for a professor of physics we could give her hot in that realm

That's what's known in the physics lingo as "physics hot."

Standards are all relative, and like good physicists, we are aware of our biases and quantify them.

If I'd had a Kindle then [...] I could have added books without leaving my hotel room.

and I wouldn't have met Julie from the American Embassy on a rainy Armistice Day evening at the Shakespeare and Co. on the Left Bank, nor the two Basque climbers who showed me around Rodellar for two days, nor the Frenchman from San Francisco in Railay. Nor, again in Paris, 15 years later, the Australian couple from Perth who bought my dinner and offered to put me up in their beach house next time I'm in the neighborhood.

Time to start shopping for plane tickets, I think.

Bars and bookstores are the best places to meet people, and reading a book in a bar is a great conversation starter. People can't resist talking to you when you're reading a book. I have an iPad, but there's a lot to be said for taking a few paperbacks and trading them along the way. And not caring too much if they're lost, wet, or beat up.

Having only the collected works of Tolstoy on a trip, and having nothing else to read, is a great way get through something you might otherwise be distracted from.

People traveled with books for centuries, even when they were travelling light. And the glory of cheap books is that you don't have to bring them back. Pass them on. I thank all the travelers who left me books. Except for the Dan Brown. Ugh. That book actually lowered my IQ.

perhaps in a neo-liberal attempt to show how useless governments are

I think you mean neo-conservative...

You know what most people are going to college for now? Business and law. Everyone wants to either be a CEO or a lawyer.

Because that's where the money is, obviously. Who gets paid, and who doesn't lose their job in a downturn? Bankers and lawyers and CEOs. Who brings in foreign workers from low-income countries to perform high-stress, relatively low-paying work, which might be outsourced at any moment to that H-1B colleague when he/she goes back home? Software and high-tech companies (cough *HP lays off 37000* cough).

Students, especially the students you want, aren't dumb and ignorant.

we really do have a shortage of qualified computer science graduates.

(finishing the implicit assumption in that statement) "At that price."

The only people going into it now are those with a passion for it

That's who should be going into it. [1]

and that's apparently not enough to meet the demand.

"At that price."

In the supply-and-demand model of economics, when no one wants the product you are offering (a job), it means that the price isn't right (salary). You're getting the product you are paying for. Want better workers? Offer more money.

People respond to incentives.

[1] in a perfect world. Obviously there's some price point at which higher wages will induce people not otherwise interested in the field into doing it anyway. Combined with the hysteresis of the time it takes to learn the field, and the time it takes for wages to rise enough to attract people into the field.

Darn it. Mod points expired, but this is the funniest thing I've read all week.

People communicate with each other -- and with their pets, and even with pre-verbal babies -- with gestures and not with keyboards.

I'm not sure that this is true now [1] much less that it will be in the future. While I'm not closeted in my mom's basement, I'd estimate that at least 50% of my interactions with my colleagues, collaborators, friends (incl. those of the girl variety), and family occur through keyboards. Think about it. Text, chat, email, social networks - even with the people I live with, we communicate extensively via keyboard. Even with a live-in girlfriend, we'd chat during the day as much as we did at night. Continuous constant availability hasn't taken away from in person communications, but they've made them much more extensive. Before email, sms, and mobile phones, I'd only talk to my SO in the evening - now it's short messages all day long.

That's my life, and I'm old. I look at the twenties that I work with, and they're even more virtual than me. Which is not to say that they don't interact with people in real life, but that they're continually interacting with them via a keyboard.

Yeah, the dogs don't have an iPhone. Yet.

until I can give my computer a dirty look or an obscene gesture to make it stop doing something I don't like, we'll continue to have a need for better human-computer interfaces.

Yeah, and how's that dirty-look/obscene-gesture interface working on the humans, or pets, in your life? If someone gets that working for computers, that'll be the only place it works.

[1] for everyone - realizing that this is a first-world problem, but we are talking about human-computer interfaces, so let's limit the discussion to the small subset of humans on the planet who use computers),

I think rules that mean you can lose out even if you have done nothing wrong bring the entire justice system into disrepute.

Or as we say over here in the colonies, "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

General Atomics plays with experimental nuclear and fusion reactor prototypes just a few miles down the road from our office building. I think it's really freakin' cool but I sure there would be a big hubballoo if more San Diegans knew about it.

It's called General Atomics, for chrissakes. I mean, it's not as though they're disguising it.

I've been harassed for opting out of the scanners several times, just for an anecdote in the other direction.

They generally make a big deal out of it, making me wait for minutes while they go find someone to do the pat down, big sighs while he puts on the rubber gloves, rough handling of my carry-ons (since I can't touch them), arguments about the safety of the scanners ("That sign over there sez they're safe, cain't you read?!"), and for extra punishment and delay, wipe-testing the carry-ons for explosives. Like if I were carrying explosives, I'd want to attract extra attention by asking to opt-out.

I'm not what wine does to the cure time of Quikrete. Water's probably better. And Lowes sells wine? Two buck Chuck?

Handy hot weather Quikrete pro-tip: use a bit more water than they recommend.

As far as we know, modern inkjet prints can be extremely long-lasting, based on accelerated testing. If you pop for a high-end printer, e.g. Epson 3880, you can make really good prints that will (probably) last decades. High-dollar printers, in my experience, don't have the problems that cheap inkjets do. They're much more durable even if you don't use them that often, but you probably should use them regularly.

But then you're off in the rabbit hole of display/printer calibration (non-trivial), ICC profiles, $500 to refill the inks, etc. Each print will probably cost several dollars. It's probably not worth it for most people. But if you're going to buy your own, save yourself a lot of frustration and get a really good printer (and IPS monitor).

I've had good luck with MPix for making high quality prints. Others are probably good also.

I have no idea how long photo books last, but there are a lot of them out there. I've had good luck with MyPublisher and Blurb for prints that look like what I sent them.

So, aside from keeping multiple digital backups, verifying them regularly, off-site storage of backups, and updating formats over years, which presumably you would do anyway, do this:

Print the photos you like best on archival inkjet paper and put them into an archival box. Take notes of who, what, where, when. Reference the original digital file. That has as good a chance as anything of lasting a few decades.

A good discussion is here at TOP, and read the comments too.

There was a silver lining to the cancellation of the SSC. There has been an explosion of quantum, solid state, and low temperature physics in the last 2 decades that might not have happened if all those great minds had been dedicated to just a single project.

And a great number of them went off to become quants on Wall Street, developing models for CDOs and derivatives ("the whole Harvard physics class of 94" one fellow who would know recently told me - I'm sure he exaggerated a bit, but that was my experience too).

How's that for a silver lining?

It's kind of like arguing that if your neighbor won't stop yelling curses at you, that you have the right to march over and beat him up.

You do. Look up "fighting words".

You think lack of civility in discourse is the problem. I think lack of civility in society is the problem - exemplified by the willingness of one particular segment of society to turn people away from medical care.

You go ahead with your agenda of trying to make us all be civil to each other, which hasn't worked in, oh, all of recorded human history. I'll settle for working to not let people who think it's ok to turn the sick away from the hospital doors get into positions of power.

The biggest thing making American politics so toxic is this sort of callousness.

It apparently matters to you whether people are accused of cheering when they turn someone away from the emergency room. What matters to me it's the fact that they think that turning someone away is acceptable.

cheer on the death of the uninsured

Almost nobody does any of these things, even the Evil Right

From the transcripts of the ACA case before the Supreme Court:

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli

getting health care service [is] a result of the social norms to which we've obligated ourselves so that people get health care.

Scalia:

Well, don't obligate yourself to that.

It's hard not to read that as, if not cheering on the death of the uninsured, being more than a bit callous. Pardon me if I fail to make a distinction.