Rounding to the nearest whole number, zero percent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012

Self-replying here, but I just looked up the equations for the 2-body problem, and sure enough, you are right. The math makes it perfectly clear, where intuition falls on its face.

Wait is that right? It's true that the barycenter of the earth-moon system is inside the earth, and that the moon is moving farther away.

But does increasing the distance cause the barycenter to move outside the earth? I would intuitively think the opposite, that as the distance increases it would induce less "wobble" in the earth, moving the barycenter closer to earth's center.

But I'm no physicist, and I'm not saying you're wrong. Just wondering if someone could explain to me how distance effects the barycenter in a 2-body system.

I'm guessing the answer he was looking for is "Guns. Lot's of guns."

You didn't RTFA (standard practice) but you didn't RTFS either. The whole reason this is news is because the US will NOT be leaving 5000 troops behind. The administration was unable to reach an agreement granting immunity to US troops, and so will instead be leaving behind only about 150, to "assist with arms sales."

None of the articles I read mentioned contractors, though, so your number on that is probably not far off.

then they found out that people who die of natural causes also raise as zombies.

I am a huge fan of the AMC series, but I've only read the first couple issues of the graphic novels, and I'm surprised to hear this.

In George Romero's films, everyone who dies comes back, but few other zombie stories hold to that, and in the television series there has already been ample evidence that this is not so. In this week's episode, for example, there are numerous dead bodies in cars stopped on the highway, which do not reanimate and which clearly have a completely in tact brain case. Darryl and T-Dawg even cover themselves with corpses to hide from the walkers.

It makes me curious as to whether the producers of the show have deliberately chosen to differ from the source material in this regard, or if they will later end up contradicting the evidence presented thus far.

No he didn't. He was asked if they knew what caused it and he said it could be a virus, bacteria, some kind of parasite. . . that they didn't know.

I think you have a poor comprehension of zombiology and will likely be infected shortly after the incident begins.

I think you are misinformed. That conversation took place between Steve, and the Gizmodo writer who bought the phone. (And you're simplifying it quite a bit at that -- Gizmodo told Steve they would return the phone if Apple would publicly claim it as their property, which Apple was not willing to do).

This story is about the person who found the phone in a bar and sold it to Gizmodo to start with. I'm pretty sure that person never spoke to Steve Jobs.

Excuse me, but if you believe the biblical record, Jesus reanimated the dead (Lazarus), and later returned from the grave himself. He was obviously a Necromancer.

I agree that the most likely cause is that the detector is closer to the emitter than they think it is. Even if the distance between them is what they think it is, however, it wouldn't mean that the particles traveled faster than c, as some here are implying. It would only mean that our prior measurements of the value of c were slightly off, and we now have a better measurement.

Its not a contradiction if causality doesn't hold! We haven't had any evidence until now, but now that we have it, we will present it 40 years ago. :)

I can only speak for myself, but I do not hate the concept of god. Nor do I hate the concept of Spider-man, nor the concept of mermaids.

In fact I rather like the concept of god. I generally enjoy the stories and films that feature god, even ones from the bible. God is one of my favorite fictional characters. Not as high on my list as Spider-man, but definitely on the list.

The difference is I don't confuse the concept with reality.

Ugh. This thread is stale at this point and I know I should just walk away. As you said, we're having a purely semantic argument.

But the thing is, the semantics of words like "illegal" and "illegally" are extremely well established, and you've got them wrong. When you say that a person has done something illegally, you are saying that the doing of that thing constitutes a crime -- that performing that act explicitly violates some statute.

There are no laws against generating bitcoin or emailing your grandmother. Those acts themselves can never be done "illegally." If I break into your house, beat you senseless with a lead pipe, use your computer to email my grandmother, and then swipe your cash and run off with it, I will be charged with (and guilty of) several things when I am caught: breaking and entering, trespassing, aggravated assault, unauthorized use of a computer, and robbery. But not with emailing my grandmother. There is no law against emailing my grandmother.

Anyone with even the tiniest exposure to matters of law can understand the distinction here. And I'm not saying that you don't, by the way -- I know that you understand my contention just as I understand yours and we are in disagreement over semantics. And if you want to assign a meaning to the word "illegally" that differs from the accepted meaning that's your business.

But don't act like the rest of us are the ones being obtuse.

So illegally using someones machine to generate bitcoins is not illegal generation of bitcoins?

That is right -- it is not. Illegally using someone's machine to generate bitcoins in not "illegal generation of bitcoins." It is "illegally using someone's machine." It isn't that fine a distinction. Using someone's machine without permission is illegal, regardless of what you do with that machine. Generating bitcoins is legal, regardless of whether you committed some other crime in your pursuit of that goal.

Let me ask you this -- is illegally using someone's computer to email your grandmother "illegally emailing your grandmother?"

8 minutes is how long it takes *light* from the sun to reach us. A solar flare takes considerably longer, on the order of a couple days.

Think about it. If the flare itself traveled at the speed of light, we wouldn't even know it had happened until it hit us.