I'll add that maybe what is most impressive is not the laser power, but the control system required to keep the beam on a moving target at a mile away. The author seemed to miss that part of the technology.
That's actually rather easy. The navy solved that problem decades ago for ballistic trajectories which substantially more complicated computationally. Line of sight targeting is FAR easier with modern computers. That is why they use lasers to paint targets for missiles to home in on a target. It's much easier to target something with a laser which is not meaningfully affected by gravity or wind or time to intercept.
I think the really impressive bit would be how they could keep the laser operational in an environment as hostile as the ocean. I would think that the ambient salt water would be seriously challenging towards keeping a laser functioning optimally.
You can extend the length of that "short order" by spinning the target.
Even if that would work you would have to:
1) spin the target in a useful rotation (difficult when target is being hit head on by laser) 2) have enough surface area to allow energy dissipation between rotations. 3) be able to dissipate energy fast enough or absorb sufficient energy for any rotation to actually matter 4) hope that the laser cannot maintain it's ability to target a single point for a length of time that matters 5) be able to practically coat the target with a mirrored coating 6) that the mirror could somehow retain sufficient ability to reflect in the face of environmental factors.
You're right. Let me rephrase that. I've never met a rich stock analyst who made his money by doing exactly what he told everyone else to do.
Bingo. It's exactly the same phenomena as guys who promise to teach you how to rich quick in real estate or forex trading or something else. If what they were selling actually worked, why would they not just use that information to get rich themselves? The ONLY way a stock adviser would be worthwhile is if they could beat the market average (S&P 500 etc) and most of them demonstrably cannot beat the market. Any time you can show an above average return others will pile into that opportunity and make it evaporate. The only way to prevent that from happening is to have an informational advantage which you would lose by advising others in most cases.
There ARE a few stock advisers out there who actually have a record of getting better than average returns. The problem is that you generally cannot tell a bad stock adviser from a good one until after the fact. Someone who has had a good track record for 10 years is no guarantee that next year they will have good returns.
I'd be happy to introduce you to a few. They're not particularly hard to find. They also don't have to be particularly good at analyzing stocks to do very well financially for themselves. They just have to be able to get people to listen to what they say.
All these little theories and formulas are swell, but let's see them put their money where their mouth is.
Companies like Goldman Sachs do exactly that and do it very successfully. What you have to remember is that stock analysts are really salesmen, not advisers. Their interests may not actually align with yours and often that is where the profit for them lies.
A better analogy is the auto industry in the 70's. The OPEC gas crunch made every car a brick, pressed higher unemployment, and resulted in towns full of abandoned vehicles.
As someone who was alive during that time I think your perceptions of that time probably don't match the reality. Most people got gas and drove their cars more or less as usual. The stories you hear were the exceptional situations - the extremes which didn't apply most places.
For 2015 we're seeing a generation of drivers who simply don't care enough about having their own car.
They'll care plenty the moment they need a job.
Low wages, transportation options, green choices, etc., are all weighing on an old school industry that hasn't evolved past SUVs.
Low wages? Workers in the US on average enjoy among the highest wages in the entire world, even among young people. More transport options? Not outside select major cities there aren't. In most places in the US if you don't have a car you don't have a job. "Green choices"? Your choices in most places are either a car or a car with better gas mileage unless you like in one of the few areas with decent public transport like NYC or Chicago.
If you were a kid, which would you choose? A $25,000 loan you have to have to find parking for, or a $1,000 watch/band/hat you can use anywhere with no further responsibilities? Probably they are going to take the latter.
Who cares what a child wants? They aren't the ones buying $25K cars. They aren't the ones that have jobs they need to get to. Driverless cars are still science fiction and will remain so for quite some time to come despite the recent progress.
I really dig the Elio, both as a consumer and a "car guy."
Then you are in a small minority. It's a fairly impractical design for most people. Most people will think it is pretty ugly too. This article sums up pretty well why it is likely doomed to failure.
But a sub-10,000 dollar automobile that gets fantastic mileage, in America?
A sub-$10K vehicle with limited seating, small cargo capacity, limited practicality in snow, weird looks, three wheels, slow, etc. If all you care about is MPG and don't need to transport anyone or anything then yeah, it might be a fine choice but that doesn't describe many people. It would be utterly useless to me personally. I can assure you that in the winter it wouldn't even get out of my driveway. (That's not hyperbole on my part. My driveway is a challenge even in a 4WD truck with snow tires sometimes)
Modular? Yeah not so much. I run a company that makes wire harnesses for the auto industry. Both body and jumper harnesses. Very little in modern cars is truly standardized when it comes to electronics. If you don't believe me I have a shelf full of parts catalogs for automotive electronics sitting 10 feet from me as I type this that proves it. They've standardized some stuff but not nearly as much as they should or could.
Car makers don't make much of anything actually, that is why they are called Assembly Plants.
Not even remotely true. Sure they subcontract a lot of stuff out but they make quite a bit themselves even today. Even when they contract stuff out, they often design it themselves or they work very closely with the Tier 1 supplier.
So they can install anything and change it on a whim from model to model and the owners can also change things if they have the money and the inclination.
The auto companies don't change ANYTHING on a whim. They are loathe to change things if they don't have to because there is a lot of cost in doing so. If things truly were modular then you might have a point but they aren't and won't be any time soon. Most of the electronics in any vehicle are highly customized to that vehicle/platform.
That's almost true but electric cars are much more simple than our current internal combustion engine powered vehicles.
Simple in some ways but the drive train is just one aspect of a car.
Compare a Tesla with a Chevy, there must be an order of magnitude fewer parts in the Tesla.
Implying what? GM can make an electric car and in fact they did so 20 years ago. So can Ford, Toyota and the rest. They just aren't jumping in with both feet because they know the fueling infrastructure and charge times simply isn't there yet. Tesla has yet to turn a consistent profit. They've got their research teams working on it but more from a hybrid angle because that is the transition vector. It's unrealistic and (currently) unprofitable to expect people to shift over en-mass to electric vehicles.
This along with the increasing importance of the car software platform (monitoring, communication, self driving, etc) could present a perfect storm for traditional auto companies that are caught napping.
How do you figure? It's not like the software companies are going to start producing cars. They'll all have access to more or less the same software because they'll license it from Google or Apple or whomever.
Hardly anyone over the age of 25 cares about the eye candy touchscreen and gadgets in the car.
Speaking as someone who is over 40 I can assure you that that is not true. I think a touch screen can be a great feature in a car (see Tesla Model S) BUT it has to be well designed - not the shitty interfaces we usually see. I love cars like the Tesla Model S or Nissan GTR with a high geek quotient. Folks over 25 like gadgets just fine but we also expect that the gadget actually be intuitive and improve the driving experience. I do NOT want to spend needless time navigating stupidly designed menus or using a touch screen when a button would make more sense. I do not want important controls buried in a touch screen menu 3 layers deep. I don't want things that will distract my attention from the actual driving.
They either car about space for kids and/or general crap, fuel economy, performance or looks or a combination of the above.
We care about a lot of things. Certainly those you mention but that's hardly end of it.
Everything else can be done on a smartphone.
I do NOT want to be playing with my smartphone while operating a motor vehicle. That's just retarded. If a smartphone can integrate smoothly (none currently do) with my car and provide useful data features (like weather, traffic, music, etc) then that's fine but I shouldn't have to touch the phone at all aside from maybe plugging it into a port for power.
Yes, but the majority of those cats eat the birds. I haven't seen a windmill that can do that.
Even if it were true that the cats eat the birds (and I'm not convinced that it is) why is that relevant? They aren't (usually) hunting birds out of actual need to eat and the bird is just as dead regardless of what happens to it later.
I wonder if windmill ground bird compost will be acceptable for organic farms. If so, it sounds like a win-win.
Perhaps you haven't looked at windmills up close recently but there isn't exactly a pile of dead birds sitting below them. Windmills are not a particularly severe danger to our avian friends.
No tool is truly a uni-tasker unless you lack imagination. That said I disagree with Alton Brown on this point. There is NOTHING wrong with a specialty tool, provided that it either saves significant time or does a better job and if you will actually use it with some regularity.
You forgot that he does allow for 1 uni-tasker. The fire extinguisher. Then the anniversary special came around and he created an alternate use for that as well....
I'm as much a fan of Alton Brown as most people here but I think the "unitasker" rule is a silly one if you really insist on it. There is nothing wrong with a labor saving and/or performance enhancing unitasker (also called a specialty tool) if you use it regularly. Some tools are single purpose but they do that purpose REALLY well. If it is something you will use with some regularity and the tool actually makes the job meaningfully easier there is nothing wrong with specialty tools.
The problem is with special purpose tools that don't actually make a better product or save time. Those are a waste of money and kitchen space.
You bought the wrong rice cooker. The good ones cost less than $10, and go inside your microwave oven. They cook perfect fluffy rice everytime, in exactly 23 minutes.
Or I can do it on my stovetop in about the same amount of time and get perfectly satisfactory results every time. Or if I really care I can pull out my electric rice cooker and use that but I find that to rarely be worth the bother.
Frankly anything that takes 23 minutes in a microwave is a misuse of the microwave.
Why is your rice cooker the only one on the planet that takes longer to cook rice than the standard method?
Rice cookers don't accelerate the process of cooking rice. They make it consistent and (hopefully) easy but they don't speed it up, at least not with any rice cooker I've ever owned or used. If you make rice with most meals I think a rice cooker is a worthwhile investment. I own one (a gift) but I rarely use it because frankly it's more trouble than the benefits justify.
Rice cookers are also brilliant at making slow cooked oatmeal (rolled or steel cut), which is the only kind worth eating.
I get perfectly satisfactory results on a stovetop which requires no special equipment. Rice cookers can do a fine job of course but I certainly wouldn't buy one just to make oatmeal and I don't eat enough rice to justify taking up the counter space. Your mileage may vary of course.
I'm not sure how a rice cookers interface can be that complicated. Mine has an on/off button and keep warm.
Mine has about 30 settings for several different types of rice and grains and the recommended ratios of rice to liquid require consulting a manual. Hence it is needlessly complicated.
A good rice cooker can cook lots more than just rice and is worth its weight in jade.
While it can do more, it's not super useful unless you cook a lot of rice. I have a rice cooker and I can use it to cook rice in an hour or I can get some Uncle Bens and do it on my stovetop in about 30 minutes. Guess which one I do more? Unless you are very fussy about your rice or do a lot of it a rice cooker is kind of a pain. Plus the interface on most of these things is pretty annoyingly complicated even for a geek like me with a pretty high tolerance for complexity.
But since you really know what you're talking about, you should easily be able to back up your claims with an authoritative source. Please, show us all one single case in the US where owners of a corporation were held personally liable for any debt - including unpaid wages.
They can be if they signed a personal guarantee which is not unusual in small companies in need of financing. But if there is no personal guarantee of company debt then you are completely correct.
But, in general, companies must pay their employees for time worked. If the company runs out, then principals can be held liable.
That is only true if the company is a sole proprietorship or partnership structure where there is no corporate veil. Claims for wages due to insolvency do not fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act unless the principle willfully filed for bankruptcy in an attempt to avoid paying wages. Employees are considered creditors during a bankruptcy and may be paid according to their priority as a creditor but generally they will have no claim on the personal assets of the shareholders unless there was a personal guarantee of some sort or malfeasance.
Smaller company, wealthy principal, employees have a reasonable chance of getting paid, enforced by their state Department of Labor.
If the company folds then the assets of the company can be held to ensure payment but they are not likely to get paid except as a creditor of the company.
So that's how employees are different than investors, the "corporate veil" does not protect the company owner from liability for their wages.
That is NOT correct in the US unless there is evidence of malfeasance.
I love how the headline and summary just unquestioningly accepts the premise that there is sexism in science and that something MUST be done about it--all based on the single data point that there are more men in STEM than women.
Had you bothered to read the article you would have found out that there is copious evidence of sexism in science. And yes, something should be done about it. Why you would think we should be letting that sort of thing go is rather worrisome. Do you want to keep talented women out of the sciences for some bizarre reason? Your attitude seems to be clear evidence of sexism by itself.
If an unbalanced gender ratio is all you need to prove sexism, then doesn't it follow that the Nursing and Elementary Education fields are even MORE sexist than STEM (and even more in need of attention)?
That is not the entirety of the evidence of sexism in STEM. If you think the gender imbalance is the entirety of the evidence for sexism then you are likely part of the problem.
What civil society is free from deadly infections? People die from COLDS and Flu you know...
Have you come down with polio lately? How about smallpox? I'm guessing you haven't had measles or mumps or reubella either. Here's a little tip for you. Vaccines work and they save lives. Just because we haven't cured every disease is no excuse not to vaccinate for the ones we can cure.
However in this case there are LONG STANDING religious belief systems that would object to vaccines for various reasons.
Don't care and neither should you. Your religious beliefs do not and should not grant you the right to endanger others. If you wish to quarantine yourself from society to protect your religious beliefs I will support that but if you want to participate in civil society then you need to take your medicine and stop doing stupid things that endanger others.
If this doesn't represent a valid objection reason to you on religious grounds, I'm not sure what does in your view.
There is NO argument you could make that would convince me that there is a valid reason to excuse anyone from a vaccine for any grounds other than medical necessity.
Remember Hobby Lobby? This is a similar issue. California simply doesn't have the power to do this.
Last I checked contraceptives are voluntary and not taking them doesn't result in communication of dangerous pathogens.
First, it IS an assault on religious freedom despite what proponents will tell you.
Baloney. Your religious rights do not and should not extend to the point where you can transmit dangerous and easily preventable pathogens compromising public safety. You can believe whatever looney nonsense you want as long as it does not hurt others. Claiming religious exemption to vaccination demonstrably hurts other people and therefore should be illegal.
You may think people with religious objections to vaccination (one or all of them) are nuts (and they may very well be) but that does not give the government the right to violate their freedom to do stupid things. It's called liberty. You may not like other's choices, but you MUST give them the choice.
What a load of complete nonsense. People don't have the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want. That would be anarchy and you cannot have a civil society where people are free to endanger others without restriction. Do you drive on the wrong side of the road without consequence? By your logic people should have complete "freedom to do stupid things".
But, more to the point, failing to put this exemption into the law will open it up to constitutional challenge. Such challenges will likely be successful.
You should certainly hope that such challenges are not successful. Lives literally depend on it. Furthermore there is nothing preventing people from opting out for religious reasons. They simply cannot put their child in public schools and endanger others in the process. They are perfectly welcome to home school or find alternative schooling but there are and should be consequences for demonstrably irresponsible and dangerous behavior.
Not to take anything away from your achievements (I certainly couldn't compete in any sport at that level), but college wrestling isn't exactly "professional-level sports". Your athletic activity was still a part-time one while focusing on your education...
You are quite wrong. Collegiate wrestling very much IS pro level athletics. I've been there and done it and know first hand. It is a full time job on top of your academic load. We're talking 40+ hours a week when in-season. And at a school like Cornell or Lehigh or Northwestern or Stanford they don't cut you any slack in the classroom. While the pay isn't as much as say someone in pro basketball (not even close), the amount of work it requires is very much the same to be at the top of the sport. Furthermore the quality of the competitors in collegiate wrestling is world class in the top programs. There are guys wrestling in college right now who are among the best in the world. Logan Steiber is just now graduating from Ohio State and he has beaten world champions wrestling in the middle of Times Square. Jordan Burroughs won his first of three world and Olympic titles just months after winning his second NCAA title. I assure you that these guys are pro athletes in every sense of the word even if they don't get paid a whole lot.
The professional athletes, whose full-time job is to play sports, are exceedingly rarely accomplished academics at the same time.
Rare but not unheard of. And certainly not as rare as you probably think. There are quite a few coaches in college getting advanced degrees while training for world and Olympic competition. I can show you guys who became national champions while doing medical residencies. I can show you Olympians who were practicing doctors.
It is quite rare for someone to be capable of working at a professional level in sports and academics at the same time.
Not as rare as you might think. I've been in the sport of wrestling for 35 years and D1 college wrestling has world class talent in the sport. Right now the toughest wrestling conference in the country is the Big10. The second toughest conference is the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) which consists primarily of the Ivy League and Patriot League schools - schools like Lehigh, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, American, Army, Navy, Columbia and the EIWA routinely has several of the top ten teams in the country. Brains and athletic talent go together far more often than many realize. Schools with high academic standards may not have as deep a bench as schools without high standards but they certainly can compete.
While the number of people who are gifted in both academics and sports is necessarily smaller than the number who are gifted in just one or the other, you'll find that it isn't particularly unusual for someone to excel in both. I myself competed in D1 college wrestling at an EIWA school while getting an engineering degree and I now have two master's degrees, one in business and one in engineering. And I wasn't the most academically gifted athlete on my team. There were guys who were All Americans on my team who got better grades than I did. People who think smarts and athletics rarely go together hasn't met a lot of real athletes.
Curiously this is almost always said by people who never played themselves. Tell me, what exactly is the problem with consenting adults playing a potentially violent game where there is some chance of getting hurt? How is it worse that an X-Games skateboarder who knows he's going to injure himself at some point? Or a sailor who knows they might drown?
Brain injuries are just one of the numerous medical problems caused by football
The only real problem I see with that is that children aren't adequately protected by the rules of the game when they play it. If an adult wants to take the risk of injury then that's their problem. They can reasonably be expected to understand the potential consequences of their participation. Children, not so much and incidence of concussions and certain other injuries in american football are far higher than for most other sports played by youths.
One might consider why one has hostile moods in the first place rather than trying to control that demon by feeding it.
One of the demonstrated best ways to deal with hostile or other moods is through exercise and sports. I cannot think of a more appropriate outlet or better treatment for such issues. I would much rather someone work out their issues on the playing field than in some less appropriate venue.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll add that maybe what is most impressive is not the laser power, but the control system required to keep the beam on a moving target at a mile away. The author seemed to miss that part of the technology.
That's actually rather easy. The navy solved that problem decades ago for ballistic trajectories which substantially more complicated computationally. Line of sight targeting is FAR easier with modern computers. That is why they use lasers to paint targets for missiles to home in on a target. It's much easier to target something with a laser which is not meaningfully affected by gravity or wind or time to intercept.
I think the really impressive bit would be how they could keep the laser operational in an environment as hostile as the ocean. I would think that the ambient salt water would be seriously challenging towards keeping a laser functioning optimally.
You can extend the length of that "short order" by spinning the target.
Even if that would work you would have to:
1) spin the target in a useful rotation (difficult when target is being hit head on by laser)
2) have enough surface area to allow energy dissipation between rotations.
3) be able to dissipate energy fast enough or absorb sufficient energy for any rotation to actually matter
4) hope that the laser cannot maintain it's ability to target a single point for a length of time that matters
5) be able to practically coat the target with a mirrored coating
6) that the mirror could somehow retain sufficient ability to reflect in the face of environmental factors.
You're right. Let me rephrase that. I've never met a rich stock analyst who made his money by doing exactly what he told everyone else to do.
Bingo. It's exactly the same phenomena as guys who promise to teach you how to rich quick in real estate or forex trading or something else. If what they were selling actually worked, why would they not just use that information to get rich themselves? The ONLY way a stock adviser would be worthwhile is if they could beat the market average (S&P 500 etc) and most of them demonstrably cannot beat the market. Any time you can show an above average return others will pile into that opportunity and make it evaporate. The only way to prevent that from happening is to have an informational advantage which you would lose by advising others in most cases.
There ARE a few stock advisers out there who actually have a record of getting better than average returns. The problem is that you generally cannot tell a bad stock adviser from a good one until after the fact. Someone who has had a good track record for 10 years is no guarantee that next year they will have good returns.
I have never met a rich stock analyst.
I'd be happy to introduce you to a few. They're not particularly hard to find. They also don't have to be particularly good at analyzing stocks to do very well financially for themselves. They just have to be able to get people to listen to what they say.
All these little theories and formulas are swell, but let's see them put their money where their mouth is.
Companies like Goldman Sachs do exactly that and do it very successfully. What you have to remember is that stock analysts are really salesmen, not advisers. Their interests may not actually align with yours and often that is where the profit for them lies.
A better analogy is the auto industry in the 70's. The OPEC gas crunch made every car a brick, pressed higher unemployment, and resulted in towns full of abandoned vehicles.
As someone who was alive during that time I think your perceptions of that time probably don't match the reality. Most people got gas and drove their cars more or less as usual. The stories you hear were the exceptional situations - the extremes which didn't apply most places.
For 2015 we're seeing a generation of drivers who simply don't care enough about having their own car.
They'll care plenty the moment they need a job.
Low wages, transportation options, green choices, etc., are all weighing on an old school industry that hasn't evolved past SUVs.
Low wages? Workers in the US on average enjoy among the highest wages in the entire world, even among young people. More transport options? Not outside select major cities there aren't. In most places in the US if you don't have a car you don't have a job. "Green choices"? Your choices in most places are either a car or a car with better gas mileage unless you like in one of the few areas with decent public transport like NYC or Chicago.
If you were a kid, which would you choose? A $25,000 loan you have to have to find parking for, or a $1,000 watch/band/hat you can use anywhere with no further responsibilities? Probably they are going to take the latter.
Who cares what a child wants? They aren't the ones buying $25K cars. They aren't the ones that have jobs they need to get to. Driverless cars are still science fiction and will remain so for quite some time to come despite the recent progress.
I really dig the Elio, both as a consumer and a "car guy."
Then you are in a small minority. It's a fairly impractical design for most people. Most people will think it is pretty ugly too. This article sums up pretty well why it is likely doomed to failure.
But a sub-10,000 dollar automobile that gets fantastic mileage, in America?
A sub-$10K vehicle with limited seating, small cargo capacity, limited practicality in snow, weird looks, three wheels, slow, etc. If all you care about is MPG and don't need to transport anyone or anything then yeah, it might be a fine choice but that doesn't describe many people. It would be utterly useless to me personally. I can assure you that in the winter it wouldn't even get out of my driveway. (That's not hyperbole on my part. My driveway is a challenge even in a 4WD truck with snow tires sometimes)
Nah, cars have used modular electronics for ages.
Modular? Yeah not so much. I run a company that makes wire harnesses for the auto industry. Both body and jumper harnesses. Very little in modern cars is truly standardized when it comes to electronics. If you don't believe me I have a shelf full of parts catalogs for automotive electronics sitting 10 feet from me as I type this that proves it. They've standardized some stuff but not nearly as much as they should or could.
Car makers don't make much of anything actually, that is why they are called Assembly Plants.
Not even remotely true. Sure they subcontract a lot of stuff out but they make quite a bit themselves even today. Even when they contract stuff out, they often design it themselves or they work very closely with the Tier 1 supplier.
So they can install anything and change it on a whim from model to model and the owners can also change things if they have the money and the inclination.
The auto companies don't change ANYTHING on a whim. They are loathe to change things if they don't have to because there is a lot of cost in doing so. If things truly were modular then you might have a point but they aren't and won't be any time soon. Most of the electronics in any vehicle are highly customized to that vehicle/platform.
That's almost true but electric cars are much more simple than our current internal combustion engine powered vehicles.
Simple in some ways but the drive train is just one aspect of a car.
Compare a Tesla with a Chevy, there must be an order of magnitude fewer parts in the Tesla.
Implying what? GM can make an electric car and in fact they did so 20 years ago. So can Ford, Toyota and the rest. They just aren't jumping in with both feet because they know the fueling infrastructure and charge times simply isn't there yet. Tesla has yet to turn a consistent profit. They've got their research teams working on it but more from a hybrid angle because that is the transition vector. It's unrealistic and (currently) unprofitable to expect people to shift over en-mass to electric vehicles.
This along with the increasing importance of the car software platform (monitoring, communication, self driving, etc) could present a perfect storm for traditional auto companies that are caught napping.
How do you figure? It's not like the software companies are going to start producing cars. They'll all have access to more or less the same software because they'll license it from Google or Apple or whomever.
Hardly anyone over the age of 25 cares about the eye candy touchscreen and gadgets in the car.
Speaking as someone who is over 40 I can assure you that that is not true. I think a touch screen can be a great feature in a car (see Tesla Model S) BUT it has to be well designed - not the shitty interfaces we usually see. I love cars like the Tesla Model S or Nissan GTR with a high geek quotient. Folks over 25 like gadgets just fine but we also expect that the gadget actually be intuitive and improve the driving experience. I do NOT want to spend needless time navigating stupidly designed menus or using a touch screen when a button would make more sense. I do not want important controls buried in a touch screen menu 3 layers deep. I don't want things that will distract my attention from the actual driving.
They either car about space for kids and/or general crap, fuel economy, performance or looks or a combination of the above.
We care about a lot of things. Certainly those you mention but that's hardly end of it.
Everything else can be done on a smartphone.
I do NOT want to be playing with my smartphone while operating a motor vehicle. That's just retarded. If a smartphone can integrate smoothly (none currently do) with my car and provide useful data features (like weather, traffic, music, etc) then that's fine but I shouldn't have to touch the phone at all aside from maybe plugging it into a port for power.
Yes, but the majority of those cats eat the birds. I haven't seen a windmill that can do that.
Even if it were true that the cats eat the birds (and I'm not convinced that it is) why is that relevant? They aren't (usually) hunting birds out of actual need to eat and the bird is just as dead regardless of what happens to it later.
I wonder if windmill ground bird compost will be acceptable for organic farms. If so, it sounds like a win-win.
Perhaps you haven't looked at windmills up close recently but there isn't exactly a pile of dead birds sitting below them. Windmills are not a particularly severe danger to our avian friends.
"There is only one uni-tasker in the kitchen."
No tool is truly a uni-tasker unless you lack imagination. That said I disagree with Alton Brown on this point. There is NOTHING wrong with a specialty tool, provided that it either saves significant time or does a better job and if you will actually use it with some regularity.
You forgot that he does allow for 1 uni-tasker. The fire extinguisher. Then the anniversary special came around and he created an alternate use for that as well....
I'm as much a fan of Alton Brown as most people here but I think the "unitasker" rule is a silly one if you really insist on it. There is nothing wrong with a labor saving and/or performance enhancing unitasker (also called a specialty tool) if you use it regularly. Some tools are single purpose but they do that purpose REALLY well. If it is something you will use with some regularity and the tool actually makes the job meaningfully easier there is nothing wrong with specialty tools.
The problem is with special purpose tools that don't actually make a better product or save time. Those are a waste of money and kitchen space.
You bought the wrong rice cooker. The good ones cost less than $10, and go inside your microwave oven. They cook perfect fluffy rice everytime, in exactly 23 minutes.
Or I can do it on my stovetop in about the same amount of time and get perfectly satisfactory results every time. Or if I really care I can pull out my electric rice cooker and use that but I find that to rarely be worth the bother.
Frankly anything that takes 23 minutes in a microwave is a misuse of the microwave.
Why is your rice cooker the only one on the planet that takes longer to cook rice than the standard method?
Rice cookers don't accelerate the process of cooking rice. They make it consistent and (hopefully) easy but they don't speed it up, at least not with any rice cooker I've ever owned or used. If you make rice with most meals I think a rice cooker is a worthwhile investment. I own one (a gift) but I rarely use it because frankly it's more trouble than the benefits justify.
Rice cookers are also brilliant at making slow cooked oatmeal (rolled or steel cut), which is the only kind worth eating.
I get perfectly satisfactory results on a stovetop which requires no special equipment. Rice cookers can do a fine job of course but I certainly wouldn't buy one just to make oatmeal and I don't eat enough rice to justify taking up the counter space. Your mileage may vary of course.
I'm not sure how a rice cookers interface can be that complicated. Mine has an on/off button and keep warm.
Mine has about 30 settings for several different types of rice and grains and the recommended ratios of rice to liquid require consulting a manual. Hence it is needlessly complicated.
A rice cooker can be used to make barley or millet porridge, and bean soup.
So can a pot on a stovetop.
A good rice cooker can cook lots more than just rice and is worth its weight in jade.
While it can do more, it's not super useful unless you cook a lot of rice. I have a rice cooker and I can use it to cook rice in an hour or I can get some Uncle Bens and do it on my stovetop in about 30 minutes. Guess which one I do more? Unless you are very fussy about your rice or do a lot of it a rice cooker is kind of a pain. Plus the interface on most of these things is pretty annoyingly complicated even for a geek like me with a pretty high tolerance for complexity.
But since you really know what you're talking about, you should easily be able to back up your claims with an authoritative source. Please, show us all one single case in the US where owners of a corporation were held personally liable for any debt - including unpaid wages.
They can be if they signed a personal guarantee which is not unusual in small companies in need of financing. But if there is no personal guarantee of company debt then you are completely correct.
But, in general, companies must pay their employees for time worked. If the company runs out, then principals can be held liable.
That is only true if the company is a sole proprietorship or partnership structure where there is no corporate veil. Claims for wages due to insolvency do not fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act unless the principle willfully filed for bankruptcy in an attempt to avoid paying wages. Employees are considered creditors during a bankruptcy and may be paid according to their priority as a creditor but generally they will have no claim on the personal assets of the shareholders unless there was a personal guarantee of some sort or malfeasance.
Smaller company, wealthy principal, employees have a reasonable chance of getting paid, enforced by their state Department of Labor.
If the company folds then the assets of the company can be held to ensure payment but they are not likely to get paid except as a creditor of the company.
So that's how employees are different than investors, the "corporate veil" does not protect the company owner from liability for their wages.
That is NOT correct in the US unless there is evidence of malfeasance.
I love how the headline and summary just unquestioningly accepts the premise that there is sexism in science and that something MUST be done about it--all based on the single data point that there are more men in STEM than women.
Had you bothered to read the article you would have found out that there is copious evidence of sexism in science. And yes, something should be done about it. Why you would think we should be letting that sort of thing go is rather worrisome. Do you want to keep talented women out of the sciences for some bizarre reason? Your attitude seems to be clear evidence of sexism by itself.
If an unbalanced gender ratio is all you need to prove sexism, then doesn't it follow that the Nursing and Elementary Education fields are even MORE sexist than STEM (and even more in need of attention)?
That is not the entirety of the evidence of sexism in STEM. If you think the gender imbalance is the entirety of the evidence for sexism then you are likely part of the problem.
What civil society is free from deadly infections? People die from COLDS and Flu you know...
Have you come down with polio lately? How about smallpox? I'm guessing you haven't had measles or mumps or reubella either. Here's a little tip for you. Vaccines work and they save lives. Just because we haven't cured every disease is no excuse not to vaccinate for the ones we can cure.
However in this case there are LONG STANDING religious belief systems that would object to vaccines for various reasons.
Don't care and neither should you. Your religious beliefs do not and should not grant you the right to endanger others. If you wish to quarantine yourself from society to protect your religious beliefs I will support that but if you want to participate in civil society then you need to take your medicine and stop doing stupid things that endanger others.
If this doesn't represent a valid objection reason to you on religious grounds, I'm not sure what does in your view.
There is NO argument you could make that would convince me that there is a valid reason to excuse anyone from a vaccine for any grounds other than medical necessity.
Remember Hobby Lobby? This is a similar issue. California simply doesn't have the power to do this.
Last I checked contraceptives are voluntary and not taking them doesn't result in communication of dangerous pathogens.
First, it IS an assault on religious freedom despite what proponents will tell you.
Baloney. Your religious rights do not and should not extend to the point where you can transmit dangerous and easily preventable pathogens compromising public safety. You can believe whatever looney nonsense you want as long as it does not hurt others. Claiming religious exemption to vaccination demonstrably hurts other people and therefore should be illegal.
You may think people with religious objections to vaccination (one or all of them) are nuts (and they may very well be) but that does not give the government the right to violate their freedom to do stupid things. It's called liberty. You may not like other's choices, but you MUST give them the choice.
What a load of complete nonsense. People don't have the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want. That would be anarchy and you cannot have a civil society where people are free to endanger others without restriction. Do you drive on the wrong side of the road without consequence? By your logic people should have complete "freedom to do stupid things".
But, more to the point, failing to put this exemption into the law will open it up to constitutional challenge. Such challenges will likely be successful.
You should certainly hope that such challenges are not successful. Lives literally depend on it. Furthermore there is nothing preventing people from opting out for religious reasons. They simply cannot put their child in public schools and endanger others in the process. They are perfectly welcome to home school or find alternative schooling but there are and should be consequences for demonstrably irresponsible and dangerous behavior.
Not to take anything away from your achievements (I certainly couldn't compete in any sport at that level), but college wrestling isn't exactly "professional-level sports". Your athletic activity was still a part-time one while focusing on your education...
You are quite wrong. Collegiate wrestling very much IS pro level athletics. I've been there and done it and know first hand. It is a full time job on top of your academic load. We're talking 40+ hours a week when in-season. And at a school like Cornell or Lehigh or Northwestern or Stanford they don't cut you any slack in the classroom. While the pay isn't as much as say someone in pro basketball (not even close), the amount of work it requires is very much the same to be at the top of the sport. Furthermore the quality of the competitors in collegiate wrestling is world class in the top programs. There are guys wrestling in college right now who are among the best in the world. Logan Steiber is just now graduating from Ohio State and he has beaten world champions wrestling in the middle of Times Square. Jordan Burroughs won his first of three world and Olympic titles just months after winning his second NCAA title. I assure you that these guys are pro athletes in every sense of the word even if they don't get paid a whole lot.
The professional athletes, whose full-time job is to play sports, are exceedingly rarely accomplished academics at the same time.
Rare but not unheard of. And certainly not as rare as you probably think. There are quite a few coaches in college getting advanced degrees while training for world and Olympic competition. I can show you guys who became national champions while doing medical residencies. I can show you Olympians who were practicing doctors.
It is quite rare for someone to be capable of working at a professional level in sports and academics at the same time.
Not as rare as you might think. I've been in the sport of wrestling for 35 years and D1 college wrestling has world class talent in the sport. Right now the toughest wrestling conference in the country is the Big10. The second toughest conference is the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) which consists primarily of the Ivy League and Patriot League schools - schools like Lehigh, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, American, Army, Navy, Columbia and the EIWA routinely has several of the top ten teams in the country. Brains and athletic talent go together far more often than many realize. Schools with high academic standards may not have as deep a bench as schools without high standards but they certainly can compete.
While the number of people who are gifted in both academics and sports is necessarily smaller than the number who are gifted in just one or the other, you'll find that it isn't particularly unusual for someone to excel in both. I myself competed in D1 college wrestling at an EIWA school while getting an engineering degree and I now have two master's degrees, one in business and one in engineering. And I wasn't the most academically gifted athlete on my team. There were guys who were All Americans on my team who got better grades than I did. People who think smarts and athletics rarely go together hasn't met a lot of real athletes.
Really nobody should be playing football.
Curiously this is almost always said by people who never played themselves. Tell me, what exactly is the problem with consenting adults playing a potentially violent game where there is some chance of getting hurt? How is it worse that an X-Games skateboarder who knows he's going to injure himself at some point? Or a sailor who knows they might drown?
Brain injuries are just one of the numerous medical problems caused by football
The only real problem I see with that is that children aren't adequately protected by the rules of the game when they play it. If an adult wants to take the risk of injury then that's their problem. They can reasonably be expected to understand the potential consequences of their participation. Children, not so much and incidence of concussions and certain other injuries in american football are far higher than for most other sports played by youths.
One might consider why one has hostile moods in the first place rather than trying to control that demon by feeding it.
One of the demonstrated best ways to deal with hostile or other moods is through exercise and sports. I cannot think of a more appropriate outlet or better treatment for such issues. I would much rather someone work out their issues on the playing field than in some less appropriate venue.