I don't know about you, but if someone handed me a lightsaber I'd go from atheist to believer in a heartbeat.

USAA is the best and I have been a customer of theirs for years. I try to give as much of my financial business to USAA because they have always been stellar with every aspect of their services. If you're military or have family in the military look into becoming a USAA member, they also have services for non-military folks too.

Same here. My wife works in the games industry and got my name into the credits of one of her projects recently as a thank you for all the crunch time support. Our son was also listed in TOR as a production baby.

While amusing this was not what I experienced when I went to vote early yesterday at my local Library. The only intimidation I experienced was at the length of the line to cast a vote so I decided to try another time.

I had a similar jaw dropping experience when a 20 year old I work with didn't get the reference "nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure." When I told him it was from Aliens his response was, "I don't watch old movies."

I read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and Cancer Ward about 10 years ago and I remember first being shocked at the brutality and callousness a government could have for their own people, and second astounded that the US was ever afraid of the USSR. The society depicted by Solzhenitsyn seemed to me to be so dysfunctional and unworkable it could inevitably only result in collapse.

Etymotic make some excellent ear buds. I bought a pair for around $300 about 7-8 years ago and they still work great today. I originally got them for noise cancellation on air flights and I didn't want the big BOSE over the ear headphones. With the foam tip inserts they block nearly all outside noise. The only drawback to them is they get a little uncomfortable if you haven't broken in the inserts already.

"When a mind does not *know* itself, it is flawed. When a mind is flawed, the man is flawed. When a man is flawed, that which he touches is flawed. It is said that what a flawed man sees, his hands make broken."
- Dak'kon, from Planescape:Torment

My theory is that the colder it is, the more kids tend to play inside =)

According to the TopCoder algorithm competition stats:

1 Russian Federation 2930.06
2 China 2843.33
3 Poland 2842.79
4 Ukraine 2557.06
5 Japan 2483.83
6 Canada 2426.56
7 United States 2320.98
8 Slovakia 2291.73
9 South Korea 2226.98
10 Belarus 2206.81

Let's just hope the next war isn't fought with robots.

Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack

Well after I RTFA I'll be sure to divest myself of the shares of SHLD I currently own. Now if they could just hit the break even point....

1a. move to the States