Well, by that logic then this is relevant too:

http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com...

According to data published by the Social Security Administration, the name Hillary is the most severely poisoned baby name in history. Hillary had been steadily climbing the baby name charts since the 1960s, when it first graced the Top 1000, becoming the 136th most common name for baby girls in 1992. But the name sharply reversed course in 1993, smashing several longstanding records (Ebeneezer, Adolph) for name contamination in its plunge from the Top 1000 girl names last year.

I'd only add one point further: as much as Ike's prescient warning about the military-industrial complex is quoted ad nauseum, what is much less-often quoted is his comments immediately following that bit...

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

I'd beg to differ, as there was a long and fruitful conversation on quora about exactly this.
I read through at least the first 20 replies, and they're quite good.*

http://www.quora.com/Why-do-sc...

Not to mention that the idea that scientists are strongly liberal is supported by ample statistical evidence (one example at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c... - Paul Krugman is hardly the mouthpiece of the GOP).

*let me be clear, I love science and hard science fiction, I think creationism is mythological poppycock, and yet I am a *staunch* conservative. So go figure.

Right here is the solid fact.

it's not about skill, It's about how cheap can we get the whores for, and how hard can we abuse them.

20 somethings tend to be too stupid to stand up for themselves and accept a 60 hour workweek as normal. They also buy the bullshit of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and keep accepting more and more workload.

I'm an "old fart" and more of a digital native than any 20 something.. I have been in the internet since 1987 in a legit form.. Was a part of it in other forms for 2 years previous... Running Unix and managing dial up nodes for UUnet access. I have been active in usenet at that time as well as not only living the digital world, but I have done more in networking and computing hardware than any 10 of the new kiddies from college put together. How many of them have actually licked a cray?

In fact most old farts I know that are still in the business can still work circles around the new turds on the block. We just work smart using that experience we have instead of being over caffeinated lost puppies sniffing and peeing on every server rack they can find.

I fail to see how laying off Congress and shipping their jobs to India would result in any possible lower value than we have in that body today?

One might point out that makes 2 massively egotistical women on the campaign trail, then?

Except that the latest UAH and RSS data sets (still in beta, so unofficial) show no warming for the last 18 years - something your link even acknowledges. (In 2009 he mentions "I have to say I find this all very puzzling.")

Have they been good at predicting things, or are the things predicted being 'adjusted' to better match the predictions?

"Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed âoeits hottest March since records began in 1880â. This year, according to âoeUS government scientistsâ, already bids to outrank 2014 as âoethe hottest everâ. The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the worldâ(TM)s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAAâ(TM)s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).
But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as âoethe hottest year everâ.

Back in January and February, two items in this column attracted more than 42,000 comments to the Telegraph website from all over the world. The provocative headings given to them were âoeClimategate the sequel: how we are still being tricked by flawed data on global warmingâ and âoeThe fiddling with temperature data is the biggest scientific scandalâ.
My cue for those pieces was the evidence multiplying from across the world that something very odd has been going on with those official surface temperature records, all of which ultimately rely on data compiled by NOAAâ(TM)s GHCN. Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been âoeadjustedâ, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified.
So strong is the evidence that all this calls for proper investigation that my articles have now brought a heavyweight response. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com...

Difference between raw and final data sets (this is an official graph from NOAA):
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/c...

"It also renews the expiring parts of the Patriot Act through 2019."

No. let that fucking thing die. The PATRIOT ACT and those that support it are enemies of the american people.

A lot of people claim the soft sciences are not 'really science' due to the intangibility of their results - and this plays directly into that bias.

However, it's very much not just the softer sciences that have this issue. There's a growing realization that it's pervasive across many hard science disciplines:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... : 64% of pharma trials couldn't be reproduced.

http://retractionwatch.com/201... - half of researchers couldn't reproduce published findings.

We're inundated with data that, due to the specificity of the field or detail of the results, has to come from 'experts' and doesn't lend itself to a sort of common-sense vetting that we can use to filter bullshit in the usual course of our lives. Whether it's from ignorance of statistical methods, poor experimental technique, motivated mendacity (for whatever reason), or simply experimental results that represent only an unusual end of a bell-curve, there are many, many reasons that scientific data has to be taken with a serious grain of salt. It can't be assumed to be conclusive until we've reproduced it in whatever context we're trying to apply it.

If that 10 years is maintenance free as in I don't have to do anything to it He will win big.
The biggest problem with off grid solar+wind installs is that caring for the battery bank is outside of the abilities of 80% of the population. If musk can make an off grid solar/wind install a zero effort/ zero care system where the drooling masses don't have to do anything.....

That will get the adoption rates way up, if the payback is within 5 years.

Right there. Psychology is as much a science as Astrology and Tarot cards. It's all based on what the observer thinks is normal.

The CEO deserves all the cookies! He is being generous in giving the Tea Party guy a chance to look at the cookie.

All hail the holy CEO's .... for they are our salvation!

"Corporations don't hold guns to their customer's heads."

AS in a physical gun? no not yet. But they hold financial guns to peoples' heads all the time. and many times try to do financial assassinations.

Why kill a person when you can make them suffer for the rest of their lives financially.