Only if you failed statistics.

Example:

If the odds of winning are 1 in 1 million (round numbers are easier, and past about 1 in 1000 with 1000 tickets the odds are asymptotic anyway), then the chance of not finding a winning ticket in the first million tickets purchased is 36.8%. Which means you only have a 65.2% chance of winning with 1 million tickets and a 1 in 1 million chance on each ticket. Not even close to 100%.

Proof left as an exercise for the reader so he may redeem himself.

The profit model is simple enough once the profit no longer has to be made on earth. In short, there's a chicken/egg problem. Colonization makes sense if you'll be richer when you move to the colony than you are now on Earth (this is what has ALWAYS driven colonization throughout history). Right now we assume you'd be richer on Earth than you are now post-colonization. That is probably not possible in the near future (resource transfer between planets isn't practical). Getting to where you can become richer on Mars than on Earth? More possible, but still difficult without a pre-existing Martian economy.

Uggh. I hate this stupid meme.

We NEVER thought the sound barrier was impossible to break. We thought it might be impossible at the time to build an aircraft that could handle the structural stress with the materials available at that time. We knew the sound barrier could be broken--bullets had been breaking it for decades. The two are NOT comparable in any way.

Vonnegut said it best with regards to that gem...

Is it bad form for the guy who made the joke to say WHOOSH?

I think he was saying she should go back to bagging groceries.

I studied astrophysics in college. What's an order of magnitude between friends?

I MIGHT, depending on whose pants I'm trying to get into that week.

Point being, if women had better taste in music, cellists would be making bank.

Only if you care about the number of missiles penetrating defenses as a function of time, and, while I can think of a few situations where you MIGHT want that, in most cases you just care about the total which just requires subtraction.

No, but most people listen to the same 20 albums or so for their ENTIRE LIVES, with a smattering of whatever's current at the moment mixed in. At least everyone I know (none of them major audiophiles either) fits that profile. They all have 20-30 favorite go-to albums they're always listening to (usually concentrated in whichever decade they were in their early 20s, but not always), and then 4-5 other albums (or 4-5 albums worth of singles in many cases) they're currently listening to.

So, the same 20 songs for five years is extreme, but the basic principle still applies to most people.

...and there's Poe's Law.

Because no one could seriously cite Star Wars novels as 'real' science fiction.

I can't imagine WHY you'd buy one (no power outlet in a sealed room?), but it's certainly feasible to make one. It's not even too much of a stretch to imagine some marketing hack pushing one into production over the engineers protests of its pointlessness.

Woz wasn't saying it was evil, but he was definitely poking the hagiography balloon with a needle.

If he's taking a multi-day train trip, it's almost certainly not in the US (may God have mercy on his soul if it is).

I was thinking of submitter + editor(s), but since the editors are actually Mechanical Turks, I must concede your point that there was only a single entity involved.