With your current background, you could get a job in technical writing. Every firm that does engineering needs people like you who:

* Understand the subject matter
* Can write about it readably

When you say pencil, I'm pretty sure you mean "graphite". A lovely and useful substance, to be sure, but not especially close to graphene.

Virgin Submarine Plan - the "Eaten Alive" of enterprises...

It would be. So would learning how to change the paper in a printer. So would be training for reading documentation thoroughly. And giving presentations. And enough accounting and finance to get by talking with a CFO. There are many things that could be useful to many students. But this is CS. And there's already a lot of material to cover. Teaching is no more important than any of those other things.

That's effectively what they are. They don't do the testing. They simply tell you how much testing you have to do before you don't get charged with a federal crime by selling your poison. If you left it to the courts (which is what all Libertarian types like to do), you'd be decrying judges finding against doctors who prescribed under-tested products because that's not "free market" either. So to fight it, you go about bandying "facts" like implying that the FDA does the testing. They don't they just set the standards. Or should theree be no standards? Do you hate them, as well?

Just face it - you folks hate government and there's not a damn thing it ever does right in your eyes. As such, you're not adding to the debate - you're just mouthing platitudes. Yes we remember your side of the issue. Though, honestly, we've heard it before. And sadly, it's just as stupid now as when we first heard it. It's as religious to the free market as Catholics are to Christ. Take your faith-based economics and go away.

Only two? I got a boatload. Although now I just look at those phrases as tools in a game played to separate fools from money. In the end, they're only Rorschach ink blots showing the con men the fastest path between the marks' hopes and fears.

As usual, normal technology caveats apply. Don't discard wheat needlessly, but do your best to look in places where the wheat/chaff ratio is relatively high. And that ain't IoT.

Picking the rulers?!

Oh, how quaint hat you really think there is any difference other than in the level of technology involved.

Yes, there are. For example, we don't hold them to the same level of accountability as people. We do not punish corporations nearly as hard as individuals. What this says about our morality is as fascinating as the legal reasoning behind the quasi-personage of the state (which is no more a "given" than our morality).

Hmmm... Never got past (2) - or at least what seems to pass for (2) in the TLA's eyes. Didn't care much. I guess that means I'm even more of a degenerate.

So we'd do better splitting on what people vote on? Bad information and demagoguery? Maybe with a dash of party-line built in?

Actually, that sounds like what we have today.

Jean McKenzie has been Executive Vice President of Mattel since September 2012. She was named President of American Girl Jan. 1, 2013. Prior to re-joining Mattel in 2011 as Senior Vice President-Marketing, she was President and CEO of Gateway Learning Corporation and Senior Vice President for The Walt Disney Company. From 1989-1998, Ms. McKenzie served in various executive positions at Mattel working on the Barbie brand, most recently as Executive Vice President and GM of Worldwide Barbie for Mattel.

Not sure if this makes the screw-up better or worse...

Over on Dice, contributor Bennet Haselton writes....

On news tonight - an informational black hole formed at Dice headquarters in New York today. John Smallberries, NIST Underdirector for Strategic Initiatives said, "It appears that a company, Dice Holdings, tried to post their normal daily Bennet Haselton article. When they did that, they neglected to measure the amount of negative information that this article contained and failed to isolate it properly. The amount of negative information was so great that it started absorbing any intelligence that was close to it and the process now seems to have formed a closed loop. We know that, if not stopped, the resulting absorption of intelligence from the rapidly expanding stupid horizon around what we are now calling a "Haselton-type neginfo black hole" could potentially destroy civilization. We continue to search for an answer. The only positive news that we have to offer is that the black hole seems to be growing relatively slowly, as the investment banking community in New York has already driven away most of the intelligence that could feed the hole. We've attempted to send volunteer scientists across the threshold in an attempt to find a way to shut this phenomenon down. None of them have returned. We extend our sincerest condolences to theses brave scientist's families and continue to look for a solution to this dire emergency. I have no further comment at this time."

A rising tide may not lift all boats. Let's say that rather than giving your hybrid to all neighbors, you give it to the world. Now everyone in the world raises yields by 50 bpa. And now, you've glutted the market and the price per bushel is so low no one makes a profit, so the farmers go bust. Or the farmers agree to destroy commodities to keep the price up. That happened with dairy products during the great depression. Dairy farmers produced too much, prices collapsed, farmers could no longer buy feed for their cattle, and went out of business, destroying their herds in the process. This brought about farm price support programs.

The moral of the story? If you want a rising tide for boats when supply increases, demand has to rise, as well. As you have failed to address the demand side and assume an infinitely elastic market, you lose, economically-speaking.

Next time, we'll introduce you to the concept of inequitable distribution of market gains, so you can understand that rising tides do not lift all boats equitably, so even if a rising tide does raise all the boats, a majority of the fleet's captain's can still all feel poorer as a result of the process. Remember that, at the core, we're still dealing with human psychological processes here. Even if you raise the boats, relative level matters - especially if you want to look at rational models of effort vs. probability of reward.

Which, if any, particular Disney princesses do you rate as "mindless bimbos"?

All of them? Because they're essentially sold characters who do not protest being sold? I thought selling people was wrong. But not these people. As such, they help to send a message that it is fine for some humanoids (or parts of their aspects) to be commoditized. Bad message on many levels... even worse for kids, who do not need to learn to use other people as commoditized tools for their own pleasure.

OK, that's harsh. But maybe one could uplevel this discussion a bit to point out that in a society where just about anything is commoditized, it might be a good idea to question that assumption, first.

We pay attention because Sweden is frequently held up as a model for the US by American progressives.

Yeah. Because American progressives have so much power these days... Snort. Try again...