I fished around the links in the article, including http://www.plosgenetics.org/ar... and it looks fascinating. But we really need to see more samples. The one of the reporter is quite good, but let's see them do it again.

They don't have to auction it forever, exhausting future generations rights. It should not be worse than selling Grimms to Disney. Shorten the rights, let our kids have a say.

“Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years." As author Joseph Heller's Dunbar character saw it, the more miserable you are, the slower time passes, and the longer (relatively) you live.

Or at least I hope so. I've been falsely tagging myself in Facebook, reversing and randomizing the tags, for years. I wish more people would poison the well instead of trying to go "invisible", we just need about 1/3 errors to discredit positive ID as a method.

Agree, I was just reading about the extinctions of Moas and Dodos a few months ago. The arrival of human-associated pests and pets (rats from ships, cats) vs. human hunting itself may be less settled, but there didn't appear to be any "news".

the new Childrens Storybook Fiction Writer overlords.

Some irony there somewhere.

Part of the revamped SAT involves establishing Khan Academy SAT Prep courses. https://www.khanacademy.org/te... The perception has been for years that test takers from wealthier families have key advantages, including taking the test multiple times and paying for special training. Gates has been a backer of Khan Academy already. I think it's a positive step if they do more to level the playing field.

From TFA "It seems obvious to say that happy developers will perform better than unhappy ones"

Then FTFA goes on and on explaining ... the obvious.

I read the article a few days ago, and thought lookout mama there's a white boat comin' up the river at Spotify. If Neil doesn't get in front and interfere, the bandwidth can support his increased quality, and the price point is cool.

Yes. You can. But most people buy stock, shares in BHP Billiton, Vale, Xstrata, Rio Tinto, Asarco.... buying rights to hundreds of thousands of acres at a time.

The source of the parent quote above is the Bureau of Land Management federal website. Perhaps whoever authored your wikipedia article is making a distinction about the "Mineral Leasing Act of 1920" which is derivative of the GMA. Or perhaps Jack Abramoff's mignons have been editing your wiki. But again, this is from BLM.gov

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/coal_and_non-energy.html "BLM has responsibility for coal leasing on approximately 570 million acres where the coal mineral estate is owned by the Federal Government. The surface estate of these lands could be controlled by BLM, the United States Forest Service, private land owners, state land owners, or other Federal agencies. BLM receives revenues on coal leasing at three points: 1) a bonus paid at the time BLM issues the lease an annual rental payment of $3.00 per acre or fraction thereof, 2) royalties paid on the value of the coal after it has been mined. The Department of the Interior and the state where the coal was mined share the revenues."

Again, the total fees collected (GMA 1872 and MLA 1920 combined) do not even cover the costs of staff at the Interior Department or BLM!