...This had been fixed with the new 'completely intuitive 22-foot-tall, 11-foot-wide 600 lever steam-powered voting machines'

http://www.theonion.com/articles/florida-to-experiment-with-new-600lever-voting-mac,29699/

Mod Parent Up.

I worked at an R&D firm that focused on natural fibre composites until about a year ago, and we had some projects with nanocellulose going on while I was around. Apparently it's pretty tiny stuff (maybe that explains the nano part, hmmm...) so barring a huge breakthrough it's not going to be threatenning kevlar fabric anytime soon since weaving it wouldnt be practical at this stage of the game. If it's used in composites, it'll be as a reinforcing fibre that gets mixed in with the matrix (some sort of polymer) which will give it a rigid shape.

The article explained the challenges fairly well. First, it's hydrophilic, so bonding it with a hydrophobic polymer won't work very well and you'll end up with poor fibre/matrix bonding which is currently the achillis heal of most natural fibre composites. Sure, there are surface treatments that can help this, but most of the current ones degrade the performance of the fibre while improving the fibre/matrix bond so that the strength increase isn't all that great (I'm talking about macroscopic natural fibres now. this may not be the same for nanocellulose but I expect that it's similar since the chemistry is similar).

Anyways, best of luck to all the people trying to make this work. I'm making plans for a transparent aluminum boat, but I'd love to use transparent wood if possible :)

I believe this is what you're looking for:

http://slashdot.org/story/12/08/20/0216225/finland-hosts-mobile-phone-throwing-championships

'QB Sliderule' for iOS :)

aaaaaaaaand.... GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Sure, but it's Japanese so it keeps freaking out and yelling about Godzilla whenever lizard gets played....

Glad to see that the quality of our first posts is still worldclass.

1. I'm a native English speaker 2. I believe I specified that I'm an Engineer, and therefore have full license to spell like a 6 year old :)

Finding a technical job in China without knowing Chinese isn't impossible. As a Canadian currently working as an engineer in China, I'd recommend looking for international companies as they will often hire people who speak English only. Searching on LinkedIn can be a good filter because, by and large, the only companies that recruit on there are companies that will accept non-Chinese speakers. That being said, I'd highly recommend you start learning Chinese (mandarin in your case since you're going to Beijing) right away. It goes without saying that most of the people you'll be working with are far more comfortable speaking Chinese, and as a foreigner living in their country it's only reasonable that you make as much of an effort to learn as possible. Most Chinese people are far kinder than North Americans when it comes to understanding you're difficulties in learning their language, but this shouldn't be an excuse to persist in ignorance. Show some respect and make every effort you can to learn the language.

Imagining the hacking opportunities already: “Quit hitting yourself, Quit hitting yourself”

... Guangdong. Time to clean the tubes