Andrew

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Most US airlines follow the same procedure for allowing non-first-class passengers to board a plane. They let people who are sitting in the back board first, then people in the next few rows, gradually working their way toward the front.

This procedure makes absolutely no sense.

The Data shows this is not a good way to board an airplane

If asked to devise a boarding method without any data, you might settle on this as a pretty sensible one. But the airlines do have data — and numerous studies have shown this is not a good way to board an airplane, in terms of time or customer satisfaction.

The fastest ways to board a plane are Southwest's boarding method — where people choose their own seats — or a theoretical boarding method known as the "Steffen method" that's not currently in use.

Both simulations and real-life experiments have proven the standard method to be the slowest out of several different ones. In 2012, the TV show "Mythbusters" recruited 173 people to compare four methods in a replica airplane interior and found that Southwest's boarding method was the fastest. A close second was allowing all windows seats to board first, then all middles, then all aisles (outside-in).

The worst way to board a plane

Here's a video showing the standard boarding process, used by the vast majority of airlines:

You can see the problem with this process pretty clearly in the video: people spend a lot of time waiting in line in the aisle.

That's because when each passenger goes to sit, there's a good chance someone who's already sat down in that row will have to get up to let him or her in, slowing everything down (the only way this can be avoided is if they happen to arrive in window-middle-aisle order). At any given time, most of the people who are boarding are trying to access the same few rows and the same few overhead bins, so everyone has to do a lot of waiting in the aisle.

Having the back board first seems logical, but all it does is move the line onto the plane, instead of the jet bridge.

A slightly better way: the random method

Surprisingly, just letting people get on the plane in an order unrelated to their seats leads to slightly faster boarding times than the standard method.

US Airways began doing this in May 2009: they let frequent fliers and the like board first, then everyone else, by order of check in.

This method is a bit faster because at any given time, most of the people boarding the plane are not trying to get in the same few rows and overhead bins at once. There's still some congestion — because of people needing to get up to let others in — but it's staggered throughout the plane.

An even better way: the outside-in method

This method cuts down on the total amount of congestion because each time a passenger sits down, no one is already sitting in their row, so they don't have to wait for someone to get up to allow them in. Because everyone isn't trying to get in the same few rows at the same time, many different passengers can access the overhead bins and enter their seats simultaneously.

The small downside is that people who are sitting together can't board together, a problem for families with children and couples who inexplicably require continuous physical contact.

The fastest (current) way: the Southwest method

Southwest Airlines uses the unassigned seat method: people get on the plane in their order of check in, but they have no assigned seat, and can just sit down wherever they like. Sadly, there is no video for it, but it is the fastest way to board a plane that any airline currently uses.

The downside of Southwest's method is stress

It works because passengers spend less time waiting in line in the aisle. If there's a line in front of you or someone taking a long time to put their bag in the overhead bin, you have the freedom to just sit down in the row you're standing at currently instead of waiting to get past. In doing so, you're clearing the aisle and making things faster for the people behind you.

The downside of this method is that some people get stressed about the idea of having to choose their own seat and don't like waiting in line (or checking in online) for the chance to pick earlier. People also like to sit with friends and family, and passengers who pick their seat later on in the process might not find any blocks of open seats together.

In the "Mythbusters" experiment, this method led to lower customer satisfaction scores, even though it was fastest. The nearly as fast outside-in method scored much higher.

The very best (theoretical) way: the Steffen method

Jason Steffen, a physicist who got interested in plane boarding while stuck in line at the Seattle airport and subsequently conducted much of the research in this area, came up with an even better boarding system using computer models.

Steffen's method is a close relative of the outside-in method, but instead of allowing all window seat passengers to board first, it creates a choreographed sequence of them to avoid any aisle-waiting at all.

Basically, window seat passengers from one whole side of the plane are sent in, followed by the window seat passengers from the other side. But the rows of passengers allowed in are staggered, so you never have multiple passengers using the same aisle space to sit down or put their bags into the overhead bins. (Example: you send in 36A, 34A, and 32A, then 35A, 33A, and 31A).

This eliminates waiting while someone in your row gets up to let you in (like the outside-in method), but also makes sure that at any given time, the passengers getting on are accessing completely different rows and overhead bins, further cutting down on congestion.

This method wasn't tested in the "Mythbusters" episode, but Steffen tested it himself. His experiments were simpler (they used a 72-seat plane), but they showed the Steffen method was faster than the standard, random, or outside-in methods.

Unfortunately, he didn't test the Southwest method, so we don't know for sure which is faster. But given how it compared to the other methods, it seems like the Steffen method would at least be competitive with Southwest's. And for a passenger, it would feel roughly like the outside-in method, so it'd probably be much less stress-inducing.

So why don't airlines use the best methods?

A great question. These methods are all unquestionably faster than the standard method, so would speed up the turnaround times, theoretically saving airlines money. But almost none of them use it.

The current system might make airlines more money than they'd save by switching

One possible answer is that the current system actually makes them more than they'd save by switching. As Businessweek pointed out, airlines often allow some passengers to pay extra to board early and skip the general unpleasantness. If the entire boarding process was faster to begin with, many people might not pay extra to skip it.

For passengers, though, this makes no sense. Most of us are waiting in line longer than necessary, and those who pay extra are sitting on planes longer than necessary. No one is getting to their destinations any faster, and everyone is paying higher base prices for tickets, because airlines have to pay extra to the crew for their time used during these delayed turnarounds.

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An anonymous reader writes with news that Verizon and New Jersey regulators have reached a deal releasing Verizon from their obligation to have brought 45Mbps broadband to all NJ residents by 2010. Instead, 4G wireless service is considered sufficient. From the article: "2010 came and went and a number of rural parts of the state are still living with dial-up or subpar DSL. And even though the original deal was made in the days of modems and CompuServe, its crafters had the foresight to define broadband as 45Mbps, which is actually higher than many Verizon broadband customers receive today. ... In spite of that, and the thousands of legitimate complaints from actual New Jersey residents, the BPU voted unanimously yesterday to approve a deal with Verizon ... According to the Bergen Record, Verizon will no longer be obligated to provide broadband to residents if they have access to broadband service from cable TV providers or wireless 4G service. ... Residents who happen to live in areas not served by cable or wireless broadband can petition Verizon for service, but can only get broadband if at least 35 people in a single census tract each agree to sign contracts for a minimum of one year and pay $100 deposits."

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With a large bulk of the rumors for the iPhone 6 revolving around its purported increased screen size, there have been a healthy amount of iPhone 6 renderings exploring what the phone could look like and how big it would be compared to the current iPhone 5s.

MacRumors forum member deuxani decided to take it a step further and compared the 4.7" iPhone 6 to its Android-based competition.

If the rumors are true, at least one model of the iPhone 6 will contain a 16:9 4.7” screen. When you think about it realistically the iPhone 6 will have a home button with a finger print scanner the same size as the iPhone 5S. Also will the top and bottom bezels have the same height for symmetry. The side bezels will be smaller than the iPhone 5S, but they will not be non-existing.

First, deuxani compared the rumored iPhone 6 to the Motorola Moto X and LG G2 Mini, two 4.7-inch Android phones, that were actually smaller despite having the same screen size. This is largely because of of the rounded Touch ID sensor on the bottom and the need for the top and bottom bezels to be symmetrical due to Apple's design philosophy.

Compared to the 5" Nexus 5 and the 5.2" LG G2, deuxani found the iPhone 6 could be as tall as either phone with less screen real estate.

And finally, when compared to this year's flagship 5" HTC One (m8) and Samsung Galaxy S5, deuxani found that the Android devices were larger in every way.

In conclusion, deuxani found that the iPhone 6 could find it difficult to impress in screen size alone when compared to its Android competition. However, the iPhone 6 may stand out in thinness, which was highlighted in a video earlier today comparing an leaked iPhone 6 case to other devices.

Apple has been rumored to release two larger sized iPhones this fall. The rumored sizes are 4.7" and 5.5", though the 4.7" version is thought to arrive first as Apple is allegedly having a difficult time finding a thin enough battery to place in the 5.5" model. A recently released Apple slide revealed that the company acknowledged that consumers wanted larger screened phones, which Apple couldn't provide them at the time.

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Over the past month, people across this great nation found themselves looking in the mirror and asking themselves one thing: Am I basic?

"Basic" and its more aggressive counterpart, "basic bitch," have been in usage for years now, but usage has spiked over the past year or so. Rihanna declared open season on basics, saying that the set of her video "Pour it Up" was a "no basic zone"; men's websites have been instructed not to date a "basic"; and recently, VICE shamed Coachella's music lineup by hinting that the music festival might be a playground for the basic.

You might have questions. In particular, you might be wondering what in the world the insult even means. So here's a short guide that will hopefully calm your fears and, at the same time, help you understand the current pop culture fascination with the term.

I think I might be "basic." I'm scared.

Step away from the ledge. Being basic isn't that serious, nor should it paralyze, incapacitate or cripple your life.

But am I basic?

Well, it depends on who you ask. If someone doesn't like you, they've probably already commented and laughed about your basic-ness. But the joke's on them. They might not even be using it correctly.

Okay, so what is the correct usage?

There's a video from College Humor that distills the current meaning of "basic":

It references a lot of things like having a penchant for Friends, sentimental picture frames, "sexy" sweat pants, Ugg boots, and the —

Stop describing my life.

That video, thanks to the power of sharing (it has over 2.8 million views on YouTube), has sort of crystallized the term "basic" and a "basic bitch" into these possessions and cultural touchstones.

And the video also represents the peak in popular knowledge of a slang term which has grown dramatically in usage in the past year. Here are the Google analytics of "basic bitch", and notice how it's dramatically spiked since 2013:

So there's a lot of interest right now, and that's part of the reason College Humor and a few think pieces capitalized on that and this image of being basic. But what you'll notice is that "basic bitch" actually had a small peak in 2009 and another in 2011.

Right. That was around the time Krea ... Kreaz ... that young woman came out with that one song.

Kreayshawn. And you're right, her song "Gucci Gucci" came out in 2011 which probably accounts for that blip on the Google trend radar. That song used the lyrics: "Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi, Fendi Prada ... basic bitches wear that shit so I don't even bother":

Kreayshawn defined basic as being unoriginal. The brands she mentioned are very popular designers, but also are known for their trademarked logos. This was also an implicit dig on people with money. In a sense, Kreayshawn was saying that you could have all the money in the world and still be kind of terrible and not that cool— or not as cool as Kreayshawn.

And the current permutation of "basic" seems like an extension of that. But instead of punching up, it's more punching down on people (but women in particular) who like certain brands or enjoy a certain kind of lifestyle.

Am I being sexist if I am calling someone a "basic bitch?"

Let's be clear: you're not calling someone a "basic bitch" because you're paying them a compliment. You are insulting someone, and on top of that, adding gender to that insult.

"Bitch", has had a long and twisty history of being a putdown to women. Recently, there's been more of an acceptance of the term and reclaiming of the word (thanks to influences like Bitch magazine, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler) to mean a cool, powerful woman who gets stuff done.

But calling someone a "basic bitch", whether it's your intention or not and whether you believe the word "bitch" to be a putdown or not, relies on the idea that there are certain "bitches" who are inferior to other non-basic "bitches."

You keep saying things like, "current" or "right now"— what gives?

Think about street-slang and slang for a second. While the web has been responsible for creating different dialects and languages, and as much as we like to say the Internet is our virtual hang out, it's still not the same thing as talking to someone face to face.

And by the time someone's Googling a term, that term has usually hit some kind of mainstream saturation point far from where it started. And people using "basic" in real life are already evolving the term beyond the College Humor video's definition.

"Basic" and "basic bitch" existed long before Kreayshawn made the terms popular in 2011, and even before people started Googling it in 2009. Back then, and even before then, it existed in black and hip-hop culture.

So is there a feeling that white people have changed the meaning?

Yup. "White people: Where did this sudden obsession with being "basic" come from? Who hurt you (this time)?" Buzzfeed's Saeed Jones wrote on Twitter, observing the rise of "basic-ness" and its newfound mainstream and popularity among white people.

Jones points out that the word has become more or less a cousin of "first world problems" or "white girl problems"— popular memes and internet terms for minor frustrations that draw the ire and complaints from affluent and, yes, white people. And Jones's dismay at what "basic" has turned into raises the question of what its true meaning is.

Jones and others point out that "basic" had already lived a full life in hip-hop slang long before this current wave of people using it.

So what did "basic" mean before?

It's not entirely clear because language and words aren't simple (it's the reason that if you ever use a thesaurus, you will hate 82 percent of the suggestions it gives you). But basic was more or less a way to say that someone was unsophisticated. And when it's passed to us by way of Kreayshawn, College Humor, and whatnot, that meaning somehow turns into "wearing a lot of North Face."

It might be helpful to think of slang (in this case black or hip-hop) going mainstream (or white) in the same fashion as any language you run through a translator — you lose a little bit of nuance no matter how good your translation might be. That's a big reason Google translate is can be a laughable experience, and big reason why no one has perfected (but many have tried) a translation app yet.

So let me get this straight: We're using an outdated insult that barely means what it was supposed to mean to put down people and think we're being kind cool?

In short: yes.

But, you should live your life. Just be you. But also keep in mind that it isn't the first time slang (from hip-hop, black/white/Asian/Latino/LGBT/etc. culture) has gone mainstream and underwent a change

Like?

"Throwing shade." The term was used in the South and in (drag) ball culture an—

That means a nasty look— like when Michelle Obama "threw shade" at John Boehner?

No. But that's the point. "Throwing shade" was originally meant to be a clever, subtle and thoughtful putdown. But that eventually evolved into what you might otherwise call a "side eye" or a dirty look. And while it maintains some tenets of what its original meaning was (a way to show your displeasure with someone), it can convey something different.

So, like the person calling me basic might be even more basic than me?

Yup. Basically. They might be as unoriginal as the kind of "basic" Kreayshawn rapped about, as mainstream as College Humor, and as unsophisticated as basic's observers first noted.

That makes me feel better. One last question.

Yes?

Am I normcore?

Maybe.

Boy survives five-and-a-half-hour plane ride in landing gear. That's the crazy story that's been making the rounds this week. Apparently a 16 year-old kid — whose name is being withheld — ran away from his home in Santa Clara, California on Sunday night and decided to hitch a lift to Maui. The only thing is, he didn't have a ticket. (He did, however, have a comb, which sounds like the plot of at least 17 MacGyver episodes.)

According to the FBI, the teenager hopped the fence at Mineta San Jose International Airport and boarded the wheel well — the section of the undercarriage that stores the plane's wheels — of Hawaii Flight 45. The flight reached altitudes of 38,000 feet, which would have made it extremely difficult for him to breathe since the air pressure was so low. When the plane landed, the ground crew at Kahului Airport in Maui found the teenager "wandering the tarmac, dazed and confused," presumably having made the five-hour flight as a stowaway.

"if your body slows down enough it doesn't need as much oxygen to survive"

Though some people remain skeptical, the FBI buys his story. "I understand everybody's skepticism, but his story checks out," said spokesperson Tom Simon. "He went into the wheel well in California and he came out of the wheel well in Hawaii.

So how did he survive the flight?

How did he even manage to sneak onto the plane?

It appears the teenager was able to scale the perimeter of the fence at SJC "under the cover of darkness," according to an airport official quoted at ABC News. The official spokesperson of the San Jose Airport said the airport doesn't have video of someone scaling a fence, though there is video of someone walking around on the grounds.

There is also video, ABC reported, of the stowaway exiting the wheel well in Kahului, Maui. He was wearing a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers.

How hard is it to get into a wheel well?

"Not hard at all," according to Jose Wolfman Guillen, a ground operations coordinator at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Just grab onto the landing gear like a ladder, says Guillen, and climb in. Of course, that's the easy part. The hard part is not being crushed once you're in there. Because there's not much room in the compartment — "even less than in the trunk of a car," says Guillen — there's a big chance the stowaway could be bashed by the tires as they close.

How did he stay warm? Isn't it really cold at 30,000 feet?

A Boeing 767 has a gross weight of approximately 300,000 pounds. That immense weight coupled with the friction resulting from a high-speed takeoff causes the plane's tires to heat up. As Kurt Streeter reported for the LA Times, it's possible that the heat emanating from the wheel well area helped keep the teenager alive: "Heat from hydraulic lines in the wheel well along with retained heat in the tires can help keep stowaways warm."

Wouldn't he have passed out at that height?

Simon said it's likely that, because of the low oxygen at high altitudes, the teenager "blacked out at about 10,000 feet," and remained unconscious "for pretty much the entire flight." This is consistent with the testimony of the airport ground crew who found him, who said that he appeared walking around "dazed and confused."

Because the plane was climbing at a steady pace, the teenager might have been able to experience unconsciousness gradually. As the wheel well cooled, hypothermia likely began to set in, resulting in some type of suspended animation — not unlike hibernation, which preserves the animal's nervous system. "It's possible," Dr. Richard Besser told ABC, "if your body slows down enough it doesn't need as much oxygen to survive."

Did he have an advantage because he's young?

Probably. In an article at Time, the medical director of the Altitude Medicine Center said that young people's brains are "more adaptable" than older folks'. That's why, he says, kids recover from comas at a higher rate than older patients. It's also likely, as LiveScience reports, that the stowaway didn't have "heart defects that could have caused fatal heart arrhythmias."

Still, trauma surgeon Kenneth Stahl said the teenager will probably have permanent brain damage from his experience.

Did he get in trouble?

Simon told ABC News the teenager was taken into custody, where he was examined by a medical doctor for injuries — none were found. Simon said the authorities are investigating how he breached the security perimeter of the airport to board the plane. But beyond that, Simon said the boy posed no threat to the airline, and therefore would not be charged. Hawaii Airlines has also released a statement saying their "primary concern now is for the wellbeing of the boy."

How common is this?

The 16-year-old isn't the first wheel-well passenger to survive a long flight. In 2000, a man named Fidel Maruhi survived a seven-hour ride in a wheel well from Tahiti to Los Angeles. The Federal Aviation Association lists two reported cases of high-altitude stowaways: one from Cuba to Spain, one from Colombia to Miami. Both flights reached altitudes of 35,000 feet, which means the stowaways would've experienced negative-65 degree temperatures, a lack of pressurization, and little to no oxygen.

Of course, the majority of people who attempt such flights die in the process. According to a statement released by the FAA, since 1947 there have been 105 stowaways. Of that number, only 25 have survived. Last summer, one dead stowaway remained in the wheel-well of a Russian charter plane for at least seven flights before his body was discovered.

The FAA claims that wheel-well stowaways "continue to be a problem and require prevention." Obviously explosives would be a concern if the stowaways were criminals, but there's also the fact that wheel-wells contain all sorts of really important flight stuff like landing gear. If that were tampered with during the flight, there would be devastating consequences.

But aviation security expert Jeffrey Price says: "Right now the threat level isn't at the point where it justifies the cost" of increased security.

You might not know what a number sentence is. Neither does Stephen Colbert, who recently suggested "word equation" and "formula paragraph" as nonsensical synonyms.

But millions of American students soon will. Math education is in the middle of big changes — including new ways of learning that might frustrate parents even more than students.

The Common Core state standards, now in place in 44 states, will require that elementary school kids not just to know how to subtract, multiply and divide, but to understand what they're doing and why.

That means more number sentences — the term, if you're curious, just means "equations" — and other unfamiliar concepts, like area multiplication and number line subtraction.

Arithmetic has usually been taught like it's a recipe: Take the raw ingredients (the numbers), follow a series of steps, and end up with a tasty end result (the answer). While an experienced baker knows why you cream butter and sugar before adding eggs, then add flour last, a beginner just following the steps is in the dark. They might know what to do, but they can't explain why.

In the past, "students had this sense that math was some kind of magical black box," says Dan Meyer, a former high school math teacher studying math education at Stanford University. "That wasn't good enough."

One goal of the Common Core math standards is to make American students better at applying math in real life — a skill that's crucial for science and technology jobs, but one at which American students are particularly weak compared with peers around the world.

'STUDENTS HAD THIS SENSE THAT MATH WAS SOME KIND OF MAGICAL BLACK BOX'

The theory is that if students understand why they do math the way they do, they'll be able to apply their skills more flexibly.

Do you have number sense?

Number sense means that you have a sense of how and why the tricks you call "math" work.

That seems abstruse and philosophical, but it's really not. You'd probably be flummoxed if someone ambushed you right after you finished a meal to demand that you multiply two decimals in your head — say, 18.5 x 0.2. That's a complicated arithmetic problem on a full stomach.

But this happens frequently in real life, where it looks like this: Your lunch cost $18.50. You want to tip 20 percent.

Cell phones with built-in calculators have made it easy to get the tip ($3.70). But many adults still do it in their heads: Move the decimal point over. OK, that's 10 percent, or $1.85. Now you need to double it. But multiplying a three-digit decimal still isn't easy. So you think about it this way: $1.85 can be broken down into $1.50 plus 35 cents. $1.50 times 2 is $3, and 35 cents times 2 is 70 cents. Tip $3.70.

Taking a challenging problem (18.5 x 0.2) and breaking it down into manageable parts ($1.85, $1.50, 35 cents) — that's number sense.

Can you teach number sense?

The Common Core standards aim to impart number sense. Although the standards don't tell teachers how to to teach or what materials to use, they say that students need to understand how to solve problems and why those methods work.

'NUMBERS AREN'T THESE BRITTLE, FRAGILE THINGS THAT BREAK'

The underlying lesson: "Numbers aren't these brittle, fragile things that break," Meyer says. "They can play with them in fun, flexible ways."

Students will still learn what's known as the standard algorithm, the way that their parents learned to multiply, divide, add, and subtract. But they'll also learn other methods that try to make the underpinnings of the standard method more obvious.

One example is subtraction with a number line. This went viral after a father posted his child's confusing homework assignment with his critique:

The idea behind using a number line for subtraction is that students get a visual representation of what subtraction is: figuring out the "distance" between two numbers.

Here's what a clearer version of the problem above would look like: Students put the two numbers at opposite ends of the number line.

Then they travel from one number to the next to figure out the distance. It's 4 steps from 316 to 320, 100 steps from 320 to 420, 7 steps from 420 to 427.

Then they add the steps together: 4 + 100 + 7 = a distance of 111. LearnZillion, a company that creates lesson plans for teaching to the Common Core standards, has a 5-minute video explaining this technique. Here's what it's supposed to look like on another sample problem:

Multiplication, too, is explained visually. Most people learned to multiply two-digit numbers like this:

What's really happening there: 16 is broken down into (10 + 6). Then the multiplication is done in two parts (27 x 6) and (27 x 10) and the answers are added together. But most students see math as a series of steps or even tricks — line up the numbers, write a zero on the second line — without a rationale, says Diane Briars, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which helped to write the math standards.

One way to explain the rationale, according to Common Core standards, is an "area model." Here's an explanation from the tutors at Khan Academy using the same problem:

Still, few adults would sit down to draw an area model or number line to do a math problem. (Most wouldn't do it by hand.) Students are still expected to learn the standard approach, which is indisputably faster. But the emphasis is switching from speed to understanding.

"Students should be able to understand any of these approaches," said Morgan Polikoff, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California who is studying how the Common Core is implemented in the classroom. "It doesn't mandate that they necessarily do one or the other."

Parents should brace for frustration

Other nations whose students have stronger math skills focus their education on problem-solving and understanding underlying concepts. But there might be other factors in play; research found a popular American math textbook is more challenging than South Korea's textbook, but South Korean kids still are much better at math.

A key question is whether elementary school teachers can learn to teach the conceptual side of math effectively. If not, number lines and area models will just become another recipe, steps to memorize in order to get an answer, Polikoff says.

Much of this is bound to confuse parents. When parents see their kids frustrated by math homework, their first reaction is to step in and help. It's natural for them to teach the step-by-step way that they learned to solve problems.

"What we want to tell parents to do is they don't need to teach the math," says Briars, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. "What they need to help their children do is figure out, What is the problem asking you?"

It's reasonable that parents will be confused by the new way of doing things, says Meyer, the former math teacher and Ph.D. student. But he says that parents' education wasn't particularly effective, even if they're confident in their arithmetic. When tested on their math skills, American adults ranked third-to-last compared to other developed countries.

"They grew up thinking math was a series of tricks to be memorized and reproduced," Meyer says. "None of us really enjoyed that."

Scientists have long suspected that monkeys are capable of mental arithmetics and a new study is helping them prove it. A research team led by neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone trained three rhesus macaques to identify symbols representing the numbers zero to 25. They then taught the test subjects how to perform addition. To eliminate the possibility of rote learning, the team had the monkeys learn an entirely different set of symbols representing the numbers zero to 25. The monkeys were able to reapply their previous knowledge to the new set and continue performing basic mathematics.

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schwit1 (797399) writes "An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic energy strong enough to disable, and even destroy, nearby electronic devices. In the first few minutes of an EMP, nearly half a million people would die. That's the worst-case scenario that author William R. Forstchen estimated would be the result of an EMP on the electric grid. 'If you do a smart plan — the Congressional EMP Commission estimated that you could protect the whole country for about $2 billion,' Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, told Watchdog.org. 'That's what we give away in foreign aid to Pakistan every year.' He said the more officials plan, the lower the estimated cost gets. 'The problem is not the technology,' Pry said. 'We know how to protect against it. It's not the money, it doesn't cost that much. The problem is the politics. It always seems to be the politics that gets in the way.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Politicians like to argue about taxes, but arguably the more important issue is what does a government spend on. High taxes to pay for excellent services makes a lot of sense. Medium taxes to pay for terrible services makes very little sense. So kudos to WalletHub for trying to create a dataset that compares state tax levels to measures of public service quality.

The way they did it ends up producing some results that tend to cut across partisan lines. For example, by this measure Texas taxpayers are getting an excellent return on investment for their (relatively small) tax burden. But so are taxpayers in high-tax Massachusetts. By contrast, California looks bad. And Arkansas looks really bad.

Which is to say that you can make liberalism work well and you can also make conservatism work well. But you can also make either general approach work poorly.

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You can hardly blame Americans for believing that the vast majority of our oil imports come from the Middle East. Ever since the 1973 oil crisis, when Middle Eastern countries refused to sell oil to the United States as punishment for backing Israel in that year's Arab-Israeli war, the American political conversation has dominated by calls for "weening ourselves off of MidEast oil." What most Americans don't know is that we've mostly succeeded.

The University of Texas, as part of its annual energy poll, asked Americans where they think US oil comes from. A staggering 58 percent of Americans think that our top source of foreign oil is Saudi Arabia and another 15 percent say it's Iraq — nearly three quarters of Americans. Meanwhile, only a tiny share — 15 percent of Americans — think we get most of our oil imports from Canada or Mexico. But the truth is almost the exact opposite: we get far more oil from our North American neighbors than we do from the Middle East:

University of Texas at Austin energy poll

It turns out that America's biggest source of oil, by far, is Canada. Along with Mexico, the two North American neighbors provide 39 percent of US oil imports. That goes up to 50 percent if you add in Venezuela. The Middle East, meanwhile, provides a lot less: Saudi Arabia and Iraq provide just 22 percent of US oil imports. Less than a quarter!

This matters. If the vast majority of Americans think we're so much more reliant on Middle Eastern oil than we actually are, they're going to push for policies they may not want if they knew the truth. America's foreign policy and energy policy are already problematic enough without being distorted by the vast public misperceptions. As the energy poll's director wrote when the results first came out in October, "Our attitudes eventually shape future policy decisions and define global energy priorities."

The green biofuels of the future might not be so green after all.

Advanced corn ethanol might produce 7% more carbon-Dioxide than gasoline in the short term

Cellulosic ethanol made from the leaves and stalks of corn plants might end up being worse for global warming than plain old gasoline — at least in the short run. That's the upshot of a new study in Nature Climate Change, which found that removing all those corn leftovers from fields could actually hurt the ability of soil to absorb carbon dioxide.

If these findings hold up, it could be a big deal. The US government is pushing to ramp up the use of cellulosic ethanol in the decades ahead — on the grounds that it will help tackle global warming. This study suggests that might be a bad idea. At the same time, the biofuels industry is pushing back hard, arguing that this new study is contradicted by other well-regarded research in the area. Here's a rundown:

Cellulosic ethanol was supposed to be the fuel of the future

Group Leader for Biomass Mads Torry-Smith (L) holds up a bottle of Cellulosic Ethanol in its early stages as US President George W. Bush tours through Novozymes North America, Inc., in Franklinton, North Carolina, 22 February 2007. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

Once upon a time, policymakers thought ethanol made from corn could be a decent replacement for gasoline made from oil. But using corn to fill up our tanks has come under heavy criticism: 40 percent of US corn now goes toward ethanol, putting a strain on the global food supply.

Cellulosic ethanol was supposed to be a green fuel that didn't strain the food supply

The next generation of advanced "cellulosic" biofuels were supposed to solve this problem. Instead of using the corn itself, why not use the leftover cobs, leaves, and stalks to make fuel? This cellulosic ethanol could provide the best of both worlds — a green fuel for our cars that doesn't impact the food supply.

The US government has put a high priority on cellulosic ethanol. The Department of Energy has spent $385 million to fund six cellulosic ethanol plants. And Congress has required refineries to buy and blend 16 billion gallons of the stuff into the nation's gasoline supply by 2022.

But the dream of cellulosic ethanol is running into obstacles. First, companies companies have struggled to produce the fuel at a low cost. Second, cellulosic ethanol might not as green as we thought. The Nature Climate Change study finds that biofuels made from corn stalks and leaves can produce 7 percent more carbon dioxide emissions in the first five years than gasoline does.

Why cellulosic ethanol may not be so green

In theory, making ethanol from corn stalks and leaves should be good for climate change. The corn plant draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as it grows. That carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere when the plant is burned for fuel. But it's then drawn out again by the next generation of corn plants.

The reality, however, may be more complicated. Right now, farmers tend to leave corn residue — the inedible stalks and the leaves — in the fields after harvest. That reduces soil erosion and preserves the ability of soil to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. If the corn residue is taken away and used for fuel instead, the soil could suffer.

The Nature Climate Change study, led by a team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, used computer simulations to estimate that this soil effect could be quite large. An additional 50 to 70 kilograms of carbon dioxide was added to the atmosphere for every megajoule of energy produced by the biofuels. (This relationship held no matter how much residue was taken from the field.)

All in all, this meant that during the first five years of production, ethanol from corn residue produced 7 percent more carbon dioxide emissions than regular gasoline did. Over the long run, cellulosic ethanol does have a climate advantage. But US law requires greenhouse-gas emissions from cellulosic ethanol to be 60 percent lower than gasoline. This study casts doubt on whether that's possible.

But don't count cellulosic ethanol out yet...

For one, it's entirely possible that this study's conclusions are wrong. Previous research from Argonne National Laboratory, for instance, found that removing corn residue had relatively little effect on the amount of carbon held in the soil. No doubt research in this area will continue.

There are other techniques that could help replenish soil carbon

And even if this latest study turns out to be correct, that doesn't mean cellulosic ethanol is totally doomed. The authors point out that there are other techniques that can help replenish soil carbon — such as planting cover crops or no-till farming. They'd just actually need to get done for cellulosic ethanol to be a useful tool for tackling climate change.

Alternatively, biofuels producers could turn to other materials besides corn — such as perennial grasses or wood residue — to make cellulosic ethanol. (Right now, corn residue is the preferred material of choice, but there's ongoing research into other types of ethanol.)

Even so, the biofuels industry was quick to criticize this latest study — noting that it contradicted past research on cellulosic ethanol and soil carbon. "The authors offer no robust explanation for why their findings contradict other recent, highly regarded research," argued Bob Dineen, the CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association.

The biofuels industry has reason to worry. Right now the oil industry is lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency to relax requirements for refineries to blend cellulosic ethanol, claiming that the fuel is being produced in much smaller quantities than Congress originally envisioned. The biofuels industry, for its part, argues that production is only just getting started. So there's a fair bit at stake in this fight.

For the second time in three years, one man's urine is forcing the city of Portland, Ore., to drain millions of gallons of treated water currently stored in an open reservoir. The first time someone was caught pissing in one of these open storage facilities back in 2011 the city ended up draining 7.5 million gallons of water, Fox News reports. But this time around, the urine made its way into an even larger reservoir, so the city is now planning to dump the entirety of the its contents — contents that amount to 38 million gallons of treated water — directly into the city's sewage system.

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Researchers have an idea for how future nuclear reactors can avoid the trauma that led to the 2011 disaster at Fukushima: by building new plants five to seven miles out into the ocean. "This affords some absolutely crucial advantages," Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, which led the research, explains in a video presenting the idea. In particular, Buongiorno says that this distance into the ocean will remove the risk of tsunamis, which won't throw big waves in such deep water, and of earthquakes, the seismic waves of which will be damped by the ocean.

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If there's one thing more annoying than passwords, it's CAPTCHA puzzles that websites use to screen out robots from registering for accounts. However, Google has just developed a new algorithm that's able to read its own CAPTCHA puzzles with 99% accuracy, which is obviously a problem since CAPTCHA puzzles are designed to be used by humans only.

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Today is the day tens of thousands of Americans will gather around the country to celebrate a drug that remains illegal in most of the US: marijuana.

April 20 (or 4/20) is cherished by pot smokers around the world as an excuse to toke up with friends and massive crowds each year. Major rallies are happening across the country, particularly in places like Colorado, Washington state, and Washington, DC, where marijuana possession is legal.

But as support for marijuana legalization grows — with at least five states considering it in 2016 — the festivities are becoming more mainstream. As a result, marijuana businesses are looking to leverage the holiday to find more ways to sell and market their products. This puts 4/20's current iteration in sharp contrast to the holiday once embraced by a counterculture movement, largely made up of hippies and others who decried greed, corporate influences, and all things mainstream.

4/20 has become the biggest single-day celebration of marijuana

Today, 4/20 is partly about supporting people's legal rights to use marijuana. But just like St. Patrick's Day is known as a holiday for America's booze lovers despite its religious origins, 4/20 is turning into a major holiday for the country's pot enthusiasts.

Unlike the early days of 4/20 (supposedly in the 1970s), the holiday is something marijuana users can celebrate more openly — now that a majority of Americans support legalizing pot. But it used to be the case that 4/20 was part of a smaller counterculture movement that embraced marijuana as a symbol to protest against broader systemic problems in the US, like overseas wars and the power of corporations in America.

"Marijuana was the way you said you weren't a suit," Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University, said, referencing how the drug was perceived before.

In recent years, marijuana legalization activists have tried to bring a more formal aspect to the celebration, framing it as a moment to push their political agenda. Organizers for the 2014 Denver rally, for example, put out a statement comparing the battle for legal marijuana to "the time when Jews fled from slavery in Egypt," a moment commemorated in Passover celebrations. "This year's rally represents the continuing fight for freedom from economic slavery for marginalized members of our community and a rebirth of creative genius that will get us there," they wrote.

Businesses are also trying to take advantage of the holiday. Eddie Miller, CEO of Invest in Cannabis, which seeks to bring investment into the marijuana industry, said his company is trying to build and sponsor major 4/20 gatherings around the country — similar to what other companies, some of which Miller has been involved with, have done with holidays like St. Patrick's Day.

"Our perspective is 4/20 is a real holiday — no smaller than St. Patrick's Day or Halloween," Miller said. "It's just nobody knows about it yet. And our company is going to let everyone know about it."

Of course, many people are attending rallies around the country just to party and have some fun. "I suspect most people are in Denver because they want to get high," Humphreys said.

Legalization is transforming 4/20 into a commercial holiday

Originally 4/20 was a counterculture holiday to protest, at least in part, the social and legal stigmas against marijuana. Marijuana legalization undercuts that purpose: as big businesses and corporations begin growing and selling pot, marijuana will slowly lose its status as a counterculture symbol — and that, Humphreys of Stanford University speculated, could bring the end of the traditional, countercultural 4/20.

"If a corporate marijuana industry adopts 4/20, it would still be a celebrated event, but not with the same counter-cultural meaning," Humphreys said in an email. "People celebrated Christmas long before it became an occasion for an orgy of gift-buying and materialist consumption, but the meaning of the holiday for most people was different then than it is now."

Companies such as Invest in Cannabis admit they're already leveraging the holiday as another opportunity to promote the industry and its products — much like beer and other alcohol companies now do with St. Patrick's Day.

"The media is covering 4/20 as a consumer interest story," Miller of Invest in Cannabis said. "But some portion of the media is covering 4/20 as a call to arms for the industry — so there are multiple competitive business conferences that are happening in Denver, the [San Francisco] Bay Area, and Las Vegas."

The pot industry has also gotten directly involved in 4/20 events. The Cannabis Cup, for example, has become a major event at Denver's 4/20 rallies, where hundreds of vendors show off their finest marijuana products to more than 40,000 attendees. The event has steadily grown over the years, now featuring big concerts from notable musicians like Snoop Dogg, Soja, and 2 Chainz and a wide collection of marijuana businesses as sponsors.

The Cannabis Cup is only one of many events, which also include comedy shows (like Cheech and Chong), marijuana-friendly speed dating, and trade shows for glass pipes and bongs, offering businesses and celebrities various opportunities to push their products and brands.

Of course, some people don't attend the public festivities at all, choosing instead to stay home and enjoy a joint (or more) with their friends. For these people, 4/20 likely remains a more casual affair void of big sponsorships and marketing.

But in public, 4/20 is increasingly becoming a commercial holiday.

It's unclear why the holiday is called 4/20

There are a few possible explanations for why marijuana enthusiasts' day of celebration landed on April 20, but the real origin remains a mystery.

One common belief is that 420 was the California police or penal code for marijuana, but there's no evidence to support those claims.

Another theory is that there are 420 active chemicals in marijuana, hence an obvious connection between the drug and the number. But there are more than 500 active ingredients in marijuana, and only about 70 or so are cannabinoids unique to the plant, according to the Dutch Association for Legal Cannabis and Its Constituents as Medicine.

A less-known explanation comes from the 1939 short story "In the Walls of Eryx" by HP Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling. The story describes "curious mirage-plants" that seemed fairly similar to marijuana and appeared to get the narrator high at, according to his watch, around 4:20. Since the story is from 1939, it's perhaps the earliest written link between marijuana and 420.

Steven Hager, a former editor of the marijuana-focused news outlet High Times, told the New York Times that the holiday came out of a ritual started by a group of high school students in the 1970s. As Hager explained, a group of Californian teenagers ritualistically smoked marijuana every day at 4:20 pm. The ritual spread, and soon 420 became code for smoking marijuana. Eventually 420 was converted into 4/20 for calendar purposes, and the day of celebration was born. Still, there's little evidence to prove Hager's story beyond the claims of a group of Californians who took credit for 420's origin.

4/20 is very big in western states, but it might expand

Since 4/20 supposedly originated in California, according to Hager at the High Times, it's unsurprising that 4/20 is a big deal there. But the celebration has already spread — particularly in other western states.

This year, the most prominent 4/20 rally is in Denver. Following Colorado's decision to legalize marijuana in 2012, Denver became the first big city to allow recreational marijuana shops. That made Denver the center of the legalization movement and, as a result, the capital of 4/20 celebrations in the US. (In particular, the 4:20 pm smoke-out — in which tens of thousands gather in front of the state capitol to smoke pot at 4:20 pm on 4/20 — is heralded as one of the largest pot rallies in the world.)

But celebrations are also taking place in Seattle, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC. And Miller of Invest in Cannabis expects the list of cities hosting major 4/20 celebrations to expand over the years, with some focusing less on tourism and more on local events.

"I believe Denver and Colorado in general will continue to grow with their cannabis tourism," he said. "Separately, you can see that, for example, San Jose is not a primarily tourist destination — but the events happening in the Bay Area are primarily for the residents of the Bay Area."

Americans support marijuana legalization, but they're not okay with public smoking

Although surveys show 4/20 celebrators have the support of most Americans when it comes to legalization, many people would likely disapprove of the public smoke-outs that often take place in celebration of 4/20.

A March survey from the Pew Research Center found that 53 percent of Americans support legalization, and 82 percent said it wouldn't bother them if people used marijuana in their own homes — but 62 percent said it would bother them if someone used pot in public.

This puts 4/20 in a tricky place for legalization advocates: Americans by and large support the pro-legalization message of the holiday, but they're probably not okay with someone ripping a bong in front of the state capitol.

So where can I sign up?

It's probably too late to plan a trip this year, unless you already live in Denver or another city holding a 4/20 rally. But if interest in the event continues climbing after legalization takes place in other states, it's probably a good idea to be a bit forward-looking with your airplane and hotel bookings for next year's rallies. And keep in mind that although many of the 4/20 events are open to the public, some do charge a fee for entry.

Where marijuana is legal in the US

Watch: Marijuana is not more dangerous than alcohol

In 2011, Thomas Sargent won the Nobel prize in economics. But in 2007, he gave a graduation speech to Berkeley undergraduates that still stands as one of the greatest, shortest introductions to economics — and to life.

He began with a simple promise. "I will economize on words," he said. And he did.

Economics is organized common sense. Here is a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches.

1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible.

2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs.

3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts,
and their preferences than you do.

4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That
is why social safety nets don't always end up working as intended.

5. There are tradeoffs between equality and efficiency.

6. In an equilibrium of a game or an economy, people are satisfied with their
choices. That is why it is difficult for well meaning outsiders to change
things for better or worse.

7. In the future, you too will respond to incentives. That is why there are
some promises that you'd like to make but can't. No one will believe those
promises because they know that later it will not be in your interest to
deliver. The lesson here is this: before you make a promise, think about
whether you will want to keep it if and when your circumstances change.
This is how you earn a reputation.

8. Governments and voters respond to incentives too. That is why governments sometimes default on loans and other promises that they have made.

9. It is feasible for one generation to shift costs to subsequent ones. That is
what national government debts and the U.S. social security system do
(but not the social security system of Singapore).

10. When a government spends, its citizens eventually pay, either today or
tomorrow, either through explicit taxes or implicit ones like inflation.

11. Most people want other people to pay for public goods and government
transfers (especially transfers to themselves).

12. Because market prices aggregate traders' information, it is difficult to forecast stock prices and interest rates and exchange rates.

If you spend enough time around economists you'll recognize these lessons immediately. What looks easy is often hard. Even great ideas have tradeoffs. It's not a pessimistic view of life — or even of government. It's a realistic one, and it prevents, or at least predicts, a lot of problems.

Which isn't to say that Sargent's speech is anywhere near comprehensive. It's an introduction to what economics teaches us about the world but it omits what the world teaches us about the limits of basic economics.

@ezraklein That's pretty good. Revealing that there's basically nothing about market failure.

— Harold Pollack (@haroldpollack) April 19, 2014

Still, you can take a lot of hard economics classes and read a lot of lengthy economics tomes that don't do nearly as good a job conveying the discipline's lessons as those 297 words.

(Hat tip to Tyler Cowen and Jim Rose.)

You've probably heard that you should slice meat "against the grain," but why exactly? And how do you figure out where the grain is? Kenji López-Alt at Serious Eats explains it all.

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Over the past few years, I’ve become overly obsessed with photographing the night sky, so when I saw that we were going to be able to see the lunar eclipse on April 15, I knew I had to shoot it. I had been planning this shot for about two weeks before Tuesday morning.

With every lunar eclipse that occurs, my social media feeds blow up with shots of the moon, but they all seem to be extremely tight compositions. Don’t get me wrong, they are great shots for detail, but I’ve always felt they lacked a bit of… “life.”

With that said, I knew that I wanted to create a composition that not only showed the amazing eclipse, but tied in an incredible foreground as well. I mean, why not include the Earth? We are kind of the reason for the lunar eclipse, right?

With the spring wildflowers blooming all across Texas, they caught my eye for a potential foreground. I searched online for a large bluebonnet field somewhat close to home, but far away enough from the heavy light pollution of Dallas. After getting a few suggestions via social media, I took the ride down to Ennis, Texas — just southeast of Dallas — with fellow photographer friend James Langford.

I set out around 11 p.m. and spent the next 7 hours shooting the moon transitions. The first shot was the field of bluebonnets, shot at a 30 second exposure using the light from the full moon to illuminate the field. I shot this with my Nikon D800 at 24mm. Then, I shot the moon approximately every 10 minutes with a 200mm lens from the beginning to the end of its transition.

It was somewhere around 4 a.m., I was standing in the middle of this bluebonnet field, freezing my tail off (the pain isn’t so bad once you go numb) that I started to have doubts that the shot I had imagined wouldn’t come together. I wondered to myself, “What in the heck am I doing here?” The moon transition was taking a longggg time, and was much further up in the sky than I had hoped for. I still continued too shoot though and hope for the best. Things finally wrapped up around 6am, and then, finally… sleep.

In post, I started with the initial foreground image that I had shot and edited it to my liking. I then began the process of sorting through quite a few moon phase shots, pulling out one every so often to create the transition. Each phase was then masked in to the sky to create the final composition.

What you see in the image is a pretty close representation of the moons path across the sky throughout the night, just brought a bit closer to the horizon to help balance the composition.

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You can find a larger version of the final photograph over on Facebook.

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About the author: Mike Mezeul II is an award winning, professional photographer currently based out of Allen, Texas. His portfolio consists of professional sports, advertising, wedding and concert photography, but his work in landscape and skyscape photography truly separates himself from others. Visit his website here and Facebook here.

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No, you probably shouldn't take selfies when standing in close proximity to large vehicles that are hurtling toward you. Gawker points us to a new video posted this week by someone named Jared Michael, who says that he recently "tried to take a selfie while a train passed a 'safe' distance behind." The trouble was that he was still close enough to the tracks for the train's conductor to reach out with his foot and kick him in the face. The results are predictably hilarious.

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