Wow, "on the internet" means the FBI is always involved because -- hey, it crosses state lines!

So now some media side show and innuendo flame war has caught the attention of three letter agencies. Good, they need another excuse not to go after bankers and people with power doing lot's of crimes and bust some more hippies saving trees.

My guess is that some corporations or interest groups are sending money to politicos in these neighboring states because they want to stop the legalization of drugs.

Or the cops are complaining because they can't get what they used to on confiscated marijuana.

Honestly, if they could hand out pot at high schools to keep kids off Meth -- that would be an improvement.

Isn't thunder created by the vacuum of a collapsing ion trail from the lightning itself?

So the lightning creates a super charged plasma, and that heat and ionization forms a vacuum. Coupled with anti-matter and xray burst you get your perfect Gamma-Ray engine.

Now I did read that we could scan for life outside our solar system by looking for ionized light -- seems that the "left-handed chirality" of amino acids is do to the right-handedness of the more common organic compounds that a Yellow star creates. The right and left-handed carbon compounds cancel out over many reactions and the slight nod to right-handed means they are more plentiful. Since "more building blocks" equals less energy, life -- at least on earth, ended up being left-handed chemical bonds.

A plethora of left-handed carbon compounds on a planet full of life means that the light that bounces off of it will be polarized.

However -- if we can say that Lightning is created on planets with magnetospheres and oxygen, and likely is the catalyst for life (well, that's my guess -- regards to Mary Shelley). Then we might "more easily" find likely life-baring planets by detecting Gamma-Ray bursts. Should stick out more than polarized light.

Detecting both gamma-ray and polarization might give us a statistical probability for life. We will need some actual sample data more than one, however.

An English major is NOT getting into a STEM Ph.D. program, no matter what.

Even if they were, job prospects are worse for STEM Ph.D. holders than for MS/BS holders—there are far fewer jobs that require Ph.D. level qualifications outside of the professoriate and academics, and for Ph.D. holders in particular, employers are absolutely loathe to hire overqualified people.

Inside the professoriate and academics, the job market is historically bad right now. It's not "get a Ph.D., then become a lab head or professor," it's "get a Ph.D., then do a postdoc, then do another postdoc, then do another postdoc, then do another postdoc, really do at least 6-7 postdocs, moving around the world every year the entire time, and at the end of all of that if you've managed to stay employed at poverty wages using highly competitive postdocs that you may not even get, while not flying apart at the emotional seams, you may finally be competitive enough to be amongst the minority of 40-year-old Ph.D. holders that gets a lab or a tenure-track position, at which point the fun REALLY begins as you are forced onto the grantwriting treadmill and feel little job security, since universities increasingly require junior faculty to 'pay their own way' with external grants or be budgeted out."

And that's INSIDE STEM, which this person is almost certainly likely to be uncompetitive for as a B.A. holder trying to get into graduate programs.

Much more likely is that with great grades and GRE scores they'll be admitted to a humanities or social sciences Ph.D. program, with many of the same problems but with CATASTROPHICALLY worse job prospects due to the accelerating collapse of humanities budgets and support on most campuses.

Ph.D. is absolutely not the way to go unless you are independently wealthy and are looking for a way to "contribute to the world" since you don't actually have to draw a salary.

For anyone with student loans, it's a disastrous decision right now, and I wouldn't recommend it.

I say this as someone with a Ph.D. who is on a faculty and routinely is approached by starry-eyed top students looking to "make the world a better place" and "do research." Given the competition out there right now, only the superstars should even attempt it, and then only if they're not strapped for cash. Hint: If you don't know whether or not you're a superstar, you're not.

I think in a decade I've strongly recommended that someone enter a Ph.D. program once, and greeted the suggestion favorably maybe three times total, out of thousands of students, many of them with the classic "4.0 GPA" and tons of "books smarts."

In short, I disagree strongly with the suggestion. Unless you absolutely know that you're competitive already on the academic market, DO NOT GO. Don't listen to the marketing from the schools; it's designed to drive (a) your enrollment and tuition, and/or (b) your cheap labor as a teaching assistant/research assistant forever once you're in the program. It's a win for the institution, not for you.

The easiest sanity checks: Do you know exactly what your dissertation will be about and what you'll need to do, in broad strokes to conduct your research, as well as what resources you'll need? Do you already have personal contact with faculty on a well-matched campus in a well-matched department that are championing you and that want to bring you in as one of their own students/assistants?

If you answers to either one of these questions is "no," then while you may be offered a position somewhere, you will be on the losing end of the deal and would be naive to take it.

You can paint a sign on an elephant and call it a Petunia for all I care. Hitler has more in common with our Republican/Conservative Party in the USA than almost anything you could mention right now.

Both sides are allowing the wealthiest to buy the rules -- so in a few more years, it won't really matter who runs the stage show. I want a living wage, and I don't want to panic about health care and retirement. Even risk-taking super trapeze artists can use a safety net. Hitler was Progressive only in the sense that he made progress. He was socially regressive however. Remember, they persecuted people.

Whomever is not for war, not for companies over people, doesn't manipulate currencies, and above all else, values human life the most -- well, that's the person who is not like Hitler. Which group is suggesting we send a bunch of latin American refugees back across the border when the drug cartels are slaughtering school buses full of people? A lack of compassion and blind obedience to ideals is the direction of fascist pricks -- call it anything you want.

From the look of things, this is already happening:

http://www.terapeak.com/blog/2...

Congress does understand. And if you keep a copy of the Fourth Amendment on your computer or cell phone, that's one of the many things that will flag you as a trouble maker.

So you agree with Johnny Ives then?

My first though without even reading the summary:

Of course pointing it to the South would "catch" more integrated spectrum, but not all of that can be converted to electricity efficiently (they are more efficient for longer wavelength), so it should not *hurt* much to till them westwards (or eastwards), where/when blue light ("useless for") is filtered by the atmosphere...

By the way, blue light is still absorbed/heats/damages the cells, but not gets converted to voltage. Or some such... ;-)

Aligning with peak demand might make more sense though.

Paul B.

Can you call Google with this sort of problem with a Chromebook, or would you be calling the vendor?

Our office went 100% Google Plus for communications, and we did have a rep, but I was not aware that they supported the touchscreen devices.

I remember about a year ago that Apple and IBM announced that they would be coordinating in Enterprise and adopting IBM solutions. So I'd say that there may be big progress in the near future in this space. IBM has a lot of strengths where Apple is weak.

As someone who has done some tech support for schools using touch devices, I can say that your "enterprise management" wish list while important, isn't likely a big issue except for all but the largest school systems. In addition, some of the largest school systems seemed to have the most problem with technology. Most schools don't even have their WIFI set up in a reliable way.

The most important factor is reliability and robustness of the device. Our number one support call was clearing the cache on an iPad. People ran these things without ever clearing an app out of memory -- for years. I don't know of any other computing device in consumers hands that runs for years without a reset -- but apparently, iPads do it all the time in schools.

Not having a keyboard, being able to easily lock them down, and the quality of the build is what is making the iPad the defacto standard. Budget sensitive schools have of course TRIED using Android and Chrome and other bargain devices -- and they've gotten burned. Only the Palm and the iPad seem to have a reputation for lasting more than a year. But most of them will not be using enterprise anything for a few more years (I don't disagree that Apple needs to get their act together in that regard).

Sure, you can afford to buy two Chromebooks for the price of an iPad -- and you will have to.

There was panic over Ebola and fewer people in the US have died from it than have been killed by rubber ducks in bath tubs. We've spent at leas $4 Trillion going after terrorists for 9/11 which killed around 3,000 people. We've had more deaths from the flu or collateral damage from SWAT teams. Threats don't seem to be commensurate with their real effect on human life, but in how they manipulate public opinion and divert us from self empowerment. Humanity landed a craft on an asteroid and all most people knew was Kim Kardashian showed her butt on a magazine. Is this really about making money on advertising dollars or do we at some point wonder if there isn't a concerted effort to keep everyone ignorant and fearful?

If we spent our money making America better or the world a better place, we'd be more secure and the average American would be better off. Yes, terrorism is a jobs program -- but one that produces drag on the economy. Scanning each other with metal detectors doesn't teach a kid, it doesn't fix a bridge, it doesn't put a solar collector on a roof. In short; it's yet another way to suck money out of the economy and create support for that waste. Most people are convinced their jobs are vital, and are not created by regulation or makework -- but as we automate more, that's true of more and more people.

And this industry demands fear and insecurity -- if there is terrorist, they have to create one. I'm sure our drone strikes which happen far away from any oversight are creating a new crop of "people who just hate us for our freedom" (and not a lack of opportunity and living under fear and exploitation).

The path we are on is towards a dystopian future. We have to chance course, the same disease that is destroying our prosperity and disenfranchising 3rd world countries is killing the environment and basically making life suck for all but a few. The good news is that we can decide as a people to change this, the bad news is the media and the black box voting machines are owned by the same cabal that profits from the terror industry.

There is a reason we have two ears -- to be able to distinguish the direction the sound is coming from!

But it is not actively clicking and listening to the echo (though probably it would work much worse for a blind person who is also deaf on one ear!)...

Paul B.