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Comment Re:This is the voice of world control. (Score 1) 106

"Do a lot of damage" is a funny way to phrase "Completely destroy"

Nuclear explosions are big. Really damn big. Have you looked at footage of underground nuclear tests?

This was a tiny little 1.2 kiloton bomb under 60 feet of packed soil. Silos aren't packed soil, and though the details are classified, I believe most bombs on ICBMs are somewhere in the megatonish range.

As pointed out elsewhere, silos are heavily-reinforced concrete. You'd have a gun barrel effect directing the blast straight up.

Further, the typical warhead on an American Peacemaker ICBM is a 300kt W87. Granted, there may be up to ten of them, but unless they exploded simultaneously, the detonation would destroy the other nine.

Comment Re:But... but nucular is bad! (Score 2) 143

I'm not saying nuclear is "safe". There's no such THING as "safe". But coal isn't safe. Oil isn't safe. Natural gas isn't safe. Wind isn't safe. Wave isn't safe. Solar isn't safe. Hydro isn't safe. All of them come with their own risks and tradeoffs.

The damage done by a wind turbine falling over, or solar panel slipping off a roof tends to be orders of magnitude less serious than a major nuclear accident. That's why wind farms and solar installations can get insurance, and nuclear can't.

Wind also kills birds. Solar requires rare earth elements that are toxic to mine, refine, and dispose of at the end of the panel's life. The damages involved are more than just "[object] falls over."

Comment Re:Illegal and Dangerous? (Score 1) 200

No, he'd win it. Even if the engine immediately went to zero thrust, the other engine would still be sufficient to find a suitable landing field. In fact, such things are practiced regularly, both simulated (for large jets) and in real life (smaller aircraft). It'd be expensive to fix, but entirely survivable, given a suitably-competent pilot.

Comment Re:He picked the wrong moment to support amnesty (Score 1) 932

"Just that simple"? You like the idea of closing borders, evidently, but do you like the idea of produce prices, meat prices, service-economy costs, and just about every other menial-labor field seeing its labor costs double overnight? Because that's the consequence of requiring that citizens do those jobs. Stoop work is awful, backbreaking work that pays bullshit. It only survives because the immigrants who do it are so desperate for the work that they'll take it.

And if at the same time we close the borders, we cut welfare benefits, so that the lazy who vote for a living have to actually work for a change, what would that do for the labor pool?

Comment Re:I get enough flying priuses already. (Score 1) 186

Seriously,

Show me the lines of the traffic code that require slower people to move to the right side.

It's a "convention" at best.

43 O.S. 11-309, notably (5):

5. Upon a roadway which is divided into four or more lanes, a vehicle shall not impede the normal flow of traffic by driving in the left lane; provided, however, this paragraph shall not prohibit driving in a lane other than the right-hand lane when traffic conditions or flow, or both, or road configuration, such as the potential of merging traffic, require the use of lanes other than the right-hand lane to maintain safe traffic conditions. [Emphasis added]

Submission + - Why China Banned Windows 8 (thediplomat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's decision to stop supporting Windows XP (still the OS of choice in China) provided an extra push for China to wean itself off dependence on foreign tech giants. The banning of Windows 8 on government computers is supposed to create a new market for domestic Chinese operating systems-- but there's a long way to go.

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