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Comment Re:Do the math, indeed! (Score 2) 376

Without a lot of resources! Are you kidding me?
In Arizona, they had free air, heat, water just flowing around, food that grew on trees and ran around, and cheap and easy access to other people and their huge trade networks. And that was all stuff they *didn't* have to pay for!
The cost of all of those things are extraordinary when you're talking about being on the moon or in space.

Comment Re:upsetting science (Score 1) 79

but the previous work isn't really getting trashed, is it?

That's what it feels like, and that's why people initially have a strong emotional reaction to it. The various levels of the brain are all operating simultaneously -- the 'fight-or-flight' part and the higher-level cognitive part. We continue to have emotional, child-like reactions, but our higher-level cognitive functioning arrests and overrides such reactions.

Comment Do you *want* them to be trusting? (Score 1) 236

sounds like they don't trust their employees

Yeah -- you think there aren't attempts to infiltrate them left and right? How dumb and naive would they be if they *did* trust their employees? Would you want to turn over documents to them if the person to whom you did turned out to be a secret agent?

Or maybe they're just going to happen upon trustworthy employee by an extensive screening process and three rounds of interviews.

Comment Re:It's complete bullshit (Score 1) 1017

That makes sense. I've always been one of those people who've been skinny and I eat basically whatever I want, so it's counter-intuitive to me that overweight people eat more -- I always ate what my friend were eating when we went out ( and I don't eat all that healthily), so I just though some metabolisms were different.. I grew up in the same household that my brothers did, and one is more normal weight while the other was obese in high school. Funny thing is they were both athletic while I was the skinny nerd. But I guess we really did eat differently.

Comment Re:It's complete bullshit (Score 1) 1017

which is utterly useless since people will typically under-estimate their calorie intake by 20-60%

Wouldn't this be corrected by randomization? Or is it only overweight people who under-report intake and over-report expenditure?

In other words, suppose I had a hypothesis that redheads were 10-15 pounds lighter than the average person. I could do a survey, but I know that everybody under-reports their weight. However, since redheads under-report just as much as everybody else, it all comes out in the wash -- unless *only* redheads *or* everybody else under-reports their weight.

So if everybody is under-estimating intake and over-estimate expenditure, it wouldn't make a different because both groups. In other words, there's error but not necessarily bias.

Comment Re:Even more strange (Score 1) 628

But then they will need maintenance workers for those robots

But wouldn't the net effect anyway be less demand for human labor? I mean, isn't that the point of making robot/machine anythings? If all we're doing is build robots so we can do a new job for a while, why bother? Instead, aren't we building machines so that we have to work less? And with an Earth that's gaining people, isn't this going to be a problem?

Comment Re:5.5% of the energy in sunlight into hydrogen fu (Score 2) 326

It seems unlikely the hindenburg blew up due to hydrogen. Remember, hydrogen is very light, so if there's any rupture, the hydrogen will escape rather than hang around to explode. Sure, some will, but the vast majority will go straight into the atmosphere.

That's why people buy the idea that the coating was what actually exploded.

Science

Thousands of Blackbirds Fall From Sky Dead 577

Dan East writes "In a fashion worthy of a King or Hitchcock novel, blackbirds began to fall from the sky dead in Arkansas yesterday. Somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 birds rained down on the small town of Beeb, Arkansas, with no visible trauma. Officials are making wild guesses as to what happened — lightning strike, high-altitude hail, or perhaps trauma from the sound of New Year's fireworks killed them."

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