a counter that showed the number of days since the last industrial accident. The specification called for this counter to have just three digits, which frankly didn't inspire much confidence.
I don't think you know what counts as an "industrial accident". You seem to think it means a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. I have worked in such industries and a cook in the canteen cutting her hand with a potato peeler counts as an industial accident. I'm not exagerating. That did happen where I work and the fuss about that cut hand went on for days - we were called in to "refresher" safety lectures, circulars were sent round, we were sick of hearing about it. The cook herself was no doubt highly embarrassed by it all.
The truth is that the management were in a pissing contest with other industrial sites for safety awards, and they had lost Brownie points. I think if I cut my hand I would sneak out to the car park and secretly bandage myself with my car first aid kit rather than go to a site first-aider.
To go 999 days on such a site with no "industrial accidents" would be, frankly, incredible.
we can't even come up with racial definitions that are stable across cultures
In practice we have. Take a look at some escorts ads.
Who said racism is dead?
Dunno, but try looking at some Chinese websites. I can't read Chinese, but the English lanuage ones are anti-foreigner and especially anti-black. I am not talking about official web sites, but individual blogs, and they are clearly mainstream, not fringe ones. I happened to follow a link into that area once. In the UK you would end up in jail for the stuff they say.
Because the suggestion that race is something that exists at the biological level is a falsehood.
So it is just one hell of a co-incidence then that white parents generally have white children and black parents generally have black children ? I'm learning all the time.
Wireless power transmission makes it extremely hard to monitor usage and thus extract payment.
TV companies have found a solution.
the only reason flying boats fell out of use is the range of land based aircraft increased sufficiently that the ability to land and refuel on the water was no longer a strength, and the ability to have a streamlined fuselage is an efficiency and speed advantage over seaplanes.
That's two reasons. How about also the fact that more dry land runways were built as time went on.
You also need to consider the imperial background of the Great Powers. The British Empire (and the French and US Empires too) included large numbers of small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, each with a post office, a local government official, a bit of trade, sea around them, a jetty, and no airstrip. The flying boats were ideal for carrying the post and lighter trade items which got there faster than by the monthly (if you were lucky) cargo steam ship.
Once these places got their independence, typically in the 1950's, they were no longer an Imperial responsibility but neither could they support a commercial air service of any sort at the time. End of flying boats.
The Hercules, aka Spruce Goose, is not amphibious: it's a seaplane, period.
What is the difference? I'm interested.
They're offering me discounts on stuff I probably don't need
My daughter (aged 10 at the time) filled in a paper-based marketing survey on the promise that you would get rewarded with 1000 GBP (but I'll use $$) in vouchers. Seemed too good to be true, but they were true to their word! A thick wad of vouchers came. The vouchers were something like :
I had the last laugh though. Everything my daughter put down was a joke, like saying (in my name) I kept weasels (some people do). I got free copies of a quarterly Weasel magazine for the next two years
I own what was once a state-owned apartment in a decent sized Chinese city
Sounds like a rabbit hutch to me. Maybe fine if a computer is the only thing you need room for, but some people have other parts to their lives.
The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.