For historical purposes (recognizing that "historical" means "20th century" here), why not? For historical purposes, fire is an element and a totally random subset of seeds are called "nuts." Sure, Pluto was a tiny object known only because it was discovered completely by chance. But humans are super arbitrary. Alternatively, I propose we just name the new planet "Pluto" and the current Pluto "Old Pluto." Problem solved.

In 2004, Sega was merged into Sammy, a gambling/arcade machine company, which then all but renamed itself to Sega. They have totally different business goals from the previous Sega. Any discussion about the direction Sega is going now should be framed in that context. Current Sega is working a different market. Nintendo is doing about as well at arcades as Sega is doing at console hardware. But it is interesting to consider what happened long before the merger with the Dreamcast and how it could have been prevented.

1.5" seems awfully small for touch, but I don't want to live in a world where every jackass on the train is shouting at their wrist.

When the U.S. first began minting our fabulous decimal currency, the lowest denomination—the half-penny—was worth a little more than today's dime. Anything less than a dime represents a value so low it wasn't worth dealing with in 1792, and it certainly isn't worth dealing with now. There are many big advantages in switching to a dimes-only coinage versus any other system:
-Dimes are an established coin in American society, and an extremely light coin, making a dimes-only system an easy plan to adopt, and easy to use.
-10 dimes to a dollar, not much is simpler than that. Any transaction would only require between 0 and 9 dimes, and only using a single coin makes counting a much simpler process.
-Rather than rounding to nickels like Australia, we can simply get rid of that pesky second decimal place. E.g. $9.5

There are a thousand arguments for other systems, and this is an arbitrary idea. But I would argue it's the cleanest arbitrary idea we've got. The dime is inefficient, and the dollar bill is inefficient, but these problems pale in comparison to the clusterfuck cause by the penny, the nickel, and everything else. The true primary hurdles would be solved by:
-Making dimes out of zinc, to appease the stupid zinc lobby.
-Putting Lincoln on it.

Then, a hundred years from now, that god we trust in willing, we ditch the dime for the dollar coin.

Isn't that an assumption that itself warrants extensive experimentation before you can base another experiment entirely on it? Besides, if the unused information is, say, musical tones instead of words, experience tells me you're probably going to see less of an effect on memory. But by this "all distractions effect you equally" model it should be the same as shouting out numbers while you're doing math, etc., which I have known from 2nd grade not to have the same effect as random background noise.

It seems to me that they're comparing two different attention tasks. In multi-tasking, you would be concerned with how the brain juggles two or more things you're [i]trying[/i] to focus on, while this one is talking about how you deal with meaningless distraction. Related, maybe, but how is it multi-tasking?

Take the gamepad, for instance. You do all the movement control that requires dexterity with your left hand, and use the right to simply bash buttons. For a couple of the very-hard fighting game maneuvers, I find myself crossing my right hand over.

Next thing you know they'll make a show about the Monty Hall problem. Oh wai-

Go all T.S. Elliot on their asses and build your posts entirely out of things other people have said. First post overlord gritsneal!

This. It's just an accessible, well-known game you can kill time/trance out with. People are freaking out about it being some kind of amazing formula to make millions but really it's just what Windows Solitaire has been for so many years. This time someone was able to monetize it, but at this point that lesson isn't useful until the next big platform shift, and even then you'll probably be headed off at the pass by Angry Birds' momentum.

Also just wear and tear on the connector. I've seen laptops become unusable just because the power socket is stupidly designed and ends up getting loose. Even some sort of less-patented snap design or something would be better. Van der Waals force, I dunno. Hell, even just something that isn't a cylinder that goes over a small bendable pin, maybe something totally solid like the Apple one only it goes in further, that would be nice...

It's called "sarcasm", it's this hip new way of expressing yourself. It works best over the internet.

For just one low payment of $35 (Canadians add $10 S&H) you can get this SPECIAL flashlight (retail value 54.95!!) that can, uh... "run up and down mathematical equations". If you program a chip. Which you could probably do with any flashlight if you know how to do that. I kinda feel bad for all the exploited nerds funding this...

Oblig. Penny Arcade on Kickstarter

I know, and actually Stargate Universe takes the name in exactly this direction. Naming something "Project Icarus" is like calling it "Project What Could Possibly Go Wrong".