The way this could work to increase general knowledge and understanding, as well as fun and potential profit, is that
1. I make a claim,
2. you refute it,
3. I provide an example, and
4. you provide a counter-example.

Still waiting on step 4. Note that I never claimed Yale was the "only university out there", though it does provide a decent standard.

e.g., "At the request of the Office of Cooperative Research, the Inventors shall execute assignments or other documents assigning to the University all their rights in the invention and any patent applications or resulting patents on the invention. " Quoted from this page.

Universities also have rights to anything invented by their faculty. This produces the bizarre result that your own ideas, often developed through your own grants (grants that also pay "overhead" averaging >50% to the university), belong to your employer, the university that (also) uses the grant to pay you. A few universities have made large amounts of money but most have been net losers from patent costs, etc. Fortunately, universities are slowly realizing that they have a poor record of converting ideas/patents into money, so they may relinquish so rights for a stake in a resulting company.

The Enterprise tied up in Boston inner harbor sometime in the mid-to-late 1980s (as I recall) and totally dwarfed everything around. These aircraft carriers are impressive but I think we don't really need 10+/- of them, each costing a fortune to run. PBS aired a multiple segment show called "Carrier" that followed the USS Nimitz on a deployment to the Persian Gulf, where it did practically nothing (good news and bad news).

'withing a few months' speaking a Saxon dialect. Maybe they would discover the spellchecker 'withing' a few years.

good point. A recent book "Washington's Crossing" makes an argument that George Washington, as commander of the nascent US Continental Army, excelled at both kinds of leadership: daring (e.g., the raid on Trenton) and organizational (keeping the woefully "under-resourced" army fed, clothed, and armed, albeit sporadically). He was a consensus-builder, possessing an understanding of the average soldier with the rhetorical skills to persuade soldiers to keep fighting against enormous odds. He was also a thoughtful listener, soliciting ideas from even very junior officers (e.g., the overnight retreat-to-fight-again from Trenton). In this book, author David Fischer contrasts Washington's style with the dictatorial British leaders (Howe, Cornwallis) and claims it established a new, successful model for US military leadership.

As ST captain, what would GW do?

What if a community of citizens decides they want a new road? They might agree to build it and finance it by a community tax. This would be possible even in a libertarian Utopia, correct? Even if some in their community object (who might also object to a single citizen building the same road), so long as there is a majority in favor, it seems they should be able to proceed. Is that not, in aggregate, what a well-functioning government does? Maybe it is more palatable if "public corporation" is substituted for "government".

We can argue about whether governments function well, whether they provide goods and services that their citizens actually want or need.

I hereby retract my call to heap troll karma on alen's post. A moment's reflection led me to realize that I'm not even sure I know what troll karma is. I apologize and welcome alen's ideas. Carry on.

Can somebody spare some "troll" karma for this post?

Nobody proposes that high speed rail can replace the airplane for long distance travel (100-600 miles, approximately). That said, I would (rather) like to see cars develop networking capabilities that would allow them to travel safely and efficiently in tight, slipstream packs on highways, where about half a single car's energy is spent (wasted) overcoming air resistance.

To moderate the post as "Flamebait", which it is at the time I post this reply, is pitiful.

I am sympathetic to the idea (honestly) but the article you link to does not make a good argument: it is tendentious, rhetorically flat (IMHO), and ridiculously outdated (e.g., how many readers upon reading "Dr. Spock" would think of the pediatrician instead of the Star Trek character?). It's good for "preaching to the choir" but please find something more persuasive for new prospective converts.

"I'm also wondering how many days I'll need to stay away from the rifle range before I won't show any particulate explosives at one of these checkpoint."

Simple: just don't carry your BOARDING PASS to the RIFLE RANGE.

Impressively low numbers, fer sure! "Age" is relative. When I finally joined (after watching for a while), I thought "that's it, I'll be at the end of this line forever." Then within a few years 10x more people joined. This is a great site (though I sometimes do look for a "like" or thumbs-up option and wish I had karma points to give).

"I don't think many people realize just how many embedded devices run Linux or BSD."

True. I've seen a couple airplane entertainment systems booting recently (normal startups, not reboots) and was a little surprised to recognize many of the usual daemons waking up. In contrast, I've seen a number of information screens in lobbies of hotels or office buildings stuck on a crashed Windows error message. Once upon a time, such a contrast would have cheered slashdotters but now it's just the way it is. So long Windows, and thanks for all the BSODs (in keeping with the thread above).

Maybe because I have credits at Audible but not even registered at S&S? Friction and inertia are sales concepts too.

rather than attacking Al Gore (like he cares, and talk about "echo chamber"!), why not address the point? Oceans "turning acidic" is shorthand for the oceanic buffer becoming saturated, after which pH changes rapidly. And yes, it amounts to "settled science", to the extent such a thing exists. If you don't believe it, simply provide an alternative theory that accounts for, and predicts the consequences of (e.g., unprecedented retreat of glaciers, reduction in polar ice fields), rapid increases in atmospheric carbon. I've heard none that are anywhere near as good as anthropogenic climate change.

The fossil fuel industries are extremely well established, rich, and (consequently) politically powerful. They have provided energy over the past 2 centuries that produced enormous increases in our standard of living. However, they will do anything in their power to delay the inevitable, eventual recognition that these fuels risk killing the planet. Now we must reduce the use of these fuels. I am skeptical anything will happen. Fortunately, we are probably at or near peak oil, so we may be saved some consequences without relying entirely on the foresight or courage of our political and economic leaders.