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Comment Re:Interview ending question (Score 1) 692

Q: Where do you see yourself in five years?

I was once asked that in an interview with my supervisor's supervisor (a VP where I was already employed). I gave an honest and ambitious answer and was promoted on the spot.

If you're truly happy with "(1a) Sufficient pay, (1b) Flexible hours, (2) Interesting work, (3) Leave me alone", then that question doesn't really require a thoughtful answer, but let's not pretend that there aren't supervisors and employees out there who can have a meaningful discussion about goals. That question is entirely appropriate in some job interviews, performance reviews, and succession planning-type situations.

Comment Re:Meh; clearly haven't talked to security workers (Score 1) 841

Who would ever get a bumper sticker like that for the sake of irony? Who would ever do that, not having read somebody's email?

Having thought about it, I can answer my own question. People whose job is much more invasive than reading people's email. Like, if my family and neighbours knew I had some secret spy job, but they didn't know that my job was to spy on you with a hidden camera in your bedroom, then I might slap that bumper sticker on there just to give people some bait to latch onto. I suppose you could call that irony.

Comment Re:Meh; clearly haven't talked to security workers (Score 1) 841

Who would ever get a bumper sticker like that for the sake of irony? Who would ever do that, not having read somebody's email?

As an alternate explanation, I think maybe the driver of that vehicle was just tired of people asking him, "hey, did you read that email I sent you?".

That's how you do irony. ;)

Comment Re:Mandotory insurance (Score 2) 462

And while you're at it, smokers, drug users, fast drivers, skydivers, safari goers, daredevils, worriers, hipsters, teamsters, mobsters, masturbaters, adulterers, tax evaders, loud talkers, smooth talkers, buffalo hunters, fast eaters, people who drive more than 5 km per day, GMO eaters, doughnut eaters, coffee drinkers, people who don't brush their teeth three times per day, people who don't eat enough vegetables, and people who eat too many vegetables.

Comment Re:Price (Score 2) 810

At only 5 miles, I'd be at work in maybe 10 to 15 minutes.

I live 4.4 km from work. I can bike there in maybe 10 minutes (I've biked there lots but never actually timed it), but then I have to either stand around for 15 minutes to cool down, or hop in the shower before I can go to the office. Realistically, my 10-minute bicycle commute takes a minimum of 30 minutes.

Then there's winter. Last night we got 30 cm of snow. Last week we got 20 cm of snow. Two weeks ago we got 20 cm of snow. I have studded tires on the bike, but you just can't keep those things rolling in more than about 5 or 6 cm of soft snow. Even on packed snow or ice, you're looking again at double commute time, plus snow pants, goggles, etc. Add to this the time it takes to clean and maintain your drivetrain on a daily basis due to slush and sand.

So yeah, biking to work is an option, and one that I have used, but to say that it's basically equivalent to driving for any commute over about 1 km is not being realistic in my experience.

Science

Building an 'Invisibility Cloak' With Electromagnetic Fields 71

Nerval's Lobster writes "University of Toronto researchers have demonstrated an invisibility cloak that hides objects within an electromagnetic field, rather than swaddling it in meta-materials as other approaches require. Instead of covering an object completely in an opaque cloak that then mimics the appearance of empty air, the technique developed by university engineering Prof. George Eleftheriades and Ph.D. candidate Michael Selvanayagam makes objects invisible using the ability of electromagnetic fields to redirect or scatter waves of energy. The approach is similar to that of 'stealth' aircraft whose skin is made of material that absorbs the energy from radar systems and deflects the rest away from the radar detectors that sent them. Rather than scattering radio waves passively due to the shape of its exterior, however, the Toronto pair's 'cloak' deflects energy using an electromagnetic field projected by antennas that surround the object being hidden. Most of the proposals in a long list of 'invisibility cloaks' announced during the past few years actually conceal objects by covering them with an opaque blanket, which becomes 'invisible' by displaying an image of what the space it occupies would look like if neither the cloak nor the object it concealed were present. An invisibility cloak concealing an adolescent wizard hiding in a corner, for example, would display an image of the walls behind it in an effort to fool observers into thinking there was no young wizard present to block their view of the empty corner. 'We've taken an electrical engineering approach, but that's what we are excited about,' Eleftheriades said in a public announcement of the paper's publication. (The full text is available as a free PDF here.)"

Comment Re:When will he be arrested? (Score 4, Insightful) 666

Not so, because then people would actually slow down, and the municipality's return on investment would plummet. The present lottery system allows people to speed and get away with it often enough that the occasional ticket isn't going to be any real deterrent for some--just enough, incidentally to provide low hanging fruit for minimal-effort enforcement.

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