dieseltaylor

The following is an actual question given on a University of Liverpool chemistry final exam. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues via the internet, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well. Question: Is hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law that gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: First, we need to know how the mass of hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that, if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in hell. Because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay constant, the volume of hell must expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities: 1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose. 2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Sandra during my freshman year, that "it will be a cold day in hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that hell is endothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is extinct... leaving only heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being - which explains why, last night, Sandra kept shouting "Oh my God." THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A".

Rather a sad affair. I suppose private enterprise will fill the gap. The idea that asserting ones own rights creating a possible bigger fall-out is an advanced bit of thinking. However in a country where notoriety carries bigger rewards than hard work I suppose it is not surprising that people work the angles. My personal view is that homosexuality is not natural - in the sense that the species is designed for procreating itself. Society has therefore a predisposition to think that this is normal. Anything else is abnormal. My personal opinion on lesbians and guys is that they do not bother me particularly other than if they insist on special treatment or push their views beyond what is reasonable. In this respect they fall into the same class as religious nuts and religions in my [in]tolerance zone.

Advertising can be sooo wrong http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/10/is_israel_fooling_itself here is the vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmdHvRxsty0

Sergei - positive discrimination does/did exist so I am not sure what tack you are on. BD6 - Given that not everybody who served under her as written to the blogs we do not know how many left the service after complaining of her behaviour. Certainly some people have mentioned she was rubbish and they told her superiors and were stonewalled. There is also a black cloud over the way the Navy deals with high profile cases where they bend over backwards to keep people sweet - see the following http://www.militarycorruption.com/paulas.htm

I suppose she is prepared to say Gower is wrong also? I mean if he says they can be OK whats with trying to make a case on them anyway? Examples of, and consequences. http://everything2.com/title/How+to+correctly+split+infinitives

BD and Sergei perhaps you have not read the 200+ comments in the blogs. Plenty of people kicked up but there was an agenda higher up. there are also complimentary comments on other women officers and reports of two male officers ejected from the Navy this year. Installing bad commanders into a system does no one any favours particularly if commonsense is overruled in favour of political agendas. There are plenty of good coloured and female candidates - putting through some ****ty ones might be argued is sabotage of the system and of the class being favoured. In which case playing it straight is best for all.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3264

Apparently the story was meant to be hushed up but has leaked to the present furore and the Capt. is being "let go". However the Navy has a history of being "careful" with the truth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Hultgreen however being dishonest with the truth is a basically a bad idea These are blogs on the case , the later being bigger and also I end with a quote about a female officer who got kicked out. And that one looks interesting. http://www.susankatzkeating.com/2010/01/captain-holly-graf-plows-down-whale.html http://navycaptain-therealnavy.blogspot.com/2010/01/number-two-in-our-countdown-is-captain.html sample Apparently not everyone gets the same protection:

I had forgotten about the Lears, amazing. I had a customer called Amber Green - married into it. I saw the RTRegiment had a Sergeant Basterd - I wonder how the recruits felt about that : )

Brilliant piece of work. Oh that this became a common check on expenditure!! Journalism turns up trumps.

Good point Belenko. In the UK we have big campaigns about avoiding too much sun - and in fact our OFFICIAL guidelines are derived from Australian rules ..... which given we are a lot further North sucks. We also have lots of problems with children with broken bones .... "Our bodies make vitamin D when the sun shines, and new research suggests the positive effects on health are greater than we ever guessed. But too much sun causes skin cancer. It's a dilemma provoking fierce discussion among scientists For any expectant mother, a brief stroll in the summer sunshine would seem a pleasant diversion from the rigours of pregnancy, a chance to relax in the warmth and to take in a little fresh air. It is a harmless - but unimportant - activity, it would seem. But there is more to such walks than was previously realised, it emerged last week. In a new study, Bristol University researchers revealed they had found out that sunny strolls have striking, long-lasting effects. They discovered that children born to women in late summer or in early autumn are, on average, about 5mm taller, and have thicker bones, than those born in late winter and early spring. Nor was it hard to see the causal link, said team leader Professor Jon Tobias. The growth of our bones, even in the womb, depends on vitamin D which, in turn, is manufactured in the skin when sunlight falls on it. Thus children born after their mothers have enjoyed a summer of sunny walks will have been exposed to more vitamin D and will have stronger bones than those born in winter or early spring. "Wider bones are thought to be stronger and less prone to breaking as a result of osteoporosis in later life, so anything that affects early bone development is significant," said Tobias. The study is important, for it indicates that women should consider taking vitamin D supplements during pregnancy to ensure their children reach full stature. However, the Bristol team's findings go beyond this straightforward conclusion, it should be noted. Their work adds critical support to a controversial health campaign that suggests most British people are being starved of sunshine, and vitamin D - a process that is putting their lives at risk. These campaigners point to a series of studies, based mainly on epidemiological evidence, that have recently linked vitamin D deficiency to illnesses such as diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and tuberculosis. Last week also saw George Ebers, professor of clinical neurology at Oxford University, unveil evidence to suggest such a deficiency during pregnancy and childhood could increase the risk that a child would develop multiple sclerosis. The studies require rigorous follow-up research, scientists admit - but they have nevertheless provoked considerable new interest in vitamin D. Indeed, for some health experts, the substance has virtually become a panacea for all human ills. Dietary supplements should be encouraged for the elderly, the young and the sick, while skin cancer awareness programmes that urge caution over sunbathing should be scrapped, they insist. We need to bring a lot more sunshine into our lives, it is claimed. But this unbridled enthusiasm has gone down badly with health officials concerned about soaring rates of melanomas in Britain, the result of over-enthusiastic suntanning by holidaymakers decades ago. Existing, restrictive recommendations for limits on sunbathing must be rigorously maintained, they argue, or melanoma death rates will rise even further. So just how much sunlight is safe for us? And which is the greater risk: skin cancer or diseases triggered by vitamin D deficiency? Answers for these questions now cause major divisions among health experts. In fact, vitamin D is not strictly a vitamin. Vitamins are defined as nutrients which can only be obtained from the food we eat and which are vital to our health. For example, vitamin C, which wards off scurvy and helps the growth of cartilage, is found in citrus fruits, while broccoli and spinach are rich in vitamin K, which plays an important role in preventing our blood from clotting. And while it is true that vitamin D is found in oily fish, cod liver oil, eggs and butter, our principal source is sunlight. "Vitamin D should really be thought of as a hormone," said Dr Peter Berry-Ottaway, of the Institute of Food Science and Technology, and an adviser to the EU on food safety. "It forms under the skin in reaction to sunlight. We do get some from our food but our principal source is the sun.' The key component in sunlight that stimulates vitamin D production in our bodies is ultra-violet light of wavelengths between 290 and 315 nanometres. Crucially, this component of sunlight only reaches Britain during the months between April and October. "The rest of the year, between November and March, the sun is low in the horizon. Its light has to pass through much more of the atmosphere than in summer and doesn't reach the ground," said Cambridge nutrition expert Dr Inez Schoenmakers. "For half the year we cannot make vitamin D from sunlight, so what we make in summer has to do us for the whole year." In relatively sunny southern England, this is not a problem but in the north and in the cloudier west, noticeable health problems build up - particularly among ethnic minorities. People with dark skin are less able to manufacture vitamin D than those with pale skin and in places with relatively gloomy skies - cities such as Bradford or Glasgow, for example - the impact can be severe. In 2007, the Department of Health revealed that up to one in 100 children born to families from ethnic minorities now suffer from rickets, a condition triggered by lack of vitamin D in which children develop a pronounced bow-legged gait. The disease once blighted lives in Victorian Britain but was eradicated by improved diets. Now it is making a major resurgence, a problem that has been further exacerbated in ethnic communities by women wearing hijabs that cover all of their bodies and block out virtually every beam of vitamin-stimulating sunshine. A major health campaign, offering dietary advice and vitamin D supplements has since been launched. But for many doctors, it is not enough. The nation's health service needs to re-evaluate completely its approach to vitamin D as a matter of urgency; establish new guidelines for taking supplements; and scrap most of the limits on sunbathing currently proposed by health bodies. These calls have been made not because of concerns about rickets, however. They follow the appearance of studies from across the globe that suggest vitamin D plays a key role in the fight against heart disease, cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Vitamin D is not so much an important component of our diets as a miracle substance, they believe. It costs nothing to make, just some time in the sun, and lasts in the body for months. A classic example of the potential of vitamin D was provided by a study published in a US journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, last year. This revealed that people with higher levels of vitamin D were more likely to survive colon, breast and lung cancer. In the study, Richard Setlow, a biophysicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US and an expert on the link between solar radiation and skin cancer, calculated how much sunshine a person would get depending on the latitude on which they lived. Setlow - who worked with colleagues at the Institute for Cancer Research in Oslo - also calculated the incidence and survival rates for various forms of internal cancers in people living at these different latitudes. Their results showed that in the northern hemisphere the incidence of colon, lung and breast cancer increased from south to north while people in southern latitudes were significantly less likely to die from these cancers than people in the north. "Since vitamin D has been shown to play a protective role in a number of internal cancers and possibly a range of other diseases, it is important to study the relative risks to determine whether advice to avoid sun exposure may be causing more harm than good in some populations," Setlow warned. And then there is the impact of vitamin D levels on the heart. In a study published last year in the journal Circulation, scientists at the Harvard Medical School in Boston found that a deficiency of vitamin D increased people's risk of developing cardiovascular disease. In addition, other studies have connected vitamin D deficiency to risks of succumbing to diabetes and TB. And there was last week's publication of the study by Professor Ebers which provided compelling evidence that lack of vitamin D triggers a rogue gene to turn against the body and attack nerve endings, a process that induces the disease multiple sclerosis. In each case, researchers urged that people ensure they take vitamin D supplements to help ward off such conditions. But others believe such calls underestimate the problem. They point to a study, published in 2007, which indicates that more than 60 per cent of middle-aged British adults have less than optimal levels of vitamin D in their bodies in summer, while this figure rises to 90 per cent in winter. Given the links between deficiency and all those ailments, only a full-scale reappraisal of the vitamin's role in British health will work, says Oliver Gillie, of the Health Research Forum. In a report, Sunlight Robbery, he calls for the scrapping of Britain's current SunSmart programme; the setting up of an international conference of doctors and specialists to establish vitamin D's importance to health; promotion of the fortification of food with vitamin D: and the creation of a new committee whose membership would include representatives of groups of patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, cancer and other conditions linked to vitamin D. But most controversial of all is his call for people to sunbathe far more frequently than currently advised. "It is time for the UK government to encourage people to sunbathe safely to reduce cancer risk," he said. Not surprisingly, the notion horrifies many health advisers. "There are now 9,000 new cases of melanoma in Britain every year and 2,000 deaths because people have sunbathed without proper care," said Sara Hiom, director of health information for Cancer Research UK. "Figures have increased dramatically over the past 20 years and will continue to do so unless we are very careful." However, Hiom acknowledged that new studies did indicate that vitamin D deficiency was now linked to an increasing number of cancers and other diseases. "That is no excuse for behaving irresponsibly, however. People must avoided getting sunburned; stay out of the sun between 11am and 3pm even in this country in summer; and use factor 15 or stronger sunblock creams." In addition, other scientists cautioned that links between vitamin D deficiency with diseases like multiple sclerosis had yet to be proved. "People with low vitamin D may be more likely to have MS but that might simply happen because their condition makes it difficult to get out in the sunshine and make vitamin D in their bodies. We have yet to distinguish cause and effect in many of these cases," said Dr Schoenmakers. These points are crucial and suggest we need to be cautious about claims that vitamin D is capable of triggering miraculous cures. On the other hand, enough evidence is now emerging from laboratories round the world to indicate that a nutrient once thought to be a bit-player in the battle against disease, clearly has a key role to play in helping to maintain the general health of large numbers of the population of Britain"

1.Having almost bought one of these devices it is kind of a shock to realize how problematic things can be. http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=5602&tag=nl.e539 2. Science is your harmless friend: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/03/scienceshot-no-gold-medal-for-sk.html?etoc Which also makes me wonder why everyone has stock skis so we can see who is the best skier not who has the best science for waxing.

BTW BF do say it is not necessarily the T/C who is the casualty. As for the delayed target acquisition - my guess is BF took away the spotting bonus that came with a commander having his head up. AS to what the bonus is I am beginning to think BF coded it as an experience level ... but I am guessing.

The question now comes to mind how many other units are making bogus claims based on the 1947 US Army factsheets.

1916 in fighting the Senussi 20 cars and 25 motor ambulances raided Bir Hakkim to rescue captured seamen. Round trip 36 hours 240 miles travelled.

I am very surprised that the captain was not chucked out of the service. Perhaps having two admirals in the family helps. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1969602,00.html

http://www.ifo.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202002/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20November%202002/cesifo_wp808.pdf Shows the damage to each cities housing stock by 1945 and incidentally the size of the cities attacked - of which apparently only 8 had populations over 500000. Interestingly the .pdf suggests that Bomber Harris was only carrying out his mission on flattening German cities as the policy was announced a week before he took his post!.

The question of Cologne is interesting as depending how you read it then the capture of Cologne west of the Rhine is actually a restricted claim. What I mean is that Cologne straddled the Rhine with the old part west of the Rhine. After the bridges were blown it did mean the remaining German troops on the West Bank had nowhere to go when the US attacked. Though there was serious fighting http://www.3ad.com/history/wwll/dugan.pages/saga.pages/7germany2.htm BTW, Aachen had apopulation of 80000 in 1860 and roughly 260000 currently so certainly smaller than Clogne [or even half of Cologne] which was rouhly 700000 during the war. http://wapedia.mobi/en/Battle_of_Aachen BTW on another thread once discussed Henceforth we would not be among a friendly populace nor would we be able to rely on the civil telephone lines as in Northern France where, at times, French Forces of the Interior would telephone ahead of our advancing troops to find the location and number of enemy troops.

This I have knicked from another thread http://wargaming.info/ww2/ustest3a.htm

The longest advance bugs me the most. I see RTR did 51 miles in 5.5 hours in Italy do perhaps we can divide it into theatres and average speed per time segment ME very good spot on the eastwards/westwards ..... you have to wonder if the 3 AD were retreating!!. Or simply that no one has ever really checked the website.

Armour is the same it is simply a percentage hit increase as the vanilla Sherman was marginally closer - I am talking perhaps 10 metres at 600metres and possibly slightly more broadside. So it ignores a manually target during my order phase and goes to the one that cannot harm him. Yep bad AI. Also bear in mind that the 76.2mm and the Firefly both fire at too high a rate and withot target re-acquisition penalties that they both suffered from. BF did not play that very nice - but then given it was a decade ago perhaps there were bound to be problems.

I was playing Mad Russians HSG 3AD Spearhead and was slightly put off by the claims made for the division in the preamble. Some of the claims seemed dubious - and further research shows that thye go back a looong way. Anyway what do you think? http://www.3ad.com/history/wwll/firsts.htm Of Allied ground forces attacking the Third Reich, the "Spearhead" Division was the: FIRST - To fire artillery shells into Germany. FIRST - To advance across the German border. FIRST - To capture a German town. FIRST - To breach the Siegfried Line. FIRST - To advance across the Siegfried Line. FIRST - To shoot down a German plane with guns emplaced on German soil. FIRST - To capture a major German city (Cologne - Germany's 4th largest). FIRST - Ground invasion of Germany in force since Napoleon in 1810 (then Prussia). and Record Holder - For the longest one-day advance through enemy territory in the history of mechanized warfare - 101 miles through central Germany on March 29, 1945. Above "Firsts" in more detail Division Commander throughout: Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose * First artillery fired into Germany by 991st Field Artillery Bn. on 9/10/44 at 13:00 hrs. in vicinity of Eupen, Belgium, with 155mm M-12 self-propelled guns. * First to advance across the German border by Task Force Lovelady under Lt. Col. William B. Lovelady, east of Eupen and south of Aachen, on 9/12/44 at 14:41 hrs. * First to capture a German town, Roetgen, west of Bonn, by Task Force Lovelady, with first actual entry into the town by 83rd Armored Reconnaissance Bn., 9/12/44. * First to breach the Siegfried Line by Task Force "X" under Lt. Col. Leander L. Doan in the vicinity of Scheidmuchle, Germany, on 9/13/44. * First to advance across the Siegfried Line by Combat Command "A" on 9/15/44 under Brig. Gen. Doyle O. Hickey. * First to shoot down a German plane [FW-190 fighter-bomber] from German soil by M-16 halftrack crew from Battery C, 486th AAA Bn on 9/18/44. T/5 Russ Eick, quad-.50 gunner. * First to capture a major German city, Cologne, west side of Rhine River, during March 5-6, 1945. * First ground invasion of Germany by foreign force since 1810, the final year of Napoloen's expeditions into then Prussia. * Record Holder: Longest one-day advance in history by lead elements of the 3AD in the northward drive toward Paderborn, Germany, 3/29/45, 101 miles, as part of U.S. First Army operation to encircle the Ruhr Pocket. Additional Major Accomplishments by the Spearhead Division * Played a major role in the decisive breakthrough of German positions northwest of St. Lo, France -- a crucial series of battles that would allow the Allies to break out from Normandy. * In the area of Mortain, France, along with the 4th and 30th Infantry Divisions, checked and ultimately annihilated a German force of five divisions attempting to drive a wedge between the U.S. First and Third Armies. * In the area of Mons, Belgium, blocked the primary escape route of a German Corps attempting to move westward into defensive positions inside Germany. Together with the 1st Infantry Division, defeated that German Corps in one of the most decisive battles of the Western Front. * Played a major part in the severe fighting of the Battle of the Bulge counteroffensive, first in checking and then in destroying or forcing the surrender of pockets of sizable German forces. * Forged nearly half of the ring in the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket in Central Germany, which resulted in the largest single capture of enemy forces in all of WWII (Europe & Pacific) - 374,000 German Army soldiers. * By the Division's rapid westward advance into Central Germany, played the key role in the forced shutdown of Germany's primary V1 and V2 rocket manufacturing facility outside of Nordhausen, Germany. * Was the first Allied force to liberate a German slave labor camp (the equivalent of a concentration camp) - Nordhausen, Germany. At WeBoB someone has said, and I agree, that the claims aslso seem to slight other forces involved. Also the invasion claim is manifestly false as the French captured several German villages in 1939. The city of Roentgen in 2006 had a population of 8000 and apparently in Germany, as in the UK, a city can be very small - 2000 people. Villages and towns can be bigger. Recon units were in Germany the previous day according to German records. The longest mechanised advance seems quite a claim also and as yet I have not found anything better.

I do have some books on weird titles. One of them divides them up into the filthy to the bizarre: "Invisible Dick" "Fifty years with the Rod" "A Love Passage" and several hundred others and the odd "The ***** Inserts of South East Asia: An Annotated Bibliography with an Overview and Common Perspectives" "Penetrating Wagners Ring" 1978 "Tosser, Gunman" 1938

Ah yes Western Australia

The chap who wrote the piece put it at the more practical level and said that troop commanders would leave the risky stuff to the vanilla tanks of which they had plenty rather than risk the scarcer resource. I find that a much more compelling argument in this case. And the Germans did target Fireflies as a preference so putting them anywhere too vulnerable was always going to be risky. Unfortunately the AI in CM does not do this much to my chagrin and will switch from a manually targeted Firefly to a Sherman because of a minor percentage gain.