#3: During a bad snowstorm I once had to go out. The snow was hubcap deep and roads hadn't been plowed. So as I turned a corner, coming the other way was a pickup truck with enough ground clearance to miss a St. Bernard. Driving down the center of the street, where the snow had been beaten down. Leaving me to drive…

How about charging what things actually cost?

Express lanes will work if stores send lane stoppers back to the end of the line. No paper checks, no coupons.

The evidence for God will always be deductive and inferential. You can choose to believe the arguments or not, but expecting observational or experimental evidence is exactly the same fallacy the creationists commit. If moral and ethical statements (e.g., gays have a right to marry) have any authority beyond pure…

So Windows Blue is coming and Microsoft's rhythm of sucks-succeeds-sucks marches on. When Windows Blue comes out, will it let me:

My litmus test for literacy about the creationism movement is the question "why can't evolution just be God's way of creating life?" If you ask it, you flunk. And the illustration shows why. To creationists, that's "theistic evolution," and they reject it.

I suspect the most interesting planets would be somewhat smaller and younger than Earth. Bigger planets would have higher gravity, making it harder to raise mountains and probably easier to erode them. Older planets would have thicker crust, perhaps too thick for plate tectonics and mountain building. So big, old…

Duh. Nothing can grow forever in a finite world. Most growth curves are sigmoid. They start off exponential, hit an inflection point and eventually flatten to a limit. All belief in never-ending growth is essentially a Ponzi scheme. Will there be some unexpected future growth episode? That's the question. It might be…

Like all enlightened humans, I consider slavery abhorrent. But Drusilla from "Bread and Circuses!" Dang!

Did they get a lot of those hats from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?

Most of these lend themselves to mnemonics:

The 14th amendment is a mess. Three fourths of it deals with Reconstruction and doesn't need to be in the Constitution at all - it could all be handled through legislation. And the most important parts of the first section are ignored. "Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due…

War never was just for soldiers. Starvation and disease always killed more civilians than soldiers who died in battle.

Tungsten has a density of 19 g/cc or 19,000 kg/cubic meter. That's why they use it, plus it's very hard and melts at absurdly high temperatures. Assume it's a really big pole, 1 meter square by 100 meters long, and it hits at 10 km/sec. It has a mass of 1.9 million kg, a velocity of 10,000 m/sec and kinetic energy…

I might suspend my disbelief from a tall flagpole, but seriously, walking robots are a really dumb idea for a weapons system. A hovering ship can go anywhere you can walk, faster, and a few missiles will pack a bigger punch than any robotic fist.

The satellite would be a miniscule collision risk whether it's tumbling or not. This article reads as if the satellite is careening all over the sky. Satellites don't do that. It's no more likely to hit another satellite spinning than not. The only risk is if it spins so fast it falls apart.

Guy here. On breast implants. Don't. Unless you've been in an accident or had a mastectomy. Or unless they cause you real self-image problems and you have a good counselor who concurs. Some guys like the look of smuggling watermelons under your sweater. Many of us (the sane ones) don't.

Because a bar would cause problems getting on and off with a skirt and some guy in a tree across town with binoculars might get a peek. This being before internet porn and all.

Lenin, Khomeini, Leona Helmsley...

Great line from an old sitcom: