Enhanced "common sense", implants for all. Double dose for members of Congress (one to provide baseline otherwise lacking).

wait a minute "Anonymous Coward", if that is your real name*... are you suggesting this, our beloved /., is not a "professional environment"?
*Dr. Strangelove reference

partly true -- the bits about subsidized phones -- and mostly silly -- the bulk comparing the housing bubble to an oversupply of smartphones and criticizing a stimulatory fiscal policy during a deep recession. And all off topic (raging against AT&T, c'mon now)

You calculate that the ratio drops from 7,400:1 currently to 740:1 if everybody lives like a profligate American? Seems like still a pretty healthy margin.

The original article makes many ridiculous extrapolations (emphasis added): "..even with an annual energy growth rate of only 2.3 percent, a civilization powered by solar energy would have to cover every square inch of Earth's land area with 100-percent-efficient solar panels within a few hundred years. Even if we covered the oceans too, and surrounded the sun and other nearby stars with solar panels, eventually there would not be enough energy in the galaxy to meet the growing demand. "

Within a few hundred years of compound growth... sounds like a stock broker. "Eventually", at the current growth rate, the mass of humanity will be expanding outwards at the speed of light... then... faster that that!!!

nice. Probably not many historians (philosophers, political scientists, logicians) on this thread so the reference is lost (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?).

Absolutely, the correct metric is fuel per seat. And by that metric, the 787 is more efficient (IIRC 10-20% more efficient than comparable jets).

Wow, that's over 50% bigger! I'm just saying it's (obviously) not as technically interesting as employing an entirely new building material and process. And the 380's size is wonderful, until you are waiting for your bags or for customs with another 300 fellow passengers. Boeing decided that more efficient was better than bigger. And without governments to write-off the initial investment, a bigger plane would never pay off. It still might not be truly profitable, ever, anyway. Governments are also investing to re-build terminals to accommodate (Frankfurt, for one, should've focused on eliminating stairways to planes before spending huge amounts to handle the 380).

"I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post." Memorably delivered by Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessup in "A Few Good Men" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/quotes)

oh definitely, let's all boycott planes made by "corporate fucks" and commit to flying only on planes made by little, friendly, ma-and-pa type ventures.

The fire can be contained, but it's the lithium that's a problem because it accellerates oxidation of aluminum. It's why there are regulations in place on transport of lithium in aircraft because a tiny bit of lithium can easily eat through critical aircraft structure and cause them to fail..

There's a lot less aluminum in the largely carbon fiber 787. Doesn't this change the risk analysis?

Excited? About something slightly bigger than the 4-decade-old 747? The most interesting thing about that plane is the prospects for sales to recoup even a significant fraction of the tens of billions the European companies, err, countries , paid to build it. Forget about bailing out Greece, Portugal, et al., some of those Euros are going straight into subsidies to the companies assembling it. Financially interesting, technically not so much.

The way this could work to increase general knowledge and understanding, as well as fun and potential profit, is that
1. I make a claim,
2. you refute it,
3. I provide an example, and
4. you provide a counter-example.

Still waiting on step 4. Note that I never claimed Yale was the "only university out there", though it does provide a decent standard.

e.g., "At the request of the Office of Cooperative Research, the Inventors shall execute assignments or other documents assigning to the University all their rights in the invention and any patent applications or resulting patents on the invention. " Quoted from this page.

Universities also have rights to anything invented by their faculty. This produces the bizarre result that your own ideas, often developed through your own grants (grants that also pay "overhead" averaging >50% to the university), belong to your employer, the university that (also) uses the grant to pay you. A few universities have made large amounts of money but most have been net losers from patent costs, etc. Fortunately, universities are slowly realizing that they have a poor record of converting ideas/patents into money, so they may relinquish so rights for a stake in a resulting company.

The Enterprise tied up in Boston inner harbor sometime in the mid-to-late 1980s (as I recall) and totally dwarfed everything around. These aircraft carriers are impressive but I think we don't really need 10+/- of them, each costing a fortune to run. PBS aired a multiple segment show called "Carrier" that followed the USS Nimitz on a deployment to the Persian Gulf, where it did practically nothing (good news and bad news).