champu

Yup, and again depending on how the atmosphere behaved, astronomy would be very bizarre. But if you could sneak off to the dark side of the terminator without freezing to death you could set up an observatory, watch constellations constantly, and see them move ever so slowly until your view repeated. That would probably be their first knowledge of a changing cyclic environment beyond their planet. /edited to add: Communication satellites would be an interesting challenge. A synchronous orbit at L1 or L2 would result in terrible elevation angles, latencies, and the L1 would have the "sun" in the field of view at all times. I suppose you could put a plane of satellites into an orbit with an inclination and LAN of 90 degrees and they would just run around the habitable ring and never go into eclipse, that would be kinda cool.

Reminds me of something that happened to me this weekend. Chicks Rock was this past weekend at Elsinore, and as anyone who has been there knows events like this result in overflow parking both onto Cereal St and the parking lots of the buildings across the street from the dropzone. So on Sunday I pull into the parking lot across the street and park next to (not on the other side of a divider or anything, immediately next to) a car with two people putting their jumpsuits on, unloading their rigs, etc. Just as I turn my car off I get a knock at my window from some guy and he says, "You can't pack here, this parking is for the church. You gotta move." I said, "Church? There's a church here?" (this is a commercial park type collection of buildings and the only tennets I was aware of were motocross equipment reps / manufacturers.) So he motions to one of the entrances and then starts making the directing traffic motions to get me to leave. So I said, "Sorry. My mistake." and started my car up. It was then I noticed that I was the last car in the row with not a single other car in the lot beyond mine in the area this guy was defending. So I roll down my window and I ask, "So... where does the church parking start so I know where to move to?" And the guy leans forward on the balls of his feet, points to the other jumpers car next to me without taking his eyes off me and says, "It starts after that car right there."

No doubt some of you read about the newest planet found in the Gliese 581 system. One of the things in the article made me think... Forgetting for a moment the ramifications tidal lock and the resulting wildly different ground temperatures would have on the development and behavior of the atmosphere, imagine language-capable life's first round of mythological explanations for a light that hung in one spot in the sky for all time, and if you travelled too far in the direction towards it you'd fry and if you travelled too far away you'd freeze.

I don't think either of you are really disagreeing with each other, I think you're both talking past one another.

I made a thread about this a few years ago. I posted photos of the bracket I ended up making at the bottom of the first page in that thread.

"Common sense" is just anything you think, and have maybe found a few people to agree with you about, that you wish everyone else thought too. If that weren't the case, the rule of the majority would coincide with common sense prevailing.

Aside from the occasional sarcastic t-shirt or helmet sticker I'm not very vocal about it.

Insofar as they consider the existance of this spiritual force and let the possibility influence any of their actions, I think the term agnostic is probably appropriate. If you simply say, "who knows" and then live your entire life under the "working hypothesis" that there are no gods or spiritual forces at work then you've entered atheist country.

The truth is stranger than fiction. http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/09/25/217074/picture-students-win-sikorsky-prize-for-submarine-helicopter-design.html I was only half kidding. But like the other three examples, getting any H/S to work is not the same as getting one that actually fulfils some mission requirement to work.

To confuse people further, the label on the velo gives a "MAX" suspended weight corresponding to a 2.2:1 wingloading, which is arguably more of a guideline than an "absolute maximum."

Boat-Planes fly like a boat and sail like a plane. Plane-Cars fly like a car and drive like a plane. Car-Boats sail like a car and a drive like a boat. Helicopter-Submarines are the real future.

I don't know that I've ever heard of "shit happening" with a positive connotation. As an aside, not necessarily directed at you, sometimes the hardest thing to do when you've been busting your ass at a job and not getting ahead is to change careers to something with a higher reward:effort ratio, something you're better at. Of course then you also have the problem that recognizing what you're good at is not something that everyone is good at.

Okay... the sports analogy has gotten really stupid (if that wasn't obvious.) Life is not a manditory biathalon, "if ya ain't first, yer last" is complete nonsense, and no portion of the population worth arguing about is as disadvantaged at every possible career path as a paraplegic skier.

This one is telling as well - Fits a lot of the forums here! Regarding the TCMP comic. I had a dream once where there was a song playing in the background of wherever I was. I think it was a restaurant or something like that. It was a familiar song but I didn't know the name of it so, as I sometimes do, I took out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down a few of the lyrics to google later. I folded up the piece of paper, stuck it in my pocket, and promptly woke up. Not being fully awake yet, I start fumbling around looking for the piece of paper (obviously to no avail) giving up muttering, "...damn it." I had a nonexistent song that I knew nothing about stuck in my head for a week. By the way, did you guys just find xkcd and start reading all of them or something?

I reserve the right to give a great deal more of a shit about my family than about the entire population of the country. Please understand I'm not a "let them rot" advocate, but I don't want the comforts I seek to provide my family to be used against me in any discussion of what should be provided to every family in part or in full on the taxpayers' dime. Also, you're suggesting that the impoverished are comparable to schoolchildren which I think is condescending towards them and the design of welfare systems, safety nets, etc. with that sort of attitude will never result in programs that actually help peoples' situations. People who have "had it easy" don't like their accomplishments marginalized. I think people (myself included at times) are too obsessed with being impressive, and it can cloud their understanding of what each person means when they say, "working hard." I'm a white male who grew up in the suburbs so I've had plenty of practice at never wow-ing anyone. I sometimes [half-]joke that, "I live in a beach city, design satellites for a living, and have thousands of skydives... but really I'm only interesting on paper."

All political views aside, there are too many people in LA already. And yes, having moved here only 6.5 years ago I'm part of the problem.

Ever? Quite often. Surely at least once in your life you've opted to DIY. The above question is generally a big part of that decision. Then you didn't make the decision based on the amount of work done to produce it, but rather the value it had to you. When you said, "based on how 'hard' it was to produce" I think he (and I) read that to be equivalent to "based on how 'hard' it would be to produce." When it comes to consumer services type labor, to which I think he was referring, the distinction between "value to you" and "how hard the work is" can become pretty silly, at least for most DIY'ers who are fairly handy. In the case of consumer goods however I'm inclined to agree you really have to talk about value and difficulty separately. An injection molding machine can stamp out a plastic doo-dad without anyone exerting much effort, but the more I value the doo-dad, the more I'll pay for it. In any event, everyone has heard the "work smarter not just harder" mantra at some point. Getting ahead does take a bunch of hard/stressful/etc. work along the way, but you have to be exerting the effort in the right direction. Going to the beach and pounding the sand with a sledge hammer for 12 hours a day is some seriously hard work but only a fool would expect any reward for that.

...must... ...refrain... -from Windows Vista jokes...

Very true, that would be another major problem. Congress has enough trouble doing their job on time as it is.

How about we turn it around and adjust the spending quarterly, instead. Presumably you'd adjust both together. Especially if people started getting upset over the recent tax hike for... oh, I don't know... a high-speed rail project. One problem with the idea is the prevalence of single-issue voters and the fickle nature of politics. I imagine you'd start seeing all kinds of funding shortfalls during the quarter or two leading up to elections in an attempt to prove the incumbents were "tough on waste and easy on your pocket book" so they could get re-elected.

Lay down on the table. I'll give you the chems. You do realize that manipulation of chemical processes in the central nervous system to produce similar experiences to those described by religious believers is actually supportive of the position that there is no god? Don't take that to mean I'm arguing it proves or disproves anything, I'm just saying that drugging someone is a remarkably poor way to convince them god exists.

Sure we do, wealth, even with simple interest, which it never is, draws a few % interest, so that gain is taxed. You can try to make them mutually exclusive all you want and I'm sure you will. Arguing mutual exclusivity of wealth and income would, indeed, be more ridiculous than your flippant interchange of them in your arguments about why the rich need to be taxed more, but that's not what anyone is saying. Note that he used the word "directly" in his post. What income do you think someone at the 20th percentile makes? At what percentile do you think a $250K earner sits?

I've checked my rig and helmets numerous times (as recently as yesterday actually) in a simple American Trunk & Case semi-rigid bag and haven't had any issues. A lot of it is being smart about how you pack things into the bag. Pelican cases are great and I use one for my camera equipment, but you can easily hit the 50 lbs mark with a rig, a pelican case, and not much else.

Again, I'll just say... I fly a velo-90 and I have a cypres and a 126 reserve. If I'm unconcious and someone deploys my main there is virtually zero chance that it will deploy correctly and result in a survivable landing. There is a high chance that it will slow me down below cypres activation speeds and prevent it from deploying my reserve. I know it wouldn't be malicious, but it would be functionally similar to flying over to me and turning my cypres off in freefall. Now, if you deploy my reserve it could still result in a worse situation than a cypres fire (e.g. if the extra altitude allows my reserve to fly into a lake and I drown) but those situations are somewhat pathological compared to the probability that the extra time under canopy allows me to come to and land safely or that the aad might not have worked for some reason. So, if possible, deploying someone's reserve if they're unconcious would generally be a nice thing to do.

You are in the minority as it is required that employers (for the most part) withhold taxes and send them in. This creates a situtation where many just look at the net and take little note of what the gov confiscates. Attitudes would change greately if many truly understood the level of "with holding" they really function under If you paid everyone their gross and just shifted everyone to quarterly or even monthly payments the vast majority of people who currently don't understand withholdings and exemptions would simply shift their ignorance to not understanding quarterly payments and penalties when they got to the end of the year having spent every dollar and having ignored the estimated payment mailings the IRS sent them. The reason I think the direct government control of withholdings is a bad idea is because the government doesn't know what I may or may not do later in the year that could drastically affect my tax liability. Am I thinking of buying or selling a house? Am I getting married? Am I going to be buying or selling stocks? Am I going to take part in adopt-a-family during the holiday season? Am I going to change 401(k) contributions? Do I have contract work coming up? I don't want any of these events resulting in thousands of dollars in tax refunds or payments due at the end of the year. And I certainly don't want to have to furnish said plans to the government so that they can attempt to get it right.