TheVat

I'm guessing if we worked on the grammar of that sentence, we'd find you meant that anyone annihilated in a nuclear attack would get to meet God. Assuming we accept the conjecture of a personal god who created everything (and all the pretzel logic that goes with), and engages in chats with all the freshly dead, then it's not really an honor is it? If everyone gets something, then that something is not really an honor, since "honor" in this sense implies a special recognition accorded only to a select few.

A lot of call for trumpets at funerals? I'm intrigued.

Might be helpful in this chat to distinguish between work and chores. I doubt anyone here disagrees that school is the important job for ten year olds or would suggest we have them join the labor force in fields or factories. Chores are valuable for reasons addressed by several here. Pete set out the protocol for extra funds for extra work, and setting standards of quality, in useful detail. The OP asks an unanswerable question: what is a typical amount. Even knowing the context of nation, specific locale, socioeconomic condition, attitudes towards consumerism, prevailing fashions, etc, it would be hard to define "typical."

I started helping in and around the house around age 8 or so. Nothing but good came of it. My parents gave me a good home, I was happy and proud to help them out. When you work for your family, you are invested in a basic way, you are connected, you develop physical and mental competence in various areas that serve you well later. I'm not saying a ten year old must work (school is work, too, after all, and sometimes that's a lot), just that I think it can have value. Don't even get me started on a ten year old with a smartphone. I don't want to do the hod carrying of all the citations I would have to go find that point to what's wrong with that.

Per your bolded quote - wouldn't that suggest that belt-tightening and forgoing trivial pleasures would be a better approach to budget management than going into debt? Debt burdens are one of the principal economic miseries of many poor people in the United States, and elsewhere. Perhaps you would do better to offer free handbooks on how to cook healthy low-cost meals, take best advantage of mass transit and bicycle transport, conserve on utilities, cut hair at home, etc. If you look at all these financial workshops that are offered by pundits like Warren Buffett, they invariably stress the importance of avoiding debt.

Beat me to it. One way to reduce the alarming number of young adults in the world with a false sense of entitlement who think the world owes them something is to start them young contributing useful work to the family. Some of that work is unpaid, because it helps the household which is already giving them free room, board, medical care, and hopefully a whole lotta love. But you can have optional tasks that a ten year old would be able to do, if they want some discretionary spending money. Wash/vac a car, help a parent with some house painting, sweep the walks and driveway, shovel snow, wash some windows (where accessible to that age), etc. In an apartment setting, there are fewer options, but there might be other options like neighboring tenants who could use a little help especially if elderly.

He's doing the Walk of Life, still, at 79. Perhaps still Twisting by the Pool. Always a thought provoking columnist, sorry to say I have not been reading him in recent years. Thanks to Peterkin for the link. I question "sub kiloton range" tac nukes, though. Most of what I've gleaned is they are largely in the 1-20 kiloton range, and if you were going for a scary demo, I doubt sub kiloton would be your pick. IIRC, there were some tiny tac nukes back in the early decades with yields down to 0.02 kilotons that could fit into artillery shells, etc. which were phased out as more trouble than they were worth. Conventional munitions could develop yields approaching that range, in groups, more cheaply and safely to your own troops. (I used to belong to a nuclear disarmament group, in a marginal way, used to try and keep up with all this madness) Really, more I think about it, the more absurd a demo bomb seems. People know what large explosions are, and what nukes bring to that game. It's not like Ukraine watches a giant crater made in a sunflower field and says, oh dear, now we know nukes are real! Let's bargain!

Nor would most of us. I am not far from a base that's a linchpin of the nuclear strike force. Our old stone foundation, two feet thick, might give some protection in the basement, but we would eventually starve with everyone else. Meanwhile, Ukraine does what I've been hoping they would do for months, bombing the Kerch Strait bridge. (The Marilyn Monroe bit was icing on the cake...) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/08/crimea-kerch-bridge-attack-explosion-russia-ukraine/ Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, tweeted a picture of the damaged bridge and said: “@Crimea, long time no see” along with a heart emoji. And the head of Ukraine’s postal service said the agency would issue a new stamp showing a damaged bridge reading: “Crimean Bridge — Done.” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, tweeted a picture of the burning bridge paired with a grainy black-and-white clip of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President,” in an apparent reference to Putin’s 70th birthday, which was Friday.

(bolding mine) Hehe! Those sound nice, especially where one ventures far into the trees where an extension cord won't reach. I've got a cordless mower, but it's got NiMH batteries, which don't do so well in capacity as Li-ion.

Call me a optimist, I think Putin uses tac nukes solely as weapons of intimidation, not of war. He's not a complete idiot, and realizes that prevailing winds are likely to carry radioactive dust into Russia. The largest tac nukes yield ten kilotons, which is two-thirds the yield of Little Boy, at Hiroshima. Their use would be so monstrous that Russia would descend to the deepest depths of pariah status, even with allies. The people would suffer great hardship and it's very likely Putin would be disposed of, Lavrentiy Beria style. Not sure he's really terminally ill (the world should be so lucky), and he could fear an ignominious end.

OK, thanks, I see now. Normally, automatic doors use a light beam that is interrupted by a body. Heat sensors don't work well, because weather causes too much variation in both air temperature and in hand temperature. So, as @Sensei says, it may use sound, so touching it would mess it up (make it "deaf") and it would not work.

Detect your hand? Not clear what that means. Your door sensor reads the pattern of your palm? Or in some way makes a positive ID of your hand? This sure doesn't sound low budget, if that's what you are describing. Quite sophisticated in fact. Like Fort Detrick Biohazard Lab sophisticated.

You must be pretty fit. Bowsaws are hard work. I've used one but never on stock more than three inches thick. One way to make felling easier (aside from waiting for the timber to die and dry) is to lop off as many branches as possible, so that what falls is more a pole and less dendrite ish. Easier to control the fall, less catching on neighbors. You can find videos on the method for creating a "hinge" which directs the fall. Wedges help a lot. And charting in advance your own exit path. If you stick with girdling (no jokes, I promise), then @zapatos has clarified the importance of cutting all the way through the xylem, to heartwood. (second joke resisted!) I am told by a fellow amateur lumberjack (he's okay) that some oaks really hoard trunk water, so girdling them might mean a longer wait. Really, with oak, it may be time to think about a chainsaw. If polluting two cycle engines are objected to, there are some decent electrics out there now for smaller scale stuff. I got along with a crappy little Black and Decker for years.

Girdling, as it's called, is an ancient technique to thin forests using less heavy equipment than felling. The tops of many species, when girdled, will dry faster, but not the trunks. (And tops can be hard to get to, for harvesting firewood) And some species still absorb water in their trunks after girdling. Bear in mind that the xylem, which is hard to cut all the way through in girdling, can still carry water. Girdling just breaks the phloem and cambium, typically. Generally, splitting and stacking in a sunny spot is your best method.

Not sure what happened with notifications, but I replied directly to your earlier post, quoting it, and providing a NASA paper that directly answers your question. In the paper's first two paragraphs, in fact. To save you some scrolling, here it is again: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2378/study-climate-change-rapidly-warming-worlds-lakes/ (A secure, encrypted website, should be safe to click) "Will go up," it turns out, should be present tense.

Cooling lakes does increase oxygenation of the waters, but it's hard to see an active system not being a waste heat producer, as Seth noted. Seems like a passive shading of some kind would be better, and cheaper. Some kind of netting spread over the water that allows air and light to reach water, but cuts insolation a few percent? As the NASA report (posted above) suggests, most lakes are only a degree C. or so above their normal temps. So maybe a partially shading net would compensate for that. Net would be bad for aquatic birds, though, so scratch that idea. What about a more natural material that floats and doesn't break up into harmful microparticles or mess up feeding activities? Something cellulosic, that would float for a while? I like the intellectual challenge of this thread, even if it's not essentially feasible.

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2378/study-climate-change-rapidly-warming-worlds-lakes/ Sorry to bear bad news, sir.

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Village designates that critical size at which an idiot is acquired and formally installed.

Please post a plain English abstract of your paper. And maybe some touchstones, as how your ideas relate to Carnap or Russell or other modern thinkers in the field.

I once encountered a porcupine that had a pin number.

AFAIK, it's all common sense stuff with PV panels - optimal angle to catch rays as perpendicular as possible, above tree shade if possible. Economically, there are cost/benefit calculations as to having a tracking or fixed mount, or whether it's on a rooftop or the ground. In cities with standard lots and many house and tree shadows, the roof is usually the only viable option. This makes a tracking mount more difficult, and there's the challenge of affixing to the roof and having all supporting members be adequately flashed and sealed so rain doesn't leak in. You also have to pay more for high roofs, where workers have to use safety harnesses and things generally take longer. And roof installations are more trouble to clean (in arid climates, they need regular cleaning, as you will lose a fair amount of watts to dust accumulation. You can get an idea of your cleaning issues by leaving a car stationary for a week or two and see how your windshield (windscreen) looks.

The less professional the army, the more likely to flee in disarray, and to abandon their weapons. (Or become cannon fodder) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/20/russia-recruits-inmates-ukraine-war-wagner-prigozhin The Kremlin’s reliance on unorthodox methods to keep the fighting going in Ukraine is worrying for Russia, according to Lee. “Russia no longer has a professional army in the traditional sense. It is now made up of some professional units, mixed with paid short-term contract soldiers, mercenaries and now, apparently, prisoners. “Armies are effective when there is clear hierarchy and cohesion,” Lee added. “I can’t even begin to imagine what disciplinary problems prisoners will bring.” On Tuesday, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, himself behind bars, tweeted that Russian prisons were full of people with “big problems with discipline and even bigger problems with alcohol and substances”. He said: “What could such an army even accomplish in combat?”

@MigL If you join a website and post the above, then you are going to come across as bigoted in your attitude. Note he could have added "some" before atheists, and then offered specific examples to support the last sentence. My guess is that he didn't back up that remark because it's a straw man. If you post bigoted comments, then where there is free discourse (which you clearly prize, as I do) people will call you on it and you don't get a special safe space where your bigotry is tiptoed around. Then Derp went onto assert: Did he post polls or surveys to support this? Did he offer any quotes from atheist arguments to support his contention of "context negative for accuracy"(whatever that means)? So, another vague attack, without any actual consideration of an atheist perspective, or glimmer of intellectual honesty.