During a lull at Maker Faire this weekend, and surfing slashdot on my phone, I see this article and point it out to an educator that had a booth near ours. He found it amusing I showed this on my mobile device, and he said article is true. His children may have a phone but he ignores calls from them when they get stumped on a exam question.

following up on this thread, I read a little more about this book, I was thinking maybe the author was one of few experts calling foul on Bush and Co. intelligence data but was squelched because they wanted to invade Iraq no matter what (I remember in 1990s many hawks were claiming we need to get back into Iraq and "finish getting rid of Saddam." Regarding 9-11, that provided a great excuse to do that. Of course, since nobody in US knows the difference between Sunni and Shia, and other details, new messes such as ISIS are created.

Perhaps like many in authority, didn't question the intel prior to 2003 invasion because they were destined to earn a lot of money from the invasion and later contracts awarded during occupation.

Maybe related to this topic, there was an article about how more and more companies are not providing useful customer support because they figure users will present, discuss, and solve problems in forums. Which I have found not many forums are useful except only reading about others have same problems as I do. i.e. video-to-usb adapters which seem excruitatingly difficult to use (easy to connect but always a crapshoot if video signal is recognized). Another gripe I have on forums are several group categories and if you don't post your question in the proper forum and with narrowly defined topic (each has specific topics of hard defined terms, none with specific topic of your question), the ban hammer will come down quick and you will be banned for life. But then many products are cheap Chinese made so get one off buy-it-now on ebay and if it doesn't work, send it to the trash to contribute to landfill ewaste problems.

Sometimes I wonder if this is deliberate, as they had to spend many a grueling all-nighters to figure out all this stuff so newbies will have to do the same. "Of course it's hard. But that's what it takes if you want to be part of the Few, the Proud," (uh that phrase might be copyrighted by a govt agency).

Speaking of waste processing systems (this topic sure has generated a lot of water interest from me), aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans area where the water was grossly polluted from all kinds of waste of everything "natural" and inorganic industrial. Some agencies came in with water reverse osmosis systems on trailers. Put the hose in the river where the water looks really gross, takes some time out comes fantastic drinking water. Expensive though and not waste it using for showers but it works.

A chemistry book (forgot title, this was 40 years ago I read) when discussing vast amount of water molecules it said a glass of water will contain about 3 of them from the same glass of water that Columbus drank from.

Here is a test of your "emotions" when drinking water. Go to Exploratorium in San Francisco, they have a drinking fountain but the base is a toilet (toilet was new and bought new and fabricated into a drinking fountain). I admit I chickened out like most people and didn't drink. OK, so now I confessed I guess that means I need to man up and go there and take a drink! And post footage on FB.

story I heard was an old guy who only drank wine, "fish pee in water." though he passed away few years ago at 95.

it's not video, it's film. And the camera had no audio input which many movie cameras back in days had no audio. Oh, there's no air to propagate sound waves. What's amazing is showing the Moon as a place where people actually were decades before most of you were born.

Sounds like what this guy said about living in London and commuting to his job in Paris at 25:10 in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

ok, come up with a new keyboard layout and see how long it will get accepted. I haven't done any research why the qwerty keyboard is layed out that way. I was talking with an old guy who learned to type using a typewriter with blank keys (I learned typing on mechanical typewriter but not with blank keys). Objective is so you don't have to look at the keyboard while you type. Start position is left fingers on "asdf" right fingers on "jkl;" as supposably those are most used letters, and fingers can easily reach other keys with next most used letters. I'm not sure were the semicolon came from unless I'm out of calibration. There are some people that learned to type without formal typewriter training (i.e. using the index finger of each hand, some of these people are blazing fast at the "hunt and peck" method).

Kind of reminds me why o why do we still use video framerate of 29.97 fps instead of even 30. It goes back to 1953 when they had to squeeze that color signal into TV transmission bandwidth (and not force people to upgrade to color TV which were very pricey). When computers came along, the CRT was an excellent display (common device everywhere). When computer monitors came along they had to be compatible with existing computers. When better computers came along (and sold by the millions), they had to be compatible with existing monitors (which number many millions). Of course there are some computer systems with specific monitors for specific purposes.

I wonder if that's SOP by the studios. Pay actors, crew, whoever starving wages unless the particular person is in such demand is when studios will cave in and pay a livable wage. I was talking with a dancer who was approached by Dancing With The Stars production team, she turned it down because they offered something pitiful like $200 (yes, that is one "2" and two "zeros"). Though she does well competing Open Pro and coaching, she isn't that rich to abandoned that for a TV show. Fer christsakes, the stage has gillion dollar gear and a few folks making big bucks. Oh well, we all heard of "hollywood accounting."

I remember seeing an advertisement in 1980s magazine comparing a small plane (Mooney I think) to a car:
"Faster than a Porsche, fuel economy as a VW, luxurious as a Cadillac. It's the perfect car for business travel and yet it isn't a car at all."

Article went on to say you don't have to worry about speeding tickets because when you fly you can go as fast as your equipment can do so. This seems such a distant world compared to these days. I also remembered browsing through Aviation Week looking at tables of small airplanes and helicopters, comparing range, payload, price, etc. Thinking about actually buying an airplane! When 1990s came along, poof! no more GA.

Well let's see here, California mountain snowpack is 5% of normal levels (where much of the drinking water comes from besides. Some argue, ITS ALL POLITICS! Oh c'mon you guys (or "alpha hotels"), in a perfect world we'd be debating how to mitigate this situation. There are other places in the world that are undergoing climate change and like California we are seeing it in person. Why are there deniers? We can debate if it is human caused (I think so as CO2 levels are much higher that can tip climatic balance). I wonder if Mayans debated politics including human sacrifices rather than organize a migration or deal with crops needing less water?