That's perfectly normal in Australia. For specialty items (such as watches or cameras), US MSRP is often less than half of the Australian price (in US dollars). As we're talking high markup, low manufacturing cost (relative to purchase price) goods, it's to be expected that the manufacturers will try to optimise pricing for each local market to maximise profit.

Exactly. You can't wear a burqa in public, but in your own home? Absolutely.

Fines will be sent out as soon as they identify the culprits.

If you're a process (chemical), reservoir or mechanical engineer and have 10+ years experience, you'll earn almost double that is lovely locations like Baghdad, Basra, Port Harcourt and Lagos.

To be honest, you can earn 200k working as an engineer almost anywhere in the developing world provided you go there on an expatriate package. A lucky few get sent to first world locations on this type of arrangement, but they don't end up with as much money to take home and the end of their assignment (higher costs of living).

The only pitfall is that you may end up with some very complicated tax arrangements when you get back home, depending on the tax laws of your home country. It is common for expatriate staff to be paid in a third low tax country, and then the challenge is getting the money back to your future home.

Hasselblad recently brought out a digital camera back for their old film cameras, which is compatible with all their V-system cameras, which they made from 1957. They include software which corrects for lens errors for every lens they've ever made.

There's two theories as to why:

• The fittest buildings survived.
• The buildings still standing were more intelligently designed.

Whilst I understand your point, your solution is based on the premise that intelligence is innate and heritable. Although this may be partly true, there is considerable evidence that intelligence can be acquired by the correct type of mental training - directing children early into certain schools and therefore certain career paths ignores the brain's ability to change itself. If the brain is truely neuroplastic, categorisation then becomes based on which students have trained their brains better for the tests - or, more likely, which parents have had their kids tutored for the tests.

Where I live, it is common for children under eight to be taken to after school tuition sessions run by private companies - which means categorising students based on test results is as much a test of their parents' desire for their child to do well academically as it is a measure of their actual ability. This will entrench the class system further, rather than allowing brighter than average underpriviledged kids to do well. I admit that the outcome would be considerably better for a genius from an underpriviledged neighbourhood, but a public education system should be designed to benefit the majority of students, rather than the one in a million.

Diverting students to selective schools will also increase the consequences of external factors which cause children to underperform at school, such as divorce, poverty and plain lack of sleep. These effects will be more obvious in younger children - although a seventeen year old may have the mental discipline to study despite the situation at home, a stable home environment is a prerequisite for a thirteen year old trying to do homework. As a stable home environment is more likely in a middle class household than in a poor one, lower class kids will be diverted away from the academic schools towards ones with designed to develop them for roles "appropriate" for them as people of "normal intellectual means".

It also fails to account for differences due to age; children in a year level can vary in age by at least a year (depending on local rules), as children born early in the year are advantaged. Differences are most pronounced at puberty, so categorising adolescents and diverting them to different schools at this time will penalise and reward individuals on an essentially arbitary criteria.

I agree with your broader social point however - people should not have to be exceptionally mentally talented in order to lead a dignified life.

As a disclaimer: I have never been to the USA, and do not have first hand experience with its public schools. Ironically, I first went to the Australian equivalent of an Ivy League school before transferring into a selective entry government run school (I suppose you could call it a "gifted" school), so my experience at school resembles what a bright student would experience under your proposed system. In that system, certain schools are renowned for teaching students to maximise their scores in the final exams, instead of teaching them to understand and learn - so if a student wants to go to university, high school is as much about playing the system as it is about ability and learning. This shows up at university; large numbers of students struggle and drop out in first year because the emphasis is on understanding rather than regurgitating pre-prepared essays.

Are you sure you don't mean "Björk Björk Björk"?

Australia.

In Victoria, where I live, there is an "Office of Police Integrity", which is led by a former judge: OPI. Police behaviour in Australia isn't perfect, but it seems to be a lot better than in other places.

Also in the news today was an incident where the federal police were warned by a judge that they could face charges for drawing guns when arresting a man alleged to be donating money to terrorist causes - see the Age's article. I can't imagine that happening in the US, or even the UK for that matter.

You seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking that because cops are a law unto themselves where you live, that's what the police are like everywhere.

In the UK, being an "average UK girl" means all your ancestors are probably from the same area. In the US, even if only the white population is considered, many people have ancestors from multiple countries.

From a scientific viewpoint, attractiveness is correlated with fertility and health. As inherently multicultural societies will tend to have more healthy and fertile people due to hybrid vigour, a more multicultural society (in this case the U.S.) will be more attractive on average.

P.S. I'm not going to let my girlfriend see this post - she's from the U.K.

Although making fraudulent DMCA claims is against US law, I have yet to hear of the US government successfully extraditing anyone from a foreign country to face charges - making a false declaration under US law may not even be a crime in some countries. As American companies appear to be required to honour DMCA claims from foreign entities, it seems like an obvious loophole.

This happened a few years ago to the Chaser (an Australian satirical TV show). Wikipedia article here - scroll down to the section titled "YouTube video removal".

YouTube's major advantage is its brand recognition - it is basically synonymous with online video. When the DMCA system is abused by mass takedown notices, people are encouraged to find alternatives, eroding the YouTube = online video association.

In effect, the law disadvantages media sharing companies with data domiciled in the US - it requires sites to implement a cost effective system to deal with DMCA requests, and the only way to do this seems to be to automatically honour them all.

Disclaimer: IANAL

Small radius bends are widely used because they're compact to transport and install and easy to fit together - the absence of large radius bends is due to a lack of mainstream demand more than any difficulty in making them.

Pneumatic conveying is widely used in the petrochemical industry for powder and pelletised products. It's relatively easy to get right, provided that the operator willing to spend the time and money to calculate the hydraulics properly, which requires quite a few hours of (expensive) engineering time. That's not an issue in an industry when a product line blockage can result in $10M of lost revenue per day (ballpark figure), but for a building it's cheaper to bash a hole in the wall and stick a larger pipe in.

Easy.

Set your UA to googlebot. Unless the site author has done something really tricky, you see the full page.

I know it's not the answer you were looking for, but in motorcycles, that sort of specific power output (100bhp per litre) is below average. For example, Aprilia, Ducati and BMW all have engines that produce more than 150 bhp per litre in their superbikes. BMW's new 1 litre superbike is supposed to produce 200 bhp/l, and they (obviously) build cars as well, so it's not a question of whether they have the technical expertise to produce those engines or not.

I suspect the reason that they don't put these type of engines in their cars is because there is a longevity and maintenance trade off - most people don't do 100,000km on their sports bikes, and my bike has a 6000km (~4000 mile) interval between services (12000kms between major services). It may be that GM and Ford believe their customers will tolerate a less durable drivetrain in their sports cars cars as a trade off for the increased power.

Another factor is probably that it is easier to meet fuel efficiency standards in high performance turbo vehicles than in naturally aspirated ones (although a turbo will drink just as much when used in anger). If the US gets mandatory fuel efficiency requirements, I suspect that the flagship models from GM and their ilk will start using turbocharging.