're not if they're tromping through a house with no fire protection policy in place.

My wife's a teacher, she has not seen a pay increase in over 4 years. She can't go elsewhere because if she does she'll be at the bottom of the stack and the first to go if (when) there's a budget crunch. She's a consistently good teacher who keeps her students engaged and works within their personal requirements as best she can. Her metrics have shown that she is a good teacher, and she does a ton of extra training every summer.

Her retirement plan will give her around 40% of the average her top 5 years of income if she retires after 30 years (Florida Retirement System [FRS]), and at 8 years of service, pulls in just over half of what your sister does.

Teacher compensation is all over the place because every state and county does things differently.

Now give up and go to sleep!

That and publishers aren't exactly forthcoming about their payments to authors, and most won't easily grant the author audit rights to the books.

So now you've got a content creator who signs away their creation to a company who then markets it, takes all the money, then tells the author "trust us, we won't let you down." If you don't have a lot of market clout (like Stephen King) or market savvy (like Piers Anthony), you're going to have a long row to hoe to get fully and fairly compensated.

It has increased a monoculture of trees in the form of stripped native forests that have been replanted with pulpwood trash pines.

DAGS on the American Chestnut tree to see what can happen to a monoculture.

Sure more trees is better than fewer trees, but a 5 year old slash pine isn't nearly as useful to the environment as a 150 year old oak.

Maybe in the Midwest there's plenty of farmland or pastures available for developing, but in everywhere I've lived in the southern US most new housing development have come at the cost of native forests.

Yes, urban sprawl is much better for humanity and the environment than living in a city.

Why, when I was a kid and went to Jacksonville Beach, I could drive for miles along the coastal highway and not see a house or a condo. Thank goodness the developers were so forward thinking that they plopped huge condo developments and beautiful beach houses all along the highway so that the water can't even be seen any more!

And look at all those nasty forests that have been clearcut to bare earth, razed, paved, and piped so that people could escape the "concrete hell."

There's nothing wrong with city living. There is something wrong with living your entire life in a closed environment. The more people live in the cities, the more area we have to play in when we just have to GTFO of town and relax.

I may sign a petition not because I necessarily agree with what it's advocating, but because I think it's an important enough topic that it should be included in the greater discourse.

My vote in the ballot box is what actually matters. I don't have much of an opinion as to whether or not something is just TALKED ABOUT, but I have a much higher standard for deciding whether or not to support that same thing with my vote.

There's a Penny Arcade for just about anything:

From Wiki Answers:

Mach is a relative measurment of speed and fluid temperature.
example;
Mach 1 at Sealevel (0 feet) is 761.2 MPH (Calibrated Airspeed) and 761.2 MPH(True Airspeed)
Mach 1 at FL50 (Flight Level 50,000) is 285.8 MPH(CAS) and 660.05 MPH(TAS)
Mach 6 at Sealevel (0 feet) is 4567.3 MPH(CAS and 4567.3 MPH(TAS)
Mach 6 at FL50 (Flight Level 50,000) is 3147.97 MPH(CAS) and 3960.31 MPH(TAS)

So that's like going from Atlanta, Ga to Honolulu in just over an hour.

Or the equivalent of 50 Volkswagen Beetles.

He's got this friend, see, who never thought it would happen to him.

It all began in line at the Apple store, and a warm hand brushed the back of his neck, and whispered, "You might like the way I look on that iPhone, but with your Android phone, you get it all, even the parts where iTouch myself."

Not being a fan of something doesn't mean you can't have respect for that thing or show an appreciation for the things that it does right.

I don't like Apple products very much, but they do a great job of being accessible computers and devices that people want to own. They just don't interest me very much.

That's also more than the number of people who use Google Wave!

My understanding is that an endless task is finite at any point in time, but continues to grow for eternity.

Much like copyright terms then, I guess?

I rewired my dryer last year, and it does use 2 phases. The power buses are staggered, so that one breaker is on a different bus from the one directly above it.

Your typical house has around 200 amp service at 220v coming in from the power company. The incoming wore goes through the meter and into your breaker box, which splits it into the 2 phases, one per bus. A double breaker (in my case a Square D brand) just snaps onto both buses (like here: Breaker box and gets a 220v current at the amperage of the breaker.

Electric stoves, heaters, and many power tools use 2 phase power. It's more efficient than single phase, and isn't as expensive as 3 phase (which is what industrial applications use).