Its considered inefficient for a collection of reasons. Lets say, your using an electric stove. This means you are using some sort of resistor to get hot from electricity, which was transmitted to you at X% loss over the power lines, after being generated at (probably) a Coal fired power plant, which means the coal was burned to make steam, where Y% of the stored energy in coal was lost up the smokestack or as cooling of the steam, which spun a turbine at some Z% loss because of friction and so forth, meaning that, from the originating fuel source, (coal in this example) you have a loss of X+Y+Z before the power even starts to warm up your pot of water.
Or, they are merely comparing costs. Lets compare heating your house with an all electric furnace system, vs a natural gas furnace. In many areas, if you set your thermostat to 70F all winter, and have an electric furnace, you spend say, 1000$ a month powering the furnace. Your neighbor, who has the same tract house as you, but replaced his furnace with a gas model, sets his thermostat to 70F as well, and spends 600$ a month on gas for his furnace. Clearly, his system is more efficient, as he spent less money on the same amount of heat.

Huh. This makes me wonder. Do those newfangled Wall sockets that have a couple USB ports for charging draw power constantly? I mean, they basically moved the wall wart inside the wall on those, so they probably do.

You're in luck, as I recently spent a great deal of time searching for tankless gas water heaters that fit a very particular set of requirements, and they happen to match a great deal of your requirements. I learned that there exist three types of tankless gas water heaters, in terms of ignition.
There is the most common, the electrically ignited, which you are familiar with.
Then, there are, if you hunt, standing pilot light models, which work much like the cheep end gas water heaters, with a constantly lit pilot light. (I've read that these take about 20$ worth of gas a year, if that is a concern at all)
And finally, there is what is known as a Hydro Ignition models, where the flow of water through the heater spins a flutter-mill of some sort, which somehow sparks and lights the burner. I've read that these models take some getting used to, as you must let the water flow for a while to get them to light, and then heat. Bosch makes a whole line of tankless heaters, using either Natural Gas or LP. I've taken the liberty of finding a Natural Gas Standing Pilot light model in the list for you:
http://www.prowaterheatersuppl...

As you'll see, they are currently offering it for 645$, which is a good deal less than the 1000$ you mentioned. If that is not to your liking, (as I can't speak to your gas line and vent, as you didn't mention dimensions) here is the search listing for all the models that do not require electrical hookup:
http://www.prowaterheatersuppl...

Holy shit, a rational argument. I thought I was on slashdot.

And THEN it will get amended out of existence. See? self correcting problem.

You know what, that might actually be fun. You could even sell little stickers to put on your car to proclaim how much of an asshole to which people groups you are. Oh wait.

The cake thing is because of an incident that occurred with a Colorado baker. The state laws dictates that either they make the cake, or face civil penalties of multiple thousands of dollars per day until the cake is delivered. The case has been at the front of evangelical news, being marked as a 'harbinger of doom' because the individual is "being forced by the state to violate their personal beliefs or go out of business".
Now, the details of the case are a bit sordid in its own right, as the situation seems to have been deliberately concocted by what many would deem 'militant gays' (as moronic as that term may be)
The baker in Colorado ran a business that prominently advertised as a Christian bakery, and was contacted by a gay couple from out of state (I want to say Pennsylvania?) requesting a wedding cake be made. When the baker refused, he ran afoul of the states relatively new anti-discrimination laws.

Now, there is probably more to this than anyone is letting on, but on the surface, it looks a lot like someone went to lengths to ensure they would be discriminated against. Why the hell would you order a cake for a gay wedding from a blatantly christian baker multiple states away, wanting it to be shipped hundreds of miles, risking damage and spoilage, when you can get a perfectly awesome cake locally? It does not take many leaps of logic to assume that someone was trying to 'Rosa Parks' the situation. The problem being, Rosa Parks was standing up (or sitting down) in protest of unjust laws, where these individuals are merely baiting a single individual into destroying what was up till then, a perfectly successful business.
Now, many will argue that he should just make the damn cake, and its none of his business what the hell anyone does with it. (and for the most part, I agree.) At the same time however, I feel disquieted by the entire situation, and am left feeling like there is a fundamental flaw in the arrangement of this law, which allows for the ruining of an individuals entire livelihood, based entirely on the complaint of a single customer, pushing against an engrained belief.

It is not far fetched to assume that some people, raised to believe certain things, will maintain some semblance of adherence to that belief for the duration of their life. This 'Ingrained behavior' generally is harder to change the older an individual gets. Just like dear old grannie who still uses the 'N' word, and everyone just sort of laughs nervously and pretends it did not happen, We are finding ourselves in an extremely uncomfortable transitional period, where a younger generation is far more accepting of the gay lifestyle than previous generations, and legislation is moving so quickly, we find ourselves punishing people who, for lack of a better term 'don't know any better'. It does not make it right, but I feel that the burden of law we have crafted is perhaps to harsh. Change takes time, and we seem to be demanding it happen faster than large swatches of society are capable of.

I don't think it really matters if they put it in their bottle or not, we're all going to still have 3 half full and expired bottles of Ketchup in the fridge anyways.

I can rag on 'Stupid Americans' all I want, I'm one of them. The state of our education system is embarrassing by and large.

I realized almost immediately what "Uruguay Syndrome" meant, and promptly had the following thought string:
"No one's going to understand that, because we stupid americans are used to "china syndrome." Also, if nuclear fuel melted through the crust, it would get stuck somewhere in the core, because its not going to have the velocity to burn upwards once it passes it, so the whole idea is retarded. Also, where the fuck is Uruguay."

If the normal 'mouse style' function of the logitech above is still to fine control, the following also exists:
http://www.ablenetinc.com/Assi...

My first thought was Joystick, my second thought was "Slow down mouse speed"
so I promptly googled this into existance:

http://www.amazon.com/3M-Ergon...

That, coupled with using a slower mouse tracking speed, should allow the user to use larger gross movements to nudge the mouse to where it needs to be, and click. Its the first route I would go anyways, instead of multi-hundred dollar eye tracking or voice control software.

So here's how you do it. You build a chair, adjustable to the height of the condemned. The condemned is seated, strapped in and sedated. A headrest is positioned very precisely at the back of the skull. The headrest contains a captured bolt projectile system, and is precisely aligned with the Medulla Oblongata. This captured bolt system is wired to a bank of seven switches, where one is randomly connected. The "firing squad" stands prepared, and at the allotted time, each member of the squad flips their switch. The bolt destroys the Medulla Oblongata, causing instant death.
No messy chemicals, no "everyone in the firing squad missed on purpose" no accidental decapitations, no trashing around under electrical shock, just a thin rod removing the part of the brain that makes humans function.

Ok, so everyone keeps bitching about how a 10,000$ gold apple watch is a useless lump of ceramic and metal in 2 years or so when the next version comes out and the battery won't hold a charge. So obviously its not an 'investment' the way people describe Rolex's and expensive jewelry.
However, thinking back to the internet, I can tell you exactly who this thing is targeted at. The people who post pictures of their bar tab on twitter, to brag how they spent 125,000$ on Cristal champagne and Cavalli vodka last night. There are people with stupid amounts of money, and Apple will gleefully take it from them, and laugh all the way to the bank.

Honestly, Percentages are a shit way to compare two things together (in this case, present tense Milky Way vs past tense Milky Way). Some of it may be because a chronic lack of sleep gives me some sort of mental handicap regarding the english language, and some of it is because I CANT TELL WHICH THING IS BEING REFERENCED.
Walk with me:

If we are using the past tense Milky Way as our frame of reference, and give it, for this example, and arbitrary size of say, 8 units. and say that the present tense Milky Way is 50% bigger, then we mean that the present tense milky way has a size of 12 units. 8 + (1/2*8)= 12

ON THE OTHER HAND:

If for some reason, we use the present tense Milky Way as our frame of reference, then the present tense Milky Way may have a size of 16 units, where the past tense milky way was 50% smaller, being 8 units.

Yes, I know that I'm mentally handicapped when it comes to english right now, and some English Major is liable to come break this down for me, but mostly my point is, Could you not be bothered to type "Half again as large." or "Twice as large" whichever is correct, seeing as either is entirely un-ambiguous?