nathaniel

The cost of a life is on the order of a few million dollars. What's the cost to society of a warrant-issued criminal not being caught for an additional day? I'd guess it can't be more than a few dollars. What's the marginal contribution of random car chases to catching suspects with outstanding warrants? What is the likelihood of catching a warrant issued suspect in a random chase, and the likelihood of killing someone? With these ranges, I suspect you'd have to have a ratio of hundreds of thousands or millions of criminals caught per life lost to make it worthwhile. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think it's human nature to panic and flee, and not everybody can be expected to compensate with their superior human intellect. It is ultimately a principle of proportionality tho--how much warrant-issued-criminal-time do you take off the street with surprise chases vs how many lives lost or crippled? I think the weight of the loss would dominate the gain under most probabilities. I do know that a skydiver from this area was killed in November in a very similar accident--no warrant or and no contraband was found on his person, his only crime was speeding (and running away / getting chased). My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I heard that some doctors, "surgeons" they are called, instead of healing people they cut people! With sharp knives! And they stick tubes and bits of plastic and sponge into people! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

well, consider the ages of the devices. The biggest risk imo is the battery--the battery is the part of it most likely to degrade over time and makes up a big difference in the price of a refurbished vs new device. IIRC active use of the device generally improves the way the battery ages, to a certain extent. Consider getting the refurb and just buying a new battery if the refurb one doesn't last very long. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

You can justify anything if you assume his guilt. Let's make him an anti-gun, pro-welfare Muslim with a criminal record, outstanding warrants, and out to plant IEDs disguised as traffic survey equipment *. Who's against using lethal force now! * edit: who just crossed the border illegally from Mexico My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think it's likely that people who don't use their first names on this forum are hiding from existing warrants on other charges. wtf does that have to do with anything My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think of this problem in terms of game theory. The situation starts off with a minor loss for justice if the suspect flees and the cops don't use lethal force. If the cops use lethal force, then there's a chance that the suspect will be apprehended, but there's also a chance that the suspect will react rationally with equally dangerous tactics simply out of self-preservation. I see it in analogy to having the death penalty for littering--anyone who thinks he's about to get arrested for littering will try to kill the cop and escape. It's a sufficient basis to establish the principle of proportionality, although surely not the only one. Thus, the outcome of using lethal force is less desirable to society on average than not using lethal force. It's reckless and vain to pursue the kid just to spite him because he's breaking a law--it's disproportionate. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If you wanted to make an analogy, but you had to leave out a vital bit of context, would you get into a flamewar over it? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

All aspects of the brain are legitimately chemical. That's all the brain is, chemicals. It's entirely devoid of substance to write off something "chemical" as therefore intractable to the mind. The difference is our science is much better at deducing the chemical than the mental. Pills are exactly a shortcut because we don't fully know the paths that don't involve pills. There's no reason to think that pills are the only way to conquer ADD, and we can expect that even with effective pills that we may find alternatives that don't involve pills. For example, one recent study of depression found that the benefits of antidepressants set in before the medicine takes effect. It is tempting to think of the mind and the brain as two separate entities. This is a convenient reduction but it is ultimately self-defeating. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Road rage kills. She shouldn't be behind the wheel if she can't keep her composure in traffic, pregnant sister or not. Raging with her pregnant sister in the car makes her road rage worse, imo. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I know that one... could you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? a smile from a veil? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

A recently developed test can determine whether you've consumed any alcohol up to a week in the past. It is a hypersensitive test, and it is known to produce false positives. link My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It is true that most taxes are enacted to suit some politician's fancy, but it is not true that tax is necessarily arbitrary. Some of them are calibrated against projected economic effects, and recalibrated continuously to maintain particular levels of the regulated activity. Marketized pollution permits, for instance, are a great example of a tax that is not arbitrary. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Lift varies with width in addition to length. Humans tend to have arms approx as wide as we are tall, esp if you wear one of tonysuits' latest bedsheets, so I think it makes sense to take the height squared. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

IIRC, olestra /is/ a fat that you can't absorb, but that can be used in some fairly traditional cooking processes and apparently tastes good enough to fool the average joe. Not that I'd ever let it get near my mouth... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's contraindicated against simultaneous use with olestra chips and taco bell. Also, do not allow your dog to eat orlistat with a bag of fake bacon dog treats. The effect could be lethal on people around you. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Don't sweat it. I know someone who had hyperthyroidism. Her treatment ultimately involved radiation therapy to destroy part of the thyroid, followed by taking thyroid supplements. Whether you have an underlying condition and what exact treatment you'll get depends on tests the doctor will give you. Radiation therapy sounds scary but really isn't, basically they give you a pill containing radioactive iodine and you swallow it. Nobody will know unless they walk up to you with a geiger counter. They nuke your thyroid till enough of it is gone, usually there's a bit of overkill and you make up the difference by taking supplements. I understand the side effects of the radiation are minimal and the whole process takes only a couple visits to the doctor for your special pill and for checkups to make sure it's working properly. As far as taking the supplements, thyroid hormone doesn't leave your system very quickly, and the effects build up gradually. It's not out of control it the way diabetes / insulin is for some people. You just take a pill every few days. So all in all hyperthyroidism a serious thing that you need treatment to fix, but the treatment can be pretty easy. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Picking this up out of Medusa's thread so as not to confuse his butt buddy Tonto wrote: Humans don't fly quite like a bird, we glide like a flying snake or a squirrel. Birds use their muscles to flap their wings, expending energy to generate power. They are limited by their mass because they're not particularly strong. We humans convert the chemical energy in the plane's fuel to potential energy in our bodies, and then let gravity do the work of creating lift. We're energy leeches, our ability to ride up in the plane is not affected by our mass unless we get too fat to skydive. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I'm not convinced that's true in the general case. Shall we embark on an analysis? Lift is proportional to the square of an airfoil's area =~ 4th power of height drag is proportional to area =~ square of height glide is lift over drag so we have the proportional effect of height on glide is height squared, no? What is the effect of mass on the lift to drag ratio? drag increases with the square of velocity lift increases with the square of velocity so the effect of mass is approximately nothing on the glide ratio (this is a famous topic on this board, no?). Although it makes the terminal velocity faster. All in all, we get that the height advantage should carry. Agree or disagree? I'll be the first to admit I'm terrible at physics and aerodynamics, please criticize if I made a mistake. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Check your local forecast

Fossil fuels act both as a energy source and as a substrate to take that energy to your car in the form of gasoline. The allure of hydrogen isn't that it's an energy source but that it's a means of carrying energy from the energy source to your car. Like a battery, but since it's a different technology than conventional chemical batteries there's interest because it could turn out to be more efficient than conventional chemical batteries. The question of the net effect depends on where the energy comes from. CO2 comes out of hydrocarbon stores in the earth when you burn fossil fuels, so there's a net shift into the atmosphere of CO2. Incidentally, many / most combustion processes also create H20, but like SpeedRacer says the water precipitates on Earth, C02 doesn't. Hydrogen doesn't exist as a natural resource in any way that's feasible for us to collect it--you find it naturally in space and in stars and they're too far away or too hot for us to just go and fetch hydrogen for fuel. Instead, we'd make hydrogen out of water with energy from another source, and use hydrogen to carry the energy from the primary energy source to your car. Thus the net effect would of using hydrogen as a fuel would depend on the source of the energy to make the hydrogen to begin with. There are lots of energy sources that don't make CO2, like nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, etc, as well as some that do make CO2 like coal, oil, and natural gas, that would be used in combination to make hydrogen out of water. So the net effect on the atmosphere levels of H20 would be negligible, and probably a lot less than burning fossil fuel in your car directly. So you can see, water vapor accumulation is not a particular concern. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I blame 1- the Allied Powers of WWI for wrecking the Ottomans and not putting them back together 2- Ghazi for instigating the modern culture of uncoordinated sectarian violence in Iraq 3- the Allies in WWII for not fixing things when they had the chance My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I bet the execs at Turner consider it money well spent. This kind of press is invaluable, half the world is laughing at Boston now and patting Turner on the back. A million dollars would buy a minute or two of primetime, and Err has been on the news for days now. Jury of peers ftw. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Two months later in Parachutist: Jumper was forced to initiate emergency procedures when a heating device was miscalibrated, melting his canopy and his lines. The jumper cutaway the main and deployed the reserve. The jumper was treated for second degree burns when he landed, and is expected to make a full recovery. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?