Do its pipes get filled with enormous amounts of materiel?

I believe that the Rolling Stones answered this decades ago:

I said, Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause tubes'll crowd
On my cloud, baby

There is no "normal" - everyone seems to have something. Developers (and geeks, in general) just wear it out there on their sleeve.

Should we throw away all that usefulness in the name of "fresh" and "new" ideas?

Who suggested that we throw anything away?

I think that this is a good supplement that open the minds of people who might not grok the scale illustrated non-graphically by the canonical chart.

that design doesn't look much better than the current one

Sure it does - it gives you scale. I, for one, never spent the time required to appreciate the differences in scale. So this new graphical representation provided me with an immediate and intuitive grasp on the situation. Sure - the numbers are there. But I never really thought about them beyond being a number (I'm sure that non-chemists can appreciate and forgive this ignorance).

And the gaps create an immediate sense of wonder. I think wonder is only a good thing (perhaps something that is missing from today's youth).

Can anyone tell me why it costs nearly $10 to register a domain for a year? What is the profit margin on this? Who keeps the profit?

Maybe old hat to you network engineers, but I was previously unfamiliar with "bits per second.kilometer".

This is equivalent to 43 LoC/HI (Libraries of Congress per hour-inch).

The biggest that I saw was about 5 inches across (Independence Oaks in Clarkston) but, normally, they are less than half of that size. I had a couple in my house recently - only about 1.5 inches - and they are QUICK.

***shudder***

Oil is a remarkable sealant - something to keep in mind. I don't have a cockroach problem but, here in Michigan, the wolf spider (and various other species scare the bejebus out of me (ever hear a 12 year old girl scream?) so I have discovered that eucalyptus oil is handy to keep them at bay.

In an episode of "Cheers," Cliff Clavin, the trivia-spouting, quirky, irksome mama's boy mailman is seated at the bar describing the buffalo theory to his buddy, Norm Peterson, the beer loving heavyweight bar stool sitting perpetual patron.

Cliff expounds his "Buffalo Theory" to Norm:
Well, you see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it's the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.

And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.