Wow. I had heard of this case and I had assumed intentional malice on the part of the police. This footage indicates that it was error in judgement instead.

Having said that, this kind of error in judgement easily rises to the level of criminal negligence and the arresting officer should be imprisoned, and almost every officer on site should be fired.

No reasonable person would ever park an empty car on train tracks, and it is even one step further to have put someone in the vehicle and not moved it immediately off the tracks.

Yeah, 20000ft is roughly 6km. The air density is about 1/2 but from what I can determine that doesn't equal 1/2 air resistance, but something more like 90-95% air resistance of sea level.

Having said that, I haven't studied aerospace engineering, so I might be getting the details wrong.

There are definitely some minor advantages to building on a mountainside, but I don't think they outweigh logistical difficulties under normal circumstances.

The idea has a good bit of scifi (and probably scientific) history behind it though. I believe Heinlein used a railgun cargo launcher from the moon in Moon is a Harsh Mistress and a mountainside sled rocket in one of his earlier books.

Project Rho is a great resource for hard scifi and rocketry research for writers. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/surfaceorbit.php is the link to a page that discusses maglev, railguns and rocketsleds.

Using a mountainside might help with structural integrity, but it's not likely to give much air resistance advantage if I'm reading the math correctly. The 5 highest peaks in the US are all in Alaska and and range from just under 5km to just over 6km. Commercial jets using air resistance/density for lift fly at about 10km and even at 38km aerodynamic lift still carries 98% of the weight of the plane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line)

Air density is halved at 5km compared to sea level, but air resistance doesn't diminish as quickly (due to it being multiplied by velocity squared and drag coefficient), and only becomes irrelevant (for short-term purposes) around 100km at the Karman Line.

If we had a 5km peak in Florida, the lack of logistical costs might make the benefits worth it, and if we could build on one of Equador's 5km peaks, then there's the further advantage of equatorial location for optimal rotational advantage (part of the reason we launch from South Florida)

I was thinking the same thing, but he addresses that in the video. The defining feature of a crossbow is that the bowstring is mechanically held in tension. With this device, if the wielder relaxes his arm the string goes slack.

Having said that, it's similar to a chu-ko-nu (repeating "crossbow" that doesn't hold the string in tension) but more accurate because the moving parts move linearly.

He calls the H-1B visa the genius visa, but that would better describe the O-1 visa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-1_visa

Arnold gets the words right, but the pronunciation is worse than his austrian-english.

In http://wtkr.com/2013/08/01/video-shows-virginia-state-police-car-hitting-skateboarder/ you can see a less-edited version of the video. The cop did not casually drive off after intentionally running the guy over. Rather he was making an illegal u-turn and wasn't paying attention. He got out to see if the skater was injured.

So not police brutality. At worst police reckless endangerment. More generously a stupid mistake.

(and I am certainly not someone who will excuse police aggression)

The only important thing to take away from this is that if you're at a good sushi joint, you only use soy sauce when the sushi chef says to. Sushi is a delicate dish.

The rest was just pretentiousness.

Very unfunny. Also very good.

That almost looks like a false flag advertisement

I can imagine it being created by democrats "attacking" themselves in a way that makes the republicans look petty and makes their guy look pretty good.

Not actually claiming that conspiracy, but if you were going to do it, this is how it should be done

Oh I most certainly understand you. However, I fully support the decision of Citizens United. Any restriction on my ability to spend money to speak is a imposition on my 1st Amendment rights.

Political corruption is certainly a harm worth preventing, but we must do so in a different way, because free speech trumps the well-intentioned desire to reduce the influence of money on politics.

As to his cause, I am quite sure that his "true motive" is self-interest, probably in the form of lower taxes. I don't think he's being particularly secretive about this, though he's trying to couch it in terms of _everyone's_ lower taxes. I am also quite certain that he bears no particular ill intent toward other less wealthy taxpayers, even if his desired policies would harm them. At worst, he doesn't care about them, and more likely, he believes they will profit as well (though perhaps not as much as he will).

>> ^packo:

take a look on index mundi
% of people below poverty line in hungary is 13.9%
for the US, its 15.1%


I looked on Index Mundi but I didn't see what they used for a definition of "Poverty Line". What I did see was that their reporting of Per Capita GDP (Purchasing Power Parity) was US 48,000 and Hungary 19,600. I suspect that the poor Hungarian would be ecstatic to be a poor American. And the poor American would probably be appalled at the living condition of their "equal" in Hungary.

To the original poster, I'm no Republican, but I fully support his freedom to buy this advertisement and speak his mind to whoever wishes to listen. I also support your right to speak _against_ his points. But I cannot support your desire to _silence_ him.

"I have a dream" "Well I have a drone".

Nice one.

There may well have been evil intent in these voter ID laws, and in fact, they may be doing their best to reduce the voter rolls with unfair voting hours. I'm not defending those tactics.

$30 every few 5-10 years is trivial by any measure. However, in researching the topic, I discovered that in Wisconsin, you can already get a free ID for voting purposes: "If you are a U.S. citizen, will be at least 18 years of age by the next election, and would like a Wisconsin ID card to vote (although it's not currently required), please check the ID for FREE box when completing the MV3004 (Wisconsin Identification Card (ID) application) or when applying online" http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/drivers/drivers/apply/idcard.htm

In the case of someone who does not have a birth certificate, there are processes in place to resolve that. You do not lose your identity when you lose your identification papers, it's just a pain to fix it. In this case, the state lost the papers, and it is the responsibility of the state to re-certify the birth of the person in question. Most likely it can be done with a court appearance and a few sworn statements, if there's no other way of proving identity.

Even if the intent behind this bill is evil and unjust, the requirement of identification at the voting booth is neither unreasonable, nor unjustly burdensome. The _burden_ is the same for everyone, a half-day in the DMV.

I was oversimplifying. I don't know enough about the theoretical physics of black holes to know in what ways they are infinite. However, the only way I can think of to extract energy from the black hole is if you could put a wormhole at the center that led back to its lip, tapping the energy from falling matter through the resulting Escher's Waterfall.