Pretty much it's always been that way.

For an example of how corrupt the public school system is, just take Richard Feynman's experience in reviewing school textbooks:

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Maybe so but when you read stories like this, it makes you worry...7 Pakistani muslim chemical engineers arrested for trespassing at Boston area municipal water supply at midnight

Really? Than explain why Africa and South America, regions with the richest natural resources in the world, are also the continually poorest? Or why Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan, islands almost completely devoid of any natural resources, are some of the richest places in the world?

The source of all wealth is human productivity, not raw materials in the ground. Human productivity is only unleashed when property rights guaranteed by rule of law and an absence of burdening government allow for unrestricted capitalism.

Don't forget increasing the chance of asteroid impacts, that wasn't on the list.

No, in fact the reason why they cancelled the plant was precisely because the state's government told them they could not raise their rates to pay for the construction of the plant, and they didn't have $25 billion just sitting around to pay for the whole thing in advance. I'm sure in 10 years when Floridians are paying three times as much for electricity that they wish they took the 5% increase when they had the chance. That's short-term thinking politicians for you though, they couldn't care less what happens in 10-20 years, all they care about is keeping their constituents happy for their next election.

The reason why the plant was cancelled was because the price tag is $25 billion. The price tag is $25 billion because of government regulation overcomplicating and slowing down construction, causing interest on capital costs to balloon to the point of unprofitability.

No. Even in the Soviet Union, with extreme lack luster safety standards, the number of people whom died due to nuclear power in the entire history of nuclear power is fewer than the number of coal miners whom die every month.

You have a pretty poor perspective on things here. The reactors produced 1100 MWe for 28 years with an average capacity factor around 80%. That's ~50 GWe-years or ~1,200,000 megatons TNT (thermal). I'm pretty keeping the lights on in the building for a few decades is a bit less than a million megatons of TNT.

No.

a) by law, the nuclear plant owners pay into a fund for the storage of waste.

b) nuclear waste becomes contact-safe after about 200 years (half life of Cs-137, the longest lived gamma emitter, is 30 years). Pu-239 is not waste, it is fuel. The only dangerous long-lived fission by-product is Tc-99, which can be separated and vitrified easily (although not done in the US currently, the technology has been proven for decades).

Murder is inherently wrong. Owning a gun is not.

EA is certainly not the first to have the problem of release-day loads, but game companies need to stop expecting to ride out the release boom and actually implement a solution that works. I don't expect them to spend huge amounts of money on extra server capacity just for release day, but there are other potential solutions. For example - stagger release dates by geography, random chance, or some other method.

Is there any possible a close encounter to Mars that might cause C/2013A1 to act as if it were orbiting mars, (at least for half a rev duration of that single pass)? And if so, just how much can Mars deflect the orbit of C/2013A1 from what it might have been for centuries?

It is not possible for an object orbiting the sun to become captured by the orbit of a planet, due to conservation of energy. The only way an object can be captured is by either using rockets or aerobraking. However aerobraking alone does not produce a stable orbit since its orbit would continually decay each time it passed through the atmosphere. In order to aerocapture you have to slow down through the atmosphere and then apply thrust at apoapsis to raise the periapsis out of the atmosphere.

I'd imagine the per-kg cost exceeds the value of whatever you could possibly return, even if you found an asteroid made of solid gold and all you had to do was de-orbit it.

Gold = $50k/kg
Delta-IV Heavy = 9000 kg to Earth escape velocity @ $250 million = $28k/kg

If the delta-V requirement to bring a NEO back to earth from earth escape is ~4 km/s, and your rocket was say a RL10 with 100 kN @ 450 Isp, than the final rocket mass m1=mo*e^(-deltav/Isp*g0) would only be ~3600 kg. Assuming the engine + tankage weighs around 1000 kg, we're talking maybe 2600 kg payload return. Again at $250 million launch cost that is $96k/kg, almost double that of pure gold. And it's not like there are actual pure gold asteroids just floating around either. We're looking at a factor of 5-10 or even worse cost difference here.

I don't understand how asteroid mining could be profitable with current technology. What is the delta-V budget for sending engines+fuel+mining equipment to a near-earth asteroid and returning it to earth? I'd imagine the per-kg cost exceeds the value of whatever you could possibly return, even if you found an asteroid made of solid gold and all you had to do was de-orbit it.

Gold = $50k/kg
Delta-IV Heavy = 9000 kg to Earth escape velocity @ $250 million = $28k/kg

If the delta-V requirement to bring a NEO back to earth from earth escape is ~4 km/s, and your rocket was say a RL10 with 100 kN @ 450 Isp, than the final rocket mass m1=mo*e^(-deltav/Isp*g0) would only be ~3600 kg. Assuming the engine + tankage weighs around 1000 kg, we're talking maybe 2600 kg payload return. Again at $250 million launch cost that is $96k/kg, almost double that of pure gold. And it's not like there are actual pure gold asteroids just floating around either. We're looking at a factor of 5-10 or even worse cost difference here.