I was young when I first saw the ending, and it put a seed in my brain. Every time I saw something in the news, and then years later the CIA reluctantly admitted to something, the seed would grow a little more.

If you enjoyed "Die Hard", I think you might also enjoy "Three Days of the Condor" (1975).

Robert Redford plays an analyst who reads data and writes reports for the CIA. He has no super-spy training and has never done field work. Something goes horribly wrong.

When Don Fanucci sees Vito Corleone in the dark corner, he says something that the closed captioning didn't translate. Turns out it is "what do you have in your hand?"

So, just to be on the safe side, I should smoke filterless Camels while scraping the popcorn off?

Its the same issue with battery run-time in phones and laptops. If you incorporate a slide-in framework like a cordless drill, it takes up room and the battery has to be a bit smaller, leading to slightly less range.

My newest laptop has the same size screen as m last one, but the last one had a pop-off battery. The new one is slimmer and lighter than the old one but the battery is smaller.

First season is not bad. I never knew why at the time, but information got around with all the reasons it went downhill.

These people from this era were familiar with farm animals, and also stray cats and dogs copulating and birthing offspring.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out oral sex, and anal intercourse (the French and Greek "methods" to avoid pregnancy, respectively)...and also, there have always been "forbidden literature" such as the written memoirs of Casanova, and others...

It's established in the old testament that good angels and bad angels can "appear" to be other shapes. I think there has been some confirmation bias in the demonizing of cats back then.

Who can be seen to skulk around on dark nights, when all "good people" are tightly indoors? Black cats.

Being dark helps them to better hide from those who would kill them, and hunting mice and rats at night is something that helps an oppressed animal survive. Once they see people hating them and trying to kill them (or even just throwing rocks), they don't need to know why. They'd hide out in the day, and hunt at night.

I'd look into a starter system with a battery, and inverter, along with the power switch between grid and battery. This way, when there is a power outage, the battery can run basic features in your home.

Later, you can add a generator, and after that, you can add solar panels. The size of the battery can also be expanded along with the number of solar panels.

I plan to buy a dual-fuel Gasoline/propane generator for those rare occasions when the battery has run out. Here's my plan:

1. add a large battery and inverter to power the heater system when its cold. Battery will be 48V and expandable to add run-time. (I have inverter, plan to buy Nissan Leaf modules)
2. Add dual-fuel generator ($1200?)
3. Add solar panel array, basic 48V and ensure its expandable.

Edit: the reason for paying extra for dual-fuel is that gasoline is problematic in the winter, and propane is more likely to start during a severe cold spell. Also, relying on only gasoline or propane is limiting. In a power outage (which can happen at any time of year), I want to have options such as solar, gasoline, propane...

I'm not saying $100/mo is my total electrical bill, I'm suggesting that a $15K system might reduce my bill $100/mo. These are just hypothetical numbers to form the basis for a discussion of ROI, which seems to be the main counter-argument against adding solar to homes.

In the four hottest months, my bill doubled from roughly $100/mo to $200/mo (from using the A/C). I have a small house and I try to be frugal. I live near central Kansas. Power outages have not lasted long, since the system here is dialed-in to that issue. However, a power outage remains a concern for me.

Rebates and power-feed-back to the grid vary from region to region. This is one area where Germany is way ahead of the rest of the world. They are at the same latitude as Canada, but in spite of the low solar gain, they have structured the addition of solar systems to be almost zero cost to have installed by a professional.

This is an effort to avoid building more of the centralized power generation that has been the norm for over 100 years.

I'm unfamiliar with the term. What does intermittency mean to you?

Let's just say that solar costs more than it would save you on your electric bill. That's called a long "Return on Investment" / ROI.

Perhaps you're not "handy" at installation, so you pay a company $15,000 to buy and install everything. As a result your "average" savings is $100/month. It would take 150 months to "break even". That's 12-1/2 years.

But what if your region occasionally has power outages? Sometimes a back-up system is not about ROI, sometimes its about having electricity to run the gas heater controller during a cold spell.

Electric motors can make their max torque from the first RPM, and a gasoline motor needs to get up to its peak RPM's to make it's peak power. This is why an electric motor can be a one-speed, and gasoline engines need several gears to go through to stay near a higher RPM through most of the acceleration in order to accelerate reasonably fast.

Drag racing gasoline cars rev the motor up very high and then "dump" the clutch which makes the rear tires spin. If you do this is everyday life, the clutch will not last long.

With an electric, you can dump the full power into the motor for a few seconds without it overheating, or wearing out, so...they are built to be able to do that because it is one of the benefits of electric, so they want to emphasize it.

I'm an anonymous poster on the internet, and I'm actually full of a steaming pile of manure.

Meteorite iron has a specific percentage of nickel, and iron from the earth has almost none, among other distinctions (sometimes iridium).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun%27s_meteoric_iron_dagger

As far as the Earth being covered by them, if we didn't have a water cycle and weather, the surface of the Earth would look like the moon. Civilization has only been experimenting with melting nuggets such as copper and tin for a few thousand years.

I wish I had a good source for that but, I don't.

When copper became useful, surface copper was taken first before deep mining was used. Same with tin and iron. If Iron weapons were made before and iron mine was operated, they used surface iron.

An all-gas cycle would be physically larger. Phase-change allows a system to be much more compact for a given movement of BTU's.

Stirling engines used in reverse for cryocooling show that a gas-only cycle can get cold enough to run a refrigeration system.

Whenever I hear about sub-standard ballistics from anything other than the 30-06, I have to laugh.

Studies by the Americans, British, and everyone else showed that the vast majority if "hits" in WWII were less than 100 yards.

I can understand snipers wanting more. The majority of confirmed hits by Chris Kyle was with a 300 WinMag. He said if he had a 338 Lapua available earlier, he would have preferred that.

The average soldier has a hard time hitting stationary targets that are black and white at 400m

Just before WW-One, the Navy developed a 6mm cartridge for the Lee straight-pull rifle, but the first batch sank in Cuba. Roughly .24 caliber

I've seen several youtubes about this, and I like the evidence and conclusions in this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq4G-7v-_xI

Thanks!

I think the biggest change in perception might be when Galileo observed it through a telescope.

The way I recall the story is that a glass blower noticed if water was in a round goblet, then anything behind it was magnified. He experimented, and made a low-power telescope, which was eventually brought to the attention of Galileo.

Galileo showed this the the leaders of the town, and showed how it could be taken to a tower to see a ship that is on the horizon, much sooner than could be seen with the naked eye.

The city paid a contract to start making these portable telescopes, and with the profits, he funded the making of machines that could grind and polish much larger lenses.

With a larger telescope, he got good view of the phases of Venus, a good view of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, along with the four largest moons of Jupiter. And of course a close-up of our moon, allowing him to make detailed drawings of the craters.

Now that you mention it, the Spaniards did seem to be more focused on gold and silver, less on trade and building businesses.

You didn't see any snakes, did you?

I think it's hilarious that journalists actually believe any savings will be passed onto the consumer. If demand stays the same and cost are lowered, the customer pays the same and the city/state uses the extra money for other projects.

Gotta use two phones, but...yeah.