Leaderboard

No argument, Professor. Hence, the proposal to include cradle-to-grave ownership registration.

A lot of manufactured training harnesses I see just aren't that accurate. Often the pilot chute is too high on your back, and with simple handles just velcro'd on, students often want to just grab and pull them in a manner that is not accurate and may not work so well in reality. A possible alternative that I would suggest is see if you can find an old out-of-service container that someone would sell cheap. You can put foam in the containers and tie them shut. But with the cutaway and reserve handles actually having cables routed into housings, that will give you a more accurate feel. Practice with an instructor to make sure you're doing the pulls accurately.

Lithium batteries don't actually contain lithium in metallic form - lithium is "dissolved" in the cathode and anode and lithium ions travel through the electrolyte when the battery is charging and discharging. Like how seawater doesn't contain metallic sodium - it contains dissolved salt. The flammability of lithium ion batteries is due to the electrolyte, which is usually quite flammable. Murata has just announced lithium batteries with a solid electrolyte, but they're going to start with tiny batteries and production is starting this fall: Murata to Mass-Produce All-Solid-State Batteries in Fall

Brent, what you and Winsor are doing is "woke-washing" the issue. When you can't address that there is a problem, you start throwing meme's and video snippets at it. You and I served with many men of color. We worked together, slept together, ate together, played together and we had each other's asses. I can't help but wonder if you would be having this same conversation with them and if you did - do you think they'd have your ass when the time came. A new problem has arisen in the past few years and was highlighted with Ferguson. In the month following the shooting, 105 black men were shot by LE. Some of them justified, most were not. And, it was intensified with George Floyd. But, what it also did was begin a process of exploration into many areas of racism - including legal barriers. You know, when you step on a cat's tail, it screams loudly, but you can't blame the cat for the noise when you were responsible for causing the pain. I don't see what the problem is with taking a long introspective look into what's going on and seeing if we can't do a better job of turning barriers into bridges. Let's not give the issue a dismissive wave of the hand.

Well then, there is the source of your disconnect from reality right there with this completely false premise.

And the advantage to that is that you’re amused much of the time. Kind of like being easily pleased. Life is better that way. Wendy P.

Seen on FB: We need to stop using the cliche "Avoid it like the plague". If we've learned anything in the last year,, it's that people will NOT, in fact, avoid an actual plague.

Did anyone address what that metal pull-up slotted plate was doing in there? A person could conclude the video was intentionally set-up to fail, but the plate just fell out so obviously?

We need a popcorn emoticon.

Would there be any realistic way to approximate the relative cost of all these proposals vs gains, in economic terms ? I don't consider myself a denier; I accept the NASA stats of rising average global surface temperatures and sea levels over many years, but we're talking about very small amounts here, and are more-than-matched by technologically advancing and very resourceful humans and, indeed, nature itself which is very resilient. A lot of 'green energy' solutions require manufactured components that leave their own pollutants, waste and energy costs in their wake; batteries, solar panels, wind blades, etc. If the intention is to replace all our petroleum vehicles with electrics by year xxxx, that's a lot of batteries with few recyclable parts consuming a lot of electrical energy that will have to come from somewhere. In some countries that will still be their coal power stations, and a lot of energy gets lost in those transfers from source to end-user. Is it ultimately still efficient ? ...efficient enough to fully balance or gain with the development, manufacture, maintenance and waste disposal costs vs our current fuel-powered machines ? When it gets stated that global warming threatens 'the world', is it not more accurate to say that it threatens specific countries and/or cities while actually benefitting other areas ? Many members here may be aware of higher than usual crop yields in many parts of the world, directly attributed to higher rainfall, perhaps even higher CO2, and indeed the coolest summers in 15+ years (this year's grape and grain crops in Australia for example). Much gets said about island nations shrinking in size although other islands are indeed growing in size, neither of which is necessarily related to sea level, as islands can be affected by coastal erosion and coral reef sediment respectively, as can mainlands. Parts of the world have seen devastating bush fires in recent years. I mention this not because I think they are related to global warming but rather as a reference to the remarkable recovery of those areas within a few years or less, or the near total recovery of Australia's Great Barrier Reef barely 5 years after a brief warmer current bleached parts of it and had climate change activists screaming "Armageddon !". It's a testament to the resiliency of nature to recover from extreme events, and yet climate change activists are encouraging a literal 'break a sweat and scream' panic over a few degrees within a century, with some gullible followers wondering if the very air around them would be too hot to breathe within their lifetime. It's dangerous fear-mongering, as damaging to society (or worse) as the deniers. I believe there is a rational middle ground where one can accept the facts of warming without spreading an absurd panic on impressionable people, especially in view of many climate predictions that have proven false since they were made ("there will be no snow at location xxx by year 2020....."). Again I state that I do not deny the very small global average rise, but wild predictions and doom prophets do a great disservice to that side of the debate. True; several large coastal cities are threatened by even a small rise in ocean levels, but this won't happen overnight, surely there would be time and resources to relocate such structures and areas with ample time ? Society has a remarkable ability to rebuild and recover. It would certainly be lousy, as an economic loss, for the people who own or reside in those threatened areas, but if we think that converting the whole world to net-zero emissions energy is not going to be an economic loss for billions of other people, in other business, in other areas, then we're kidding ourselves. Either way here, we'll have a lot of losers. Can we be sure where the most economically fair global average gains will be made, vs the losses ?