Or, the system automatically keeps your car a specified distance from the vehicle in front of you.

Definitely not serious, but super fun: "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

I had acid reflux from the time I was 15 years old. By the time I was 22 it had eaten holes almost through my esophagus, so I had Laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication surgery. They basically wrapped part of my stomach around the valve and it tightened it up. No more heartburn.

On the down side, I no longer can vomit, so there's that. (Confirmed after the not-so-smart decision to try every booth at a chili cook-off.)

So what happens when you'd normally need to vomit?

Nature finds a way :) (Door #2)

I suppose if it was an alcohol poisoning situation or something like that, I have to get my stomach pumped.

Not a single good place in the entire United States to move to?

Miami, Savanna, Boston, NYC, Austin, Vermont, Minneapolis, Duluth, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Nashville, Colorado, Scottsdale, Vegas, Tahoe, San Diego, Seattle ...

It seems like there are a lot of different climates and feels to choose from ...

Red/Green/Blue Mars is authored by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Oh right. It's been a while since I read them. I have Robinson's 2312, which I guess is a sequel to the Mars trilogy. Has a train city running along the dark side on Mercury propelled by the sun on the light side expanding the tracks. I got distracted and never finished the story.

If it is actually an average of one every 3 minutes 14.159265359 seconds ... now you've got something.

The length of the minute and second are arbitrary.

You mean not every civilization chooses to make their unit of time multiples of 9,192,631,770 cesium-133 oscillations? /s

Plus, if they don't use Tau by convention, they aren't even worth discovering in the first place.

Now you've come full circle. You'll next be suggesting we use IBM 360 computers. http://ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/z-os/complete_360/

Dream-killer. :P

That would be meaningless. Pi is 3.14159. But 3 minutes and 14 seconds is 3.23333 minutes. There's no special relationship between the numbers "3" and "14" in different arbitrary bases...

Without checking the interweb, isn't Stuart Smalley == Al Franken?

Al Franken - Real person, writer and cast member on SNL, Senator.

Stuart Smalley - Character played by Al Franken.

Jack Handey - Real person, writer on SNL, did Deep Thoughts voiceovers.

Yes, that was one of his more notable characters.

I worked for that organization from 1996-2005. Nothing earth-shattering:

- Requirements Reviews with Customer, Requirements Analysts, and Testers all sitting around the same table going over them word by word. (e.g. 12 people to review changing an interface by one parameter so that a new value can be displayed in the cockpit.)

- Code reviews with 8 people around the table going over the changes line by line.

- Independent organizations performing unit tests and system tests on the software. Again, with 10 people around the table going over your test results line by line, plot by plot.

Those code reviews are more commonly called inspections or code walkthroughs and are very very uncommon. Everyone wants to cheap out on testing and quality :/

38 Sioux in Mankato, MN 1862. This sounds like a lynching, but it was the sanctioned by the government, so maybe it doesn't fit the definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibley_Park

I'm thinking you would want to keep batting around the cycle of various meals. Seems like you wouldn't get the full nutrient coverage with only one or two (or five) different meals. Sometimes I really crave a salad with a bunch of vegetables. Sometimes I crave meat. Makes me think my body knows something.