I would say they certainly can vote. After all, we've already had our nation's first Chimpanzee President.

As much as we'd all love our cars to drive our drunk asses home from the bars, thereby saving us a cab fare, that's a long way off. I think in the near future, the laws will mirror pilots and autopilots -- even if the autopilot is on, you still need a licensed, non-drunk pilot in the cockpit in the event the autopilot fails. However, I am sure we are not far away before some drunk Infiniti owner tries to use his self-driving car in his DUI defense. Stay tuned to Fark.com for more details on that story, coming at 11.

I cancelled Comcast a year ago when I moved to a new city outside of their service area. Since they could no longer serve me due to being out of their area, they didn't harass me. They cancelled me no problems and I sent the equipment back via UPS with no issues. But they said that I had a $40 credit on my account and that I would be getting a check back in the mail in about 60 days. Ha! LOL! It's been a year and I still have yet to see that check. I should probably send THEM to collections for it,. . . except for the fact that it's really not worth the $40 in dealing with those pathetic excuses for human beings.

I mean, at least they didn't ink a deal with the guys in charge of the Fifth Element. We would all be required to carry a MULTI-PASS!

I used to be a die-hard Windows user throughout the 90s and early 21st century. Until 2011 when I bought my MacBook Pro. I've now come to the sad realization that, in the post Windows XP world, Windows sucks. My employer even gave me a Lenovo ThinkPad to use last year and it sits on my desk collecting dust while my own personal MacBook Pro does most of the work. Apple just makes a good, solid machine that just works. Most of the "clone" manufacturers make cheap crap systems for $300 a pop that you'll replace every year because they'll fall apart. And don't even get me started on "Windows 8".

The football and basketball coaches are doing great!

I don't know about administrative staff, but at many of the D1 research schools, tenured and tenure-track faculty have largely been replaced by "perma-docs". That is, postdoctoral researchers that are entirely paid by "soft money" (e.g. grants), have zero teaching responsibilities, are not offered tenure (only the minute chance of a tenure-track job if they keep applying enough) and have no job security. It is not uncommon to see people in STEM fields with a PhD and having done three, four, even six post-doc appointments. In the past 20-30 years, the number of tenure/tenure-track jobs has declined dramatically, and the number of post-docs has increased exponentially.

Why do researchers have to sacrifice an industry paycheck to do it? In other words, why won't industrial pharma hire more talented scientists. They seem instead to be more interested in hiring salespeople, lawyers and MBAs, then contracting with academia so they can take advantage of "cheap labor" due to the overabundant supply of low-paid graduate students and post-docs. But then they wonder why the amount of NDAs (New Drug Applications) has been declining.

No doubt that Shulgin was a definite genius, and made significant contributions to his field. The biggest issue with him among many professionals in the biomedical sciences is his rather unorthodox methods. He often tested compounds on himself, which is a major safety issue and generally frowned upon among professionals. If he followed common laboratory protocols and human subjects guidelines, he would be more accepted among his peers.

So, is this blond hair gene linked to intelligence? I wouldn't be surprised,. . .

Your material will be saved to the cloud where the NSA computers can check it and make sure you're not doing anything illegal. But please just ignore the prying eyes, citizen, and get back to work for the Man. After all, he owns the NSA now.

The reason the electric vehicles aren't taking of has a lot to do with price (although there is also a legitimate concern about range between charges). But the price is a major factor, especially in an economy where the middle class (the lion's share of all car purchases) continues to get squeezed every time we look the wrong way. Seriously, let's look at price -- even the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt (plug-in hybrid) are $40,000 vehicles. And electric vehicles go up from there -- up to the Tesla Roadster in the six figure range. The average American doesn't even spent $30,000 on a car, so the price range of these new vehicles is still in the realm of the rich for toys and games. And to be honest, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are going to be priced in that same $40,000 and up range as well, so we won't be seeing those in the mainstream anytime soon. Henry Ford had it right back in the early 20th century. If you want your product to be adopted in the mainstream, you need to pay your workers enough to afford the product to be worth owning. They haven't done that yet, and until they do, we won't be seeing electric of hydrogen fuel cells in mainstream life anytime soon.

I predict that 3D printers in the home will be out at about the same time that we start to see Linux as a mainstream OS on most home desktop computers. In other words, not everyone needs to print 3D objects often enough to really warrant their own personal 3D printer. The same reason most home users don't need all the functionality of unix. It will be a novelty by many for awhile, and you'll probably see 3D printing being an option at Walmart and FedEx Kinko's for some things. But it's still a very niche product, and won't be mainstream for a very long time. Maybe one day, if they get to the point of having a 3D printer with almost the same functionality as a Star Trek Replicator, then it will become an appliance in the kitchen.

Many US universities also offer free public transportation passes as well. But this typically only works well for urban campuses and in areas with good public transportation, which does not describe most of the united states. The oil companies made sure of that several decades ago.

Publishers have American students basically by the balls. The cost of textbooks has doubled and even quadrupled in the 20 years since I was an undergraduate. They'll charge you through the nose for a required textbook, then make a few minor changes to the questions at the back of the chapter, pump out a new edition, and use that next semester, so the buyback/used value drops to practically nothing. And if they don't get you that way, it's the extra fee for "online access" and "online homework". I also see more and more students opting for the "international version", which is basically the exact same textbook but not in hardcover -- it's a paperback. Basically, they know that the USA is the wealthiest nation on earth, and companies intended on milking us for every dime they can get.

BTW; Professors don't buy the textbooks. Publishers give professors free complimentary copies of the "instructor's copy". They also like to wine and dine them to make sure their textbook gets selected,. . .

Majoring in biology is one of the most popular majors for students interested in medical school (if not, the most popular major). And, of course, the process of getting into medical school these days is super hypercompetitive, so many of these students don't get in. Many of the students that don't get accepted after a BS, go on to either pre-health certificate programs (essentially a masters degree without the research component) or a full masters degree, in the hopes that they'll get a good enough GPA and other experience that medical schools will look for so they can get in. And even with a masters degree (yes, the certificate programs are a complete waste of time and only serve as cash cows for the universities offering them), the prospects of getting into medical school are still hypercompetitive. So many masters recipients go on to get their PhD. In the biomedical sciences. So part of this issue is a direct result of the hypercompetitiveness of medical school admissions.