Free Republic

The Pacers were actually named mostly for Indiana’s history of famous horse racing pacers. Dan Patch was the most famous Pacer of all time and was bred in Indiana. The reference to pace cars was a nice extra tie in to the Indy 500. It also makes it quite the coincidence that Indiana’s other pro sports team also got its name from the horse racing industry, as the Baltimore Colts were named in honor of Baltimore’s horse breeding and racing history.

I’m a mechanical engineer and I’ve only heard “datum” used in the context of a reference. It’s plural form is datums. Different concept than the singular form of data. I’d be curious what field of engineering you are in that people actually use datum (singular of data) in daily conversation. I’d be considered a pedant at my job if I used the word datum to convey the concept of a single piece of information.

Disparaging other engineers by saying they are engineers in title only is childish. Incidentally, this is the type of attitude that gives engineers a bad reputation.

Building codes and inspections would prevent that more than licensing. If you want to make sure your house passes inspection the first time, maybe you choose to use a certified contractor. A government license doesn’t necessarily guarantee you anything. There are plenty of government licensed doctors getting sued for malpractice.

His point was the government could certify that their skills met a specified criteria, but people would still be able to use the services of a practitioner that is not certified. It would come down to the choice of the consumer if they felt that the government certification was worth anything.

Most Filipinos I know prefer Emperador Brandy
http://www.drinksint.com/m/fullstory.php/aid/4028/The_Philippines__Emperador_heads_top_ten_brandy_list.html

But Gorilla Glass has a fracture toughness of 0.7 MPa*m^0.5 while aluminum has a fracture toughness of around 20 MPa*m^0.5. So given the presence of an initial crack, the gorilla glass is much more likely to fail in brittle fracture while the aluminum would be more likely to fail through fatigue.

Gorilla Glass has a high resistance to scratch damage compared to a soda lime glass and is thus less likely to initiate a crack by the user. However, if an initial flaw occurs at manufacture it will likely fail in a brittle manner.

One thing I’d be interested in knowing is if this glass is being made by Corning in China. If it is, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the problem with the glass is from manufacturing defects and not from user scratches. The glass might be failing when an initial flaw is present and someone puts the case on causing a load that raises the stress intensity factor at the crack above the fracture toughness of the glass. If so, my advice to Apple would be to have the glass made in Korea, Japan or the US and ship it to China for assembly.

That’s interesting, a few years ago HP tried to argue that non-compete agreements aren’t enforceable. Interesting how their tune changes when the roles are reversed.

http://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/196802817/lexmark-settles-with-hp-over-hiring-of-ex-lexmark-exec.htm

Where do you see that he got a degree in Physics? Everything I see says he started a physics degree but switched degrees half way through. There are probably 100,000s of people more qualified to be giving input into this problem, including me. But I guess I haven’t directed a movie, so no one asked me to help. Personally, I think its a waste of time and effort to involve him in this. I’m sick of celebrities being elevated to some sort of expert on topics that they know very little about but happened to star in or direct a movie about that topic.

Applica has the license to make Black & Decker small kitchen appliances. GE contracts with various manufacturers to build their small kitchen appliances (Applica, Hamilton Beach, etc. and some direct from Chinese manufacturers), but GE still maintains control over the product specification, appearance and marketing.

Someone needs to send this link to Warren Buffet. I heard he’s very interested in sending more of his money to the federal government, but he just can’t figure out how.

He needs to give an apology on the house floor like this: “I’m sorry for shouting during the President’s speech to the joint session of Congress, however I stand by my statement that the President lied on numerous occasions during the speech. Such as...” And then proceed to list every lie the President told with the evidence to back up each claim. Keep on talking until Nancy has to cut him off (it shouldn’t be hard to keep talking about all the lies Obama has spewed over the past several months). It would be a perfect opportunity to turn the tables on the Democrats.

I find it absolutely absurd that a group (Color Of Change) that was created on the premise that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” is upset that someone called the current President a racist. Pot meet kettle. Why doesn’t the media ever challenge people over obvious hypocrisy.

Their website still sells “Kanye was Right” Tshirts and it was all over their website from 2005 and appears to be the premise behind their entire organization at the time. “Kanye was Right::Colorofchange.org, Bush doesn’t care. But we do” http://web.archive.org/web/20051102031642/http://colorofchange.org/

Several years ago I was living in Ridgecrest (right outside Death Valley) and my parents came to visit me. We planned a trip to Las Vegas via Death Valley. At one point my dad thought it would be fun to take a more “scenic” route and guided me along a “short cut”. Unfortunately this road was full of potholes and I was an inexperienced driver (going way too fast) and got a flat front tire. After inspecting my rear tire I noticed it also had a nice size bulge in it, but it hadn't blown. I put the spare on and then I carefully drove out of there. The scary thing is that based on the description of this article we were close to where this incident occurred because it was not far after leaving Trona. However, we were still on an actual road and there were at least two people that we passed taking nature photos along the way, so we weren't completely hopeless if the other tire blew. Still, reading this article brings back those fears that I had at the time of how close we were to being in real danger.

"It is true that in the olden days only property owners could vote — perhaps you’d like to return to that system.

Guilty!! I believe only those with an economic interest in a country should be able to vote on how its treasure is spent."

OK... if only property owners can vote, then non-property owners shouldn't have to pay income taxes. Because obviously they don't have "an economic interest" in the country.

By the way, how do you define a property owner. If the bank owns 80% of your property and you own 20% does that count? what about 99% and 1%? I could see it now, a thousand people own 0.1% of the same plot of land so that they can have the right to vote. Maybe banks will get a "supervote" because they own such a large percentage of the homes in the country.

As a renter, I guess my $25,000 in taxes last year means that I don’t pay enough taxes for the government to care about me? Please tell me how much I have to pay to be releveant for you. Did you ever stop to think that some people rent because they are single and tend to move around a lot (ie, a new city every year or two) in order to advance their career? Or maybe being single they don’t see the reason to live in a 3 bedroom house when a nice, cozy one bedroom apartment serves their needs. Incidentally, people like me (single, no kids, no house) probably end up paying the highest tax rate for equivelant income of anybody and receive the least amount of personal benefit back from the government. So maybe you should think again before making generalizations about people based on something like home ownership.

Most states require liability insurance for damage caused to other cars. I don’t know about Virginia, but I believe Ohio allows you to sign an affadavit and submit financial records to prove you can “self-insure” if you damage someone elses property. I don’t know of any state, Virginia included, that requires you carry insurance to cover damages on your own car.

really? what states demand you carry liablity insurance on your own car?

The lack of interest in Indy is a direct result of Tony George's actions. All you have to do is look at the drop in qualifying attendance after 1995. You're correct that Tony George claimed to be concerned about the lack of Americans in IndyCar. But look at his league now. Most of the competitive drivers are foreign. I'm the type that wants the best driver racing regardless of nationality, but I see the importance of having Americans racing in strong roles. Tony George has not provided on that promise. He could have been much more effective in starting his own team for American drivers with the money he's sunk into the IRL (which he finally did now to provide his stepson a ride, since no one else would hire him).

The race got a big boost this year because of Danica. However, the race was not a sellout. In 1995 the race sold out almost a year before. I would like to know what you think has been accomplished by starting the IRL. He hasn't been succesful in reviving openwheel oval racing (ask the folks in Nazarath or Phoenix and then the people in St. Pete about that), he hasn't been succesful in keeping American Sprint car drivers from going to NASCAR, Indy has been devalued considerably (no one would care about the race this year if Danica wasn't racing). So what did George accomplish?

"Has any event gone to irrelevance as dramatically as the Indy 500? I remember as a kid, I couldn't wait to listen to it on the radio. Now it's a barely a blip on the radar screen.

No doubt! I wonder what caused this - did we change, or did the race change? Or both?"

Ever heard of Tony George? Thats what caused this.

How come these liberal catholics seem only interested in one thing... sex. What did they want from the new Pope:

- the end of celibate priests... sex (why they care if they're not priests, I don't know)
- endorsement of gays... more sex
- condoms for all... lets have more sex (of course the argument that somehow church support of condoms will stop the spread of AIDS is a weird argument, since how much is AIDS really spread between two committed, married individuals? You mean people who are having sex with multiple partners are going to all of sudden hear that the church supports the use of condoms and start using them?)
- abortions... lets eliminate any consequences from sex

its funny, becuase you hear how they are concerned about the poor of the world, but in the past day it has only been in the context of ensuring they can have all the sex they want without the worry of disease or pregnancy. The liberals have become obsessed with sex, apparantly the church to them has nothing to do with anything else.