More importantly, how can you call something extrasensory perception, when it involves the humans perceiving an LED signal, with their visual sense?
This is pretty silly.

As far as it being inappropriate to use the Nazi symbol in media; well maybe it is in bad form, and maybe it makes some people uncomfortable, but it's a bit of history. One which affected the world, not just Europe. The Nazi laws in Europe are significant, but they're also oppressive and insane. To say a country is so scarred by a piece of history that it has to ban a symbol in order to protect people from being sad, uncomfortable, or in Germany's case for feeling remourseful is downright ridiculous. Grown ups, as you say, should be able to handle whatever flow of emotion comes from viewing these symbols, and should also be able to say for themselves "I'm not comfortable with this, I'm not going to purchase this game". It shouldn't require action from any government to say "no we can't have that, it might upset people who were/are affected by that bit of history".

On the other hand, in Germany we can say "Fuck" on the radio without it being censored out by the government in order to protect people from feeling sad or uncomfortable. I'm wondering what incredible historic catastrophy must have brought about those oppressive censorhip laws in the States.

Sorry, but you are ignorant.

By quashing political dissent, you are becoming like the Nazis. Let the right wingers openly glorify the nazis, so reasonable moderate people can see just how awful they are. Here in the states we let the KKK march freely, and usually the protests over the march are bigger than the klan march itself. If you do not trust your populace to make the right choice when fully informed, how can you even pretend to be democratic?

Freedom of Expression is guaranteed by the German Constitution. There are Nazi marches in Germany and the corresponding, much larger, counter-marches, just like those KKK marches in the state that you are referring to. Nobody suggested those were forbidden. The only "expression" that is expressively forbidden is denial of the Holocaust, and that law is simply a special, very strict case of legislation against libel.

If you really want to prevent Nazis from gaining power again, don't outright ban them in your constitution. Codify principles incompatible with Naziism in your constitution. Freedom of religion, Freedom of Expression, etc. As long as Freedom of Expression is not protected by your constitution, it can be taken away from you. When (not if) that happens, do you really care if it was the Nazis or some other group?

The German Constitution does not ban National Socialism. It codifies human and civic rights, like those that you mention, and several others (most importantly, the right to dignity). You have clearly never read it, otherwise you wouldn't lecture about it like this.

German law strikes a different balance between Freedom of Expression and the Protection from Intimidation than the Anglo-American system, because of the country's history. Imagine living in what was arguably the world's most industrially advanced, culturally influential, progressive country. Then, one day, the houses of parliament are disbanded by armed paramilitaries. Your intellectual elite is driven into exile or killed. Almost all civic rights are abolished. About eight to ten Million Jews, politicial dissidents, Gays, Roma, mentally ill and others are killed. Finally, your country goes on to unleash the world's deadliest ever war, killing well above 30 Million people in the battlefields. I think you can be forgiven for outlawing the symbols of the movement that caused all this afterward.

Jeez, people, everytime anything related to this law comes up, everyone starts crying censorship. There is one small bloody set of symbols that's forbidden. One stupid verse of a song, and one stupid greeting. That's it! It's not like Germany had a censorship agency. In most of the United States, you can't even take a piss in public! How's that for freedom of expression?

Labs are just one of many reasons why this approach doesn't work. The people who promote this idea of an online University imply that higher education is only about transferring old knowledge from one person (professor) to the other (student). If it were that simple, there wouldn't be much of a need to rank Universities (but professors instead), and nobody would care about a University's history, location and culture.

"Alma mater" is Latin for "nurturing mother". A University is not a web portal. It's a place where personalities are made. The eloquent guy with the strong political opinion you shared a house with in your second year, the brilliant students in the first row that always outsmarted you in class, the cameraderie of the guys on the football field or in your rowing boat, the all-nighters spent over an assignment you absolutely had to hand in by sunrise, all that make up the quality of your University education, just as much as that famous professor in whose lab you wrote your Masters thesis. None of this can be shipped to someone's mother's basement.

Have a look at your average 18 year old when they leave high school, and look at them again a few years later when they return from Uni. You can't send that sort of experience over a broadband connection. Employers know that. After all, they've been to University.

As another poster has pointed out, the planet's surface is already filled with friction-generating objects: Houses, trees, rocks and mountains will always dominate the dissipated energy between air and ground globally, so we don't have to worry about passat winds stopping because of wind farms.

On a more general note though, the interpretation presented here of this calculation strikes me as backwards: What these people are saying is that if we were to cover all the surface area of the planet except for built-up areas and forests (that is, including all arable land, all deserts, all mountain tops), we'd just about manage to fulfill our current energy needs! I don't think that's such good news.

Parent is right indeed. Either wikipedia is wrong, or he never got an Orwell Prize. In either case, having the link in the summary is stupid.

There are many people working on input methods for the disabled. As just one example, Dasher is an information efficient text-entry method that can be controlled by mouse, voice, gaze, two buttons or even a single button. Experienced users regularly type 20+ words per minute, just with their gaze. Try that with an on-screen keyboard.

The same group has just published nomon, a single-button text entry method (and pointing device) for the severely disabled. Did I mention that both programs are open source?

My conjecture is that this was down to Geography: The concept of a "German" nation meant different things at different times, but Central Europe, probably a less loaded term for this area, has been an incredibly competitive environment for the past 3 Millenia. There were literally hundreds of tribes / kingdoms / nations fighting for land, food and power. The winters were cold, so people had time on their hands and a need to invent machines that helped them stay alive. Finally, the area was (and still is) at the heart of international trade between Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Arabia and the far East. There were a lot of goods coming through, lots of ideas, and lots of ways to make a profit. This kept people (comparably) open-minded and (comparably) well off. Both are important factors allowing artists (from Duerer to Beuys), philosophers (Luther, Kant, Nietzsche,...), scientists (Leibniz, Helmholtz, Humboldt, Planck, Einstein,...) and musicians (Bach, Haendel, Mozart, Haydn, ...) to develop their ideas, and giving entrepreneurs (Bosch, Siemens, Krupp, Daimler, Benz, ...) a chance to sell their goods.

But, really, this is not unique to Germany. The rest of Europe produced brilliant minds as well. And they, too, spent a large part of their time killing each other. This, put simply, is the reason why Europe, European ideas and European nations dominated the world for a thousand years, and why they still play a major role in the world: It was a tough, rough place, but with enough structure to allow people to spend their time on more than pure survival. It brought out the best and the worst in the humans who lived there. A hundred years ago, America was just like that. Tough, rough, and full of opportunities. Right now, maybe China, Brazil and India are such places.

Here's a textbook on Data Compression, Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms that's five years old.

It's freely available online, from the author. And here comes the shocking bit: It's fun to read.

Was I a fool for opting out?

Yes.

And they better should. This sure sounds like green wash to me.

So the seat, mirrors and steering wheel are partly made from materials that contain chemicals that are derived from carrots. Seriously. Wake me when they can industrially produce carbon-neutral engines, gearboxes, wheels, impact zones and, most of all, catalysers (which currently contain a lot of poisonous and expensive materials).