No idea if M. Obama is to blame or not, but someone made the decision to hire this questionable company after they failed time and time again. Who should we blame? I don't think we can blame George W. Bush for this decision in any way since the ACA was not passed until AFTER he was no longer president. More than likely, its simple incompetence and the blame should be placed on the shoulders of yet another incompetent president who can not seem to do anything properly.

And this is sufficient reason to hire them again under a different president when they did not deliver in the past? Unless you are trying to convince us that the Bush Administration is responsible through time travel for this decision to hire them for THIS job.

The real win is that as a male I now pay for maternity care. I can get pregnant and its covered! I love paying for things that I don't want. That is a true win, being forced to buy products when I don't want most of what is offered and than being told that the higher costs are due to my superior older insurance with no deductibles being really junk when this new product is great because it offers services like drug rehab, insanity care for free, and of course the old maternity care.

The real win is that people in insurance that can now sell a product for more money that no one wants with such high deductibles that no one can afford to go to the ER. I used to be able to go, but if a QUICK trip to the ER costs me 2k out of pocket, with insurance paying zero, who do you think really wins because of this? Not the people, that is for sure...because now we can not afford to go to the ER for broken bones. Or those people in the medical fields that are now covered under every insurance plans. The people do not win, because once again politicians are shoving a product down our throats that so very few need nor want, and what we do want (low deductibles) is now considered a taxable service (cadillac insurance) and so what the people really want is of course once again not offered.

Oh? So George W. Bush hired this company to do work on the Obamacare website before the ACA was even passed? I am glad we have your insight into this issue that sure makes a ton of sense. Yes, George W. Bush traveled into the future while he was president, selected this incompetent company just to make Obama look bad, and than zapped himself back into the past. You are right, this had nothing to do with our president who just sat at his desk and was violated by our previous incompetent president who happens to time travel to pass his incompetence onto other presidents as well. Of course the more logical approach to this issue is to stop spinning it like you are and admit that the incompetent policies started under George W. Bush were continued under the incompetent presidency of Obama who despite having the ability to look back and see the mistakes of George W. instead ignored those mistakes, made them worse and now people are blaming the previous president when we should be blaming the current president for being incompetent as badly as George W. Stop making excuses and admit that the current president is just as incompetent as George W. Bush which is what this shows.

Well we can take the partisanship out of it if you wish? All of the stuff Obama plays with could have been stopped at any time while he was president, and yet it still continues and he still voted for the extension of the Patriot Act when he was a senator, so I don't think politics has anything to do with the two political parties who are both statists and just want to control us as much as possible. Indeed, for myself, I call Bush Herr Bush and Obama Herr Obama because they are both fascists of different stripes that get off on telling others what they can and can not do. While bush liked to tell us that we have the right to get groped in airports and have a right to treat people like cattle in Guatanamo Bay, we have Obama busy telling us what we can and can not eat, what kinds of power we can use to generate electricity, and so on and so forth. Its seeming more and more like every politician is just trying to trump the previous idiot/dumbass and take away even more of our freedoms while the people shout out about how their political party is so much better....yea partisan politics has sure solved these issues well.

Of course, both political parties are just being fascists for "our own good" and so will tell us what we can eat, what healthcare we can have, and what we can say via the Patriot Act. There is no freedom party in this country because they are all after their own fascist little power trips and they all want to go to war for "our own good" while we the people get shafted with politicians who use our own money to shaft us and turn around and send our young men to die on their pointless little wars. Politics is dead in the US right now if you ask me, and fascism is alive and kicking with the NSA still recording our phone calls for our own protection. We still live in a free country (sort of) but that has sure changed in the last 15 years when we used to have so many more freedoms. I too wonder where this all ends.

Yes because its the right-wing people who eat fish and go fishing in general while people on the left-wing never eat fish and never go fishing at all. Guess as long as you are insulting the correct half of the country you get moderated "insightful" around here when you use such thoughts as "people on the right stick their sex organs into the ocean without getting consent..." Those evil bastards, no means no! The oceans told me so.

Or this concept that only people on the right trash the planet or are responsible for pollution when its normally those celebrities like Al Gore who have carbon budgets 1000 times more than normal people...

Oh how much fun this is?! Lets explore this concept that nature survival instinct has anything to do with being "not greedy." Yea, good luck finding even one wild animal that does not have this survival instinct to kill everything it can kill competition wise while it will eat itself into starvation mode by eating everything it can see...but somehow our greed which is the definition of instinctual behavior in animals....no that could not be natural when every single species on this planet survives by being greedy, by wasting large amounts of food and taking the choice bits and leaving the rest to rot...No, not only do you use rather poor diction, but your entire premise here betrays a terrible misunderstanding of how nature really works and how in your own words, its the half of the country who you disagree with which is at fault, while the left is completely safe especially Al Gore who right now is probably pooping in his personal jet and dumping it over your head.

So basically our solution to the high cost of wind energy is to radically re-design what we already have because its too expensive as is...and we are supposed to take these people's words for it that their redesign is actually going to be more cost effective? What have these companies been doing the last 40 years with all of this subsidy money? Goofing off? Wasting it? And now they are serious for the first time? Please, if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

So who gave you the right to tell other people what they can do in their own countries? Who gave any of us the right to use ideological belief as a basis for forcing our will onto those in the third world?

You have no right to make that decision, and neither does our Government. Its colonialism all over again where we in the first world assume we are superior to these people, and so we subjugate them by telling them what they can or can not do. You know what they say, those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, and here you go.

If wind is cheaper than coal, why do we subsidize it to a tune of 3x the cost of coal? (5x for off-shore)?

If wind IS cheaper than coal, than we are getting ripped off by rich scam artists who are taking this subsidy money for their own enrichment...and that is something that we should put an end to. So what about it? Is Wikipedia lying to you and letting scam artists get off with subsidies? Or perhaps did they simply add in the subsidies and public assistance which wind receives without telling you to show that hey, the subsidies ARE making the costs line up with reality so that people WILL install wind turbines. We are talking billions of dollars in subsidies every year in Western countries, so this is not chump change. Its big money that we have to keep investing in wind and solar while since the 1970's the same story has been "wind will become economical in the future." The only thing we see is that the cost of subsidies increases every year and the price of electricity likewise increases ensuring that the poor people of our nations have less access to energy and are subjected to fuel poverty while the cost of the subsidies simply becomes a regressive tax where the poor are taxed for wind energy and pay more for energy while the rich pay less in taxes after they install several wind turbines and make money off of the poor. A truly regressive tax....And yet again someone like you posts an article which explains that the money we spend on subsidies for wind and solar are not actually part of the cost of these sources of energy, and so many people believe its true....

Yea, I am sure we can trust a site that does not take subsidies into consideration on the costs of energy production. That is the way to use your noggen.

But don't despair of wikipedia completely, I found this on another wikipedia page (probably written by someone different:)

A 2010 study by Global Subsidies Initiative compared global relative subsidies of different energy sources. Results show that fossil fuels receive 0.8 US cents per kWh of energy they produce (although it should be noted that the estimate of fossil fuel subsidies applies only to consumer subsidies and only within non-OECD countries), nuclear energy receives 1.7 cents / kWh, renewable energy (excluding hydroelectricity) receives 5.0 cents / kWh and biofuels receive 5.1 cents / kWh in subsidies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies So yea, that is three times the subsidies for renewable energy on average. Now why in the world would we hide these facts from the rest of us? Its either a scam like you claim or that wikipedia page is lying to you either through ignorance or on purpose because they are in fact vested in the renewable energy regressive tax. I will leave you to tell me which it is.

I am sure that people who starve to death and freeze to death while dying on average in their 30's really care about how coal might knock off 3 months of their life if they do manage to live to their 70's. Yep, they really would rather freeze to death without a good heat source or die due to malaria or any countless other diseases because they lack infrastructure for clean water, electricity and of course modernized farming and modern healthcare. Yep, that sure makes us all feel better doesn't it? We have ours, but they can't have theirs because we do not like coal. Let's keep them in the dark ages, force them to use the electricity we deem proper, and leave them to die in droves while doctors in Africa who do use the allowed solar power are forced to choose between having proper lightning during the day or using the fridge for vaccines. I am glad you care so much about them that you will act like a big brother without realizing the full extent of their suffering and make decisions based on whims and without consulting them even once. With that kind of attitude, I expect they will be kept in the dark ages for yet another 50 years while those of us in the west make decisions for their "greater good."

There is always far more going on than most people want to believe. The problem is figuring out what exactly is going on. Governments have become experts and indeed surgeons at obfuscation in general, and they cloud up every issue with so much information that the average person only remembers the vague details like how "people who state that the NSA is recording your every internet stop" as being "tinfoil nutters". This was what people stated before Snowden released the proof that the NSA was doing that.....And the Government wants to spin this incident as "nothing to see here, move along", when the truth is that the NSA has been taking a back-door to our constitutional rights and not telling us. Now they will continue to do this out in the public eye and appologize to no one. The very real fact that most of the people who were supposed to be playing "gate-keepers" in congress were on board with this tells us everything we need to know that the US Government is not going to stop spying on every single citizen anytime soon.

Look, you are absolutely right that this is one of the bad parts of the revelations, but the most troubling part of it has nothing to do with how we were lied to, the most troubling part is that this information is now in the public domain and nothing has changed and nothing is being done to change it. The only result is that our Government wants to shoot the messenger who told mommy on it. That is the most troubling aspect...in that our Government is either so incompetent or so full of shit that the best they can do to fix themselves is shoot the messenger. Or how they do not even attempt to fix problems, but instead shoot the people who tell on them or waste so much time on wasting money as with the IRS. The Government is dysfunctional, and has been for some time where instead of firing those who screw up, those who screw up are given promotions to keep their mouths shut. They are only mad at Snowden after all because he told on them.

I must disagree. Most MBA's from college that I know of are sitting at dead end jobs in HR or working for the feds making peanuts. Your assertion that the water boy is doing better today is probably a local example you know of, but for the most part the jocks had to find real jobs which is something they typically are not all that interested in to begin with, and so they lost their primary drive to life and "settled for HR". I feel sorry for them more than anything, because my life calling as a scientist is still going strong while their life calling to be "a professional athlete" is a dream that is dead. Same for people who want to be actors or actresses. Some of them might still be living the dream, but none of them made it from any school I attended which just goes to show that the advantage nerds have is that our professions don't typically toss us out after eating the best years of our life. Rather, they tend to get better the older we get and so a nerd has never had it this good. Perhaps that is perspective? But in any event your experience differs and I see MBA degrees as something I could always get if management appealed to me (its not like the degree is hard for a scientist) but why should I bother when I am happy doing what I am doing? Don't let money, or fame or even delusions of grandeur of athletes hold you back from just having a good and fun life if you are a nerd or if not.

There are countries that are better educated than in the US, but if you look at the facts, America is not all that far behind other countries. Some countries, like Japan stop secondary school at about the high school level for all but the brightest and the richest. This means that only the brightest fraction of children are taught past this level for the most part which means when you do standardized testing in those countries, the test scores far outpace the US. This is not to say that the American educational system is superior, but mainly that we do educate farther than those countries. You are basically comparing all American Children to the brightest Japanese children as a rule, and of course they come out looking better. As for the past, the trend has been other countries getting better at education and as such they start outperforming us when you start comparing like that. In that case, its the same as the example of your "friends who were taught in the old eastern schools". When you compare the brightest to everyone else, you tend to get much worse results. I don't think I have ever seen an apples to apples test that measures this at the secondary level. Most primary testing shows a rather complete picture, but past that its not really accurate. Especially as you get out of the developed world where some people don't get any education.

Personally, our education system for the most part is about the same as it was when we were "great". While other countries are doing better, we are stuck in the same old mold. And we can learn from their lessons and how they got better to better our own system, and that is just common sense.

It has nothing to do with a small American elite. Finland for instance has the same system where children go to school until the high school level where some children go into vocational training. What is the secret to their success and other countries? The most notable thing is that only the brightest teachers are allowed to teach by making an educational degree program as difficult as engineering and highly technical degrees are in the states. This means that teachers are respected (unlike in the US), they make good money, and they are the cream of the crop as far as intellectuals. As it is in the US, anyone can get an educational degree and as a rule everyone looks down on teachers as being the "dumb career choice." And so our education goes downhill in comparison simply because we do not set our priorities. The priorities for Americans has always been high tech, engineering, and high tech toys. Politically, the real solution to the problem is a non-starter because our different political groups are entrenched on other issues and like to kick the can down the road to the next politician.

I agree, no where does it mention that increased condensation is something that will be achieved or water efficiency itself will be increased, its only discussing the efficiency of the heat transport process. I read the article to figure out what he was talking about....and they did talk about a second application that does mention condensation as a power source.

But the finding also suggests another possible new application, Miljkovic says: By placing two parallel metal plates out in the open, with “one surface that has droplets jumping, and another that collects them you could generate some power” just from condensation from the ambient air. All that would be needed is a way of keeping the condenser surface cool, such as water from a nearby lake or river. “You just need a cold surface in a moist environment,” he says. “We’re working on demonstrating this concept.

And I am pretty sure this is what the first poster was mis-reading. The idea behind that second process is that in a MOIST environment with a cold surface, you can achieve power generation in this matter as long as you have the following:

large amounts of cold water AND moist air. The reason the first poster is wrong is that he states that this can be an application in arid regions, which as a rule have neither of the requirements.

Considering that the scientific method was developed by Roger Bacon ( a catholic) who codified the method about 700 years ago for the Catholic Church and is widely hailed as the father of science....... (this was based on the work of others including the Greek philosophers too) I would almost say that saying science without Christian might be wrong in itself. Of course, I am assuming you are joking, but you never do know nowadays. In other words, even back in the Middle Ages Christians in general who controlled most of the universities and in general were in charge of research were constantly looking for methods to better explain the world through logic and deduction. You see, the entire meme that the bible is literal or that we "have it your way" like Burger King with religion on select bible quotes and ignore other quotes that don't agree with "your belief on what Chistianity is" is an entirely newer thing that yes a small fraction of Americans to this day still believe in. I personally don't get it, but don't confuse a small group of nut-cases who can't think things through logically with Christians in general.