Most things that are perfect *are* theoretical.

Most modern encryption isn't cracked by breaking the technology used to encrypt it. Security is only as secure as the pain tolerance of the person who knows the PIN, or the size of the visor that is suppose to hide the numbers you press from the person in line behind you.

This patent would have helped a co-worker of mine's uncle: He thought LOL meant "Lots of Love."

Pretty harmless, until he started using it inappropriately: "I'm so sorry to hear of your loss. LOL" or "You're better off without him anyway. LOL".

Apparently, they had to hold an intervention. :)

You switch to LEDs to save energy, changing back strikes me as failing to address the root cause, temperature.

Where I live we have a couple of awkward corners so they mounted mirrors to allow people to see oncoming traffic. As we get snow, those mirrors have a built-in heating element that only switches on when it's cold - precisely the right idea.

If I recall correctly, there's also a self-regulating tape which is used to be embedded with water pipes to prevent them from freezing, so it's not like there aren't any solutions.

Just going back to wasting energy ALL THE TIME is mad IMHO.

As long as you make sure the isotopes give more light than the LEDs :-).

Nope, most of the engineering degreed terrorists went to school in Europe, further more, most don't come from the oil-rich states, but from the Yemen/Sudan/Egypt/PA type states. Yes, most on 9/11 were Saudi, but even then the free educations in Saudi Arabia are in theology, not engineering.

Atta went to school in Germany, Yahya Ayyash got a engineering degree from BZU*, Ramzi Binalshibh was Yemeni and went to school in Germany.

And this connection isn't new, the Israelis talked about it in the book "The Hunt for the Engineer", Kaplan talked about it, engineering and terrorism have been linked for a decade or so.

* - I just missed being on the Egged 36 bus when Yahya Ayyash bombed it.

I can address the "which tourists would join a club" question. I used to be a sales rep in the outdoor industry, for tents, backpacks, boots, whatnot. The industry's twice-yearly trade show was in Salt Lake City, so I would spend the greater part of a week in SLC twice a year. During that time, it's really nice to be able to grab a beer with your partners, or your clients, or your friends from the other side of the country you only see twice a year...

fwiw, we rarely got hassled to "join" a club. I don't know if they relaxed the rules during those weeks in the face of thousands of heathens coming in from the outside, or if they tired of hearing each of those heathens saying, "Private membership club wot wot?" but only once that I recall did we have to sign up as members. And that was actually pretty funny - my buddy is a smartass, and went on a riff about what benefits we could expect, when do they mail the newsletter, is there a profit-sharing option, and so on - the waitress was lost.

Some oddities did exist, though: iirc, you could not order pitchers of anything, only individual drinks. You could only have one drink at a time, so if you ordered "another round", the server could not set the new drink down in front of you until you drained the first one or gave it to the server. And all the beer was 3.2, which is basically beer for people who like to pee a lot.

...but it's often quite close.

The disregard for quantifiable relationships here is silly. Screaming correlationisnotcausation is exactly like screaming, "Just because there's smoke doesn't mean there's fire." That can be true, in a limited number of cases. In the vast majority of cases, smoke does correctly imply fire, and a strong correlation often correctly implies causation.

Can there be outliers? Sure. Can there be a third-party cause for the correlation? Sure. Is the most likely explanation often the most accurate one? You bet.

My old stats prof used to say that the causal link between smoking and lung cancer has never been proven - never run the double-blinds, etc. However, it is correlated beyond any reasonable doubt. Sometimes enough really is enough.

Alright:

Two travelers from Hungary and Czech Republic are backpacking through a national park, when they are attacked and eaten by a pair of grizzly bears. Rangers shoot the bears and autopsy them. They open the female bear and find the remains of the Hungarian. Ranger turns to his partner and says, "I guess the Czech's in the male."

Ba-dum-bum.