I read this as 'When I don't know what I'm doing, I hack at it until I get something working and then I document what I did.' Fair enough. At that point you are documenting it at a fairly detailed level (hopefully). This happens when software development is done as 'Art'.
When software development is happening as 'Science', odds are you can at least outline your intent and design before you start coding the solution.

I've done both. Computer Science usually produces better results than Computer Art.

A Toyota Yaris with a much higher deceleration

No way a Yaris could out decelerate a sport-bike (motorcycle.) A decent sport bike will brake right up to the edge of traction, meaning it will decelerate as hard as it accelerates, and no stock vehicle can accelerate as hard as a sport bike (carrier deck catapult launched fighter jets being the single exception.)
Citation
(Note : I said stock. As in walk in to the dealer, buy and drive it off the lot. Funny-car dragsters are not dealer stock vehicles.)

But the OP story was still awesome, using physics to beat a bull-shit traffic ticket. I'm still waiting for someone to use the concept of absolute velocity with respect to the universe to demonstrate that they were traveling within 1% of the same speed of all other vehicles, and that even the officer when sitting at rest was traveling 100x the posted speed limit (when taking into account the velocity of the Earth around the Sun, coupled with the 1000mph rotational speed of the Earth around its axis.)

I think a more appropriate change that I would love to see, is the ability to treat a red light as a stop sign.

In some states, motorcycles can. Citation

Ahhh - I missed the 'you take physical access of my machine for a few minutes without me being present' part.
Yes I agree with you on that part - the minute someone loses physical control of the hardware all bets are off.

I was more interested in how effective the setup I described was against anything I could accidentally run across on the web on my own, while still being the only one touching the keyboard. I prescribe it as the Holy Grail for people that surf indiscriminately, in the wild wild west, but maintain physical control of their box. I was hoping to get either affirmation or a description why I was wrong in that case (and if you're still reading, I'm still interested.)

Impressive. Does that work on against Firefox running NoScript and AdBlock on a Ubuntu boot thumbdrive that doesn't mount the hard drive?
I'm genuinely interested in an honest answer, and if the answer is 'Yes' I'm interested in details, because many on this thread believe that a boot thumbdrive running FireFox or Chrome on Linux is the holy grail (myself included.)

Smartest thing I've read all day. It is literally a perfect match to the original question, which is probably the dumbest thing I've read all day (drive image your work laptop, smoke it and install your own warez, and restore the drive image before giving it back to them.)

OP - here's the one piece where your plan fails : the active directory connection establishing your machine as a trusted member of the domain, and your user as the domain with the same name ... disconnects if it hasn't been refreshed in a while. I don't know how long it takes, but it happens. And it is a particularly uncomfortable discussion with corporate IT explaining why, given that your machine looks exactly like it did when they gave it to you, and you have been using it for a few months. The question is going to come up 'What did you do to it?' and you are going to answer just like they expect you to 'Nothing.' ... and it goes downhill from there.

Technical answer for you is same as Anrego : USB Thumbdrive install of Linux : Pen Drive Linux has a zillion distros you can pick from, and they give you step by step instructions on making it work.

If technical answer #1 doesn't work for you, here's technical answer #2 for you : remove the work hard drive, install a new hard drive, install your own OS on that and swap out drives for work / pleasure. Downside is limited to the danger of physically borking the work drive while removing it or storing it while it is out of the machine. Explaining how you managed to mangle the SATA connector on a work laptop is a very difficult discussion.

Personal preference answer is also same as Anrego : don't do anything on your work laptop that you wouldn't do with representatives from corporate HR, IT, your boss and his boss standing over your shoulder. Buy a cheap used netbook for $150 on Craigslist and take it with you to do your warez/internet surfing/pr0n viewing.

Or when your company only makes $1.0B in profits that year, unlike the year before when they made $1.4B in profits.

I'm guessing part of their security comes from not being connected to the 'net. Hell, DOS and Windows 3.1 machines were some of the most secure machines in the past 25 years history of computers, assuming you secured them physically - because by and large they didn't have dedicated connections to other (external) machines. I'm guessing if you didn't plug it in to an Ethernet connection and physically secured the machine, even an unpatched XP box is pretty secure.

How about through shared interests, say a running club, hiking... basically anything but ideally something with wide general interest.

Go outside and talk to real people? Fuck that. Try Craigslist.

I answered one ad seven months ago, spent a few days establishing a rapport via email, met in person over a nice non-committal dinner, established a nice rapport in person, started dating in earnest over the last few months. We're getting engaged on Valentine's Day.

Seriously, first and only hit on Craigslist was a grand slam. It's not just for pervs and fat girls anymore.

He was referring to a few ships full of mercs under Lafayette that sailed out from France to help the American Colonies fight against the British during the American Revolutionary War. I only know about it because that's my great great great ^ (1..n) grandfather was on one of those ships, came here as one of those mercs.

France in the American Revolutionary War

It's "1337" hacker. Just sayin'.

And seriously, ... the incident cost the company between $400,000 and $1 million in salaries, consultant expenses and other costs. ???
That's got to be the craziest application of 'cop math' I've seen in a non-drug related case ever.

Silly question, but assuming that the minuscule mass of objects in low Earth orbit still contribute to the Earth's overall mass with respect to the inertia and centripetal acceleration that keeps us in orbit around the sun. If we were to start ejecting tons of crap from LEO and sending it towards the sun, however minute the volume, couldn't we potentially alter the balance slightly and possibly even impact our orbit (duration / trajectory / stability) ?

I'm guessing no, but that assumes everything in moderation.

It'd be a good place to listen to Rasta dub music, mon. Not to mention the occasional need to move stuff around Freeside.

My mod points just ran out so I will just say it - that's the most informative and insightful thing I've read all week.
As a professional software engineer with a masters degree in software engineering and twenty years of professional experience, the question literally offended me.

Quick, Easy, Make a lot of money. Pick two.

Agreed.

The sacrifices you made ten years ago, no matter how bad they sucked ... they are behind you.
The gains you made as a benefit of those sacrifices ... they are with you today, and will be with you tomorrow.

I'd rather be me now, than have been the quarterback in high school. What most people would call the greatest day of their life, I call Wednesday.