Viewing profile — stratomorph

"Your goals should be to effect positive change in the world." Should it? Why? What makes positive change a more valid goal than making more mans? ( http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=…

On the other hand, you've disregarded the possibility of continuing to browse after doing three things (or stopping prior to three things). If browsing is an endless stream, then f…

It's a bit misleading to flatly cite the 100km Karman line as if there was no room to debate "where does space begin?" The boundary could be lower: NASA gives out astronaut wings a…

>In tracking the sensors on each of the phones, we observed that the GPS in Nexus S could function up to altitudes of about 60,000 ft. and would actually start working again on the…

>"an angle" refers to any angle other than the angle directly from the sun. So do these conceptual glasses have a way to find the direction of the sun, and adjust the moire pattern…

That still won't work the way I think you intend. This will block light that enters perpendicularly, while passing some of the light that enters at an angle. The problem is that li…

I don't think that will work the way you intend. Direct sunlight is (on average) unpolarized. Polarized lenses only block glare off, for example, the surface of a body of water, be…

One of my favorite stories is about perhaps the most conscientious counterfeiter: http://www.snopes.com/business/money/mister880.asp .

Depends on how you look at it. Yeah, they're "worth" $100 apiece because they can be exchanged for goods and services "worth" $100. (Let the chicken and egg lie.) So it's $110 bill…

Well, 94% mortality and 6% for which there is insufficient data to draw a conclusion. We'll have to wait a while to be sure if any of them are immortal.

>The B-1 and B-52 also have low observability characteristics I'd challenge the B-52 bit. The airframe had pretty well reached its final form by 1950. Radar was still in its infanc…

Being predictable isn't easy to avoid. We put so much hardware in the sky, and quickly neutralize so many of the surface-to-air threats, that aircraft are far more likely to have a…

>Where in the Bill of Rights are you guaranteed the right to air travel? Right here in the ninth amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be co…

I either don't agree with your point, or don't understand it. Why is it a bad thing (and who is it bad for) to make money hard to track? I'm also pretty sure payment is difficult f…

I'd point out that those programs don't silently install themselves without the owner's knowledge or consent, which makes a world of difference.

Yeah, but I also didn't account for any sort of inefficiency in the electric drivetrain. 90% conversion efficiency is a good rule of thumb, and there's one step from house panel to…

Sure, the assumption that I need a full tank every day is pushing it, but that's partially balanced by the fact that I used a fuel-efficient car for a baseline. Someone who drives …

I stand by the approximation. 300 m^2 is about 17.3m on a side, 17.3 m in feet is a touch under 57 ft. Rounded to one sig fig because I'm not carrying any sort of precision through…

While I agree with you about decentralization, onboard solar cells won't ever do the trick. Even for a home-sized array, I'm not sure it can be made practical. Here are some back-o…

The resemblance is entirely coincidental. The two words have unrelated etymologies. We might as well advise people to avoid words like "luck" and "truck," which are not technically…

The Soviet aeronautic industry is far ahead of the West, though due to the shroud of secrecy surrounding the designs, this is not known to many. "Far fetched" is a good way to put …

It looks like gcc can be used ( http://mspgcc.sourceforge.net/ ). I'll have to brush up on my C.

Bingo, birth rate is a consequence, not a cause. He's trying to put the cart before the horse.

A country gets rich before the birth rate falls, so just driving down the birth rate of a poor country doesn't affect the underlying mechanism. You can't just copy the superficial …

It's pretty disingenuous to say it's that simple. Some poverty-ridden heavily populated areas have been poor since they were lightly populated. It is in the nature of humans to mak…