So what's the answer? And don't put it on "brilliant engineering minds" to figure something out for you. Tell us what a good, economical, and environmentally sound option should be.

1. Renewables? A massive decrease in the cost of petroleum does not make the economics of renewables, especially solar, more attractive.
2. Nuclear? Good luck convincing regulatory bodies, the population, and environmentalists that's the best way to go. Besides, nuclear waste is a real problem, and we are in the perpetual state of "a few years more" to achieving the fast breeder reactors.
3. Fusion? Not technically possible right now, but you never know, maybe with "another 10 years" and we'll have it.
4. Force demand to be lower by using quotas or raising electricity price artificially? Yay, big government regulation causing dramatic changes in how people will live their lives. I'm sure everyone will just love being told to stop using heaters in the winter and air conditioners in the summer.
5. Carbon tax? Yay, big government regulation. Guess who profits from "carbon exchanges?" Goldman Sachs.
6. Kill off tons of people thereby reducing energy demand? Go for it, Mr. Eugenics. Just remember, killing people also takes energy expenditure in one way or another.

Nothing is easy.

I disagree with some of the pretenses here primarily that higher level math directly equates with a better performing student. I went to grad school for chemical engineering with 1/3 US students and 2/3 foreign all from China and India, and I will agree that their skills when it came to even engineering math (e.g. calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, numerical analysis) all surpassed what I and other domestic students knew.

But I think this is because of a fundamental difference in evaluating what problems are important. During my undergrad, memorization for a test was thought to be a pointless task and not worth doing (because in the real world, you can use Google, textbooks, whatever you want to accomplish the goal). Tests were structured to require extra thinking, problems could be formulated in a completely different way than found in the homework, or worse, the questions could nigh-unsolvable and require the student to explain how they would go about solving it if they weren't able to. However, in grad school, most of my tests relied on memorization of certain fundamentals and derivation methodologies to succeed. Guess which group performed better on that?

But what about skills that are not so easy testable? Like communication? Or thinking about a problem outside the box and not approaching it from the exact same way as everyone else? Many modern engineering problems are not just solved by use of complex mathematics; formulation of a problem, simplifying the problem where appropriate, solution methodologies, thinking about time constraints, monetary concerns, interactions with less technical people, and communication of results are all part of my daily job. Solving a problem using personal knowledge of PDE's may help occasionally, but knowing how to use tools when appropriate and knowing how to communicate is worth far more ultimately.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, and YMMV.

The idea that we're "soon" to have invisibility cloaks that are both omni-directional *and* handle visible light is an unfounded one. True, maybe the underlying foundations are set well and the science is understood. But here's the issue: metamaterials ("invisibility cloaks" as a rule, fall into this category since they're properties are determined by the structure of the materials - not the material itself) have specific patterns in the structure. Microwave radiation has a wavelength between 1 mm and 1 m. Visible light has a wavelength of 390 to 750 nm. We are talking about four orders of magnitude.

The structure of the metamaterial needed to handle visible light is going to be out of our reach for quite some time until we can design a better way of handling structural details on the nanoscale and beyond (right now, the best methods are self assembled, and those methods usually aren't good for the massive complexity you'd desire).

And what favors would those be to Saudi Aramco or Gazprom? I won't deny that the US has its fair share of corruption, but to say that our government goes out of its way to throw favors at foreign companies just because they are in a "powerful industry" seems like a long shot to me.

If you can prove it on either one of those two *huge* companies getting favors from the federal government, I'll buy it. I'll admit that I was wrong and apologize for being so misguided.

Haha, so they come to the US to ask for help about acidizing wells, new drilling methodologies, and completions... Just because we are a large market for it?

You know what? Let's say you're right. I hope in the future, when you are trying to figure out how to start up a very productive farm, you mosey your way on over to China and get their help on all the best techniques (because, of course, they are the largest market for food in the world). You mind as well go over there for all your electronics needs as well. Heck, I bet you can't wait to pick up the new Huawei smartphone. I mean, they have to be the best in the world since they're the largest market, right?

Fixing my poor grammar now instead of later: ...is he... should be ...he is...

Just another alarmist that doesn't know what the heck is he talking about.

True, the patent system for software is completely hosed up. But to say, "Innovation is dead in this country," is just you talking out of your ass.

There are plenty of companies in many other facets of science and engineering that are doing just fine by staying in the states (not to mention having some of the best schools in the world plus lots of very good ones). As an example, why do international companies in the petroleum industry routinely do business in the states? Oh wait, is it because innovation is dead? No, it's because we have some of the very best technology and great minds to advise companies all over the world.

From the article...

"...living 'against the clock' may be a factor contributing to the epidemic of obesity..."

You have to be kidding me. So they found a correlation? Yippie. I can find the correlation between number and pirates and global warming. Means nothing.

What's worse is that they don't even try to explain what's really going on here. Is it that metabolism is slower when things are out of order from circadian rhythm? Where are the citations for that suggestion? Is it actually a true case of causation with experimental evidence in biochemistry, or more regressions and "it looks this way, but we have no idea so here's a paper on it anyway" type of thing?

Or is it so much more simple? Maybe like... People are eating more calories than they burn?! No way! Common sense just can't come into play ever. Maybe people feel more hungry with less sleep! Oh goodness! Let's do a double regression on chronotypes and amount of sleep so that we can submit another paper and get more funding!

This argument seems analogous to "graphics in games are not photorealistic therefore I am not immersed as much as I wish therefore it's not worth my time to enjoy the game."

I would love to hear your reason as to why you hate having choices yanked out of you in a limited game. I mean, do you honestly expect an "interactive fiction" where you can make any decision that you possibly could want? Golly what if someone is a pacifist and doesn't want to go blow up virtual aliens? What if someone wants to be a psycho and kill all major characters? Do you expect the game makers to have thought of every stupid thing a person could want to do and develop an individual story with voice overs and endings to all?

Limited time. Limited money. Limited technology. There is no way to feasibly construct some game that is both a sandbox (allowing you to do whatever you feel like) and story driven (to actually be told a unique story) at the same time given our current abilities in game making. Either you have your expectations so high it's not even funny, or you are going to cite some shitty 8-bit game of "amazingness" that is 100 times better than anything today because it "let you do anything you wanted."

Haha, of course, I forgot that they're already supposedly using Zinc oxide as the original reactant. My foolish mistake. Still, I wish I could find the academic paper to get a better idea than some news report.

I have tried searching Web of Knowledge and Academic Search Premier (EBSCO), and I can't find any articles written by Koepf relating to hydrogen, solar, or zinc. I can also find no papers from the advisers dealing with this subject matter. It is entirely possible that they just haven't published anything on this yet, but that seems very sketchy to get press for something that has not yet been published... Hard to say. Anyone else have any luck with finding articles?

Also, zinc oxide is produced as a by product, so what we're seeing is something like...

Zn+H2O -> ZnO + H2

The real question is how to regenerate pure zinc from its oxide. If this technology can go somewhere, producing zinc from ZnO shouldn't require any external energy input (or minimal, if any). It is also entirely possible to just ignore reforming zinc oxide back into zinc, and they probably will at first. I just don't think splitting an oxide salt will be so easy only using high temperatures. Electrochemistry may help, but again, if the net energy gain of this whole process is too low, then it's unlikely to be picked up. Still pretty cool stuff though.

Really? Aren't we just getting a little paranoid? Why not take it one step further and suggest to sandbox every application inside the VM OS?

I'm sorry, but you have to be kidding me. I may not be a developer by trade, but from the way I see it...

iOS - Objective C
Android - Java
Windows Phone 7 - .NET XNA/Silverlight

Is Java really so far away from .NET that you couldn't port the code halfway decently? I mean, my God, Java and C# have so much of the same syntax it isn't even funny. Objective-C has quite a bit different syntax than Java, and you don't even see that being a problem do you?