Basically they had reason to investigate the call, but did they have reason to investigate un-related offenses? IE the concern of drunkenness didn't pan out, but we pulled him over anyway. Then they continued to search, for a cause completely un-related to the first tip. At some point you have to draw a line.

distill
: to make (a liquid) pure by heating it until it becomes a gas and then cooling it until it is a liquid again : to purify (a liquid) by distillation

2 mistakes in your post:
>extremely diluted quantities of a harmful substance
Urine is not considered a harmful substance.
> to boil off contaminants
No, distilled water is water that was boiled, then the steam is condensed to water then it is distilled water. Campers will boil water to make it microbiologically safe, but that is not distilled water, you can only distill by condensing the steam (FYI I am pretty sure RO water is also considered more pure than distilled water as well, definitely cleaner than boiled water.)

> insulation or one of the various waste-heat-recovery systems that transfer some amount of the heat remaing in outgoing exhaust gases into incoming working fluids?

Several reasons this isn't done in the engine intake. The main power conversion in a ICE is through the thermal expansion of the gasses trapped in the cylinder, so heating it before the intake valve is closed only reduces the density of the air taken into the cylinder (PV=nRT so at the same Pressure and volume, the higher the temperature, the fewer molecules, less O2 available to burn.) Once the air is trapped in the cylinder all heat added will then be converted, so a cold intake, then a hot block helps contribute to efficiency. But then metals have limitations on the allowable temperatures (for at least the last 40 years Ceramic engines have been on the verge of a breakthrough making higher temp more efficient engines a reality, maybe next year.) Also combustion properties of carbon fuels create emissions problems when combustion occurs at too high of temperatures.
Power stations will harness the waste heat from Ng Generators, and pump that into a sterling engine, then take that waste heat into another conversion, then take that waste heat as warm water for buildings, etc. But that takes too much space, weight, and cost (I assume) to be put into a mobile vehicle (other than used as a heater in the winter.) Although I would hope Cruise ships, etc would utilize this waste heat as well.

> 2nd amendment favors the rich because they can arm themselves to the hilt

I don't think that is the general case. It is true for Ted Nuegent, where he has a 1000 acres, probably 100% coverage of networked game cameras alerting him of entry, and all the weapons he can get, and probably a dozen fully armed "friends" around him at most times.
But in general I would think the normal rich are more on the lots of gun restrictions, they have more stuff to lose and more exposure, and less likely to need to take by force. After all they can hire the off duty police, who get through all legal challenges... But all of that can be upset by anyone who can come up with a a couple grand and waits for the right time, to call them out on what some wrong. And the distrust of the poor can be great amongst them, well at least the rich republicans.

I would say the line is also pretty high where a person making minimum wage can (would require good budgeting) come up with the money to get a AR and ammo, but your going to have to be a billionaire to justify spending a millions to get to those weapons you list that the "poor" can't touch.

> Firearms are for when you are assaulted by gun fire from a distance AND standing and shooting back
I don't think those are necessarily true. For one, your assuming you are the one being assaulted, If I walk by a gang rape, the extent of my reaction without a firearm is to take cover and let it happen until police arrive. With a gun, I can find the high ground, and attempt to verbally break up the action, then defend myself from the likely attack. Similar if I am assaulted by a group, If I escape and am cornered (or if I see it coming, I may get cornered in the escape) the firearm comes back into use. It is also a deterrent to a possible attacker. Seeing a potential victim with guns, they need to make the decision, that a attack needs to be with the intent to kill. The theory would be if they leave me armed and able, they leave themselves open to be killed. Attacking someone without a weapon, any failure is almost certainly leaving them a safe escape. At least where I live, in a border state, it is said that the smugglers do have look outs. When they see a armed party, they stay clear. The risk of being spotted by a defensed group ups the likely hood of failure, with failure being any activity that increases the interest of Police/Border Patrol quick response. If a unarmed party spots them, they can use less noisy means to silence the group than gun fire (will surrender to guns, can be killed with knives...)

The square yard plan I had was to do increasing D shaped passes. So imagine a 30 by 30 lawn mower width field, you would start your North pass 10 lawn mower widths from the west edge, mow until you were 11 lawn mower passes from the North edge, and then make as tight of a 90 as possible, then drive 9 lawn mower widths to the East, then make as hard of 90 to the right heading back South, reaching 10 mower widths north of the South edge you would turn as sharp as you could back to the West. You would mow until you cross your first path, turning 90 to the right to mow to the west edge of that path. Then follow the left edge of your previous cuts until your done.
The point of this is to make sure you never get into following a path on the inside of a corner, because that will cause every corner to get tighter and tighter until you can't make the corner. This path you only double cut 1/2 that first pass (technically if you start your first path 10 passes in from each edge, you would never mow the spot 2*, you will end with a couple unmowed circles at each corner before you have to overlap to catch them up if truly square.

is this about something other than the gay marriage proposition? Because California has recognized a Gay Domestic partnership 1999, and was completely unrelated to prop 8. Supporting this prop in no way affects how anyone can live their life in California, but a little about how it travels to more Conservative states.

OKCupid's actions were purely PR, otherwise they shouldn't be going after what mozilla guy did 6 years ago, they should be boycotting actual meaningful and active hateful companies and people, going after the 6 year old $1000 donation, while remaining silent on the Koch brothers millions in dozens of states really smells funney, but then the took on the easy target so that both mozilla and OkCupid can take a meaningless action (can't take back his donation or change anything done so long ago), and look good to liberals. The positive PR is worth paying off Eich to give up a title for mozilla, Eich, Mozilla, OKCupid are probably all much better off after this PR stunt, and had no actual effect.

I think a better option would be a fee that is triggered off a pattern of undesirable trading patterns over a extended time period (perhaps a year). IE brokerages that has a high percentage of short term trades gets a extra fee, along with customers and funds that do the same. Not preventing a single (or a few) actions.

> you have to hold on to them for a minimum of a week or a month

In general I think that would make momentum stocks much worse, more bubbles and crashes. IE if a stock takes off going up, you will create a bubble anytime you lock out very many sellers. Also locking out sellers in one often locks out buyers in another stock, thus creating more market volatility, as well.
For example as a fundamentals trader I look at a industry that looks promising, and find individual stocks and place a value on it, then look for stocks to give me a chance at a desired return, but expect half of that. For example I might decide I like ag-equipment, and put a values on Cat for $90 and Deere for $85. I buy the one at a better value, if I buy cat at 8am for $85, it is at $90 later in the day, and deere drops to $80 that same day, despite planning to hold cat stock for 2 years to get 10% return, I would take the 5% today in Cat (preventing a price bubble) and instead buy the new better value (Deere in this case.) The point of the market is to keep valuations in check (not too high or too low), so preventing me from selling the Cat stock, and buying the Deere stock hurts the market arbitrage. For example I have had an entire year not selling a single stock, and I have had days where I bought and sold several stocks the same day multiple times. Encouraging people to hold a stock (or houses, businesses...) despite it being overvalued, causes more problems than HFT.

>SCADA systems NEVER EVER get connected to the internet
Easy for the clueless to say. But often not connecting a SCADA system (through a firewall) to the internet has more payoff than risk. Worked in a factory with 24 hour operations, having a competent engineer on staff at all times just isn't practical (good engineers don't like to work off shifts, just in case.) So when the meat of the operations go down costing $1000's a hour, allowing the system to be troubleshoot remotely without waiting for a hour drive in for the closest engineer, is more valuable than the risk of being targeted by a hacker who compromised a PC on the network.

All of your arguments were about joining a boycott. This was a person using their position in a business; to call for a attack (boycott) of another business in a attempt to get a person fired over a action that person took (as a individual) over 6 years ago (and wasn't associated with Mozilla at the time.) Not even all that prejudiced of an action IMO. IE California already had a domestic partner law, that gave equal treatment in California. I would have voted against prop 8, but I don't see calling out supporters as being bigoted. In this case, because of the time after the action, how minor the action was; And how large the counter action was, This boycott looks like a real dick move to me (at least the actions by OKcupid)

>Tesla is profitably making electric vehicles
You might want to check that; Tesla has had one profitable quarter, making $16 million. (even that math was even somewhat questionable, how they accounted for leased vehicle revenue, and selling emission credits to other automakers....) All of the money paid back was purely from investors, the hype has made their stock sky high. Not (yet) from selling cars. Nothing wrong with that, and the reason for the hype is because many people much smarter than me believe they will be highly profitable (I don't see it, but that doesn't matter.)

The all around system I saw, has a virtual sky eyeball of all the cameras with a car icon in the middle. So one look at the screen shows where every thing is around your car. The system I saw had proximity sensors as well, so while stopped, it would highlight in red any area where a object (person?) was detected. When in gear, it would highlight objects that could be a problem in your intended direction. while in motion it would just show the vehicles around you. Had a touch screnn you could touch any section and have that camera then take up the whole screen

So once you got used to the system, I am sure you could glance at the display and instantly recognize whats completely around you. Better than looking right and left. With a large panoramic review mirror I think you can mostly keep track of all the other vehicles without the camera display at night while moving. The backup camera and object sensor would more than make up for any detail lost in the distorted rear view mirror.

>Comparing the disaster to the deaths from the tsunami is meaningless.

Do you even realize that the earthquake was the root cause of every death? From your post, you make it sound like the meltdown, and the earthquake were unrelated. The point being you suck as risk analysis if you don't understand that when a once in a 1000 years tsunami strikes a area, people will die in that area. The added risk to life caused by also having a nuclear plant in this area was a insignificant increase in the average risk to the people living in the area. That is why it is important to consider that a natural disaster that killed 20k people that less than 10 of those deaths are due to nuclear plants. While your correct the rational decision is to try and prevent as many deaths as possible in the future. But resources are limited, so dedicating those resources according to the most preventable paths makes the most sense. Nuclear power was probably the safest option available in 1970, every other option would likely have ended in more death and destruction in this tsunami than the one built. Should they have done more, obviously, was nuclear the correct answer
(IMO) obviously.

>As the tsunami is worse, then the meltdown "doesn't count." Hurray for the amazing logic of pro-nuke fanboy

The point is Japan had a horrible natural disaster, that natural disaster was made no worse by having nuclear power in terms of life lost, despite the Japanese making almost the worst case decisions all along. IE at the time these plants were made, the only other realistic option would have been to build at least 30* more coal plants than nukes, those plants would have caused more people to be in the path of the storm, and would have exposed the local people to more radiation over their lives than the nuclear plant disaster did. If they build nuclear plants to current standards this wouldn't have been a disaster at all. So compared to today's options, nuclear is still realistically as safe of option as any. You would be better putting more effort into what housing building standards caused the 20,000 deaths and rebuilding nuclear, than the other way.