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Comment Curious (Score 1) 436

Am I the only one who can't wait to give Win8 a shot just to see what all the screaming is about? I haven't touched the interface at all and only know what I've seen in pictures, but usually something as polarizing as metro ends up being awesome in the long run or it gets completely ditched. I'm excited to decide which one I think it is....

Comment Compared to what? (Score 5, Interesting) 351

Why is reading a crappy magazine in the doctor's office more productive than using your smartphone? I hate when people spew opinions like this without showing at least ONE piece of data/evidence that using a smartphone is more harmful than the alternative (the other things we do when we're bored).

And didn't people make the same arguments about television? And then, later, about videogames?

Comment Re:Orbit (Score 2) 67

If the orbit comes close enough to the black hole, and if the protoplanetary disc is large enough, tidal effects will destroy the protoplanetary disc.

Question is: why hasn't this destruction happened at the previous closest pass of the black hole?

From TFA:

"The star was likely formed in the stellar ring and later thrown into its highly eccentric orbit though a close encounter with one or more stars in the ring. The stars exchanged momentum and the red dwarf was tossed onto a new, deadly trajectory. "

So, even though they're calling it an "orbit," it was likely not on this trajectory before and this is the first time it's getting close enough to the black hole for the disc to be affected. Also, the disc is already being destroyed: "But the damage is already happening. The protoplanetary disk is disintegrating under the black hole's tidal pull -- stretching the disk like taffy. Add to that a withering blast of ultraviolet radiation from the black hole that is heating and driving off material in the disk."

Comment Re:Love the global warming answer. (Score 2) 608

Romney cannot spell out what HE would do but he can blame Obama for doing what Obama has done.

Is this your first election? I'm not trying to be a smart-a$$, just pointing out that this is almost always the strategy when going up against the incumbent. It's much safer to try and make the incumbent look bad than to try and convince others that his own policies are any better.

Comment Inoffensive and unhelpful answers (Score 1) 608

Unfortunately, it is hard to find anything controversial or interesting in these answers, which is to be expected when political teams are given time to craft PC responses to questions like these. Everything here is what you would expect - Obama answers the questions by talking up his policies of the past 4 years and Mitt answers the questions by attacking Obama's policies of the past 4 years. I would much rather see these questions posed in a debate, where the candidates have less time and less help in coming up with responses.

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