the puppet master in the White House is a Muslim. And, by "puppet master" I am not referring to Obama - he is the puppet!

Um... what? I can't tell if this is satire or not.

nobody outside the US even remotely takes that "controversy" serious

Hell, most scientists inside the US don't take the "controversy" seriously, or even notice it most of the time. The only reason most of us care is because those fuckwits keep trying to legislate their mythology into the public schools, otherwise they'd be worth no more thought than, say, flat-earthers or faith healers. And in large parts of the country, e.g. liberal urban areas like the one I live in, it's not even an issue in schools either. (God knows our public schools have enough other problems...)

identified Christians as potential extremists

Identified specific Christians as potential extremists. And they do exist - why is this in any way a surprise? Every faith-based ideology (Marxism obviously falls into this category) eventually attracts violent nutjobs. Even Buddhism has violent extremists, some of whom are currently hard at work ethnically cleansing a Muslim minority in Myanmar. There are also left-wing environmentalist extremists, along with Maoists and anarchists, all of whom the DHS and FBI also track.

Among other things, I find it curious that DHS was searching so hard for "non-Islamist" extremists - almost like Islamist extremists had DHS tacit approval.

The fact that most worldwide religious extremists are currently Muslim does not mean we should give a free pass to domestic extremists just because they happen to follow your preferred religion. (And what makes you so certain that the DHS wasn't investigating domestic Islamists too?) Since Christians are an overwhelming majority in the US, it is certainly logical to look for extremists in that population, especially since they may have an easier time blending in, and there are existing organized extremist groups, some of which have a long history of violence. (I should note that Timothy McVeigh was an "honorably discharged military veteran".)

It will never again occur in academic labs, because academics has been undermined by the multiple generations of decreasingly literate students.

The students you describe don't end up in academic labs, at least not for any job more important than cleaning glassware. Everyone doing real work already has a BS degree at a minimum, and most of them either hold PhDs or are in graduate programs. (Also, a huge fraction of them are immigrants, at least in the US.) Some of them are pretty sloppy nonetheless, but there's absolutely not a surplus of semi-literate scientists in academic research (as opposed to small technical colleges).

I'm just saying that the science rot we're seeing is not coming out of the corporate labs.

Corporate labs have a very different incentive system, and at least in most areas of the biomedical sciences, they publish far less in peer-reviewed journals. What they do publish will usually be better vetted, but this comes at the expense of taking much longer - because, of course, their scientists aren't dependent on (rapid) publication for career advancement. (The issue of applied vs. directed research is a separate problem - very few companies can afford to do truly undirected basic research.) There are certainly things that could be changed about academia to mitigate the problem; the current system of grad students and postdocs doing most of the work in academia is a disaster. (I say this as someone who has spent more than a decade in this system.)

Where you err is assuming that you can simply weed out the bad actors through some kind of personality test. Contrary to your supposition, very few people go into academic research for any impure motivation, and it isn't simply a problem with the people in power. Much of the fraud and incompetence is produced by junior researchers who aren't rich or famous or powerful, and are motivated solely by the need to advance to the next stage in their careers. And there are plenty of examples of people who are motivated in part by "money or power or attention", but also manage to do excellent science at the same time. (Craig Venter is one obvious example, but there are plenty of pure academics who are equally ego-driven.) But in general, everyone following this career path is fundamentally interested in and excited by science, otherwise they would have become doctors or bankers.

Mann will sue your ass off, an innovation he has personally added to the scientific method.

Mann didn't sue anyone for hurting his feelings, or claiming he was wrong - he sued them for claiming, very explicitly, that he had committed fraud, and for calling him "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science".

Yes, yes it is. And that's why Greece is f*'d. Entering into a currency union with a bunch of other nations that have very different economies and politics was a really stupid idea.

Also, government bonds are usually denominated in the country's currency. That means you can always run the printing presses to pay off your foreign debt (something people often forget when discussing US government debt).

That's the whole point. Devaluing the currency means everyone in the country takes a pay cut, at least with respect to imports. but internal prices don't change (at least not immediately). This has the effect of discouraging imports and encouraging exports. Taken to extremes it will mean hyperinflation and financial collapse but used judiciously it's a good economic tool.

Doing AJAX through jQuery these days is only acceptable in small stand-alone pieces of your application.

Care to clarify? I'm not familiar with any of the modern MVC frameworks so I don't understand what the alternatives are as far as AJAX is concerned. I certainly hope we're not expected to deal with XMLHTTPRequests directly...

First Amendment says "Kiss my ass" to export restrictions.

Your Mom isn't much of a "Cyber Criminal" then. I guess she should stick with baking cookies.

True. I've heard her baking is criminal enough.

Was I the only one disappointed that the video on the CNN site didn't involve a huge explosion, preferably upon hitting ground? I find some of these launch failure videos almost pornographic.

(Yes, I realize it's much better for the rocket to burn up in orbit instead of crashing in a populated area.)

It goes against every instinct in my body to defend the GOP, but it's a bit unfair to attack the party for "block[ing] private space" when just below this article was another article about Congress making policy to suit the private space industry, mainly on the Republican side:

The commercial space industry had a great day on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, with the Republican-controlled House Science Committee giving it most of what it wanted while swatting away proposed changes from the minority Democrats.

Among the goodies approved by the committee: a decade-long extension of the moratorium on regulating commercial human spaceflight; a nine-year extension of industry-government cost sharing for damages caused by launch accidents; and an act that would give companies property rights to materials they mine from asteroids.