Oops... messed up the number of dimensions in my estimation. Frankly, that type of error in mental arithmetic could happen with any unit of measure, metric or not.

One square foot packed from floor to ceiling is about one cubic meter. One medium-sized bedroom is about 100 square feet (maybe 120, but close enough for this purpose). So if you packed your stuff from floor to ceiling with no packing materials and no waste of space, could you fit it in half of a bedroom? If so, you've got under 50 cubic meters of stuff. If not, you've got more.

I am all for space exploration, but we know about all isotopes from right here on earth. From right here on earth, we can study stable isotopes, isotopes so light that their half lives are fractionths of a second, and isotopes so heavy that their half lives are fractionths of a second. Isotopic abundances will vary by location, but the properties of the individual isotopes will be the same.

Historical definitions and modern definitions have little in common. The historical definition of the meter was 1/10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to the north pole along a certain longitude line. The modern definition of the meter is based on the distance a certain wavelength of light travels in a perfect vacuum in a measured amount of time. That's (indirectly, through the meter) the modern definition of an inch, too. It just happens to be a different measured amount of time. See http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/on-what-basis-is-one-inch-exactly-equal-to-25.4-mm-has-the-imperial-inch-been-adjusted-to-give-this-exact-fit-and-if-so-when-(faq-length)

An inch is defined as exactly 2.54 centimeters. I don't know how much more based on SI units it could be. It's not really any different from how we define minutes, hours, days, and years. Those aren't all factors of 10, either.

Interesting. I just learned tonight from reading /. that I have not been doing proper science this whole time. My notebook of organic reactions is full of measurements in minutes, hours, and days. In over a decade of organic chemistry research, measurements recorded in seconds account for under 1% of my time measurements. Indeed, my raw time data usually takes the form of hours and minutes from a clock. Quick... how many seconds into the day am I at the exact moment when the second hand reaches 12 o'clock (when I usually do something if I want high precision in my timing) at 15:47? Equally importantly, why should I care?

That's silly. We all know that heat rises. It's true that you want to cut a hole in the floor, but it's to get the cold air. (Don't worry... that heat engine will still work.) You need another hole in the ceiling for the heat to escape. Straddle the hole and hold your laptop right there, and you'll get the best cooling. If you don't believe me, just try it!

Left foot on clutch. Left side of right foot on brake pedal. Right side of right foot partial throttle. Let off clutch pedal far enough for the clutch to bite and transmit enough power to have the car straining forward just a bit. Roll right foot gradually off the brakes and onto the gas while continuing to let off the clutch. With just a little practice, you can pull this off with _zero_ backward rolling. You can do it quickly to get a fast start, or slowly to get a nice slow roll.

I think people who are sending their children to this school will be able to teach their children the necessary computer skills just fine without the help of the school.

I also have yet to meet a piece of paper that gives immediate feedback. However, I have met teachers who can give better targeted and more useful feedback than any computer program. Learning tools are great, but perhaps a bit more emphasis should be given to inspiring and training more good teachers.

But "tiny cuts would get infected, and spread," the reason that you're telling me that a high (absurd, but theoretical) dose of capsacin would lead to mass tissue death, is exactly the outcome the immune system fights against! That part wouldn't be affected at all by turning off nerve receptors. Nor would the clotting process. So how exactly does turning off a receptor in a nerve affect the body's ability to heal? Numbing a cut on the outside of the body certainly doesn't affect the body's ability to heal on the outside. The digestive tract is topologically on the outside, so I fail to see the difference. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm genuinely curious since what you're telling me strikes me as being extremely counterintuitive.

Can you provide some refereed papers in support of this? It makes no sense to me since the immune system is not governed by the nervous system. No signal in the nervous system would mean no sensation, but it wouldn't mean that the immune system would stop responding to any effects. There are no nerves from the brain to the white blood cells.

Best upgrade? Going from having no computer to having a computer. Sure, by modern standards my Mac SE with its 1 MB of RAM and a 20 MB hard drive is obsolete. But being able to edit documents without rewriting the entire thing forever changed how I went about my work. My work and home computers are orders of magnitude faster now, but the fundamental tasks that I perform on them haven't really changed all that much.

Suppose you can build some large equipment in space with manufacturing advantages. (Never mind all the effort to set up such a manufacturing base.) How exactly would you get it back to earth where it's needed? It's not like you can just give that fancy gas turbine that you just built a slight retrograde nudge and let it fall back down to earth.

Oops... undoing bad moderation.