The flaw with your argument is that there is a much smaller pool of road construction workers to draw from than from the general population, which all of your other statistics represent. I don't know how many road construction workers there are, but I can guarantee it's significantly smaller than 300 million. If we make the assumption that there are 1 million road construction workers, which seems overly generous, the likelyhood of being struck by a car and dying while doing road construction work is roughly equivalent to the likelyhood of being murdered.

A quick look at the bureau of labor statistics here suggests that in 2008, in the US, there were approximately 83,000 road, bridge, and highway construction workers. Extrapolated to a risk for the general US population, you would expect to lose about 220,000 people to being struck by a car in a workzone, about 5.5 times as likely as dying in a car accident in general, and an order of magnitude more likely than being murdered.

The speed has gone way up, due to improvements in technology, but I'm not so sure about the quality.

"Now factor in that it's almost exclusively among people who have contracts with carriers that don't offer iPhones."

Or to put it another way, in the US only AT&T offers iPhones. How did an iPhone limitation become a feature?

Well, I would believe Nintendo from their platinum clad for..... ohhhhhhhhh, rhetorical. right.

So was it above or below the curve?

Um, that's definately a false comment. Intel controlled (and still does) effectively control USB, but Apple was probably the biggest manufacturer to "push" USB when they released the iMac - long BEFORE they had switched from PowerPC to Intel processors.

That's funny... scenarios 1 and 2 apply to me, and yet I've never had that kind of problem with offline mode. Not being able to use it when Steam has to update sucks, though.

You are right. I should have written that it is the sampling distribution of the means that takes on a normal distribution as the sample size gets larger. It is a mouthful but it is important in math to get the details right. Also, there are some nice Java applets on the web that allow you to simulate this exercise to your heart's content. My students really like doing this with the pennies, but eventually they get tired of grabbing samples of thirty and calculating the sample mean!

i don't fly, but i really doubt it.

Only 4 pockets? You call yourself a nerd?

Right Front: primary keyring (home, work, car), primary lighter (zippo)
Left Front: backup keyring (home spare, car spare), backup lighter (bic), customer site keyring
Right Back: Ultimate writing utensil (Zebra F-402)
Left Back: Wallet (ThinkGeek Tyvek wallet)

Left Dropleg: Nexus G1
Right Dropleg: Small Moleskine notepad for time tracking and secondary Zebra F-402)
Left Belt: Holster for Surefire Executive E2D Defender flashlight--good light for behind the racks, and the trusty Leatherman
Left Shirt Pocket: Small business card holder for my cards, extra Nexus One battery in case I get stranded somewhere without the charger, loosleaf business cards acquired throughout the day from vendors, clients, etc...

I'd argue that BP was probably not innocent in any shortcuts Halliburton took, and I'm not talking legally. And I see no reason to give BP the benefit of the doubt. But you're right, "obviously" was overstating things.

LoL you just made all that up. Trolling! How are the tides any more likely to "siphon off energy" than say a cliff? Or a sea turtle swimming against the current?

I once sat on the bus behind an old lady talking to a young boy about how she was against wind power in case we would run out of wind. I wanted to scream CONVECTION at her.. and I've a similar feeling here.

Funny! But, you're wrong. At least in the short term,which may be a lot longer than I'd like, the #1 response will be that it can't be done.
Meanwhile, people like Shai Agassi will be busy doing it.

I believe the answer is yes.

What would we do as a country if we have university graduates who think for themselves and don't automatically buy whatever the current Democratic Party line is?

There's Democrats in Arizona?