Competition and expense at elite colleges is really tough for my kids. Today, I don't think I would have gotten into the colleges I attended 30 years ago. And I hear most of the parents of my generation griping about competition from incoming foreign students.

No, I say this is good. The USA college tuitions have been going up 3 times the rate of inflation for three decades. While much of the increased annual fees go to "need based" tuition scholarships, the university endowments have funded an arms race on "country club" campuses complexes, the maintenance of which draws from the same tuition and fees. Students are paying for the lavishness. MOOC (massive online open courses) have been proposed as the solution, providing the education without the cost of the colleges' overhead.

As this would trend, the smaller and middle reputation colleges would fold and get privatized (which has not worked well at all). Colleges like, say Hendrix in Arkansas or St. Mike's in VT, are fine schools with good professors, and they'd be the victim if it weren't for an increase in students who can afford to pay the full tuition. If the country club and reputations of US colleges didn't attract foreign full-tuition paying students, the only solution would be more college debt, which is already unsustainable. So if my kid (with better grades, scores, and languages than I had) didn't get into the "A-List" college I attended, I'm satisfied she'll find more people as smart as she is at the less prestigious school, and that all the foreign tuition coming into this program will float all boats.

The only two things most people remember about college are 1) the interesting people they met (friends, faculty, etc) and 2) the debt they leave with. MOOC's only address the latter. More wealthy foreign students paying full tuition addresses both.

"Sorry, my dear Intelligent Kneecap. We've had good times together, but now you know aye too much!"
*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*
[Drags rest of self away from crime scene.]

'cause they aren't getting our money fast enough yet?

Re #2, Teh Beeb or someone on the telly said that the IPO was already for a front company, 'cause foreigners aren't allowed to own Chinese companies.

Also said some potential investors are shy because it's not clear whether / how long China will tolerate the kind of workaround set up for the IPO.

You beat me to it, 'cause I paused to look it up. He was a woodcutter, not the thieves' leader. The wanted to kill him because he knew how to get their treasure.

Not that that version of the story is particularly reasurring for an IPO either...

s/customer/consumer/

All missiles have civilian applications: governments can use them to blow up civilians, and malcontent citizens who can get their hands on the can use them to blow up governments.

And other governments are always there to provide missiles to the malcontents.

Once it's built it will probably only employee low-paid assembly line workers and some managers.

(Which isn't STEM, but may still be an improvement on the way the USA has been hedded for the past few decades.)

A factory that makes giants.

Anyone can get a sweetheart deal in Nevada. Microsoft and Amazon are already firmly established their.

Nevada's economy is so weak that there was once serious consideration of reverting its rushed statehood.

Most people don't understand the compliance. There's good and bad, but there's no going back once your industry (candle makers, software writers, barbers, whoever) adapts a standard it invariably becomes a tool of an authority.

Good: What I like about it is that our certifications increase accountability by encouraging recording mistakes. The "routine" of flagging mistakes and finding root causes and formalizing "corrective and preventative action" has been good and improved our company.

Bad: These standards are adapted by many companies in order to reduce competition, take away via consensus unique individual methods for doing things. They become almost like a "union", punishing individual innovation via auditors that view the world inside a "box". Uniqueness and innovation are an increased cost and risk to the third party auditor, and the auditor is ready to adapt the majority interpretation - which is usually to increase barrier of entry into the field of competiton.

As Morris Kleiner, the AFL-CIO chair in labor policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, put it "Occupational licensing has either no impact or even a negative impact on the quality of services provided to customers by members of the regulated occupation."

But dealing with reality is very logical.

If you don't want people to see pictures of you naked, don't take the pictures.
And if you do, don't put them on a computer.
And if you do, don't put them on a computer on the internet.
And if you do, don't put them on someone else's computer on the internet.

If they're out there, someone is going to get them.

Two of which are irrelevant for deciding constitutionally.

And if a higher court has already agreed that what they are using the Patriot Act to justify is constitutional, they need merely cite the case. Otherwise they're just trying to blow smoke up the judges' asses. Or arguing that Appeals Courts' opinions don't matter.

(I wouldn't think either was a good strategy for an argument in an Appeals Court, but maybe they think Appeals Courts' judges are stupid.)