Tsunamis don't go up that high. All you have to do is float 100 meters or so to avoid a tsunami.

And even if you float as high as 1 km, you won't be higher than most mountains.

Yeah, because they already charge you the desktop price even if you're just using a tablet. Maybe AT&T should do that, too.

Also, I'm fairly sure it's illegal. FCC has some sort of regulations about devices even causing unintentional interference.

Devices that are designed to have interference? Definitely not legal for civilian uses.

Sure. Find any wireless router that supports DD-WRT. Install DD-WRT, and voila, you have a wireless router with IPv6 support.

I think cheapest of these routers go for something like $25 or $30 routinely.

Um, I thought everyone was ready to move to IPv6. Even Windows now supports IPv6 properly.

Or maybe they can just put them in charge of Gundam.

I don't know if they think about it, but it's actually been in the news recently. Apparently some hotel is built so perfectly for, ah hem, tanning their customers who happen to be in the pool area.

This 19-year-old hasn't made the focus point adjustable... so you can't set a moving target at a variable distance on fire with it.
Any dish shaped thing with mirrors has a focus point - especially satellite dishes - so this isn't exactly rocket science.

Well, his *simple* prototype doesn't have that feature, but it is conceptually simple enough to implement, if technically complicated.

One, the mirrors do not have to be on a dish-shaped thing; they just all have to have the correct angle at each position as if it were on a dish shaped thing. In actuality, they can be supported on a planar platform (see Fresnel lens for a similar concept).

Two, once above point is established, each mirror can have a motorized kinematic mount behind it, to set the angle of that mirror correctly, for a desired focal point.

Once you have these, you can adjust the focus within some reasonable limit—and the range of available focal length should be long enough to set a boat on fire (although all this is probably outside the capability of ancient Greeks).

Here's the real summary: Brian Greene has written on string theory for a popular audience in the past, and he's also fascinated by some of the more fringe-y elements of physics, such as the multiverse theory.

Um, multiverse theory isn't fringe-y—at least no more than any other theory within its area, i.e. on the interpretations of quantum mechanics. In fact, next to the Copenhagen interpretation (which is the textbook version of the non-explanations that physicists will try to sell you first), it's closest to the current mainstream than anything else.

Of course, the actual many worlds theory has little resemblance with the sci-fi versions (where alternate versions of even whole persons exist in vaguely recognizable but slightly different way), but the many worlds theory itself is not fringe-y—at least no more than string theory (which, I realize, isn't saying much).

Because they would not be required by law to repave the street, the streets would gradually be replaced by a patchwork of heavy steel plates covering the open trenches below.

Never mind that you are describing neither mainstream Tea Party or (more likely what you were imagining) libertarian position.

But *suppose* we lived in a world where we lived in some kind of world where anarcho-capitalist (which is closer to what you describe) view prevailed, then this is what would happen: every section of the street would be owned by somebody. And whoever dug up the streets and failed to repave or otherwise return them to good condition would get sued out of existence by whoever owned those streets.

Tragedy of commons happens only in a world where there is such thing as a public (i.e. common) property. Private individuals usually protect their own property, even against huge corporations, tooth and nail.

If God® wanted you naked, he would have made you born that way.

So ... he wants us covered in blood?

it was his comment with which I sarcastically agreed. bkpark's comments actually agreed with this, though he clearly didn't see my comment as being in agreement.

With a good reason. Did you see the percentage that Pelosi was re-elected with? I forgot the exact number, but it was somewhere in the 80% of the vote.

Last election wasn't exactly an encouraging sign for conservatives in California (or New York or Massachusetts), because apparently a "wave election" in favor of conservatism can do little to make any dent in the region where I currently live.

Sarcasm gets stale quickly when it hits too close to home.

You must not be following current events (nor have passed basic reading comprehension).

The lame duck Congress recently extended the ethanol subsidy (I forget whether that was part of the tax cut deal), and how would the Congress elected in 2008 deal with issues that affect 2011 budgets?

Actually, scratch that, they actually can affect the 2011 budget since they should've come up with the budget by the end of 2010, but in a "failure to govern" (not my words, the Democrats') they have failed to come up with anything better than continuing resolutions so far—and that's including the current lame-duck session.

Sure they do. You just need a gradient. This is how coil gun works.

Furthermore, the question isn't "are we at the center of solar system" The question here is "are we at the center of the Universe", and the scientific answer to that is an emphatic yes.

Case in point: red shifts of far-away supernovas (so-called "standard candle") show that every astronomical objects are moving away from us, as if we were in the center of the universe.

Perhaps I should clarify this point by saying, yes, we are moving relative to the rest frame of the Universe (i.e. the inertial frame where cosmic microwave background radiation is isotropic, not red-shifted one way blue-shifted another), but not very fast. And yes, every observer in the inertial frame of the Universe will see himself at the center of the Universe, but so what—we still see ourselves at the center of the Universe and that's what counts.