"An estimated 13 to 15 deaths and 1,125 injuries may be prevented with the implementation of this new requirement."

Assuming people will actually use their backup cameras. If they can't be bothered with looking behind them or even using their rear view mirrors now, why should we think they will look at their backup cameras in the future?

I have read it, but when I compare it to how the real world works I see no correlation.

Actually, I thought everything in our court system boiled down to "who has the best lawyer".

What really happened was that Wolowitz and Koothrappali rigged the electric can opener to create false postitive results for Sheldon's test equipment. He shouldn't have announced his findings so soon.

"Coronal mass ejections, with in 2012, according to researchers."

My hovercraft is full of eels.

If all they are collecting are email addresses and phone numbers, why do they need such a ginormous new data center in Utah?

Moot questions. I wasn't talking about the plagiarism. I was talking about publishing results that cannot be duplicated.

Well, it's not like this is something new. Companies have been able to trademark colors for some time. And it's not like Fluke is some unknown company -- they've been around for a long time and everyone in the industry knows their multimeters are yellow around the edges. I'm skeptical that Sparkfun is completely innocent in all this. A quick look at their website shows that their company colors feature red, which appears to even apply to their circuit boards and tools. One would think their multimeters would be red, not yellow.

And as for forcing them to be destroyed, well that's how customs has always worked. Thirty years ago I had some alcohol brought back from Europe that I failed to declare. The choice was to pay the tax or have it destroyed and pay for the destruction. Either way you're gonna pay.

Having said all of that, there seem to be lots of other things like this that do make it through customs, and one gets the impression that Sparkfun would have had no problem if their bribe had been big enough.

Sadly, this is the kind of thing you usually only see in countries where government officials are corrupt. It is a warning sign of the direction the U.S. government is headed.

I'm perplexed at the motive behind such shennanigans. What is to be gained? Grant money? But surely that's too short-lived to be worth it. Does it just boil down to laziness on the part of someone seeking a PhD?

I guess it's like embezzlement. You have to know, you're going to get caught eventually. There is no escaping it. But people do it anyway.

True, but their world view is mostly about being angry at someone or something. The shows on those channels, and the way stories are presented, are specifically designed to get people angry and upset. The viewers are comfortable in their anger. They embrace it, and look forward to more of it. It's a kind of madness, I think.

Fox News would go out of business.

A solution in search of a problem. With driverless cars on the verge of being a reality, road rage will become a thing of the past.

I am reminded of the scene from the movie Brazil, where the protagonist is drving this tiny little one-person vehicle on the freeway, surrounded by huge trucks on all sides.

With a dead extinct animal? No. The closest thing is an extinct ibex cloned in 2009 (hardly "a decade"), and it only lived for a few minutes --- not exactly a success in my book.