Everyone -- scientists, janitors, senators, saviors riding triceratops -- engages in this exact behavior. Logic and reason work only so long as the individual's core belief is not called into question, and at that point they line up on their predetermined side of whatever topic is being discussed.

And please don't pretend that science is above reproach and never wrong. It involves people, and ultimately all people, no matter how credentialed are prone to the same failings.

It should be obvious that I meant fashionable for others to claim the same happened to them, given that it actually happened to him. Like the first kid in an elementary school class who gets glasses, then all of a sudden several other children want them. Except in King's case, glasses were a brutal beating by police, and the other children wanted the result of having been a victim of said brutality without the actual brutality.

I'm sure there was way more outright police corruption in the early 20th century.

Power corrupts. Money corrupts. It has been true as long as they have been around.

I'm not going to pretend I know which side is correct, if either. But to play Devil's advocate, I'd bet dollars to donuts the vast majority of the people making these completes are criminals or otherwise people on the police radar. As such, they are motivated to claim police brutality -- especially since Rodney King, which made it en vogue.

Oh look, an opinionated academic saying we need academics to run the country. Weird. I'm sure plenty of racists think we need a Klansman to properly run the country.

Also, it isn't that I prefer the "CEO" of my local landscaping company to be president over an Ivy League graduate. What I don't want is someone with only academics and politics. When people bury their heads in statistics they become just as blind to their ideology as the Jesus-on-a-triceratops, young earth creationists. Even the ones like Krugman blathering on about inequality. We have too many rich people; our economy must be ill?

There are probably a few janitors with legislative, executive, and judicial branch experience.

Couldn't agree more. But we seem to have collectively decided that politics is hard, and best left to those career politicians, which I see as a necessary first step on the road back to tyranny. Celebrity worship + politics = royalty.

Academics is too abstract. The president is the CEO of the country -- I don't want a lawyer, academic, or career politician filling those shoes.

Gary Johnson for president!

Shame on you, you bad man. I don't know if fracking is actually good or bad*, but I do know that agreeing with fracking is bad.

*Note: It doesn't seem like a good idea, but that is in no way based on hard science.

Considering the (un)likelihood of it ever passing congress, and the fact that any other candidate I can think of has way more dings against him or her, he is a winner in my book.

What don't you like about it?

We need Gary Johnson. Which is why we will never get him.

In my little piss-ant berg of southern CT, we had a chance for a mayor not tied to the Democrat party (the Dem primary is basically the election; The Republican party sends out a candidate just for fun), but when it was clear he was popular and had a good chance to win, the Party made sure their choice was elected. The mainline Dems and Reps are on the same team; they don't really care which side wins, so long as it is one of them.

Or maybe I should say, digital piracy.

As I said, people tended to buy music once. Yes, there was pirating in the form of mix tapes, but I'm fairly certain it was not even a drop in the bucket of online piracy (to use the parlance of our time).

In the past, free (stolen) music was not common - relatively speaking - because the means of distribution were limited. The average consumer of music understood that the form factor - record, 8 track, tape, CD - required they buy it once. This set the bar for musicians (though let's be honest, record companies always made the lion share of the profit) to expect they could sell their music at a certain price.

Fast forward to our hyper-connected world, delivery seems effortless, or at least bundled with the monthly fee we pay our ISP. Stealing music no longer feels like actual stealing because it is all digital, and we're accustomed to sending and receiving bits without a thought to the huge amount of infrastructure and manpower required to create content and keep all those servers running. Additionally, the market forces dictate a new pricing structure because we're consuming music sans physical medium, so the expectation is that price will drop accordingly. But we have a decades old system predicated on the $10 - $15 price point (give or take inflation) for an album.

We have conflicting interests: Joe Musician still has to perfect his craft and write all those songs. He can engineer it at home, but let's be honest, that is often obvious in the end product. Either way, Joe still has the same level of effort to make an album, but the consumers now have the world at their fingertips and an expectation that with a widespread and immediate audience Joe will take a lot less for his record.

Note: This is not a new phenomenon, nor is it only in the digital space. Costco and Walmart have done the same thing for the cost of manufactured and farmed goods. Do those cheap chicken thighs really reflect the cost of raising chickens? They do if one is okay with cramming chickens into a factory farm. In this instance, the environment and well being of the animals suffer, so no one complains.

At least in the United States, I feel the push for STEM programs is the politicians wanting to be perceived as doing something; and, as typically is the case with politicians, they are doing it wrong. Technically wrong, and for the wrong reasons. As for the "empires (corporations)," that is tracing the curve to its logical extreme, as if faceless corporations will take over the world and we will be powerless to stop them. As much as I love a good corporate apocalypse movie, it is only happening because we allow it, and continue to allow it because we accept the carrot that is leisure time in exchange for the freedom to decide -- because choice comes with the possibility of failure.

I have begun to think that maybe we deserve to be slaves. The divine right of kings was tossed on its head after centuries by the U.S. Constitution. And ever since we divested ourselves from it we have slowly moved back towards it. Our politicians have celebrity status. How long before another Kennedy clan arises, and we cheer as they crown themselves king?