http://www.likesuchas.com/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/04/25/funny-pictures-wuz-it-my-cuteness-sry/

http://kokogiak.com/solarsystembodieslargerthan200miles.html

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/9836/

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/space-debris-1.jpg

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NbKUQiRwaD8

http://fukung.net/images/527/DeadeyeDick.jpg

Farm Subsidiaries

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/washington/15cnd-farm.html
"The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve a five-year, $307 billion farm bill, sending it to President Bush for what is expected to be his futile veto."

"Mr. Bush had sought an adjusted gross income limit of $200,000 above which farmers could not qualify for any subsidy payments. The bill passed by the Senate and House, however, allows farm income of up to $750,000 and nonfarm income of $500,000 per individual."

I know we are both against farm subsidiaries, but this is over $1000.00 per person to farms. What gets me is this has such overwhelming support (from congress). $750k AGI before they can't get the money? Looks like I'm becoming a farmer.

"Some critics have also pointed to earmarks in the bill, including a tax break for racehorse owners added by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky"

As pissed as I am about this, that Kentucky race horse tax break is pretty funny.



So I started to do a bit more reading into farm subsidies, mainly I wanted to see what their pros were (there had to be pros).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy

"The majority of the arguments in favor of agricultural subsidies are based largely on social and cultural values. Farm subsidies have the effect of transferring income from the general tax payers to farm owners. There is a common perception in many countries that farmers are among the hard working poor, thus there is often public support for using tax dollars to supplement farmers' incomes. (In most developed countries however, the majority of farm owners are not poor, and many are quite wealthy. Also, in many cases farm subsidies benefit rich farmers at least as much, and sometimes significantly more than poor farmers.)"

'They're hard working people, so let's give them more money?!' Pure insanity. I read the whole 'benefits' section on Wikipedia, and there wasn't anything worthwhile. In fact most of it was more criticisms of it. I have to hope in this case Wikipedia is just biased or something. We give an average of $16 billion every year to farms, there has to be a reason other than lobbyists.


On a slightly related note I didn't realize how fucking crazy high top tax rates had been until recently (94% !):
"The apportionment requirement made income taxes on property practically impossible, and Congress did not want to limit the income tax solely to a tax on wages. Therefore, in 1909 Congress proposed the Sixteenth Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1913 when it was ratified by the required number of states. The Amendment modified the requirement for apportionment of direct taxes by exempting all income taxes—whether considered direct or indirect—from the apportionment requirement. Congress re-adopted the income tax that same year, levying a 1% tax on net personal incomes above $3,000, with a 6% surtax on incomes above $500,000. By 1918, the top rate of the income tax was increased to 77% (on income over $1,000,000) to finance World War I. The top marginal tax rate was reduced to 58% in 1922, to 25% in 1925, and finally to 24% in 1929. In 1932 the top marginal tax rate was increased to 63% during the Great Depression and steadily increased, reaching 94% (on all income over $200,000) in 1945. During World War II, Congress introduced payroll withholding and quarterly tax payments. Top marginal tax rates stayed near or above 90% until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% in 1982 and eventually to 28% in 1988."

Also I found this graph rather interesting:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Federal_spendings.png

http://www.money.co.uk/article/1000390-13-year-old-steals-dads-credit-card-to-buy-hookers.htm

http://simulatedcomicproduct.com/2007/10/29/surrender-humanoid/

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Image:Whydoesntthisworkkg2.jpg

http://www.pollsb.com/polls/poll/11629/mayor-puts-up-funny-stop-signs-to-make-drivers-stop-illinois-department-of-transportation-oreders-him-to-remove-them

http://www.afrotechmods.com/reallycheap/batteries/batts.htm

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080323-rick-rolled-to-child-porn-youre-a-pedophile-says-fbi.html

http://www.rabbitcare.org/rabbit-eye_view.htm

http://www.swaygogear.com/articles/truckcamping/default.html

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976737732

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Geology_classes_in_Alabama_now_mandating_alternative_%22Paul_Bunyan%22_theory

http://www.askgenghis.com/pregnant.html

http://comicblasphemy.com/comics/2007-08-24.jpg

http://www.drivers.com/article/149/

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/chasing-the-american-dream-with-25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEeqHj3Nj2c

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2007/09/18/overruled/

So I did some reading on highways. If you want, you can start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_highways_in_the_United_States

But that isn't what I wanted to mention. I discovered the purpose of counties. They manage unincorporated areas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unincorporated_area

It turns out that pretty much the whole north east (and all of NJ) is covered by municipalities (towns), and thus counties aren't very strong. But apparently out west they are used a lot more, as there are areas which aren't part of any town. I like how being from NJ it seems insane to me that there would be be an area which isn't part of a town or city. In theory I guess this would mean you wouldn't pay property tax.


http://www.b3ta.com/links/An_Engineers_Guide_to_Cats

http://russellsteapot.com/know-your-bible/new/jeremiah-102-4.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312018,00.html <- Killing yourself over internet relationship = a good idea

http://southjersey.craigslist.org/zip/653911455.html <- Used porn

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/4677/1152165116789vp6ti0.jpg <- Tips like these are how the pros get ahead.

So doing research on the camera I want, lookinig at video sample on youtube I found this (if it's not obvious I think this would be a neat idea for SE trip):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfDG63UQNmc

http://mb-soft.com/public2/diet007.html

http://mb-soft.com/public2/humaneff.html

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mmVaLp8icoU

Cost of Boiling Water

So in today's exciting math adventure I'm trying to figure out the cost to boil a pot of water. I was reading something saving money, and it said to save money instead of wasting soap and sponge life on scrubbing a pot with gunk in it, boil a vinegar solution in it for 5 minutes, then clean normally. Note I think it will be cheaper, but that's not the point I want to do the math.
http://www.frugalurbanite.com/?p=14
So it breaks down like this:
savings = (wear + extra soap) - (water + vinegar + energy), where wear is the extra wear on the sponge, soap is extra soap you use, keep in mind you still need to use soap and sponge to clean it, this should just use less. Then you subtract the cost of the water, the energy to heat to water, and the vinegar. I suppose the value of your time should be figured in, but I'm going to ignore it, both because it's hard to peg a value, and because I'm not sure which would take more time, and how much more.

Finding the average cost of tap water is kind of hard, but I know water is very cheap, and everything I've found list prices well under a penny/gallon. Vinegar is also cheap ($1.60/gallon), and it says a weak solution. At first I assumed a weak solution would just be a couple tablespoons, but I am seeing 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water called a weak solution online, so we'll go with that (25% vinegar). I'm also using 2 quarts as our pot size, meaning we'll need 1pint or 1/8th gallon of vinegar = $0.20.

Now come the cost of energy, this is the fun part. This is going to be complicated. First I'll need to find the amount of energy to boil water for 5 minute, then I need to find out how efficient common stoves are (gas and electric), lastly I'll need to find to find the cost of the gas or electric. I decided to start with efficiency, as I knew this would be the hardest to find. It turns out I was right, because I've been reading for about an hour and I've yet to come up with a reliable figure. One link I found list 40% and that seems reasonable. Next the cost of energy, since I'm growing tired of this, I'm going to use $0.10/kWh for electricity, and $10/1000 cubic feet of gas (1ft^3 = 1030 BTUs). Now to convert all this nonsense into joules:
1 kWh = 3,600,000 joules
1 MJ = $0.027

1000 ft^3 = 1,030,000 BTUs = 1,086 MJ
1 MJ = $0.009

Now how much energy does it take to boil water:
50F (10C) tap water, 2L (2.11 quarts)
90C * 4.184 * 2000 = 753,120 J, 90 degrees to 100C, 4.184 is the specific heat of liquid water, 2000 grams.
However, now it again get complicated. Because it takes a lot of energy to actually vaporize the water (2260J/g, compare with 418.4J/g to heat it 100C). The problem is that not all the water is vaporized when you boil it for 5 minutes, since you still have liquid water left. In fact not much water is lost at all, but since the energy to vaporize is so high it can't be ignored. I'm going to assume you lose 100g (5% of the total) of water. I'm guessing that since I've never cooked anything in my life a lot of this is harder, but that is what we are using.
2260 * 100 = 226,000 J
226,000 + 753,120 = 979,120 J ~ 1 MJ
Using 40% efficiency that means we'll use 2.5 MJ to put 1 MJ into the water. This will cost $0.0675 electric, or $0.0225 gas.
Putting it all together, $0.20 (vinegar and water) + $0.07 (energy) = $0.27 ($0.23 gas).

Just for fun, let's boil all the water, and assume 10% efficiency.
2260 * 2000 = 4,520,000 J
4,520,000 J + 226,000 J = 4,746,000 J ~ 5 MJ
5 MJ * 10 (10% efficiency) = 50 MJ
$1.35 electric, $0.45 gas (plus $0.20 vinegar/water)

What did we learn from this? Don't try to figure things out with so many unknowns.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng99196.htm

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=56371

http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?&a=126197&c=ecica

Falling to 88mph

There was a thread about B2TF when they used the train to get to 88mph, and if they could. This got me thinking about how to solve this problem (assuming the train couldn't do it). It seemed a simple way would just be to free fall. However I know large distances are covered quite fast when free falling.

88mph = 39.3395 m/s
freefall = 9.81 m/s^2
40m/s / 9.81ms = 4.077s
v = .5 (s + e), where v is average velocity, s is starting speed , and e is ending speed
.5 (0 + 40) = 20m/s average speed over 4 seconds = 80 meters covered in 4 seconds.
Thus you'd need to fall at least 80 meters (say 100 to be safe) to reach 88mph. Now the question becomes could you find some place to fall at least 100m from in the late 1800's. Well the two obvious choices are some sort of man made building, or a cliff. It seems both would have been suitable, and in fact I seem to remember the train falling into a ravine anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_three_tallest_structures_in_the_world