Couldn't NASA find a generous corporate sponsor to shell out some $$$ to have their name on the side of a building or rocket ?
Stupid companies pay for namespace on sports facilities why not take advantage of the side of the gantry.

I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.

Recycling, and re-using are great but that assumes the water is there to be used and re-used in the first place. The Colorado river doesn't even reach the gulf anymore without artificial aid.
 

Been meeting with the same group for more than 30 years now on Saturday night. I started playing the when the 1st red-book with crayons came out, I was like in 6th grade, and yes I still have the boxed set and nearly EVERY other book, module, and accessory. I'm 46 now and NO other form of RPG online or other can compare to the fun and comradeship of a face to face pen and paper RPG. More imagination, more interaction, and for those of you who doubt it is family fun, our group consists of 2 single ladies, 3 single guys, 2 married couples all my relative age (mid 40's) and 3 much younger players in their mid 20's ( 2 guys and a girl. We have 3 players who rotate as Game Master and we play in a long standing organically customized world. We have been at several Gen-Cons and we ran a full tourney game that was very successful several years ago.
Long live D&D

:-)

You make it sound like starving people are getting fat too.

If they are becoming obese, the particular individual has a surplus of caloric intake, if only for this year or month. This is not to say that they have proper nutrition. So I am not at all clear that the fact that there is obesity in the third world is confounding evidence.

For most of the existence of mankind and indeed all of mankind's progenitors, having too much food was a rare problem and being hungry all of the time was a fact of life. We are not necessarily well-evolved to handle it. So, no surprise that we eat to repletion and are still hungry. You don't really have any reason to look at it as an illness caused by anything other than too much food.

Martin,

The last time I had a professional video produced, I paid $5000 for a one-minute commercial, and those were rock-bottom prices from hungry people who wanted it for their own portfolio. I doubt I could get that today. $8000 for the entire conference is really volunteer work on Gary's part.

Someone's got to pay for it. One alternative would be to get a corporate sponsor and give them a keynote, which is what so many conferences do, but that would be abandoning our editorial independence. Having Gary fund his own operation through Kickstarter without burdening the conference is what we're doing. We're really lucky we could get that.

We do charge entry to the convention. We get really nice facilities for the people who actually travel there and for the speakers. Last year's location was subperb. But I don't see why they should actually subsidize the folks who do not attend.

I think TAPR's policy is that the presentations be freely redistributable, but I don't know what they and Gary have discussed. I am one of the speakers and have always made sure that my own talk would be freely redistributable. I wouldn't really want it to be modifiable except for translation and quotes, since it's a work of opinion. Nobody should get the right to modify the video in such a way as to make my opinion seem like it's anything other than what it is.

If I remember correctly, it was 4 video channels last year: tracking on presenter, proscenium, audience, projector.

Yes. I put in $100, and I am asking other people to put in money to sponsor these programs so that everyone, including people who did not put in any money at all, can see them for free. If you look at the 150+ videos, you can see that Gary's pretty good at this (and he brought a really professional-seeming cameraman to Hamvention, too) and the programs are interesting. Even if at least four of them feature yours truly :-) He filmed every one of the talks at the TAPR DCC last year (and has filmed for the past 5 years) and it costs him about $8000 to drive there from North Carolina to Austin, Texas; to bring his equipment and to keep it maintained, to stay in a motel, to run a multi-camera shoot for every talk in the conference, and to get some fair compensation for his time in editing (and he does a really good job at that).

and if I visit a retailer that won't accept cash you lose the sale. I have credit and debit, but I prefer to pay cash for what I want. As for the criminal economy, I'd say corporate America is doing just fine with credit and cash. I also do a healthy side business dealing in barter for services, even more anonymous and generally tax free.

Do you have experience that points to other sources ? I've done this for several years now and I've yet to have to work a teachers or admins workstation for anything but a part failure, while I spend more time cleaning up student workstations and shared library stations with the software filter and the tampering students...

NOTE : quite often I learn NEW and interesting things fixing stuff after the kids are done, things I never would have considered or thought of trying :)

WOW I wish more people thought like you. I volunteer and manage a network and wireless setup for a high-school in my area, the bandwidth is provided free of charge by AT&T, I know it surprised me as well. Kids can and DO break things in ways I never even conceived of before taking on this responsibility. I work as an admin for a very LARGE business and do this professionally and I've never seen the cluster-fsck that 2 dozen high school kids can make of a network in 10 minutes without even really trying.
Hardware and software companies need to get these kids to be beta testers.