If people feel paranoid about this, something's wrong. Good parenting should enable your kids to handle "unreachable situations" (whatever that is). You should have trust in your kids' ability to grow into an independent person. Granted, a cell phone is a convenient thing to have and I accept that argument, but if you need it to ease your paranoia, then the issue is more with you rather than the kid.

GTD and Omnifocus works best for me. I often capture spontaneous thoughts immediately on my phone so I won't forget (and forget I'd otherwise do). Capturing literally everything is key here, and random notes are no exception.

I've tried a lot of GTD programs, but OmniFocus is the best one out there, not least for the fact that syncing via WebDAV allows me to not sell my soul (and potentially proprietary information) to Google or any other random website I don't trust.

Nope, the easiest one for that purpose would actually be MATLAB (or octave, for that matter). If you want decent O-O with that, you can also use PyLab. Anyone who needs FORTRAN for whatever reason down the road can easily pick it up having been exposed to any of the above, but it should not be taught as a first programming language.

OK, here's what's going to happen: initially, the publishers will charge low bulk rates to get everyone to switch over. After that, they'll introduce higher, per-student access fees. Oh, yeah, and don't even think about mixing and matching online books from different publishers. Fees for a single book will be so exorbitant, that the only way you'll be able to afford this is to buy the whole K-12 package. Just ask any university librarian about that business model...

Motors aren't the only reason for low power factors. Non-linear loads such as switched power supplies and, yes, CFLs, also decrease the power factor. If residential homes are doing this on a large scale (and transition to CFL or LED will accelerate this), the utilities will have to deal with it. It is likely that they will eventually start charging residential customers based on PF as well, once they have the infrastructure in place to reliably measure it. See here, for example: http://ecmweb.com/mag/electric_perplexed_pq_issues_3/

Then why do utilities require power factor correction for large load customers? The higher currents required increase the stress on the distribution system due to ohmic losses, which the power company has to eat, among others. Maybe it's time to revisit your power textbook.

While this is obviously not a scientific statement, I would, however, guess that the correlation between someone knowing those facts and the same person being scientifically literate is rather strong. So, measuring scientific literacy by a quick survey like this is both faster and cheaper than a more elaborate test while still giving you reasonably accurate results.

Well, actually there is a CLI equivalent to this. It is called command line completion. Just hit the tab key and you are presented with a set of alternatives. So, while your point for a GUI is well taken and while it is not quite the same as with a GUI, it is a reasonable remedy of the problem you presented.

Now don't get me started, however, on the point that in Ubuntu useradd and adduser don't do the same thing...

There's a difference between knowing what's going on in your child's life (a.k.a. being involved) and preventing them to grow into independent persons (and yes, that means they'll have to deal with the occasional setback or disappointment all by themselves).

My kinds (2 and 4) are climbers that make Sir Edmund Hillary and Reinhold Messner look like amateurs. So far we got lucky and just had a couple of bruises. In preparation for the big fallout (I'm sure it'll happen), and exoskeleton will come in pretty handy then.