Welcome to the forum Dr. Soong!

Joking. That post was a thing of beauty. And fwiw anon, I have mods but was moved to reply. So...damn given and thanks for reviving the old /. vibe in me for a moment.

On the whole, I would say no.

Building a reputation for quality is hard and restrictive. It restricts your ability to be lazy and make short term cash by ripping people off.

China can make high quality things right now. They just choose not to.

And though I feel it is crucial, I will leave the cultural differences between Germany/Japan and China unexplored so as not to incite a riot.

Really? Sounds like a bit more than that to me:

"While NHTSA says it has no reports of injuries or deaths linked to a counterfeit device, in its testing the counterfeit bags had "consistent malfunctioning," ranging from not deploying on impact to throwing metal shards."

Feel free to install them in your car however and re-sell the genuine ones for a bit of quick cash.

"wielding 50+ pound swords"

Swords do not weigh that much. The Wallace Sword is five feet six inches long and weighs six pounds. It's at the upper end of claymore size/weight and of swords generally.

My take is that he fully understands evolution and rejects it as a sophisticated ploy by Satan to trick us. I've met someone with this exact philosophy before and there was no reasoning with them on it. He too was an otherwise extremely intelligent person. Folks of that ilk have an impenetrable fall-back position from 'Satan did it' - it must be that God is testing us. I quickly realized that the only winning move was not to play.

Seems relevant somehow to also mention the really smart and rather wealthy guy who once told me that environmentalism was a waste of time because Jesus was going to come before things fall apart. How I wish I was making that up.

Actually, dropping that part of the sentence as false does nothing to the logic of the rest of it. The poster should have omitted it completely to begin with.

For sure, technological advancement SHOULD lead to a natural decrease in many prices over time. That isn't the case though because the money is losing value more quickly than the advancements are happening. The fact that even superior (let's say 5x) bread is now more than 30 cents per pound shows that pretty clearly.

And you made me curious too! The loaf of bread on my shelf says 1lb on the label and it was a little over $2 IIRC.

"But 1 L(1914) would buy you far more than 1 L(2005), so in that sense it is worth more."

Think about that for a minute.

1 in 1914 = 76 loaves of bread (just a number for example)
1 in 2005 = 1 loaf of bread

In absolutely no sense is it worth more now. It is very simple. If it were truly worth more now, in any way shape or form, you would be getting more than 76 loaves of bread for it.

"the Pound was worth roughly 76 times more in 2005 (the year it was written) than it was in 1914."

Less. The pound was worth ~76 times less in 2005 than in 1914. See the graphs on pages 18 and 19.

"You sir are an a-hole."

The truth is bitter.

"A Christian with balls."

Little teeny, tiny ones Mr Anonymous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rghRaOndEY :)

Reading on the subject (hand issue with a close family member) tells me that using toe joints to regain some finger functionality is not unknown in Western medicine currently. And I would speculate that a large part of the issue with five v. three is the cosmetic effect. This really can't be underestimated. It's the reason why many who currently can use a traditional clasping-hook prosthesis choose not to.

BTW and kinda-on-topic - IMO the current state-of-the-art in hand prosthetics is from Touch Bionics. Great, great stuff. Here's hoping that over the next decade or so we see some real progress in this area, for children as well as adults. Hat's off to Nemours and their use of 3D-printing.

If I have it right, humans have been around in anatomical form for about ~200,000 years. And in about one billion years, the sun will begin expansion. Let's also say that in only 500,000,000 years it will already be unlivable on Earth for the reasons you mentioned.

We would still have ~2500 'lifetimes-of-humanity-thusfar' to figure it out.

Not. Worried.

"Why aren't you doing everything you can to breeze through it?"

Because it's not right that I should have to.

Unlike you, for whom the threat of a jackboot on your neck for trying to go about your business as a free citizen has become comfortable.