Except for absentee voting, or voting my mail. Where I live (Utah), you can vote absentee by filling out a ballot at home (or abroad if you are not currently in the state) and mailing it in. Whats to prevent someone from paying you to vote a certain way, by having you fill out the ballet, giving it to them, and if you have followed their instructions, they pay you and they put the ballot in the envelope and mail it for you.
Further, in the county where I live, they are providing a "vote by mail permanently" type program, where you can vote by mail every time, even if you are in town on election day.
Except 30,000 square meters is about 0.03 square kilometers according to Google.
It comes out to be about 7.5 acres, or 0.0115830648 square miles.
18.5 square miles would be quite large and cover an area slightly larger than 4 miles by 4 miles. That would be quite large.
From http://www.msichicago.org/matm/the-details
Agree to very limited contact with the outside, and limited and/or prohibited personal use of cell phone, texting, e-mail, Facebook, etc., during the residence period.
Absolutely no visitors overnight or when the Museum is closed to the public.
You must be available to live in the Museum for 30 days with no outside personal or work responsibilities.
If the person mentioned was on the jury, and there is nothing I've read of his to suggest otherwise, I highly recommend reading his recent posts on his slashdot user page: http://slashdot.org/~BengalsUF
I learned more in 5 minutes about the case than I have over the past 2 years reading Slashdot and news stories. And, as it turns out, most of what I've read up until today has been embellished or simply was an opinion of someone who knew little about the case.
Do you know the song Ninety Nine Red Balloons? The original German was Neun und Neunzig Luft Balon (SP?). I understand it was inspired by a wayward bundle of helium balloons that was mistaken by the Soviets as a missile launch.
Not quite, but close. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons
One of Nena's band members saw balloons floating away at a Rolling Stones concert in the Allied sector of Berlin and thought about what would happen if/when they crossed into the airspace over the Soviet sector.
Flying through dense enough ash clouds can cause significant problems. British Airways flight 9 from London to New Zealand is just one example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9
And it can affect more than just the engines. In the above cited incident, the windscreen was sandblasted to the point that it was nearly impossible to see out through it.
Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.