Full disclosure: I haven't RTFA, so I don't know who the author thinks will nuke who. However, the responses here mostly assume it would be a nuclear power nuking another nuclear power. As many have pointed out, having precision nukes would not cause that to happen; it's just too risky.

However, I think that precision nukes do increase the chance of a nuclear power nuking a _non_nuclear power. Granted, I don't think the risk is that high, but there are some possible scenarios where a precision nuke could be used -- maybe a major terrorist attack on the US (lead by a hawkish president) by a group based in some remote area. I'm sure other scenarios could give other nuclear powers an itchy trigger finger too. Again, I'm not saying it will happen, but it's more likely with precision nukes than without.

Although the lower receiver seems to be the most regulated part of a gun, it doesn't look that hard to machine (given that you have a mill -- CNC or manual). What parts (if any) are harder to make (at least with off-the-shelf equipment)? The barrel?

It's a bit more complicated that that. Even if an element is somewhat abundant but evenly distributed in the earth's crust, then it's difficult to mine. It's only practical to mine something if it's concentrated in some areas. E.g. gold is rare but you can find it in macroscopic flecks or clumps that are concentrated in certain areas. If gold were not concentrated like that but was instead uniformly distributed in the crust, there'd be no economical way to mine it.

That said, it looks like indium is concentrated somewhere: in zinc ores. So large scale production may be possible.

O RLY? Parting out a bike takes effort and most used bike parts are worth very little. Most stolen bikes are not fancy ones with valuable parts. There simply isn't enough demand for crappy parts to account for the number of crappy stolen bikes; most are sold intact. Having lived in a number of college towns (where there are lots of bikes to be stolen), I know several examples of stolen bikes reappearing intact with a new owner. That's even been the case for expensive bikes, which evidently were not sold for parts. I realize that's anecdotal evidence, but it's not inline with your absurd proposition that the entire point of bike thefts is to sell them for parts.

Not even a politician could have given more non-answers.

Uhhh, that same text basically gives them the right to deny any request you have to amend anything. In particular:

"A covered entity may deny an individual's request for amendment, if it determines that the protected health information... is accurate and complete."

Translation, if they say the record is good, then you have no right to amend it. Guess what they're going to say if you request to amend your record?

Yes, it's click-bate, but I agree that there's a rush to connect everything to the internet without thinking about the security consequences; we have enough trouble securing the things already connected to the internet -- never mind an huge influx of cheaply-made, dumb, internet-connected knob turners.

Others have suggested that this isn't new because all technology can and has be used to kill people, but IMHO, the potential for "democratizing" remote and unwanted destruction of physical things is unnerving. Previously, only well-funded governments could pull that shit...

From what I've read, that number is right, but it's because of additional restrictions. For example, there are restrictions on visible tattoos:

http://insider.foxnews.com/201...

IIRC, all people who need to take medication every day are also out. (I know that I'm out for medical reasons, even though I could handle those physical requirements.)

All the restrictions put together really limits the eligible pool.

I'm not sure how 'not forbidding' is different than 'allowing'. Regardless, slavery wasn't handled just through the 10th amendment. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 specifies that slaves (i.e. people who are neither free nor indianans) count as 0.6 people for determining the number of congressional representatives from a state. Because of that, I'd say that the constitution condoned slavery.

I'm surprised the "dominating group" is that large. There aren't a ton of _senior_ scientist out there (i.e. professors or researchers with the funding for graduate students and postdocs), and those are the people whose names appear most frequently. A senior scientist will probably have been doing research for years, have lots of projects going on at once, have many students and postdocs, have a number of collaborators, and the senior scientist's name will go on every paper produced by that group (even if it's as a middle author -- which means next to nothing). New guys will often want to collaborate with the big names, which means the big names get on even more papers. If you're working on your own (i.e. you don't have the funding to hire others), then you won't publish as frequently.

What did you expect? Why is this an issue?

Sincerely,

A graduate student who has been working on a project for two years (and who should be working on a paper)

That's not a fair comparison; a car has large taillights, but most bike tail lights are low-power LEDs.

Are you mad when car turn signals blink? Even brake lights turn on and off in an attempted to get people's attention.

Maybe blinking bike lights don't help. Maybe they don't. You raise an interesting question, but your thoughts and anecdotal evidence don't contribute much. There are some actual studies out there, and they seem to indicate that blinking lights are more effective. (This has a number of references.)

Just a thought (unsubstantiated): a blinking light may help differentiate a bike from other vehicles, and that may be useful. if there's just one bike and one car on a street, then that isn't an issue. If a cyclists is on a road with many cars -- all with steady red lights -- then it may be hard to recognize that there's a cyclist in the mix. A blinking light could make it easier to tell that there's a non-car on the road.

Do you really think these idiot cyclists don't know what a red light means? They know; they just don't care. A license would not fix that. (Altho it may make the idiots easier to fine.)

It's not like drivers really know the laws relating to cyclists either, and there are some unexpected laws (example). That said, I'm fine with cyclists having to get a license -- as long as drivers have to pass a rigorous test of laws related to bikes...

I don't study particle physics, but from what I understand, for photons or neutrinos to "turn into other shit", they need to interact with something -- such as the particles they create, atomic nuclei, etc. Photons interact through electromagnetic forces -- which is the strongest force out there. In contrast, neutrinos interact via the weak force. As you might guess, that force is very weak. That's why neutrinos are so hard to detect.

Since photons interact with "other shit" via a much stronger force than neutrinos, photons are much, much, much more likely to "turn into other shit" than neutrinos are.

So, sorry internet troll, this isn't "cherry picking"; it's science. Deal with it.

WRT the Black Hawks, I'd say that up to the Sauk, since Black Hawk was their leader at one point.

They wouldn't necessarily object. For example, the Seminoles officially sanction Florida State University's use of their name. Having a sport's team named after you needn't be insulting; since sports teams emphasize hard work and skill, some take the naming as an honor.

However most Native Americans object to "Redskin" -- which I can certainly see as being interpreted as an insult.

SV: Who get's to decide? Native Americans, that's who (not you).

The TV example is a mix of proving his point and a meaningless comparison.

Digital generally has two states: working and not working, and GP is saying that it's often easy for an all digital system to be in the former camp. (Think of an LCD computer display that gets digital inputs; there's almost no noise there.). However, "Digital" TV is really a digital/analog hybrid: you have analog antennas, amplifiers, and filters. Those analog parts are flexible; the digital part is much less so. The analog part can take some noise (snow on an analog TV), but when that noise is passed on to the digital part, things can fall apart. I.e. digital signals are much more sensitive to GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), but that's much less of a problem on an all digital system.

In short, the complicated part is the analog part; if that can give the digital part a good signal, then there are no problems. In other words, it's exactly what the GP said.