What is being said in the article is almost verbatim true for physics as well. Poorly taught, even more poorly understood by almost anyone (including teachers).

Mathematics is much more fundamental than physics, no doubt. Very good points are made here. But (ironically?), you could replace "math" with "physics" in the article and most of it would be true just as well.

I don't hold hope that especially Americans will ever get this, though, either for math, or for other STEM fields. Because it's "too hard". Being ignorant is just too damn easy, if you ask me.

Heck, I'd be happy if people at least would get math.

I don't have the feeling that ADHD is being swept under the rug. Quite the contrary. If your kid happens to have have something other than ADHD, it is now that kid that is being swept under the rug because it does not have the condition "en vogue".

Unfortunately that is my personal experience. This does neither do justice to the kids who really have ADHD and need help (I am not surprised if there are are many misdiagnosed cases) nor to the kids who have any other kind of condition or need, whatever they may be.

I do see parents, teachers, and schools all to easily (and often willingly) choose the convenient way of just handing out a pill without really trying to find what out is going on and what the best way is to address the situation. That often requires work, and lots of it. If your specific problem is easy to address, count your blessings - not all of us are so lucky.

It may well be that ADHD is misunderstood. Welcome to the club. But frankly, I get the feeling that most people don't understand what a "normal" childhood should/could look like, either.

Well, there are the "International Traffic in Arms Regulations" that regulate the export not only of defense articles (those seem obvious), but also of hardware that can be used to create space hardware (launchers, rockets, scientific experiments, the Space station, basically anything NASA builds and puts into space, including certain software). Export to any foreign national other than US citizens and US resident aliens is illegal without proper license. Violations carry heavy fines. To me working on a NASA (hardware) project and using a Google email account is probably highly problematic if not just plain stupid. So, in other words, any (!) country other than the US for those purposes is the wrong country.

Say what you want about Lomborg's books (and there is lot to say, no doubt), but there is at least one point he makes that is worth thinking about more carefully:

Wether we know or not how global warming really works, to me the bigger issue is that we are rapidly depleting resources and polluting/screwing up our planet - on so many levels that it is not funny. We have been doing so much crap at such a rapid pace that Lomborg is probably right when he says that we simply won't be able to pay our way out of this mess. And that includes all nations, not just the rich and/or polluting ones.

As a result, you have to do two things: reduce doing crap (again, on many levels), and pay for those solutions to reduce/reverse bad developments that make the most impact. And solutions making the most impact may not necessarily be the "feel good" solutions.

Even though this may seem wrong to many, adding some economic common sense to the whole debate (as Lomborg proposes) makes sense to me, if done right.

Frankly, I don't really care whether humankind is capable of changing the climate and generally screwing things up, because on a fundamental level I believe we simply should not. If we think/know that we are, we should get our act together and try the most effective ways of counteracting those developments. It will be hard. But we certainly know how not pollute etc., if we really wanted to.

Beyond that, the religious wars of who is right when and where really just bore me. All it does is giving people a reason not to do something sensible and productive. Such is humankind, I suppose ...

Nah, they'll use frog DNA and we'll all be safe.

On the bottom of the rock, it was stamped "Made on Mars".

One last thing...you should never talk about any camera view other than the cockpit view if you are talking about a serious racing sim. Who cares if the bumper cam is off (and how would you know...have you drive your car from the bumper before).

Other than that, I enjoyed your post and will probably be buying an Xbox 360 and Forza, because I tried GT5 prologue and was underwhelmed, and frankly, I'm tired of waiting for something I'm starting to believe won't live up to the hype.

But you can't prove that they don't not exist, either!

Well, it's a bit of a problem with Ludwig von Drake - when people start questioning his numbers, he gets frustrated easily, steam blows out his ears, and he has a tendency to either grab his papers carelessly and run around them, tear them up in anger, or start babbling like a madman and eat them...

"Privacy is no longer a social norm ...". I suppose that's correct. Stupidity and ignorance have replaced it, among other things. But that's ok with me as long as I continue to have a choice. Besides, those new "norms" can make for good entertainment.

That's an arrogant statement by Schmidt (and yes, I read the whole thing). How often have we heard the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" argument over the decades? Add Google to that long list - and it's not an honor roll! I guess "Don't be evil" is leaving the building. It was a matter of time, anyway.

The Germans have a nice saying for that phenomenon: "Vox populi, vox Rindvieh.", which loosely translates to "the voice of the people is the voice of idiots." (more precisely, the voice of stupid cows).