What is ironic is that Gastric Electric Stimulators are used to ease the symptoms of gastroparesis, reducing nausea and allowing those patients to gain weight.

No, Hedy Lamarr invented a particular mechanical way to achieve frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) using paper player piano rolls.

FHSS was actually invented by Tesla, who patented the idea in 1903, and there were various implementations of it by WWI.

Moreover, direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) was actually only made practical through the "noise wheel" work of Mortimer Rogoff around 1950. His work was kept secret for over 30 years, which is part of the reason why few people know of him.

Hedy Lamarr was clearly a very intelligent person, and her work with George Antheil was apparently used to control some torpedoes in the 1960's using FHSS.

But it is misleading to say that she invented spread spectrum, or even invented frequency hopping.

It should also be noted that only the lowest bandwidth early 802.11 protocols used FHSS. There was a transition to DSSS, and now most modern 802.11 protocols use OFDM.

I wonder why California didn't pop to mind, especially since he lives there.

Looking at CA solar plant permitting processes, it generally takes about 2 years to get a permit now - unless you get turned down.

My father used to own a Texaco gas station. He often competed with stations that were owned by Texaco itself. There were times when those company-owned stations would sell gas for cheaper than they would sell it to him wholesale. Corporate mentality doesn't care about anything but profit.

Of course through the effects of corporate self-interest, consumers got cheaper gas than they could from your father's rip-off gas station...

The LA Unified School District is spending over $1 billion to give all students (650,000) iPads.

Note that Beverly Hills School District is independent, and not part of LAUSD...

How do you teach grit, anyway?

My wife taught me grit. We fell in love despite my inability to even keep a clean room, and then she started slowly with things like "clean up your mess" then "here is a list of things to get done" then "maybe you should make your own lists of things you need to get done" etc...

Both positive and negative rewards were given to me!

Anyway, she helped me pick up a reasonable amount of grit to go with my intelligence. Now I need to stop reading Slashdot for the day!

murder isn't the only way people are killed by guns.

True, but the mortality rates are different. For gunshot wounds, mortality rate is 22%, while that for stab wounds was 4% (source, though from 1994 and I wonder with more cell phones whether faster trauma admission speeds may enhance differential mortalities due to differential bleed rates between the two modalities).

Detroit is the US city with the highest murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate of 45 per 100,000 people.

DC is not even in the top ten US cities.

In 2014, US Federal, State, and Local governments spent 35.5% of GDP. Compare with 31.6% of GDP in 2000.

You can, as a Dish subscriber, view any channel right now over the Internet.

As a "Dish subscriber" you can stream on authenticated devices, but not as a "Sling TV subscriber". That would require another contract between Dish and content providers.

OPEC doesn't set the price, just output levels.

For a long time, it has been unclear that OPEC can actually "set output levels". Cartels are notoriously hard to keep together when every member can do better for themselves by cheating.

Dish already has the right contact list from its DBS business.

Dish may have the "contact list", but certainly it does not yet have the rights to stream broadcast television stations on the Internet without entering into an agreement with those stations (which likely would mean additional retransmission fees).

Of course you can already watch broadcast stations for free over the air in actual HD quality, as opposed to the very likely lower quality streaming unless you can keep a 10 Mbps H.264 stream going continuously over your Internet connection.

The easy solution is to make highrise apartment and office buildings illegal through zoning.

Or make high-rise apartment buildings LEGAL so that more people live closer to their job instead of in the suburbs.

LA has too many parts of its "urban" area zoned as single-family residential (compare with Manhattan).

My brother and I were actually heading down to the Sunset Strip a couple weeks ago for a concert and my brother decided to try the Waze route.

raining hard

Dude, when it is raining hard, the 405 Sepulveda pass and the 110 Cahuenga pass became parking lots. If Waze took you over the hills, I'm sure that was the fastest route, even if it seemed like it was long!

"Waze has caused trouble for LA residents by redirecting traffic from Interstate 405 to neighborhood side streets paralleling the interstate. "

Exactly, that is why I use Waze, so when the highways get backed up, I can go around them on the surface streets!

If you can't take the traffic, move to the suburbs!