He was also an obese asthmatic and died from the strain of trying to run away from a volcano.

Oh, sexconker, you and your stories - "the study is wrong", "beer kills brain cells".... Now let's go back to that ... building ... thingie ... where our beds and TV ... is.

I'm not sure literacy rate is a good way to measure general ignorance either, though.
I live in Seattle, and have lived in southern Oregon and Oklahoma.

I'm not a bigot toward my Okie friends (of which I have a few), but they generally are, while literate, very, very ignorant.

-1 MegaPedant

So cups in the US are 250 ml? I have a selection of cups here which have between 150 ml and 500 ml. Which of them is the "baking cup"? Cup is a quite confusing measuring unit.

1 Guinea = 21 shillings. Prices were often expressed in Guineas, to appear smaller compared to prices in Pounds.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66591-all-right-said-susan-i-m-not-stupid-you-re-saying-humans

While I personally see a device like this (sorry... ROBOT!) of rather limited use for testing prepared dishes, I can see great utility for it for testing ingredients. You could have a standardized, unambiguous way to rate the quality or at least properties of a given product, be it meat, fruit, vegetables, etc. I bet cultivar breeding programs in particular could really benefit from this - "Well, I was hoping that this new mango would be a huge innovation, but actually it's almost identical to a Keitt. Though to be fair its mouthfeel is somewhat like a Carrie, and it does have a small amount of a new novel aromatic compound..." Just a single mass produced sensor package that measures a wide range of different properties at once in a repeatable, universal manner. If such a thing could become widespread, I'd bet half of the "cultivars" out there would pretty much disappear, having been shown to be essentially identical to others.

Goddammit, if I weren't already ideologically minded, I would despise conservatives for their crimes against the english language.

When the best you can manage is passive-aggressive solipsism and intentionally petrified bawdy humour, PUT THE KEYBOARD DOWN.

Another fucking coder thinks the right side of his brain is worth a damn...

I have no doubt that you own rheostat dimmers, but I seriously doubt they're the average.
I haven't encountered one in well over 2 decades.

Parent was otherwise correct about the operation of the standard wall dimming unit

Peak oil is a mathematical concept. It's entirely impossible to accurately predict when it will happen, and if we're talking about the original definition of it, it already has. All deviation from the Hubbert curve has been expensive "unconventional" oil prospects, and we're *still* outpacing growth of production with growth of demand.
I don't understand why this is a difficult concept for some people. The math is pretty fucking simple. You can't win. We got all the easy shit. Every time we find a new field that buys the earth another few months, all you whack jobs jump out and go "aha! see! peak oil is a myth!", without taking into account that these 3 month extensions to the expiration date of cheap oil only come about once every few years.

I think it's more of a jest for most educated folk here in the States. We're well aware of French history, and their part in the American Revolution. (We have school, streets, cities named after La Fayette).

It's still good for a mild giggle to talk about white flags and such. Vichy was a bitch. If they can't take a joke, they can shut their asses about Bush.

The EPA guidelines are in line with the level of risk: very, very little. If you want to cut your mercury exposure, don't stop using CFLs, stop eating seafood.

As for the Bridges case, you should read the Maine EPA's account. CFLs were new back then, and they had decided to use her case to learn more about what sort of advice they should give for dealing with broken bulbs. So they sent someone with a meter because they wanted to learn more, not because that's standard practice. The carpet was already intended for removal as part of a rennovation. They took readings all over the room. The only place with "high" levels was right where the bulb broke - not in the ambient air, not anywhere else on the carpet, not on the toys, not even under the carpet where it broke. I say "high" because even the levels right where it broke weren't actually high, just over Maine's long-term exposure guidelines (which is obviously not applicable to a temporary event). Moving the meter even six to eight inches away rom the breakage point dropped the levels way down. She was told that the bulb breakage was "of negligible health concern". However "the homeowner expressed particular nervousness about exposures to mercury even in low numbers", so they told her what she could do if it bothered her, one of which was calling a cleanup contractor. And of course any private cleanup contractor will charge you an utter fortune. The Maine EPA came back two days later after the story hit the news, before anything had been done in the house. The area where the bulb broke had dropped down below Maine's limit.

The case was ridiculously blown out of proportion.

Don't you have write-in candidates?

Are you reading the same webpage I am? Where does that say you're supposed to bag up your bedding and pillow and toss them into the garbage - "EPA's words"? It says no such thing. It basically says open the windows for 5-10 minutes and shut off your HVAC, scoop up the fragments, use tape to get the little bits, wipe it, put all the waste in a sealed glass jar or plastic bag, and properly dispose of it. Ooooh, terrifying! And at the bottom of the page it says:

What if I can't follow all the recommended steps? or I cleaned up a CFL but didn't do it properly?

Don't be alarmed; these steps are only precautions that reflect best practices for cleaning up a broken CFL. Keep in mind that CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury -- less than 1/100th of the amount in a mercury thermometer.

Clearly you're reading that page from a bizzarro universe where it says something like "If you break a CFL and don't move out of your house and entomb it in a concrete shell then you'll get electro-cancer that will kill you and all of your descendants."