ITER is a all the proof anyone should need that the Tokamak is not the way to economical fusion power generation. Of course neither is inertial confinement fusion, while we're on the topic. It would be one thing if these projects were sold as basic science, but instead they are sold as being practical approaches to fusion power generation. It's a lie.

For $5.4 million, they better be talking about more than simply damaging the electronics beyond use. I could throw something together to do that overnight for less than $100.

Sure there is! You can run out of memory!

The problem with Bill Mitchell's approach to monetary theory (Chartalism), is that it is focuses on public debt when it's the inevitable deleveraging of private debt that cause recessions and depressions. Given, it may be a workable approach, but it's not very direct. Steve Keen, on the other hand, focuses directly on the role of private debt in the macroeconomy. He's currently working on a dynamic model fully capable accurately simulating booms, recessions and depressions in all their glory, and he already has some very instructive models. You can check out his blog here, his "manifesto" here, and his research papers here.

Then why is there a comment system?

It doesn't matter what seems more likely. No one thought it was likely for the speed of light to be the same independent of inertial reference frame, but it is. Stop imposing your beliefs on nature.

I've never heard of this approach. How would you implement it? I've always seen the database connection directly in the server side code.

Polarized gravitation would also make some forms of man-made time travel possible, which would be quite interesting. It would be very revolutionary if antimatter turned out to have opposite gravitational sign. Unfortunately, we're probably still several years from knowing. Still exciting, though.

How many humans have complex thoughts by human standards?

The whole point of the concept of evolution is that every separation we make between species is arbitrary. The changes are continuous, not quantized (well, technically they are quantized, but only at the level of DNA, which is a minuscule scale).

In my undergrad psychology book, there were several anecdotes of intelligent behavior in various animals. One story was about a dolphin that was trained to clean trash from it's holding tank. Each time it brought a piece of trash to the trainer, it would receive a fish as a reward. Eventually one dolphin figured out that it could put a rock on a piece of trash, rip it into smaller pieces, and be rewarded for each smaller piece. After it figured this out, the other dolphins in the tank apparently started doing the same thing (implying that they learned from each other).

I don't believe it's an accident of history that dolphins are considered some of the most intelligent animals. There are people who study animal intelligence for a living, and I am willing to concede to their expertise.

This didn't make any sense until i looked it up and saw that you're predicting a subsequence of continuous throws. Just thought I'd point that out in case anyone else was confused.

They are probably not including energy used to pump the liquids in their cycle efficiency. However, the volumetric energy density is quoted as exceeding 50Wh / L. A 5 watt water pump has a typical flow rate of ~300 L/h (maximum pumping height of 4 feet), resulting in an energy usage of ~0.017 Wh/L, which is less than 0.03% of the total energy density. So pumping should have little effect on the cycle efficiency.

Stop spread FUD. The vast majority of solar cells are polycrystalline silicon. Nitrogen triflouride is only used for etching thin film solar cells, which requires only small amounts of the gas. In addition, flourine can be used directly, or the unused nitrogen triflouride can be captured.

Yeah, they should have a registration tax, a gas tax, and a corporate tax!

Oh, wait...

In Soviet Africa, fish hunt bird!