Forget supersonic. I want superluminal, aka faster than light.

I've lived in Houston for 15 years. I think it has something to do with Texas' root of being a "Lone Star" state in the Union, i.e., we used to be our own country -- the Republic of Texas. And a lot of people here are still proud of that root to this day.

So whenever the federal government starts to impose some draconian policy over the entire nation, Texans have the natural tendency of saying, FU, not here in Texas. And I suspect if/when things got out of hand and a new revolution were ever needed, it might just possibly start in Texas.

I suspect the reason most nerds are bad at social etiquette simply because they don't see the point and don't care. It's a waste of time and/or something beneath their intellectual pursuits. If you are on the verge of a breakthrough in a new black hole theory, or revolutionary AI algorithm, everything else might seem unimportant by comparison.

If they started caring, picking up proper social etiquette is really not that hard. You don't need a school a class or an instructional manual... Just mirror whatever other "smooth" and "cool" people are doing. (The hard part is to hold an engaging social conversation talking about nothing, but that's a story for another day.)

So the key is to convince the nerd of the importance of social etiquette. Ironically, those who do go to this school probably don't really need it, and those who really need it haven't realized what they are missing... but sooner or later, they will do.

One main reason why history is fascinating is precisely because historical records are rare and incomplete.

Imagine every single person's entire life in known history can be viewed at the push of a button. Nobody will ever watch it except maybe those with great historical importance. The vast majority of it would be more boring than the current crop of reality TV shows.

Imagine yourself, watching a recording of your past self, who's watching a recording of your past self, who's...

Agreed. Not the first and won't be the last, cf. Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Come on now. Yes there are numbers involved in your analytics, but do you really think it even approaches the complexity of real technical fields, such as electronics, aerospace, bioengineering, nanotech etc.?

Not putting down marketing people, but don't try to be someone you are not.

Or he would have mentioned the product's name front and center.

Why will it be so embarrassing??

If/when it happens, we congratulate them. It will be another accomplishment not only for the Chinese people, but the humanity as a whole. After all, we've already done it, and revered the same way all around the world.

Not everything needs to be a race or competition. The cold war is over a couple of decades ago.

Sounds like preview can be your friend too.

It should be 2x10^16 joules, or 5 megatons (somehow 0.1C became C in the Google equation while copy-n-pasting). A little less impressive but still highly unlikely.

Note to self: preview is your friend.

> manhole cover moving about about 0.1c

A manhole cover has a mass over 50kg. Traveling at 0.1C, it's kinetic energy would be over 2x10^18 joules, which is about half a gigaton TNT equivalent.

By comparison, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated had a yield of 50 megatons.

Moral of the story: never underestimate the venerable C (when compared to human scale objects and measurements).