I was wrong if Wikipedia is right. It will go 40.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_UAV#Aeryon_Labs_.22SkyRanger.22

That makes sense, although it assumes that when they say "tolerance" they mean it can hover in that kind of wind. They might just mean it can fly and not crash in that kind wind, with the inevitable drift. You would think if it could hit 40mph, they would have shown at least one such zoom in their video.

hmmm ... I don't see where it says it goes 40. It does say this:

40/55 mph (65/90 kph) sustained/gust wind tolerance,

which is clearly different than going 40mph.

I recently listened to the excellent History of Rome podcast

Was it Hard Core History by chance? If not, you'd probably like his work:
http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive

There's a 6 part series about Rome still up free and the 5 part series on Genghis Khan is great.

Also if it was not HCH, please provide a link. I'm always in the market for excellent history podcasts.

Well, I guess I was inarticulate -- ISA is internationally reportable "like" mad cow is internationally reportable (not that it is like mad cow). The upshot is that when cattle are suffering from mad cow, you can't export the meat. When farmed salmon are suffering from ISA, you can't export the meat. Protecting exports is why the Canadian government is trying to hide it's ISA problem.

The sad thing is, if you take infected fish home and wash it before cooking, there is a possibility that ISA then ends up in the local waters depending on how (or if, as it is often not in Canada) waste water is treated.

Here's a very interesting movie about farmed salmon in BC and the ISA virus (an internationally reportable virus like mad cow). http://salmonconfidential.ca/

Basically, the Canadian government, despite highly reputable testing, continues to deny that there is ISA and other viruses in the farms, muzzles the scientist who published research on the topic, and almost passed a law making it a felony to report on infections in livestock/farmed fish. All the while, native stocks of salmon plummet due to diseases that fill the narrow passageways in which the farms are located. And no, you can't just replace wild salmon with farmed salmon -- unless you're going to truck them out to the forest and dump them because even the trees get fertilized by dead fish that bears leave around after eating the eggs (and then of course there are Orcas and seals to feed etc. etc). The rivers can provide nutrients to an entire ecosystem including people -- farmed salmon destroy that but provide profit for big business. With most fishermen being small time business people -- guess which wins. http://oregonstate.edu/instruction/fw580/pdf/15.%20MDN%20riparian.pdf

Wait - Bush and the GOP are is still in power?

Yes they are -- power has been handed over to the New GOP (AKA Democrats) so that all the Executive branch power grabs and Constitutional abuses of the GWB era can be legitimized as the "New Normal".

Drunk kids having a little fun. Basically ... all kids are terrors in one way or another. Too bad we've moved way beyond imposing a fine, a stern talking to, and maybe a few hours picking up garbage on the freeway.

karma

True now, but what if Congress simply required manufactures to include taggants as has been suggested for gunpowders. I don't know if it would be possible to reliably transfer a taggant to a bullet, but I think it is premature to think that such printed guns would be totally untraceable. Assumptions like that are what cause people to get caught.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taggant

What about the chemical characteristics of the plastic used for the barrel? I would think that some of that plastic would rub off on the bullet because the barrel material is softer than the bullet. If that is so, it may be possible to identify the particular plastic, even perhaps the batch, and then narrow down the list of possible suspects.

Even easier, the government could just require tracing compounds be incorporated into the plastics and require detailed sales records.

Anecdote:

I started life as a dirty hippy. There are quite a few photos, by the instamatic standards of the late 60s, of me crawling around naked in river beds next to the campgrounds we lived in or sitting in mud puddles splashing about. In one photo, I'm sitting in the dry part of a riverbed chewing on a stick I must have picked up, smiling like an idiot smile while some dirt and drool seep out of the corner of my mouth.

Anyway, I almost never get sick and the only thing I have an allergy to is acetaminophen. I do shower almost everyday now though.

Action movies are rather dull to me. I'm not saying they're bad or anything snobby like that, just that they bore me personally. And it's also true that not all the Trek movies, or even every episode of the various TV series, lived up to highest standards of Sci-Fi.

That said, aside from being extremely disappointed with it, all I remember from the first JJAbrams Trek was some part where someone was hanging off something very high up and someone rescues that person -- like a million other hanging by the fingernails from a cliff/balcony/girder/airplane/whatever scenes. Yawn. Anyway, I'm going to wait for it to be on Netflix, because for me, if it is going to be as forgettable as his first try, there is no reason for me to spend money on it.

It is also somewhat informative to me that in the entire review here, I still have no idea what the plot is about. Clearly the plot was not a big part of this movie, which is a big downside for me.

Clearly the light countdown would be superior to using the pedestrian signs. Fortunately, I live in a comparatively small town (about 80k) and all of the pedestrian timers work the same way. But insofar as they are useful to me in my town based on my familiarity with their operation, it is a demonstration that a timer on the light itself would be even more useful.

In my town, the walk/don't walk signs have a display that counts down the seconds left for the "walk" time. Then the red "don't walk" symbol pops up, and shortly after that the light turns yellow.

It's extremely helpful -- if I'm half a block away and the sign says 12 seconds left, I know I'm going to get through the light on green. If I see 2 seconds left, I know it'll be red and there's no point in doing anything other than coasting.

The signs we have look sort of like this (but without the glasses looking symbol on top): http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/tools_solve/ped_scdproj/webinar052809/las_vegas/images/image081.jpg