KaliMan

I was just badly burned in our work cafeteria. I put hot tomato soup into a styrofoam container (made by Dart). When I went to pick up the container it had severely softened and sort of crushed in my hand, even though I wasn't squeezing hard. The hot soup when all over my hand resulting in immediate blistering, etc.

I know there are guidelines for the minimum temperature you need to heat food to make it safe - are there any guidelines for maximum temperatures (particularly when serving in styrofoam) ?

I have latitude and longitude for my starting point and destination (in gps digital form). I am traveling straight from source to destination (as the crow flies). I know how far I've traveled (in miles). How do I get the lat and long for my current position? BTW - the source and destination are always within 10 miles of each other, so the curvature of the earth is less of an issue. I have the algebra for a simple line-slope equation, but it assumes that x, y, and distances are all in the same units.

You should have to fight to be ranked.

I have a small device that uses 5v at 0.5 amps. I have a power supply that is 5v rated at 5 amps. Would that power supply damage my device, or would the device draw only what it needed from the power supply?

I need noise suppression headphones for use when video taping weddings/events/etc. I have narrowed it down to two: one (which costs $60) gives -25db noise suppression and the other (which costs $100) gives -29db noise suppression.

For weddings and similar events, is it worth the extra $40 for the extra -4db suppression?

A free spirited female hooks up with a nerdy guy. It turns out that she has a pattern of hooking up with nerdy guys - she stays with them for X months to help them get over their fear of women and become better socialized - then she leaves and finds a new nerdy guy. I think we discover, at the end, that she has a terminal disease (that she keeps secret).

Anyone recognize the movie?

I need to send a home movie (reunion video) to 30 people. The video is long enough that I would need a DL DVD to hold it. Are DL DVD's really compatable with home DVD players - or would I be better served to split the video into two pieces and create two single layer DVD's?

I am tired of having to contact everyone each time I switch ISP. I know that there are a number of non-ISP providers out there (including Yahoo). I understand that some of them have unique features. POP3 is nice, but not critical.

The Republicans (at least their media front-men) are now saying that Sotomayor should be disqualified from the Supreme Court because she is a woman.

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Obama went on TV to discuss the H1N1 flu and reminded all Americans to use good hygiene - to wash our hands frequently with soap and water. The (obviously socialistic) scientific and medical communities applauded this as a good preventative measure, and evidently they believe that his request had a positive effect in limiting the spread of the flu (not to mention just being good hygiene).

Considering the Republican approach of disagreeing with *everything* Obama says - I thought I'd ask if you think this is another example of 'big brother' government interfering in personal liberty. Was Obama asking us to make the sacrifice of good hygiene another step down the slippery slope of socialism?

I've heard the Right say (on many occasions) that this is a Christian Nation, in part because it was founded by Christians. I have done research and discovered that many of our founding fathers (so far I have confirmed Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and Franklin) were *not* Christians. In fact, Thomas Jefferson was so opposed to the idea that Jesus was the Son of God that he rewrote the Gospels (it is called the Jefferson Bible) to recast Jesus just as a moral man worthy of respect and emulation - all references to divinity or divine intervention were removed. If you take a look at some of the founding father's early writings you'll see that they were strongly opposed to any implication that the US was aligned with any religion.

So, is the US really a Christian Nation, or is the right just trying to rewrite history for their own purposes, or is this just a case of ignorant people who just don't know better?

I watched her fight Cyborg - and even though she was thoroughly beaten I though she was wonderful to watch. She not only hung in there against someone 15 pounds heaver than the weight she usually fights at, she was fun to watch (the first time I ever saw someone try a flying arm-bar). Plus, I think she's kinda hot.

I would love to see pics of her and videos of some of her earlier fights.

I think it is Yahoo mail. I can get to other sites - but when I try to read my mail I get blank screens.

Pro-life advocates make a lot of noise about abortions .. why don't they try to outlaw infertility treatmenst like in-vitro fertilization, where there are extra fertilized eggs which are destroyed. Could it be that there are too many middle-class people who support fertility clinics?

Would it help if you were going to get a $750,000 (after tax) bonus? Does that still constitute a 'major sacrifice for the country'?

I am an experienced Unix/Bash-Java-C programmer. I want to start writing some simple programs to automate certain activities on the Mac (e.g. interfacing with iTunes).

I see that the Mac has several scripting and programming languages, and interfaces to other programming languages. I'll learn a new language (e.g. AppleScript) if I need to - but it would be *ideal* if there was a Java class library that gave me access to all of the AppleScript (and more) functionality.

As I get more comfortable with the Mac and automating tasks on the Mac I may want to start on more ambitious projects - it would be nice if I didn't have to start the learning curve over again for them.

Experienced Mac programmers only - what approach/language do you suggest I take? What resources are there available to me to assist with this transition to the Mac?

I have a white beard and salt'n pepper hair. I wanted white hair for Christmas (I was playing Santa) so I bleached it. Instead of white the hair came out sort of a reddish blonde (the color I had when I was an adolescent) .

I don't want to keep the blonde hair and have to worry about roots all the time (I'm a guy after all). I'm thinking maybe I could dye it back to brown and then streak in gray so it pretty much blends when it grows out .... however (as I've already discovered) my hair turns blonde when it is bleached.

Is there any way, short of cutting my hair off, to get it so that I don't have to worry about coloring as it grows out?

Which do you think would most quickly impact our economic downturn - funding 'shovel ready' projects or implementing new tax cuts?

I am not a Christian, but I really do like Jesus and appreciate him more every day (although it is unlikely I will become a Christian).

The Biblical God is a 3-O God, Omniscient (all knowing), Omnipresent (present in all things), and Omnipotent (all powerful). The Biblical God created all things. Now, let's think of the implications of this.

God created each person knowing in advance how that person would behave. If that person behaves sinfully, it means that God created him with full knowledge that the person would behave sinfully.

So what about free will - the soul's opportunity to control its destiny? Well, if God is 3-O and created all things, then God created the soul. How does a 3-O God create Free Will? Does he put a random number generator in the soul to make decisions? What ever mechanism God put in the soul, God was the one who put it in and put it in knowing in advance how that soul would behave.

This leads me to why I like Jesus. Before Jesus (and after him in some conservative theologies) there was all this worry about sin. It wasn't a question of getting along with people, or working for the common good, or behaving in such a way that you were in harmony with the world - it was about following a set of rules that imperfect people imperfectly wrote down with the belief that those rules were Divinely inspired.

Jesus came along and said that he represented a new covenant with God and gave us new rules which pretty much consist of working for the common good and behaving in a way that is in harmony with nature. And if you believed Jesus and accepted his teachings, then your sins were washed away. In other words, believe Jesus, work for the common good, be in harmony with nature, and stop worrying about sin.

I find it interesting that conservative Christians have a 3-O God, can't really explain Free Will (other than by faith), and have latched onto the old rules and make sin as a centerpiece of their theology. It has been my observation that their theology spends a lot of time threatening with hell and being intolerant of other beliefs. They do this when Gospels make it pretty clear that Jesus expected us to live our lives by the new covenant.

I am interested in thoughtful and logical responses.