They do mention coexistence of superconductivity, and magnetism, but I am actually unsure if this would explain that behaviour, it has been some time since I was a physicist.

In the situation you describe, I would go to HR and hand them my notice. Except maybe if it was a truly exceptional boss unter extenuating circumstances.

Here in Germany, I have never been told to "get along". Instead, I have been shown the flaws in my thinking. I have been told that I had an incomplete picture. I have been told that the issue has been discussed before, and the circumstances have not changed enough yet.

You talk about problems that kill if left unattended, yet would respect and work for a boss that is not interested in the problem but just sends his colleague away to "deal with it"?

You react to an absolutely minor problem of terminology with name calling ("loser") and only see it in a political context ("trying to control", "your little group")?

Either you are no engineer, or there or something truly fucked up about American engineers, if you think that is a work culture conductive to problem solving.

Sure. Atlas Shrugged. Il principe. The Capital. The Wealth of Nations.

All those books that come with simple, conclusive, thought-through images of the world...

Please take longer breaks than 10 minute after driving 350 miles, especially if driving another 350 miles after.

Otherwise, you pose a severe risk to you, and the motorists around you.

An old saying in my family: There are a shitload more highly intelligent truckers than highly intelligent professors.

Cause sample size does matter.

The second wave in Germany has just about started. Deaths trail cases by about 2-3 weeks, due to a step by step lower percentage of people being sick, developing pneumonia, asphyxiating and finally dying during those three weeks.

I'm not a particular fan of any of those conditions, and will rather stay away from people and wear a mask. Might even buy some mouthwash.

To me, it was clear since about three weeks ago that the disease will not be stopped in Germany. An eradication of the virus by quarantine is extremely unlikely. The quarantines are necessary to delay / slow the epidemic, that much is clear. But we will catch the virus sooner or later.
Therefore, my wife and I stopped eating sweets, switched meals to mostly fresh produce with nuts / legumes and lots of herbs, started to exercise (no, walking the dog does not count) at least 30-45 minutes a day, and adopted a more rigorous sleep schedule.

I do not work from home, as catching the virus now, and going through it without serious complications is pretty much the optimal scenario, and rather likely as we are in the 30-40 age bracket and led a reasonably healthy life even before. Our parents (which we do avoid extended contact with, of course) will catch the virus as well, and then require help. Of course, once I feel even slightly sick, I will work from home. And - selfish as it may be - if we were to develop complications now, the hospitals probably still have beds available - and we may be even out of them in time for the great wave.

We did not stock up on toilet paper (seriously? If it runs out, wash your ass / use magazines / ...), but did fill up the freezer and got some dried goods stocked. Although I do not really expect any problems with provisioning, it did calm some nerves...

As the US is very likely at the same point in the epidemic as Germany, you should have done the same three weeks ago. If not, start now. The key to winnig the fight is to train beforehand.

Well, posting this from an EEE 900A under Xubuntu (if used as a Desktop replacement) or PuppyLinux (if used as a netbook), let me say this:

You
are
wrong.

I have thrown quite some serious stuff at this thing. Encoding several thousand PNG images to mpeg4 while running FF3.0 and coding/compiling (albeit in VIM - but that's just personal preference) at a 1680x1050 desktop resolution is a typical workload - and the fan does not even ramp up.

Configuring effort: Almost zero. (X)Ubuntu even sets up a ramdisk (/dev/shm) for your convenience, which is very convenient with the slow SSD.
I did install Adam's "lean"-kernel ( see www.array.org/ubuntu ), as without this wireless is defunct. However, the effort needed for that was no less than tracking down a driver for Linux.
Additionally, I modified fstab for noatime and added entries for my SD-Card and my USB-Thumbdrives. But this is not necessary for the typical user.

And I really want to see XP [fully patched!] on a machine with 128 MB. Back in the day when I was using XP, I started out with 512MB and did notice significant improvements after upgrading to 2 GB.

And you did not mention disk space which is very important on low-end machines. Currently, both operating systems and all programs take 2.5 GB.

On WinXP a 5 GB partition that was used solely for the OS was not enough even before SP3, which probably added another couple of hundred MB.

You do know that Graphene is made out of Carbon?

And if you can not grasp the implications of that with respect to "cheap" oder "efficient manufacturing" please close your browser now.

The chancellor of Germany holds a PhD in theoretical quantum/molecular mechanics.

Why are you using a Computer to essentially play educational games?

Get some real stuff, that the children can touch, mess around with, break (and get reprimanded for), hit each other other the head with, whatever?

Why on earth does anybody want children to lay a "virtual lab"? What happened to simply go out to the school yard and blow the stuff up as a demonstration? That was far, far more fun to ma as a "virtual lab" could ever be.

There is a real world out there. Use it.

My school (in Germany) had a cobbled-together pick-of-the-litter CIP-Pool running under Suse.
When I went through physics the CIP Pool ran on Suse and DEC Alphas.
I did my diploma thesis in an MPI and we were/are running Suse on P4s and the number-crunching is done under Suse on some old Alphas and Opterons.
Now I am on Xubuntu on an EEE - well, that's what you get when you head out for a year abroad.

So there was definitely no shortage of Linux in my education.

However, e.g. most of the Architecture department has never heard of Linux - the CAD vendors make sure of that. The same with the Business department. And I know that the CS-department gets free licenses from Microsoft to avoid them "going Linux" [many still do].