Awesome, now that we have another 50 years of technological advance, maybe it's time to revisit the issue...

Instead of having a special case every few years, how about going ahead and making a millisecond of adjustment every day as needed? The adjustments could start with 0 or 1 milliseconds, and as the oceans slosh us ever slower, we could start making 1 or 2 millisecond adjustments every day at midnight.

Would also keep the stars better aligned to the official time.

It doesn't even have to target humans.... how about a mutation that makes Hitchcock's Birds a reality, on demand when they smell a certain chemical that is odorless to humans....

On the spread of genetic modification:

Whether the agent is engineered by Skynet, Osama II, or the NSA, somebody (anybody) could create a virus that sweeps the world like an annoying, seemingly harmless, flu bug. One that makes the children of every couple who were ever infected have blue eyes, or fingernails that glow in the dark after they eat peanuts, or other things....

The playability of simple games lies in good multi-player implementation: MarioKart, Mule, Poker, Canasta....

Don't know about where you live, but in my house, a normal PC whirring 25m away in the other room is far from silent - perhaps drowned out by the AC system when it is blowing, but still far from silent.

Forgot, connected to two external 2TB hard drives that store, and mirror, all the things.

My i5 NUC is near-slient, w/ 100GB SSD and 8GB RAM for less than $500 total.

Connected to the family room TV, runs Hulu, Neftlix and Kodi (XBMC) quite nicely, also will run VLC and pull camera feeds from around the house - makes a "virtual window with night vision" in the living room wall.

The old NiMH rechargeables start at 1.2V fully charged. If devices stop working below 1.3V, then they can't use these rechargables at all.

However, a "1.5V boost converter sleeve" on a NiMH does make an interesting case....

Ignorance of the law is an excuse?

>the conventional criminal conduct requirement of 'awareness of some wrongdoing.'

What percent are hoaxes in registered phones?

Came here to say this, pleased that it is so near the top.

40 loaves of bread is costing more than $100 (fiat US dollars) these days.

Sure it's high, and I get soot on my bumper - if I drag race and don't wash the car for a year.

Irony is that the soot in the air around there is 90+% produced from non-vehicular sources, but it's the vehicles that are strictly regulated.

Sure, there's plenty of steam coming from the stacks and it's easy to point to.

There is also fine particulate hydrocarbon (tar) that settles on things and makes a sticky film. I lived in Taylor Lake Village, next door to Space Center Houston, not far enough from Pasadena, apparently. My car, parked under a carport but with open walls, would get a visible, sticky film on it in a very short time after being washed.

The crap was so pervasive it made it into our air conditioned house and got all over the electrostatic air cleaners - again, covered in tar within days of washing. When we moved to Gainesville, Florida, those same air cleaners would get covered seasonally, with pollen, but the tar from the air of Houston never showed up.