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Comment: Re:we scrub at 5:30. (Score 1) 141

by UltraOne (#47258021) Attached to: I typically start my workday ...
Actually, in the healthcare context, using scrub as a verb most specifically refers to scrubbing your hands in preparation for surgery or another sterile procedure. It can also be used as a synecdoche for the entire process of the provider getting ready for surgery, starting at changing from street clothes to scrubs and ending with donning the sterile gown and gloves (or for a subset of that process if you already put your scrubs on earlier in the day).

Comment: Re:How about some other ideas (Score 1) 146

by UltraOne (#43989635) Attached to: Project Envisions Modular Aircraft That Double as Train Cars

I think an issue with the gull wing design would be that it would significantly complicate and perhaps also weaken the design of the fuselage, especially given the need for it to be pressure tight. My idea for a similar concept would be to have a circular seam at the back of the fuselage. The plane would be backed into the gate, the seam opened, and the tail swung out of the way (I've seen cargo planes that have that kind of hatch). Then the entire inside of the fuselage (passengers and baggage) would be pulled out the back onto a receiver structure in the terminal.

You would need a system of rails to allow for this movement and to couple the interior to the fuselage shell. There would also be a safety issue during the movement (since the fuselage moves relative to the passengers next to it in the window seats). A lightweight, non-structural shell that is part of the inside could be used. Alternatively, if the inner surface of the fuselage was completely smooth, with nothing that passengers or gear could catch on, perhaps it would be safe to slowly move the interior out of the fuselage.

Regarding the boarding order, what you are forgetting is that because of the scramble for overhead bin space, airlines allow higher priority passengers (more expensive tickets, frequent fliers, etc) to board first, and those people tend to have the better seats near the front of the plane. I never understood why when the airlines started charging for baggage, they didn't charge for carry on and make checked baggage free (or at least significantly cheaper than carry on). The current system on most US airlines (charge for checked baggage, carry on is free) obviously encourages people to carry more bags on the plane and, IMHO, is a major source of boarding delays.

Comment: Clinical Perspective (Score 3, Informative) 83

by UltraOne (#39303999) Attached to: Drug-Free Organ Transplants From Unrelated Donors







To address some of the other comments:



Comment: Re:One question (Score 1) 332

by UltraOne (#38036014) Attached to: Judge Makes Divorcing Couple Swap Facebook Passwords

IANAL, but the short answer is basically judges can order whatever they want in theory, although in practice there are significant limitations (more on that below). Another big point to mention is that the United States uses a common law system, meaning that large parts of the law have never been defined by a statute (i.e. a law passed by a legislature). The major limitations:

1. The judicial selection process almost always picks people who are not going to go off the deep end and start issuing crazy orders, but generally stick close to what is authorized by statutory, regulatory, or case law.

2. Orders from lower courts can be appealed and overturned by appellate courts.

3. There are mechanisms in place to impeach judges.

Within the law, there are various factors that limit orders judge are supposed to issue, and I suspect a relevant one here is jurisdiction. Divorce is a matter for state courts, and if the divorce is occurring in a state where Facebook doesn't have enough of a presence to bring it under the judge's jurisdiction, ordering the parties to swap passwords may be a lot simpler (from a legal perspective) compared to whatever they would have to do to bring another action in Federal court or in a state court with jurisdiction over Facebook to compel Facebook to turn over the data. I'm not sure why the court didn't just ask Facebook to turn over the relevant data. Of course it's also possible they did and Facebook refused, or the court knows that Facebook has refused similar requests (as distinguished from orders) in the past.

Comment: Re:Inflation (Score 3, Informative) 696

by UltraOne (#36933832) Attached to: Seigniorage Hack Could Resolve Debt Limit Crisis

This is a very good point. The Federal Reserve currently holds about $1.6 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. So it would be possible to sell those securities (which pulls the money that others use to buy them out of the economy) so that the the coin hack had no net effect on the money supply until the Federal government spent more than $1.6 trillion.


Comment: Re:Inflation (Score 5, Informative) 696

by UltraOne (#36933532) Attached to: Seigniorage Hack Could Resolve Debt Limit Crisis





Comment: Re:Postpone only (Score 4, Interesting) 696

by UltraOne (#36933248) Attached to: Seigniorage Hack Could Resolve Debt Limit Crisis
United States

+ - Seigniorage Hack to Prevent Debt Limit Crisis-> 4

Submitted by UltraOne
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Best case scenario? (Score 3, Interesting) 152

by UltraOne (#35256048) Attached to: Judge Rules Against China In 'Green Dam' Suit

Almost all of the US Treasury debt owned by China (and in general) is in the form of book-entry securities. This means there is no physical document for the treasury bill, note or bond. It exists as an entry in the database of a broker or the US Treasury. The court could simply order ownership of an appropriate value of those securities to be transferred from the Chinese government to the successful plaintiff.

Comment: Re:IANAL but... (Score 5, Informative) 152

by UltraOne (#35255828) Attached to: Judge Rules Against China In 'Green Dam' Suit

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act is the US federal law that regulates suits in US courts (federal or state) against foreign governments. It lists exceptions to the general rule that foreign states are immune to suit because of sovereign immunity. The exception that this suit is probably based on is the one that says a foreign state can be sued when it is engaged in “commercial activity”.

Assuming the plaintiff wins the suit, damages would be collected by seizing assets of the foreign state under US jurisdiction. Since US Treasury bonds owned by China are essentially promises by the US Treasury to pay a certain amount of money when the bond comes due, transferring ownership of those bonds to the plaintiff would seem to be a way of collecting damages. Of course, that might have diplomatic consequences.

IANAL either.

Comment: Re:The one they always overlook (Score 1) 454

by UltraOne (#34018018) Attached to: The Time Travel Paradoxes of Back To the Future

Because gravity is different from all other forces, and in some sense, is not a force at all. Mass (or more precisely, all components of the stress-energy tensor) changes the geometry of space-time so that the distances between objects, free of any forces acting on them, are different than what they would be in a flat Minkowski space-time.

An analogy is the difference in behavior between objects moving along lines that are initially parallel on a flat 2D plane and the 2D surface of a 3D sphere. On a plane, the objects will never meet. On a sphere, objects that start on adjacent lines of longitude at the equator (assuming the sphere is marked with latitude and longitude lines like the Earth), and move (initially in parallel) North will eventually meet at the North Pole. There is no force that pushes the objects together: they move together because of the geometry of the surface that they travel in.
