rcxb's Comments
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Gardner Island has lots of plants and animals. Groves of coconut trees would provide plenty of food and water for two people, without even looking any further.
The more you work out the details, the more unlikely it becomes. Gardner Island offered a perfect landing spot for their sea plane, yet it wasn't there when search parties came looking days later. So they had to crash and sink elsewhere, but get out, be close enough to that island to make it there alive, go inland and die somewhere hidden (despite available water and food) before they could start a signal fire, and before the search party reached the island? If they didn't choose to land there, there's nothing special about Gardner over any of the other dozens of islands in the vicinity.
The more you work out the details, the more unlikely it becomes. Gardner Island offered a perfect landing spot for their sea plane, yet it wasn't there when search parties came looking days later. So they had to crash and sink elsewhere, but get out, be close enough to that island to make it there alive, go inland and die somewhere hidden (despite available water and food) before they could start a signal fire, and before the search party reached the island? If they didn't choose to land there, there's nothing special about Gardner over any of the other dozens of islands in the vicinity.
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From WP: "a week after Earhart disappeared, a Navy plane searched Gardner Island. It saw signs of recent habitation and the wreck of the SS Norwich City, but did not see any signs of Earhart's plane or people."
So they made it onto the island, but their plane did not, and they very quickly died somewhere hidden from aerial view? Possible, I suppose, but rather far-fetched.
There's a lot of water in the Pacific Ocean, and very little land. It's infinitely more likely they splashed-down, somewhere, and sunk, but I guess you can sell more books with an unsupported fringe theory...
So they made it onto the island, but their plane did not, and they very quickly died somewhere hidden from aerial view? Possible, I suppose, but rather far-fetched.
There's a lot of water in the Pacific Ocean, and very little land. It's infinitely more likely they splashed-down, somewhere, and sunk, but I guess you can sell more books with an unsupported fringe theory...
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Am I missing the joke? Straw figures are common in Japan. It's no mystery:
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/10/19/the-giant-straw-sculptures-of-japan-%e3%80%90photos%e3%80%91/
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/10/19/the-giant-straw-sculptures-of-japan-%e3%80%90photos%e3%80%91/
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Cheap cameras work just fine in full bright sunlight and with stationary subjects. They are worthless, however in low light conditions, and pretty poor with any motion. You might notice that expensive cameras have a HUGE lens up front... That allows them to gather far more light, in far less time, which makes all the difference with action or low-light shots.
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Actually, Lucas went cheap on the prequels. He used digital HD cameras, which saved a lot of money, BUT you will never see them in 4k when that becomes popular. Film would have been more expensive, but higher quality and more future-proof.
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Brazil did largely the same thing, building Brazilia from nothing in the middle of the jungle, and making it their new capitol. There were many problems and untold critics calling it mad and ill fated. But it seems to have worked out well enough, now, with the benefit of much hindsight.
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The guy with the SUV clearly knows what he's doing... He has a tall snorkel coming out of the engine, meaning he drives it through deep water for fun. What's more, even if he got washed down-river he would merely need to wait for an opportunity and could drive right out of it. All cars should come equipped that way...
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Cats obviously don't read headstones, so how does he even know that location is significant?
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Vastly better explanation of the strategy here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-I0bAuEUE
"The magic of this solution ISN'T that it gives better odds for any single individual to find their [instrument], because it doesn't [still 50/50]. It's that all the successes or failures are forced to happen together. Everyone wins together [30% of the time], or everyone loses together [70% of the time]. Your fates are linked..."
Think of it this way... Just by random chance, each instrument COULD end up in its correct box. Or they could all end-up one-step removed, two steps removed, etc. Then EVERYONE would only have to try one/two/three boxes, and they would ALL (not just one or a few of them) succeed. If instead they tried opening boxes in a random order, somebody in the group would invariable need to try all 10 boxes before getting it right, and you'd never stand a chance of everyone winning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-I0bAuEUE
"The magic of this solution ISN'T that it gives better odds for any single individual to find their [instrument], because it doesn't [still 50/50]. It's that all the successes or failures are forced to happen together. Everyone wins together [30% of the time], or everyone loses together [70% of the time]. Your fates are linked..."
Think of it this way... Just by random chance, each instrument COULD end up in its correct box. Or they could all end-up one-step removed, two steps removed, etc. Then EVERYONE would only have to try one/two/three boxes, and they would ALL (not just one or a few of them) succeed. If instead they tried opening boxes in a random order, somebody in the group would invariable need to try all 10 boxes before getting it right, and you'd never stand a chance of everyone winning.
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Fast food in schools sounds fine to me... They can't screw up any worse than schools did. I remember frozen pepperoni pizzas cooked harder than crackers, egg rolls burnt to a crisp, and horrid low grade hamburger meat between stale buns, and NOTHING ELSE... Not a slice of tomato, lettuce, zip. This for nearly $2, back when fast food dollar menus were respectable, and shortly before McDonalds introduced their $0.29 hamburgers. Oh, and I forgot to mention the lines... I actually had days where I got in line a couple minutes after the bell, and was several spots back when lunch ended. I hated school lunches with a passion, and can't imagine any changes could possibly be bad...
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WWII was devastating. But... incredible progress came out of it, and the world learned some important lessons. War deaths dropped dramatically and permanently after, we managed to avoid global thermonuclear war, technological progress was incredible, global stability reigned ever since, and world economies have benefited incredibly from that.
Who's to say what would have happened in an alternate timeline without Hitler? You can hope we'd still have gotten all the good, without all the bad, but you don't know. The outcome could have been far worse. Without some way to test the alternatives, it would be an insane risk to shuffle the chess pieces of our past like that. Saving millions might later doom billions... Hope your time travel machine is of the scifi sort, where you can always go back earlier and change things back again and again.
It's a shame Hitler always gets top billing, when Stalin actually murdered so many more people, and did such devastation to his country, neighbors, and anyone unlucky enough to be in a country that joined the Warsaw Pact, with no punishment for his crimes during his lifetime, and far too little after.
Who's to say what would have happened in an alternate timeline without Hitler? You can hope we'd still have gotten all the good, without all the bad, but you don't know. The outcome could have been far worse. Without some way to test the alternatives, it would be an insane risk to shuffle the chess pieces of our past like that. Saving millions might later doom billions... Hope your time travel machine is of the scifi sort, where you can always go back earlier and change things back again and again.
It's a shame Hitler always gets top billing, when Stalin actually murdered so many more people, and did such devastation to his country, neighbors, and anyone unlucky enough to be in a country that joined the Warsaw Pact, with no punishment for his crimes during his lifetime, and far too little after.
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https://archive.org/details/santa_claus_conquers_the_martians_ipod