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Honestly, those conditions are no worse than many jobs I've worked. 80 hours a month overtime is 20 hours per week. I did that and more for months at a time. That engineer probably had health issues which would have killed him even with a 40 hour week. Besides that, on all of the jobs I had I...

I saw this a while back. Seems to be geared more towards streetlighting/warehouse light than home lighting due to the enormous output (not that I wouldn't mind one in my workroom ;) ). I wonder if it can be scaled down to a 20 to 50 watt size more appropriate for home lighting without losing...

I think the case/PSU is the best thing to give her if you can convince her to upgrade. A good case can last forever, and the PSU is arguably the most important part of the computer. I use the Lian-Li PC-60 on all my builds along with a Seasonic high-PFC power supply. It probably adds over $100...

Actually, BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight. BMI>30 is obese, or "obeast" as my late father used to pronounce it. Still, point taken-Americans are the fattest people on Earth, but the EU is catching up.

You ever think this bill will even see the light of day? The cost of compliance would put most small retailers out of business.

Here is another interesting read on the subject. What is really happening is inevitable. Think about it for a while. Suburban living is basically spread out living, but with infrastructure close to the standards of a more densely populated city. A mile of sewer pipe or electrical line or road...

Just taken a few minutes ago: Humidity is at or near 100% as well. Probably feels like 120°F. :( I almost got heat stroke just opening the door.

Are they using incandescent lighting in the trains or just in the stations? Honestly, I'm surprised they're still using it at all. NYC has been using fluoro in the trains since the R10 in 1948, and in most of the stations since the 1970s/early 1980s. From my childhood I remember the D line when...

Actually it doesn't quite work that way. Our house naturally holds about 20 to 30 °F above the outside temperature due to solar heating, body heat, and electrical appliances. As a general rule we don't need to heat until the outside temperatures drop under about 45° to 50°F. Even if it's 20°F...

Yeah, a Mr. Fusion would be nice but there is such a thing now. It's called the electric car and electric train. A nuclear power plant generates the energy which charges the car's battery, or in the case of the train powers the catenary from which it draws it's power. And yes, at the current...

Besides the problems I mentioned, simple lack of money prevents access to medical care if you're unisured like I am. My income is low enough to qualify for EIC. You do the math. I can neither afford medical insurace nor can I pay out of pocket. I don't qualify for any of the insurance programs...

It works for me but here's a link to an article on Yahoo News about the same study.

I doubt I've even close to that number, and I'm 18 years older than you are. The only prescription drug I recall taking was penicillin/amoxicillin when I had root canals done. Very occasionally I'll take an OTC cold/fever remedy if aspirin doesn't work. In a way it's a blessing that I react...

Really disturbing article: Over half of Americans on chronic medicines Now I can understand an unfortunate person with a chronic genetically caused condition or injury of some sort needing medication, but according to the article a lot of these medications are simply used to counter an...

Not really. You have to put them on every train for starters. That makes it way more expensive. Electronic equipement and trains don't mix due to the huge amount of RFI generated by the motors. And many tunnels might not make decent projection screens. This is especially true in NYC where you...

In essence supporting a person takes neither air nor water nor food because all of those can be recycled indefinitely given an arbitrarily advanced technology and a certain amount of energy. Energy is really the only external input life of any sort requires. On a global scale, that's exactly...

Put a P4 in that thing and you have a heat source to make a bamboo steamer(shown in right of picture). Now your PC can both be eco-friendly and heat up lunch/dinner at the same time. BTW, my next door neighbor has been growing bamboo on his front lawn. It's actually a pretty plant...

Ironically, poison Western culture results in the premature deterioration of bodies but the ability to keep one around in a not so great state for 20 or 30 years. I'm sure money is the motive. Hospitals don't make money off healthy people or dead people. The idea is to first start the downward...

See here. "California Vehicle Code: "No person operating any motor vehicle or bicycle shall wear any headset covering, or any earplugs in, both ears. The prohibition of this section does not apply to any of the following..." Exceptions include hearing aids." I can understand the reasoning...

That's the nature of having a small group unfortunately. I've already met a few locals from CPF but then again their membership is in the tens of thousands. Anyway, if you're ever in NYC give me a holler.

The problem in a word is aerodynamics. See here for an interesting discussion. Somewhere along the line car makers suddenly decided to make boxes. Mentioned in the article was someone who put some aerodynamic add-ons to a Honda Civic EX, boosting the mileage from 40 mpg to 70 mpg in the process...

There's talk of using hydrogen as an energy storage medium for home electrical generation. The reason this might work is because solar panels currently aren't very efficient. If a process can be found to allow solar energy to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen more efficiently than...

The problem with hydrogen is the inefficiencies inherent in the process. You get far less energy using the hydrogen in a fuel cell than you spend making it. I think you only get out about one-third of what you put in. Grid electricity charging a battery is way more efficient (I think overall...

Because money talks-the same wonderful companies which sell us gasoline also have their hands in coal and natural gas. Why do you think those two things are being pushed heavily? And why do you think there is a push for fuel cells and the so-called "hydrogen highway"? Same reason-centralized...

What's really interesting is that it is real problem here is not one of engineering, but rather of legislation and societal expectations. I can illustrate this best by comparing the US and Japanese expectations and design philosophies regarding railways. The same line of thought has carried over...

I have seen LED bulbs using Crees which give in excess of 60 lm/W. However, all of these are 12VDC based MR16 lamps, not 120VAC GU10s. Dimmability has to be built in to the bulb. I suspect most bulbs these days aren't dimmable. Like I've said many times, LED isn't quite there yet for home...

It depends where in the country you live. By NYC or LA standards at best she's average. I see loads of people who look better just walking down any random street in Manhattan or Flushing, or going on the subway. Just about all my female friends in HS were better looking. My sister at nearly 44...

Amen to that! They would have to pay me $1000 an hour to do anything with her. What a disappointment to find out that's what Spitzer ruined his career over. At least if she was drop-dead gorgeous I might understand a little. This guy was smart enough to get 1590 on his SAT and dumb enough to...

This came up on CPF a month ago. Bottom line is they're talking about a luminous efficacy of 300 lm/W, or in other words the efficiency of the emitted spectrum, not the luminous efficiency, or lumens out per watt of power in. A typical white LED actually has a luminous efficacy of about 330...

Those were my thoughts exactly when I first read about this. 3500K might be borderline tolerable, but 2700K, fuhgetaboutit! That's positively nausea-inducing, irrespective of whether I'm with a Cantonese cuttie or not. There was some talk on CPF about bluish-tinted light being good for setting...

90% on both which makes me pretty libertarian. Not sure on totally free trade or censorship. I'm all for free speech up to a point but I would like some limits on commercial speech (i.e. advertising), including a return to the ban on prescription drug ads. People are currently too uneducated to...

15795. Considering I haven't looked at a map in ages, I'm surprised I did as well as I did.

You also had a few things going in your favor. For one thing, you were young, and as far as I know had/have no major health issues. If need be, a young, fairly healthy person can live out of a box for a long time. It's not the best, healthiest thing long term, but many have done it and survived...

Those places are cheap because the few jobs there are low-paying. Proportionately housing is just as expensive relative to the available jobs. You can't afford a $140K house on that $5 an hour job in the local greasy spoon, which is about all you're likely to get in a place like that. In FL the...

You're right that a lot of uneducated, low-income people spend money they really don't have on stupid things, and otherwise have pretty warped priorities (i.e. big screen TV but no food in the house). But the fact remains that in certain parts of the country even the most basic housing runs...

The compelling reasons to stick with AMD at this point are more motherboard features at a given price point, and ability to use higher-density RAM. Most of the AMD motherboards I see support up to 4GB per slot while the Intel support only 2GB. Down the road you may want to go with a 64-bit OS...

You're missing the point again. Someone making $30K nowadays can't afford to live at today's prices even if they pay zero taxes. The taxes they do pay are not coming from disposable income. It's not like the money they send to the government each week simply means they have to give up buying a...

Not really. I actually started writing a rant yesterday but decided I didn't even want to get into it. The post above was about as much ranting as I care to do on this subject. Gilbo probably already said a lot of the stuff I would have said. The system is broke because of both parties. The...

Buffett does contribute an enormous amount to charity. He probably feels by keeping more of his money via tax shelters then more goes to the charities which do a better job helping whoever they are helping than the government would. I'd do the same in his position. I'd probably keep a few...

Not bad at all. I tend to do anywhere from 2 to 4 miles a day just running errands (i.e. shopping, going to the bank). Two Saturdays ago I went to the Flushing Chinese New Year's parade. Too cheap to take the bus. Six miles round trip, plus about another two just walking around downtown...

Another funny site in the same spirit as the one Howell found: Stuff Asian People Like

I was laughing my ass off because it was all so true. Just go to any yuppie neighborhood in New York. You'll find people who are exactly like that. Some of my favorites were the parts about gifted children, bicycles, and Asian girls. Yeah, (yuppie) white people always have "gifted" children, and...

Fascinating stuff all these altered states of matter. It would be kind of cool to slow a light beam down to the point you could actually get out its way, sort of like in that Trek episode "Wink of an Eye". Speaking of Lucy Lui, she grew up in Jackson Heights, within walking distance of Astoria...

Clocker basically just said the same thing as me but in fewer words. That's exactly what they teach in engineering schools. Heat is the end product of practically every process.

Leave it to SF to get such a simple topic off on some many tangents. :diablo: Well, looks like I'm getting pulled into the discussion again. Let's start with that electric motor example. You all know I'm going to turn this into something with trains, so let's say the motor in question is maybe...

I saw an infomercial for one of those colon-cleansing products. Just for kicks I decided to google for more info. Anyway, I came across this. Funny as hell. Note: This link definitely not safe for work, especially the pictures he links to! Don't bother looking if you just ate, either. As for...

Maybe some of the light from the power or HDD indicator will leave the room, or some of turbulence from the case fans will affect air outside an open window, but it's nothing that could be easily measured unless you're at 6 decimal places. Essentially, power in=room heating, and that applies to...

I have mixed feelings on this. The zoos which give animals plenty of roaming space, and are close to their natural habitat, are probably not a bad thing for the reasons you mentioned. The animals will likely live similarly to how they might in the wild, but free of their natural predators. On...

Going by my brother's new system, the motherboard certainly "sees" all of the 4GB prior to booting (It says 4194304K available RAM-actually a little less than that due to some holes between 640K and 1024K). However, in XP there is anywhere between 2.75 and 2.93 GB available to the OS, depending...

Hmm, just look at what one monkey can do... ;-)