Concrete of that size would take a hell of a long time to cure so isn't feasible. I remember watching the documentary about the Hoover damn and if they poured it all at once it'd take centuries and as it was the blocks they were pouring was taking days to cure with coolent running through the slabs. Plus concrete is brittle and pourous and there's no gaurantee it'll survive the 5000 feet descent.
I think I'll leave the guessing to those that are smarter then I am and are employed to do it to fix the problem then throw out my own crazy ideas.

Did you see that the lower rod is also driven by the main engine? It's like one engine driving both parts of the Prius mechanism. Small additional torque on the control rod causes it to speed up/slow down, and it's the speed difference that shows up at the output. The vast bulk of the torques are provided by the main engine through BOTH RODS.

But the control gear is connected to a shaft that has a 'counter torque' applied by the main drive. So the main drive is powering both shafts, but the gear systems leave the bottom gear with a net zero torque. The control gear only has to add extra 'delta' of torque, not combat the whole output.

I'd vote for you. Fortunately it seems to be only America where the masses are quite so ignorant to the lie of the 'subsidy'. I have a feeling it is because you have so many different mobile technologies; if you change networks you'll generally have to buy a new phone anyway, so it is easier for the networks to force you to buy one.

Has the oil industry become so corrupted that the only way to get a useful opinion is to recruit a team from a completely different field?

I used 8.04 at work for the past 2 years (desktop + dev. server). I don't recall any stability issues... Hrm. During 1 long stretch where I never updated the OS (terrible, I know) I got an uptime of 6 months. I finally caved an applied a kernel update and had to restart. Never froze or crashed and the services I was running were pretty solid.

Okay, I'll take the bait. Setting aside covered shorts, name a derivative that is useful to our society. My stance is that uncovered shorts are, essentially insurance and should be regulated as such.

Spaceflight has not turned into the everyday occurence that everyone thought it would around the time of the moon landing.

When everybody is five years old, they believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny too. What 'everyone thinks' has roughly zero relevance to the real world, doubly so when most people don't understand why we went to the moon in the first place. (Short version: political Viagra.)
 

Hell, 2001 was nine fucking years ago. I still can't get over that.

In other words, because reality has failed to keep face with your ill informed dreams, it's realities fault?

I certainly agree with you that anyone who claims that a $40 bottle of vodka is generally "better" than a $20 bottle is generally full of crap. Vodka is essentially supposed to be close to pure ethanol and pure water. Smirnoff and similarly priced vodkas get close enough to this ideal that expensive vodkas are not actually "better."

That isn't to say that they aren't quite different in character. Potato vodkas, for example, are often quite different from grain-based vodkas. And the kind of water that is used can make a big difference in flavor.

So, while I agree with you that Smirnoff is a perfectly fine vodka, I also think people can prefer some of the subtle variations of flavor offered by different brands. If you want to pay a premium of a couple hundred percent for that subtle flavor, that's your choice. You may not be getting any closer to the "ideal" vodka, but if you're drinking it straight, you can tell the difference with many brands. (If you're just mixing it, I agree that you're an idiot to throw expensive vodka in.)

I feel your pain. I was with Cingular before AT&T swallowed 'em up and I didn't feel the need to change since I use basic phones with barebones plans.

I moved to a more rural area and now my coverage is intermittent no matter where I drive. The tower is 1.5 miles from my house with no forests or other obstructions in the way, and yet it's as if they arbitrarily turn the transmitters on and off at random no matter how close I get to the tower.

My phone will show 5 bars of reception but it will throw "no service" warnings when I try to make calls. I have to re-send text messages 5 times before they finally go through. Yep, looks like it's time to switch after my obligation is up since I don't have an army of lawyers to contest an early termination fee. God bless America.

Guess that just depends on how big the hole is, and how big the largest passenger is.... ;-)

Stop being so freakin ignorant, it's not because you got pulled over before you killed someone that it couldn't of happened. Yes, it sucks, the person didn't ask to be borned with diabetes, but he/she was! Just get over that and accept it, that person shouldn't be driving if he/she can't keep it under control. It's really that simple... I've looked into (and started) classes to obtain my private pilot's license, however one of the requirement for doing your solo flights is "not to have high blood pressure" Of course, there's a certain range that's considered acceptable... I personally don't fall within that range. What does it mean for me? I'm not going to be allowed to do my solo flights this year, that simple! It's up to me to exercise and to work to lower my blood pressure so I can hopefully start my solo flights next summer, otherwise the one after. If I'm not successful, as much as it sucks, it's very simple: The captain's chair will never be mine. The fact that my blood pressure isn't within the acceptable range doesn't mean I'll have a heart attack, but guess what? They're not willing to take any chances (and I don't blame them, although flying has been a long time dream of mine and it's quite disappointing).

Someone doesn't ask to be borned with a bad vision (some people can actually see, but their vision is so much diminished they're considered legally blind) but even if they didn't ask to be borned this way, if corrective lenses doesn't improve the situation enough so they can be safe on the road (both for themselves and the public), guess what, THEY SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING. Driving isn't a right, it's a privilege.

You seem to have this idea that, if they have good intentions, it's ok. How wrong you are... Someone can have "good intentions" and still end up killing someone. This simply isn't acceptable.

Paracetamol is the Official International Non-Proprietary name as given by the World Health Association (as it does for all pharmaceuticals) and is therefore perfectly valid in official international use for a pharmaceutical standpoint. The International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry name (the official name used in chemistry, and generated according to specific rules is N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)ethanamide and is considered the official chemical name for it.

Anything with acet is the United States Adopted name and is not official in anyway on the international scale, and goes back to a naming system that chemists threw out years ago with international standardization and a chemist would only use it as a name for acetone now just because it's shorter than it's actual chemical name and doesn't include the eth carbon grouping that all other acet did it was confusing and so acet was thrown out in favour of true systematic naming.

Hahahahahah @ binary decision. You must be one of those false dichotomy idealists who thinks the world is binary, when it is in fact not. The only way to measure safety as a binary decision is whether you hurt someone or not. In every case I cited, no one was hurt. Conveniently, you ignored everything I said, except the one thing you disagreed with, then presented a dichotomy (false, like most) as some sort of idealist championing statement for the purity of your safety ideals.

Again, if you start to feel funny, you pull over. But that wont stop the cops from beating you, AS I POINTED OUT VIA LINKS I CITED. Your sad retort was meaningless idealism. The real world is not binary, no matter how much you fantasized about being a Transformer when you grew up.

The real world isn't black and white, but I know dichotomy driven jerks like to ignore data, and you like to conclude that you can just magically decide in advance if you are safe to drive, when you can IN FACT not, as this points out.

But hey, let's live in your false world where diabetics magically can predict blood sugar fluctuations, and where they deserve to be treated like drunk drivers. Because everyone hates a complex world. I know how much easier it is for feeble minds like yours to cope when things can conveniently fit into 2 categories.

Sounds to me like if you were in charge of public policy, you would end up discriminating against people over your own inability to have the clarity to view reality in more than binary. Personally, I think you must have 0 experience with diabetics in your family or household, so you are akin to a villager waving a pitchfork around.