I mainly mentioned the class project to point out that it can be done at the hardware level without too high a grade of difficulty.

Yeah, it would be pretty easy to program a GAL or an FPGA to output an "all-red" signal if there are conflicting signal conditions output by the microcontroller. (A traffic-light controller built with only such parts is a common 200- or 300-level Electrical Engineering class project). I would be surprised if real traffic light controllers did not have such a safety module.

And even for those systems that are interconnected with "miles of wires", the electric utilities will mostly just be in a scramble replacing line fuses and older, ungrounded transformers. Your grandma will probably lose her old analog telephone, though.

The other thing that is being missed in all this discussion about liquid vs. air cooling is the fact that the resistivity of the metal and silicon in the electronics rises as the temperature of the material rises. Remember this equation: P=i^2*R? Well that R, resistance, is also a function of Temperature. If you can transfer a higher amount of heat away from the processors, etc. with liquid cooling, the temperature inside the case will stay lower and less heat will be generated in the first place. Therefore less heat gets dumped into the air in your mom's basement (so maybe you don't want that if you live in Minnesota in the winter).

It's a common misconception that the U.S. uses Imperial Units. Sure, we use the same unit names as Imperial, but really, ours are just a bit off, except for liquid measures, which are off by a fairly large amount.

Modern U.S. standard units are also set to be fixed values of the metric system:

1 pound-mass = 0.45359237 kg (exactly)
1 inch (US Standard)= 2.54 cm (exactly)
1 gallon (US liquid) = 231 cubic inches (exactly) = 3.785 L (approx.)

But, compare:
1 gallon (UK "Imperial") = 4.54609 L (exactly)

There's also the quirk that, for land surveys, the older definition of 1 foot = (1200/3937) meter is still used. The difference between the standard foot and the survey foot is at the fifth decimal place, so most of the time, it's an insignificant difference.

The actual perihelion point isn't a good choice because the earth wobbles a bit in it's orbit due both the gravitation of the other planets and especially our own moon, making for slightly inconsistent times between perihelions.

Seriously, they are calling this a "Klingon" beer and it's only 5.5% ABV. This should be in the 9%-10% range at least! And an aroma of cloves and banana!?! Give me a break! It should have a bitter hoppy flavor, maybe with a bit of metallic taste to be reminiscent of freshly spilled blood!

It's the basically the yellow housing with the gray face that Fluke has trademarked. All yellow is not covered and a variety of brands make those.

You have to exercise a Trademark in order to maintain possession of it. It may seem a ridiculous thing to trademark your color scheme, but at least Fluke is pretty damn consistent about keeping to that scheme.

I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of land use in the Americas is rural, or even wilderness. Then there's this wide spectrum of land use between urban and rural, frequently refered to as "suburbia" or "the suburbs", where public transportation is near non-existant and it may still be 5-15 miles (~8-24 km) to the nearest grocery store.

That website is fishy alright. A fake "Update Flash" window popped up when I tried going to it.

Instrumental (progressive) metal has been gaining more popularity of late, but still has not attracted the interest of the major record labels, yet, so most of the bands are unsigned, DIY, or only signed to minor record labels. A few bands off the top of my head worth checking out (mostly local to my area - greater Seattle): Steelscape (fully instrumental; Seattle area) Isthmusia (fully instrumental; Seattle area) Lo' There Do I See My Brother (a couple songs with lyrics; Seattle area) Summer Finn (a couple songs with lyrics; Seattle area) Lion in Winter (long instrumental parts, with some interspersed screaming; Seattle) Ghosts of Glaciers (fully instrumental; Colorado)

By "close" you mean seated in the nosebleed seats of a good amphitheatre. One thing you miss even in a good recording is the directional quality of sound from the different instruments and sections. Stereo recording helps, and surround sound has an interesting quality of its own, but it's still not quite the same as being there!

The ship was in drydock (not in the water), so it was already in maintenance-and-repair mode, so things like the fire-pipes (sea water for fire hoses, IIRC) were probably empty, and even if they weren't, the pumps to keep the system charged may have been shutdown. As for flammable materials: non-asbestos pipe insulation can burn (steam pipes all over the place), wire insulation can burn as a secondary fire (generally needs a hot ignition source, ship's emergency batteries can catch fire, the emergency diesel engine fluids can catch fire. And being under maintenance, there could have been cans of paint or solvents or any number of other flammable products on board.

Since I can't read the full article (due to both registration and source language), can someone who does read Japanese, go through the article and check to see how through they were about correcting for atmospheric refraction, using proper ephemeris data for the base distance, etc? Somehow, I think SOHO, STEREO, and professional ground-based solar observatories have a better handle on this.