phoenix_ca

I think the wings are beautiful. Seeing all that metal bend gracefully under its own weight. It's a fantastic sight. It reminds me of the time I saw an An-225 Mriya at an airport. Just, looked out the window and there it was. And the thing FLIES.

It's a sufficient hack to make it work. O.o If you want better...then you really are talking about limitations in the game. Maybe not specifically the engine itself, but still.

It wasn't the earthquake so much as the tower of water that hit it. The earthquake certainly didn't help matters.

SSD's are waaaaay more expensive than mechanical drives per unit of storage. They also have a finite number of read/write cycles. If you're going to get one, go with Intel. They actually know what quality control is and the **** they put their drives through is insane. o.O SSD for speed, HDD for storage or tape if you have looooots of data to back-up. All that said I'd still classify an SSD as something of a luxury item for computers. They're great and awesome and all, but you can live without one. (Once something is loaded to RAM it ceases to matter anyway; it's almost certainly one of the last things you should consider upgrading, unless you're actually doing something that would benefit from really fast read/write to non-volatile media...the only thing that comes to mind is raw video and photo editing.)

*sigh* I said they need less area when operated and designed with safety in mind. Those accidents are hardly representative of the land-use impact of all reactors. Hell, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl isn't even all that radioactive. Most of it (and most of the zone around Fukushima) isn't even all that bad compared to what astronauts on the ISS get hit with. The effects of radiation tend to get over-blown: (Note that this image implies that the entire western coast of North America and much of the western inland was almost completely wiped-out; 90-100% mortality.) As for animals, they can keep on going just fine. Or at least they probably can. Adaptation and natural selection. I will agree that it's a right mess we've made of those areas, but not that it some how causes dire harm to the environment. We humans just don't want to live there. No, I doubt that you could put wind farms in the middle of people's crop fields. Where would you run the cables? Above ground? Hardly practical. Bury them? You'd have to bury them even deeper than usual to avoid the tilling that farmers do to their fields. And I strongly disagree about the idea that nuclear power is "only cost effective if you manage to bribe the autorities to skip security measures". Canada has been using nuclear power for decades now, in a very safe and regulated manner, where safety is of paramount concern. After Fukushima we turned around right away, figured-out the potential risks to our own reactors, and acted to mitigate those risks almost immediately. And all that nuclear energy is still produced at a reasonable cost. Not dirt cheap, but on-par with things like hydro or solar.

I didn't know that. Thankfully the A380 engine problem was resolved immediately after the issue was discovered/determined/found-out/demystified/words. Gotta love those air worthiness directives. That system of investigation in aviation is what made it so goddamn safe in only a few decades. ... Science wins again.

Bahahahaha! That was some awesome wording. I assume that "food" = "meat" to you then? Yes, plants are good for you. Especially the cellulose (aka fibre). It makes your...uh...bathroom time more...uh...efficient. Sorry to say though, Red Iron Crown has a point. If you do any survival training, you'll learn that the best place to store excess energy is often in your body. Got food that might spoil? Eat it before it does. Your body will store as much as it can. Gorging when you have the food available is a very viable strategy, but you won't be able to sustain really hard exertion for nearly as long as someone who can load-up on thousands of calories before a marathon can. Eat all the things, then take it slow and steady. Same goes for water. Best place to store it is inside you. Come to think of it...the human body is remarkable. To think of all the processes going on just to keep oneself alive, and practically all of it in the background, without any conscious thought...quite awesome. Evolution is awesome. (Oh, and plants eat sunlight and nitrates. ... I wouldn't suggest trying to eat either. One will give you sunburn and the other would be distinctly unpleasant.)

This is very odd for the Science Labs. If you're using a mechanical drive, it goes slowly because mechanical drives are pretty slow (well, relatively speaking; in reality the platters rotate fast enough to create hurricane-force winds inside the darn thing), particularly at seeking between non-contiguous sectors, which is what defragmentation has to do pretty much the entire time. I'd suggest Smart Defrag 3. It's free and offers optimization too (sticking files that are together and will be accessed together in a row instead of all over the place), just mind that you use the custom install and deselect all the "Install Yahoo toolbar and make Yahoo run your browser from now until the end of time GOOD LUCK EVER REMOVING THIS" madness. All said, this is exactly the reason why the OS should not fragment files when writing them to a drive. Linux and OS X have been doing it for years now. Microsoft really has no excuse on this. (OS X and Linux have kinda spoiled me in that regard too. It wasn't until recently I remembered that Windows 7 is remarkably stupid in how it deals with files and that I need to actually defragment the damn thing. You know when people ask why people use Apple computers? This is one of those reasons OS X can make for a better workstation, especially when dealing with massive files. Just throwing that out there.)

Renewable sources of energy rarely have the same energy density and compactness though. For crowded nations with little land to spare, they make a whole lot of sense. You can generate huuuuuge amounts of power from a comparatively tiny patch of land. It's certainly part of the reason nuclear power is so popular in Japan and France, and used as a base-load in other dense population areas like Southern Ontario (although relatively speaking Canada isn't very dense at all ). Wind is great when you have lots of ocean to spare (talk about a shipping hazard, and putting it on land can have adverse effects on flying animal species), and solar is great if you have lots of land to spare. If you don't really have either, nuclear power offers a much more compact solution which properly designed and managed can be just as safe (well probably; if things truly go completely horribly pear-shaped nearly any nuclear reactor will eventually release some radiation).

I don't care that this is technically against the rules. It's too good to pass-up: Data sure loves the number seven.

Everyone on board the pseudoscience train! CHOO-CHOO!!! ... Okay that sounded a lot better in my head. Anyway just a little searching turned-up this: http://neutrinodreaming.blogspot.ca/2011/09/electric-universe-theory-debunked.html I bet I can dig up more. But suffice to say...this is bonkers.

Even considerable exercise and dieting can result in a rebound when someone stops the diet, even if they continue exercise. Sometimes you're just screwed and your body is happy at a pudgy equilibrium. As noted above by HeadHunter, that doesn't necessarily mean you're unfit. Being sedentary is far worse (and I really should practice what I preach here a bit more...*plans to ride his bicycle later*). You know that that's...not exactly the ideal way to train, right? If I understand you correctly, what you're doing is depleting your glycogen stores pretty much completely. It's extremely stressful on your muscles and other internal organs, to say nothing of the disruption it can cause to the nervous system. It's better to replenish your glycogen and electrolytes as you exercise (eLoad is awesome; screw the testimonials, these guys go into exacting detail as to what it is and why its useful and have the evidence to back it up). Doing so can actually allow you to perform better over a longer period and gives your body a chance to slowly build-up more glycogen storage over time. Hitting the wall is just throwing your whole system into a sort of emergency mode where you might not even have the energy to continue, you know, living. (It's happened to marathoners before, and it's a terrible place to be, physiologically anyway.) *ahem* That was quite derailing. Whatever. It's the SCIENCE LABS. FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!!! Or...something.

They're both pretty planes. The A380 is the shiny-new juggernaut of the skies though...to say nothing of the sheer beauty of the engineering of that behemoth. Except for the exploding engine. But that was fixed!

Let's not kid ourselves. The Airbus Group has been firmly in the field of cool at least since the A380. This is still pretty awesome though.

When it comes to airlines, knowing the weight of your aircraft is extremely important; as much as it is with spaceflight. If you are overweight, you might get off the ground for a few moments and then crash past the end of the runway, or lose significant control authority if your mass isn't properly distributed (cargo handlers loading aircraft have to take this into consideration and take great care in placement of cargo). Several crashes have resulted from planes being overweight, or a combination of being at or near max takeoff weight and also having reduced lift caused by icing. Given the vital importance of weight in aircraft, as well as the extra fuel burn added by more weight, it's fair to have a surcharge on obese people. Morbidly obese people could be reasonably compelled to pay for multiple seats (kinda like Yo-Yo Ma and his cello, except the extra space is for all the fat). Not that any of that will be accepted by passengers with any sort of grace; it's like people think of air travel as a utility, not a privilege (and boy is it ever a privilege of the developed world). Good news though: There are new and fun ways to keep fit on the horizon.

Ooooh, I can see the headlines now. "Stop discriminating against fat people in space flight! Fat people have rights too! Down with the patriarchy!" Actually motivation has little to do with it. If you're...very big, the most you can hope to reasonably do is maintain your fitness level (which is pretty separate from the amount of body fat you store), and manage your weight so that you don't become morbidly obese. Actually getting rid of weight is nigh-on-impossible; most people after losing weight gain it again very fast, sometimes even before they're "done" dieting.

SCCCCIIIIIEEEENNNNCCCEEEE! Exciting! ... Yeah, that's all I've got.

Not wholly, no. There's rarely ever an argument against something that's a proverbial "silver bullet" that completely obliterates the justification for a complex idea. The problem here is that that's just one problem among a multitude of problems. And they're suggesting what about DC vs AC now? There's a really, really good reason that AC won-out over DC when it came to power transmission along electrical cables, and that's that it requires half the bloody cable. For DC to work, you need a continuous, closed circuit (just like in a land-line phone). For AC, you just stick one end into the ground instead. Also, they did happen to write a response to various claims made: http://solarroadways.com/clearingthefreakinair.shtml I still have my reservations about the LEDs and the glass. You might be able to get LEDs visible in daylight, but it's not like that doesn't take power. O.o There's also this fun bit of paranoia: You know what? Just because people laugh at someone, doesn't mean that they're a genius. Address the specific arguments against your idea and you might gain some traction. This allusion to people like myself and Thunderf00t being some sort of puppet of the...what, the road industry I guess...is absurd.

Regarding solar roadways, here's more fun from Thunderf00t. Are you seeing the absurdity yet?

As far as I'm aware, most if not all of the route of the 99 doesn't even have that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyspermy

I knew subjectively that trying to ride the 99 during rush hour sucked, but I didn't know it was moving that many bodies. As for the buses, they don't have any reserved lanes along the entire route. The most they get is the same right-of-way that all buses get.

The fire on the Hindenburg was caused primarily by the coating on the outer shell, not the hydrogen itself (at least if you believe a MythBuster's case study is indicative of anything; in this case I seems reasonable). And when I'm back home and not using my phone...it's broken record time. Edit: Alrighty! It's broken record tiem!!1! There are other ways of storing hydrogen: See also: Reading: http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2009/june/feather-fibers-fluff-up-hydrogen-storage-capacity.html http://cleantechnica.com/2009/06/24/hydrogen-fuel-tanks-made-from-chicken-feathers-could-save-55-million/

I...you...they... ...what?

Funny, I thought it seemed like it was one of the primary selling points of their video. That would require rewriting the traffic code of most jurisdictions.