I tried Wings3d first, and it's easy to get into and make some compositions of cubes and spheres and whatnot. There's a good starting tutorial here where you make a simple table.

However, as a programmer, I find it much faster and more intuitive to use OpenSCAD. Instead of clicking on things and moving them around on the screen, you edit code that generates the objects. There are thousands of examples to get you started at thingiverse. Here's one of mine.

At the other extreme, Google Sketchup is excellent for the "click and drag objects around" approach. Its UI is way more powerful than Wings3D, and it may even be an easier starting point for non-programmers.

People hate feeling stupid, and if you pass information to them in a way that makes them feel smart, it will stick better. Your average undergraduate doesn't care about what you're trying to teach them, but they DO care about looking better than their peers, and looking good to employers. Knowledge isn't an end, it's a means to an end. Before you try to teach something, make sure it's something they want to know (even if it's for a stupid reason).

A personal trainer helped me a TON. Wife and I went together for a year. It cost a bunch, but it established a habit. And the habit has stuck since. Now the game is, if one of us skips a gym session, that person must pay $20 the other's favorite charity. The EFF only made $60 from her last year :)

So Aaron Swartz did not get fairly treated by the justice system. THIS DOES NOT IMPLY THAT EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD GET THE SAME TREATMENT. The justice system is what needs to change.

Been playing since the 3AM release. It's worked *nearly* perfect. The achievement server has been up and down, but that does not impact any aspect of gameplay.

If Facebook has taught us anything at all, it's that trust becomes a non-issue for people, as long as the "vanity" and "convenience" payoffs are high enough.

The job of police and prosecutors is to establish guilt. They are not there to help you. They are there to harm you in any way they can. Do not talk to them at all if you can avoid it.

Don't Talk To Cops is a video detailing exactly how someone who is PURELY INNOCENT can have their words twisted to prove their "guilt". If you have not watched this, watch it. Make your kids watch it too.

I think that's the right button.

Since when can corporations act like governments?

Yep, it totally ignores cases where multiple threads can be chewing on the same piece of RAM without conflict. My domain is image processing, and as long as each thread can access its own sub-chunk of the image, parallelizing my code takes near-zero overhead. I don't have to split the data into chunks at all.

See subject line, FTFY.

I solved this problem by getting a good set of isolation headphones. When I'm trying to seriously work on something, I put them on, and I can't hear the outside world at all. It takes people that much more effort to bug me - they have to tap me on the shoulder. So a lot of non-serious requests just never happen.

+1, with you on all counts. I started out working mostly from home. It meant that all my waking hours were taken up either working, or feeling guilty that I wasn't working. I would feel obligated to work well into the night, especially if I'd been lazier about working during the day. No one was counting my hours or anything, I just constantly felt guilty for not being more productive. Now I come into work, and I feel less guilty for relaxing at home.

But I have a 5-minute commute, and I'm wishing it was longer, because sometimes work still manages to come home with me. And I find myself wandering into work on off-days just out of boredom (granted, I have a cool job.) Maybe something around a 15-minute transit time would work better.

This is one of her better talks.
It's a little more technical, but also more exciting.

I think they had a different purpose in mind: recognizing scientists who are already awesome, so as to hold them up as inspirational figures. Other prizes exist for up-and-coming researchers.

I can't speak for most of the scientists on the list, but two days ago I had the pleasure of seeing Cornelia Bargmann speak, and she was AMAZING. Some of her talks are on Youtube, and I highly recommend them:
Genes, the brain and behavior

They're accessible enough for the general public.