Annotated Posts

There are a lot of formulas that look simple. "The absolute error is less than 0.00004" (actually that's the relative error) basically means that the first four digits match (when ignoring the location of the decimal point). So the chance of two given verses matching a given formula to this extent by random is about 1e-8. On the other hand, the Bible has ...

Taxes versus tax receipts are endlessly complicated -- to the point that a sufficiently silver-tongued politician could argue persuasively for pretty much anything with the data sets we have -- but I'll posit a simple litmus test for the "cost" of tax cuts. Given a list of federal tax receipts by year (roughly halfway down the page), can you tell me when ...

Short Answer: True. Every year, in time for Davos (i.e. the Annual Meeting for the World Economic Forum), Oxfam releases a report about the state of inequality. Here's a link to their latest. Additional link to calculations down at the bottom of the page. https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2019-01-18/billionaire-fortunes-grew-25-billion-day-...

That statistic is at least plausible, and likely true. Children have essentially no wealth, so to start out the richest are already ahead of about 25% of the world (about 1.9 billion people) simply by having a positive net worth. The next 1.9 billion is made up of the impoverished adults, young adults that are just starting careers, working class populations,...

Obviously, my source is looking at headlights. However if one has internet access you can look it up. Wikipedia seemed to have the most info in one spot but additional info at other sites would be helpful . Lumens (L) are a measure of the amount of light. Old sealbeams = ?, early halogens = 1550 L later halogens =1820 L newest halogens = 2100 L HID = ...

Right idea, wrong target. We have a pretty good idea which Russian diplomats are affiliated to their various intelligence agencies, and they ours—without help from Snowden. That's how we know whom to expel. Note we didn't assassinate them. I recall in 1975, an American columnist identified a Soviet "journalist" known as Yuri Barsukov as a top spy. (I ...

No. I personally lived in Houston for several years and I drove that stretch of road many times. It is definitely not 26 lanes. Here's how the Houston Chronicle contrives that number (and I still come up short on my count): There are only 4 thru lanes in each direction for a total of 8. There are an additional 2 interchange lanes in each direction, used ...

Nope. It just looks like. The average main freeway lanes are 8 lanes. The toll lanes are 4 lanes. The frontage lanes are 6 lanes. Where there's acceleration lanes are 10 lanes. It then averages to 18 lanes. Where there's acceleration lanes will be 20 lanes. However, the West Loop north of the Katy Freeway is wider since reconstruction is done with. By this ...

Yeah, kind of, they are spotty and they strange. So they was a likely celocanth found during the late Paleocene and one of the Israel Miocene. One of the ones claimed to have lived in the Palestinian Israeli territory are controversial as it could have been done by a creationist. The other Israeli one is a bit strange as it was never tested. The late ...

By chance I found a reference to that anecdote right after I read your awesome answer, take a look here: http://www.yutopian.com/go/misc/gohistory.html under the title "Weiqi During the Jin Dynasties" You probably could not find the names on Wikipedia because they are spelled differently; on that page the names are Xie An and Xian Zuan. It describes a ...

No Science does not define life as "beginning at conception", because science does not, to any satisfactory degree, define "life" in the general case: There is no broadly accepted definition of 'life.' Suggested definitions face problems, often in the form of robust counter-examples. Here we use insights from philosophical investigations into language to ...

A bath tub has a capacity of around 110L. An average 80kg person has a density of 1010kg/m3, therefore a volume of 0.08m3 or 80L. Let's say the person is only 50% under water when taking a bath. That means around 70L of water are poured in the bath tub so that it's full to the rim when one person is sitting in it. Compare with a shower. A typical shower ...

I paid close attention to the Fukushima investigation for years. I've lost my sources (I could use some help with that) but I can add some more detail as to exactly where it went wrong. If the lack of refs is a problem, I'll cheerfully delete this answer. Yes, as you say, the earthquake didn't do any critical damage inside the containment area, but the ...

In a nutshell, "I am a simple employee and I want to critic my boss. Why? Reasons!.". So everybody talks against bosses, it's practically routine. Now, about the topic, one explanation. A Psychopath is a person that doesn't know what is right or wrong, while a sociopath is somebody that knows what is right and wrong, but he/she doesn't care. So, a ...

Technically no. The best speed is the speed with a better ratio of consumption/distance. Usually (it depends on the vehicle) it's around from 50km/h to 80km/h. Reducing the speed will decrease the emission but increases the time the vehicle is polluting. For example, a parked car with the engine running still pollutes.

There are two different claims being represented in this question, that the church engage[s] in a significant number of lawsuits over incidents at their activities and implicitly, that the church deliberately provokes people to beat up its members. I don't know about the first claim, but the second claim is definitely not true, and could only be ...

An analogy: suppose there's a long line of swings. You run along the line, pushing each swing as you go. This will result in each swing being slightly out of phase with the one before it. There will be appear to be a "wave" traveling down the line of swings at the same speed that you ran down it. For instance, if you look for a swing that at its maximum ...

The claim here is that Michael Cohen's sentence was already reduced by Robert Mueller's (special counsel) prosecution team. Cohen then has to continue to tell the same story, including to Congress. If he told a different story, he could be prosecuted (again) for lying in his allocution (for our purposes here, his confession under oath when he plead guilty) ...

Maduro’s claim is a fallacious equivocation robs us of 30 billion dollars and offers us four crumbs Maduro’s statement is misleading because he’s referring to an “us” that is actually two different groups of people within the same country. The people being “robbed” of $30 billion are the people who run the state owned oil company. The people being given ...

It is worth noting that the name or word "Nazi" does not appear in Hitler's book My Struggle [see Hitler, Adolph, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim] nor does it appear in the speeches of Herman Goering [See Selected Speeches of Field Marshal Hermann Goring, available on Amazon Kindle]. Hitler Youth leader Melita Maschmann wrote a book about her ...

@Tom77's answer is correct, in that the speedometer must be designed to already read a little high to avoid ever reading lower than actual speed. However, that rule only applies to the speedometer on the instrument cluster. Often there is a second speedometer based on the car's GPS unit that is part of the navigation system. Some systems can display it, e.g....

It seems likely to be true. In particular, Starboard Value made the claim as part of an extended, savage, and heavily reported critique of the then-management of the chain, where the "no salting" bit featured heavily in the reportage. The attack was clearly and openly being made as part of a takeover attempt. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/...

No, it is not fair to say that "a missed telegraph pole delivery" was "what caused" World War II. Even if we are willing to give the Joker the benefit of doubt, that he meant "one of the causes", the impact of that one missed delivery is much less significant than The Joker, or the web articles you quoted, imply. Poincare's decision to invade the Ruhr came ...

While the statement is generally true today, as other answers have explained in detail, it isn't certain that it will always hold true in all physically demanding sports. Of courses it is difficult to say "never", but there is some evidence that women may eventually match or even exceed men's performance in certain endurance sports such as ultra-marathons. ...

The exact cause of autism to develop in a newborn or adult is not well understood yet. Autism is a developmental disability which occurs in the neurological mechanism showing traits of speech delays, communication problems and repetitive behavior. Autism is still a questioning developmental disability in my experience as a Sped Guide at ACCEL. There have ...

2015 New Scientist Article: Moon’s gravity could govern plant movement like the tides 2015 New Scientist article, Werewolf plant waits for the light of the full moon At night, Ephedra foeminea, a non-flowering relative of conifers and cycads, secretes small translucent globules of sugary liquid to attract nocturnal pollinating insects. The globules are ...

The short answer is that more medical interventions and higher spend do not automatically improve the outcomes for patients. Instead of spending more, healthcare system should be spending smarter. Moreover, blindly trying to reduce spending (e.g. by decreasing Medicare funding) will likely make patients outcome worse. Now the details: The main study on ...

What specific claims are considered quackery, and why? Pretty much all of it. The referenced page from "Altered state newsletter" is solid woo. The trouble with confronting woo is that it sounds meaningful but you can't actually pin down what it means. If you want to ask if these claims are true, you have to start by figuring out what, if anything, is ...

This is a question loaded with nuances, and has since been overtaken by events. The short answer is: when that article was written back in 2014, that might have been somewhat true. Today, it is either not true, or not nearly as true. One flaw in that article is that there are no hard measurements, as in comparing two nearly identical apps on both systems. ...

Several of the other answers here talk about speed, energy and braking distance. But that's not what the question asked. The question asked whether it is safer to drive at the speed limit, and makes reference to other cars driving both faster, and slower than this figure. The answer to this is that there's no objective answer. Speed limits are a legal ...

If the current has a direct pathway to the heart (e.g., via a cardiac catheter or other kind of electrode), a much lower current of less than 1 mA (AC or DC) can cause fibrillation Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_injury The second contact mechanism involves a person in the water being in an electric field because of an ...

Correct - only as used in the article The article is comparing 2 cases, each involving driving along "a section of road with 10 traffic signal systems" 1) as today, when drivers have no information, leading to "unnecessary stopping and starting" - i.e. cars accelerate to a cruising speed, reach a red light, stop, idle, wait for green, accelerate again etc ...

The small print on the pdf declares that it was from an online survey targeting american adults who play video games. Online surveys have pretty bad self-selection issues. ESA looks like it's not particularly entangled with any one political side, but it is still (among other things) a lobbying group. Their own website (both hosting and linked to by the ...

No, it's an Internet urban legend "Marianas web" is an expression originating from an infographic first published on Imgur in 2011 that attempted to provide a classification of the deep web architecture. According to this infographic, the web is divided in five layers, each more difficult to access, and the deepest is supposed to be "Marianas web". First ...

When calculations are done, the Earth's temperature seems hotter than current mechanisms can be explained. One theory for the high temperature is that the Earth has gravitationally captured dark matter. This is a main theory for what is at the core of the gas giants. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-dark-matter-encircle-earth/

The first statement is true but incomplete. The key reason that marriage has existed at all in any society and at any time is that sexual relationships between men and women naturally produce children. The production of children is not in itself a sufficient reason for the institution of marriage. Rather it is kinship that drives marriage (Wikipedia ...

Most non-lethal weapons would probably qualify, as would any weapons never actually used (e.g. ICBMs) as long as at least one person had a fatal accident during production. Note that the primary military impact of the V2 was not death toll, and it was likely not expected to be - compared to the amount of explosives a single bomber could drop a lot more than ...

At 100% throttle, the ECU leaves "closed loop" and enters "open loop" fuel enrichment mode. This is bad for fuel consumption. The most efficient throttle opening at which to accelerate is just before fuel enrichment mode. Typically 85% throttle is quoted as a safe amount to gain best results over at ecomodder.com where this is discussed as much length. See '...

This isn't a complete answer to your questions, but I'd like to point out that the government doesn't need access to the E911 chip to locate you. Traditionally mobile phone networks were switched networks. They work by locating where you are in the world, and routing your telecoms through a microcell / macrocell transmitter. It's been some time since i ...

No, this statistic is wildly exaggerated. The way it was calculated used poorly understood and outdated data. Below is how Heather Mac Donald arrived at this conclusion. The 36 unarmed black male victims of police shootings in 2015 measured against the total black male population [nearly 19 million in mid-2014, per the Census Bureau] amounts to a per ...

TL;DR? The USA has so many mass shootings that the average deaths-per-shooting is lower than other places. Let's break down what he's calculating: The rates of murder from mass public shootings per million people. This means that, when there is a mass shooting(1) in public(2), that if we account for population(3), more people are murdered(4) . By using ...

A "true" allergy is a Type 1 IgE mediated hypersensitivity in which antibodies recognize specific antigens. Antibodies are created when an interplay between T cells and B cells occurs, notably the presentation of a protein on a Major HistoCompatability (MHC) complex, which induces the creation and release of antibodies that the target that protein. As MHC ...

For other hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses the definition "deaths as a direct result of the event" - e.g. the deaths caused by drowning, etc. occurring immediately during the event. The official government death toll includes only deaths in which documentation of “hurricane-related” as the cause of death appears ...

Nuclear fusion is the mechanism by which most atom nucleii have been formed from the original plasma present after the Big Bang. It requires incredibly hot temperatures not found in outer space. Since the Big Bang, nucleii have been formed in stars and then ejected in outer space at the end of the life of those stars. See for instance: Nasa's Cosmicopia ...

I work in Diabetes research in the UK and Can find no evidence to support the wild claims in the paper, press release and press reports. Sadly hidden away in a table in supplementary data is the fact that the result of improved glucose is a result folrom 3 people who had the vaccine compared to 3 had placebo. This very small number makes it very likely that ...

Re "set up any interest free monetary system?" This could use some semantic clarification. The current monetary system is interest-free in that the Federal Reserve Notes you have in your pocket do not earn interest. If you want interest directly guaranteed by the Federal government you have to buy a Treasury bond, bill, or note. Treasury bonds, bills and ...

It's a fair statement to make, even if not true (and especially not when taken out of context). From the context it's apparent that he meant predictive calendars in widespread use. Also one can imply that fairly simple rules can be qualification needed for everyday use. I think it's obvious that with today's knowledge of mathematics and physics even the ...

Is the crime rate for undocumented immigrants “considerably lower” than that of Trump campaign staffers? Caveat: Strictly speaking, the crime rate for undocumented immigrants is rather high. While being in the country illegally is a civil infraction rather than a crime, entering the country illegally is a crime. Moreover, all male illegal immigrants between ...

Looking at the results, JFK's majority in Illinois was 8,858, or 0.2% of the vote. There could be doubt about this, certainly. However as MichaelK notes, Nixon would have had to win both Illinois and Texas to change the final result. In Texas, Kennedy's majority was 46,257, or 2% of the vote. Regardless of whether some fraud took place (and realistically ...