Trust me, "scientists" don't spend 8-10 years as a student (plus more as a post-doc usually), making no money to get rich. They are mostly just intelligent, curious people with a desire to know how the world works. Your typical "scientist" isn't hauling in the cash and most of them work at tenured jobs where they'd get paid regardless of what they publish. Besides, at this point you're not grabbing anyone's attention when you say that climate change is real and that humans are at least part of the cause. This is agreed upon. No one is "debating the issue".
You are correct on one point. We do need to get real about this. We need to convince the masses that science isn't out to get them. Science just measures the world and shares its results. (And not by looking out the window.)

1.) Vote for the candidate who you calculate might best influence the nation in the way you prefer, knowing that it can't possibly and wont ever be perfect. (Which is okay because you also have your own life outside of the goings on of the nation)

2.) Don't vote. By doing this you are stating that you are fine with the odds of each candidate winning staying as they are because you agree relatively with their positions by that weighting.
2.a) You can tell others not to vote. This is an act of anarchy because you do not know who they might have originally voted for nor your complete sphere of influence.

3.) Get involved in politics and see just how hard it is to 1) achieve and maintain power while holding to your principles and 2) convince everyone else that your ideals are good for them too.
3.a) Start your own party and stop bitching about the lack of options.

10 million dollars is peanuts. Besides, why hold back progress, especially when that progress is actually innovative and tries to make things better for everyone?
North America was built on invention, innovation and beating everyone else to the punch. Without that drive, the economy sags and other parts of the world start to dominate (i.e. like right now).

...Then they didn't go to Waterloo, or they did but didn't pass. I have to wonder how low the bar is for your typical college CS degree is, if that statement can hold ANY water at all.

Data structures, algorithm theory and design fundamentals, run time analysis, software engineering paradigms, formal languages and parsing theory, complexity and computability, formal logic, operating system fundamentals, compiler fundamentals, matrix algebra and vector calculus are just some of the REQUIRED courses for a CS degree at Waterloo. Then you have to pass a bunch more courses of your choosing.

Don't other degrees require graduates to have studied similar topics? While you could learn these things on your own, its easier with a prof, TAs, peers, structured schedules, etc... (IMO expensive but worth it)

He shouldn't count his French what?
Did you mean to say "You don't count your French votes" or "You don't count your French fries" or something else?

Your comment certainly shouldn't count as it's not English.

I taught myself to program in the summers. That is now my profession. I have to believe that many children/teens also take advantage of summer as a time to look into and pursue interests/hobbies that end up becoming careers.

We need some hackers with a human touch.

Really? You think there are 3.5 billion people in the world who are in a position not to be able to transition away from meat if they wanted to? How do you come to that conclusion?

In most places, meat is the most expensive and least abundant food commodity. Grains, legumes, vegetables and fruits, (some of the cheapest food commodities, except in frigid regions) in the right combination can very easily replace nutritional value of meat. With dairy, that replacement becomes nearly trivial. Pretty much anywhere you can have meat, you can have dairy and its more sustainable because you keep the animals alive.

There are select communities of people (i.e those living in polar or mountainous regions) who genuinely rely on meat nutritionally. I would be shocked if this is most of the planet.

http://co2isgreen.org/ ...So according to this, anyone belching lots of planet saving C02 must be a commie, tree-hugging hippy!

Stop the damn dirty hippies, use solar power!

How are those mutually exclusive and how did you get 3 points?

The term pop music is a loaded term now-days. The whole structure of the industry has changed.

Pop music that makes the charts is often music largely constructed by the big record companies. They produce music to maximize profit, so its no surprise that it is unexciting musically. They are catering to the lowest common denominator. By design they want music that offends no one and that nearly anyone could listen to. Thus you get the most bland, re-hashed music possible. Is this what is found in the 'Million Song Dataset'?

However, there is a whole other world of pop music on the internet and playing in the local venues. It is popular in that millions of people world wide are listening to some of these musicians, but they aren't being backed by the big music stations, promoters, etc. This type of pop is much broader musically because it is made for the love of music (or at least it can be) and can be adopted by audiences with a more specific taste in music. It has the capacity to be more experimental both intra and inter genrely. I would argue that it is a time of explosive creativity in this realm because of how easy it is for musicians to enter the game and then to share ideas world wide. There are SO many bands right now doing interesting things, everywhere.

In short, the 'Million Song Dataset' does not contain the million reasonably popular songs that were produced last year. (Or if it does, it has a poor name).

Instead, I would argue that female gamers and women who look at porn are also destroying our generation... If I were to make a parallel/gender-neutral argument that is.

My room-mate got the call once, lead them on for a while and then hung up. The woman (with a strong Indian accent) called back and yelled at him "fuck your mother!"

Ballmer's problem was that he was too focused on developers... While I kid, as a developer for X360 (and *shudder* Ps3) and also Windows, I can vouch for the strides Microsoft has made in their development platforms/environments in the last 10 years. Hell, for C# and the FREE Visual C# IDE alone, I'd like to hug the man.

I was browsing on my Dreamcast in 1999.