I dunno, as someone who enjoys crotch-rockets (Hayabusa FTW), I love its look.

It's almost like something that Batman would ride.

The federal gas tax currently stands at 18.4 cents a gallon, where it has been set since 1993, when gas cost $1.16 a gallon.

Since the gas tax is ostensibly for the construction and maintenance of roads and highways, it should be compared to that. The cost of maintenance and construction scale mostly according to CPI, not the price of gas. I can't think of any reason why you'd compare the tax to the price of gas unless you're deliberately trying to mislead people into thinking it needs to go up more (political arguments about energy taxes aside).

Putting $1.16 into an inflation calculator yields $1.90 in 2014 dollars, or a 64% increase. 64% of 18.4 cents is 11.7 cents. So a 12 cent increase is exactly what's needed for the tax to keep pace with inflation.

Up to now, they haven't wanted to. Japan, however, is threatened by not one but two nuclear-armed nations.

Three nuclear-armed nations. Part of the Kuril Islands are contested by Japan and Russia. Russia (the Soviets at the time) won control of the entire chain (plus Sakhalin) at the end of WWII as a hedge by the Allies. Basically we weren't sure if Japan would surrender after the atomic bombs were dropped. So we begged Russia to violate their non-aggression pact with Japan and invade after the bombings to put further pressure on Japan to surrender. They did so, and have claimed those territories ever since. Japan gave up most of their claims following WWII, but still claim four islands that Russia currently administrates.

I wonder if this ought to invalidate crap like the infamous Amazon one-click patent.

Unfortunately, you have to (1) be sued by Amazon for violating the patent (else you have no standing to challenge it), and (2) pay the expense of multi-year court battles with practically no hope of recouping your costs even if you win.

OTOH, I actually like the one-click patent even though I think it's a stupid and invalid patent. It prevents other online stores from putting in a button which can cause you to instantly buy something if you accidentally click it (this has happened to me on Amazon).

The person it's deriding gets to decide if it's offensive. That's kind of how it works. The white guy doesn't get to decide if Nigger is a bad word. The white guy doesn't get to decide if Chink is a bad word. The white guy doesn't get to decide if Redskin is a bad word. Etc etc etc... This is plain common sense, and everyone arguing against it is an ass.

I completely disagree. It's common sense that the person using the word decides if it's offensive. If someone says "negro" referring to the color of a couch, it's not offensive even if a black person takes offense at it. If a child calls the black paymates he adores "niggers" because that's the only word he's ever known for them, that's not offensive. His black friends may request that he use a different word because they take offense at the term, but the child meant no offense by using the word and it'd be a serious miscarriage of justice for him to be chastised for using the word.

The important thing is the intent of the person using the word. If the person is using it to denigrate someone or a group, it's offensive. If the person is using it out of ignorance or in an unrelated context, it's not offensive. The person feeling offended has nothing to do with it other than in the general social context that certain words are known to offend certain groups.

The problem comes about when the person using the word is using it to be offensive, but claims he's not. In that respect it's better to avoid using words known to be offensive. But it's just plain wrong to assume that any time an offensive word is used, that offense is intended.

You Ignorant Redneck Honkies. -- See what I did there? Doesn't seem offensive to ME... It's up to YOU to decide, because you're the ones I'm deriding.

When someone uses a derogatory word without intent to offend, and someone else is offended by the use of the word, it is a misunderstanding. Not an offense. However, in this case you clearly demonstrate that you knew the term could be offensive, and thus indict yourself that you wrote them with the intent to offend.

I learned photography in a darkroom in the 1980s too. Film and prints/slides are a terrible way to learn photography. You take the photo, then several days later you see the results and how you screwed up. When I went on trips, I had to keep a notebook where I wrote down the exposure settings for every photo I took, and weeks later I would cross-reference the prints with my notebook to figure out what worked and what didn't. The time constant for the feedback loop is too long for any useful learning unless you spend years at it.

It is much better to learn with a digital camera. You take a shot, then instantly see the results. If you notice a flaw after you've downloaded the pics to your computer, you can call up the exposure information and figure out what you did wrong. Feedback is immediate and all your settings are automatically recorded for you to learn from.

Once you've got that down, then you can fool around with old analog photography.

Some will call me a troll, but as a gamer I'm no longer interested in 4K video since I know Occulus Rift (and competing VR set) are coming.

Why spend a shitload of money of a new 4K screen and the video card necessary for an acceptable game experience when I'll be able to do VR with a fraction of the cost and with my existing hardware setup?

You're making a fundamental error many people make when it comes to display resolution. What matters isn't resolution or pixels per inch. It's pixels per degree. Angular resolution, not linear resolution.

I've got a 1080p projector. When I project a 20 ft image onto a wall 10 ft away, the pixels are quite obvious and I wish I had a 4k projector. If I move back to 20 ft away from the wall, the image becomes acceptable again. It's the angle of view that matters not the size or resolution. 20/20 vision is defined as the ability to distinguish a line pair with 1 arc-minute separation. So within one degree (60 arc-minutes) you'd need 120 pixels to fool 20/20 vision.

This is where the 300 dpi standard comes from. Viewed from 2 ft away, one inch covers just about 2.5 degrees, which is 150 arc-minutes, which can be fully resolved with 300 dots. So for a printout viewed from 2 ft away, you want about 300 dpi to match 20/20 vision. If it's not necessary to perfectly fool the eye, you can cut this requirement to about half.

In terms of Occulus Rift, a 1080p screen is 2203 pixels diagonal, so this corresponds to 18.4 degrees to fool 20/20 vision, 39 degrees to be adequate. If you want your VR display to look decent while covering a substantially wider angle of view than 39 degrees, you will want better than 1080p resolution. I'm gonna go out on a limb, and predict that most people will want more than a 39 degree field of view in their VR headset.

That actually gets to the real heart of the matter. Going after Google for this or the European right to be forgotten thing is shooting the messenger. Google doesn't actually host the content in question, and removing it from their index doesn't actually make the content disappear. The only reason it ranked highly in a Google search is because lots of websites linked to it, so removing it from Google's index won't stop people from getting to the info via the intermediary sites. It is literally like sticking your head in the sand in hopes it'll make the bad thing go away.

Starbuck's CEO Schultz is a smart cookie. He realizes while raising the minimum wage will ameliorate the problem, it is ultimately not a solution. Wages for low-skill jobs are low because of simple supply/demand economics. Too many unskilled workers + not enough jobs for them = low wages for them.

Schultz recognizes that the ultimate solution is to change this supply/demand balance. Technological progress means low-skilled jobs are disappearing, so the only avenue available is to reduce the number of unskilled workers. We need to educate them so that they are no longer unskilled or low-skilled.

So the whole point of this program is to educate people in a medium-skill or high-skill job. That way they are able to get a better, higher-paying job, removing themselves from the supply of unskilled workers, thus helping to naturally increase wages for unskilled workers.

The point of this program is not to let you get a degree in something you think is "fun" or "always wanted to do" with zero regard for its applicability or usefulness to society (the mistake most kids make when their parents are paying for their education). You're supposed to study so you can get a job which takes some skill, but is readily available and useful to society, and hopefully you enjoy doing.

You see, while raising the minimum wage alters the income distribution, it is a zero-sum proposition (possibly even negative-sum, as it eliminates some low-end jobs). It does not increase the net productivity of the population, so it is merely dividing the pie a different way. OTOH, educating people for a higher-skill job increases their productivity - it makes the pie bigger, and is thus the preferable solution.

I think those numbers in terms of calories and protein requirements (broscience or real science) are often directional, simply because we have different levels of activity with slight differences in metabolism. Even when people work out, one person may work out much more intensely than another.

So, the best solution is to play around with them until you're at a point that's best for you.

For me, I've been tracking my intake and dietary habits against my workouts and progress for over 7 years, and this is what I've found. I barely keep muscle mass at about .7-.8 gm/lb; I keep it and do well at 1-1.1 gm/lb; and I start putting more on at 1.2-1.4 gm/lb.

Agreed that it's not in the summary, but as you correctly note, it's just a "summary". Anyone who reads the underlying blog post will read this among the facts on which the court based its opinion: "The public was allowed to search by keyword. The search results showed only the page numbers for the search term and the number of times it appeared; none of the text was visible."

So those readers who RTFA will be in the know.

They are both full of starch and high in carbs. They are good supplemental foods when you need energy, but I wouldn't base my diet around either of those.

But really, it is cultural. In the US, most food is centered around pasta, pizza, and burgers. Sure, we eat our share of salads, Asian food, curry, and so on, but I'd imagine that the vast majority of our carbs (other than from fries, soda, and candy) probably come from pasta, pizza, and bread.

Telling people to buckle up and giving them the tools and knowledge to fight their addiction is not verbal abuse.

I still think my maths hold up and you selected very specific body-builder-favoured foods to 'disprove' the maths.

No, the healthy choices happened to be those that athletes and bodybuilders favor, that is all. That doesn't make them "bodybuilding" food anymore than a burger is "fat people" food.

(Come on. Egg whites? No ordinary person would even think of eating an egg like that.)

Ummm, I do not know where you live. I am guessing not the US, from your comments. But here in the US, you get liquid egg whites, prepackaged, just like milk. You can just pour them and make an omelette. Everything I posted (e.g. fat free cottage cheese, Greek yogurt) is easily available in grocery stores.

I'm not, FWIW, arguing that you should avoid those foods. They're certainly nutritious and fine for their purpose. Just that no ordinary person would suddenly have a light-bulb moment and start a diet with these foods, for the purposes of getting fit or losing weight.

Which is why I posted them - the problem is as much ignorance and need for education as it is unhealthy habits.

(You're certainly correct that people must mind their protein intake when embarking on a quest of losing weight and it's something the mainstream media never seems to mention. Just that the number you quoted is way too high. (Yeah. I'm repeating myself.))

The number only seems high because we're used to diets that are relatively unhealthy, and carb/fat rich. In my own personal experience, you need at least that much protein to keep up your muscle mass. And btw, I am not a bodybuilder. I am not even an athlete. I am just a regular guy who does rock climbing about once a week, and tries to hit the gym once or twice a week. I am not buff - while I am in shape, I am not bulky, and far from "jacked". Even my workout schedule is very minimal (i.e. twice a week most weeks; maybe 3-4 times during the holidays because I eat a lot). Despite that, I have found that if I do not eat adequate amounts of protein, my performance suffers. I lose muscle mass. I injure myself more. I lose both volume and density. By biceps turn into fatceps.

Getting in shape is not something that happens magically, and obviously any number I throw out there is directional. 1g/lb is the general consensus among amateur athletes and BBers - some do more, some do less. Ultimately, you need to figure out what works for you through trial and error.

Fixating on the actual number is silly because it takes away from the original point - i.e. do not try and lose weight; instead, try and lose fat while keeping muscle. And that requires eating adequate protein and weight lifting.