I don't think your idea of "just going about your day" would work in my area. Looking for a parking spot where I can pull an extension cord out of the trunk and plug in with every stop I make seems like a major PITA, and there just don't seem to be that many places to plug in around here. Granted, I may just not be noticing them since I'm not looking for them.

I love the idea of an EV and really wanted to like the Prius that I test drove last year, planning to do a plugin conversion. My wife didn't like the interior of the car, and I was concerned about voiding the warranty with the conversion, so we continue to look for a solution that makes sense for us.

Wow. Just wow.

I've heard of states (or counties or cities) giving breaks to corporations for income, property, or other taxes, but I've never heard of an arrangement where the company is allowed to keep any withholdings from employee's payrolls as you claim... do you have a concrete example you could share?

No, this is not a good idea, this is an idea that seems good and laudable on the surface but starts to fall apart under examination. You've already identified one huge problem: "free money" is a large part of the tuition problem now; schools are not motivated to keep costs in check, since a potential student can just get a loan to cover the costs. Distancing the cost further from the individual student to a pool of all former students is even worse.

From the summary:

Higher education has always been primarily an individual good. Sure, society benefits from education too, but the real reason to get a degree is to get a job.
If the goal is to get more people through a college or vocational program, this will have the exact opposite effect. I can't think of a worse way to encourage people to become educated "for the public good" than to tell them as soon as they're educated "society" will be taxing them extra.

My previous employer was self-insured, a fact that they liked to remind us of each year when premiums went up. But even self-insured companies can purchase reinsurance to back catastrophic losses.

"The government" may not make any money off of insurance companies, but lawmakers sure do.

With all due respect, "Large successful companies" don't do layoffs. Large struggling companies do.

And they need to be able to do it. If companies are told they can never let excess employees go, they will be all the more hesitant to hire when they need extra labor.

I have dreams about past jobs where I wasn't 100% sure if leaving was the right decision. Coulda/woulda/shoulda haunts my dreams.

eInk could be updated every minute for a (wait for it) 60x power savings over updating every second, but even running an LCD all the time is possible with only solar, there are watches that do that right now.

As this one hasn't panned out as you had hoped, you might want to consider evaluating how you approach your next contract. Rather than cross your fingers and sign up for 6 months, you might suggest to the company that they bring you on for 12-40 hours of evaluation work. Offer a reduced rate or even to do that work for free, if needed. At the end of that contract, you will provide them with your professional opinion of what it would take to complete the work they are expecting for the full contract. Break it down into schedule and price, present it to them so they can see what you're offering and how you'll be worth it. Price that contract accordingly. If you want the work, emphasize how you are now the most familiar candidtate with the work to be completed. If you don't want the work, finish your presentation explaining how you feel that as a professional, you can't in good conscience accept their contract because they would be throwing good money after bad, but would be more than happy to help them find someone who can.

This approach will tell you several things:

• The health of the code you're about to become responsible for.
• If the company balks at the idea of paying for you to evaluate their code, let that be a warning as to how willing they'll be to pay for "real" work. If their management can't get this straight, expect that they will also jerk you around with their specifications and last-minute changes.
• If their code is an unholy mess, you can decline to bid for the followup work, or at least bid at a rate that makes it worth it to you to slog through it. Declining the work in a professional way, like "I think you will be better served by finding someone else to complete the work; can I refer someone to you?" is miles above taking on the work and then quitting or doing a piss-poor job of it.,

Don't worry about them never hiring you again. If the relationship is going to sour, it's better for both parties to know that up front rather than invest 6 months of time into it.

Fizzbuzz for the win. Depressing, but it is an accurate test.

A wise friend once told me, "You can never overpay a salesman on commission."

Apparently it's very easy to look at a high-performing salesman and think they're overpaid, forgetting the large buckets of money they brought in to lead to their commissions...

I understand that "Oracle" didn't try to low-ball him, it was someone with that particular mental defect who thinks that winning a negotiation means they are powerful. If you're a manager with fiscal authority (in a company of any size) and you give up a talented employee for $10k, you are a doofus. Doing it while discriminating is strike #2, and getting caught is #3.

The last time I moved for a new position, my new employer spent over $20k just in my relocation expenses, and I only moved about 300 miles.

If this guy is so good, why would Oracle try to low-ball him like this? His boss wants to offer him a position with a $60,000 salary that would require him to relocate half-way around the world, and his bosses come back wanting to low-ball the guy by $10k? Assuming the employee has a spouse and maybe a kid or two, they would spend more than this on plane tickets and immigration paperwork, for crying out loud! Oracle, are you really that stupid? This is penny ante thinking!

I've never met anyone with side effects from the polio vaccine that I'm aware of, but I have met people who had polio as children before vaccination became widespread.

Not to downplay the problems that you've had from the vaccine, but do you really think the world on whole was better off before the vaccine? Mortality rates are very high, and those that survive are affected for life.

As a father of 3 (soon to be 5), I'll roll the dice with the vaccine.