1.414, Amanda Palmer has actually started doing this. She got successful enough to get her fans to be her patrons and now she really does promote younger artists.

Yeah... it will be just like all those artists who see no point in producing things.

You really need the discount card. At least here in Austria on the ÖBB, you get an increasing discount for every member of your party. You are correct though and its true, it is ridiculously expensive to travel unless you buy into the system with a discount card.

What you've described seems like a dead on description for computational materials science. Which is still a very active area with plenty of investment for both chemical companies and semiconductor companies. My work is in predictive models for ion sputtering, but there is a ton of really cool stuff being done in other fields. So yeah, ethical exists at least its no more unethical than using computers; without which GPU programming would be difficult.

Well Duh.

I learned that the hard way when trying to convince my mother to let me ride. On the other hand the cyclists who would do stupid things like braking and turning at the same time don't live very long. I haven't ridden with another auto-driver very recently who had any idea of how terrible an idea these two combined actions are. Also the American motorcycle testing system does a pretty good job instilling the idea that dodging is better than braking so all in all I still feel pretty safe on a bike. I wonder if anyone has published the 0-20 times for hybrids, the instant torque may lead to some surprising numbers.

No... Cycle world has braking distances listed and most sport bikes W/O abs come in with similar braking distances to a Toyota Corolla (with abs) 60-0. Also it is worth noting that the front contact patch for sport bikes is smaller than the rear, this would also support an asymmetrical positive-negative acceleration profile.

Quartz has some neat stress properties. You can take a white hot quartz tube and quench it in water and it stays a tube. If you do that with borosilicate, (not that you can really get it as hot) you end up with crunchy bits.

I'm not sure if I quite buy that. I lived in Hangzhou a few years back and it was amazing to me what I could get for 1-2 dollars a day for food. Rice with fried eggplant (8RMB), fried rice noodles (6RMB), a breakfast omelette wrapped in a pancake (3RMB). Even better I would go out to dinner with the guys in the lab and split N+2 dishes for less than 10RMB a person and we ALWAYS had left-overs. When I was living there I cooked fewer than 10 times because it was cheaper to eat out than for me to buy ingredients and kitchen equipment. The wages are reasonable for where they are living and the article was full of half truths (they kept quoting different people without making it perfectly clear that there wasn't a single story) but I still feel that as Americans or Europeans we are taking advantage of these people. I would prefer that robots take the jobs domestically but only so that R&D and Production are co-located in MY tax base. What was scary in the article was the corruption, state employees are getting kickbacks in order to require internships. That is an abuse of power that we should feel bad about. Yes there will always be manufacturing jobs that I wouldn't want to do as long as there are poor people. We however do have an obligation to avoid profiting from the exploitation of other people. For the sake of karma, it's the right choice.

They are better! Old text books in math and science, if they cover the topics are better in my experience. The small collection of monographs is better than any 600pg tome.

Hmmm, When I started Undergrad my school had just started a mandatory laptop program for all freshmen so I had a fancy laptop that I felt should be used for class. I proceeded to sign up for the laptop sections of math where I took multivariable calculus and differential equations using Maple. I aced the course and got quite accomplished with the software but I did not LEARN diff. eq, or even really multivariable calc as I later found out during my 3rd year classical mechanics course. I still only know enough diff to realize how to recognize them most of the time. I also really don't think that it was the professor's fault. I think that math requires a certain amount of mechanical crunching in order to become a useful tool. I therefore really think that math should be performed naked, in PEN, if you are studying physics or engineering then by all means teach numerical methods and use simple software to automate the calculations if it makes sense. Otherwise keep in mind that math is a philosophical toolset, and you don't get better at philosophy or logic with wikipedia, you get better by arguing. Programming is a skill that should be taught in school, research is also another useful skill that these days requires internet, (though primary source essays are a better method IMHO), but school is not the place to train white collar workers how to use PWP.

have you taken apart anything Austrian or German recently?

parc: thin film Xray imagers, printable electronics and displays. I'm hoping to intern there before I graduate simply because I want to be there but not for a post-doc.

Maybe its because I'm doing scientific computing but I think you are lost on your time scales here. You say it takes years to develop an algorithm. I'd say I develope new algorithms every few weeks. Then I spend a long time figuring out which ones actually work well and how to compare them and choose the 'best' for my problem. I publish the resulting software which is protected by copyright and I don't give you the source. Now how are you supposed to have ANY idea how my algorithm works. Its a black box and you have to gain my experience to expand upon it. Therefore my work has value, if you want an expert on solving this sort of question you have to hire me. If you can solve what took me years and layers to develop into a working piece of software quickly, well then I look pretty dumb. In retrospect I've just convinced myself of an underthought advantage to patents. If I do alot of work and am convinced that I know some tricks to solving a problem and you convince me to sell them to you then a patent is a nice way to transfer those rights. Though now that I'm thinking a bit harder I think that a legally binding contract can be just as useful if I just want to share the punchline with you. If you share my punchline without permission or have it stolen then I go through the same (but maybe cleaner, since it is a contract) legal mess to sue you for damages. I do think that formal copyright on software should have source included, but for algorithms I think trade secrets are much better for business and society in the long run.