According to stuff I've read before, dust particles are mostly a problem inside the system, on mirrors and on targets. This is because dust hit by a laser tends to accelerate away from the beam source, as the side of the particle that is illuminated by the laser vaporizes first. So dust on the near side of a lens, on a mirror or on a target would get blown into the object's surface, causing pitting. But dust on the far surface of a lens would get blown off of the lens. Inside the system, this would be a problem because that dust would get blown into the next element in line. But on that last lens/window where the beam exists, I think mostly the external surface dust merely gets accelerated off of the surface. I'm sure they make an effort to keep that surface clean, but I'm not sure it's as crucial an issue as your post makes it out to be.

There's something wrong with their numbers.

There's no way that only 30% of Americans are high school graduates who are not obese and don't have criminal records. It's just not possible.

The U.S. high school graduation rate is 80%. About 30% of the population have been arrested. Many of those will be found innocent, charges never pressed, or convicted of very minor charges, such that 8.5% of the population ends up with felony convictions. Does obesity account for all the rest?

The stats they are using are ages 17-24. Is it possible they are skewed by the fact that many 17 and 18-year-olds simply haven't finished high school yet (even if they are on track to do so)?

Positive thinkers already get some of the mental-benefit of the task being complete. Imagining being finished is just a little bit like being finished. That saps some of the motivation to finish, since they've already received part of the payoff. Negative thinkers have actually increased the payoff even more, because they get the additional payoff of having been wrong about their negativity.

At the risk of being snarky, you seem to have no idea what you're talking about. So why did you bother with the post?

Except to truly appreciate what the artist "meant", you'd have to use exactly the headphones they used when mixing. If they used Beats, and you use ones with "flat" response, you're still getting the "wrong" experience. Even more complicated, you really need to be using the headphones that an artist thought you'd be using. They might be using headphones with "flat" response in mixing, but purposefully dialing back on the bass knowing what the effect would be for fans listening through Beats, such that the experience the artist "meant" is best experienced through Beats.

Probably makes the most sense if people just use the headphones that provide sound they like, and not try to act all self-righteous when posting on the internet about headphones.

I always think it's funny when people get really snarky making wrong grammar corrections.

"Their" refers back to "Apple and Bose", although "stall" should be plural. The sentence is saying "so why should we care about which crap is pulled from Apple and Bose's respective stalls".

Which is why this line was included in the description:

"Creating this kind of curved spacetime in the lab won't reveal any new physics but it will allow researchers to study the behavior of existing laws under these conditions for the first time."

I know this is off-topic, but that girl is amazing.

There's no one trick in there I haven't seen before, but the presentation is refreshingly new/fresh.

First it evaporates. It photo-oxidizes once's its freely floating in the air.

Have you read the article?

I know... stupid question.

The hypothesis is that evaporated siloxanes photo-oxidize (in the presence of hydroxyl radicals), then condense onto nanoparticles (that have been separately created by different sources), causing them to grow into the size range that's harmful for humans.

This stuff is also heavily used in building materials -- sealants that keep water from soaking into concrete, for instance. I'd be curious to see why they dismiss such building materials as a source, focusing only on personal-care products. It's possible that there is simply so much more used in personal care products. But the one link that isn't slashdotted doesn't explain why the focus on personal-care products.

This does not seem to have anything to do with method of application. The stuff evaporates off your skin into the air.

The nerds are all off typing two-at-a-time on their keyboards. :)

The future is now. And it's freaking cool, man.

Oh, I'm sure some nay-sayers will be like "but who really needs this?"

To which I say "need? Who cares about need?"

obligatory picture of that crazy aliens guy goes here.