oops this wasn't post I was following up on... and comes off as harsh, but looking at the class notes is still worth a try...

Ohh... I did find class notes for 236. I assume that the prof will be happy you're learning too so here's a link:
http://www.pma.caltech.edu/~ph236/yr2010/index.html

by the way... learn to use google, and Amazon... Slashdot is full of old hosers, and now even Cmdr Taco has left!

Yes... there is a lot of math. That is almost all I remember from my attempt to learn it in PH236 at a small technical school in southern cal. Memories of Christoffel symbols, Riemann Curvature, and covariant derivatives dance in my head. I find learning the math pretty dry without some physics behind it. There are on-line class notes which might be helpful and studying with friends (if you can find someone that shares your illness).

http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misner/dp/0716703440/
Bleah! Read the reviews of MTW and see what you think...

I've since discovered that our book, Gravitation (while a great demonstration of the weight of the topic), is not the best book to learn from... at best it is a reference. A more basic book by Hartle is probably better for beginners. I picked it up at a friends house and felt I understood more GR reading it for an hour than I did studying Gravitation for 8 weeks (yes I dropped the class!). Mathematica was just coming out at the time, and I wish that we had used it, since it seems that much of the "algebraic" manipulation would have been easier... I don't know that the concepts would have been.

http://www.amazon.com/Gravity-Introduction-Einsteins-General-Relativity/dp/0805386629/
Please don't just read one of the pop-science books and feel like you know the material... "Everything is relative, dude" is just stupid.

I'm pretty surprised that General Relativity was part of a basic physics sequence... I think you mean Special Relativity, which is basically (linear) algebra and is a small departure from classical physics.... I too studied Special Rel in a freshman class at a small school in Pasadena... Then I sat in on Ph236 where I tried to grasp part of General Rel as taught by Kip Thorne (who helped write Gravitation, a book which demonstrates it's weighty topic)... Mostly I learned math, and my final understanding today is very limited.

Perhaps Special Relativity is what the poster means too, but it doesn't seem like it based on his concern, and it's not what he said. As others have mentioned General Relativity is a much bigger an more difficult topic involving Tensors and Differential Geometry.

Look at the two topics in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity

Basically, Special Rel deals with the special case of inertial reference frames (eg those that are not accelerating or rotating). It explains Doppler RADAR, and is basically completely accepted by the scientific community. Special Relativistic Quantum mechanics (Dirac's Equation) is part of the Standard Model and necessary for some quantum chemistry and Fine Structure of the atom.

Complexly, General Rel deals with the more general case of all reference frames (eg including gravitation, acceleration, and rotation). It explains gravitational lensing and a portion of Mercury's orbital precession, but is still not completely accepted, because it's not known how to combine its concepts with Quantum Mechanics. String Theory is the most popular attempt... (also not really accepted),

I consider Quantum Electrodynamics QED and Quantum Chromdynamics QCD to be much more commonly understood and comprehensible. They are still hard (like math), but not absurd.

Dude-

Appreciate the sentiment, but careful what you offer... someone will take you up on it :P

Almost certainly an effort to get people interested, though it appears that the original patents (for Ni not Al) just expired a few years ago (1990-2009).
The original purpose has always been about batteries, and I can't imagine that it hasn't been tested.... that it's not ubiquitous either means that it's not that good, or that whatever innovation actually makes it good hasn't been popularized.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=ydwfAAAAEBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=4957543&hl=en&ei=yU0jTvrfMMPWiAKE0Mm9Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA

I can't imagine that everyone in the field of battery electrodes hasn't heard of this technique.

It is patently absurd to think that an omniscient omnipotent creator could just 'evolve'.
Obviously, it was created by a multi-threaded Flying Spaghetti Monster... and the hypothesis in Null.
Only Null Pointers to the uninitialized FSM can be safely de-referenced, all others are void hypotheses .

Oh, wait... you meant hairless monkeys?
Most of them aren't intelligent enough to realize a self-inconsistent tautology when they see it.

The US is no longer the center of innovation. It will happen somewhere else, and I predict Korea or China first.
They both have huge traffic congestion problems, and heavily state (or Chaebol) controlled economies.
In Korea Samsung and Hyundai control over a third of the economy, including car manufacturing, road construction, gas distribution, aerospace, navigation, cell phones, LCDs, CPUs (ARM based), Flash, RAM... insurance, home appliances, happiness, food, water, air, dreaming... Ok I'm kidding about the last 4... or maybe dreaming is largely controlled by the Chaebol as well. They are competent and think long term, something you can not say about our government or most of our business leadership.

The efficiency of car trains and automated parking could be huge... The taxi concession isn't going to like it, and they do prevent most mass transit from going airports for that reason. There are huge vested interests as well as an irrational public (and dysfunctional media). I heard a great description of what a journalist is supposed to do, "to make important things interesting, not to make titillating things important".

If an Asian government decides that automated driving is better and more efficient, they will start to develop them, implement them, enable them, distribute them, and eventually enforce them. We will end up buying them from someone else after we are considered more insane that the drivers of Rome and Naples.

I once told Larry that I thought he needed to solve a political/emotional problem to make driverless cars happen... I no longer think so after spending a lot of time in Asia over the last few years. He could make a good friend in Korea and make his dream come true at the same time. (probably the same in China, but Google isn't as well received there...)

I call BS.
Perhaps you're an elite cyclist, or someone is editing Wikipedia to make you look silly, but averaging anything like 500W for an hour (much less indefinitely) would make you the worlds best distance cyclist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance

Lance Armstrong near his peak was reputed to be capable of ~520W for 20min.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/weekinreview/24kola.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Ok... so your gym exercise bike is a flattering, but I agree that 250W is within the range of most regular cyclists, although most won't push that hard.

Yeah... how else am I supposed to SMS while driving? ;^)

Yes, because there are not vast multi-billion dollar drug distribution rings.
You are correct, the MOB doesn't exist and all of the CIAs black-ops have come to light.
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Eve and computerized economies (including the real one) can only work when authority is distributed, and rules can be enforced.
The idea that one person could actually control a Dreadnaught, battleship, or anything much larger than a dingy is ludicrous. The idea that a single password would be used to control access is equally silly although convenient in a game environment.
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Yes we hare complicated beings with many levels of trust and methods of control and enforcement. This really only breaks down (either through bureaucratic decay, or through embezzlement and looting when a small number of people can gain control over assets that are larger than their ability to reimburse for, or where normal enforcement methods are intentionally circumvented for "efficiency".
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Our financial system became very efficient and allocating home loans recently. Risk and return were reduced to simple numerical models (made obscure and believable by geeks at the behest of their masters) and the people allocating the loans, measuring risk, and making money redistributing complex instruments didn't care that the "efficiency" failed to measure the buyers-recipients getting paid. It was efficient at "making money" for a variety of nonpunishable corporations that were "TooBigToFail". Even for the buyers-recipients it was OtherPeoplesMoney, and their personal wealth was increased by increasing returns on that pension/insurance company even if it would blow up after they were gone.
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It didn't need to be that way. Old laws (Glass Steagal) had to be repealed, regulators had to be neutered (SEC FINRA etc), rating agencies had to be co-opted, Prosecutor/Govenenors had to be ruined in prostitution scandals, and the FedReserve needed to look on it's work (smoothing the economic cycle by growing ever larger bubbles) with great satisfaction. None of the individuals could take responsibility for their decisions (eg the appraiser responsible for evaluating $1B in housing value) due to the sheer size, and corporations existed to prevent prosecution of individuals. Everyone had "deniability".
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And yet... it lasted for 80years, which is right about the correct time for a maximum size human Ponzi. Read up on fractional reserve lending, and explain how with the issuance of only debt based money, you do not have a potential crisis when the exponentially growing total future-money owed becomes larger than the present-money available.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
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You have a Nash equilibrium where so long as everyone agrees there will be more debt-based money in the future then they will be able to be paid, but once a significant group of people decide to take what they can (first out the door), then there is less debt, less money, and the future debts can only be repaid (if at all) in inflated dollars which are worth less than was lent. It's a very simple and convenient fiction that the world bases its monetary system on, and it is very productive and useful, until it fails and a small group of people make off with the majority of the wealth. The redistribution of that wealth will be ugly and not very productive.

Q. How am I charged for Voicemail calls while roaming internationally? A. Voicemail calls are charged as follows: When your device is on:

* Calls that you do not answer that are routed to the AT&T voicemail system will be charged as an international roaming incoming call to your device.

* In addition, the foreign carrier's routing of that call to the AT&T voicemail system may generate an outgoing call charge from your device's location to the U.S.

* These charges apply even if the caller disconnects from the voicemail system without leaving a message.

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/faq.jsp

If Ebay allowed a third party to secretly bid and resell to capture the difference between a sellers reserve price, and the top buyers maximum bid, do you think that would be fair? It's called front running and it's illegal, unless you've been given regulatory dispensation, which the SLPs have been. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running

Maybe that's why wild senator firebrand Schumer informed the SEC that if they didn't stop it 'flashing', there would be a law to make the current method and practice more explicitly illegal. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ajcRCWFi5MLs

Interesting... what are the Supplemental Liquidity Providers, except for privileged powerful wealthy day-traders? Why do they deserve a 1% cut of every trade on every fast moving stock? This is in addition to the commission that you pay. Why are monopoly interests PAID 0.15 to 0.25 cents for every trade by the exchange for stocks above $1? This preserves the illusion of liquidity, but note that its less than the 0.35 cents actual DMM (designated market makers) get for taking real risk. Why are they given preferential sub second looks at others prices, and paid to trade in smaller blocks at lower latency than anyone else? Couldn't all bids and asks just be available to everyone for 1 outrageously full second so that the field was level? Why do the big firms trade in "Dark Pools" for exactly this reason? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pools

The volume of SLP trading has grown significantly in just the last few months to the point where Goldman is responsible for some 20-30% of all trades on the NYSE (not in a single name... all trades) and almost are done for themselves (principal) rather than for others (agency). http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/7.13.09.jpg You don't think this moves markets? Do you think they're trading leveraged?

"In any event, positive-feedback trading is likely to increase volatility substantially. If one wants to design regulatory interventions that will decrease volatility, one must think about measures that will discourage positive-feedback trading rather than negative-feedback trading. Positive-feedback trading is substantially discouraged when traders using that strategy suffer massive losses, which is what one observed after the crash. Everyone who had been pursuing positive-feedback strategies bought more and more as the market went higher and higher, thinking that their portfolio insurance would enable them to get out. They were wrong. It's clear that the crash reduced volatility by reducing the attractiveness of positive-feedback trading." Larry Summers Previous Treasury Sec in 1988

This kind of liquidity doesn't improve markets. The next exchange closing event will be measured in seconds rather than hours or minutes. Thanks :^)