The metric system makes calculations where you combine units easier. These tends to occur in science, particularly (in my experience) when calculating energy (because so many different formulas give energy, or because J=N*m=kg*m^2/s^2=Pa*m^3=W*s).

Not all forms of the foms of punishment that satisfies the need for venegeance will be equally bad at rehabilitating. Both needs exist and there certainly is a tendency for them to run counter to each other, but you don't necessarily have to choose either one or the other.

In addition to the possibility that you could be lying that other posters have pointed out, the possibility of punishment could also works as a deterrent to keep other people from doing their first crime.

It isn't a dichotomy, legal punishment is part vengeance by proxy, part rehabilitation, part keeping the criminals off the streets, and part deterrent.

To keep vigilantism to a minimum. Part of the social contract for our societies is that we have given up our possibility for vengeance, on the promise that the state will punish the people who should be punished. If the public does not feel that this bargain is being held up by the state, they might take the matter into their own hands.

I think you give the author too much credit. As I read it, it is steeped in pure lust for vengeance, no rational thought required.

Socioeconomic status of the parents, including stock portfolio and presumably correlating with political connections, is worse than IQ tests in predicting success. However, so few people have large amounts of stock and many political connections that it could be a better predictor for this subpopulation, but still lose out over the general public.

Childhood IQ tests is one of the best predictions we have of adult success, in whatever terms we have tried to measure that. They aren't good, but they are better than, say, socio-economic status of the home.

You haven't been teaching much, I can hear. It seems that some people are just faster at understanding and applying information than others. In what environment is it an advantage to be slow to understand new information? Even within the same social strata, there still seem to be quite a spread, which wouldn't be expected if it was simply adaption.

I'm not saying it has to be that way. I am merely pointing out that we can't distinguish the different scenarios based on the evidence at this point.

You have better tell that to Humble Indie Bundle, where the average (mean, I guess) payment is nearly 4 dollars at the moment. While I don't know what the median is, the top 10 contributors is only responsible for less than 1% of that, so "nearly no-one" paying anything doesn't seem to fit the pattern.

Do we know that the women were encouraged to hula hoop?

But we don't know whether this is a fair representation of the events. Especially with hostile comments, that is a subjective call, and it is easy to mistake " harsh criticism" for "hostilily". If we imagine a world were she were a bad coder, it could look exactly the same to us, so we have no way to tell whether we are in the world where she is a good coder and the company has a bad working environment, or we are in the world were she is a bad coder who can't take criticism (at least from just this story. There might be prior information that could help us make an educated guess).

The original post I commented on talked about bioaccumulation. Your original post calculated how much was left after certain amounts of time. But now you were suddenly always talking about something else? Please stop moving the goalposts.

Are you assuming that the biological half-life is 1 year? Because it isn't. Which I said earlier. And which year acknowledged in your previous post. It is 70 days. That means that 20 years is roughly 100 half-lifes. So after 20 years, the proportion of the original material that is left is 2^-100, which is approaximately 10^-30. Or roughly 1/(10 millions * Avogardos number). Which means we need top start out with 10 million moles to have 1 atom left after 20 years. 10 million moles of something that weighs around 100 g/mole is a billion grams. Or a million kg. Or a thousand tons. So no, the correct answer is not "far away from multiple tons". Your answer is, but "Your mass is unfortunately way off :D"

Both of your examples have independent central banks, and so are not examples of what happens if we let politicians control of the printing press. I am not sure how they are relevant to the discussion of what happens if we do.

Because it is only a good idea on a phone with a capacitive touchscreen as its main input device. How many devices had that before the iPhone?

After around 15 years, the proportion of cesium that is left in the body is close to Avogrado's number. After 20 years, you need to start out with millions of moles, or thousands of tons, of cesium in the body for there to be one atom left. You are not even technically correct.