If someone is trying to open my front door with a crowbar, someone else might get suspicious.
You should read about lock bumping. Pin tumbler locks (ie ordinary door locks) can be opened in seconds by any unskilled thief using a bump key. There are videos on youtube if you're interested.
trying to keep it in the bathtub without telling your wife probably isn't going to turn out well...
Unless you're into that kind of thing, in which case it'll turn out great!
Terminal velocity is the speed a thing is going when the force of gravity pulling down is equal to the force of drag pushing up (0 net force = no acceleration, ie constant velocity). The force due to drag at high altitudes is very low because there's not much air that high, which means there's not much to keep gravity from accelerating the sky diver. As he descends and the air gets thicker he will decelerate back to subsonic speeds because terminal velocity is lower at lower altitudes (all else being constant).
A common myth related to terminal velocity is that terminal velocity is a constant rate that all objects fall at. That's not true because drag factors into terminal velocity and different things are more or less aerodynamic. A person skydiving spread-eagle falls slower than a person diving streamlined, and a bullet will fall back down at about the same speed it was going when it was fired.
Anyone who needs/wants more processing power is dumping the electricity down the non-productive heat drain (e.g. gamers) or pursuits which will never produce anything of use (e.g. SETI@HOME).
What about CAD, or complicated simulations? Are you saying that modern methods of research and engineering don't produce anything of use?!?
The processors have been more than sufficient for a decade or more
Yeah, and automotive technology has been more than sufficient for 80 years or more; who really needs to got more than 50 mph, or have air conditioning? I'm not really sure what your even complaining about. Are you trying to say spending resources on having fun is unethical, and that there's no point in increasing the standard of living? And what does any of that have to do with parallel processing?
Yeah... It's probably a cynical prediction...
I think you've confused cynicism with optimism
With these new mice, when I want to click I have to lift my finger up from the surface of the mouse and then press down (if the video in the article is indicative of how it functions). I think constantly lifting my finger would become tiring.
How is it that you manage to type if you can't bear the strain of lifting your fingers off the home row?
But most people have two eyes, and the parallax between them gives the third dimension.
That's almost completely wrong, the grandparent poster knows what he's talking about. Binocular vision is only useful for depth perception within about a foot or two of your face, beyond that and the difference between what your eyes see is too small to matter. Depth perception is almost entirely unconscious mental processing that's informed by cues like relative position, relative size, clarity and so on.
The reason you have two eyes is because of bilateral symmetry and a wide field of vision is useful. Think about rabbits, their eyes have almost no overlapping field of vision, but they manage just fine in 3d space.
..the Fed (by printing money and giving it to them at zero percent even if it destroys the dollar)
The Federal Reserve does not print money. Maybe you were speaking metaphorically, but you're still wrong. The Federal Reserve can influence interest rates, and it can change the size of the the money supply by issuing and recalling treasury bills and by adjusting the reserve requirement.. Those functions allow the Fed to alter the price of money, but that's not equivalent to printing more money.
I was reading earlier this week the U.S. now has the greatest income inequality in the world except for Singapore and Hong Kong which are tiny city states
Well you read wrong. Equality of income distribution is quantified by the Gini coefficient. Wealth is less evenly distributed in the US than many places (ie Europe), but there's more than 40 countries ahead of us. China and Mexico for instance. See this map for more detail.
For anyone whose interested, the Planet Money blog and podcast is a great place to start. Their reporting and research is done by actual economists rather than ideologues and talking heads, and they explain why things are the way they are and how they got there. Like I said, our current financial situation is kinda FUBAR, but approaching it with a level head and trying to understand what's really going on is better than getting angry and playing the blame game.
Though to be fair, that race course was a mixture of twists, turns and hills.
To be fair, normal roads are a mixture of twists, turns and hills.
For those of you who aren't familiar with them, naked mole rats are pretty weird in a bunch of other ways
They lack the neurotransmitter that lets them feel pain, which is evolutionarily unique as far as I know. Their respiratory systems are adapted to handle the high concentrations of CO2 that build up in their burrows. Their metabolic rate is 2/3 of other similarly sized rodents, and they can slow it even further in times of need.
Their behavior is even weirder. The colonies (200-300 in population) are organized eusocialy, ie in the same manner as a bee or ant colony. There in one queen, with a harem of 3-4 males that produce all the offspring for the entire colony. Like ants, naked mole rats form separate castes for diggers, soldiers, etc. Oh, and to top it all off their front teeth are on the outside of their mouths to help them dig.
"The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy." -- Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards
