I am a bit taken aback by the inclusion of the FJ Cruiser. I see a few younger drivers with them, but they aren't exactly cheap.

Knowing most of the people that drive a Mercury Topaz, I am not surprised by that. I wish I could snag a Supra as they are a bit difficult to get in this day and age.

An intelligent leader does not need to be a scientist, however, an intelligent leader needs to be scientifically literate. I feel that the lack of scientific literacy and statistical literacy as a whole has created a great gap between understanding what is going on and trusting people who have the bests interests of the people at heart. However, some exceptions exist. I honestly feel Pope Francis has been one of the best leaders of the Catholic church in the last century. I don't know if he will exceed Pope John Paul II or not, but in a short time, he has undone a lot of damage that his predecessor did. I feel his scientific background has assisted in this.

On top of that, we have an economy built on short term gains. This has created a lot of negative perceptions on things that need to be done. We can't push alternative energy because we will destroy the economy, but China and Germany have been doing just that and their economies are booming.

Sadly, what we are being told by this study is that our researchers need a PR team. Everyone can imagine what that will do to the cost of research and development. On a positive note, we might now have justification for employing the people who spent all of that time getting marketing degrees.

MOM vs MAVEN is pretty easy to answer.

For starters, I don't think you will be able to successfully employ a rocket scientist for $9,888 or what ever ridiculous wage they worked for. Second MOM weighs in at 15 Kg, while MAVEN weighs in at 65 Kg. These probes function much differently.

MAVEN is there to look at dry river beds and research Mars's Atmosphere as well as serve as a relay for the rovers on the Mars.

MOM is just a proof of concept explorer for India. They threw in a few scientific instruments for kicks.

I am thrilled that India did what they did with MOM, but this in no way justifies that they are accomplishing the task of what NASA is doing for less. I hope China gets in on the action as well. I hope the US gets motivated to try and do more with less as well.

Well, perhaps if they can get some of the payload contracts, Dream Chaser could possibly become a reality down the road.

I have mixed feelings on this as well.

Here we have taxpayer funded technology which the NSA is making a profit off of in order to provide funding for the NSA. The problem is that while they are creating revenue off of something that was initially purchased by the tax payer. Selling such technology or research to companies in a strange way privatizes that research or technology. I firmly believe that these things should be handed over to the populace that developed them. There are some exceptions to this like for example if the NSA contracted an individual company and the individual company patents the tech, then they are trying to secure their contract with the NSA. However, when the NSA makes a discovery should become public domain.

Imagine if NASA only released their data to people who subscribed to the premium NASA network or if our armed services only provided protection to countries or states that rented our services. Imagine if FEMA only brought aid or created a tiered service to which they dispersed aid to those who donated to them.

I understand that this is how the world works, but I feel that allowing the NSA to do this, they can justify their existence by saying they are self-sustaining while other agencies don't have the ability to monetize their research but actually do more for this rocky mass orbiting third in order from Sol.

In summary, cool, you can sustain yourself, bad, you are using that to justify your existence instead of your actual excuse for existence.

If I remember correctly, before and after entering office, Obama vowed to improve government transparency and protecting whistle blowers. While in sections, such as with ARRA, government transparency was increased, the remainder of the government was obscured further.

Anymore I have to tend to race to the register in order to pay for the meal.

Times have changed, but women being on par or having equal opportunities to mean still is not true.

Currently we still use the term, "Manned" Space travel. Prior to 1970, any sentence that started a asexual pronoun usually ended with his or him to describe the asexual person. Wages are still unequal. The US still doesn't have maternity leave, but most companies do allow for that.

The situation has improved in many western countries, but there is still a lot of growth that needs to happen.

I was thinking about Larry Ellison being 70 and still wanting to work and in fact, actually wanting to take a position where he can continue to be creative instead of one handling the day to day business.

At the same time, my Grandfather passed away last year at age ninety-one. He was weeks away from being ninety-two. When asked about how old he wanted to live, he responded, "My dad lived to be ninety-two, and I think that's a good age, so I want to be ninety-two."

Towards the end, he was being despondent and spent most of his days sleeping. There were times where he would be lucid and say some fantastic things, but for the most part, I could tell he was ready to go. He had lived a good life. Many of us in the family felt that he was due as he lived his last year in a nursing home and didn't really want to even do that.

I do think that quality of life should be included in decisions to prolong life. Terry Schaivo was a case where there was nearly zero potential to improve her life. Other times, I sense that some of these hospital administrations are doing what they can to bilk insurance companies in order to extend a person's life regardless of the eventuality of their passing. Not to sound completely inhumane, but if a person is going to continue their existence by suffering, are we being humane by prolonging their existence.

There are some cases, like with Stephen Hawking, where an individual wants so much to contribute to the world that they want to exist. Because of this, there should not be any hard limit put in as far as a person's life to which we should consider ending health care.

My company, while not a fortune 500 company has been known as an engineering training ground. Those who stay behind are generally not skilled enough or too attached to the area to leave.

I am going to go ahead and include myself in not skilled enough column. Then again, they do pay for college courses and I haven't had too much trouble in getting them to allow me to go to training courses, so they aren't entirely evil.

Depends on the subject matter. I spent a couple days at DEFCON and managed to take in more info than I did at my regular job for the entire year. Personally, I consider this to be beneficial.

However, because I did go on my own dime and my own time, I didn't feel obligated to get as much out of the event and didn't think I really harmed anyone or anything other than quite a few brain cells and my liver.

If this were a conference where there were new things to learn and... the conference costs a bit more than out of pocket allows, then I would go to the company and also behave myself a bit more.

Awesome idea. If the site fails, no big loss. If the site is a success, congratulations, there is one stop shopping for exploitation. Congrats you just paid a lot of money to share your data with a bunch of friends only to have it exploited.

Nothing better than creating an easily accessible haven for all of your no-no shots and painting a giant target on it.

Was cheaper...

Because some states were pushing Ethanol pretty heavily, the price of HFCS actually went up enough to justify the cost of real sugar. The only reason why the price of sugar is so high though is because apparently we have to protect the farmers in Hawaii with tariffs on any imports. Subsidies and Tariffs can be the devil sometimes.

Farm Subsidies also are responsible for keeping the cost of HFCS down below the price of sugar cane.

However, a mission to Mars would require research into food preservation which is one of the largest problems to getting food into remote areas of the world and maintaining nutritional value for the people who need to consume it. For ever argument you can throw at NASA being a waste of money, I can counter that argument with a reason why NASA improves life.

We just had a big article about some key congressmen trying to block and sabotage SpaceX's development process. SpaceX is a young and aggressive company with clear drive and motivation to succeed. While they might have been a risky bet because they were new, they would have backed their development record.
Remember this:
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

These three tools of Boeing are using congress to hold back our space exploration. We need competition between these companies and giving SpaceX a chance to shine will make Boeing stop screwing over the U.S.

Anyone in Colorado and Alabama care to remove these idiots from office?

When hearing about the cloud, I tend to use the early shore based ocean analogy of what made the early oceans and oceans today cloudy. Clouds in the water were generally masses of spermatozoa looking for an egg to fertilize. So when someone references head in clouds, I can't help but think of this as a potential bukake party.

On a serious note, I have a serious problem with an ISP trying to provide cloud services and vice-versa. This is the same reason I take issue with Google Fiber. I love the speed of Google Fiber and how it shakes up the industry, but I take issue with who is providing the service the same as I take issue with CenturyLink buying up Rackspace.