Google (along with the NSA, CIA, FBI, Chinese Government and a hoard of others) all know everything I do. Why are the ads I see so badly targeted? I spend lots of money online and in the real world, and I can't remember the last time saw an ad for something I actually wanted. When ads are targeted they are always late - ads for hotels in cities I've just left, ads for new computers or cars just after I've bought one.

It takes me 20-30 minutes to get to work by car depending on traffic. It takes an hour, with 2 changes to get there by public transit. I sometimes have to work late hours without warning - if I'm too late for the last shuttle from my workplace, I'm stuck with a $50 taxi ride.

I work at a national lab. With overhead I cost the taxpayers something like $150/hour. Would you prefer I spend an extra hour a day working or sitting on a crowded bus? I pay taxes that help support public transportation, it just doesn't happen to serve my needs.

Companies like Google that provide comfortable group transportation where people can work while they commute are the target of protests. Is the wealthy that are class sensitive, or it it the poor?

That said, a bubble car wouldn't work anyway. Since I can't use it for long trips, I would be using up another very scarce parking space where I live. Its not at all clear that owning a commute car and a normal car is an environmental win over just owning an econo-box that serves all my driving needs.

I rarely see this sort of behavior among friends because anyone who acted in a misogynistic fashion would no longer by my friend. Anyone engaging in sexist behavior at work would be fired. I expect that there are a number of people in my situation who may be aware that the problem exists but who don't see it in person, and therefor really aren't in a good position to do much about it (other than dropping friends, and firing employees who behave that way) .

There is clearly a big problem - a quick glance at many of the posts here makes that clear. OTOH, I think it is very counterproductive to suggest that ALL or even a majority of men treat women badly. There are lots of men who are decent human beings, and lumping them in with sexist assholes, and suggesting that they are lying or naive when they say that there is minimal sexism in their environment will cause them to dismiss all claims.

The same is true of racism - many white Americans really don't see much racism - they are there when a black man gets stop / frisked, or detained for "driving while black".

Don't dismiss people as saying "lala I'm not involved", when they are involved by the act of refusing to associate with people who are sexist, and by maintaining a non-sexist work atmosphere. Their success in fighting sexism is that it no longer exists in their environment. Someone stuck in a sexist environment may not realize that these places exist, but they do. They aren't perfect, but they are places where women can work without being harassed, or otherwise discriminated against.

I believe you that you have problems at your work. That shouldn't happen. One thing you can do though is to take your talent to a place where you will be treated well. Where I work (a DOE lab) there really is very little visible sexism. We have female scientists and managers, and until recently a female director. We encourage young women to start careers here through a variety of mentoring programs, though sadly not very many stay (for reasons that I think are unrelated to sexism). I'm not saying that I've never heard a sexist comment, but its really rare (I can think of only a few examples in 25 years), and the people who made them have been appropriately reprimanded.

I'm not saying that you *should* leave your work or that it is in any way your fault or responsibility. Its just that people can only fix things within their own sphere of influence. I can do my best to make sure women are treated well here, but there really is very little I can to to see that that happens at other companies.

There is probably a tendency for men and women who do not like sexist environments to move to better ones and that can lead to a large disparity between "good" and "bad" work environments.The people in each may have trouble believing that the other exists. In a similar way, people who are not sexist will not associate with people who are, with the unfortunate result that the lose influence over them. My friends are not visibly sexist because I won't associate with people who are.

I think there are a lot of people who are doing the right things in environments where women are treated well. By self selection they wind up having very little contact with places where women are treated badly.

From what I've seen "law", "theory", "rule", "principal", "equation", "rule" etc are not used as rigorous terms in the scientific community. As another poster points out, Ohm's law is far less widely correct than the "theory" of gravity. Remember these are scientists, not lawyers. It is understood that any "law", "theory", etc may be invalidated by the next experiment. Its also understood that "theories" generally come with all sorts of caveats:

The gravitational force between to bodies goes as GM1M2/r^2..... in the limit of non-relativistically weak gravity, in flat space time, over non-cosmological distances. It is understood that this has not been verified when r is small (sub millimeter), and some theories predict non 1/r^2 behavior at short distances. It is expected but not verified that M is always positive, but has not been tested for antimatter.

Similarly the "law" of conservation of energy became the law of conservation of mass-energy (or really 4-momentum), which needs to be clarified in curved space-time. It is widely believed to be correct, but a violation of this or any other conservation "law" would be extremely interesting and is not considered impossible, though very unlikely.

Evolution is a very complex topic. There is a huge amount of evidence to support the general concept of mutation and natural selection, but lots of missing pieces in the details. People should not "believe" in evolution. They should accept that it is a model that is widely supported and has good predictive power. Like any other theory it could be disproved by new evidence. It also does not rule out other forms of species change from Lamarkian evolution to genetic engineering.

Perhaps people are thinking of it as a "baby sitter" monitor not a "baby" monitor.

Thank you. That is for standard bamboo which is about 30X weaker than graphite reinforced epoxy. I hope that isn't what they are thinking of using as a replacement.....

If it is, then they are being silly if they are considering it for anything other than decorative or special purpose (like damping) applications.

Any list of the relative properties of carbon reinforced epoxy and epoxy impregnated bamboo? Density, strength, elastic modulus, impact strength etc?

People use carbon fiber where its high strength / weight and stiffness / weight improve the overall performance and efficiency of a vehicle. Is bamboo as good?

SiC FETS and IGBTs have been around for a while from Cree and other vendors.

I'm really surprised that they can get a 10% improvement in overall efficiency from this. I would have thought that the switching electronics was already in the 90% efficiency range, and SiC isn't going to reduce the losses to 0.

The article says that the switchers are 20% of the LOSSES, not 20% of the power. I hope they losses are not 50% (!!!!!)

Maybe they meant that the switching LOSSES would be reduced by 10% - that I believe. That's a nice improvement, but a BIG difference from a 10% mileage improvement.

Pretty easy:

1) avoid medechlorians, JarJar and Ewoks.

2) Avoid really stupid looking special effects

3). Avoid really bad dialog

4). Avoid truly stupid plots.

5). Avoid completely transparent toy marketing.

Then the movie will make a billion dollars, as will the next two. Its really not that hard.

Yes. Having fines go to local law enforcement really is the root of the problem.

Also see
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/e...

It was actually done much earlier but generating matter by scattering off of virtual photons. The SLAC experiment was actually looking for (and found) nonlinear interactions in photon / photon collisions. (as were predicted by QED).

Completely agree if the car is FULLY autonomous. If it is partially autonomous, eg. it sometimes needs human intervention, then it is a very confusing situation. I would have no desire to own a partially-autonomous car because of the unclear responsibility. If I need to pay constant attention to what the car is doing, then I want to be driving.

The electric motor really doesn't change the difficulty of flying. In a small training aircraft, engine management is a very minor part of the workload.

Even daytime VFR flight rules in the US require 30 minutes of fuel beyond your expected destination. So the 45 minutes to 1 hour turns into 15-30 minutes of usable flight time. At 100mph cruise, and counting the extra fuel burn for climb, it probably has a 30 mile useful range.

BTW - why ducted fans? For low subsonic speeds, unducted props are more efficient, thats why they are used on virtually every low subsonic aircraft. (everything from a piper cub to a commercial twin-turboprop. There are some nice features that they list, but giving up efficiency on such a marginal aircraft seems like pure marketing.

They say 2 seats, but what is the useful load? Can it carry 2 standard adults and their usual flying gear?