Often at business meetings we would go out to dinner. Usually when the bill came we would have everyone chip in including tip the amount of money they felt they owed. Some folks had drinks, wine with dinner, and desert. Others may have had only a salad. It was a good judge of character to see who was honest about it. Since this is Slashdot I should mention that we were scientists and engineers so we could do the math. Most the time we would end up with a few extra dollars which would just go for a bigger tip. Occasionally we would be short, and someone would have to fess up about not putting enough in. Good way to see who is trustworthy.

For small payments to many people, split the money between the law firm and the govt. in a reasonable manner. Saves a lot of admin costs and we all as tax payers benefit.

Federal R&D funding agencies often have to justify why certain states get a disproportional amount of their funding. Information like this can be used to show why some states get a lot more federal funding than others. About 20 years ago I looked at DOD basic research funding per capita. As I recall Mass. got about $50 per person vs. 50 cents for Maine. NSF has a program called EPSCOR to set aside funding just for the have not states.

Astronauts have told me that foods have much less taste in space due to fluids increasing in your head. Therefore they like to put lots of hot sauce on things. One worry of course was that a drop of hot sauce would float away and get inhaled. They do particularly like sweets. Thus taste testing on Earth is not too relevant to space.

each rocket costs about $50k, not so good for antiartillery

Just reading the prior patents cited by this patent, I can't understand why this isn't prior art or so obvious from prior art that it doesn't warrant patenting. It seems like the patent examiners aren't will to reject stuff like this instead of letting it get fought in the courts. If our leaders truly want to help small business then they need to end crap like this and make patent examiners do their job.

Or Silicon Valley

A few years ago I went to a talk by an expert on explosives detection. He said, "if someone tells you they can detect explosive better than a dog, don't believe them, because we don't really know how well dogs can detect explosives."

To think the discovery of the structure of DNA is only 60 years old. I believe James Watson is still alive. Sort of like the first moon landing was only 66 years after the first manned powered flight. Or the progress from the first transistor to the modern laptop that has five plus billion of them. Anyone care to give some other examples?

If you are concerned about population consider India, more people than Africa and 1/15 the area.

This is impressive, of course another way to state it would be: it delivers the energy of one laptop battery in one pulse. One must keep in mind the difference between energy and power.

It is the close proximity of pigs, ducks, and people on Chinese farms that is a major source of flu virus mutations.

It will be ok in North Carolina since their legislature said you can only use linear extrapolations of sea level rise to plan building in coastal areas. Guess they didn't get beyond simple algebra in school (no quadratic equations etc).

I looked up Singapore individual tax rates. Max out at 20% and 0% on capital gains. Looks like a good deal for him. I assume Calif will get some tax out of him too before he leaves. I assume he must have another citizenship already. Notice Singpore requires two years residency before you can be a citizen. Of course maybe there is a billonaire's exception.

Near the end of the paper is this wonderful understatement: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."