In the case of a taxi however, even if they're using a taxi app, there is no guarantee that they're coming to pick you up, because someone else could flag them on the way, they may get a more attractive offer of someone needing a ride to the airport

That is nonsense. Legally questionable, and what taxi business would allow that?

That's not exactly how it works, but it's hardly nonsense. Plenty of NYC taxis break the rules to ask you where you're going and leave you without a ride if they don't want to go there.

This is probably true for very small values of "king".

I've just racked my brain and bookmarks and Internet for the source for this figure and can't find it, so I'm probably messing it up a little, but, I seem to recall reading somewhere that the typical American lifestyle today relies on machines that exert approximately the same amount of effort as 60 human laborers. That doesn't account for nearly the same level of opulence as a major king would probably expect, but it's not a bad start either.

Come on - Are us Mormons REALLY bad neighbors? :)

The Mormons are really nice people and ways they've been finding balance on issues like tolerating (and welcoming!) homosexuals while still preserving their core religious values and teachings on the matter are pretty good. Even the (in)famous Orson Scott Card treated the matter with exquisite nuance in his fiction, decades ago in the pre-dawn of our current culture war. If there is hope for real pluralism in our nation and harmony between groups with fundamentally different world-views (instead of just one group bludgeoning the other into compliance) then this and things like the "Utah Compromise" provide a foundation. (A flawed foundation, to be sure, and, Orson Scott Card himself undermined a lot of that with his notorious expression of shock that homosexuals and their political allies are afforded political representation -- this was not so open-minded -- but a good sight better foundation than the oft-proposed alternative of compliance or implicit cultural extermination which is directed at other parts of the Christian right.)

But if you're a non-Mormon and hope to move there, there will still be plenty of people who look at you real funny for purchasing coffee at Starbucks. (gasp! caffeine!) Being in a cultural minority might be a very different experience than you're used to; it takes some real maturity to navigate, and risks leaving you angry and resentful.

Geez. Reno? I mean, sure, there's more there than gambling there, but you'd better be able to appreciate the blinkenlights aesthetic advertising it everywhere. Personally, though, having slot machines in the men's bathroom would bother me.

(I exxagerate. slightly.)

If you're up for a slightly longer commute, you could also live somewhere in/near Philadelphia and commute down to Murder Town USA (Wilmington, DE) to work at any number of corporate headquarters, especially if your'e willing to put up with the financial industry. (Philadelphia's University City area seems to be pretty fancy these days, there's an Amtrak station a stone's throw away, and there's plenty of museums/culture to be had in the city on the weekends.)

It's election season. Ignoring all the political news sources with the Facebook "I don't want to see this" control is one of the most pro-social things you can do :)

What? Should that be "they always have the right of way if on a crosswalk"?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha you wish. I've read angry diatribes in the comments at sfgate.com which basically said that pedestrians not only deserve the right of way at all time, it's offensive victim-blaming to suggest that a pedestrian crossing the road ought to be pragmatic and exercise caution for the sake of avoiding serious injury or death. (The real trendy position is to advocate for banning cars in San Francisco entirely.)

No company ever comes in spending more, whether it be on cleanliness or safety. Regulation is the only way to prevent a race to the bottom.

Yes. I too am confident that without regulation we'd all be stuck driving Yugos to work, living in slumlord-owned apartment blocks which leak when it rains and catch fire nightly, and subsisting on flavorless gruel. Competition could never bring us safe cars, pleasant housing, organic food, or usable taxi services, and people running away from the disaster scene that we call the regulated taxi industry are clearly insane or berserk.

There are alternative ways to fund research programs for things that benefit humanity, programs that don't necessarily mean spending quite as much cash on steel, rocket fuel, and other consumables. If all you want is technological ROI, landing on the moon (again) is not the best way to get it.

Ashamed of the submitter/editors for messing up this opportunity and letting us all down. The correct title of this story is that the venerable aircraft designer James Bede has died.

Is Northumbria somewhere in Middle Earth?

Of course. The Shire is a metaphor for England, the elves are Scandanavian, Minas Tirith is basically Constantinople...

The Admiral of the US Navy should send a battleship up the Potomac River and fire a warning shot across the "bow of Capital Hill" ...

Fun fact: as of 2006, the US navy doesn't own any battleships anymore. It's all about the carriers, baby! I mean, I guess they could try and lug in a museum boat like the U.S.S. North Carolina, or something...

You know, you can still get that if you want. PINE is still a thing (and elm, and mutt) and they work just like they used to. And the command line is a little formidable but you don't see it radically changing the rules all that much.

Of course, in the years since those things were invented we've also invented amazing ways to send things like family pictures through email straight through your phone, and multigigabyte free online storage of photos that might outlast your lack-of-backups on the desktop, so... you win some, you lose some

Some discoveries. Very slowly. With very limited flexibility and substantially reduced spinoff benefits.

And at a trivial fraction of the price-tag. If the Mars-mission roboticists had the same budget as it'd take for a good manned mission, things might look very different.

Are there actually real plans and proposals for a system that could detect nuclear reactors operating with a network of neutrino detectors, and what that would entail? If so, can you link me to any of them? The physics is a little formidable, the things have notoriously weak interactions and there's a ~70 billion particles/cm^2/sec flux from the Sun to contend with.

Also, $10 billion for intel on Iran's reactors is a little expensive when you can probably just drop $10 million or so on the likes of Stuxnet and old-school espionage instead. (Of course, you don't get any scientific neutrino-astronomy observations out of that sum.)