Widom-Larsen requires an implausible mix of scales. The effective mass of heavy electrons in the solid state is a collective phenomenon happening over distances and time-scales that are large relative to the nucleus and nuclear time-scales and affect the dynamics of the electron's interaction with the lattice, on those scales. To impute to these large-scale effects efficacy at the nuclear scale is very unlikely to be correct.

Consider a car analogy: a car moving along a freeway in dense traffic interacts with all the cars around it. If the driver accelerates, they will pull up close to the care behind and that driver may speed up a bit too, sending a diminishing wave of acceleration through the traffic, so compared to the same car alone on the road the car in dense traffic appears to have a much higher effective mass. Alone, you hit the gas and speed up a lot. In traffic, you hit the gas and speed up a little bit. That's what the electron in the surface looks like: a car in traffic.

But on the scale of car-car interactions, the "bare" mass of the car is what matters. If two cars collide you get an energy of 0.5*m*v^2, not 0.5*Meff*v^2.

Yeah, there are multi-car pileups that muddy the analogy, but they add up to nothing like the effective mass of the whole traffic block, so there. And the difference in scales between "cars and traffic" is tiny compared to the difference in scales between "nuclei and the lattice", so the effect that analogy hopefully makes obvious will be that much larger in the latter case.

While I don't disagree on the smell, Gates is richer than God, and the first thing I thought on seeing this was that if I had that kind of money I might spend a bit of it on wigged-out ideas, just in case. It's like me throwing a panhandler a buck just 'cause I can.

What on earth makes you think that NK has to have the native talent? The didn't figure out how to make nukes on their own either. They didn't home-grow their substantial currency counterfeiting operation, either. They likewise don't design and build their own military equipment. But that doesn't stop them from having nukes, from doing big business in phony currency, and sinking other people's ships.

Sure they did. They stole time from millions of people. They deliberately screwed with the expectations and plans of millions of people, all for a little bit of cash and bragging rights among their fellow assholes.

You're right, all those people should have chosen to buy fun, well-developed, richly supported gaming platforms from one of the many providers who offer open source, freedom-minded, anti-IP, systems that have a large selection of really cool massive multiplayer games with giant networks supporting all of that activity. There are so many to choose from that I'm sure it's why you just didn't have time to list them.

It's idiots like you, who think that businesses, networks, people's entertainment time, and the like "aren't real" that give comfort and encouragement to idiots like the guys who pulled this. They did it to be dicks, just like other dicks might throw a rock through your window and nail your TV right before you were going to watch the World Cup match you've been waiting weeks to watch with your friends. Or, in a closer analogy, waiting until moments before the game starts, and then cutting the cable that services your house or apartment building.

Let me guess: that soccer game's not real! They're not at the stadium in person, so denying them the chance to watch it as they planned isn't actually harmful! Destruction of the time someone plans to use in a certain way is a theft more real, in many ways, than stealing physical objects. You'll never be able to replace the time. Which is one of the reasons these guys are dicks. Deliberate, purposeful, not noble in any way, dicks.

I'm 44, my daughter is 17 and roughly two years away from leaving the house. I've picked up more physical activity again and plan to do dive into regular intensive yoga next year. Also as a long term investment in my health and old age.

Sex is better than ever, allthough I've finally had a pleasant share of affairs in the last few years and thus don't feel like I'm missing out all the time anymore - which takes away quite some pressure and is a great thing too. I've also grown man enough not to take any crap from woman anymore whilst at the same time treating them with respect and fairness. I picked up tango dancing 7 years back and since have gained a bunch of lady-friends that are smart, intelligent, breathtakingly beautiful and of the type I wouldn't have dreamt of even talking to 15 years ago.

I've gained in self-respect and in respect for others and I've made a point of systematically and continously improving my social skills. Wore a tie for the first time in my life 2 weeks back. Gray hair == shirt & tie person with decision authority. Neat. I've gained solid experience for the job (web-centric FOSS web development), smell bad projects from miles away and know how to treat marketing, customers and collegues so as to get along with them.

It's the nerd advantage all over, if you take good care of yourself. Which I strongly recommend. And don't wait to long for having children. 27 seemed to early for me back then and I was scared shitless, but I'm so glad it happend so early today. Later in life your former jock classmates will be all fat and wasted and you'll just be running up to full throttle.

Avoid alcohol and smoking, pick up something intelligent with excercise (Martial Art like Aikido, Kung-Fu or something, or social dancing like Swing or Argentine Tango (helps you meet the ladies too)) and see to it that you have a solid throughput of encounters with the opposite sex. Learn a musical instrument and learn to shut off the computer, go out, meet and talk to people. Learn to technically manage your habits, especially the bad ones.

Who knows, once my daughter is on her own I might even to a career switch or move to some cool city like Amsterdam, Berlin or Paris.

Stay healthy, avoid dept and to many material goods and bondings like the plague and be ready to learn and change your vantage point on life once in a while. Do all that and aside from some wrinkles, gray hair and a constant increasing pool of experience and coolness you won't have any signs of aging for most of your life. Types of people of whom you never thought would be interested in you will ask your advice, crave your presence and even look up to you. It's a very awkward and suprising, and a whole new experience - but an ultimately rewarding one. Don't miss out on that.

Good luck in your life.

Err. Rocket is from the guys that brought you CoreOS. CoreOS uses systemd. Not the same thing.

But he did film it, kinda. He just didn't put it into the story. It shows up a little bit in the Mirror of Galadriel sequence.

One could argue that that was the correct way to play it, too. I know people who claim to have "walked out of the theater after the first ending and skipped all of the other ones," as it is.

Yeah, on my set there are two settings that combine to create the effect and I have each set to "most of the way off" because that's the way I like it.

Except Michael Brown was no Martin Luther King. King would have been appalled by the circumstances into which Brown's family launched him through neglect of his character. King would have been disgusted by Brown, who spend the morning smoking dope, robbing a convenience store to get more supplies, and then assaulting a cop. King would likewise have been disgusted by people chanting in the streets about things that didn't happen, outraged by their willingness to destroy people's property and burn down their neighborhood businesses, or shout in large organized groups about wanting to see dead cops NOW!

No, things are very different now than they were even 20 years ago. Worse, when it comes to that sort of thing.

Well I definitely give you points for being so tenacious in your attempt to pretend you still understand the conversation.

Another poster says that people are wrong to point out Obama's failures, because look at all of the things HE accomplished. Except, HE didn't do those things. He's not responsible for them. The Bin Laden take-down had essentially zero to do with him or any policy on his part, other than, "Yeah, keep doing what you started doing under Bush, until we get that guy." I'm pointing out that the person trying to fish around for some way to show Obama as a success, is attributing to him personally things for which he is not responsible. But you keep attacking that straw man, if it makes you feel better. Nobody is fooled, and I doubt you're even fooling yourself.

What's astonishing with these rich people is that all this is insanely tasteles. Personally I'd have to invest roughly another 10 million to get all the crap removed. For instance: WTF are these fountains noisily piddling into the pool constantly and blocking the view?? Which architect had that brilliant idea? ... I'd fire the guy instantly. ...
Rich people: Lot's of money, no taste.

Pretty much. He seems unaware of the huge selection bias--and logical contradiction--implied by the claim about "the inability that humans have exhibited in rectifying uncontrollable catastrophic challenges"

We've dealt with a huge number of challenges successfully, but a pretentious git like this would never even be aware of them, so his estimate of our track-record is off by light years.

Bacterial disease: rectified.

Unwanted pregnancy: rectified.

Polio: rectified.

Smallpox: rectified.

Growing enough food to feed ourselves: rectified.

And so on.

Sure there are hard problems left. They will be solved by engineers, scientists, bureaucrats and businesspeople willing to take risks and test ideas by publicly testing them via systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference, not pretentious gits telling us how awful we all are.