That's inaccurate. People with larger bodies have a higher basal metabolism rate than skinnier people. If a fat person and a skinny person are eating the same amount of calories, either the fat person will lose weight or the skinny person will gain weight (with all other things being equal). This is why people who are dieting and losing weight often plateau at a lower weight, once they lose some weight their body isn't working as hard (the heart is more efficient, the skeletal muscles have to lift less weight, etc.) and their intake starts to equal their burn rate rather than having a deficit.

Salt Lake CIty has some other things going for it, like being right next to Utopia cities and being close to Google Fiber's existing network in Provo. Google already interconnects with Utopia so it would probably not require as much infrastructure for Google to deploy in Salt Lake as it would in other cities.

If you don't trust the word of The Phantom Mensch, how about Stephen Hawking, he's pretty smart:

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans,"
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."

Yeah, and why does the Tachyon have a name, it is only theoretical too! Also, the Higgs Boson shouldn't have had a name until recently, they should have called it "The boson that Higgs postulated" until they actually observed it.

Sometimes, when you are talking about something it is helpful to give it a name so that every time you talk about it you don't have to refer to it as "the planetoid that may or may not have crashed into the Earth in its early history, forming the moon".

No that's EXACTLY what fucking racism is. If he said "I don't want to be around Michael Jordan" because he doesn't like the guy, that is personal preference. If he says "I don't want to be around any black people" that is a textbook definition of racism. Assuming that all black people are "those kinds of people" because of their race is racism. He didn't say "don't bring people who act like a fool" he said "don't bring black people". If you don't consider that racism, then what meets your criteria?

Upthread somebody mentioned that the league legally owns the team and the franchise owners are more like operators. That didn't sound right, so I did some research. This tidbit from a news article makes it sound like that is the case:

If the contract you signed allows the league to terminate your ownership you should not be whining about your $2 billion windfall. To stop the league from doing this, Sterling's wife (acting as a legal representative of the Sterling family trust) sold the team to Ballmer. The sale was entered into voluntarily, and even if it wasn't it sounds like the league has the ability to just confiscate the team.

Why are you ranting about a "totalitatian state" when the government has absolutely nothing to do with this? This is a contract dispute between the NBA and Sterling, You fucking partisan dickbags are all the same, no matter what the issue you have to make it political. If he didn't like the terms of the contract he signed, he didn't have to sign it. Nobody forced him to participate in the NBA.

It depends. IIRC, sexual orientation is not a federally protected class. Religion IS a federally protected class so anybody denied entrance into the league because of their religion would have grounds to sue. That being said, I believe sexual orientation is a state protected class in California so the Clippers could not participate in such discrimination without running afoul of the law.

Yep, and that's the way we like it. My city also has a monopoly on sewer systems. Just because people want something doesn't mean some company has to make a buck off of it. If the people own the network then it is cheaper than a company owning because it doesn't need to pay shareholders every quarter, it just has to pay for itself. The network being owned by the city doesn't mean there isn't any competition in the ISP space, there are 15-20 different ISPs I can choose from, can you say the same?

Auto manufacturers standardize when they are required to. A much better analogy would be the fuel fill port on a gasoline car. Although there are a number of different fuel door and cap designs, the design of the actual fuel fill port is the same on all unleaded-powered cars. The design of the pump nozzles that fill them is also standardized.

Swappable batteries make a lot of sense, especially if they are modular. Smaller cars could have 2 modules (with a bay for a third for longer trips), SUVs/trucks could have 3 or 4 scaling up to semi-trucks who could have 10 or 15 packs in parallel. Smaller modules would be easier to handle during swaps and would provide greater flexibility than swapping monolithic packs. This aluminium technology would fit right into such a system, before you take a long trip you could go have your day-to-day packs swapped out for some long-range aluminium packs so that you can do your whole trip without recharging.

Well, aluminium on the US commodities market currently sells for around $0.81/pound so the maximum cost for refining 100 Kg of aluminum from bauxite is $178. Refining from alumina (the waste product of this battery) is presumably cheaper because it removes all the refining steps in the process before electrolysis.

Yes, that's why I mentioned that it was funded by sales tax in my original post. Just as they subsidize my internet connection, I susbidize many city services that other people use that I don't.

I don't want to give out TOO much personal information but I live in one of the 15 cities participating in the Utopia network.

Just because I say I love my ISP you assume it is Xmission? You would be right, they are fantastic!

Being someone who is in a city who built a municipal fiber network, that is nowhere near the actual cost per resident. The network was paid for with bonds and the bonds have been serviced by a portion of sales tax revenue in member cities as well as subscriber revenue. Residents are not paying $2000 per year for it. I get internet over the network and it is much faster and much cheaper than when I used Comcast. Yes, I pay sales tax in my city so I am also indirectly paying for it elsewhere but it is nowhere near as expensive as you think it is to build a very fast network, especially if you don't have to pay your shareholders every quarter.