Aren't there still loads of unemployed people in the USA? Instead of putting them to work digging holes and filling them in again, why not employ them to convert the nation to metric? Like one of those Depression-era construction schemes, e.g the Hoover Dam.

There's a huge amount of work to be done, changing highway signs, changing settings on scales in stores.... sure, it's not rocket science, but it's better than sitting idly collecting a welfare check, and it educates the disadvantaged about the metric system, thereby making them more employable in the future. Surely it also has a positive effect on your economy, by making US exports more competitive with the rest of the world...

A "metric cup" is 250mL. About the same amount that you'd hold in a pair of cupped hands.

How long are your paces? How many yards in a mile? A _kilometre_ on the other hand, is 1000 metres, or damn near a thousand paces.

Now I'm not sure if AC is really that ignorant, or if I just got trolled.

I hope its search is better than its translate, because Bing translate is unusable.

Repeat after me: Correlation does not equal causation. Maybe the antiterrorist rock that I bought in 2001 has prevented the hijackings?

Moving on, hijackings don't happen anymore because hijackers know that the PASSENGERS will beat them down. You know, like what happened after the first two planes hit the towers on 9/11.

Conventional wisdom pre-9/11 was for passengers to be passive and allow the hijacked plane to be flown to Cuba (or wherever), wait around, and they will eventually be released when they are no longer useful. After 9/11 however, passengers will take the law into their own hands, and tackle and would-be hijackers, subduing them. You know, like what happened to the shoe bomber and the underpants bomber. Both of whom walked right past the TSA.

The nice thing about nuclear waste is that it's an "emission" that can be relatively easily collected, moved, and stored. Sure, it's radioactive, but it's a solid. You can put it in a truck, and store it somewhere safe.

Now try to do that with a few cubic miles of (also slightly radioactive, and quite high in heavy metals) coal power station exhaust.

Why yes, they would use a _small_ truck.

Early catalytic converters were crap. However, here in the 21st century we have "high-flow" cats that don't significantly increase backpressure in the exhaust.

Othr things that have improved since the 1970s:

- Horsepower per litre, thanks to alloy blocks, overhead cams, EFI.

- Fuel consumption per horsepower, thanks to all the above

- Handling, thanks to disc brakes, independent suspension

- Safety, thanks to seat belts, crumple zones, ABS

All that aside, I can see the appeal of a muscle car. If I had the time and money, I'd love to take a big boxy 1970s beast, throw away the ancient cast-iron carburetted engine, and drop in something like the 4.5L Lexus V8. Here in .au these engines are reasonably cheap from wrecked japanese imports. EFI, all-alloy, quad-cam, unleaded fuel friendly, and no dicking aorund tweaking carbs or constantly adjusting ignition points.

It may annoy the purists, but I would be able to spend more time _driving_ it.

So why drive, if there are so many buses getting there faster?

Also that there are plenty of warm, dry places where ice doesn't form anywhere, let alone turbine blades. For example, there are plenty of hot, dry deserts out there that are often very windy.

As stated above, everything has its drawbacks. There is no "silver bullet" to replace our reliance on fossil fuels, but it's irresponsible to reject a power source because it won't supply 100% of our needs by dinner time this evening.

And the solution is definitely NOT to have real universities (like Newcastle) implement stupid, expensive, invasive, ineffective measures like this. Can anyone think of any good that could possibly come from this?

As many other poster have pointed out, if people don't want to pay attention to the lecture, it's counter-productive to force them to attend.

Sure, but that doesn't mean the codes shouldn't explicitly prohibit dangerous practices. Belt and braces.

Good to know. A few years ago in Aspen there were objections to a homeowner putting solar panels on their roof because it was "a political statement"!! There was at least one HOA around the same time that allowed rooftop solar panels, but only if they weren't visible from the street, which completely ridiculous if that part of the roof faces north.

Sorry I can't find a link right now. This would have been 2010-ish.

Holy shit!!! I had a hernia repair in Australia in 2010. Didn't cost me a CENT out of pocket. Now, this was in a public hospital in a shared ward, after a 9 month waiting period, and the care wasn't personalised or even particularly "friendly" (where do they find such fucking surly nurses) but I am happy to pay a bit more in tax so that I know if I need to have an operation under general anesthetic it won't be expensive right when I am flat on my back recovering. And if I wanted happy, smiling carers in a private ward, I am welcome to buy private heath insurance to get this level of care.

Note also that I am a healthy, active 30 year old, non-smoker, low blood pressure blah blah blah. You never know when you'll need some kind of operation!

A Raspberry Pi can.

I just finished the free Introduction to Networking offered by Stanford (which I also found out about via Slashdot)

Now I have signed up for this course. I think I fit a fairly typical hobbyist demographic - some very simple playing with BASIC, some Arduino hacking, but minimal formal programming experience.

It's a shame this course doesn't offer a certificate of accomplishment like the Stanford one does. We'vw all dealt with the HR dept that thinks certificates are more important than experience :-(