The question doesn't say walking in a straight line, just walking west. A circle around the pole is the trajectory traveled when walking westward near either of the poles. The solution around the North Pole also requires walking a curved path. If you walk straight you either end up almost a mile away (if using Great Circles as your definition of "straight"), or exactly a mile away, hovering in the air (if using Euclidean "straight").

Which, I'm sure, is a huge relief for the people being tortured by fools who believe in it.

For what it's worth, from the complaint there's no evidence she ever agreed to be tracked outside of work hours, and she uninstalled the app as soon as she realized it did that.

P.S. Thank-you Slashdot for no edit function.

Nevermind, I see what you're saying now. But I'm disputing this:

She did not agree to the last part when she was hired.

From the complaint she was hired in February:

App only came in April:

From the complaint it sounds like the tracking app was made a requirement a couple months after she was hired. Could you point me to where she agreed to this when she was hired? I can't see it in either the linked article or the complaint.

I think this is normal for fields like astronomy which involve a large number of scientists sharing a single, very expensive, piece of equipment.

For bullet resistance you generally need high toughness, not hardeness. In a technical context toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy without breaking, whereas hardness is the ability of a material to withstand denting, scratching, etc.

Frequently hard materials are not very tough, and visa-versa.

Canada likely wouldn't want it. We had an aircraft carrier but we scrapped it because it was too expensive for a country of our size to maintain.

Germany and Japan are near there in terms of [military expenditures](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures). Which seems to me to be a better measure of military power, as number of military personnel is going overestimate the military power of low-tech militaries with lots of infantry.

It's still less regressive than fixed fines. And according to the article their system accounts for many of your objections by basing of spending money, not income. For an average Finn, this apparently works out to 30 - 50 Euro/day, or 500 Euro for an average fine.

And most parts of the world have professional police forces who are hired, not elected, so are not subject to campaign contribution bribery such as you describe.

Is there a second source for this? I can't find anything outside of the linked article. E.g. In Google I can't find anything about OPP child porn busts since Sept 2014; I can't find anything about this on the OPP home page; nor in the last month or so on EFF blog (EFF provided a quote for the article).

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not let facts get in the way of Internet outrage.

Barber is not a good example, since (afaik) barbers are not required to be licensed. Generally licensees are due to public safety concerns: e.g. the push for licensing engineers was due in part to pressure vessels exploding and killing people. Similarly poorly done plumbing can spill sewage into neighboring houses; improper electrical installations can start fires; improper gas fittings can cause natural gas explosions; etc.

We do, however, have a unique ID burned into our bodies. It goes something like GATTACA...

(well, excepting twins, chimeras and a few other special cases).