The typical American doesn't eat CFLs...

I think this is really the only case to be made for 3d printers / CNC in schools. If I ran a private school, there would be a class where students partnered up - each designs a simple project, produces shop drawings and hands it off to their partner, who makes their product and vice versa.

Although the problems with closed-source Makerbot printers and proprietary software from Autodesk are standard /. fare, I think the real issue with the 3d printing hype is how disconnected people are from actually making things themselves without the use of CNC equipment. I think it's also why people are so obsessed with food, it is the only DIY thing most people do anymore.

What's worse is the locked in Autodesk software. There are good open 3d printers but good, open 3d CAD software is a little thin on the ground.

Which is why brownies were invented.. Can't stand green dragon, I don't react well to simultaneous alcohol and pot consumption. However, thanks to drug testing in my industry, I am no longer able to indulge. I think the number one problem we will see with legal marijuana is the lack of a test that distinguishes between intoxication and recent use. Imagine if alcohol gave positive test results for weeks after consumption. Even if pot is legalized in my province I won't get to enjoy it because of my employer. My employer has some ground to stand on, as I work in a safety-sensitive position and although there's no problem with me drinking after work because I will test negative in the morning - if I were involved in an accident and tested positive for THC nobody would be able to prove I wasn't high when I caused the accident.

Not to mention unless you have some sort of supercar, your brakes have a lot more torque than the motor does. An average econobox can stop a lot faster than it can accelerate.

I think the best cars on the market right now are cheap, 00's era manuals. They have fuel injection, good brakes, good crumple zones, often have an aux port, have the same fuel efficiency as your average new car and when you adjust for how cheap you can get one, cost less than a hybrid to run. Especially if you structure your lifestyle to barely drive - I go through 1.25 tanks a month in my 08 accent, which is less than I pay for internet. I paid 6000 for the car a year ago and plan to drive it for 5 more years and sell it for 1000 dollars. The car's gas, depreciation and insurance (liability only because it is a cheap car and I have enough saved to buy a new one just like it) cost me $2500 a year plus about $250 in random bullshit like putting snow tires on, undercoating it and oil changes. If I budget $1000 for one major repair, it costs 3000 dollars a year to have my car. And if somehow it ever loses it's mind and goes full throttle I can put it in neutral.

A throttle linkage on most cars is literally a wire - it's a bowden cable (like a bicycle brake or shifter cable) .

The problem is that the Galaxy Gear is an underpowered cellula- radio-less phone with short battery life and excessive size, the pebble has good battery life and is more reasonably sized. The pebble doesn't do much but it actually works well for the tasks it does do. The Galaxy Gear does a lot of things poorly.

The issue isn't so much the collapse of civilization, but the possibility that your currency might become worthless. Obviously if civilization collapses you will have more pressing concerns than whether or not you converted your paper/digital money into gold or not, but if your country's currency experiences hyperinflation then the gold is a much safer bet. It's also worth noting that it's pointless to have paper gold, the government can take/devalue paper gold very easily but they can't do too much about physical gold.

Jazz also doesn't fly over bodies of water bigger than the Great Lakes, which are narrower than the glide distance of an airplane... so there is no likely scenario in which a plane makes a controlled water landing. In an uncontrolled water landing the lifejackets are pretty superfluous.

Yes, it took me a few months out of college and into the $40,000 salary range (nothing special but more than a lot of people make, so I'm not complaining) to start saving. By new years I will have - depending on how much I spend on christmas gifts - 3 months of income / 5 months of living expenses saved up. It feels wonderful. But I'm also pretty frugal, aside from toys and pure luxury items, I live on around $25,000 a year with an income of $43,000 and no debt to pay. I could actually live on two McJobs (One full time one part time, same hours I work for my salary) if I had to, which is pretty reassuring.

I'm only a ME, but I think the first thing that will happen in a taxi/takeoff/landing incident is a loud noise and a big jolt. In any case, in a takeoff/landing accident, the passengers have nothing to do except hope and pray until the aircraft stops moving.

Honestly the nerve gas / pathogen threat is completely unaddressed by existing security theater and is really the most terrifying one. Imagine releasing some kind of pathogen on a plane - aside from likely getting yourself infected (a hazmat suit would probably blow your cover) you could infect 15 people who might live in as many as 15 different places if you are on a flight to a hub like Atlanta or LA or Chicago or JFK. And nobody would know how it happened. Assuming you can solve the self-infection problem with vaccine or a course of antibiotics starting the day before you attack, aside from the difficulty and risks in obtaining the pathogen, you could probably carry out one the worst terrorist attack in human history for under 500 dollars and walk away a free man, possibly a suspect due to being on the only common flight between the patient zeros - but so is every other passenger and aircrew on that flight. If anything the only problem with such an attack is that because it would likely affect multiple countries - and soon the world - it would be hard to link it to an ideology.

Maybe they put the tablets in *puts on sunglasses* airplane mode. OTOH, it is kind of funny, my company has replaced a lot of paper documentation related to field work with iPads a year ago because even though they're more expensive (Based on a 2 year service life) than dead trees they are either working or not working and lost or not lost (they never go missing, nobody wants to tell the boss man they lost a 600 dollar tablet). Delays piss off customers and cost us overtime hours and road pay, and an iPad fixes those issues because unlike paper, which is lost, never given to the employee, gets treated poorly because we can just print more, gets given to others and forgotten about etc, nobody is going to lose their 600 dollar tablet. The very worst that happens is that they have to get an extension cord for it because they forgot to charge it last night.