Please refer to the Kepler FAQ

Also concerning stellar variablity...

One would hope that we can have enough faith in our friends at Nasa that they would do their homework (rather than just surf a few sites on the internet before launching a 1/2 billion dollar mission)...

Or maybe the 700yo inhabitants just go around saying "Nyah na nyah, bonk bonk on the head, you mean old grups"...

AFAIK, these things don't happen too often. The next big asteroid viewing opportunity is likely to be in 2027 when 1999-AN10 makes a near pass (and should be brighter than 2004-BL86). Although asteroid 2004-BL86 will revisit our neighborhood in 2050, it won't be as close as it will be tonight for another 200 years...

... Voyager > Enterprise

FTFY... Wouldn't be the first time a movie was inspired by a cheezy advert...

Observation: if you have a big enough ego to think you can create such a questionable site and get away with it, you have probably can't stop yourself from feeling invincible in whatever you do and dismiss any possibility that your logs will get compromised *ever*. Conversely, if have enough doubt about the eventual security of your logs in the event you might eventually get caught, you probably don't have the balls to go through with it in the first place...

(Federal) Patent law does not address the ownership question, it simply grants patent rights to who the owner is. The actual ownership is an issue of contract law (or more specifically the imputed contract of employment between employer and employee). Although there are some federal legal issues in employment contracting (e.g., EEOC, minimum wage, working conditions, etc), most of the legal aspects of employment contract law is set by the states (e.g,. right to work, living wage, etc) and local rules which further restrict the federal rules. AFAIK, when patent ownership issues arise in federal courts, they are obliged to look at the applicable state statutes to make the ownership determination.

For example, in California (where silicon valley is), California Labor Code Section 2870 specifically prohibits employers from co-opting inventions made by employees except those made for hire.

Other states (e.g., Texas) have different laws that favor the employer. This is likely one of the many reasons a large amount of entrepreneurial economic activity has continued to exist around Silicon valley and not elsewhere in the USA despite the high cost of doing business in the state. Another provision that helps Californai is the prohibition of generic non-compete clauses (which sadly is a real problem in other potential hi-tech areas such as Canada).

Okaaaay... Now, what planet did you say you were from again? ;^)

On the odd chance you were attempting to be serious, you probably are thinking about electronic transactions through FedWire or CHIPS (the industrial strength versions of ACH and EFT). The US Treasury doesn't move any money around for anyone but itself, nor does any bank actually reprint money that is transferred...

However, it is unlikely that these would be used for a simple equity transaction like this. More likely you would see such a transaction clear through DTCC, although with a private company like SpaceX, there may be other simpler arrangements...

Or maybe say this radio signal was bait/chum and we (or perhaps our planet) are the game in someone else's sport.

Apparently nobody has a clue about these so called FRBs, so nobody can prove us wrong ;^)

On the other hand it appears that these signals are pulse compressed a bit by some kind of intergalactic dispersive media (electron gas?) so if someone was actually looking for some thing in the intergalactic void, this is a pretty plausible analogy to deep seismic sounding the cosmos...

Actually, it may be like that... tuberculosis and pneumonia are quite capable in ravaging through our population if unchecked.

In the years right before the wide availability of antibiotics in the US (1930's), just these two bacterial infections were responsible about 20% of all deaths in the US (not including other bacterial infections). If you've seen someone suffering TB, perhaps it might be considered your weird snotty epidemic...

Also, those mushroom-based antibiotics aren't the ones of last resort. The nasty antibiotics with all the nasty side-effects are the modern ones (that are basically injectable pesticides that doctors often hold back as last resort). If we don't clean up our act we might be going back to something more akin to a pre-anti-biotic Victorian era with people dying of consumption (not some quaint 60's ampicillin pill-poping rehash).

Then there is Canadian Football which has two "50-yard" lines resulting in a 110 yard playing field + two 20 yard end zones being 150 yards.

This, of course, is a result of Canada being a metric nation ;^)

But when you say football field, many folks think of a 100-110m FIFA compliant field which is just about matches American football field + endzones which seems to make some sense. On the other hand, I don't have any idea what the Canadians were thinking, except that nobody is going to play their sport except in stadiums in Canada.

It isn't as easy to spot the "fakers" as you might imagine. Especially if you don't speak the same "language".

A personal example come to mind when I say this. A very good friend of mine has a very deep background in math and statistics, but from an economics background. My math and statistics background is mostly physics and control theory based. Over time we've worked with quite a few people and although I was quite able to tell people that were faking through the math when we talked an engineering language (e.g., ergodic process IIR filtering, numerical stability, etc.), but when we started talking about that same stuff from an econometric point of view (e.g., ARMAX modeling), constant translation between the two in my head made it much more difficult for me to tease out the subtle clues that trigger my BS meter...

Earlier in my dealings with my friend, I found my BS meter triggering all the time with his econometric spin on statistical modeling, but as I got to know him better, I realized my BS meter was just faulty. He knew the statistics stuff as well or better than me, but he was speaking a different language to describe the same mathematical concepts, and the papers he read had different set of seminal authors and the common data regularization procedures went by different names. I eventually took the time to learn his econometric vocabulary, but I can say I doubt I will ever be fluent in his way of talking about statistical mathematics. Having experienced this constant translation issue over time, I can say it really makes it hard to have an effective BS meter because you are constantly questioning if your own translation is accurate enough...

FWIW, I'm pretty sure have met a some real 1%-ers in my time at Caltech, and yes some of them are so out of my league that they could been BS-ing me and I still wouldn't know it. One of my classmates would sometimes look at our homework and then come up with some proof that applied some far out algebraic principle and later grin and say, well just kidding, I made that up I don't know if that proof is true, but doesn't it sounds right. Who knows if he was BS-ing or not, as he could talk circles around us in Algebraic-Category theory (and he also managed to learn how to juggle 20+ balls and ride around on a unicycle which was also way beyond me too). However, we never let him divide up the restaurant bills though as we never did fully trust his arithmetic abilities when it came to actual money ;^)

Actually, your response exemplifies the issue...

You mentioned that you met folks and felt you didn't measure up.
In my experience, many men in the same situation wouldn't factor in if they thought they measured up in their decision making.
If they wanted to get into that field and they thought they had some aptitude, they would simply adopt a fake it until they made it approach.

I think that is the part has to do with gender.

Not that it's totally of biological gender origin, but probably mostly gender social conditioning in our society (although there may be some statistical gender bias when it comes to risk taking or blind confidence that is inherent in the fake it until you make it approach to life).

As I've come to realize over time, there are quite a few people that appear to speak a language (say like math, or computer science) but sometimes are just faking their way through it with only a cursory understanding... Sadly, it's sometimes hard to distinguish between them in a general conversation (say like a 45 minute interview or in a social siutation)...

Actually, the option that I pick is that there are similarly "radical Christians".

E.g., the IRA, the LRA, the Nagaland rebels in India, Lebanese Christian Militia groups, the US based Christian Militia groups such as those involved for Ruby Ridge, and Waco, and even some lone-wolf radicalized persons such as the ones responsible for the 2011 Norway attacks on top of the the clichéd plethora of abortion bombers...

Just not finding them discussed by the daily talking head mass media makers dominated by Judeo-Christian populace doesn't mean they don't exist. Pretty much every other mass religion has a high enough quantity of deluded followers to cause potential substantial misrepresentation of a religion (even if the mainstream opinion media doesn't drill it into our collective talking points)...

Like many religions, over time they tend to branch and secularize and sometimes these sects evolve divergent and potentially violent belief that are not held by the majority of adherents. You many dismiss the studies of theologians as merely pandering to the extreme fringe that you see in the over-reported in the media but that itself is a dismissive and radical view. It gives too much weight to the media who appear sometimes to have inadvertently conspired with the media to hijacked the narrative... Okay maybe that was a bit tin-foil hat, but hopefully you get the point ;^)

I'm not sure you are entirely on logical footing here. Theologians are those that study the bible as a professional career, probably not a large overlapping set of folks to those that are Christian criminals (unless you think most theologians are criminals, or that most Christian criminals are christian theologians). When I claimed most theologians interpret these things, I meant those that study the bible as a professional career.

Again, as cited by the article you linked, you conveniently omitted the opinion of Muslim extremists on the internet qualifier, as if they were somehow representative of all Muslims or Muslim clerics.... Citation of statistically valid poll required please... (to paraphrase your rules).

I don't think you are understanding the origin of the Koran correctly if you use the word of "has made his". Mohammed was an illiterate prophet who allegedly received the word of god and communicated it to scribes which is recorded as the Koran. You can choose to believe what you wish, but I suspect many followers of Islam might use this slip up mischaracterization as a signal that you really have no idea what Islam is about or what the motivation of followers are.

BTW, I am not Islamic, or even religious in the slightest (now or in the past), but have studied the Bible quite in depth in the past (grandfather was a minister) and the Koran more recently just out of pure curiosity and contrast.