Weed is not a tranquilizer. I don't think you've ever tried it. I am more careful when driving stoned than when I drive clearheaded. The larger the dose, the more paranoid I get that something bad is going to happen if I don't dedicate 100% of my attention to the act. High drivers drive slower and are more relaxed (and possibly paranoid of rearending someone) so they don't generally tailgate. This is such a common reaction that it is a stereotype.

If its all marijuana, and revenue, that's about 130kg of weed using a weed price of $11.5/gram (Priceofweed.com, Texas, High Quality, based on 9568 samples). Thats a lot of weed shipments- roughly 175 grams per business day.

Chinese people may not be universally unscrupulous, but it is definitely a lot more common than in other countries. When is the last time a German or Australian was at a trade show and wasted a competitor's time, asking questions that are obviously related to copying their business, taking detailed notes, and photos of everything? I have never seen it happen or witness such a thing. But without fail, at every trade show I go to, there are several Chinese delegations who go around doing this to every booth in the show. It's a cultural etiquette mismatch. Chinese people (despite, or because of, their totalitarian government?) also seem to have a difficult time following any kind of rule.

Why would they make it cheaper? They can sell expensive razor blade handles AND expensive razor blades.

Wow you weren't kidding. There is a ridiculous number of listings on ebay. If I were younger and had more time, I might be tempted. A more recent chip would still give a better $/performance though. Especially if you factor in power costs.

There are two different bills that the GP referenced, the Grid Act and the SHIELD Act.

The GRID act gives special emergency powers to The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to order utilities to do something. This was widely rejected by the industry because some of the powers could force the utility to keep their plants online, even if their machines were being damaged. That's not reasonable. If a grid problem gets to the point where it is damaging generators and other grid infrastructure, we should shut it down. Intentionally damaging a bunch of generators isn't going to keep the grid online if things get to that point.

The SHIELD act was about electromagnetic interference. FERC asked NERC last month to look into this some more. I would rather a government agency with some knowledge and experience on the matter write the rules, rather than a bunch of politicians who are pushing a bill that a lobbyist wrote.

Which is probably one of the reasons that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (The federal agency "FERC") asked the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (FERC's rulemaking organization "NERC") to investigate this. Less than a month ago. And their documents look like a common-sense plan.

The quote from Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry
"Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid."

is just ridiculous in that context. FERC is the government agency responsible and they have asked their rulemaking body to make or revise some rules on the subject. And NERC is not a lobbying group. They make rules. The reporting requirements for some of their rules are onerous for the utilities (although they are generally common-sense and reasonable). I have a hard time believing they are in anybody's pocket.

Yep, this guy is full of crap. The telling statement is:
"Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid."

That's very misleading. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is a government agency that has powers to make rules regarding the grid. They decided that this is a highly technical industry, so they basically created the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to investigate potential issues, draft rules, and get the industry on board with them. FERC tells NERC which kind of rule they want, NERC drafts it. Then FERC decides if the draft rules should be made law. NERC doesn't have any legal powers to protect the grid, they are just a rulemaking organization. So the statement "no part of the U.S. government that has legal powers to order them to protect the grid" is very misleading since NERC doesn't have the power to protect the grid anyway. That's FERC's job.

If NERC is in the industry's pocket, they aren't in it very deep. They have made rules regarding cybersecurity and IT systems that have cost utilities hundreds of thousands (small utilities) to millions (large utilities). Just look at some of their recent filings (proposed rules.) Especially this one - The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s Report on the Potential Impacts of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Proposed Clean Power Plan—Chapter 7 Reliability Assurance Mechanism. If NERC was in the industry's pocket, this would be some drivel about how the EPA's clean power plan was rubbish. It isn't. It basically just says "hey this EPA plan might affect grid reliability, we better develop a metric to measure grid reliability". It's very reasonable and obviously written by an engineer, not a lobbyist.

That's a side effect of operating systems which don't scale properly. Windows doesn't do it properly and most other operating systems screw it up in various ways too.

We are one major (not a joker or protester) incident away from having crippling regulations put on radio control aircraft.

$10/mo is cheap compared to SiriusXM. SiriusXM is a terrible company, their customer service is awful and their marketing machine makes the people selling fake viagra blush. Advertisements on some channels (Comedy in particular) are some of the sleaziest late-night ads I have ever heard. But I have struggled to find something better. The barrier to entry into online services is a bit high- every online service there is requires some tweaking, customizing, or "learning your tastes" period, whereas I can just turn on Sirius and go to a genre channel and get exactly what the channel says it is.

I think it has more to due with what happens when a kidney is rejected. With a single swap, if things go bad, that is tragic but the two matches probably got to know each other a little bit. With a long chain, the chances of at least one of the kidneys being rejected increases, and the politics may get more complicated when that happens.

I completely agree with cooking in metric being a pain. I've tried to make some Japanese and eastern European recipes, and it generally involves a LOT of weighing. Weighing is probably more accurate, but it becomes a huge chore. Especially when you get to the point in the recipe when you have to weigh out precise amounts of egg whites.

All of that absolutely doesn't matter. The US doesn't export cheap manufactured goods. We just don't do it. We're too high on the standard of living pyramid to make it work economically.

For expensive precision goods, I have yet to find a machinist who can hit a dimension of 4.000" +/- 0.001" but can't machine the same part to 3.937" (100mm). The machines all have toggle switches, but to reduce errors it is better to just have the engineer do all the conversions to inches right on the drawing or in the CAM program.

And Pizza diameters. I've been all over the world and have found Pizza sizes advertised in inches in some very strongly metric countries.