1) A jury-like panel of practitioners to judge obviousness.

It should, perhaps, be noted that a lot of things are obvious AFTER they've been invented.

NO doubt there are some that were also obvious before they were invented too, but it's by no means the same set of things....

The old "you can't yell fire in a crowded movie house" comes to mind.

The proper quote is "you can't FALSELY yell fire in a crowded theatre".

Pay close attention to that extra word - it's important....

Democrats are far more likely to have no valid ID

What, Democrats don't drive?? And can't be bothered to get the DL-equivalents that every State offers for non-drivers to use as ID?

consider that the Apple Watch is just the start of wearing things around your wrist. .

And here I thought the cellphone was the END of wearing things around my wrist....

Unless something is done about the population growth

Absent immigration, population growth in the US is negative.

Ditto Europe.

And China.

India isn't quite there yet, but their population growth rate has been steadily declining for most of my life.

In other words, the Third World is the only place where population growth is an issue today. So, yes, we do have the resources....

Nothing in your agreement with the ISP requires them to peer with the people you want them to peer with, at the capacity you want them to have.

And nothing in the net neutrality rules requires your ISP to peer with the people you want them to peer with, at the capacity you want them to have.

The operational phrase being "at the capacity you want them to have"....

All of these recent failues (including the U.S. ones) give some insight into the Apollo program's amazing success (except for 13) in the U.S.

Umm, Apollo had two failures (1 & 13). Out of 17 Apollos (not all of which carried crew). So a failure rate of 11% or so....

As opposed to Shuttle's failure rate (two shuttles of 133 flights) of 1.5%.

Admittedly, Soyuz also had two failures, of 117 flights (as I recall - could be off by a few), which amounted to a failure rate of 1.7% or so.

Oh, look! Shuttle had a lower failure rate than either Apollo or Soyuz! How is that possible?!

and a lower per capita rate of crime than half the nation.

Though higher than New York. Or South Carolina. Or Mississippi....

Well, here's your mistake, then:

We EXPECT the government to serve our needs and prevent abuses such as this.

You mispelled "their own" in the above.

So, who does the "biomatter" belong to when the "biomatter" is a fertilized egg?

It's not her DNA, it's not his DNA. And the fertilized egg is not a human in the eyes of the law...

So, who does the "biomatter" belong to? And why?

I'm no cardiologist, but couldn't these fractions be simplified?

Cardiology has nothing to do with this. Cardiology is about hearts, not eyes....

Designing and building a dam that provides drinking water and electricity to millions is not "societally meaningful"?

Likewise, designing a weathersat that improves predictions of hurricanes and such is not "societally meaningful"?

Interesting that the argument being used is that "most of what engineers do does nothing for society, so women don't want to do that sort of thing"....

Say some kid doesn't quite get what they were talking about in the lesson, and has additional questions. Where would that kid go?

To the FAQ page?

Seriously, while I doubt very much that educator is going to disappear, a great deal of the raw information is quite susceptible to computerization.

The most important thing you need a teacher for at that level is the socialization skills - we have less need of well-educated psychopaths than you might think (other than politicians and such, of course)....