Federal Loans have little (if any) impact on the cost of education. Federal Loans have a big impact on the Federal Budget and the students they give loans to. The rising cost of Education has everything to do with how Universities spend their money. Ten or so years ago, the University of Michigan had a 50 million dollar surplus in their budget. If they didn't spend that money, they'd not only have to turn it back over to the federal government, but the following year they would have had their money from the Feds cut by that amount. So instead of being allowed to be fiscally responsible and saving the Feds money that year, they had to spend the money (and they did - they built a new building in Ann Arbor that year) or else risk having a budget crisis the following year.

It's not the loans that cause the problem, its our broken ass system and the people that run it.

Fuck you Ron Paul and your ideological bullshit. Do what's right and fix what's broken, not what's easy. Your argument is as rotten as the "fix the voting laws to prevent fraud". It's all ideological horseshit wrapped in bacon.

I used to live in Arizona, and I know that the lack of moisture, clouds, etc make the desert prime for seeing the night sky in an impressive display I've never seen anywhere else. Do we have any idea of the weather around the world at that time? Can we account for every possible scenario that might cause a particular observatory not to have anyone on staff to see this comet (weather, holiday, sick)? Was the comet visible to the naked eye? What if the other observatories were aligned to look at something else - is it possible to miss one event while looking at another? This would be especially relevant if the comet was not visible to the naked eye i would think.

August 1883 perhaps? Exactly how many observatories were in the world in 1883? Exactly where were they located and how many were actively watching the sky? It's not like the technology of the day allowed for claims to be corroborated or recorded in real time.

I'm not saying the original article doesn't have holes, but if you are going to be skeptical about the claim, at least be honest and include both sides of the skepticism.

Works for me. :) At least it did until I found out that Netflix, Hulu and a host of other apps I love on my smart phone (also android) are not available on the kindle fire...

Must be all those Volcanic Eruptions and Illegal Immigrants, I'm pretty sure they're at the heart of everything.

That's an electronic writing pad by iMPROV electronics. They're pretty cool, even if their product name sucks.

:) I missed the humor. My fault, not yours. Was recently listening to a podcast about the state of genetically modified & antibiotic infused foods and I guess it took a bit out of my funny bone on the subject. Companies doing irresponsible things get my goat a bit. Sorry! :(

It is kinda funny they tested seagull poo, I never would have thought to do that. My daughters and I love feeding them by where we live - abandoned grocery store parking lot - but we stay in the car to prevent getting shat on.

Sorry, but just because the FDA hasn't given their oh holy stamp of approval does not mean a treatment you get overseas is untested or unsafe.

It's too bad ISP's won't deliver on their promises of bandwidth, they're just going to change their promises...

You don't need a psychic to see the writing on the wall, but they're in serious financial trouble if they are rebranding.

Kids put their fingers in their eyes and mouth all the time. Sometimes on accident sometimes not.

Just sayin...

Perhaps it's not necessary to treat animals with antibiotics all the fucking time, hmm?

I don't even understand patent law in the first place. Between patent laws and corporations that patent shit someone else worked on I think the whole system has gone off the rails. You shouldn't even be able to patent things that already exist in nature. You didn't invent it, you just figured out how it worked. In this case, the company that got the patent didn't even do the figuring out.

I believe in projects like foldit - the more people working on a problem, the better chances we have of solving it, but it gets really fucking dangerous when a company can come in and patent that work.

It would appear I did suspect wrong. Thank you for clarifying.

In my personal experience, drugs are devastating to lives, not just their own but to those around them, strangers or otherwise. Smoking, eating badly and drinking heavily are bad for you, yes, but the matter of degree is (at least to me) the difference. I think everybody knows fat people, chain smokers and alcoholics and probably have even seen a few recover. For some drugs, the recovery rate is either low or non-existent. I would not legalize crack or meth just like I would not legalize shooting people. In my experience, both hardcore narcotics usage and shooting someone are both potentially one time kills you fatal. I suppose that is where we might disagree.

I will be honest, I do support the "what you do is your business" ideal. I begin to take issue with certain things because of happenings to people around me, and I wouldn't wish some of the shit I've seen on anyone.

I agree, you can't send a small army across the border, but when have drug kingpins used actual soldiers? They just pay armed thugs to do things. In fact, they wouldn't even need to send anyone across the border, there are enough of them over here already, they just contact them and get it done. However, I didn't consider Pfizer or Lily when I imagined legalizing drugs. I guess I imagined that those companies would not want to take part in the bad press of the suddenly legal narcotics trade. I don't think it would sit right with the public, but then again I've been surprised before.

I retract my statement about nationalism, I misunderstood your intention and was out of line. I apologize. :)

If some people would take ONLY themselves out of the gene pool, then great. But we both know that junkies are problematic (at best) for more than just themselves.

A cartel is simply a corporation that doesn't follow anyone else's rules but their own. Believing that you can just shut off the violence simply by adding legitimate industry is a farce. Prohibition is only the same animal by a stretch of the imagination.

You are either forgetting (or don't care) that many stupid people equate legal with good. That's one problem with legalizing everything.

Another problem is that, you assume that the cartels would just give up and go home or not be able to cross the border to get at the US based companies. How do you think they get the drugs here? You don't think an established cartel (basically a small army) can't lean on a corporation? That's a bit naive don't you think?

Your suggestion of nationalism in that it [would suck for mexico] is a bit selfish too, but I suspect you might be a big fan of NIMBY so that's unfortunate. :(