I thought the parallel processing element of Shu's argument was much more relevant; the base-four argument is pretty underwhelming by comparison.

Recent scientific evidence suggests that teeth clenching won't affect that.

I presume that among the Japanese at least, there's a belief of some kind that clenching one's teeth helps one concentrate. Otherwise, there's no context for this study to be about something meaningful. Given that my assumption about this study being prompted by a cultural belief is true, there's no real…

Animals without a stress response will die under most conditions.

Recent scientific evidence suggests that teeth clenching won't affect that.

I don't know, but I think that's probably the case. My first response to this article was to interpret it as a classic study of the dissociation between linked phenomena. Whenever something like teeth clenching is seen in association with arithmetic, you can bet that someone will postulate that the first factor is…

I suspect that the $10 billion would only cover the costs of creating a task force that would conduct the preliminary studies necessary to indicate the best way of forming a committee to oversee the selection of the site where the space ship and initial training operations for the mission would take place.

If we want them to be able to return and not simply perish upon arrival in the middle of deep space, I imagine this more as a forty-year voyage with a twenty-year on-site mission, or a continuous data-gathering mission. That frames it squarely as an intra-solar system project, which would make it easier to gather…

I often think we should be working on Von Neumann machines that would be able to operate in the asteroid belt. The profitability of mining asteroids would be more easily assessable if we could first determine what would constitute self-sustainability. And the questions raised in speculating about self-sustainability…

It seems to have to do with the fact that this is the first live-action movie portrayal of Green Lantern, and that the comic book series is apparently known in great detail but its fans. I've been struck by how much material they have been releasing about the movie, in an attempt to reassure people that it's really X…

I watched the whole trailer, waiting to hear the "Snarf!" Alas.

I think the facts that the survey involves picking two options, and that some of these options say "send food" and others say "don't send food," result in some confusion. It's obvious that one should send food in the immediate context, and equally obvious that one should do something to prevent future famine by…

I meant, cannibalism during a terrible famine, not in general.

There's a fair amount of tough love coming through these survey results so far. Not sending food when a "terrible famine" has already broken out, and instead teaching farming techniques that will help the famine survivors after a few years or completely stalling their economy in the same time frame seem somewhat…

Very true. It's difficult to imagine who would play his character.

In your imagined scene, you can mentally add to it a soundtrack by Tenacious D.

I think we've hit on two of the main aspects of the original film which gave it surprising legitimacy: Sean Connery and Queen. The choreography and editing were also quite good, from what I recall.

Suddenly, being bad ass Connor isn't as awesome as he thought

I was thinking of Jack Black.