I think he's talking about the families where they'd serve too much food, like giving a child adult-sized portions for example, and tell them "Eat everything or you're in trouble! Don't waste food!". That kind of habit might train them to ignore their natural appetite limits, and lead to overeating later in life.

This story doesn't really support your claim. This story only proves that manipulative women who hook up with every guy in their workplace are poor relationship material, the fact that she happened to be a programmer is incidental to the story. You can tell because if you replaced "programming" with say... "painting" or "accounting" and change the other terms to match, the story still works exactly the same. I for one am a web developer, as is my girlfriend. We've been together six years and are very happy.

Estimated GNP up almost 200%. Experts remain mystified as to the reason behind this sudden surge in productivity.

Well, they ARE loaded with extremely high density fuel. Just get it into orbit and then use that stuff to propel it wherever you want. Heck, shoot them out in random directions with messages to aliens written on the side. The isotopes will continue to decay for millenia, and should be easy to detect for any reasonably advanced species studying the heavens. Add in some nuclear powered broadcasters of some kind if you want to be really sure it gets attention. When suitably advanced extraterrestrials notice the weird radiation source passing through their star system they can either investigate it directly (if they have an easy way to retrieve it) or backtrace its path to get an approximate direction for Earth.

Oh deadly radiation, is there anything you aren't useful for?

Your theory is plausible sounding (hybrid between interface characteristics and signal source) but is untestable and thus worthless unless you provide a set of criteria on which to evaluate it.

For example: I theorize that a person's soul is the source of their personality. Thus, if the soul is damaged somehow, the person's personality should change.

I suggest an experiment in which people sign the bottoms of hidden documents. The control group will sign pieces of paper that are blank. The test subjects will sign papers that condemn an innocent person to death, or the cutting of funding to an orphanage. (For the sake of rigor, we should actually carry out whatever horrible act is proscribed by the signed papers)

If the "soul" theory is correct, such soul damaging activities should result in measurable personality changes to the test subjects' personalities without corresponding changes to the control group.

So yeah. I disagree with "we do not know". We "do not know" all sorts of stuff, like why gravity works or why the universe exists, but that doesn't stop us from determining things about them based on their observable characteristics. (i.e. gravity exists and is tied somehow to mass) We can also remove possibilities that fail to show evidence of existence (i.e. there is no ether in space).

We know that almost everything that makes a personality can be explained by various functions of the brain, with the only gaps being left in some of the more complex interactions between our systems of consciousness. We know which part of the brain creates emotion, which part recognizes faces, which part lets us analyze our own thoughts, and a bunch of other things that were once attributed to "the soul".

Pretty well, actually. The most progressive designs actually have enough salt on hand to store 3 days' worth of energy. I'm assuming you'd need 5 or 6 days of excellent sunlight to save that up, but assuming you're consistently collecting more than you consume you'd be able to weather a couple days of rainstorms without issue.

And they would, in fact, still produce some energy on cloudy days. Most designs call for parabolic mirror installations, which will focus the light onto the tower even if the source is diffuse (i.e. on the other side of clouds). It wouldn't look as impressive, but you'd still be focusing all the available light onto the salt reservoirs and slowly heating it to the melting point.

If I can use the power at a significant discount? Deal. (Why more companies don't offer this as a way to secure property and put down opposition baffles me. Give every person whose property borders the solar plant a $5k annual electricity credit and watch their complaints melt away....)

Actually, this only allows for sharks with lasers going INTO their eyes. Not nearly as scary unfortunately...

They didn't do it properly because what they wanted to do was not properly legal. The US government wanted to prosecute someone on NZ soil based on flimsy evidence provided by biased parties, without due authorization or process.

Protip for US Law Enforcement: If something you want to do is against the law it doesn't mean the law is bad, nor does it mean the law should be rewritten/removed. It means what you want to do is wrong, and you shouldn't do it.

That loophole only works if it's written in plain english from the robot's perspective. Likely "...shall not harm a human or blah blah blah" just the human readable equivalent of :

function human (profiledata){
this.name = profiledata[name];
this.age = profiledata[age];
// the rest of the person's data is irrelevant for this example //
this.firstLaw = function (action){
for (outcome in action.resultCalc()){
if (harmAnalyze(outcome) === harmDefinition("human", this.age, this.medicalhistory, this.condition, this.surroundings, this.futurePredict,)){
return = "first Law Violation";
}
else return "No First Law Violation";
};

I'm a little unclear on why so much. Only $50mil in loans have been paid out, but most articles suggest that taxpayers would be on the hook for both the loan AND the interest. Isn't the loan *from* the taxpayers? I understand that the budget might be $100mil *short* of its intended level as a result, but the taxpayers should only really be down the $50mil in cash that they've actually paid out.

Can someone with a better understanding of this kind of economics explain?

Pixologic's Zbrush.

If you buy their software, the upgrades come with it. All of them. Forever.

My understanding is that the missile system IS for our defense. The idea is to place the defenses closer to the origin of the missiles, so they have more time to react and can destroy them further from populated areas. (like over the Atlantic maybe?)

It also opens up options like using fast, guided micro-missiles that tail their target for an easy hit at low relative speeds, instead of something that has to be pinpoint precise and catch the target head-on at high relative speeds.

They call it a threat because it neutralizes the "Mutually Assured Destruction" balance that has thus far prevented thermonuclear war from being a viable option. If they can't shoot missiles at us, but we can shoot missiles at them, then there's nothing preventing us from just nuking them out of existence next time we have a disagreement.

The cold war is still pretty fresh in some people's minds...

Sure they do. It was sustained right up until it was fatal.