I'm sorry, but going to Mars is NOTHING like going to California. You can be pretty well assured that wherever you go on Earth, you won't die of suffocation (except maybe from exposure to fumes from an active volcano). And food grows or is found almost everywhere on the planet (excluding Antarctica -- even most deserts have food available in them).

The only way Mars would work is if machinery can be sent that digs a deep enough pit, so it can have a usable air pressure. From there it can be terraformed.

For citations central to your argument, sure, you need to track down the main papers. It's not that difficult - just look at what papers everybody else is citing. But most citations are just fulfilling the [citation needed] reqs for facts you use in your work. Any one of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of papers would easily fill in for that role.

You find two references about the same thing. As far as citing the fact you need they're essentially equivalent. One will take three weeks and thirty dollars - and half a day of arguing to make the lab pay those thirty dollars - to get, and half the time your thirty bucks will give you a badly printed paper copy. The other you can download into your paper manager and read right now. Guess which one almost everybody will use?

To be honest, as a kid I enjoyed chess and played with my friends right up to the point where you suddenly had to start memorizing openings and other canned sequences. At which point it felt more like a school subject than an escape from it.

I might just be lazy, and 151 is a reasonable-size prime number :)

Because now I know it's 151 digits. Had no idea before.

How can you know I didn't just guess?

Here is the number of legal positions:
6697231142888292128927 401888417065435099377 8064017873281031833769694562442854721810521 43260127743713971848488909701 11836283470468812827907149926502 347633

Why they chose to present it like that, instead of scientific notation, I'll never know but there it is.

I'm not quite clear how 6.697231142888292128 927401888417065435 099377806401787328 103183376969456244 285472181052143260 127743713971848488 909701118362834704 688128279071499265 02347633e151 is much of an improvement, to be honest.

They may not owe US taxes, but they will probably have to file paperwork every year declaring such. Failure to file the paperwork can result in large fines, which are a problem if they ever decide to travel to the US.

Smart article yes, but it's still incredibly stupid to buy a lottery ticket.

Unless you think it's fun to play. Idle daydreaming about what you'd do if you won; the excitement as the numbers are called; the rollercoaster of emotion as you realize you may win - no you won't - oh but you did get a small price.

It's only stupid if you see it as an investment. See it as entertainment and it's no more dumb than paying to watch a movie.

It is ridiculous of course. It is also a common attitude among PI's toward their postdocs and students, especially in high-profile, high-pressure labs.

This letter from a PI to a worker made the rounds a few years ago. The PI claimed later it was a joke. It doesn't read like a joke, and the exact same attidude is not uncommon at all:

http://www.chemistry-blog.com/...

I used to ride every day. But my place of work changed, so now I walk and take the train instead. Around home we generally walk as well, so my bike sits unused for months on end.

Walking is also good exercize of course, but it does limit the range of places to go. I should fix up the bike and start using it again come spring.

Automation changes the source of production from workers to machines. And that separates the source of production from the source of consumption.

To put it simply, robots produce wealth but does not consume it. Humans consume wealth, but (in this possible future) can no longer produce it. Robots have owners of course, but even if you ignore what happens to the majority of people, a few extremely wealthy people can not possibly make up for the consumption shortfall. Ten-thousand people with 10k each vastly outconsume (by necessity) a single person worth 100M.

So, if the entities making wealth and those using wealth become separate, you need a way to transfer wealth from one to the other. If not, you will see a slow-moving economic collapse, as lack of demand and cost-cutting automation drive each other down.

A basic income, generated from a tax on production (transaction tax, energy tax, direct tax on machinery) is one way, and has the benefit of being simple, straightforward and having low administrative overhead.

The time spent selecting questions, then answer them in a simple and understandable way is not free. Especially in a climate where even keeping a blog in your spare time is sometimes seen as a suspect frivolity that takes time from your research.

That said, I spend several years of my life helping to get rid of the Morse Code test for radio hams, so that smart folks like you could just take technical tests to get the license.

I'm currently assembling a Softrock Ensemble receiver just to play with SDR. I'm starting to become interested in more than passive receiving â" but a major part of my curiousity is about Morse, not voice. I can talk to anybody over the net after all, while Morse code communication feels like a very different kind of thing.

[...] and rather than cutting the least important program, they cut the most visible program, in an attempt to get their funding restored.

Honestly, though, a qestion-answer service for school children probably does rank among the least important programs for a research lab. I very much doubt this is part of their written remit (as opposed to communicate their actual research to the public), and the people spending time at work answering the questions certainly get zero professional recognition for it.

It does sound like a very nice, fun service. And I do agree that this kind of outreach is important. But if this is not part of what their funders want them to do, then it should come as no surprise if it's among the first things to go when money becomes tight.

You want this kind of thing to continue? Make sure there's funding (and paid time) earmarked for doing it. In fact, that may be a good idea in general: add a small fraction (.1% or even less) to any research grant over a certain size for general science outreach. If it's part of your funding, that also removes the career obstacles toward doing outreach we too often have now.

[...] please ensure that your channel's primary focus is on gaming or music creation."

Sing your code. Problem solved.

So, "assert(Ieiei == True)"

becomes

"Aaaand IIIIIIIIIIeeeeiiiiiiieeeeiiii wiiiiilllll aaaalways be Ttrrrruuuuuuueeeeeeeee"