Since "The Avengers" is a giant movie this year, when you think of something that shoots lightning,
you might think of Thor. If so, perhaps your clever joke would be "Can we name that
Laser-Induced Plasma Channel "Mjolnir"?If you're old like me, "Star Trek" will be more your thing and "Set your phasers to fry"
will be more your speed.
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Sigmund Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - he meant not everything was about sex, which must really frustrate evolutionary psychology grad students(1), being as he is the most famous psychiatrist ever and was wrong about almost everything else but correct on that point.
But that also means a cigar isn't always just a cigar, even in the literal sense. In an era where progressive busybodies have taken to micro-regulation of choice (grocery bags, Big Gulps, goldfish, Happy Meals, golf), it was only a matter of time before the cultural mullahs who want to ban cigarettes (but legalize pot) turned their sights on cigars.
Sometimes declaring bankruptcy is a good thing. In the case of Abound Solar Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that had American taxpayers on the hook for $400 million, the good thing is they closed the doors after only losing us $70 million in Department of Energy funds.
Chump change, I know, since we have committed $72 billion on alternative energy in the last few years, but $330 million here and $330 million there, and pretty soon we are talking about real money.
Who hasn't thought about Chasing UFOs?
When I saw "Independence Day" in 1996 I first thought, "A Mac can bring down an entire alien civilization? Their users really are creative!" but then I wondered if some day, someone might actually get paid to find aliens.
Well, that day is here. But I have to warn you, the language is bad in this UFO stuff.
Self-plagiariasm is big news these days. A short while ago, former ACS president Ron Breslow had an article in the
Journal of the American Chemical Society pulled - not because he claimed dinosaurs might be ruling other planets, but because he re-used work from other articles he wrote without crediting himself.
Is it possible to lose at Rochambeau, the millenia-old game of Rock, Paper, Sissors, every single time?
It shouldn't be but a new Janken robot (Janken is the Japanese name for Rock, Paper, Scissors - why is the West stuck with a French name for an ancient Egyptian game? It's a mystery of linguistics) can win against humans without fail.
Is it psychic? Are humans that predictable? No, it basically cheats - if by cheating I mean being much faster than I can ever be.