As far as I know, OS X has used the GPU to render everything for several years. So how does Windows 8 compare? Is this another example of Windows playing catch-up?

From TFA: "Thirty seconds after leaping, he’ll exceed the speed of sound in the thin upper atmosphere by traveling almost 700 miles per hour."

The speed of of sound in the upper atmosphere is _not_ 700 miles per hour. That figure relates to the speed of sound at one atmosphere and normal temperatures and also has to consider partial pressures including water vapor. In the upper atmosphere, the speed of sound is much less.

Claims similar to this over the years that the space shuttle is traveling at Mach 25 are just as ill-informed, since the "mach" number is supposed to be based on local conditions, not at some hypothetical place on a beach (one atmosphere, nice temperatures). It is wrong to simply divide some velocity by the speed of sound at sea level and then apply it to conditions present at the object's location.

OMG. I really do hope medicine outgrows its infancy during my lifetime.

Direct democracy isn't what it is cracked up to be. (Sorry for any Americanism in that sentence). Which is why the Founders of the United States chose a different system, a _representative_ democracy in which people vote for wise and accomplished people to represent them, rather than allowing the masses to be swayed by specious arguments and tactics. The Founders were in many ways students of history—The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was being written by Gibbons at the same time and published in 1776–1789. The American system is not without its problems but it arguably has provided a more stable government than a direct democracy such as that of the ancient Greeks.

"weak math skills are linked with an array of poor life outcomes such as prison, unemployment, exclusion from school, poverty and long-term illness"

How about this for an example of bad math? Researchers post an article making the age-old mistake of equating correlation to causation.

As noted in the introduction, the easier it is to vote (internet, mail, motor-voter registration, etc.), the more people vote who wouldn't otherwise have voted. This is the best reason there is for not making voting easier, for it is these marginally-motivated people who are the least informed and the most ill-informed.

This piece piques one of my pet peeves, the confusion between scientists and engineers. Scientists do not build rockets--engineers build rockets. Even if a person trained in, say, physics, is designing a rocket, that person is effectively acting as an engineer.

I object to attempts to glorify certain kinds of engineers by calling them scientists. There is no such need to glorify engineers--they are glorious in their own right. Calling them scientists is a slap in the face and an insult.

Engineering and science could hardly be different. Engineers put things together; scientists take things apart.

YABL

I just returned from the CES and can report that when I'm in Las Vegas, I'm very handsome to very pretty blonde women who want to meet me later for a drink. Which is to say, they let hookers into the CES.

That's a great story. Thanks.
OP

"And yes, the invention is every bit as obvious as you can imagine."

The standard defense against this type of claim-without-support is that if it were obvious, and given that there are _lots_ of eyeballs on the subject matter, and given that it is highly useful, then someone would have already done it. Therefore, since nobody has done it before, it was not obvious.

The "it's obvious" rant is almost universal when someone sees an idea that they (a) know is good, and (b) understand. As an inventor and generally creative type myself, I can't tell you how many times people will say that something is obvious once I have explained it clearly to them, even though had I not done so, they would never have made the same invention in their lifetime. The corollary is that there is a high probability that they will then believe that the idea was their own. I once showed a choreographer the ending to her dance with which she was struggling; after its first performance, someone congratulated her on her work, especially the ending, and she took full credit even though I was standing at her side at the time.

Will this version of Qt improve the horrible impedance mismatch to the OS X GUI?