This is absurd. I would understand if this had been funded by Department of Defense or DHS money, but this is a small grant by the National Science Foundation to study an interesting sociology problem that many people ask. Saying its some grand conspiracy for mind control is like saying the NSF is funding biology research to better understand how to deploy biological weapons, funding chemistry to build better bombs, physics to build better listening devices, or funding computer vision to build a better spy satellite. If you honestly feel the NSF is a front for government mind control, then why do we even bother publicly funding ANY science research since most can have "dual use"?

Also, look at the people who are railing against this particular piece of spending. Congressman Lamar Smith for example, has been aggressively tinkering with NSF and USG scientific funding in general, believing that the US should slash funding of sociological, psychological, and climate change research. I'm sure he threw the mind control one in there to help rile people up for his crusade against what he views as wasteful government spending.

Yet wealthy men and wealthy companies become wealthy because they know how to calculate, and recalculate, risks and financial cases especially after catastrophic losses like this. Hopefully this loss won't tip the balance to less profitable and lead to cancellation.

People forget too that NASA's manned spaceflight is extremely safe and "routine" because it forces its contractors to place layer after layer of redundancy on its programs. NASA paid a premium to buy that extra percentage point of safety.

Problem is, no matter what aircraft manufacturers may say, its the airlines that determine the seating configuration, and sadly, they're going to just pocket that money and cram in one extra row.

I would only point out that the poverty hole the People's Republic of China dragged all those individuals was created directly by poor PRC policies back in the 1960s and 1970s, so if you give them credit for that, you also have to give the United States tremendous credit for ending slavery and desegregation. That, or neither can claim an advantage in that regard.

New incentive to buy rigid cases. Time to go buy Otterbox stock!

Not really. Less than 20% Texans are polled to be in support of secession. That falls in line with the national average of all US citizens who want their states to cede, from New Englanders wanting to join Canada to Silicon Valley types fantasizing about their own libertarian utopia.

The challenge isn't registering for the course but actually passing the course. My undergrad used an equivalent Computer Science intro course as a weed out course for the entire college of engineering. Did a pretty effective job of it too.

While it is a bit complex on the surface, the USPTO's metrics are pretty straight forward: an X level patent examiner should be able to examine Y number of patents in a given quarter. Some patent applications take longer than others, but it all averages out in a year. Meet the minimum requirements, and you get paid. Exceed those requirements, and you get a bonus. In my opinion, its probably one of the most meritocratic agencies in the entire Federal government. All the time tracking issues revolves around the second time card they keep to try and fine tune what Y should be for X, but I didn't get a feel that the situation was so bad that it would significantly impact the numbers.

All politics is domestic, and Cuba is the same. As long as there is a very vocal community of Cuban expats that have an axe to grind with the Castro-created regime, the United States will not be lifting sanctions. I think as that generation gets older and fades away, we'll see an easing, but while they're still alive and politically active, change will not happen. Cubans Americans after all make up a large and politically active faction in a crucial swing state (Florida).

Ask the Iranians who continue to be under tight US sanctions. Oil hasn't helped them escape thirty years of US economic embargo.

The Chinese love to call hypocrisy, about "Well, the US does blah blah blah..." However, look at the Gulf of Mexico, a good comparative example to the South China Sea situation. See, in the Gulf of Mexico, the United States may actually have a strong position than the Chinese, with greater amount of shoreline touching the water and greater military superiority over its neighbors. There's oil in those water, rich fisheries, and its a critical body of water for American security interests. Yet unlike the Chinese, the Americans didn't scoop up the entire region like a hollowed out grapefruit and tell its neighbors FU. Instead, they sat down, from a position of power no less, and negotiated equitable maritime boundaries, not just with friendly nations like Mexico, but with hostile states like the Cubans. However, the Chinese are different, proving quite greedy and trying to essentially annex other nations' EEZ from Malaysia and Brunei up to Korea and Japan. It's a sad state of affairs, and it only serves to unite China's neighbors against it. With actions like that, they really shouldn't question why their neighbors fear them.