What were you listening to? Come, Sweet Death?

It would take 70 years for someone to copy all of the music Bach wrote. There are plenty of upbeat Bach pieces to chose from.

Carl Franklin's website has some ~30s samples of each track.

FTFY

TFA cites a letter sent to the Congressional committee by David Morganstein, president of the American Statistical Association. He writes:

You can read Morganstein's full letter here. [PDF alert]

Well, sometimes it can. An engine or transmission in poor condition can slow down a car's uphill performance. A broken heater will make a car less comfortable in the winter. Repairs will correct these problems.

And so it goes with software refactoring. Removing redundant calculations and data-reads (e.g., out of loops) where possible will improve performance. Changing names of variables, functions, classes, etc., to reflect their use more closely will improve readability (or "comfort" if you will.)

Good car analogy, though.

1964 called. They want their APL manual back, along with the "write-only language" jokes.

But there's no such thing as a Vulcan Death Grip! -- Nurse Christine Chapel

FTFY. But actually he made it with radio tubes, after time-travelling with Kirk and McCoy to depression-era 1930 in New York City.

Whenever I hear anyone compare scientific funding to a gravy train, I burn with contempt.

Surviving as an academic researcher is difficult. There is a high level of competition for grant money. Typically, only one out of every 5 to 10 proposals gets funded. The dollar amount of a grant can vary significantly from $100k to a few million, depending on whether the grant covers a year-long study, or a larger mission that involves building and/or transporting equipment to remote parts of the earth or to space. But no matter what the funding level, researchers' salaries are capped by the institution they work at. Getting more grant money just allows the researcher to do more projects with larger teams. It doesn't increase their take-home pay.

And let's not get too excited about the amount of $21.4B. It is comparable to recent yearly budgets of NASA.

I see what you did there. You are implying that (climate) scientists have an agenda. And that makes it okay for AGW-deniers to have one, doesn't it?

If scientists aspire to any agenda, it is to advance the understanding of nature through observation of it. Of course, scientists are human, and some may have hidden agendas. That is why scientists are obliged to reveal their observations and their methods that they use to arrive at their conclusions, so their peers can examine it. Revealing their sources of funding is part of that process.

I saw what you did there.

TapeCutter already said that they get their salary from the university, and thus indirectly from governments and/or grants.

TapeCutter did not say that. S/he didn't even imply it. You made a straw man, and a pretty sloppy one at that.

It's common practice to cite not only the funding sources, but the actual grant numbers. The agencies may be supporting several areas of research, and they want to be sure the funding supported the area for which it was intended.

Several ACs here have misunderstood my post. Rather than responding to each of them, I'm responding to my own to cover each of them. No offense intended.

First of all, I'm far from a Republican shill. I happen to like MSNBC. And although she's obviously biased, I think Rachel Maddow is an insightful commentator and I enjoy watching her show.

My point was that MSNBC has not done what greenwow claims. I can find no evidence that MSNBC "exposed" as a "lie" the report of 800,000 healthcare.gov users receiving false tax information. Quite the contrary, in fact.

Check the last paragraph in this article.