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Comment Re:Taking a hint from the last election (Score 0) 881

With the new filibuster rules in the Senate all it takes to stop a bill is one person saying that they will filibuster. Then you need a super majority to move forward. While there was a couple times that there was a Democratic super majority on paper most of the time there werenâ(TM)t 60 Democratic senators to break a filibuster.

Comment Re:Do companies really use Big Iron anymore? (Score 5, Interesting) 230

I watched an IBM mainframe service tech remove the jacket of his three piece suit, roll up his shirt sleeves, strike up a propane torch and re-sweat the solder joints on the copper pipe for the water cooling system of an ES/9000. I don't know what they are like these days, but 15 years ago those guys were amazing. They had to know how to repair every piece of hardware that IBM made, and how to troubleshoot every operating system.

Comment Re:i would *like* to be an astronaut... (Score 3, Interesting) 229

I hold a PADI rescue diver certification and have made several dives to 95+ feet. I have never used trimix. 5 ATM is 4 ATM of water pressure and 1 ATM of air. You add 1 ATM for every 33 feet so 4 ATM of water is 132 feet - the limit for recreational diving. If you want to go deeper or you want to stay down there for more than a few minutes you have to get in to technical diving and then you can learn to use trimix. Anyone with an advanced certification and a deep specialty can get to 5 ATM of pressure.

Also, 1 ATM is 14.7 PSI. So 5 ATM is 73.5 PSI. Still enough to crush you and to keep you from breathing through an unpressurized hose, but not hundreds of pounds per square inch.

Comment Be careful of sources. This article in particular (Score 3, Interesting) 411

Look at the byline:

"Makiko Segawa is a staff writer at the Shingetsu News Agency. She prepared this report from Fukushima and Tokyo. She can be reached at shingetsunewsagency@gmail.com"

Look up who the "Shingetsu News Agency" is. Note that they have no real press credentials and their articles, especially those by Miss Segawa fall well into the fear-mongering "OMG!! BIG GOVERNMENT COVERUP!!" end of the scale.

The situation in Fukushima is being watched by nuclear experts all over the world and the basic facts of the aituation are posted on the IAEA's site. Anything beyond the stating of pressure, temperature and radiation readings as well as remediation steps being taken should be taken as pure guesswork. There has been way too much "This could mean that the reactors are undergoing fission and could go critical" kind of speculation.

Comment Re:fucking city-living hipsters (Score 1) 233

You're bringing up a false dichotomy of the electric vs human-powered bicycle as though an electric bike uses the battery all the time. Here in Japan what has become hugely popular are the electrically-assisted bicycles especially the type used by housewives to truck kids to and from school andto buy groceries. I live in Kanagawa-kan just outside Tokyo and there are LOTS of hills. I'll be riding around on the weekends slogging up a hill in the lowest gear on my mountain bike when a Japanese mum on her grocery-loaded electrically assisted "Mama-charin" will come cruising on by and not be breaking any sweat at all. With easily replaceable battery packs and short charging times these make bike commuting, even in hilly locations possible. The weather, of course, is a separate issue.

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