Ridiculous?

Air marshal leaves plane after dropping bullets

Passenger Finds Loaded Ammunition Clip on Southwest Flight

US air marshal leaves gun in airport restroom

Air Marshal Causes International Incident

Air Marshal Accused of Rape at Gunpoint

Marshals Fight Battle in Air and on Ground

From that last article:

"How would you describe the management in the air marshal service?" CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian asked a current air marshal.

"Sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-disabled vet group, grossly incompetent," said the marshal, whose identity was concealed. "That's the general consensus among air marshals."

Nearly two dozen current or former marshals have told CBS News the agency is dominated by an "old boys club" of white, male supervisors -- mainly ex-secret service agents who, they allege, routinely discriminate, intimidate and retaliate against employees who question their actions or authority.

"This behavior has just spread like a cancer and it's out of control," the marshal said.

Well ... it sounds like you called it right: ridiculous.

This Bloomberg video on the Chinese neodymium monopoly starts off as bleak as your post, but the last 45 seconds show that US industry shouldn't be counted out just yet. There is hope. Want to help? I suppose you could buy Molycorp stock.

If it's any consolation I don't think it's just Slashdot. A general-topic discussion site I heard about here on Slashdot years and years ago is plastic.com. It used to be a truly excellent place for really thought-provoking discussions. I think things have slowed down simply due to dwindling participation. Maybe that's at the core of the changes you see in Slashdot -- the prime contributors are finding they've got less and less "free" time to contribute to online discussion forums?

If you're trying to make me feel better:

1) Thank you.
2) It's not working. :-(

I'm disappointed it's a negative reaction that actually prompted me to log in for the first time in a over a year, but this story is crazy. The whole idea is crazy. Not because of technological limitations, but because we don't have a prayer of paying for it.

A few days ago, copponex wrote:

"America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years."

I want to believe NASA could pull this off -- and by 2025 -- but I think it's tragically unrealistic from a financial perspective.

Your post reminds me a little of the "Postal Experiments" that I remember reading about amongst some comments here on Slashdot nearly 10 years ago:

We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting.

It's tough to say what my personal favorite was, but I think the helium-filled balloon at least deserves special mention. :-)

When I'm using an earwig...

What is this? The Wrath of Khan?

> why did the phone guys make theirs upside-down?

Go to the "Keyboards" section of this course outline and follow the link to the PDF copy of the "Bell Labs 1960 study". In short, it's because that configuration ranked highly for inputting phone numbers. If you take a look at the image provided of the button-based phone's predecessor you'll see that 7, 8, 9, and 0 are at the bottom and 1, 2, and 3 are at the top. I'd guess that made that structure more familiar to the test subjects, along with the fact that English is read from left to right, and from ... in case you hadn't noticed ... top to bottom. With those two points in mind, my question to you is, why are the keys on numeric keypads and calculators upside-down? :-)