Pinckney

I think paternosters are really, really cool. I'd love to ride one.

However, I must wonder whether they can be used by the elderly or disabled. How do you board one with a wheelchair? Or do they just run alongside modern elevators in buildings where handicapped accessibility is a requirement?

I would bet the biggest opposer to divorce will be the INS ... imagine the Green Card businesses that would enable! After all, it should make little difference to INS whether people choose to have their multiple marriages in series or in parallel.

It doesn't appear to be anything obviously associated with the Nazi group, though.

Lead-free ammo is much more expensive, and gun regulation is a politically charged topic. Any attempt to ban lead ammunition will, rightly or wrongly, be perceived as an attempt to discourage recreational shooting by making ammunition less available. Much like California's handgun drop-safety requirement is currently perceived as an attempt to discourage handgun ownership, by making them less available, or Texas' recent abortion regulations are perceived as an attempt to make abortions less available. They're ostensibly regulations enacted for health and safety, but nobody affected by them believes that story.

I'm sure it will happen, just like some people rob ATMs. But I don't think it will be trivial to do successfully, and the losses will almost certainly be manageable.

The paper doesn't make any sense without the title:

"Can n^2 + 1 unit equilateral triangles cover an equilateral triangle of side >n, say n+\epsilon?"

That doesn't matter to an individual developer. Why should they care if the set of all in use USB PIDs has collisions? It's only becomes a problem for them if their PID suffers a collision.

If you buy the idea that MAD is rational, how can you also support SDI? Do you want a nuclear first strike to be a viable option?

Brazil and Suriname, since 1946.

You might find this interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Island_(Sicily)

Why is Mr. Wilson going out of his way to tell them what it's for?

"What are you shipping?"

"CNC Mill."

"Great, we'll be happy to ship that for you."

Don't try to confuse the customer service rep by saying things that have the potential to confuse them; they don't need to know what it's meant for.

It's doubtful that UPS, at a high level, cares enough to ban this. Rather, someone heard "something something GUN MACHINE," doesn't know anything about the relevant law, and made a snap decision that was least likely to get them in trouble.

Ion thrusters basically are low energy particle accelerators already. The problem, aside from energy consumption, is scaling up the thrust. You can't just cram twice as many particles through your particle accelerator without scaling up the mass of the thruster itself, or decreasing the exit velocity. And it does you very little good if your rocket has the fuel to accelerate to .1 c, if it takes you 10,000 years to do so.

That would all be more reassuring if the Census Bureau hadn't assisted in rounding up Japanese Americans during WWII. Whether or not intelligence agencies track minorities now is irrelevant. If Congress ever decides all Arab Americans, or Japanese Americans, or Mexican Americans, or any other hated minority de jour, are a threat to National Security, they'll repeal the laws protecting census data again, and the FBI will have those records within days.

It's already been done with agricultural pests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_California_medfly_attack

I don't think the lack of a blade is an issue. Don't most people who carry multitools already have pocket knives? Pocket knives which are often better quality than any multitool blade you're likely to find?

They use these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock

gCaptain has some good photos from the MV Rena sinking which show how much abuse they can take before failing.

http://gcaptain.com/incident-photos-week-rena/

"Some light contrast enhancements have been made to emphasise certain features and to bring out features in the shadowed areas. In reality, the comet is extremely dark ­– blacker than coal. The images, taken in black-and-white, are grey-scaled according to the relative brightness of the features observed, which depends on local illumination conditions, surface characteristics and composition of the given area."

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/High...

The allegation that Dr. Gat was a spy seems to be sensationalism on the part of the Pasadena Star. One doesn't need to be a spy to violate ITAR.

The most substantial allegations against Dr. Gat are that he shared data with his adviser. It's quite easy to imagine a young researcher viewing ITAR as a dumb American law which inhibits collaboration, and deciding to continue sharing preprints and collaborating with colleagues abroad as though he were still in Israel. And why not? He doesn't seem to have been working on a project with obvious military potential, and is from an allied country. ITAR prosecutions against professors are extremely rare.

The comic references the problems with the cold gas thrusters, so it is not all pre-drawn.

The press release is much clearer.

http://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/20...

I haven't read the paper, but it appears they're proposing to use the ablative lasers only to shape the flow of supersonic gas through a thruster nozzle.

Antares has a maximum payload of 6000kg. This is roughly the same as the launch mass of the Apollo command module, which weighed 5500kg. To rescue the command module in an emergency, Apollo missions had a 4200kg launch escape system. So we might expect a escape rocket to cost Antares almost half of its payload capacity.

Furthermore, adding a launch escape system would mean adding parachutes and flotation to a payload which otherwise doesn't need it.

Why not just set up a filter to delete them?

Interesting article. Ventilation is one of several reasons I strongly prefer shooting at outdoor ranges.

Still not as crazy as the planned Lunar Escape Systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Escape_Systems

"There was no mass or power available in the LESS for an Inertial Measurement Unit to measure acceleration and tell the astronauts where they were, where they were going or how fast they would be getting there, or even for a radar altimeter to show altitude above the lunar surface."

Concealed carry has nothing to do with it. You don't need a CC permit to take advantage of the FOPA safe passage provisions, and FOPA won't protect you if you're carrying on your person even if you have a CC permit valid at the endpoints. The firearms and ammunition need to be unloaded and not readily accessible from the passenger compartment.

That's not really a problem with recaptcha so much as the integration with the rest of the site.

The problem isn't captchas, but users not understanding how to interact with them. So what if a few are bad? Hammer out best guesses, fast as you can, until you're successful. It's not as if you're graded on accuracy. There is no reason to ever resort to the refresh button,

Out of curiosity, I went and opened the demo page (https://www.google.com/recaptcha/demo/ajax) in a new incognito window and timed myself. I can do about 8/minute at maybe 90% accuracy.

Captchas are only a problem if you compulsively refresh in hopes of getting something clear.

I honestly find the idea of spending decades of my life in a prison facing daily verbal and physical abuse from guards and inmates to be far more terrifying than death.

No, you can't un-execute somebody, but you can't give someone years of their life back, either.

>Going to Mars to backup humanity has the real, bona-fide potential to save more lives than any amount of Earth charity;

I really find this morality baffling. As I see it extinction level event would be a tragedy on account of the deaths of billions. But the human species, as a whole, is not an individual; it does not think or feel or suffer. Its cessation has no moral value beyond the death of the individuals which make it up.

I'm open to hearing an argument to the contrary; usually discussions of space colonization, it's assumed obvious that perpetuating humanity is important. But I don't see it, and so I tend to view anything that helps actual individuals as a better use of resources.