I'll bet it is rooted cell phones, with the added security of being mobile, allowing Chinese to do what the rest of the world takes for granted.

However if you used relativity it would always be right for any situation we have managed to encounter or create.

"No" # 1 - quantum world

"No" # 2 - black holes

There is no reason to assume that relativity is right everywhere. Saying it "would always be right" is unscientific, in the extreme.

though your Wikipedia reference doesn't really support your claim

Well, since you were the one to say that freight trains had priority over passenger trains, how about you support your claim.

but in much of Europe, the passenger trains do have right of way, even if they're running late

And in Canada (where I worked for CP Rail some decades back). It surprised me that the U.S. operated differently.

In the US, slow cargo trains have right-of-way, slowing down passenger trains.

Not quite. Passenger trains have priority, and only lose it when they run late and even then, it is not that freight has priority over passenger service but that it does not have to yield to passenger trains. It would be more accurate to say it becomes "first come, first served". Kind of like if you reserve a table, they hold it for you for a few minutes after the time you set, then it becomes available to all.

Railways have the highest fixed costs of any transportation system. 25%, I was told 30 years ago when I worked on one.

High fixed, low variable cost. So adding one freight car = dirt cheap. Going one mph faster on a curve = very expensive, due to increased wear on rails, road bed, etc.

There is also the not small problem of grade. Trains dislike hills, with a grade over 1% being excessive to them. Cars routinely handle ten times this.

Grades dictate routes. The only way around this is tunnels & bridges. Either way, cost per mile for a track is much higher than for a road. With costs born by one company, rather than all of us.

It is a fundamental problem, that leads to the division of bulk (slow) hauling = railways, people & fast hauling = trucks/cars.

100 to 1000 times below NOEL is the goal -- the standard that few come close to.

The maximum daily dose of Paracetamol (aka Acetaminophen) is 66% of the FATAL dose.

I bought a Yeti some months back for the $100 you mention. I like it a lot. Running on a powered USB hub.

Now if I can just stop whistling letters, especially "s"...

The Shanghai Tower has them beat in terms of being the first.

How about "miniature hula hoops"?

0-day? How about a 900-day? Jan, 2012 was about 900 days ago.

Have a request sheet for those who want copies of each document. Catch is that you get "charged" for the paper you consume, with the charges coming out of a special "Think of the Children" end-of-the-year bonus.

Paper consumption would drop to almost zero.

The biggest problem is not that the Higgs field/boson/theory is wrong. Nor that BICEP2 is wrong.

The biggest problem is that physicists do not want a new theory. Everyone gets paid and paid well to keep doing the usual stuff -- CMB, inflation, Big Bang, String Theory, smashing particles together and looking for the oldest star.

Physicists prefer stuff known to be wrong over stuff that might be right.

Your's is the worst kind of anecdote -- non-typical usage.

You rented a car for a week so:
(1) you wanted to have fun driving around...in a battery-weighted car
(2) you were not going to be spending one to two hours a day in rush hour traffic...that a Prius was designed for
(3) because you were going to be doing more than typical amounts of highway driving...that a Prius is neutered by

Three strikes, your anecdote is out.

And it would get better gas mileage than a hybrid Prius for those driving mostly highway (or non stop-and-go) miles.