The Wikipedia entry for Gollum at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gollum#Characteristics says: In the first edition of The Hobbit, Tolkien made no reference to Gollum's size, leading illustrators such as Tove Jansson to portray him as very large.[7] Tolkien realised the omission, and clarified in later editions that Gollum was "a small slimy creature."[T 3]The Two Towers characterises him as slightly larger than Sam;[T 17] and later, comparing him to Shelob, one of the Orcs describes him as "rather like a spider himself, or perhaps like a starved frog."[T 18]
If you need to planets to be on the same side of the sun as the Earth then there's a 0.5^7 chance on average that would happen, or on average nearly 3 days per year. Also, Pluto is very near Jupiter in the sky (see https://heavens-above.com/PlanetSummary.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT ) so potentially visible. But at magnitude 14.4 you'll need about an 8-inch telescope to see it, if I read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude correctly. The next dimmest, Neptune, is mag. 7.9 which can be seen (in dark skies) with binoculars.
"Despite claims of 90% validity by polygraph advocates, the National Research Council has found no evidence of effectiveness. ... A polygraph cannot differentiate anxiety caused by dishonesty and anxiety caused by something else." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness So many police techniques - bite mark analysis, arson detection, bullet led analysis, and even fingerprint matching - have proven more questionable than the practitioners of the field suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_science#Questionable_techniques
The article says Avis Budget Group will manage the physical fleet of vehicles. I figure Avis has plenty of experience in dealing with rentable unsupervised, enclosed spaces.
Here's one of those legal battles - who will be charged if an autonomous vehicle kills or injures someone, or causes damage, or otherwise breaks the law (eg, speeds because its internal information was wrong), in a situation where a human driver doing the same thing would be charged? If it's a corporate entity instead of a person, what's the equivalent to, say, a sentence of 1 week in jail?
Franzified, I think you are turning into your parents. ☺︎ I mean, as a kid in the 1980s I remember adults asking why the kids these days were buying distressed or acid-washed jeans, and couldn't understand why anyone would buy jeans with holes already in them. So this seems like more of the same.
Looks like it's described in patent US28981A, "Process of producing smoke clouds from moving aircraft", granted in 1927. Application filed 1925. https://patents.google.com/patent/US1619183A/en . "We prefer to employ a smoke-pr ducing liquid such as TiCl₄, SnCl₄, oleum and chlorsulphonic acid. ... The effect produced is the generation of a falling smoke curtain, which reaches the ground in the form of a long, high screen. Dependent on the height at which the plane is travelling when the liquid is released, the smoke curtain may be made to hang in the air, or may be made to rest on the ground."
Sure. I've been to the Blue Lagoon too. For that matter, manatees in Florida thrive in power plant wastewater, to the point that losing those plants might be a problem - https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060031090 .
Not just the Romans! Urine use for tanning and fulling (cleaning wool) was widespread. Starting around the Renaissance, urine was used to make saltpeter, essential for the gunpower used in centuries of wars. For example, saltpetermen would come to dig saltpeter from under the barn where the animals peed (and everywhere else with nitrated earth, under protection of the crown). Urine from beer and wine drinkers was in demand because it was thought to produce better yields. There's even a story during the US Civil war when Jonathan Haralson, Agent Nitre and Mining Bureau, asked the "ladies of Selma ... to preserve the chamber lye to be collected for the purpose of making nitre. A barrel will be sent around daily to collect it." Leading Northerners to write a ditty to the tune of "O Tannenbaum": "Jon Haralson, Jon Haralson—you are a wretched creature; You’ve added to this bloody war a new and useful feature. / You’d have us think, while every man is bound to be a fighter, / The Ladies, bless the pretty dears, should save their pee for nitre."
"It's a Southern Thing" did a skit about 6 types of Back-to-School Moms. #6 was "The Stay At Home" Mom - https://youtu.be/jGoFVcUGyLQ?t=64 - spoofing Risky Business.
I went to North Dakota to see the giant buffalo statue in Jamestown. As a bonus, I drove through Strasburg, birth town of Lawrence Welk and his drummer Johnny Klein. In Idaho I visited Craters of the Moon Nat'n Park ]to see the lava tubes, and drove through Arco, the "first community in the world ever to be lit by electricity generated solely by nuclear power." In Liberal, Kansas I visited Dorthy's house (of Oz fame) and the Mid-America Air Museum. In Mississippi ... I bought gas in Biloxi.
So many police techniques - bite mark analysis, arson detection, bullet led analysis, and even fingerprint matching - have proven more questionable than the practitioners of the field suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_science#Questionable_techniques
If it's a corporate entity instead of a person, what's the equivalent to, say, a sentence of 1 week in jail?