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The significance is that when teaching a homogeneous population there are many common frames of reference, and thus less opportunity for miscommunication or misunderstanding during the teaching process. In a more diverse society, you'll have multiple languages, multiple dialects of the same...

HDL should be >60 and LDL <100. Howell's numbers are quite good. No idea of my HDL or LDL but my BP is usually around 110/65 according to my home BP monitor. Don't feel bad. My last physical was when I started college in 1980. Given the track record doctors have as far as accidentally killing...

My ISP went down Monday. I didn't get it back until today. I can sympathize.

If you think that's bad look at the Second Avenue subway. It was planned since 1920. Actual construction was finally started in 1925, and halted due to finances. It was restarted in earnest in 1972, and then halted again due to the city's financial crisis in the mid 1970s. Now it looks like a...

I too wish I had something deeper to say in honor of your 10000th post but I don't. In your recent absence we could only at best fill-in for you, not replace you. Over the years you've had your ups and downs. You've been a part of the ups and downs of the entire membership. I hope this place has...

Besides the fact that I don't meet your requirements, that would definitely leave me out. I HATE hot weather with a purple passion. 360 days of 25°C or over. Yuck! That means being confined indoors with A/C most of the time. As it is I can't stand the 90 or so days over 25°C that we get here in...

There's actually a good possibility of using carbon-fiber wiring in the not too distant future. The spike in copper prices is driving R&D. I'm not sure if making electric motors for maybe 100 million vehicles would cause all that large of a demand increase for copper. Don't forget how much...

Yep, I'm with you here. The rise in food prices, especially over the last year, has been ridiculous. I was tracking the price of a 17 oz box of Reese's Puffs cereal (one of my favorites until the price broke $2 a box) over the last year. It went from $4.29 (already too pricey for my budget)...

No, not really. I realize there are environmental costs to making those batteries. On balance though, there is far less damage overall than going the current route. OK, and what about the damage caused by drilling for crude oil? Moreover, mining the materials for the batteries is a one-shot...

I'm not debating that biofuels can have some role in reducing the use of imported oil. However, the real kicker is quoted above-they can offset fossil fuel use by perhaps only 30% or so, and even this will take until the year 2030. And even if it's no worse than gas (a point I'm not qualified...

Another vote for increasing the edit time. Sometimes by the time I reread my submitted posts I find an error I didn't catch during preview but can't fix it. I think at least 15 minutes would be sufficient.

Isn't there a way to turn all that stuff off? Even putting aside the possible misuses mentioned, it would annoy me just for the simple reason it increases hard drive clutter.

My advice is to spend a little more and go with a 50" 1080p LCD. While DLP TVs give a better picture than the older projection TVs, to me the screen still looks dim and the colors washed out, at least compared to LCD. I can view an LCD TV or monitor well even in a room brightly lit with...

Yeah, I do that sometimes. Lots of fun actually to be going 45 or 50 mph while not breaking a sweat. The downside is that if a bus is accelerating flat out I'll start to lose them around 30 mph. My power-to-weight just isn't high enough to keep up. But if the bus is in a little traffic and only...

Certainly true although frontal area is usually constrained by the vehicle's intended use. A short list of drag coefficients I found here: * 2.1 - a smooth brick * 0.9 - a typical bicycle plus cyclist * 0.7 to 1.1 - typical values for a Formula 1 car (wing settings change for each circuit) *...

I'll defer to your knowledge since this is your field of expertise, but I'll admit to finding that a little hard to believe. Something pretty well streamlined like the EV1 is 0.19. What is basically a box with a few rounded corners is not even twice that? :scratch: For reference a diesel...

Yep, as Clocker said earlier the automotive transportation sector is only a small part of the picture. It may be one place to start but there are loads of other areas we have to deal with: 1) Railroads in the US are by far the biggest consumer of diesel fuel. Diesel fuel has already past the...

I saw the Volt at the car show at Javits a few months ago:

Let's assume the weight is 6000 pounds, the frontal area is 30 square feet, and the drag coefficient is 0.7 (about right for the box that most SUVs are). Rolling resistance = 0.015*6000 = 90 pounds Tire flex drag = 0.0001*speed*weight = 0.0001*100*6000 = 60 pounds Aero drag = 0.0026*frontal...

Been there, done that. The 55 mph limit was both unenforceable and a massive failure. Enforcement cost more fuel than it saved. It also cost lives, both in car chases and from people falling asleep at the wheel. In all honestly, if we had higher limits like Europe that would lead to more...

I think they should have a choice. I ride in traffic most of the time, but when traffic gets too heavy I sometimes take to the sidewalk, even though it's against the law here. Better to get a summons than to be dead although here again is another example of a law which effectively removes a...

They'll drive more. It's been proven time and again in studies. Also, the population will eventually increase enough to bring congestion to what it was before. There's not much difference in traffic density between a free-flowing highway and a congested one. You might have free flow for a while...

Just to correct a few misconceptions: I'm not advocating ONE solution to all our problems. In fact, one reason we're in this mess to begin with was the reliance on the auto to fill nearly every transportation role. Autos can serve many niche roles, no doubt about it. They're good to run...

The Honda undoubtably had a lead-acid battery, which basically sucks. No power in the cold, heavy, and needs to be replaced every 5-7 years. This technology, which didn't exist even 5 years ago, should make EVs feasible. About the Prius, I read about lots of owners who rave about them. Maybe...

Couldn't they be offered as an option? And a lot of people still don't use even standard selt belts. Uncomfortable? Riding in a car by definition is uncomfortable compared to a train, so I'll just be a little more uncomfortable but safer. I never had a license. It just wasn't my cup of tea...

I'm with you there. If only we had the will to make driving tests harder, periodically retest, and get the worst 25% of drivers off the roads for good, accidents would probably almost never happen. In fact, insurance companies use the term "collision" because accident implies nobody is at fault...

That's certainly true, and if anyone is to blame it would be the government for not having higher gas taxes. And that basically brings us full circle. Sure, I'd rather have $10 per gallon gas and no CAFE regulations so as to let the free market choose. My point here was not to have us all ride...

Source for above statement. 1900-39.6% urban, 60.4% rural (total population-76,212,168) 1990-75.2% urban, 24.8% rural (total population-248,709,873) By 2050 some estimates put the percentage living in urban areas at greater than 90%. The northeast from Boston to Washington and most of...

If that's the case then EVs would be perfect for most people. I was under the impression based on car buying choices that most people drive 100 miles each way to work while towing 6000 pounds, or climb up mountains every weekend. Or at least that's what these idiotic car commercials lead me to...

Interesting article. It seems the thrust of the article is that CAFE standards will be difficult to raise because of people's current buying preferences. Now exactly whose fault is it that people have these buying preferences? Yes, it's the automakers who for years pushed SUVs and other large...

Thinking of something momentous to say for his 10,000th post perhaps? At least that's what I'd be doing in his shoes.

Unfortunately, the insurance won't pay for the repair itself, just damage to the house and contents. Now we have to go through boxes of my father's baseball cards and other crap to see if we have enough to file a claim. There's a $1000 deductible besides. :( Never thought of it that way. :D Oh...

Retest under more favorable conditions:

I've gotten over 9400Kbps on occasion but I guess the lines are slow today.

Tell me about it. :bglaugh: Wikipedia reference Not mentioned in the wikipedia article, perhaps urban legend: I heard that the name came about because the area was largely salt marshes where flushing human waste might be problematic. Because of that, maps had "NO FLUSHING". The NO part was...

Yep, that's roughly 22 mph for the 4 mile portion of the ride. My speed varied between 15 and 30 mph for this stretch, depending upon terrain, although the bulk of it was at 22 to 24 mph (my comfort zone when everything's working right). The rest of the ride I wasn't so lucky, so the overall...

Bottled water is about the dumbest thing the marketing weanies ever came up with. I see idiots paying $1 a bottle or more for water, and then dumping the bottles wherever they feel like it (including my front lawn). :arge: If anything should be outlawed, it should be bottled water. Those stupid...

Weather for Berlin I wish we had this weather here instead of 95°F and humid like it was yesterday. :( Occasionally I check weather overseas. As a general rule Western European summers seem to have highs in the 60s or 70s, lows in the 50s or even high 40s. That's why the heat wave two years...

You're right and I agree 100% with everything in your post, but as Will said what's done is done. For what it's worth, I'd trust anyone on this forum to raise an unplanned child more than I would trust most of the general population to raise a planned one. In my case it would be more like...

Congratulations! :beer: If he shows up exactly on November 30 (my birthday) name him after me if it's a boy. :mrgrn: And congratulations Chewy! :beer:

Same here. I don't mind the government supporting people who can't work for whatever reason (unless they have a self-afflicted "disability" like drug abuse or alcoholism). However, if you have a genetic disability that you're highly likely to pass on to your offspring then a condition of getting...

I know that's not a commuter link. I'm just figuring that for people on holiday, or visiting, or whatever it seems late afternoon to evening is the most likely travel time, perhaps even later evening. Or maybe mid-mornings when they're on the way. Harder to figure peak times with long distance...

Same here. I've actually talked of going to Canada or Niagara Falls this fall or winter with my mom. We're debating whether to drive or take Amtrak. I'm sure you know what my preference would be. ;)

I'd guess from late afternoon through early evening. That would probably be the time most people finished whatever they're doing, and then hop the train to get back home, or wherever else their going. Or at least those were the times Amtrak seemed most crowded here in the Northeast. Just...

It's from nycsubway.org. There's thousands of pictures there of both the retired and present fleets. I could spend literally days browsing their huge collection of images. Lots of the pictures of long retired trains take me right back to my childhood or otherwise evoke some long forgotten...

Did that happen during the week you were in NY and met me, or was it some other time? Yeah, I've fallen asleep more times than I care to think about, especially when I got out of work at 10 or 11. Never had anyone bother me. And you should have seen some of the characters I encountered when I...

Of the two the Cascades has the better schedule by roughly 90 minutes, probably due to lighter equipment/shorter trains. The upgrade to business class results in more comfortable seating and the other mentioned amenities. It looks like both use the same route, at least from Seattle to Portland...

The way I usually dress somehow I think I'm very unlikely to be bothered on public transit. Maybe I'll get some fellow riders trying to give me quarters but that's about it.

It's a combination of the fumes plus the plastics/leathers typically used in car interiors plus the constant excessive accelerations/decelerations which all combine to make me physically sick in short order. My tolerance is a bit higher in winter when the air smells better. And yes, the fumes...

There's probably some truth to that. It's also true that since I've done a lot less "adventurous" stuff in my 44 years than you have in your 26 what may seem routine to you might even seem like an adventure to me. Even something simple like taking the train to Manhattan around the holidays...