One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes is "I want to go to heaven for the climate, and hell for the company."

I don't know how exactly I've got that, but it is the gist...

Yes, but he also wasn't Jonas Salk or Ghandi or Pasteur or Einstein or Justus von Liebig or any of a thousand others who had far greater impact of human life and culture and health. He had a brilliant design sense and he was a brilliant marketer but this whole "He changed the WORLD!" thing is more than a little overblown.

He made better gadgets and made a metric crapload of money doing it. More power to him, but his contributions are incremental and not terribly important.

That explains these boat eggs...

(Okay, those were swans. Still...)

(as others have noted) when you filter at all.

By opting to edit "objectionable material" they have opened themselves up to this.

I think people who think gayness can be "cured" are idiots. But for all I know these app developers are actually following my personal code of business ethics: "1. A fool and his money are my target market, and b. It is morally wrong to allow stupid people to keep their money."

(Or is this a free app?)

I'm firmly of two minds: The first is my standard response whenever anyone objects to any media content: You don't have to buy/watch/listen. There's an "off" switch. Use it.

The other mind is every company that appoints itself guardian of my content should have its arse sued into oblivion.

All I know is that my next device will be android. Not because of this specific case, but because of Apple's consistent impulse for control. The iPhone served me well as a user, but as a developer it rather sucks and the android platform and range of devices have come along nicely.

I haven't done the actual math but I think it would be either 2 or 1 depending on whether you started with an odd or even number of companies... ;)

That's why I asked the question. I think you are talking about watts/m^2 averaged over 24 hours and I'm talking about watts/m^2 at solar noon. In other words, I think both figures are correct because they are different figures. I did use the phrase "factual error," and I really should not have because I think it was me missing the "real figure" you were using. And my original question was free of accusation because I was genuinely only asking for clarification. So this is, I think, an example of violent agreement. So please ignore my loaded reply (which also wasn't intended as an accusation because it still wasn't clear to me).

So, to sum up, sorry for the rhetoric, and thanks for the clarification.

I was trying to figure out why your insolation number was so much less than what I have personally observed and your number makes sense for a diurnal average (which is what you were using, yes?)

Thanks!

That's beautiful, except the 1300 watt figure is already an average. I'm by no means an expert, but I have had a long time interest in solar PV, and the energy at the surface where I live for a flat plate collector aimed at solar noon is quite close to 1000 watts per square meter. Now, a mono or plycrystalline silicon panel, with its indirect bandgap absorption is only going to collect something on the order of 1/5 to 1/10 of that energy, but that doesn't change the fact that it is there.

I actually agree with the overall gist of the original poster's argument. I just think when your rhetoric is expressing agitation at "bad science" and you then go on to make an argument that contains a serious error of fact, well, it undermines one's authority.

I'm not jumping on a high horse here myself. I once in a loud and angry online debate confused hydrocarbons and carbohydrates. We all make mistakes. I expressed mine as a question. I wanted to understand where the figure came from because it didn't match my direct experience with PVs at 45 degrees north.