By all means, ban it now before we even have the ability to model solar shades accurately, and have no idea whether materials technology will make them economically viable in time to do anything. We need to preempt actual science from weighing in on our decision making. Sometimes the UN goes and does something that makes me wonder why we don't just use a paperclip to jam the "veto" button down and withdraw our diplomats.

1) Use gps to determine average speed over the 30 seconds on either side of a text message being sent.

2) Record the speed, time, and location in a database for a week or two.

3) Require that cars record the time of airbag deployment.

4) Anyone who is in the driver's seat of a car during a reported accident has the database checked against the time of the accident as reported by car's airbags.

5) Anyone who sent a text while moving 20 mph or faster within 5 minutes of being in a car accident is publicly hanged in the city square for everyone to see.

Any thoughts?

The theory behind making a working fission bomb was considered straightforward back in the late 30's. It's no accident we had a working nuke a decade after learning the structure of the atom and the nature of radiation. The only reason we beat Britain, France, Germany, and the USSR to the first nuclear weapon is because everyone else was putting their entire economy into winning WWII. More important than the design of a nuke, as Chill mentions, is the manufacturing process (and hiding it from the IAEA). Also, effective delivery devices are fairly well controlled. There's a big difference between a medium range ballistic missile MIRVs/SLBMs. I've read that it is uncertain whether Pakistan has small enough nukes and delivery systems to have significant second strike capability, which has some serious implications for stability in the region.

I highly recommend the TI-30X series of calculators. The layout is second nature to anyone who has used the TI-83/84/89/90 series and intuitive for anyone else. It maintains the 2-line screen, where you can see the data you've entered on the same screen as the calculation and scroll through past entries. It does roots, trig functions, and logarithms without graphing or solving equations symbolically (like the 89). It has a very primitive memory, with A, B, C, D, and E that can be set to numerical values. This is handy for running the same formula at several values but could not be used to store notes anywhere (though perhaps a multiple choice letter string could get out in one; if you're doing multiple choice you should be doing several exam keys already to reduce over-the shoulder copying). You can also wipe their memory between tests easily by going 2nd >> Reset >> Yes(enter).

They're $12 at walmart (( http://www.walmart.com/ip/Texas-Instruments-TI-30X-IIS-Calculator-Morpho-Blue/14918006 )), and easily cheap enough to stick on your students' reading lists, or require any primitive no-memory calculator and carry backup enough calculators for 15% of the class. I had a professor that would rent calculators to students for $1/test. Seemed like kind of a dick move even though it isn't really, but I understand he makes $10-20 per test period off it, and could put that toward recouping his investment.

As far as digital translators, etc, I have to think you should not allow in devices that can store text or reach outside networks. I have some sympathy for second language students, but networked devices in testing areas is going too far. Particularly since you couldn't be expected to tell a realtime email/text correspondence in Korean from a set of harmless definitions. If you can come up with a reasonable middle ground, by all means do it, but do not allow networkable devices into classrooms.

On a side note, I do applaud the open book testing format. It's more applicable to the non-academic world, and it forces testing on processes rather than information regurgitation.

As long as we're on the topic, I have a stupid request from the community:

My grandparents had an alarm clock with rotating number wheels. The display read the time like a digital clock and it plugged into a wall for power. This seems about perfect, since it had no light pollution and isn't prone to lack of batteries or winding, and also does not force me to decode analog when I am partially awake. I've been looking for a clock like this for ages, but never seen one for sale online or in a store.

Does anyone know where I can get a clock like this, or what the name for this type of display is?

Thanks.

Speaking as someone with a newly-disassembled alarm clock on my desk, I can confirm that the clocks with glowing numbers on a black background are indeed LEDs not some crazy color LCD screen. The watch-like ones with black numerals on a grey/green/clear/backlit background are definitely LCDs though, and both use the same numeral style. I can see how the descriptions above are ambiguous, but we're definitely talking about LEDs.

New slashdot motto: When in doubt, open that shit up with a screwdriver.

Perhaps it's because one of "your rights online" is "to not have your files arbitrarily replaced with octopus manga".

The quality of this alleged cephalopod manga is clearly relevant to how serious a crime this is. We need to see these pictures before we can make a judgment.

Sometimes I really wish "bunny suits" actually meant costumes of bunnies... Space exploration could use a little more whimsy.

It's widely known that the area around #FF1493 is the gayest region of the hex color wheel, scientifically speaking.

However it might be stated in the article, I don't think the actual effect has to do with "bright" colors so much as "conspicuous" ones. Red cars, though they may be less popular now, are still going to be at least 10% of the cars on the road, counting used cars, and would still be "inconspicuous" enough for a thief. A neon green mustang with black stripes, one the other hand, is so conspicuous that driving it by any cop once the alert has gone out will not only get his attention, but remind him that he's looking for a stolen green mustang. A red mustang may make him want to give you a speeding ticket, but the difference may be enough to deter criminals.

I also imagine body parts make up a decent enough chunk of a car's resale value, so anything painted a weird color is going to be more expensive to unload, since it would have to be sanded down and repainted.

Anyone else notice that the state of Mississippi was red for the entire video? Guess I'd be upset too if I had to live there...

The key phrase there is "equal effort".

The plastic and other debris will get gathered either way. The difference is that one way you either melt into blocks and sink it or ship it to a landfill, and the other way you go through the massive money and energy expenditure to convert it into building materials and assemble it on site into a floating recycled modern utopia.

As well intentioned as this proposal is, we will never, ever get to the point where the cheapest source of building materials is a container vessel full of assorted sea flotsam. There will always be renewable lumber, glass from or inexhaustible supply of silicates, and presumably soon plant-derived plastics that will be competitive with oil-derived ones. If we decide it's worth the investment to clean this thing up, the garbage will go to a landfill where it will either be recycled or not. But under no circumstances will the economical to build it into a floating disneyland on site. A floating garbage-packaging plant maybe, but why return the recycled plastic to make a city? Use cheaper materials instead. Or better yet, stick your new city on land within reach of a desalination plant, and not stick yourself with the engineering constraint of making everything float.

I'm all for fixing the environment, but this specific proposal is economic nonsense. I'm sure it'd be cool to live in a shiny eco-neutral star trek paradise, but wishing will not make this actually work.

...says the government that pays citizens by the post to write pro-government comments on Chinese blogs.