CFL's are generally just over 4:1 against incandescents. A 60W equivalent CFL uses 14W-17W and others I know of are 40:9 and 23:100. I still won't buy them, though, as the cost is pennies across their life and I live in a colder climate. I tried them out and after coming home after dark only to stand there for 15-30 seconds while it warmed up was enough to make me reconsider. When they started failing much, much sooner than advertised I stopped using them. When a company comes out with a ballast that screws into a light fixture and a compact fluorescent bulb that inserts into that I will buy them. Not interested in paying absurd prices that are artificially jacked up because they chose to engineer them poorly by marrying the bulb to the ballast. This would also allow for manufacturing quick start ballasts that work properly when you come home to a cold house as well.

And this is why we value our private firearms and put up with high murder rates due to them. We allow our government to take certain actions because we hold the trump card; our willingness to die for our belief that governments should be restricted past a certain point. We are enjoying a decent life. When the government stoops to a level we find unacceptable we will forcibly remove them and start again. Countries like Germany were able to do what we can not because they were brain-washing their children to love the state first, family second. That's why Americans get all bent out of shape when schools try to get stupid and take authority away from a child's parent. We accept parents teaching their kids things we disagree with because once you control that aspect of a child's life entirely you have taken the first critical step in creating what the SS had in Nazi Germany.
It could happen in the USA, but its not likely. The undercurrent of distrust and dissatisfaction that used to only reside on the fringes of our society have crept into much of the mainstream. Obama, the savior of all and next greatest president, is at an all time low approval rating because he thought he could ride that wave of support and take away people's constitutional rights. Hopefully his wake-up call is realizing that his average approval rating is lower than the great Satan, George Bush. Sadly, though, he seems to honestly not give a shit about anything but his own agenda and the results will only be people being less trusting of his party.

Are you from the United States where this occurred? Only asking because it sounds like you are talking out of your ass with a complete lack of understanding of all aspects of this situation. Walmart always has signs up indicating where their public restrooms are. The giant sign that says restrooms is understood to be for public use because they are publicly advertised. You are definitely correct that if someone went into an employee only restroom they would not seek to have you charged with theft because trespassing is a more serious charge. You are also correct that electricity is not an object that can be handled or actually taken like a bottle of soda, however it is definitely quantifiable and has value. You need to read up on theft of services. Its a different part of law than theft of property but it still counts as theft and at a minimum is a misdemeanor in most places. Most minor misdemeanors where the cop didn't actually see the crime occur will only result in a ticket and/or a summons to court but if a person admits to committing a misdemeanor or they are caught in the act the can be arrested for it.

Your analogy sucks. Walmart has PUBLIC restrooms. That means they are offering its services, usage and water for free. Its not theft just because the 7 Up is for sale and has a price printed on it. It has a monetary value that the victim of the theft would have had to pay for if the thief wasn't caught. In this situation there is no analogy needed. It was a guy stealing electricity. If the school had this outlet obviously located and dedicated for people to charge their phones or laptops that would be a different situation. They did nothing of the sort. Some jackass thought he would get away with stealing because hey, its such a small amount he's stealing so no one would ever be mad, right? Did he ask permission or offer to pay for the electricity beforehand? Nope. He even admitted that he routinely steals from publicly accessible outlets and never asks permission because its always such a small amount. If I ever walked out of my house and saw that a neighbor had plugged into the outlet on the side of my house I would definitely call the cops. What kind of entitled douchebag would ever think it was ok to steal so long as it was a small amount? Walk into a bank, reach over the counter and grab a nickel and see if you don't get arrested.

I thought they denied her because the record was sealed and she refused to show them?

Taken from "The Age and Progenitor Mass of Sirius B", (which most astrophysicists hold to be the standard when dealing with how massive the star actually is):
"This result yields in principle the most accurate data point at relatively high masses for the initial-final mass relation. However, the analysis relies on the assumption that the primordial abundance of the Sirius stars was solar, based on membership in the Sirius supercluster. A recent study suggests that its membership in the group is by no means certain."

So the only way they can determine Sirius B's mass is to first determine its age. To determine it's age they have had to make an assumption that it was part of the Sirius supercluster yet a recent study suggests that its membership in that group is by no means certain. Therefore everything they have said regarding its mass is by no means certain. If that is by no means certain than how can any observation of its gravitational relationship to nearby objects be certain? Going from that, if everything they have determined is by no means certain, than why say that it is so certain that there must be Dark Matter there to make the equations work?

This quote from wikipedia is the accepted reason why it is said to exist. "Astrophysicists hypothesized dark matter due to discrepancies between the mass of large astronomical objects determined from their gravitational effects and the mass calculated from the "luminous matter" they contain: stars, gas, and dust."

First and foremost the scientists that decided it needed to be created to begin with had to first decide that their ability to calculate the masses of objects, (that are too far away to reliably gauge any relevant data except through speculation or guess work), somehow had to be irrefutable. Tell me first, how the data that was collected is irrefutable. You can't. Except in a land of non-science there isn't a need to create something to prove something else unless that something else is irrefutable. There isn't a way to calculate a stars mass exactly because we have absolutely no idea what is inside their cores and at best are making educated guesses based on what we know about our own planet. You might be right, but the data set containing the correct answer could possibly be anything. How does a logic minded person step from "we made a guess and the evidence says we are incorrect" to "obviously everything we have done is infallible therefore it must be something else we need to create in order to justify our previous GUESS".
I get it. People want this to be real. But there really isn't a justification for it's existence as a serious pursuit other than ego. There is no honesty in this approach. Honesty would be admitting that maybe we don't know as much as we claim about gravity and its effect on the fabric of space and even the tiniest degree off at the start will skew the end results dramatically. Honesty would be admitting that if we guessed wrong on the mass of stars, (and it is a guess no matter how educated a guess we claim), that any answer we get is somewhat suspect and not some infallible truth that demands creation of something else. You can take any wild guess or even an outright lie and through a long progression of made up supporting data make it appear to be fact. It doesn't make it a fact it just buries your original guess or miscalculation at the bottom of a giant pile of garbage.

Too bad you took the coward's road AC. I would have modded you up instead of replying. I definitely feel that Dark Matter only exists because they want it to exist. It's always bothered me that we call something science that isn't really scientific at all. It's pseudo-science at best. The bigger issue is that religious people claim to have the answers. Believing they are all idiots and fools, (and saying as much to anyone that will listen), has left the scientific community in the position of NEEDING to show that they have all the answers. If one group says 'We have all of the answers' and another group responds 'you know, we really know jack shit compared to the totality of what's out there, we're just 99.99% certain that those other guys don't know what they're talking about' is the only honest answer. Instead people don't want to be perceived as lacking in knowledge when compared to someone they deem their enemy. This has lead to several areas of scientific research turning to theories that have little basis in reality except to cover that their previous theories were wrong when presented with new discoveries.

At what point did it become ok in the scientific community to keep on with a theory that evidence contradicts? Usually, when a theory is shown to be wrong its thrown out or at least revised, not magically shown to be correct overnight by making up something else to support it. I once read a book called The Road to Reality. Very long and fairly serious reading that started turning me against one of my favorite areas of science about 75% of the way through the book. The day I realized that the previous three chapters I had read were not science, but rather theories that were based on other theories based on yet other theories that only existed because the first theory was shown to be wrong at some point, was a real downer.

We use Citrix where I work and they flipped out over us being productive. Too many times the server would bog down to the point nothing would load and there isn't a save locally function. Instead we just used the email function to attach the files, send them to gmail and work on them anywhere.

I think you started down the right path but got distracted enough to miss the bigger point. If the next biggest thing I am waiting for, (Dayz Stand Alone atm), was a Linux exclusive I would sadly move on to play something else. What makes this situation different from the one describe? There is a very decent chance that something else you would want to play is in the pipeline for Wii. For Linux there is not and for a guy like me with 200 or so games in my Steam library that means a lot. As a matter of fact, it means everything to the gamer side of me. I like to spend my time gaming on a rig that boots up, has never had a virus and hasn't had any crashes or issues that take what little time I have away from gaming. For me that's a Win7 machine. I couldn't care less if people have had issues with Windows. I've had issues with Linux. Have tried several distros and even given that Steam has some games that run on that platform I still had enough issues to stay away. SteamOS takes all that away as its designed exactly for what I want to use it for. What it doesn't take away is that there aren't enough games out for it and there isn't a reasonable timeline when ALL major publishers will put ALL of their games out for Linux. Until then most gamers, (and therefore most money), will stay on Windows rather than Linux. Hit me up in ten years and if things have changed I'll probably already be Windows free.

Bullshit. We're 'wired' to empathize with ourselves. If children aren't taught to share their instinct is to be selfish. We CHOOSE to empathize with what we call "our own" regardless of whether its human or animal and its completely arbitrary what a person chooses to identify with. I grew up on a farm where hurting the family dog was inconceivable but shooting a random dog that was killing or mauling your own animals was a necessity of life. Why? Because we chose to have emotional attachment to the animals we called our own. We set rat traps to protect our horses' grain and I guarantee if their were monkeys breaking into our barn and tearing into the food we had for our animals we would not have given a second thought to finding a way to destroy them.

I'm pretty sure the main attraction to the Wildcat is it could probably take a few more bullets than a horse and won't get scared by gun fire, snakes, fire or anything else. I don't know about you, but I've been around horses my whole life and know if a small piece of barbed wire can effectively end its life, it doesn't bring much to the table against something, (that when armored and ready for deployment), will shrug off most small weapons fire and keep on going.

You're an idiot. Look up studies on punching bags or stress pillows relating to catharsis. I've seen two such studies where people who took the violent release ended up seeing it as a reward and tended to be more aggressive towards other people.
It took me about five seconds to prove that you do not know what you're talking about.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/200909/you-cant-punch-your-way-out-anger
Unless by ""actual" research" you meant shit you just made up to prove a point because you simply disagreed with me.

"It also might be that you misinterpreted the Swedish approach to drug addiction, which is to treat in the community rather than to lock people up as criminals"
That is a definite truth but irrelevant. What I was going off of is spending 20 years across the three largest cities in the USA and never having seen a larger percentage of the population begging in the street and claiming drug addiction as the cause, unable to even find basic work. While their is absolutely a larger percentage of Americans in prison, you are either claiming that ZERO people are in Sweden's prison for drugs or are completely overlooking the glaring ineffectiveness of the country's drug treatment capacity or ability. Maybe I only went through the cities with very high populations of drug users, but people don't abuse drugs like heroin unless they are not happy with their lives. My comment was directly aimed at people claiming quality of life is better in "Western Europe and Scandinavia" than the USA while failing to mention nearly 5% more Europeans are unemployed versus the USA along with my own experiences of drug addicted panhandlers in far, far greater numbers than anywhere I have personally experienced in the USA. Unless of course the treatment there is very effective only masking even more people with serious issues causing them to use hard drugs.

Reality for me was experiencing a higher percentage of random people in Sweden telling me they were addicted to drugs and asking for money than anywhere in the US. Maybe our druggies are just more polite and keep to themselves. Some places felt similar to India with how many people were begging in the city.