Maybe the US government, but historically European governments have issued bonds to raise capital, although this has the unfortunate consequence that a substantial portion of all future taxes just goes to pay the interest on previously issued bonds. It's only relatively recently that "quantative easing" has been seen as a viable option by governments over here, but even then it's reserved for emergencies because if overused it would inevitably result in massive currency devaluation and then hyperinflation.

I think it's significant that lower powered devices such as Arduinos are starting to become more popular, and C is the natural if not the only choice for a lot of these types of chips.

DO NOT DO THIS. Seriously, whether you like their coding style or not, there's better things you can be doing - for example your own work. But reformatting someone else's code (or even worse, restructuring it) can make it impossible for them if they're still working on the code and need to merge their code back in to what you've turned it in to, or for them to fix bugs in that code later on.

There's also the very strong likelihood that you won't actually understand all the subtleties of the code and you'll break something in the process. I remember a junior programmer doing this at a previous company who refactored and reformatted the code of a colleague who was about 20 years older, so basically the same situation. The younger guy's check-in comment: "Refactored code to look nicer". The older guy's next check-in comment: "Refactored code back to working" (he reverted the entire changeset back to his version).

So, the upshot is that at best you're just going to make the other's guy's life harder, at worst you're going to break the code in the process.

Personally, my golden rule is to change the minimum possible with each check-in, unless the task is specifically to refactor or rewrite a big chunk of code. If that means temporarily abandoning your preferred code style to work in a style that's consistent with the code area you're working in, then do so. Of course, that's what coding standards are for - to try to ensure the style is uniform is the same across a project, but that's often not possible across language boundaries or on projects that have merged.

The OP states he only has linux in the house. I did this exact same thing a few years back, using abcde which is an interface to cdparanoia and cddb.

I set up an automounter script that automatically ran abcde when a CD disc is inserted. It reads the TOC in a couple of seconds and asks you to confirm the CDDB entries, which in most cases is just pressing enter twice. When it's finished it can even eject the disc for you. I'd literally just pop to the computer room every 10 minutes or so and just swap the disc and let it carry on. Probably about 10 seconds per disc.

Nice troll. By definition, there can't be scientific evidence for creationism. Science is about observing natural effects, testing hypotheses and turning them into a theory if they seem to be valid, and then finding evidence to prove or disprove them. If you manage to prove them, you then have a scientific fact. If you manage to prove them, you have a useless theory and try to come up with a new theory.

By definition, the creation story in the bible can never be tested. It's a story that explains some things we see, but doesn't attempt to explain other things. That you can't disprove it by science doesn't make it fact any more than not being able to prove it makes it wrong.

Exactly. However, neither should you turn unproven scientific theory into a religion, because that implies that you no longer have an open mind and looking for ways to scientifically test your theory. Remember, real scientists like disproving theories just as much as proving them, because the goal of science is to incease ones understanding of the observable world.

You are conflating several things. The theory of evolution consists of several aspects:

* Variations between generations
* Some of these variations are positive and some are negative
* Natural selection
* Everything evolved from a single organism

Of them, the first is easily testable. We can see it happening, firstly in that one generation's DNA is slightly different to the next, but even see the effects in our own lifetimes on short-lived generations of other species.

The second is also verifiable. Most usually we see the negative effects and label them disabilities, but the positive variations are obvious - a stronger than normal child might become an athlete, a taller child might become a basketballer etc.

Natural selection isn't really a theory. It's a corollary of the above. If you get genetic variation, then some are better adapted to the world around them, others less so. Interestingly, this effect isn't anywhere nearly as visible in humans as other species because we tend to look after the weaker members of society, however it is very apparent in most other species. In examples that we would consider cruel in our species, almost every litter of puppies for instance has a runt of the litter who the mother will kick away and deny food from because it is "better" for the group as a whole that the strongest of the litter are well nourished than all of them being relatively undernourished and pehaps unable to survive later on.

The only controversial point in creation theory is extrapolation backwards into areas we can't actually test. It's a big leap from "we can see small variations between generations in a species" to "all species evolved from a single organism". There are so many obvious problems with this as a theory, e.g. "why can't different species reproduce?", "why are there radically different methods of reproduction?", "how can all a major variation possibly happen in a couple of generations when we observe only very minor variations?"

The real issue is that this last theory is always lumped in with the genetic mutation theory, which is a real shame, because it's the only part of evolution theory that actually contradicts a biblical stance and equally it's the only part of evolution theory that actually can't be proved with science, because at best all you can do is find more examples of bigger than normal evolutionary jumps. You can never actually prove it's a fact and so it is always destined to remain a theory.

Evolution is a theory, and the aspect of evolution relating to small changes between generations in observably valid.

One unprovable hypothesis that can be drawn from evolution theory is that everything evolved from a single organism.

Another unprovable hypothesis that can be drawn from evolution theory coupled with creationist theory is that God created evolution between generations as a way to create variety between generations rather than exact clones.

If you look at the actual mechanisms in DNA and RNA replication where it's pretty much guaranteed to produce some occasional copying errors but rejects large errors, one could very easily argue that the process was designed to produce evolution.

Ultimatelty, it all comes down to fact versus belief. Just as religious education is taught in most UK schools as "some people believe this, some other people believe this other thing, some other people believe none of this", so should things like evolution as an explanation of the origin of all species, the big bang theory or anything else which is an unprovable hypothesis. The children should be allowed to assess for themselves which is the most credible option.

As someone who grew up through school years as an atheist studying a lot of science, I actually found deep flaws in a lot of things presented as "scientific fact" when I dug into them further and many years later became a Christian in part due to contemplating these things. Science is only science when you create theories that can be tested. If you accept untestable theories as fact, you're just turning them into religion, albeit a godless religion, because it is just predicated on belief.

TLDR: Evolution should be taught but in the correct context - as a theory that explains some of the things we can see around us. However, as soon as the government starts mandating that theories should be taught as fact, we have a problem, because by removing the requirement to actually test the theory, it no longer represents science.