A "science" degree in creationism certainly isn't a degree in science. There is no way I would ever hire anyone with such a degree. If anything, I would see them as potentially being very disruptive in the workplace.

Woah there, bud. Be careful. That might be religious discrimination.

Yay law of unintended consequences!

Why the fucking fuck is the government dictating what PHDs a University and issue, anyway? Does this draconian, freedom-hating measure only apply publicly funded universities, or is it anyone?

Well technically you are not giving it. It's your children or grandchildren who will ultimately pay the bill for the debt incurred by this generation. (Thanks mom and dad, or grandma and grandpa.)

Technically, most of them will have it taken at gunpoint; only a few will willingly give it.

My, how different the world looks with hindsight.

Hindsight? I've been saying the housing bubble is going to burst for the last 5 years ('03 to about '08, when the mantra became, "See, I fucking told you so!"), arguing with my Realtor friend, and I don't know shit about economics. It was just so unbelievably obvious to me that it's hard for me to believe our "officials" didn't see it coming. Doubly so when they then proceeded to take actions that in fact made it worse, rather than heading it off at the pass. And got rich in the process. The government version of Enron, anyone? Literally. s/stocks/housing/gi and you have the biggest fucking pump and dump scheme ever concocted by man. First at the expense of speculators, then big corporations, and now the American Taxpayer. And us fucking morons are voting for more anal raping at the expense of these losers, which is why we elected Obama over McCain instead of throwing them both to the dogs and getting Ron Paul or (shudder) Bob Barr in there. Kenneth Lay is probably snickering at the genius of it all and kicking himself in the ass for not thinking of it himself.

No, far from surprising, this seems downright intentional to me.

I'm not alone, either. In fact, other silly Austrian-school economists were predicting the housing collapse for way longer than myself. It was never a question of if for them, but rather of when.

Now, I'll admit I never saw the investment banks or AIG getting tanked, but that has less to do with the predictability of the situation and more to do with me not knowing shit about economics and not having thought it all the way through. Although in some sense, it's impossible to think through what all the unintended consequences of government action might be. Just today I was thinking about how the government has poured trillions into the banks trying to get them to lend, and they still aren't, and I was theorizing about why that was, and realized that there was a potential scenario where the more money you injected, the less incentive there would be to lend it out. On the surface, it seems retarded that making more money available would make lending harder, but when you really think it through, there's a good reason why it might. And if I do say so myself, that's a pretty big fucking unintended consequence.

In closing, a random related tangent: it's only the big government Keynes that have been blindsided by this, which should tell you something about that economic model/theory...

Depends on where you're coasting.

Many modern vehicles (actually, pretty much everything with EFI and electronic ignition, ie. just about everything after '99 or so) turn off the fuel injection if there is no throttle and the engine is above a certain RPM.

If you're coasting on a long downhill stretch, and using the brakes to slow you when you'd maintain in 5th or 4th, you're actually not doing yourself any favors by idling the engine (idling uses gas, engine braking doesn't until the engine is turning too slowly).

My car is rather amusing going down Mt. Hood. If I put it in second around 20mph or so, there is just enough engine braking to slightly slow the car going down hill, but when it hits ~1,100 rpm, it surges as the fuel injection comes back on, up to about ~2,000 rpm, where it shuts off again.

The disadvantage is that, on the way home, it's almost 40 miles straight down hill. I can literally go almost 55 miles without the engine warming up if I engine brake. This, obviously, is quite bad for the engine. Of course, I idle down the first leg in neutral (or just put it in 3rd/4th), using the brakes to maintain speed, the car warms up in a couple of miles...