Never knew math was so political...

Sure it is, remember when W said, "Make the pi higher"?

Fine, but doing the Macarena well is much more profitable for a monkey.

Another thing that struck me* is that metal and metal working was relatively expensive in the olden days. Deflective wing-like doo-dads may improve safety, but perhaps at the cost of more metal and/or metal-working effort. Remember, they didn't value individual lives as much back then: life was brutal and short and they accepted that. (Besides, if you put an eye out, you always had a second career as a pirate :-)

* No pun intended

Wouldn't it be vastly cheaper just to modify a Tesla? While probably not as simple as stretching a car, would it be $300,000+ more expensive to just put the old-tymey touring car body on a stretched Tesla frame?

Especially when you're golfing with lawyers, and it's on the firm's tab.

Yeah, I know I got lucky. But that's the point. I can't "get lucky" and win a javelin throw. You don't "get lucky" and throw an 85 mph fast ball. There's a reason that people can play golf at a professional level as septuagenarians. It's just not the most physically demanding of sports.

But we don't know if Earth's path to complex life is the only viable path. There may be "other angles" to get to complex life. We only have one sample to judge on.

Babies are people

So:

babies = people
corporations = people

Therefore:

corporations = babies

Does this mean we can spank corporations and give them time-outs?

So, where are all the "why are you sitting in the snow" jokes?

Industry over-extends usage of fad and is disappointed when it can't produce magic.

Gee, would've never seen that coming.

Maybe if ED drugs worked better we wouldn't have ads about cryopreservation..

With a name like "Tiger", waddya expect?

I never said other sports didn't have problems (tradeoffs) also. Baseball's slow pace is driving away the younger generation, I would note. The offense-oriented "steroid bubble" in baseball created more interest (ratings), before it was exposed and fell apart.

But even in American football, typical scores are around the 20's, which corresponds to roughly 4 goals per team, which is still more than typical soccer. And there are also field goals (3 points) which are sort of like half-goals. Thus each team will "score" something about 5 or 6 times on average per game.

I am not trying to start a nationalistic squabble, I am only reporting US fan psychology as I observe it, and not intending to give it value judgement. It's simply a cause-and-effect observation: if you want to increase x, you do y based on past patterns.

Based on my observations, as a general rule, offense (scoring) increases audience interest in the US. Whether that is good or bad is probably another debate. In the NBA lately they have been altering the refereeing guidelines to create more offense and a quicker pace after losing interest to college games. They are trying to grow the sport. (As a side-effect, injuries may be increasing, which is hurting "star power" draw. There may be a happy medium in terms of ratings.)

Some will say jacking up the offense ruins the "art" of the game, but whether one prefers popularity or "art" is a personal judgement. Different people have different goals (no pun intended).

Are you a plant?

Yes, but call me Robert.

but we are being "lightly toasted", not "scorched"; that's the difference. (Time to use cooking terms, for libraries-of-congress analogies are getting old.)