I guess it depends on the type of work though. When it comes to writing software, I find that if I get up, go for a walk, chat with some coworkers, etc. - which is technically "unproductive" - that I can move past a roadblock that I was encountering and sometimes wrap a problem up in about thirty minutes. Other-times where the expectation was that you had to sit and code all day, I could easily spend four times as long working on the same problem due to mental fatigue.

Back in 1995 Dilbert highlighted some of the issues with development and engineering type positions and what is considered work - namely, the time spent at home thinking about a problem isn't considered "work."

Nope, the physics professor I had spent the first day talking Sikhism and the Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) and it would come up from time to time after that, although he did some more time actually talking about physics. Sadly, he had a very thick accent so you really had to pay attention to figure out what he was saying to determine if it was even relevant.

Sure, except for the fact that nobody has been able to explain how the rebels managed to get their hands on chemical weapons in order to launch the attack. Short of manufacturing them they would have had to have gotten them from a Syrian storehouse that fell into their hands in which case it makes sense for the Syrian government to want to wash their hands free of them.

It's entirely possible that the rules have changed since you had your first SSBI, but unless they changed things (again) the only reason that they would talk to elementary school teachers is if you actually given them as one of your references. The last time I looked at DCID 6/4 it basically said something along the lines of verify education and interview sources if education was your primary activity during the past three years. There's always the possibility that an investigation would be expanded, but I like I said a couple posts back, I don't see OPM going and talking to someone's elementary school teachers and asking for a character reference.

Except that nobody in this day and age actually calls it "special clearance" or if they do then it was outside of the community that I was in. If they are going back and talking to elementry school teachers then it is not an SSBI that is being conducted since that only goes back 10 years or until the age of 18 which ever is less and that is the usual standard for SCI materials. Of course, this is not to say that a SAP might require above and beyond but then my point still stands about talking to elementray school teachers about what you were like at that age still stands: it is completely meaningless unless they knew you as an older teenager or adult.

What do you mean by "special clearance" though? For an SSBI they aren't going to go back and talk to elementary school teachers because there would be no point in doing that unless you knew those same teachers when you were older. When they do an SSBI for military personnel that are fresh out of high school they don't go back and talk to elementary school teachers unless they knew the subject in the recent past since someones opinion of a child is unlikely to give any indication as to their trustworthiness as an adult.

Generally speaking the odds of a random American having tried drugs was about 42% back in 2008 and I'm sure that on a generational basis that number is likely higher or lower. Plus if you know where someone grew up or is currently living that affects the odds as well. So from that perspective it kind of makes sense to push someone on the issue - if they will not admit to doing something once or twice (that they really don't care about) then what else are they likely to keep close lipped that can actually be used against them?

Although oddly enough I've actually seen more traffic going to my Flickr account that was being driven by searches on Flickr. So it looks like they might have tweaked the searching under the hood as well which is nice, but the new UI on the other hand, cluttered.

Realistically the reason that the US cares about the use of chemical weapons in Syria is because there is fear that AQ or one of the other radical groups operating in Syria could get their hands on them for use outside of Syria. If Syria is resorting to the use of chemical weapons then they are becoming more liberal with their transport and they can fall out of their control. If this was a false flag operation of some sort then Syria has already lost control of chemical weapons in which case someone needs to go in their to re-establish control of them. Beyond that the US doesn't want to get involved unless one of their allies in the region pulls them into the quagmire which hasn't been happening. As someone already pointed out, the missiles that hit Turkey gave the US casus belli to attack Syria and even with the war hawks in Congress and the Senate beating the war drums they've avoided doing anything overt thus far.

I'm not sure if that is sarcasm nor not. The education system in Japan is largely based upon rote memorization and is known be counter productive in terms of creativity. The United States are up there on the list of countries with the most working hours and least amount of vacation time taken.

There are actually a lot of reports of the B-2 Spirt being reported as Black Triangle UFOs and there is some plausible evidence out there that there might be another experimental airframe out there that is triangular in shape.

Pointing such things out does not make you appear couth, but rather more of a churl.

On the same token, who said the anthropomorphic being applied aren't unfounded? There is a lot of evidence out there to support the fact that some animals aren't "dumb" so it's not unreasonable to speculate that some of them might be capable of communicating using mechanisms that we could both anthropomorphise and be complete incapable of understanding.

With regards to the argument that the "Language Log" is trying to make about signature whistles not acting like names, well, they are guilty of assuming that dolphin "grammar" would act the same as human languages. For all intensive purposes they are falling for the anthropomorphic as a result. Or to put in another way "Dolphins aren't following the rules of human grammar, therefore, signature whistles can't be names."

Or Snowden might be exaggerating what the software could do because he wasn't actually authorized to use it (i.e. he drew conclusions based upon the training materials on SharePoint) and Rogers is downplaying how poor the security at the NSA actually is.

If Snowden was a system administrator at the NSA then there would have been no reason for him to be using the tools that the intellegence analysts would have been using and I would like to think that he would not have had need to know to actually use the systems even if he had knowledge of them. So he likely was not in a position to be fully briefed about the actual capablities of the systems. Even if he was being truthful about being a "infrastructure analyst" (i.e. black hat) there still wouldn't have been much of a reason for him to the tools of an intellegence analyst.

Don't forget that some of those sites could also just be access servers that allow the relevent software to be run and might not be the servers doing the actual probing.