Stilts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilts :)

If grad school has at best a questionable return, how could a postdoc - indentured servitude, slavery - be any better an idea?

The exceptional at anything will do fine, including academics. By definition, odds are you're not exceptional in a given talent pool, even one that's two or three deviations out.

Have a concrete plan to feed yourself. Or save the schooling for retirement, after you've saved up enough to live on. Digging yourself a hundred thousand dollar hole isn't a great idea right out of the gate.

Academics used to be the playground of the elite (and the exceptional, with a patron). That's been forgotten..

I'm more interested in knowing that in the time between when a launch is detected and confirmed on the west coast of North America, their fate as a nation will be sealed forever and all time, thus ensuring MAD is upheld.

I expect anyone who launches a nuclear war will have to come out of the bunkers, sooner or later.

We need an updated, modern, and effective nuclear arsenal.

If you don't defend your way of life, bad men will come and take it from you. Sometimes they are the bad men, and sometimes you are. History is funny that way.

I don't have any problem with nuclear weapons - they're a fact of life now. I just want ours to be the best.. and if anyone launches, it needs to be understood, completely, your entire right to exist as a nation. There can be no other peace.

Reality, sometimes, is grim stuff.

They didn't put a gun to her head, she made a choice. If you want the big bucks, you sell out, and she did.

I don 't think its a bit over-broad. I've had a scope probe in one hand since about 1950, and while you guys with the logic analysers will eventually find the problem IF you know what the signatures are telling you, some old fart like me with a scope probe in one or both hands, will find the problem and have it fixed while you are still consulting the schematic and hooking up your 16 channel logic analyser.

If you do not understand ALL the physics behind how all this stuff works, you are just a wannabe. Out in the real world, we are checking electrolytic caps for ESR first, then cracked "cold" solder joints or corroded IC pins. When you think you are good enough, go sit for a C.E.T. test, pass it with a 99% correct score, and then spend the next 40 years convincing the folks who write the checks that you can indeed walk on water. BTDT, still doing it occasionally at 79.

No, Karmshock is spot on. It would likely be easier to just put a tariff on polluter countries like China and India, unless those good can be shown to be at least "average" in CO2 output. Same with the US. There are plenty of green companies here, or relatively, the main polluters are the employees, not the employers. Driving cars.

And before people scream "tariffs are bad for developing countries", I would remind them that every imported item created lots of CO2 to cross the ocean to get here. Maybe all countries should charge an extra 4-8% tariff to encourage domestic production. Not enough to choke imports off, just just enough to encourage local production.

Seriously, C is that awesome.

If C doesn't work, import python.

What's new is old.. and old new..

http://youtu.be/up863eQKGUI

Remember kids, don't copy that floppy!

I have to clue what that test writer is smoking, but its got to be great stuff. But the people who actually approved this shit have got to be full blown crackheads. There simply is no other explanation that can begin to explain this level of abject stupidity.

Here I am, now 79 years old. I went through the so-called educational system back in the 1940's, and was once tested by the Iowa test as having an IQ roughly equ to 147 on the S/B scale. I am also the only one scoring over 40 on the 100 question AFQT I took in the middle of the Korean war, scored a 98 on that, next best was 39 in a group of 136 boys that day.

I have made my livelyhood for about 60 years now in electronics, making stuff work again when it quits, although I have now been retired from the Chief Engineers chair at the local CBS affiliate, a position I held since 1984, for a bit over 10 years, but just yesterday I had to go put our local daytime AM broadcaster back on the air.

But I don't blame my 8th grade education, having quit school and going to work fixing televisions in 1949, on my poor math education. I did get decent scores on the math they taught, but there was little to almost zip underlying theory, and I did not actually learn a usable amount of algebra, and am still poor at calculus to this day. My math teacher, the best one ever, was when in the early 70's, I bought a TI SR-51 calculator. Strictly enforcing the algebraic rules, it taught me more useful math of the stuff I needed every day, in a month than I learned in 8 years of schooling. When it gave you the answer, if it wasn't correct, it was off by so far that you _knew_ you had screwed up stating the problem to it.

I never did grok the RPN calculator craze, and while I had one for several years, I considered it a crutch for those who didn't ever understand the rules of math in the first place. It did NOT help me to solve the problems I encountered in every day repair, and occasionally redesign work, some of which was in digital stuff, done by high priced design people that never were in the same room with a book of recommended practices. Or mechanical, designed by people whose hands don't fit the tools. Mine has always fit the tools well.

I realize I am just one voice in the wilderness, asking when in the hell are the parents going to demand that their children actually get a good, 100% usable education from the socialist indoctrination centers our schools have become in the last 100 years?

But the reality is that there is so damned much federal money in the schools and they demand that the school boards do it their way if they want the money for that new school to replace the one the feds built in 1927. Said another way, if you want your kids to get a decent education, it will involve higher taxes to do it because you are not going to get that good education when there is a single penny of federal money in it.

The choice really is that when its boiled down to its essence.

This isn't it, not by a hell of a long row of apple trees. I was tempted to run for the local school board, but several conversations with other retired members of several boards, I learned they are so ham-strung by the need for federal money just to heat the buildings that most, still in good enough health & sound minds, simply gave it up and never ran for such a thankless job again. Their thoughts, like mine, are just that lonely voice crying out in the wilderness of mediocrity we have today, as exemplified by this example test's idiocy.

So, no cheers from Almost Retired this time folks. But it really is you and I, who will have to "foot the bill" who will have to fix it. And be aware, the feds will use every hammer they have to flatten you when you do.

Maybe they always were. Functional, but they're jewlery. I have a nice Citizen Ecodrive I'm fond of. It's functional, it's lightweight, it never needs batteries, and it looks nice. It's titanium, with a sapphire face.

It allows me to casually check time in meetings without being rude; it looks professional; that's important for what I do, less important for others.

Smartwatches are horrible to look at. They are gaudy and tacky. I am not sure what they say about the wearer, but I am not sure they are part of the image I would want to project. Yes, that type of thing matters to some people. Particularly, I suspect, those who still wear watches.

What I want is a nice watch like that that maybe has a silent notification capabilty, and perhaps, can pick up some biometric data (pulse, whatever). I would find real value in that - something that my phone can't do, an an alert to get me to check my phone for something interesting or pressing.

I can see myself getting Google Glasses before a smartwatch.

Get off my lawn.

That $10k differential, if invested, could pay a return that would cover most of your gas.

Fuel, or cars in general, need to get much more expensive for this to make sense. Better to start the transition now, and hey - props to everyone buying a Tesla.

Nor do I, and I've been watching the slow intersection of the excrement with the air moving device for 79 years now. You see a splatter on the walls occasionally, but the build up is so slow its not noticed.

I am proud of my country and what we have done, I have even had a walk on part in it now & then, but I'm scared shitless of my government and have been since the mid '60's.