. . . he needs an official declaration that he was never guilty in the first place, and should never have been prosecuted.

Between '89 to '95, I went to multi-dozen trade shows. Four a year sometimes. COMDEX, CES, E3.

I stood around in my cheap suit, in horrible dress shoes, and show off CD-ROM multimedia software.

It got a little better after other, larger companies started putting show personnel in casual-dress uniforms. Golf shirts with logos, khakis, black sneakers, that kind of thing.

What made it all incredibly frustrating is that, while I was working in "high tech" (I mean, gosh, multimedia CD-ROM), it was all about selling and sales and making deals. There was no real interest in the technology, and what it could do, and how it worked.

I eventually got my ass in gear and went to grad school so I could actually work on a development team. While I miss the travel sometimes, I'm so glad to be through with trade shows.

It would be expensive, because of the high delta-V required to match Mercury's orbit around the sun, but we should really get a lander down there.

One that can take core samples, and that has a sophisticated chemistry lab.

Or perhaps several landers / core samplers, with the ability to send samples to a central lab module.

The ice, and the carbon material covering it, would contain a history of comet impacts, captured dust samples, and other events.

Why are we being asked to worry about this when Americans are facing REAL problems, like the War on Christmas, and Michelle Obama wanting to replace our children's cafeteria pizzas and sloppy joes with brocolli and whole wheat bread?

PRIORITIES, PEOPLE, PRIORITIES!

It's not like this problem is going to get worse and worse if we just ignore it, until there is a massive collapse of marine ecosystems leaving nothing but oceans full of algea blooms and teeming hordes of jellyfish.

I'm about to buy a house, and there are a few things I actually need. Laundry appliances, a refrigerator, a step ladder, maybe a space heater.

If the prices are right -- that is, if the items are actually on sale -- I'll make a few highly selective forays.

I have no need or desire to compete for limited-quantity "doorbuster" items.

This has been going on for a long time, and no, it isn't just public schools.

George Orwell mentioned getting mocked -- by the headmaster's wife, for cripes sake -- for being part of a group that collected insects. ("Such, Such Were the Joys.")

But the OA made me think of this Freeman Dyson quote:

"So it happened that I belonged to a small minority of boys who were lacking in physical strength and athletic prowess, interested in other things besides football, and squeezed between the twin oppressions of whip and sandpaper. We hated the headmaster with his Latin grammar and we hated even more the boys with their empty football heads. So what could the poor helpless minority of intellectuals, later and in another country to be known as nerds, do to defend ourselves? We found our refuge in a territory that was equally inaccessible to our Latin-obsessed headmaster and our football-obsessed schoolmates. We found our refuge in science. With no help from the school authorities, we founded a science society. As a persecuted minority, we kept a low profile. We held our meetings quietly and inconspicuously. We could do no real experiments. All we could do was share books and explain to each other what we didn't understand. But we learned a lot. Above all, we learned those lessons that can never be taught by formal courses of instruction; that science is a conspiracy of brains against ignorance, that science is a revenge of victims against oppressors, that science is a territory of freedom and friendship in the midst of tyranny and hatred."

-- From "To Teach or Not to Teach," 1990

They're all hiding out in a black hole waiting for all those slacker main sequence dwarfs to die off. Damn pirates never contribute anything to the interstellar medium. Eliminate capital gains taxes now!

snarks > /dev/null

I graduated High School in 1980. Personal computers were exotic, expensive things. I knew no one, in a fairly affluent town, who had one.

What we got: A DEC PDP-8e. A bit wider than a refrigerator. OS and languages loaded via magnetic tape.

Five teletypes with rolls of beige paper. Two-character variables. Program storage on strips of yellow paper.

...any experiments along these lines will lead to the subjects developing terrifying mental powers, leading to a series of events ending with the callous lead scientist having his head explode.

About five years back, I had a dream in which, on a visit to my parents in Upstate New York, my father presented me with a jet pack.

Only, it was a piece of crap. He'd ordered it on impulse, late at night, off of QVC.

It consisted of a padded canvas vest, in an unattractive tan color, with a stubby cylinder strapped to the back.

Dad was very proud. He said it was mine if I did him a favor: If I flew to Long Island to visit my friends, I had return a book to an old friend.

Well, why not? I soared across Rockland County, over the Palisades and the Hudson, and through Westchester.

The trouble started when I crossed Throg's Neck. The pack was losing power, and I was just skimming the waves. I actually got my sneakers wet.

I gained a bit of altitude over Queens, and landed on a golf course. There was a swell party going on in the club house, with a buffet and open bar, but even though I was dressed well enough to fit in I figured I'd better leave, to avoid questions about the frigging jet pack on my back.

I determined the thing needed fuel. It turned out to run on little propane cylinders. I found one of the crappy retail strips that litter Queens, and located a hardware store. The price of cylinders was through the roof. I decided flying was just wasn't worth it, and rode off on a county bus. END.

I voted robot maid, but I bet that would be disappointing too.

When JPMorgan is busted up into regional banks -- some of which do investment banking, the others FDIC insured savings & loans -- will they be able to share this server farm?

The larger and wealthier they get, the more secure and generous giant international corporations will feel. Their titanic concentrations of wealth will trickle down to . . .

. . . oh, sorry, I can't type this shit with a straight face long enough to come to a decent snark.

This technique is yet another step down a road toward a world where callous corporations dominate all political and economic activity.

4. Huh . . . well, look at that. Hurricanes in January. Hey, this is not a time to play the blame game. No one could have foreseen this would happen.
5. Something must be done. Level headed people like us. Introducing Exxon Atmospheric Engineering Associates.
6. OK, that didn't work. But hey, neon green sunsets . . . cool!
7. Look you'all knew for decades that our product could lead to this, but you CHOSE to ignore the warnings by scientists rather than taking responsibility and choosing to use renewable energy. We were just selling a product people wanted and freely chose to use.

. . . go get yourself some new talking points.

Seriously, the old "Oh, well, things have changed in the past, so what's the worry?" canard?

The processes you describe took place over millions of years.

We're talking relatively drastic changes, over the course of decades, on a highly developed area of an increasingly crowded and interdependent planet.

If a drunk driver speeding through a red light ran over your dog or your kid, would you accept the driver saying, "Look, people die in accidents all the time. In seventy years, a trivial fraction of the age of the Earth, your kid would likely be dead anyway. Calm down and accept change as a normal part of life. And anyway, can you really prove it was my car that killed your kid? Maybe you wiped his blood on my bumper so you could sue me, and infringe on my right to drink and drive!"