Where I grew up, we were at the start of a not so long street and had a large mailbox. When the postman was lazy, he would just put all mail for the entire street in our box.

Mod parent up. Americans are extremely good drivers, possibly on account of driving more than any other nationality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority is that people tend to overestimate their abilities. According to one survey quoted in the wikipedia article, 93 % of US drivers think they are above average drivers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disulfiram is used extensively in Sweden to treat bad drinkers and has been for a very long time. It is called Antabus there.

It was very probably steam heated. Replacing the windows would also make the room quieter by shutting out traffic noise, which would have improved the ambience. But as you say, the owners clearly decided it wasn't worth it.

I stayed at a really fancy hotel in NYC, where enormous amounts of money had been spent on interior decoration. But the windows were single glass windows which let through a lot of cold and noise. You cannot buy such bad windows in many European countries. Why do they not install proper triple-glass windows? I have not seen any building in NY with proper windows. Do they not sell them in the US?

I think you Americans need a full reboot of your system over there. You have a federal government that is unable to get bills or budgets passed, a federal administration that is unable to oversee banks and business sufficiently and thousands of companies exploiting every loophole that your broken government leaves. Add a judicial system extremely susceptible to frivolous litigation to that. You may blame a few bankers or a few companies, but the problem is deeper than that and possibly has to do with your constitution.

As a scientist I want everyone to be able to read my work. But if I write an article I don't want to allow others to modify it. If they change it, put their name on it and publish it anywhere, then they are commiting plagiarism, which is one of the most serious crimes in the scientific world. If they change it and leave my name on it, then they are publishing something I did not approve in my name, which is probably even worse.

In this day and age when citations and publications determine your funding and job prospects as a researcher, it is a gold mine to stumble on a process like this. It recursively generates new articles, and so research funding will flow her way almost automatically.

The 18th century Swedish poet Carl Michael Bellman did something similar. The king of the time (Gustav III) liked his songs and gave him a really cushy job as head of the state lottery. Bellman new he would not be able to hold down a job so he employed someone else to actually do the work and he lived from the difference of what he got from the king and what he paid the person doing the work. He spent most of his time in pubs and wrote an enormous number of drinking songs. He is the Swedish equivalent of Robert Burns.

If you don't believe in evolution then by definition you cannot believe that bacteria can acquire resistance to antibiotics. This can and will lead to treatment decisions which are wrong.

You might be. I see a bell curve but no independent random variables and no limit. Hence, no central limit theorem.

Bed sizes are not measured in cm or inches. They are twin size, queen size, and king size. Those are the most ridiculous length units I have ever encountered. And no, two twins do not fit in one twin size bed. Also, getting a buzz cut, you tell the hairdresser you want a no. 1, 2 or 3 haircut. The hairdresser has no idea what that is in cm or inches.

If you turn up at a government office claiming to be me they will ask you for a valid ID. That can be a passport, drivers licence, a national ID card, an ID card issued by the postoffice, there are a few more possibilities. These are very hard to forge documents with holograms, stuff only visible in UV light, all sorts of security details. Let's say you steal my ID card. They will look at the picture on that card, then at you, then press a button under their desk. :) You have now committed a crime.

The card has my SSN on it. By showing this card I can prove that I am actually the real live person who, in their computer, is represented by that number. They can look me up in their system and take it from there.

The problem isn't with google for collecting social security numbers. The problem is that SSNs are so sensitive in the US. I live in Sweden and here social security numbers are a matter of public record and many companies collect these numbers from their customers for their databases. It's quite convenient and, if done right, not as privacy infringing as people seem to think. It's quite ridiculous to have, like the US, a system where you can impersonate someone by knowing their number.