Well the academia is no different. The same petty politics, the same self-serving nipple rubbing. People are the same everywhere. The only difference is that academia is more p2p - If your real work is outgunned, you can hopefully find another journal or university, get a second opinion. This makes a hell of a difference - because wikipedia seems to be a central authority, you outsource much of your critical thinking and then find yourseld pissed when people happen. In academia, because of the explicit p2p nature you are forced to do your own thinking and therefore learn to deal with it to the point that it becomes programmatic and you are not able to pause to see it to be the same thing anymore.
Also you should not underestimate the system of meta(data) you build in your mind to navigate the the academia. This meta is linked to the best and only true value system you can imagine (your's), is built on the most complete and competent data available to you (your experience) and is therefore the best you can imagine (this meta is _you_, afterall!). So you build your image of academia in the image of yourself, and then notice that academia navigates well, is predictably reliable and gets the job done. Just like you! Expect it to happen in any field though, once you invest enough brainhours.

How 'bout some bay area blues?

FTFY

Climate change - reserch on this has fought the banhammer since Dubya.
Effects of fracking - the new kid in town.
Considering the status quo in the US of A, I'm pretty sure this proposal is all about clearing the road to kick the can down on.

You seem to have trouble parsing political language.

Temporary means permanent. Once you remeber this, you will be amazed how often you hear this word.

For some further fun, notice how many of their plans and speeches become crystal clear once you interpret 'terrorist' the way they do: 'a person'.

Do I even need to remind anyone that freedom = slavery?

They must have solved the travelling salesman problem.

What do you mean, paying for tethering?

How exactly am I supposed to use the app without picking up the phone?

So are you saying that enforcing predictable and correct answers has a significant performance cost?

Even more than that, the medium defines the content to the point that there is no difference between them. You can easily see it on american TV - it's a very distinct form of crap, and you can easily see that nothing but more and worse of this crap can ever be hoped to be broadcast on this american TV.

Any medium has certain kind of message(s) it is able to convey. American press on a scale is able to convey american exceptonalism, but unable to convey real critique. Taken as a sum, the message becomes unseparable from the medium - they define and create each other like space/time/matter/energy.

This makes sense. You need both of your brain hemispheres developed to see the forest behind the trees of 2001. Sadly the comments here indicate a strong left-brain dominance, up to the point of arrogance and dismissal towards the unfamiliar.

Burma shave!

Because the first one to start doing it might gain a competitive advantage for a few years?

I'd go another route:
Be willing to work for a little more than the going rate.
Focus, yes, on the smaller companies, but shoot straight for senior/teamlead positions. Your track record should cover you there. Tell them, you want to gain a level in your career and that your age should help you there.

millenium - a thousand anuses, from latin 'anus'
millennium - a thousand years, from latin 'annus'

It is common for an it guy to get stuck waiting in the main loop when there is no new input. Beyond ones existing hobbies, i would recommend turning to your wife for recommendations. She is supposed to know you well.
something like
ssh wife "dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1M count=1" > /dev/null
should fill up your own entropy pool quite nicely and refresh your imagination.