The deficit they're talking about is around 1% to 2% of the annual production. Assuming that you sell the reserves prior to selling the new crops, and put the unsold new crops in reserve, the reserves could last for decades with none of the stock being over a year old.

Of course that is a highly simplified view, but it does allow for multi-year deficits without actually running out of cocoa. Of course a low reserve also means that there could be serious problems if the yields are particularly bad one year. (But at least it's just cocoa. A staple crop would be an entirely different issue.)

Either the eraser end or the tip of the pencil. The fact that a high school physics teacher couldn't answer the question doesn't surprise me. It isn't a high school level problem. It also isn't the sort of thing that would cause me to question everything that a teacher says. It simply represents a limit to the teacher's knowledge, rather than a teacher communicating incorrect information. It simply means that you have to take an extra step in learning: either looking for other resources or figure out the solution yourself.

Services like Uber, Lyft, and taxies woud end up increasing road usage since drivers have to drive to pick up their fare. The only infrastructure they reduce the demand for are parking lots.

Besides, public transit has not been for "people who couldn't afford private transport" for a very long time. At least that is the case in major urban centres, where people will gladly accepted a higher cost of living simply to ditch the car.

Many transit authorities have profitable bus routes, particularly in higher density areas. They bleed money on suburban routes, where it's difficult to fill a bus. Perhaps a better option would be to fund companies like Uber with taxpayer money in order to eliminate those suburban busses that transport few, if any, passengers.

(I'm saying that tongue-in-cheek, since such a system would be rife with abuse by both operators and customers. Still, there are cases where it could be cheaper if you could magically make abusing the system disappear.)

Cities that offer good transit service don't have to worry about the competition. Those transit services already offer fast and reliable service at a reasonable price.

On the other hand, cities that offer horrible transit service need the competition. They need to realize that poor coverage, poor scheduling, unreliable service, and drivers with poor safety records are unacceptable. If they don't realize that it is unacceptable, then maybe they should shutter their doors and let the private sector take over. (This coming from someone who normally supports a strong public sector.)

To give you an idea of what I mean: I work two jobs in a city with poor transit service, so I decided to sit down and do some math one day. The end result is that taking the bus cost significantly more than taking a taxi. That's a single person in a regulated cab, and not the shared-ride service mentioned here. Yes, a great part of the cost was from lost income. Yet it was real lost income in my case because I had to negotiate my work hours around transit. For other people, the loss of income will come in other forms: being unable to accept a job due to transit coverage or scheduling, or losing a job because unreliable service results in an unreliable employee. For other people it will result in a diminished quality of life, simply because much of their time is spent waiting for or being in transit.

(To give you an idea of how inefficient transit is in my city: if it takes 30 minutes to walk somewhere, you may as well walk since the bus is going to take longer. If you have to be somewhere at a particular time, you can usually increase that 30 minute walking radius to 1 hour because that bus that "arrives 10 minutes early" will end up arriving 10 minutes late so frequently that you will end up unemployed.)

There are plenty of high schools that teach people the basics of programming in the course of ten months. The advanced courses do a pretty good job of covering everything from languages to algorithms to software engineering. Yet I don't see businesses jumping at the prospects of hiring these graduates.

There's a reason for that: they only touch upon the basics because they only have time to touch upon the basics. While that may be enough to put together a website for a small business or create a basic smartphone/tablet app, only the tiniest minority will come away with the skills to make something as advanced as a salable indie game.

To do anything innovative, you need both the training and experience to handle the mathematics and design that goes into larger applications. That takes years, which is why university programs take years. Without that extra effort and the dedication behind it, very few people are going to be able to develop anything beyond the most basic program.

(Note: I'm not suggesting that the training and experience has to be formal, since a lot of self-studies have done amazing stuff in this field. Yet even teenagers who have created sophisticated programs have been building upon their skills for more than a year, never mind a few months.)

The motivation to get an SUV may be different from the motivation to get a burger, but willpower is a good word in both cases.

In some circles, an SUV is a status symbol. The people who buy them as a status symbol don't actually need an SUV, but they buy them because they think that an SUV reflects who they are or who they want to be. Well, they probably don't think in exactly those terms. They probably think of what they can do with it, just like I think of what I can do with a new computer. Either way though, that extra performance is about how we present ourselves to ourselves or to others rather than an actual need. Either way, if we can't afford it due to our income or the cost, we are less likely to buy it.

Note: I'm not saying that nobody uses an SUV. There are certainly people who will find an SUV more practical than a minivan or a pickup truck. Yet it is doubtful that the people who needed an SUV stopped buying SUV's in the first place. Similarly, I doubt that people who need a quick family meal while on the road would shun that Big Mac (which is what fast food is about, rather than as a regular meal replacement as we seem to see it as today).

That is actually a very good idea, and it is something that I would appreciate given that I sometimes have difficulty hearing dialogue over background noise.

However, that would also entail some sort of arrangement between device manufacturers and theaters since the only way it's going to happen is if they're guaranteed that the device cannot record audio and video in the theater. While I'm not against that in principle, I am against it in practice. (Telling a device, "no recording," is one thing. The layers of malware that they'd layer on top of that, and resulting loss of control of the device both inside and outside of theaters, makes me jittery to the point of paranoia.)

It depends upon how stable orbiting systems are formed. There has to be a transfer of angular momentum. That angular momentum is probably transferred via magnetic fields. The magnetic field needs something to interact with, such as ionized particles. Ionizing particles requires an energy source, such as a hot central body. For Jupiter and it's moons, that could very well be the Sun.

(Note: it has been a while since I studied this stuff, so I may be a bit off. But the most important point is that it is difficult to create stable orbiting bodies.)

Everyone who receives a high school diploma is, in a sense, exposed to wiring a house. It is called the electricity unit in science. These units are a mandatory part of the science curriculum in the primary and secondary grades. They teach you everything you need to know to wire a house except how to do it to code.

In the same vein, I would argue that children and youth should be exposed to programming. It doesn't have to be a standalone course that you need to pass in order to graduate. It may be a unit in an existing course, such as mathematics. Regardless of what form it takes, it should be enough to give children/youth an idea of what programming is and whether they're interested in it. If those units/courses go a step further and teach transferable skills (e.g. various approaches to problem solving) it would be going far beyond most of the existing parts of the curriculum, such as those electricity units.

There are kits, and it would be nice if the museum picked up a few to create an interactive exhibit. Just imagine being able to walk into an exhibit hall where the original is maintained in working order, but also being able to use one of the kits to get a taste of computing back in the day.

The problem is that a lot of people either feel entitled to speed, or that they believe that they believe the whole thing is a government conspiracy to generate revenue by fiddling with the equipment and posted speed limits.

Quite frankly, I don't buy into any of that. People were trying to talk officers out of tickets even when there was an actual officer pulling you over after reading your speed off of a radar gun. If that didn't work out, a number of those people would still go to court to challenge the ticket.

Indeed, the only real issue with these cameras is the slow feedback via post. Yet the only issue with that are successive tickets being issues prior to notification, since the motorist isn't given an opportunity to modify their behavior. Even so it is possible to provide immediate feedback to motorists by posting their measured speed on electronic signage. (This sort of thing is common in awareness campaigns in school zones, where volunteers with radar guns and electronic signage will measure and post your speed, without ticketing.)

He may have been screened. Airport security measures seem to depend upon the type of airport and the type of flight. This means that it is possible to enter some secure areas of an airport with no screening whatsoever by simply booking a flight to that airport.

Sigh. May I suggest working on your reading skills? Determining meaning from context and imagery are important aspects of literacy. While they may not have a place in technical writing, where the precision of language is essential, they do allow for more engaging reading experiences.

Reading on a 3.2" screen isn't all that bad, but I wouldn't present that as a solution for children. Books for the youngest are illustrated, and present part of the story as part of those illustrations. Early chapter books use larger text, presumably because the audience is still learning the shape of letters. Even later chapter books have illustrations that would be difficult to enjoy on a small screen.

Yet the real problem with closing libraries in favor of elending is the lack of availability of ebooks for lending. (That, and libraries offer much more than books.)