IANAL & IANA (I am not American) but aren't you meant to be sentenced based on what crime you are convicted of? Seriously the QLD Chief Justice (Highest Judge in QLD) withdrew from an appeals hearing of a convicted child abuser & murderer because he had had a meeting with someone who lobbied for harsher sentences for child molesters.

If the sentencing judge references other non-case related matters surely that would affect the standing of the ruling and open up appeals?

So let's all build arcs then. Our invisible friend in the sky might at any moment decide to flood the earth again. He did it once, so it's probably overdue.

In short: "no matter how unlikely" can be extremely unlikely. That's when we use reasoning instead of blanket statements.

To avoid the 20% to 40% power loss when converting from DC to AC

...they're doing it wrong. DC to AC conversion is easily achieved in the high 90% range. For instance, a typical solar inverter is around 95% efficient. And you can do better, it just gets more expensive (although that's a one-time cost, whereas energy loss is a constant concern.)

Someone is pushing some other agenda here.

Sure. Did it to myself decades ago. Offspring of my genetic line aren't of the least bit of interest to me; perfectly happy raising kids of other birth who needed parents (5 so far, mostly excellent results.) Plus that whole "all the bareback sex with my SO we want, any time" thing is awesome.

Which, again, is just how I approach feline guardianship. Don't need new kittens from them. Plenty of kittens out there that need to own their own human.

If we were starting out then maybe, but there are just so many things that can be plugged into an AC socket. It's pretty amazing that you can take anything from the last 50 years or more that has the right plug on it, shove it into a wall socket, and off it goes. The current system is a very good standard, and it will be hard to change things. Further, one of the original reasons Tesla (Nikola) won out is that the induction motor is an extremely good motor design (safe, reliable, quiet). Lots of things still have AC induction motors (heatpumps, your fridge) and these require, well AC. If you don't have that then you need a motor driver for them (or brushes I suppose) which is just a three-phase inverter anyway.

Also 20-40% power loss is crazy. More like 5-10% with modern semi-conductors and getting better/cheaper all the time.

In my experiences, leadership is simply being the type of person that people want to follow. Now whether they have any idea where to lead the people once they are following is a different question. Certainly the best leaders also have a solid sense of direction, but it is entirely possible, and rather common, for people to exude the other elements of leadership while lacking this key requirement.

Where else do you think the entire management consultant business has come from? It is basically the way that corporate leaders generate direction in their businesses due to their own inability to come up with ideas. This is why you do have to respect people like Gates, Jobs and Ellison. At least they could come up with their own corporate strategies that worked (even if you think they are evil).

Hahaha. The executive market is already global. How else do you think they avoid paying tax? The other benefits of being a member of the 'market' is that nobody actually cares whether you just ran your last business into the ground, parachuting out of it on a cloud of shareholder capital just before it imploded, and if you really get completely useless at keeping businesses from imploding they will just give you a cushy government advisor job. Oh and the best bit is that the members of the 'market' set the salaries for each other.

I think what you probably meant is that they should open the market up to competition from those who aren't members (don't have lots of inherited wealth). Good luck with that.

10 quid says the next mass extinction is the 1% purposefully "culling" the heard

So... if you stay quiet, you should be okay.

Seriously guys. Learn to read!!! The Montreal Protocol was all about reducing ozone depleting chemicals from being released into the atmosphere with a particular focus on CFCs. There is NO LINK to climate change in this treaty and climate change had nothing to do with the decision to take it. There was a growing hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica, to the point it was stretching over Australia. CFCs were directly linked to the growth of the hole and cutting their use has dramatically improved the situation re the size of the hole.

There continue to be releases of other chemicals that have been restricted, especially from fire fighting equipment. But CFCs made up such a huge component and their use dropped so much that that alone has made a measurable impact.

Really this is exactly the same as restricting the emission of sulphur because it lead to acid rain.

What possibly makes you think this means they don't know what they are doing? Change the question to "Patent Law, Industrial Relations, Marketing, Geophysics, etc" and the GOOD leader is the one who can turn around and say "I don't know, but I can ask someone who does".

In any large organisation where IT is critical then a good leader should have someone they can trust who does know IT to tell them what they need to know. To parse down the huge shit-tonne of noise and distil for them the key points. This is the same for their legal department, their accountants, their customer service, their logistics etc.

The job of your top leader is to pull disparate teams together and achieve a goal. That means that they need to offset the demands of multiple divisions, their challenges and opportunities against each other and decide which path is the best. None of that requires more than a high level understanding of each area.

I agree with you about the F35. I think it is a terrible waste of money. So far it isn't even lining up as being particularly good. That said the f111s were getting very long in the tooth and needed significant upgrades to remain viable. The biggest problem, as I see it, with the F35 is it is trying to be everything to everyone. Instead they should have built 2 different planes. One an air superiority fighter and one ground attack.

As for the China threat, the issues will come around territorial claims. Have a look at what is happening at the Spratly Atoll in the South China Sea. At the moment there is a bunch of shallow reefs that are claimed by pretty much everyone. China has moved into the region and started building artificial islands there and outfitting them with landing strips and deep water ports. The US is concerned by this for two main reasons. The first is that they are legally required to defend Taiwan and Taiwan has a claim on those Islands, which means the US could get dragged in. The second is that allowing China to claim territorial control of the South China Sea means China will take control of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

I don't think China will attach the US or vice-versa on purpose. But I can see nasty scuffles happening through grandstanding between both sides.

While I think the f35 is a complete waste Australia needed a replacement for the f111s and the super hornets are only a stop gap. Because of our geography we need a decent airforce to protect the country, too much land and too much coast. If you accept that Aus needs a military at all then you have to accept we need a decent fighter platform.

Sigh. Road AND Rail. Which means two of everything minimum. Also the rail line is over 40 miles because of grade considerations.

Ditto for operators - "foo + bar" does something quite different to "bar + foo".

This holds for practically all languages that overload '+' for string concatenation. Luckily in C this doesn't hold: there "foo+bar" always equals "bar+foo", even for strings.