Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Government

California's Santa Clara County Bans Happy Meal Toys 756

WrongSizeGlass writes "The L.A. Times is reporting that Santa Clara County officials have voted to ban toys and other promotions that restaurants offer with high-calorie children's meals. 'This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's love of toys' to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. 'This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes.' Supervisor Donald Gage, who voted against the measure, said, 'If you can't control a 3-year-old child for a toy, God save you when they get to be teenagers.' The vote was 3 - 2 in favor of the ban."

Comment This doesn't make sense. (Score 1) 140

  1. Energies at the Large Hadron Collider are likely to peak at 14 teraelectronvolts

  2. breaks down at the quantum level. This energy is in the order of 1018 gigaelectronvolts

  3. 100 trillion times more energetic than the LHC

If I convert all those frighteningly big numbers to scientific notation, I get:

  1. 1.40 E 13
  2. 1.02 E 12
  3. 1.00 E 14 * 1.40 E 13 = 1.4 E 27

The parent is saying that the LHC puts out about 10x as much energy as that at which we lose all idea of what's happening. He's also saying that 1.02 e 12 is 100 trillion times 1.4 E 13. Something is not right here. Anyone care to set him/me/us straight?

Comment Vote parent up! (Score 1) 569

I absolutely agree that church-like but secular organizations would be a tremendous boon to mankind.

While we're on the topic of starving children, take note that the Christian churches of the world do their utmost to keep condoms and other forms of family planning out of the hands of the poor buggers in developing countries, thereby GREATLY exacerbating the problem of unsustainable, miserable, squalid overpopulation.

Comment Eclipse problem and workaround (Score 1) 1231

I'm happy to say I had only one problem with 9.10: In some cases buttons in the Eclipse GUI could not be mouse-clicked. The "OK" button would assume its "pressed" look but would not do anything. It was possible to click such buttons using the keyboard, however.

Thankfully, I was not the first with this problem and found a solution on the 'Net: You can set the environment variable

GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true

before starting Eclipse and then everything will be fine. Well, as far as that problem is concerned, anyway.

Comment Re:Keep at it, guys! (Score 0, Troll) 404

Irrespective of the reasons, these people hate our guts. All the good reasons you cite don't change that. Treating them with political correctness isn't going to make their hatred go away. Am I obligated to be polite to people who would kill me if they could? Not in my book I ain't.

Comment Re:when the energy runs out - social justice... is (Score 2, Interesting) 404

That's the beauty of the thing: If we stop burning fossil fuels, we'll be creating less of a heat-capturing blanket around the planet, which will compensate at least in part for the greater amount of energy released by us.

Long-term strategies will be needed to balance the whole thing out, but fusion would help give mankind a few more decades in which to get their act together.

Comment Re:when the energy runs out - social justice... is (Score 1) 404

Energy efficiency vs energy shortage is analogous. And when these ultimately short term methods of energy production are exhausted, the poor will die in droves.

That's why we're having this discussion: Unlike the current majority of energy sources, fusion is a potentially limitless source - or as limitless as the water in our oceans. Limitless energy also makes it a little easier to grow more food. For example, given cheap energy, it becomes simple to desalinate seawater.

Slashdot Top Deals

One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.

Working...