Strange

What is your (new) equation for work-energy? (I may have missed it in your rambling description) What is the experimental evidence that your equation is correct?

Good point.

I completely missed the fact it was rice porridge (congee) - I thought the question was about porridge porridge (oatmeal). But that would have been the wrong way round as well. Don't know what I was thinking. In which case, it seems obvious that rice porridge takes longer to cook because it is basically overcooked rice. The longer cooking time (and extra water) is pretty much the definition of congee. (That and the fish and fried garlic and chilli...)

Porridge is softer/moister than rice. So it is easier for water to penetrate and it doesn't need as much water/time to become soft. (I guess.)

Um, well, uh, because ... mumble ...

And I despise this sort of bigotry. But there you go, we all have to live with each other despite our faults.

OK. But did you hear about the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac who lay awake all night wondering if there was a dog?

Not believing (or caring) about something is not a belief. Like not playing (or caring) about golf IS NOT A SPORT. Sheesh. What is there to think about? How much time do you spend thinking about whether there is an invisible pink unicorn watching your every move? I assume many (most?) people who do believe in a god or gods never think about it either. They just believe. And then there are some who think about their faith. And, presumably, some who think about their lack of faith. But you don't have faith because you have looked at the evidence and thought about it. That wouldn't be faith (in my book). That is a pretty broad definition. It would include a lot of things that many people wouldn't consider to be religions. But if you think that materialism or logical positivism or utilitarianism are religions then ... well, good luck to you.

The point of commenting is to explain what the code is doing at a higher level than the code can describe. And to explain why the code is implemented in a particular way. // We have to check the fuel level doesn't get too low or the pump could burn out if (fuel_level < MIN_FUEL_LEVEL) { ... ring alarm bell } Or // Note we use a bubble sort here: you may have been taught that this is the worst // possible type of sort, but it works really well on a parallel architecture like this ... sort routine And I suspect people who argue for minimal commenting haven't had to debug soon else's code!

Right. And not being interested in golf is a sport. And, the more I think about this, the more I want to go "AAaaasrghhhh!!!" It is such a stupid statement, I can't believe people keep making it. It is actually even more stupid than claiming science is a religion. At least people "do" science. You don't "do" atheism any more than you "do" not-playing-golf. "What are you doing today?" "Not playing golf" "Again! You must be really good at it by now" p.s. I know there are some people who go to Atheist Churches, but they are oxymorons.

It looks like someone has resurrected(*) the old story as an April Fool's joke. (*) Doubly appropriate as it is also Easter! I seem to remember there was a bit of scandal and some resignations over this because it turned out that some senior people knew what the problem was but kept it quiet to gain more publicity. (Or something.)

There have been attempts to build fusion power generators for decades. We are not much closer. It is just really hard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

Oh, of course. Why did no one think of that before?

Does it exist? No. Is it possible? It seems unlikely.

The results of last year's test are pretty bad; only 10% of people did better than chance:

The problem is that the answer is obviously no ...

I didn't understand what your graph was supposed to show. (Your calculation in the red box is incomprehensible.) You would need to work out full used vs travel time and what you want to achieve. There is no general answer otherwise.

There is always a trade-off between journey time and fuel used. I am fairly sure it would be more efficient to accelerate half way and then decelerate half way. But it depends on what your constraints are. The important point is that velocity is relative. So you may see an object with velocity v and calculate the kinetic energy as [math]\frac{1}{2} m v^2[/math]. But someone else, in a different frame of reference will see the same object with velocity v' and they will calculate the kinetic energy as [math]\frac{1}{2} m v^{\prime 2} [/math]. And, if v (or v') gets large then you will need to use the relativistic equation for kinetic energy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy#Relativistic_kinetic_energy_of_rigid_bodies

Good point. Maybe this is one of those cases where the analogy only makes sense to people who already understand the concepts!

That sounds more like philosophy than physics.

I'm not sure what you are asking. If you are asking what is the best point to start reducing your speed to reach the destination at zero velocity, then it is half way, even if you take relativity into account. No. But they are only valid in a single frame of reference. Energy is observer dependent. For example, if we are moving at different speeds, we will each measure the speed and the kinetic of an object differently.

But we can measure the effects predicted by the theory. Nowhere does the theory say we should be able to see the future. Not a very good star man argument. Must try harder. Not yours though. That is not exactly a surprising fact. It doesn't appear to novel, interesting or relevant.

The Culture is a future society invented by Ian M Banks.

Neither. It will be like this: Where velocity is the velocity as seen by the "stationary" observer as a fraction of the speed of light Note that velocity always increases. The rate at which velocity increases (Newtonian acceleration) decreases. You get closer and closer to c but never reach it.

I don't know if it helps, but you can get liquid-crystal devices that modulate the phase of reflected light. These can be used to create holographic images, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_light_modulator