You must not have kids. I've heard plenty about education reform for the last 20 years. My kid gets tested out the wazoo and is required to know a lot of stuff that was completely missing from my education 35+ years ago. From what I've seen, the dominant factor in educational outcome seems to be the economic success of the parents. Kids from well-off households seem to do well, and kids from poor households seem to struggle. An interesting tidbit from Freakonomics is that the authors found a correlation between kids living in households with books and the kids' educational success. The amount of reading didn't factor -- it was the presence of books. (Go figure.)

I'm waiting for the moment not too far off when some of these same innocent people's photos will be circulated on Facebook identifying them as accomplices.

I stumbled on one of these notices filed by the RIAA yesterday, and it seems not only reasonable but important for the notice to be posted, including the relevant URL; otherwise, how will I know that the site hosting the illegal material is doing so illegally? I looked at the site in question, and they most certainly didn't include any notice that downloading that particular song was a violation of copyright. But because of the notice that Google linked to, I knew that I shouldn't do it.

It seems to me that MPAA and RIAA want to have their cake and eat it, too.

Didn't Osama bin Laden try a variant of the carrier pigeon method? It seems to me is the best thing is to not do anything that makes them that interested in you to begin with.

You're French? I'm impressed. I didn't even notice your "accent". (There are things Francophones do when writing English that are similar to a spoken accent, like using the plural for "information".) In any case, the panda joke would not make sense in French. In the joke, "[The panda] eats shoots and leaves," would come out as something like "Il mange des pousses et des feuilles," while "[The panda] eats, shoots, and leaves," would be more like "Il mange, il tire, et il se quitte." (As you can see, punctuation is the least of my problems in French.)

I tried plugging "Americans have a huge bias against diesel which is common in Europe" and "Americans have a huge bias against diesel, which is common in Europe" into Google translate, and it's hard for me to see the difference, even when I substitute "crow" and "crows" for "diesel". Hmm. (I'm a better language nerd than I am a computer programmer.)

There was also sex....

It may just be me, but I believe you would have done better to insert a comma after diesel. My first reading of this sentence led me to think that Europe was rife with diesel-hating Americans, when what you really meant to say is that diesel is common in Europe, and that Americans are biased against it.

There is a panda joke that illustrates the importance of comma placement.

Not quite. I sort of remember that $10,000 reporting law being passed when I was a teenager.

Yup.

I'll be glad to finally be able to carry my knife again, but the airlines and their ever-changing unbundling/bundling of services have done a remarkable job of taking any joy out of commercial air travel.

If these saber-rattling threats from the North Korean dicatorship aren't laughable, then I don't know what is. In truth, it is just plain sad that a government can get away with the cruelty that has been inflicted on the North Korean people by their own government's policies.

BMWs are also made elsewhere.

The answer is, "It depends." Before I had a prostatectomy several years ago, I looked very hard into the humans vs. robotic surgery question, at both the available statistics (such as they were) and with conversations with about a half-dozen men who'd had one or the other procedure. Neither side had a clear edge. The surgeon who ended up with my business told me that he felt that the da Vinci procedure was oversold, and that patients were disappointed when recovery didn't occur as quickly or fully as they'd come to expect. This was borne out by the conversations I had; the guys who had the robotic procedure were no more able to get it up than the ones who had traditional surgery, and continence was about the same for both groups. But the surgeon matters most. The guy who had the worst experience went to the premier prostate cancer center in the country and got a protege of the top surgeon. The guys who stayed local and sought out the top guys in our area were much happier, me included.

Yes, there is. TI is able to make more money if they're $100 a pop. FWIW, my kid's H.S. requires a TI-80-something for algebra, etc. It really irks me, because A) we weren't even allowed to use a four-function calculator in my high school classes (1972-1976), B) the thing is more sophisticated than the "engineering" calculator I got for college, and C) no one in my daughter's generation seems to be able to figure out how much change they should get/give in their head.

(And yes -- you damn kids get off of my lawn!)

The way it would work if they had more powerful devices is that one kid would write a program and the rest of the kids would get him to give or sell it to them. Unfortunately, kids still cheat today, by any means available. My H.S. daughter has regaled me with a few of the attempts she's seen.

Also, great story about the prisms!