There's not much chance of gravity pulling something into us in that way. Think about how long it would take for a ball dropped a few hundred thousand km above the earth to fall to the ground. Any object moving fast enough that it has passed the earth by during that time will not be pulled into us.

As you imply, reviewing articles is a part of academic life. The 'pay' is part of a faculty member's salary if you want to think of it that way. When applying for tenure or promotion, faculty routinely include reviewing work in their cv.

What Elsevier journal are you paying to publish in? I have published in multiple Elsevier journals and have never been asked to pay a fee. I think this may be the policy of your particular journal?

The biggest problem I see with this is that the research funding will end up going to those with the best grant writing skills and not necessarily the best scientists. I have no idea how to solve this problem, and get the actual best people working on it, but this is as important as any other aspect of the project.

The problem is the unions. I don't think that needs any explanation.

Thank you, I'm not sure how the AC got modded. You would think that seeing a 747 cost $1,000,000 per 1000 km to fly would have raised a flag for someone.

This is easy to say, but not many people are going to pay 5X the price or more to fly with an airline that pays their employees extra and is nice to their customers. Unfortunately, consumers are getting what they want from the air travel industry, a race to the bottom.

Look up eddy currents and inductive heating

Quebec City is not a major Canadian airport. All major airports have pre-clearance, little regional airports do not. I used to fly to Boston from Fredericton and had to clear customs in Boston, but Fredericton Airport is basically a shed with one international flight a day (usually with about five people on it).

Toronto, Montreal, even Ottawa which is a tiny airport, Vancouver, Calgary etc, all have pre-clearance

She was cute. The GP has likely never been near a real woman to has no point for comparison.

Way to provide a well supported counter argument. I there a fancy Latin term for the logical fallacy of refuting an argument by saying "no they don't"?

If you want real fictional mathematics, look for some of the works of El Naschie.

Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to compare Google and RIM. After I wrote my comment, I realized some people might draw that conclusion. I was just pointing out, based on my own experience, that trading stocks based on technical indicators is not always the best idea, as was implied by the post I was responding to.

I remember buying some RIM stock a few years ago (for > $100 / share) based on this philosophy. Ask me how that worked out.

I think that one of the reasons there is so much hate directed to smokers is that disliking those that are different from you is an unfortunate part of human nature. Smokers are virtually the only group left that it is politically correct to put down and so people flock to them as a kind of punching bag.

Another reason is jealousy I think. People who used to smoke, or are two inhibited to allow themselves a publicly visible vice feel jealous when they see somebody enjoying a smoke and take it out on them.