A social worker friend of mine said that Ritalin was a _diagnostic_ drug. If you had ADD symptoms and they went away with Ritalin, then you had ADD. IF the symptoms didn't go away, you had something else. I thought that was interesting and weird, but if you think about it, actually useful too in a backasswards kind of way.

NASA will use all sorts of experts, but they will of course ignore the discoveries of the first expert they hired to help find life on Mars, James Lovelock.

Hired to build machines to search for life on Mars, he investigated biology and quickly realized that over geologic time, extremophiles such as bacteria found in hot springs or in the arctic could not survive without all the rest of life creating the free oxygen and other elements and compounds necessary for life. NASA ignored The Gaia Hypothesis completely yet that was a discovery they paid for.

In the article, he advised using the extension cable and not plugging it directly in. The article is good, not by the vendor.
It even has a little fan inside that puts out a high-pitched annoying whine after longterm use.

I appreciate your on-the-spot insight, but it seems as if there would also be facts to back up your assertion. Granted, it would be hard to discriminate between the folks who drive for Uber every Saturday vs the ones who drive only on the Saturdays they "think" there might be surge pricing.

With prices changing every 5 minutes, seems to me the astute driver would foregoe the first surge that attracts other drivers to an area and try to be in the vacant area that receives the next surge 5 minutes later.

By the way, he isn't poking holes in anybody's approach. Everyone agrees there are three ways surge prices address scarcities. Uber says their approach worksby doing option 1 but the researcher says it works by doing option 3. It thought it was pretty clear in both the summary and the article but apparently not.

Actually, it is Uber that says their surge pricing puts more drivers on the road and the researcher who says that is not true, that Uber's surge pricing merely redistributes the current drivers, it does not add new drivers.

I'm so sorry you confuse explanation of facts with conspiracies.

That's who demagogues rely on for their support.
There are upsides and downsides to _everything_.

The smarter you are, the more that fact hits you in the face every place you look. There actually are benefits to mankind from religion, not just costs. Same with Capitalism, science and whatever pet aspect of life you completely hate or love.

I think it's pretty damned easy to tell how smart someone is, child or adult, after being with them for a few hours.
Smart people don't really need to give tests to determine this (within a reasonable range).
If you can't tell how smart someone is without a test, I'll bet I can predict your own IQ test score ;-)

Or for smaller diameter holes, there are things called oil drills (that can be drilled sideways).

Digging tunnels is difficult. Chicago is so flat that in order to put in the first sewer system, they decided it was cheaper to raise every building in the city 10 feet (~3 meters).

Probably for the same reason the US does.

Except if you immediately remove one who gives notice, that is _exactly_ identical to having an employee quit without notice, which is one of the things disgruntled employees can do to cause as much pain as possible (see posts above).
I think it depends on the employee and what they do.

People who give notice tend to be more trustworthy and responsible than those who do not give notice.

I think the waste of too much bureaucracy is a direct result of voters/pols wanting to "prevent" waste.
Counting anything costs money. If we're going to make people apply for something, we need to read all the damned applications. And we need to have rules for what is successful and what isn't on the application. And we need to advertise it to everybody who might be eligible. The laws about hiring contractors and putting out bids are stultifying.

But in a democracy, we make rules based on fantasy and belief implemented by immediate desire.
Let's stop this current example of fraud and abuse (one example out of 4,000 purchases) regardless of how much it costs.
That's how bureaucratic policies get implemented and ossified.
And it isn't necessarily bad. If you want "your" property rights enforced, some governmental entity someplace has to have a meticulous record of that.

The sweet spot is finding the correct amount of bureaucracy for each aspect of the job, something the article directly addresses.

Over the long run, that's statistically unfair to the even-plated people since the odd-plated folks can drive consecutive days on
Jan 31/Feb 1 (Feb 29/Mar 1 looooong run ;-) Mar 31/Apr1 May 31/Jun1 July 31/Aug 1 Aug 31/Sep 1 Oct 31/Nov 1