Folks, you're too quick to conclude that Republican voters are stupid. I know quite a few old white guys who are actually smart people, and who vote Republican. What they think does make sense, if the premises they believe are true.

The stupid part comes in when you don't actually check your premises against reality to see if they are true. Instead, conservatives use their smarts to argue in favor of their premises, despite any facts. That's stupid.

It doesn't quite work that way. What people often don't seem to understand is that the amount of current a source can provide isn't necessarily the amount of current that a load will draw. For example, if you have a wireless router that takes 500mA at 9V, it's perfectly okay to hook it up to a 5A 9V supply - it will still only draw 500mA. The power supply won't somehow force 5A through the device. A good practical demonstration of this is when you get in your car and start the engine - the battery provides a couple of hundred amps to the starter motor, but the interior light coming on when you open the door only draws a few milliamps.

While it's true that a relatively low current can harm you, your body will only pass a certain amount of current. You can measure the resistance across your hands with an ordinary multimeter. If you actually *do* get a serious electric shock then things become complicated because you're not a particularly linear resistance and if you get a burn on your skin at one of the points of contact the resistance will go down, increasing the current, making the burn worse and... yeah, you see how that works.

It's still a good idea to stay away from bare power lines, whatever else you do. I notice that in the US with the low voltage supplies over there you seem toh ave a lot more pole transformers than we do. Presumably it's because the voltage drop at 110V is more of a problem on long runs.

It's not even that. If the NTSB or the FAA investigate this accident, and do so entirely dispassionately and fairly, there will still be *someone* - probably on slashdot, at that - who will go "ZOMG WTF CONSPIRACY THEY ARE COVERING UP THE TRUTH! THE PLANE WAS WIRED WITH EXPLOSIVES! THE JEWS/MUSLIMS/PETA/MORMON TABERNACLE CHOIR DID IT!".

In the UK pretty much all pumps are self-service. Some of them have card-readers so you can pay at the pump, but they don't accept my fuel bunker card so I just pay at the counter. You don't pay up front though, that's a stupid idea. What would happen if you paid for 80 litres of fuel but you only needed 70 to brim the tank?

The cameras aren't usually directly connected to the fuel pump systems, and in any case all fuel pumps can only be activated by the operator behind the desk.

I know people were gibbering on about how the UK was turning into a police state because of ANPR cameras locking out petrol pumps a while back - I got banned from boingboing because I pointed out the Cory Doctorow presenting pure conjecture as fact in this - but the simple fact of the matter is that the pumps are *not* controlled by ANPR cameras.

How complex would a system need to be to detect, record and validate not just every UK number plate, but every other international plate too? Or are tourists supposed to be able to travel around the UK on a single tank of fuel? What about vehicles that have no number plates?

In all the petrol stations I've been in, none of the ANPR cameras have ever detected my numberplate correctly, or even at all. It's a perfectly valid legal number plate, but it seems to confuse the image recognition stuff entirely.

If the stuff on the pole is 110V drops to the surrounding houses, it's not going to be any more deadly than the wiring in your house. The "amps" have nothing to do with it.

No, not in the slightest. That's some of the ideas behind totalitarianism. Communism doesn't necessarily imply totalitarianism, but it's a convenient excuse for it.

[citation needed]

Most self-declared conservatives and liberals are actually fascists. By definition a conservative wants to regulate moral matters, but does not want to regulate business. A liberal is just the opposite. Practically nobody is a pure liberal or conservative.

Conservatives are concerned about things like abortion and gay marriage, because conservative's view towards economic issues is supposed to be free market.

An EASY fix? Ever fired a paintball gun? Most of them aren't that accurate. You'd probably do a lot of firing, risking notice.