INS has a lot of latitude in how they interpret and enforce existing laws. They have a number of places they look to for guidance, and the president is likely the largest. Trump is looking for statistics that show he is 'making a difference'. Cost to the economy doesn't appear to be a factor at all, only appearances.

One example I've seen recently is that my wife's company had a Mexican field support engineer denied entry recently, despite having a visa that was valid for his purpose (training). It sounds like he probably described the purpose for his visit incorrectly (along the lines of "I'm going to do some work for my US employer", exactly as he has for many entries over more than a decade, but which is not generally allowed on this visa), so the denial is not totally unreasonable, yet it points to immigration people who are currently looking for reasons to deny entry rather than looking for reasons to allow entry.

And appealing these decisions is difficult to the point of being almost impossible. This engineer may not ever be allowed into the US again under any VISA.

Thanks, very interesting.
Once someone mentioned 'thermal neutrons' it made more sense. Whether or not this kind of thing actually turns out to be real, it is good to see scientists working on high-risk research.

I read the linked article, and he refers to "ultra-low-momentum neutrons with a huge capture cross-section". Has anyone dug deeper into this? How do you create these neutrons? Or is it just pseudo-science?

Seems like if you could actually do this, there are a lot of crazy things you could do. Such as creating unstable isotopes that decay into something else. Either the decay by-product could be valuable, or the energy released...

Alchemy, anyone?

I mostly agree with you, but this is not the point. Unfortunately, the flip side of the amounts 'not being worth suing over' reduces the motivation of project originators to actually do what they say they will do. There is a real risk that Kickstarter will be overwhelmed by projects that are deceptive or fraudulent, like the Bonaverde Coffee Changers project.

It seems like Kickstarter will, in the longer run, be hurt by fraudulent projects and that they should have a more proactive approach to avoid being taken over by criminals. Perhaps they are waiting to see if this becomes a wide-spread problem before doing more. The fact that they have made changes to their rules indicates that some issues have been identified.

Of course, in the BV case it appears there may be applicable consumer protection laws, and possibly even criminal laws.

BTW, I was the Anonymous Coward poster above, I did not notice I was not logged in before posting.

This specific example is not useful, but for other units it would make tons of sense and be more useful than the Google results if it produces an answer to a unit multiplication question rather than giving a link to a site that will do it. Often with extra features come extra ways to get silly answers, this is one I would be willing to live with.

as a 'loser in 2007'. This was in their January 2007 Edition. Kind of interesting that Germany has already pulled out. See: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4842