If you say so. I'm not sure you quite have a grasp of what welfare is, but if you honestly don't support funding scientific research, I really hope you don't come down with, say, Tourette syndrome or Parkinson's disease. But at least in your alternate reality you can rest assured that capitalism will prevail and the free market will rush to assist you in your moment of need.

Grew up hearing about how education is indispensable from my two first-gen college-educated parents. Went through high school with very little effort, graduated near the top of my class, got a degree in physics at a well-known university. But here I am, late 20's, with a tenuous job as a research associate, not knowing whether I'll still have a job next year given the uncertainty with federal research funding.

Younger sister on the other hand (currently in her early 20's), struggled a bit in high school, dropped out of college after freshman year, to the utter dismay of my parents. She got a job washing dishes and worked her way up, now works for a farmers market delivering produce to local restaurants. She earns almost as much as I do now, and without the uncertainty that the {Republicans | Democrats} will legislate her out of a job next year over the latest government spending fight. It's a pretty safe bet that 10 years from now people will still be eating vegetables.

In theory my career opportunities and income should exceed hers in the years ahead, but I say that with a whole lot less confidence than I did a couple years ago.

I wish the tech media (/. included, though Gizmodo is the worst offender) would stop covering McAfee's latest antics. The guy clearly has some serious mental and legal issues and needs professional help. Enabling him by conducting interviews and real-time blog coverage isn't doing anyone any good (except for a few journalists who clearly have book deals pending).

Oh, for crying out loud. Look, maybe there was a genuine conspiracy relating to the Benghazi attack. Or maybe there wasn't and shit just happens.

But, if you want to convince anyone else of your case, you have to stop treating every shadow like it's a smoking gun and every government official like they're a co-conspirator until you have real, substantial evidence. That's the way it works: you don't get to claim conspiracy just by randomly picking facts to be a story and hoping some of it pans out.

If Congress wants to talk to Petraeus, they'll subpoena him. If that happens and he flees the country, then that's a story. His exact job title really doesn't matter.

There are plenty of jobs where you can hold personal secrets without exposing yourself or your subordinates to real danger.

Being CIA director is not one of them.

This probably is not well-known to people except those working in neuroscience/behavioral psych research, but "wanting" and "liking" are part of a drug addiction theory called incentive salience. The basic notion is that "liking" something is a momentary, pleasurable feeling of hedonism. It passes quickly, but it's powerful reinforcement that drives you to want that hedonic feeling. The "wanting" is where motivation and incentive comes into play to drive the craving for reward (be it drugs, food, whatever).

Think about it: what's the last time you ate a cheeseburger? Do you have a vivid memory of it? Probably not.

But do you want a cheeseburger? Especially one with cheese, bacon, medium rare, fries on the side... mmm...

Anyway, the theory explains why addiction persists and drug abusers fall back into old habits, even when they've been clean for years. Salient cues are too much to ignore (a needle, a bus stop they used to meet their dealer, etc). The theory works with rats getting drugs, food, sex... No reason it can't be applied to website visitors too.

Umich researcher here (full-time staff, part time comp sci student)... yes, I wish my tuition was a bit lower, especially since I'm a self-funded student. But we have one of the top CS programs in the country (and arguably the best outside of Silicon Valley). The only way you can build and maintain a program like that is to have resources like this available to the students to experiment with and learn from. It's an investment, not an expense.

By the way, don't worry too much about your tax bill. Our state legislature is doing their best to defund us all the way to zero (last time I checked, state money was less than 10% of the U-M budget).

A border patrol vigilante is busy trying to figure out how to load a magazine clip into his assault rifle flatscreen.

Amusing timing on this question, as I just got back from running two weeks of summer camp for a Boy Scout troop(*) I volunteer for. 60+ people, 15 days. I slept for about 20 hours when I got home Sunday night.

Backstory: A couple years ago, we took a hard look at the fact that we were taking 30 kids to camp each summer at the cost of $350+ a head, when we were spending less than that to run basic program the rest of the year. Scout camps are cheap compared to most other summer camps, but still, $350/person can buy a lot of camping if you spend it yourself instead of on some pre-packaged experience where you're mainly paying the stipends of camp counselors. So we decided we'd go somewhere fun (picked a river valley in the northeastern US with boating/rock climbing/biking/hiking options), and run about half the daily activities in in-house with adult volunteers (whom we can also pay for), and contract out the other half to a local guide service. Much better experience for the kids. We actually had kids break down in tears this year because they were anti-homesick (they didn't want to go home!)

Lots of people ask why I spend so much personal time and money on what (on the surface) amounts to a horrible vacation (chaotic, lack of sleep, busy all day). And it's true, if your ideal vacation is lying on a beach somewhere for a week, it's not for you. But frankly, "going to the beach" was every family trip since I can remember until I went away to college, and I just can't stand it anymore. When I go away on vacation, I want to do something other than bake in the sun every day and different from what I do in an office the rest of the year.

*(In case anyone asks: I find the most of the behavior of the BSA organization as a whole to be embarrassing/despicable, but most of the time we simply ignore them and they ignore us.)

A comic book is just a medium for telling a particular story. The notion of a "comic strip" was originally telling a story with a sequence of pictures. Television and film is arguably just an evolution along that path. In other words, focusing on stories regardless of the medium they're told in is going back to the original business of comics.

Personally, I have a hard time seeing Comic-Con as anything but a win for everyone involved. Fans love it for the interactivity, writers, artists and actors love it for the chance to get fans excited about their work, and I'm sure it makes plenty of money for the ownership. I suspect very few people in those groups want the event to go back to focusing solely on comic books.

I'm in southeast Michigan. Temp here is 98 today, and has been similar for the past week. At home, I normally run the air conditioning a couple weeks of the summer. This year, it's been running constantly since April. At work, our buildings are serviced by an internal power plant and it seems to hit capacity when the temp gets over 95 or so, so we've been under instructions for the past week to turn off lights and computers to reduce the electrical and heat load. I'm sure HVAC systems in places like Houston and D.C. are designed to deal with this kind of heat, but Michigan ain't Texas (or at least we keep telling ourselves...)

On the topic of dealing with the heat, one thing that helped me a few years ago was losing weight. I lost about 50 pounds (went from ~230 to 175), and one of the unexpected positive consequences is that I am much more tolerant of warm temperatures than before. Previously, just sitting around in anything over 80 degrees was uncomfortable, now that threshold is more like 90. (On the other hand, I'm now more sensitive to cold, but hey, that's what winter coats are for.)

Not that I'm a defender of Verizon, but why the hell would anyone sign up for a shared plan with only one device? Obviously you're going to lose out... the prices are designed to make it marginally cheaper to add additional devices in return for a higher "first device" fee.

The new "share everything" plans are designed to make it easier (and a bit cheaper) for families with a bunch of smartphones, a tablet or two, and text-messaging addicted teenagers. Not for single-device customers looking for a bargain.

The only reason I've ever heard that actually makes sense is that it cuts down on in-store returns.

People often feel that if they return a product to the store that they're obligated to include all the original packaging: little plastic baggies and paper flyers, as well as the foam padding and the box itself.

In reality, most stores are far more lenient, but when you have quite literally destroyed the package in the process of testing it out, it makes you far less likely to take that $10 light bulb back to the store.

Damn, pasted wrong URL. Hate it when I do that.

http://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=8070026&icde=12211723