Only if they do it reliably. Your LOCALIZED (to honor your all caps notation) power generators are worthless for this argument if they stop providing power at random times and you have to rely on the distant ones anyway.

Also, you cannot build large and solar farms in any LOCATION. The south-west part of Germany in this case is mountainous but still quite densely populated. Meaning - not particularly windy and not many free places for solar panels. That's why the wind farms are in the north - the land is flat and sparsely populated (though distant).

Well, most people do think it matters to distinguish the correct hypothesis from the incorrect ones and are not ashamed to call the former ones "true" (though not "True" as in some kind of "Ultimate Truth"). You are just being snobbish by dismissing it.

Like how? Go out and dig out fossils from different strata on different continents by themselves? Buy expensive lab equipment to examine genomes of different species?

Again that T-ruth! Who ever says that apart from religious people referring to their scripture? Anyway, it's not because "smart people said so" but because the theory has a track record of all scientifically performed (empirical, peer reviewed etc.) experiments supporting it and, more importantly, of all scientific attempts to disprove it failing.

Who are these ominous people? Give me an example of an article or something. In TFA the author names Dawkins and Tyson as example but fails to quote them - can you show me just one example of them talking about Truth (instead of truth) or relying simply on the words on a 'smart person' or showing a strong lack of understanding of the evidence?

To be fair, the summary is too cryptic. The article itself is surprisingly clear and easy to read though.

This is what the article (and you) get wrong. For one thing, people like Dawkins and DeGrasse Tyson are not after the capitalized "Truth", that is just a straw-man attack. A simple "truth" is more than enough. For the other, science gives us empirical evidence either supporting hypotheses or disproving hypotheses. If we ask ourselves, is global warming happening or not, we make large amount of empirical tests and determine, that yes, it is happening, what's wrong then with saying that its indeed "true" that global warming is happening?

There seems to be a disconnect in your (and TFA author's) mind between the empirical science and theoretical science even in place where no disconnect should be found. Coming back to your point about evolution. The initial hypothesis (the theory part) is that lifeforms came to be to their current form through gradual change over time brought by processes of natural selection. This predicts a bunch of things - like what kind of lifeforms you should expect when you dig in rocks of different ages, what kind information would be found in the genome etc. When we then empirically find that all the predictions are true, I (and Dawkins and Tyson) would say that the hypothesis itself seems to be true. While you (and TFA author) disconnect the empirical from theoretical part and say that only the predictions seem to hold up.

In effect you are saying - I have no idea whether the evolution hypothesis is true, even though all the 150 years worth of empirical data are supporting it and none of the zillion phenomena that could disprove it showed up during that time. I'm sorry, but that is ludicrous.

About as much as picking your nose is not mutually exclusive with doing science - it does not make you refuse science, but you still have to choose to do one or the other at any given time.

It's just a question of what's more worthwhile.

There is another option - the police department may argue that a rare occurrence like this may be outweighed by the countless lives the police officers had saved because they were allowed to text while driving. Not that I would know if that's correct but I suppose that was the rationale behind allowing it in the first place.

That is not quite correct either. You cannot be 'convicted' of entering the bicycle lane because that is not a criminal offense. You can be charged with manslaughter and there you have to consider the culpability, or the state of mind of the defendant. I think we can disregard the possibility that the cop *intended* to kill the cyclist, so that leaves us with considering recklessness or negligence.

For *recklessness* you would need to prove that the subject knowingly broke the law disregarding the possible risks. This is typically the case where most of the cases of killing people with a car while breaking the law (drunk driving, speeding, etc.) fall in - if you do that and kill someone, you have been driving recklessly and will be prosecuted for vehicular manslaughter. It does not apply to the cop, because he drifted in the bicycle lane unknowingly.

*Negligence* applies to cases where you can argue that "a reasonable person with the same general knowledge and abilities" as the accused would have reacted in that situation differently thus avoiding the disaster. In general, cases where you broke the law unknowingly fall here as well as cases where people fail to exercise more caution - e.g. not slowing down in an extreme rain storm, snow, etc. There you could argue that a typical "reasonable person" would slow down, or that a "reasonable person" would recognize that he/she is breaking the law. In the TFA case you would have to prove that a typical cop either would not have texted while driving or that a typical cop would not have crossed the lane while texting. Both of those would be really hard to prove in a court of law.

The police is allowed to violate traffic laws in the line of duty. Which is what the prosecution says happened here.

The law specifies areas where you have to yield to pedestrians. See for instance this explanation given by the Wisconsin authorities. A typical case that will not be prosecuted is when a driver kills a pedestrian that entered the road outside of any crossing or specific designation for pedestrians and without checking for incoming traffic.

You can't "mow" people down. But if you hit and kill someone unintentionally without breaking any traffic regulations and laws, you won't be prosecuted. In this case, the cop didn't break any laws or regulations. The closest charge you could try to apply would be criminal negligence but even though it is the least strict level of culpability that's applicable by the law it would be impossible to apply it in this situation. You would have to prove that "a reasonable person with the same general knowledge and abilities" (meaning a cop) as the accused would have not done what the cop in question did in that situation.

Maybe he means that because of outsourcing, more and more applications are being developed in India by the "natives" rather than in the US by H1Bs

He's not. I'm pretty sure Chinese, Indians, Americans and Europeans are going to continue to go to space with or without Putin.

US is not working against 'Russians'. It's just containing a power-hungry dictatorial imperialistic regime. Attacking the wealth of a regime is always a good way to reduce its ability to conquer neighboring nations.

Do you seriously think they didn't consider all the options Putin has? Or maybe at least the obvious ones like cutting his exports and imports? It's just a typical reactionary BS

Yeah, imagine US losing their 28th business partner by volume of trade . Economic destruction my @ss.

Typical dictatorship thinking - if I lose control over a government it must be because some other country took it. There's no way people would just elect their own representatives...

The article itself was not very clear about it. It really says the down payment was enough to cover the newly opted 700 shares at $100 per share, but it doesn't say what was the total price for all of the shares. I assumed it was $100 per share, but I don't really know...

TSR, a small company dealing in the fringe hobby of "war gaming" got hugely popular at the beginning of 1980's thanks to an unexpected publicity from a hoax that got propagated by the national media.

The company owners and executives, Gygax and the Bloom brothers were no skilled businessmen and they projected this sudden jump in the company's revenue into the next years, expecting it to grow tenfold in a year. They went on a hiring and acquisition spree accordingly.

As the miraculous growth didn't come, TSR ran into financial problems, running on a $750k deficit by the mid 80's

The Bloom brothers tried to get a big outside investment to get the company out of the red numbers but Gygax opposed - he didn't want non-gamers to control the company. To this effect he executed an ancient option he got when the company was formed, gained a (very narrow) majority of the company's shares and thus the power to strip the Bloom brothers of their executive positions and void the investment by the outsiders.

In response the Blooms wanted to execute the option of selling all their shares back to the company for a large (but not outlandish) sum of some $500K but TSR could not afford it.

Half a year later the Blooms executed the same option Gygax did before to gain a slight majority in the company and sold all of their shares to Lorraine Williams for a third of the price per share, making her the largest and a majority shareholder.

One day later Gygax was stripped of all his executive positions in the company

He fought the decision in court, but really had no case and eventually sold off his shares in order to finance his new business.

How Gygax lost his copyright to D&D and Grayhawk the article does not say

All in all a really boring story

Plus, the article does not seem to understand the drugs it's talking about. Caffeine is definitely a workaholic's drug and I can see how it could be upgraded to cocaine. But oxycodone and other opiates? Those will not help you pull another over-nighter. They'll knock you out instead.

Either you obesity causes you to have some real disabling condition like joint damage or breathing problems in which case you don't need a special 'obesity disability' to be considered disabled, or it doesn't cause you any disabling conditions and again, you don't need to be considered 'disabled.

It's like saying everybody that has been in a car crash should be defined as disabled.