What do you mean illegal? I think the immigration laws at that time consisted of "gravity" -- you're not suggesting the cometary debris disobeyed that law, are you?

and the vast majority are complete and utter failures.

I would add to this, though - they may have failed, but they likely learned something that will permanently increase their value to society. And, because of that, permanently increase their income.

I strongly recommend that all college students try to start a business. Yes, you will likely fail - but you will be exposed to thing that will change your perspective forever.

100 C has no practical application for most values of real life.

You don't boil water by setting something to 100 C (or 212F for that matter). You turn up the dial to medium-high and wait for bubbles. Or stick it in the microwave for some number of minutes.

0 C also not so practical. My refrigerator's freezer compartment lets me choose on a scale not related to C or F. In any case, it's a temperature below freezing.

Not to say metric is without merit, but it's practical applications are not a good argument for people familiar with imperial units.

No, that doesn't address the issue. That report only shows "firearm deaths" - we are looking at crime, which is a larger set than "firearm deaths".

Accelerating to higher speeds is fine and all, but unless you want to zip by the planet, you're going to need to decelerate too.

I wonder whether this is true for any thirty-ish day range, or only true for calendar months?

Actually, I pretty much disagree entirely with that analysis...

The question is not "sell low" or "sell high" - you do not know the future, so that fact that it went up is not available to you before the decision. The question is are you getting enough that your risk is significantly decreased.

For example, if your company is generating free cash flows of $2M, you will usually get a valuation of $10M. That is the market rate for a startup that's breaking out. (It can change based on other factors, of course, but that is the starting point.) As a public company, that $2M is worth about $30M. You might look at that difference and claim "unfairness", but it is the price difference between concentrated risk and unconcentrated risk. To put it simply, if that wasn't the price difference in risk then most deals would not be made - either the startup would refuse to sell or the large company would refuse to buy.

Honestly, if this is your first company you are going to think that any price isn't fair. And when you don't accept the price, you'll be horrified when the company loses its value a little later. And then next time, you'll understand the price difference and you'll sell.

But the important thing is to keep building companies - I've started quite a few, and there is no job like it!

If he started a company in his teens, I doubt he wants to relax the rest of his life...

He should sell. The reason small companies sell to large companies is to decrease concentration of risk for their owners. He, as an owner of a small company, needs to deconcentrate his risk. He will have another company he wants to work on - he probably already has some ideas. It is far easier to do that after selling your first company, and far harder to do that after missing the only opportunity to sell.

The simple fact is a cash out event gives you great options for your future work. If you don't sell, there is a high risk that the company will fail before you can personally cash out - this is true of all start-ups.

Sometimes that is a coin toss when comparing highly educated with highly experienced or two similar candidates.

In cases like this, or where there is plainly not enough information, leave that one blank -- don't vote for either unknown. Unless your ballot stupidly requires you not to leave any races blank (are there such ballots?)

I find pretty much all religion abhorrent. Buddhism however, while still abhorrent for believing in mystical ideas that go against the simplest (and therefore best) definitions of reality, is definitely less abhorrent than the others. I've seen a lot of quotes from the Dalai Lama that I really appreciate and can agree wholeheartedly with.

Seems to me that someone who abhors religion and mysticism would agree wholebrainedly rather than wholeheartedly.

That's no problem at all using unobtainium, of course!

Actually, my math is off by a factor of 10 - I didn't convert kg to N correctly. The corrected result is:

FlyingMass = OtherStuff + 0.525 * FlyingMass

So your aircraft has to be half solar cells, roughly speaking. And, yes, the solar cell area is a bit on the large size...

To inject some math into the discussion:

ThrustToKeepFlying = FlyingMass / LiftToDragRatio
PowerToKeepFlying = ThrustToKeepFlying * Velocity = Velocity * FlyingMass / LiftToDragRatio

Typically LiftToDragRatio is about 20 or so. Airplanes don't really make sense unless they are faster than other vehicles, so Velocity needs to be 100-300 m/s. (Typically, jets fly just under Mach 1, where they have the least drag/greatest power)

FlyingMass = AircraftMass + PayloadMass + EngineMass + PowersourceMass

Since we are using unobtainium to build our aircraft, it doesn't weigh anything. And we'll just say that we can fly arbitrarily large airplanes for a single passenger, so PayloadMass is essentially zero as well.

The best solar cells are about 300W/kg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panels_on_spacecraft), and the best electric engines are about 6 kW/kg. So

FlyingMass = OtherStuff + PowerToKeepFlying / 300 + PowerToKeepFlying / 6000 = OtherStuff + 0.0035 * PowerToKeepFlying

FlyingMass = OtherStuff + 0.0035 * ( 300 * FlyingMass / 20 )

FlyingMass = OtherStuff + 0.0525 * FlyingMass

OtherStuff = 0.9475 * FlyingMass

So this says that as long as your airplane and payload are under about 95% of the engine / power source mass, it is at least possible. Structures that light are not really an issue - the real issue is only flying during the day and in good weather. (And, of course, it would cost an arm and a leg!)

Nice article. The Atlantic glosses over the bit, though, where the syrup cartel *causes* a calamity that threatens their industry, before they wise up.

A physical connection is not required, nor necessarily helpful. Wires have resistance, after all. With an arbitrarily large transmission array wireless losses can get arbitrarily small - as an example, a visible laser (just a very focused and high frequency electromagnetic wave) transmits virtually all of the energy to the target.

This simply isn't true. Do the math - there are two things that can kill you here, momentum change and energy change. To make it simpler, let's use the elephant and flea car, which are, of course, perfectly elastic:

setup: Elephant and flea car approach each other, both going 50 meters/second.
collision
aftermath: Elephant car continues at the same velocity and direction. Flea car now has doubled velocity and reversed direction.
Velocity change for elephant car: approximately 0 meters/second
Velocity change for flea car: 150 meters/second - hitting a brick wall would be far better, at only 50 m/s
Energy change of elephant car: approximately 0 J
Energy change of flea car: approximately 22,500 * mass J

size matters!