...and have knowledgeable staff, who can respond to a customer who says, "I really liked this one, do you have any more that are similar?" (even if they're just plugging the title into an online service). Customer service is the main difference between B&M vs online.

Your sarcasm, sir, hints at the real solution. Clean, cheap energy (CCE) solves it all. Unfortunately, CCE is currently beyond our means. But with CCE, everything else falls in to place: we can recapture atmospheric CO2, we can desalinate sea water as a source of freshwater, we can produce fertilizers for our crops. But, again, CCE is currently beyond our means. My money is on solar for CCE...only time will tell.

I've had Bell internet at my home for 7 years now. I'm still on the original plan: 1Mb/s down, unlimited bandwidth. I know that I could upgrade to a better speed, but that would mean loosing the "unlimited" part. As it is, Netflix, at the highest quality setting, works just fine. What more could I ask?

The article fails to quote an efficiency rating...are smaller heat engines more efficient than macro-scale ones?

This sounds pretty well wrapped up, but I'm not convinced. Females who choose not to breed with the GM males will have normal healthy offspring. Any mating preference that causes the females to choose non-GM males will become highly successful. It doesn't matter what that mating preference is: if the males have a different colouring, a different smell, if they flap their wings a little too fast...it could be anything. And it doesn't have to apply *only* to the GM males, this trait could cause the females to select against non-GM males as well. The point is that any female with this selection preference will be highly successful since their female offspring will have wings and will thrive in an environment with very little intra-species competition.

This move could, at best, introduce an evolutionary bottleneck (where genetic diversity is suddenly greatly reduced), but I wouldn't expect it to cause extinction. TFA reports an 80% reduction of the A. aegypti population on the Grand Cayman Island in 2009, but I'd be interested to know if the population has bounced back and if the same GM males would have a similar effect again today. I'm guessing that the present population would tend to avoid the GM males next time around.

The Lowell observatory has a nice property and good tour, including the telescope and the original photographic plates used to discover Pluto. If you're going to the Grand Canyon, it's pretty close. You can do it in a half-day. I suggest reading, "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown to round out the experience (or the audiobook, since you're driving).

Oh, the irony. The parent posted as an AC. 37892084 is the post ID. Thus, I refute your assertion that Slashdot is for smart people, you must be new here.

I fail to see a down-side to this.

Ok, that was, by far, the easiest way to get Linux running on my iPad.

I can only assume that they've corrected for General Relativity. Everyone seems to be pointing to the obvious potential sources of error: knowing when the neutrinos are created, knowing when they arrive, knowing the distance that they've traveled.

What about variations in the Earth's gravitational field between the two clocks? Or along the path that the neutrinos follow? You can't call the planet a point-source of gravity - the density of matter is quite lumpy.

I haven't seen a back-of-the-envelope calculation for this...maybe it's orders of magnitudes impossible? Would it require a tiny black hole to throw the timing off by 60ns...or would a big uranium deposit be enough? I could probably do the Lorenz transforms for Special Relativity myself, but General is a bit beyond me!

I hate to nit-pick, but it was published in Nature

This kind of idea has been around for ages, for example: the University of Guelph's Living Library.

Because they are closer. from the article:

So, we could stop off at one of these on the way to Proxima Centauri.

I cannot think of a single circumstance where this is necessary or a good idea.

Excuses for why is it the way it is don't count.

That's less than $1M per kilogram, sounds like a bargain.