Well, yes, obviously that's a better way of saying it (and more accurate). The effect is somewhat similar, though. The model basically ignores the fact that differences between individual candidates might matter (or candidate's actions, or campaigning, or whatever). While it may not be strictly equivalent to "straight ticket" voting, it assumes voters behave in similar ways, i.e., their party choices would never change (collectively) no matter which candidates were running or how those candidates acted.

While such an assumption may be true for many and likely a majority of voters in many areas, many elections are also won on much thinner margins. If even 10-20% of the electorate might actually vote for a different party if the candidate changes, it could sway this model significantly in many races.

Keep in mind, JJ Abrams also had the Enterprise submerged in under water. I could maybe buy that if they had the shields up the whole time and the water never got to touch the hull, but it was made completely clear that no, it was just dunked in water and functioning normally.

In short, JJ Abrams doesn't care about geeky physics and engineering concerns; if something looks kind of cool, he'll go with it.

...or Get Smart episode? - You be the judge.

I wondered why no one ever came up with the idea of a blaster that fired three bolts in a slightly spreading triangle.

And I wondered why nobody ever used simple projectile weapons, like a 20th-Century assault rifle or even a shotgun. With blasters, when you shoot at a Jedi, you or one of your buddies gets hit with the deflected blaster bolt; so use simple bullets that would vaporize on the sabre even if the Jedi could get them all.

Or if you want to go all science-fictiony, lasers. Go for what Larry Niven once called "a mile-long invisible sword".

From my observation, the Internet of Things is being sold to companies that want big data and lower costs obtained by monitoring end-users and their gear. Since the end-user is not the customer, it is not surprising that there is lots of very sloppy IoT code and gear out there. A few lawsuits will help this situation, but it is unfortunate that some people will have to suffer for that to happen.

I haven't had the pleasure personally; but I suspect that the difference(aside from whatever call-center-like workplace hell policies they have) is that productive testing means focusing most intensely on the parts that are broken or suck, while ignoring or skimming through as fast as possible the good and working stuff; while repetitive gaming (while often inscrutable to those less interested) focuses on the most pleasurable parts of the game, while speeding through or skipping the boring ones(in games with mod support this is especially evident if you look at the various mods that skip certain sections of the game or speed up crafting or leveling or the like, the distribution and popularity of these tell you a lot about what parts of the game people want to avoid on replay).

AMD theoretically has parts that target reasonably similar power envelopes (lower-powered 'Kabini' APUs, 'Temash' APUs, and 'Mullins' APUs, go here and play with the wattage filter if you want the actual model-number-soup); but design wins appear to be..sparse...at best.

Zotac put an A6-1450 into a little fanless desktop/HTPC thing; but AMD parts seem to be damn rare outside cheap desktops and the churn of big-n'-awful 15ish inch Best Buy shelfwarmer laptops.

I'm not familiar enough with the benchmarks, and definitely not familiar enough with what OEMs actually pay, to say how much of this is due to objective inferiority, and how much is due to Intel's rather 'generous' pricing of their low-end, low-TDP parts to break into the tablet game.

Compared with something like the J1900 ('Bay Trail' celeron ~10w) the A6-1450 can hold its own, and likely has a punchier GPU; but reports are that Intel is practically giving Bay Trails away, while AMD just doesn't have anything that matches Haswell parts.

Do any laptops count as 'investments'? I'm pretty sure I've had some toner cartridges last longer than some laptops.

The one nice thing about the crap that Lenovo sells is that it (only sometimes, not always, alas) provides them with space to express their bad ideas without fucking up the Thinkpad line.

They can make all the freakjobs and plastic toys they want; but if the day comes when I can't get a decent thinkpad it's going to be very, very, bad.

I wondered why no one ever came up with the idea of a blaster that fired three bolts in a slightly spreading triangle. The lightsaber is a line - it can only block two of them, no matter who fast its wielder is.

J. J. Abrams' Star Trek was Star Wars set in the Star Trek universe. I don't think he'll have a problem adapting to setting it in the Star Wars universe...

Sure. And I'd expect that they'd be able to get them into mass production, shipped, and deployed in... well under 100 years. Probably. If everything goes smoothly.

Both the floret and the katana are designed to allow blades to slide along and be kicked away. A crossguard like this is often used to trap, or even snap, incoming weapons.

I like to think that the choreographers will find clever and interesting things to do with this. They always have in the past. It is a little odd that it appeared to have a metal nub near the base, where it could potentially be damaged by an energy blade, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were still able to use it to trap an incoming blade (and perhaps counter by pivoting around that point and using the crossguard offensively).

The lens flare that was there was actually well used, when the Falcon went up into the sun. It helped highlight a dramatic moment. I thought that was good work.

Once. The problem is that he over-uses the trick.

Who said I'm not? Of course I recognize racial disparities in the U.S. Of course I recognize the need to change the system to avoid racism -- both overt and systemic -- now.

My post wasn't about judging the validity of arguments for redressing racism or preventing racist political actions. My post is bringing up the obvious point that if you gerrymander a bunch of Democrats (of whatever race) into one district for whatever reason, you may end up making it more difficult for Democrats to win surrounding districts.

Hence, if we gerrymander to allow minorities a chance to get someone elected to Congress, but in the process we also gather together a lot of Democrats in one place, we can SIMULTANEOUSLY enhance the minority effect of voting while diluting the overall effect of Democratic voters.

At no point did I say we haven't had significant racial problems in the U.S., nor did I in any way imply we still don't have a long way to go to overcome various racist parts of our political system. But even if you find the creation of majority-minority districts a good idea, you still have to recognize that it can also potentially set-back the Democratic cause at large. That's the tension I was actually pointing out.