There are a lot more hot button issues:

Minimum wage laws: The economic theory very clearly concludes that imposing a minimum wage will increase unemployment, and yet the economists couldn't have consistently pinned this effect down in the empirical studies. As a result, a whole bunch of high profile economists supported the last federal minimum wage hike.

Monetary policy: These days a lot of economists have less to say about monetary policy than a janitor who works at a Federal reserve bank. A very vocal and influential wing of macroeconomists embarked on a research agenda trying to build models of economy where "money doesn't matter" in the 70/80s. This resulted in the famous Real Business Cycle model (RBC) of the 70s and 80s, for which Prescott and Kydland have won a Nobel prize. While today a lot of economists disagree with the notion that money doesn't matter, a whole lot of leading departments still churn out macro economists who can't say anything intelligent about the monetary policy. In my opinion, a couple of decades down the road, the Federal reserve may be recruiting people with a non-economics background because of this.

Macroeconomic stabilization issues in general. What to do during the recession? AKA Keynesian economics (more spending/less taxes) vs monetarists (loose monetary policy) vs the do nothing vs lower all taxes crowd.

Corporate Taxes. Many economists argue that corporate taxes hurt the economy, and the conservatives love this idea.

Agricultural Policy: Another hot button issue. Most economists would argue that in the long run the agricultural subsidies and import tariffs and other protections hurt consumers and are costly to the government. And yet, farm bill after farm bill, the US Congress, in non-partisan manner, is happy to send generous portions of pork to the agricultural states.

The only time the consumers can distinguish between German and Mexico-built cars is when the models built at the two plants are different. I know there are some fetishists who preferred the German built Golf and GTI to Mexican built Jettas (same thing with a trunk), but that's because the Golf had IRS. This year, both have IRS and will be built in Mexico.

As for Volvo, I am not sure what you mean better than American cars? Anyone who hangs around on car forums and blogs knows well European cars have on average a pretty bad reliability record and terrible resale values, while the Americans have gone a long way to improve both the technology and reliability.

The Volt is still extremely expensive. The base MSRP is 40 grand and you can buy it cheaper only due to the government subsidies. If I had some 35K grand burning my pocket, I'd personally look at getting a Honda Accord hybrid. This car beats diesels in both torque and fuel economy, and unlike Volt, you can take it on a long trip.

Your information is out of date. The 2012- Prius uses a bigger 1.8L engine and a CVT transmission. The throttle response is excellent for a zippy commuter car. Thanks to well calibrated CVT transmission there is never a hesitation and jerkiness in shifts you can experience with the automatics. So, in my personal opinion, the 2012- Prius nails the drive train pretty well. It's an excellent car. The only issue right now is the price. For 24-25K you get a base model with very low equipment, even seat adjustments are manual.

I really don't like the fast release cycle of many Linux distros, so I used to stick with CentOS or RHEL on my desktops as well. What about RHEL 7? By the way, what filesystem should be used on a laptop?

Indeed. In small enough samples, the power of the test (the probability of rejecting the wrong null hypothesis) can be ridiculously low. Having said that, you can't seriously make statements about how big the sample should be from the top of your hear. The power of the test as well as the consistency of hypothesis testing for a given sample size is dependent on the actual data generating process, which we normally can't observe.

The second best thing you can do is to _impose_ the assumption of the data generating process, and then run a monte carlo simulation to study the properties of the test you want perform on real data. People often simply use normal distribution, but if they know so properties of data, then can use other distribution as well. This is less perfect, but can shade some light on the sample size you need to make your tests valid. I'd disagree with the "10,000" minimum sample size requirement. Such large sample size is usually required only in certain types of tests involving time series. Cross-sectional data can do with much smaller sample size. For regression based tests, some studies have shown that 300 observations can be enough, while for simple location studies (means, etc) smaller samples could work pretty well.

You won't get a dual core i5 laptop for $400 "easily", unless you're buying a used notebook or something easily outdated. Try maybe $600. And then you end up almost certainly with the garbage 720p or 1366x768 screen.

Perl was designed by people and for people who were fond of the Unix shell scripting syntax, all the unix tools, and the C language, which were the primary tools of coding unix in the old days. Unfortunately, Perl looks cryptic to anyone without a background in that sort of Unix environment. Most people don't learn unix shell scripting and C, before jumping into a scripting programming language. They jump straight into scripting language. As a result, Python has a huge advantage with this crowd. Then there is the issue of TMTOWTDI, which a lot of companies and programmers want to avoid these days.

This is why Python has become an industry standard language while Perl remains a tool for one-off hacks.

I really don't understand how retailers and manufacturers are still getting away with selling $700-800 laptops with those awful 1366x768 or 720p displays. A few times I was looking for a basic laptop with entry level CPU and memory, and a 14-15 inch screen with nice resolution at an affordable price at Fry's or BestBuy. But the sales people always direct me at loaded models that cost +1000 to get that screen.

Most departments in most fields are reluctant to hire their own graduates. Hiring your own graduates will simply lead to rehashing of the same old ideas and intellectual stagnation. The same type of discrimination against own graduates is observed in graduate school admissions. I often see the pattern that at many competitive schools they don't really like admitting their own graduates into PhD programs. It happens, but not that frequently.

No I don't. What do you propose? That all cars should also be "smart cars" which will not start without owners fingerprint for the sake of safety?

I suspect the ban on using Russian engines to launch the US military satellites is more of a posturing. Russian rockets and rocket engines are used mostly to launch civilian satellites.

I think the intent is to get more Russians to use Russia's GPS equivalent.

The sanctions and bans clearly will not work to defuse the Ukraine crisis. The Russian public has bought into Putin's nationalist rhetoric. Putin completely controls the political discourse in the mass media within Russia. This year, Kremlin increased pressure even on web based news, social networks, and blogs. Every Western sanction is met with a counter-sanction from the Russian side. The Russian economy and standards of living may suffer (some have serious doubts about the effectiveness of these sanctions), but I don't think they will make Russia back away.

Moreover, it's not clear what is the goal of the western sanctions as their goal is often amorphously described as "deescalate the situation in Ukraine". What does this mean? Russians think that annexation of Crimea is a done deal. Not just Putin, average Russians too. They certainly won't back away from that. As for the instability in east Ukraine, it's not clear how you prove who is escalating what right now? The locals in East Ukraine are certainly as pissed off at Kiev as it gets, specially after deadly Odesa clashes and the coup in Kiev. I don't think they need a lot of encouragement from Putin at this point.

The best way to defuse the crisis in Ukraine, is to help this country rebuild its democratic institutions and economy. While Ukraine is viewed as the victim in this dispute, its government must do more to accommodate the concerns of its Russian-speaking citizens in the East regions. For one, they should be allowed to elect their local government officials.