I'm a mass spec guy, so I certainly agree that different masses will focus differently. But in the ion drive schematics I see online, I don't see where there is a focussing step. The plasma is made, then just accelerated across a planar electrostatic voltage drop. No focussing needed. I'm also not seeing a x2 increase just from a slightly better ability to focus even if that did matter.

Why would isotopic purification increase the efficiency by a factor of 2?

I prefer WOPR.

Or maybe Joshua...

I agree that they should be paying taxes on money earned in the UK. But I would argue that the responsibility falls upon the government to create laws that fill in the loopholes and reduce deductions, rather than the company to apply its arbitrary set of ethical standards, in determining how much money the company owes to the government.

To rely on the company to decide how much to pay is equivalent to asking it to donate money to the government, which the company (or anybody for that matter) are not obliged to do.

Isn't the point of having a tax code so that we don't have to decide how much to pay in taxes based upon our ethics? The government tells us how much to pay based upon its tax code, so we pay it. At no point do they ask us to pay based upon our ethical standards.

I guess I wonder what should Google do. Should they pay the maximum amount the UK government wants, and avoid all possible deductions and loopholes? Or should they pick the "normal" deductions that other UK businesses use? Something in between? Which deductions/loopholes should they choose? Which ones are ethical? And by whose standards are they ethical?

I use my ethical standards when I donate to something like the Red Cross or UNICEF. I don't donate my money to the government. Taxes are a bill I pay to receive the benefits that the government provides to me. I'll find any way I can, within the letter of the law, to reduce that bill.

Do you happen to have a reference for your theory? The theories I've heard (which are proclaimed pessimistic) say nothing about water splitting due to solar radiation, but rather just evaporating and making its way up to the stratosphere, where it has a higher probability of being lost to space. It also sounds like the time frame for this process is not pinned down.

Welcome to the world of scientific research. It's a scientific article, which are almost always behind a paywall. ScienceDirect (operated by publisher Elsevier) is one of the largest scientific journal conglomerates. Universities pay 10's of thousands of dollars every year, if not more, to give their researchers access to these journals. So the authors make no money on it, but Elsevier makes loads on these articles.

No no I prefer the artificial cranberry jelly. That stuff is like crack to me.

Yeah I vaguely remember when I was a kid going to Ocean City in the summers and hearing my dad complain about OC being a dry town. He always had to run to the next town over to go pick up beer.

I'm originally from PA, and I couldn't agree with you more. I'm proud of a lot of things about PA (like Yuengling), but it has some really antiquated laws. I went to college in Pittsburgh, and every time we had a party on Saturday night, at 11:45p we would run out to the beer distributor and get another half-barrel, because once the clock struck 12, they couldn't sell any more.

I currently live in CT, and when I moved here I was completely floored by the fact that the supermarket had a whole aisle for beer! Quite a contrast to PA where you get carded just for walking into a liquor store.

Many more states in the country don't allow beer to be sold on Sundays. In some states (including PA), every once in awhile a politician floats the idea that they should start selling on Sundays, and supposedly local liquor/beer stores don't like it, because it means they'd have to pay staff to stay open one more day per week.

The Johnstown Flood Tax is such a joke, especially considering that, after a half dozen floods to hit the town (1936 was just one of them), Johnstown has been steadily shedding population (it's currently at a third of what it was during the 1930's).

Therefore No crime of war perpetrated by the US military can ever be trialed by an independant court

Actually the US can always re-sign and ratify the Rome statute, after which it will be possible to be tried for war crimes. As I understand it, they have problems with suspicion that American citizens who are brought to trial at the Hague may not receive due process, including a jury trial.

The US signed the Rome Statute at first under Clinton (but didn't ratify it), then the Bush administration revoked the signature (which would mean they really don't have to even pretend to abide by it). Now the current administration is showing signs of being interested in the ICC again, but they haven't directly stated that they want to sign or ratify it. It seems like a thin line the current administration is walking - they want other countries to be held accountable at the Hague, but not themselves quite yet. Maybe once the government isn't at war, they'll be more likely to ratify it (since war crimes prior to ratification can't be prosecuted).

I disagree with the statement that the US has perpetrated more crimes of war and crimes against humanity than any other nation. Although the US is by no means a saint, Sudan, Rwanda, Egypt, Syria, Cambodia, Iraq, North Korea, China, and others have had their share of crimes against humanity in the past 70 years, including genocide in some cases, without trial in an international court. Iraq 1 and 2, Kosovo, Vietnam, etc. aren't by their nature war crimes. War crimes do happen in every war, and I personally think people who commit them should be held accountable by the Hague (including Americans). But to say that the US as a whole has committed more crimes against humanity than, say Rwanda where 800,000 people were killed in 1994, or the Kmer Rouge which killed 1.7 million Cambodians in the late 1970's, is nonsense.

In addition to the absurdity of the case at all, there are a couple other things that bother me a lot about this:

1) the prosecution asked for 4 year sentences. The judge upped it to 6 years. How often does a judge go beyond the prosecution's requested sentence?

2) this was held in the town that got devastated by the quake. What are the chances that they'd get a fair trial?

Somehow they've successfully alienated the scientific community and made their own judicial system look like a joke at the same time. If I was a scientist on any government advisory committee in Italy, I'd be stepping down right about now.

the second heaviest of the noble gasses

For what it's worth, actually it's "gases". "Gasses" is a present tense verb.

it would overtun and eviserate that last remaining shred that mainstream religion(mormons ans scientology don't count)

Not Necessarily.

Along those lines, it should be pointed out that in the laser (spectroscopy) community, if we want a window that's transparent in the UV and visible, we typically use sapphire. Glass (ie BK7, float glass, or the like) absorbs UV, and the alternative, quartz, is not as strong. So it would make sense if they wanted to switch to sapphire for its strength, but didn't consider its UV transparency. Has anyone opened the camera up to see what else is between the sapphire and the element?