Mathematica syntax is actually quite easy once you get used to it. This is enhanced enormously by the excellent help/reference/tutorial database. Can't remember the syntax for a certain command? Curious about options? Need a similar command but can't remember/don't know it? Highlight your command and hit F1. Takes all of about 2 seconds, and you have all the requisite knowledge to construct some pretty sophisticated functions. I'm a physics student, and I've used Mathematica extensively for both quick and dirty and more involved numerical work, and in this respect its proved invaluable. My one reservation is that it's handling of procedural programming blows-- sometimes I wish I knew C better than I do...

DARPA is the canonical "high risk, high reward" agency. Sure some of their funded proposals/contracts sound bat shit insane, but what if this actually succeeds? This is, after all, the organization that brought us the precursor to the internet and the predator drone. A pilot-less combat plane you say? Blasphemy. Lay people exchanging information and culture near instantaneously across the world using light traveling through a cable? Apostasy. IMHO, quit whining about what in all reality is a small, small fraction of the federal budget, and focus on what really matters. And by that I mean ensuring net neutrality. =)

You know what the great thing about making absolute statements (or in your case, the insinuation) is? It only takes one counter example to prove the statement false. I played WoW for about 5 years, consistently performing at the highest levels of both PVE and PVP (top 100 world wide PVE, multiple gladiator titles). I'm also a physics major at a world class research university who has publications in a major journal. While your statement may be true of many WoW players, it's downright asinine to assume no benefits come from the game at all or that it inevitably wrecks your life. In short, I defy you, sir.

I can probably read the BBC article using the BBC news app on my android phone. For those of you unfamiliar with the BBC, it's a corporation operating under royal charter that's funded primarily by taxes (the television licensing fee). Oh irony, how you brighten my day...

In the gaming community, I've noticed a trend where people will drop offline, then reappear, explaining that they'd been "Comcast'd". Take that as you will.

Yeah, I figured the literature was probably fluff so I didn't even bother to track it down. It's interesting that they can't even show an expulsion of flux--my experience has been that you can take quite a few ceramics and throw them into a SQUID and see the "Meissner" effect... but when you try and measure resistivity it's always finite but measurable. Seems they didn't even get that far...

Doing research in a solid state physics lab, I can tell you that this article is worth nothing without the inclusion of the critical temperature Tc at which the "superconductor" starts working. Given that its some sort of ceramic, its a class II superconductor which means that it could possibly be one of the "high Tc" superconductors, a misleading title because they do still need to be cooled with LN2 (just not liquid helium, a much more expensive/difficult prospect). If their "superconductor" only works at .7 kelvin, it's not very impressive--there are lots of materials that do that. To quote (more or less) one of my lab mates "if I dunked my cat in liquid helium, it would probably begin to superconduct." In summary, the devil is in the details.

Heh, I watched the episode last night as well. But seriously, this guy is crazier than a green snake in a sugar cane field.

Follow me here: The average household is somewhere around 2400 square feet. Let's assume for simplicity sake that it's a box measuring 49'x49'x10'. That makes for about 6800 square feet of interior surface area. The skin depth for gold at 2.4 GHz is pretty close to 200nm, but to be sure that the vast majority of the signal is stopped lets assume a coating of 1um thickness. 6800 square feet multiplied by 1um yields a volume of about 6e-4 m^3 of gold. Multiplying this by the density of gold (~20gm/cm^3) yields about 12 kilograms of gold. The last time I checked, gold was something close to $1200 dollars an ounce, which works out to be about $508k. So all the guy really wants to do is use the settlement money to WiFi proof his house. And have a gold plated interior. And a little bit left over for hookers and blow.