Now that we're discussing hydrogen, electric is conventional I think that shows where this is heading.

With the newly Obama-mandated Electronic Medical Records that will keep your medical history for generations to come (harming not only you, but potentially your progeny, too) seeking mental illness treatment may soon be prima facie proof of poor mental faculties, anyway. It's hard to imagine a move that places a bigger stigma on those who would otherwise consider seeking help. #UnintendedConsequences

Seriously, I believe this is a far greater deterrent to needed treatment than "more aggressive institutionalization". Let's face it - most of the "homeless" are mentally unstable and at least marginally incompetent people who would have been institutionalized in past years. I have a hard time believing it's "kinder and more respectful" to let them fend for themselves and die on the streets than to make sure they're cared for in a State Home. It's certainly not cheaper to turn them out, at least in the long run...

Our children are in schools that have completely inadequate meteor defense systems! Something must be done! They could be mashed flat in an instant!

I didn't take then into school, but there were guns in a fair fraction of the cars in the parking lot (including quite a few in gun racks in the back windows of pickups, back when no one ever stole the guns that way...)

We'd head down to the river or the I-35 underpass and blast away after school. Pistols, rifles, shotguns, you name it. There might have even been an "illegal" weapon or two from time to time - one guy filed his sear to get full-auto - the problem with that method was that once you pulled the trigger, you had to empty the entire magazine, since releasing the trigger won't stop it firing.

It was tons of fun and a literal blast, but no one was ever killed or even injured (at least by firearms, with the exception of the occasional newbie whose improper grip would slice the web of his thumb with the slide of an auto pistol.)

One guy shredded his knee slipping into the creek, though. Turns out mud can be more dangerous than guns...

There's probably a good chance you could get a false positive with a firecracker or similar device - even maybe something as small as a cigarette load or those little pops-when-you-throw-them (or pull-on-them) things, if near the sensor.

This could rapidly become a popular new sport at schools equipped with this system. Just sayin'... (Don't try this at school, kiddos!)

It depends a LOT on both the round and what you're shooting it from. While many rimfire .22s are subsonic, especially from pistols, some can be quite powerful with longer barrels - check out this test of .22 magnum penetration of aluminum diamond plate when shot through the new KelTec CMR-30 carbine: http://olegvolk.net/blog/2014/11/13/should-22mag-be-taken-seriously-as-a-defensive-caliber-new-on-alloutdoor/

No, there is approximately ZERO chance of anyone confusing Gnome (which was a word long before Stallman decided to mispronounce it), a commercial product by a company called Groupon, with GNOME, a free window mangler by the GNOME Foundation, part of an organization that is explicitly designed to *prevent* commerce. Yeah, sure, people will confuse those.

Sorry, but from both the trademark law and a common sense points of view, the GNOME Foundation is simply engaged in self-righteous trademark bullying rather than valid defense of a mark.

Agreed. Bennett needed some editing for length and focus, but the basic article and the experiments behind it are reasonably thoughtful and intriguing.

I'd actually like to see a more detailed article on the validity caveats associated with using Amazon's Mechanical Turk for these kinds of surveys. My guess is that the biggest problem is that this is a very skewed, self-selected pool in the first place, but it *would* be interesting to know if that's really the case...

This is back-of-the-envelope-type research - it's not perfect, but I find the methodology (even if flawed) to be of considerably more interest than any possible conclusion about racism in the perception of breastfeeding mothers.

I'd also argue this is appropriate for /. simply because of the use of AMT in an attempt to quickly and inexpensively conduct rough-order-of-magnitude sociological/perception research. (I know, still needed more samples, etc.) Kinda cool and clever, though, really...

You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at you!

Oh, for mod points today! Well played, sir, you made my evening :-)

Lots of us have gone *back* to mechanical watches. I'm especially fond of the wonderful Seiko 5 automatic (self-winding) series. Seiko doesn't sell these through their usual US channels, but Amazon and others have them (and Amazon substitutes thier own warranty for Seiko's original - this is a pretty safe bet, as these things are extraordinarily well-built for the money). A good, basic Seiko 5 can be had for as little as ~$50. At that price, they're understandably popular with those who want to hack and modify their watches (faces, bands, upgraded lume, etc. - I'm planning on copper and brass-plating some of the guts of my next one to give it a dieselpunk feel, just because I can...)

I have several much nicer watches, but my 5s are now my daily go-to watches. (I also like the clean, somewhat Bremont-like lines of the less expensive models. If I win the lottery, I'll buy a Bremont, but until then, I'm pretty enamored of the value of the 5s. Don't get me wrong - I actually appreciate the design and workmanship of high-quality watches like Omegas, Reversos, etc., but I also have to admire a fairly decent and rugged mechanism that's cheap enough that I don't get too upset when I inevitably ding it on an I-beam or engine block.

While the 5s don't have the accuracy of a quartz watch, mine aren't far off, and they can be adjusted - don't even try until you've worn it (or at least run it) for several months solid: the springs and winder really do need to settle in. I've thought each new one needed adjusting, but almost all of them settle in to pretty much dead accurate after several months of running.

Unless you need a navigation-grade chronometer, buy yourself one of these - they're cheap, fun, and the see-through back crystal alone is worth the price of the watch just for entertainment value, especially if you carry any mech-hacker genes.

Is it a truly awesome watch? Not really. But it's a very good watch that's definitely awesome for the price, though. I own several great quartz watches, but these inexpensive automatics have earned a special place in my heart - as Jeremy Clarkson might say, "They've got Soul!"...

The first batch of product to market is sent by airfreight, which is expensive so you only send enough to satisfy a reasonable portion of the initial demand. Later, the product is sent by surface (ship) in larger quantities so there are more available and the supply/demand economics can start to kick in.

In Spanish most words in femenine form can mean prostitute. This isn't considered sexist by Spanish girls, because they all have bigger cojones than the men anyway.

They have some nice niche products not related to the noise-cancelling tech. I used to travel a lot for work and a pair of these made life a little more comfortable; you can't wear headphones all the time. They are expensive and the sound is quite coloured, but the bass and the volume you get from such a tiny thing is impressive. I had an equaliser setting saved in iTunes to flatten them out a bit.