After reading your article, I've decided I'm going to have to see if I can find myself a jerkmeter. If I read the article correctly, you could find someone you think is a jerk, crack them over the head with it and say, "See how big a jerk you are." Of course then I'd probably have to do the same to myself.

This is why I love particle physics. I am a scientists by training, but not a physicist, and while I have the sense that you two are not speaking gibberish, I can't be sure :) Or to put it another way, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advanced physics is indistinguishable from gibberish."

This is why I believe it should be referred to as "domestic terrorism". This would have several positive effects. First it would be more accurate, and second, people would understand how it differs from a standard crime. If 3000 people were killed in NYC on 9/11 for 3000 independent individual reasons, that is not nearly as big a crime which aims to terrorize the entire nation. This would also help people to understand the purpose of the distinction. If the people who killed Mathew Shephard killed him because they hate gays, and Mathew made a pass at them, or made fun of them. That is a crime against Mathew. If they selected him at random from a population of gays to send a message to all gays that being gay openly will get you killed, that is terrorism, and should be treated accordingly. In both cases they hate Mathew because he is gay. Only in the later case to they commit a crime against an entire group in addition to the individual crime.

Yea... Right... I'm sure you charge a premium for it though right :) ?

If you've never played Lemmings on the Amiga, you've never played it best. It's the only version I know of that was a 2 player version. The Amiga allowed each player to use a separate mouse. Both players had lemmings, and while you could only assign new roles to your lemmings, the effects (such as blockers) would affect both players lemmings. You had two separate exits, and the object was to get the most lemmings out of your exit. If you were substantially ahead, and the other player was about to steal a bunch of lemmings, you would often attempt to kill them all rather than let your opponent steal. It was awesome.

I don't even mind the term Piracy since it is unlikely anyone will actually mistake it for actual high seas piracy, and while it certainly is a slanted term which implies theft, it is certainly a more convenient term than copyright infringement. What really bothers me is when people call it Theft. It is clearly not theft, yet people might easily confuse it for theft. That is the battle I fight. I fear the piracy battle is already lost.

It doesn't necessarily follow that if he can be right 90% of the time, he can make money. It's possible that what he says is true, but not particularly useful. Let me give you an example. I play limit poker, and while I'm not good enough to make a living at it, I am good enough to consistently make around $5-$15 per hour. The key is folding most of your hands. Typically, I make money on 1 hand in 25, meaning if I fold every hand, I will be right 96% of the time and still be unable to make money. The key is to maximize expected value. If the expected value of the 4% of hands I win is more than 25 times the value of the times I lose, I still make money, but it doesn't take very many mistakes to turn a winning proposition into a losing one. The key here is not the fact that he's right 90% of the time, but how much he loses when he's wrong vs. how much he makes when he's right. Those are not the same things.

I love the double ententre implied in your statement. We've definitely been celebrating mediocrity since dollar year. I'm not sure which dollar year you are referring to, but whenever big dollars are in play, mediocrity seems to follow :)

It is quite possible this spray wouldn't work for the reasons you mentioned, but there are a couple of things you missed which I believe warrant a study:

This spray is not an epoxy. As stated in the article, this spray adheres to virtually any surface in a layer which is 15-30 atoms thick. This implies to me that it has an extremely high wetting ability which may act to draw it into a crack. It is clear in some cases that capillary action can be stronger than atmospheric pressure for some substances. This is clearly not the case for any sort of epoxy. It's possible this spray is so wet that it would in fact be sucked into the crack, but have minimal impact on the sharpness of the crack. It's also possible that it would adhere well to the crack and have a substantial blunting effect. It's unclear how this spray would interact with the large particles left in the crack.

As I said, it's quite possible this spray wouldn't be useful in this application, but it is a big mistake to think that what you know about how epoxies are used to repair windshield cracks has anything to do with how this spray would react. Further study might be quite interesting.

I know this was meant as a joke, but the way wind shields are repaired is essentially spraying in some clear liquid which hardens. It might be difficult to use this spray to get a clear windshield, but the key thing which causes cracks to run is the sharpness of the crack. If this could be sprayed in soon after the crack forms, it may keep the crack from running by blunting the crack tip.