There's also a lot of old and outdated information that can be refreshed/verified. During my freshman year astronomy class in college, we got some telescope time and we were calculating out binary variable stars to confirm that what was measured 50 years ago was still accurate. Ours turned into a paper for our professor when our binary star turned out to have a third star in there, causing faint fluctuations that our modern CCD camera could catch, but the older technology had not been able to detect.

Although if there is an "Astronomy Throughout History" class I'd go take it, because it's really one of the oldest scientific disciplines.

It was "accounted" for in the ever-growing US debt burden, unfortunately. That's like buying a brand new car and listing it in your assets, while ignoring the $20,000 loan you have outstanding. Hooray! You accounted for the minimum car payments and maintenance payments in your monthly budget - but not the interest payments, which are making that debt grow ever larger.

"Pensions" and "healthcare" also includes military pensions and healthcare, too. I was born in a giant Army hospital. Where do you think the money for that hospital came from? Not the budget allocated to buying war planes, I can tell you that.

Thank you for parsing that out. Too bad nobody will listen if it goes against their preconceived notions that civilian entitlements take up all our budget.

I think it's this more than anything else. My best friend's father is a COBOL programmer. He came down with hairy cell leukemia and was down part time while he went through chemo and all that stuff. The company was completely understanding, and from what I hear gave him a friggin raise when he came back because they didn't have anyone else who could do what he did and they were scared of him retiring early due to health reasons.

You know, you can actually do a FOIA and request a lot of that information at a county, state, or even federal level.

Individual program taxes will never happen, though, because in the US the biggest suck on our tax dollars is the Pentagon and the military, and a lot of people like me would be happy to opt out of that. I would not, however, opt out of SS and Medicare/Medicaid, since I'm supposed to (in theory) get that money returned when I need it the most.

From TFA: 'In communication with the Nevada DMV before the test, Google said its policy was to prohibit autonomous operation at railroad crossings that lack signals and for human drivers to take over. It also noted: “[Roundabouts are] particularly challenging, where many drivers don’t know the proper rules in the first place.” In an e-mail to colleagues at the DMV, Breslow wrote, “We can’t fail an applicant for not being able to navigate a traffic circle if they say that there [sic] vehicle can’t yet do it.” '

So the two times that the Google engineer took over were for the two things that Google said they felt it was unsafe for the car to handle - a railroad track without a signal, and a roundabout.

Someone who forgot to hit the ATM before going shopping.

MSI motherboard with 16 GB of RAM, standard DVD player, blah blah. Two HDDs, one SSD and one platter, with a fat external USB platter for backups. Dual 1080p monitors. And yes, it's quite possible that the 650 watt PSU I had before was simply low quality, but it was an excuse to upgrade to a nice modular 1000 watt one, and future proof it. I'll be dropping in a 2nd 660 and SLIing them for my birthday this year.

Apparently having something to do stops a lot of drug use and other crimes in general.

Quite true - when I was in high school, I had music lessons or rehearsals twice a day every day of the week. I had time for school, music, and sleep. I even stopped watching television at some point, never to resume. Unfortunately I ended up suffering from music burnout by the time I went to college, which is why I'm not an opera singer or a professional trumpet player today.

Someone who experienced the registry getting chewed up during an unexpected burp once before.

Had some instability due to a too weak PSU when I rebuilt my Win8 system last winter. I was getting BSoD or worse - total unannounced shutdown - with annoying frequency. (Turns out the GTX 660 really did need that 1000 watt PSU I was too cheap to get at first.) Thankfully, no lasting damage, because the BSoD and system shutdowns worked as intended and protected the rest of the hardware.

It's very stable now. I think I've had to reboot the system once in the last month.

I am suddenly grateful we've been using a store branded Home Depot credit card for the last few years. Replacing that with a new one won't be painful at all. I think I've paid cash if the amount was under $10, too.

Still going to go through ye old checking account and verify there's no HD charges on there since April.

Have you talked to your eye doctor about the weekly/monthly lenses? I only have to take mine out once a week, and I throw them away for a fresh pair every month.