There's a lot to be said for the GP's "Get out of my cubicle for a couple of days. See what other people at the company do." If you get opportunities for a temporary change of scenery, it can help your personal development. There's an interesting article on the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in The Atlantic, where some of the moves he made happen - flying F-16s in the National Guard, working with a venture capital investment firm, temporary placement in the Department of Agriculture - justify the claim that "his climb through the ranks was always unorthodox." Obviously a few hours packing boxes doesn't amount to much alongside that, but it's the same principle.

Calling for stronger Chinese and Japanese currencies is essentially calling for a weaker dollar. Unless we want all currencies to be "stronger than average".

Valid points, but "alot" may not be a good hill to die on in defending the evolution of language. It seems to make things more complicated. I've seen "alittle" and "abit": where do we end up? There are perfectly good words like "atop" and "afar", and if the "drop spaces" crowd takes control then confusion may ensue.

PBS has some great science content. Fascinating Fails is a really good series about a range of discoveries. As well as an episode on penicillin (Fleming may have jazzed up the origin story) there is an interesting episode on ergot and LSD.

There was a fun video from xckd last week: What if you used a flamethrower as a snowblower?. Spoiler: it's better to move it than melt it. But the flame thrower would win on entertainment value.

FTFY with massive air quotes. Many of them get a one-way trip from retailers to homes.

That's what I thought, given that protons are ten a penny (actually 10^24 a penny) and hardly worth transporting around. But the summary in Ars has the answer:

That's not great, but a Thirties-style depression would have been a lot worse.

Counterpoint: People could miss out on good opportunities without targeted ads. I'm interested in local theater and I've found out about several productions through Facebook ads. Also I go running, and there are a couple of local events that I only found out about because of Facebook. If advertising is partly about matching up possible consumers and possible suppliers then (and it pains me to say this) Facebook's targeting could be a good thing.

"Race to the bottom" should get more love in Slashdot. It gives people more stuff for less money, and it's silly to engineer a sandwich toaster to last for 20 years, when it might only get used 20 times. But I'm quite keen on my over-engineered vacuum cleaner.

Honeybees and CGP Grey know it: Hexagons are the Bestagons.

Hundreds of billions of dollars to teach a 78 year old man some economics. Coursera would be a lot cheaper.

Agreed. Also it's wise to spend the shortest possible time at the "insane crowd around the Mona Lisa" exhibit.

I can't remember what I ordered at about 9am in the Louvre cafeteria, but they served me a beer. I'm pretty sure my French isn't that bad. Anyway, quite an unexpected treat.

It's funny that we're discussing matters of enormous constitutional importance, but what I most care about is that you didn't put a space before either of the opening brackets :)

Isn't this just reflecting the reality that the Congress has taken a back seat and the Executive is completely in control? Perhaps the GDR and the DPRK should have edited themselves in the same way.