Greg H.

I doubt it's an abnormality of any kind. It may be a genetic thing for the local population, or it have something to do with hand size, or even a ratio of hand to finger size. But making blanket statements like your OP without using a statistically significant sample size is just inviting other people to trivially prove you wrong.

Here's a list: Thumb - cannot fold into the palm of my hand completely on either hand. Index finger: when folded completely, only the thumb and pinky remain straight. Middle finger as above Ring finger: Only index and thumb remain straight Pinky:Unable to fold completely without also folding in the ring finger - other fingers remain straight. It's more or less the same on both hands - my right hand isn't what I would call a good baseline, however, due to some knuckle and nerve damage when I was young.

Actually, I can fold my middle finger in completely and still stretch my index finger and my littlest finger straight on both hands.

As a general rule, I try and provide citations whenever I post something that I consider to be outside the realm of general knowledge. It just saves tediousness later, and tends to move the discussion along. I should note that it's important to provide citations that are meaningful to the topic at hand - a comment from a high school English teacher on quantum mechanics is probably not going to garner much support for your position (unless said individual also happens to hold an advanced degree in physics for some reason). If the topic at hand lends itself to a mathematic demonstration, include one. This forum does include a LaTeX parser, and it's pretty hard to argue with correctly done maths (unless they're being misapplied - like using Newton when GR is required). Finally, if possible, try to include more than one citation from multiple sources - this tends to make your position stronger. Edit to add: Try and avoid using sources that have been repeatedly debunked. Pretty much anything from the Institue for Creation Research, for example, has generally been discussed to death and roundly refuted here, and on other forums.

Yeah, sorry about that.

It's possible, though it's generally very hard to find the state culpable in product related incidents. Still, it is a sad commentary that the American Dream is no longer work hard, get ahead, but get hurt, sue everyone in sight.

California is basically an over protective parent. They don't want you to breath, drink, ingest, stub your toe on something,or in any other way expose you to even the minutest risk unless you have been properly warned that it might cause anything from urination to your kidneys exploding, and your house spontaneously combuting in a blue white flame.

Good luck.

Apparently (I've never tried it) but both PCs and MACs can read the FAT32 based file system, so as long as the USB drive is formatted in that fashion, it should just work. I found an article on eHow on it, if you'd like more information. http://www.ehow.com/how_5929724_format-drive-work-mac-pc.html

This isn't a new concept, when you get down to it. The problem becomes one of standards, building the cars to handle it, and maintaining warranty coverage on your car if the battery that isn't "yours" fries something. The fact that the batteries weigh hundreds of pounds doesn't help either. That said, this was exactly how we handled the electric forlifts back when I worked at the textile mill. When the juice got low, you went to the charging station and swapped out the battery for a fresh one. (It took a hydraulic jack to get the old one out and the new one in, but there you are.)

Off topic, but this reminded me of the first time my daughter saw a rotary dial telephone.

What about the prosecuter that seeks it out? At the very least he should be an accomplice, right?

If you take the weight of the car, and a 50/50 weight distribution, you would get 1500 pounds per axle (roughly - 50/50 is rarely exactly equal down to the ounce except maybe in very high performance cars where that kind of precision really matters). You also have to take into account the load inside the vehicle, which could throw off your weight distribution, depending on how that load is distributed. If what you really want to know is how much impact force is delivered to the tires/speed bump, you're looking at a much more complex scenario. Edit to add: If you want to know how many lbs/in2, you need to know the area of the contact patch (the part that's in contact witht he road at any given time) for the tires - so that formula would be: [math]W_{lb/in^2} = \frac{1500lbs} {2(CP_{t}in^2)}[/math]

1. Aim weapon. 2. Fire. 3. Repeat as necessary until they get the message. Not that this has anything to do with the death penalty.

Windows XP was (and is) popular because it just farking worked. You turned your computer on, it booted, and you could go about your day. The reason you still see high numbers of Windows XP users is because, even years old, it continue to just work and do what the users ask of it. Kudos to Microsoft for getting it right (finally). Windows 7 enjoys the popularity it does because it (for the most part) shares Windows XP's model of just working. Windows 8's only saving grace is that it is not (quite) as terrible as Windows ME was. I use Windows 8.1 on my home PC, and I find it to be reasonable (especially with an SSD), but it has too many extra bells and whistles for me to be completely happy with it. I don't like getting reminders from facebook apps from my OS, for God's sake. FWIW, my grandmother's PC was still using Windows 98 when she died in 2004 because it still did everything she asked of it.

No. The idea that something is sacred is a human construct, and varies depending on which human you ask. The universe, by and large, doesn't really care.

Despite what the talking heads would like us to think, I don't think the death penalty deters much of anything. What it really seems to be is way to stop people that a particular society considers unsalvageable from being a drain on everyone else. In that regard it is effective, though as MonDie points out, and based on the results from non-profits like the freedom project, there are likely to be people on death row who shouldn't be incarcerated at all. In combat those people would be called collateral damage. In a civilian setting, however, I think it's unacceptable.

My wife actually has grey eyes with hazel flecks.

You have committed what is known as the fallacy of the false dichotomy. Just because someone questions evolutionary science does not automatically mean that they need to invoke the God of the Gaps to explain things. Also, neither evolution nor creationism are religions. In fact, they're not even adressing the same field of science. Cretionism more properly argues against abiogenesis. Evolution has nothing to do with where life came from - only what happens after it arises.

Science always allows for competing theories assuming they meet the following criteria: 1. They account for all existing experimental evidence, and 2. They better (or more precisely) explain the observed phonomenon. However, that does not necessarily mean that the old theory was wrong, only that the new one better explains the science in question. GR replacing Newton is a good example of this - and yet we can still use Newton's ideas for problems that do not happen at relativistic speeds, because they are a good enough approximation of what happens. If you want to deal in absolute truths, I suggest you work in mathematics. 1 + 0 = 1 is a fact that never changes. Proper scientific theories change repeatedly based on new evidence or refinements in the models that support them.

Another option that may be available (it always has been at my schools, at least), is to simply have the college obtain the transcripts they need directly. You fill out a form in the registrar's office, sign it, they mail it to the school and the schools sends the transcripts back to the university. In fact, most universities in the US (or at least the ones that I have attended) will not accept a transcript hand delivered by a student on the grounds that it may have been altered in some fashion. They request a certified copy from the school directly.

The problem with any argument based on probability is that, unless the probability is actually 0 (i.e. the chance of rolling a seven on a single standard six sided die), it doesn't matter how low the probability actually is. Given enough permutations, statistically speaking, any given discrete event WILL occur. Unless you limit the question somehow (the chance of rolling a six in one roll), it's almost useless to discuss, because given a long enough time frame everything is bound to happen. Probably.

We really do make our own reality.

I agree with you in principle, but for the rough purposes of pointing out why it's nothing to worry about in the normal course of events, I just needed some numbers. Even if we assume a fatal dose an order of magnitude smaller (.75g), we're still talking about roughly 3 full tubes of tooth paste in a short amount of time (as I said, I didn't look up how fast it disappates from the body, and to get an accurate number it really should be factored in). The point remains that, unless you are seriously misusing it, toothpaste swallowing isn't likely to kill you any time soon. Of course, the same thing applies to a whole litany of other products humans regularly ingest as well.

Assuming that's right, and I have done my maths correctly, that would mean you'd have to eat (splitting the difference and calling 7.5 g fatal) 26 119 g of paste in order to get a fatal dose. Given my normal brushing habits (2x a day, every day) a normal sized tube lasts me about 3 - 4 months. So that's roughly seven and a half years worth of toothpaste. So if you were brushing your teeth something like 5000 times a day, you'd probably start to have issues, which is a physical impossibility.(See below). You'd actually have to just eat it. Though, as an aside, if you actually brushed your teeth that many times, for the recommended two minutes a time, that would be 7 days of non-stop brushing, 24 hours a day. You'd scrub your gums off first, would be my supposition.