At least we can count on the fact that there aren't any lobbyists in Washington anymore!

Considering that it was how we moved big stuff in to space and current relations with Russia going south (with Russia being our only ticket to the ISS), we better get to those "potential future programs" pretty damn fast.

I was born in 1967.
In the 1970s when I was in elementary school, even in our small rural school (the whole grade was ~50-60 kids), there was a gifted/talented program. It was informal, open to kids solely as recommended by teachers, and essentially took the 4-5 of us in the school who were wasting hours per day doing nothing (Kristi, Steve, Vincent, and later Bob...you might recognize yourselves) in class waiting for the others to catch up, and took us to learn more on pretty much whatever we as a group wanted to do - meteorology, dinosaurs, math, astronomy, etc. It was absolutely great and AFAIK there was no (apparent) resentment by those not in the program, nor did we make a big deal about it.
When I hit 6th grade, we moved to Bloomington MN, and there was a 'high achiever' program for that much larger school district. In this (only for 6th grade) the ~50 kids that qualified after teacher recommendation, testing, and evaluation by (I'd guess?) developmental pschologists and the district were segregated into a totally separate school for the whole year. That was personally rather hard (I don't know that I was mature enough to be in this program in a totally new school, even if I was smart enough) but a second year would have been much, much better, I expect.
The problem was, there WAS no second year...ever. After this 6th grade of extremely high-level classwork, we were all dropped into the mainstream. Maybe those who went back to their old friends had a better experience, but I found 7th grade extraordinarily hard, just going back to utter boredom - and both my grades and attitude reflected the problems. Tough time of life to be even more adrift, imo.
Finally, in high school, there was nothing. I'd completed advanced Chemistry, AP Calc, and Engineering Physics as a junior and had literally nothing left to do as a senior. Fortunately, this was the first year of the Post-Secondary Educational Options (PSEO) program, so I went to a local junior college my whole senior year, but even that wasn't much educational advancement. (The program was also entirely new, and had some teething pains.)

Now, with my own kids 20-30 years later, I see the same thing happening - except there are no actual programs that support gifted/talented at all (while there are ample monies available for the 'mainstreaming' of kids who *might* eventually learn to eat without assistance). Constant boredom, programming that is deliberately designed to hobble advanced students and prevent them getting 'too far ahead'. Some teachers at the elementary level did try, at a personal, individual-class level to help support and address these kids' needs, but by junior high/high school, that level of personal attention absolutely vanished. PSEO is much better, but still, essentially this means that the taxpayers - who already are paying for the schools - are FURTHER subsidizing a school district's inability to sufficiently address educational needs by paying to send those students to local colleges.

Everything I've read on this subject sounds like a prima donna drama queen. Good riddance.

All good, except....

> don't borrow money... not for a house
That depends - a home is a *secured* loan. You can always 'give it back' and rent. A *humble* home is better than renting for decades.

> You don't need to drink, to ..., to have a spouse or to have children.
No. (Almost all) people *need* a spouse. For love, for the work of life. On the purely economic side, its efficient to have 2 (or 1.5) incomes to pay one mortgage, two people to share household goods, groceries, cooking, cleaning...

> ... you *wlll* have money unless your health significantly fails.
Your health will (almost certainly) fail if you strike it out without a spouse.

I think this was demoed on The Next Step with Richard Hart show on the Discovery Channel back in the early 90s. Or was that Beyond 2000? Anyways, yes, I saw that hosted on one of those two shows.

So Greenspan rightly pointed out that inflation means the top 1% from the '20s would be in poverty now if their wealth hadn't been subjected to inflation.

Yeah. So what has that got to do with ANYTHING?

Are you certain of that statement? What is the measure of "advance quickly?" How are you factoring in population growth? You statement was probably applicable at any past point in time. I could stand at 1900 and say 'at no time has science advanced as quicly as 1850-1900' ... and so on. Well, maybe not the dark ages but you get the point.

Whether the government has had a role in "scientific progress" is not really material to how science is funded nor what the appropriate mix of funding sources should be.

Also, please provide a reference for your NASA/DOD claim.

"Living longer, healthier lives without an arbitrary time limit is a worthwhile goal. If you don't agree, feel free to die of old age instead of accepting treatment, but don't condemn everyone else to early death and try to claim the high ground."

Perhaps you can try harder to read and comprehend what you read.

It was claimed that "death is wrong". I claim that at the very least it brings up ethic questions to try and eliminate it entirely and certainly not "wrong".

Then you claim I'm trying condemn everyone else to an "early grave" when I clearly state that I'm all for extending and improving the quality of life to allow us to live to whatever our natural max is (120, 130 or whatever) and claim Im trying to take the moral high ground?

I do not accept by default that it *IS* a worthwhile goal. Not without some serious thought. You clearly are staking claim to the 'moral high ground' by your statements. I'm saying "lets not be to hasty".

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Fuck the UK and their censorship.

Why is this here? Because it's arguing about extending human life.

To say "death is wrong" is like saying "fly death is wrong" or "spider death is wrong". It isn't wrong. It's built in to the system.

"And in spite of pride and erring reason spite, one truth stands clear -- what ever is, is right" (A. Pope -- An essay on man -- not sure if I have the quote exact, but it's pretty close).

I'm all for advances in science improving the QUALITY of life and allowing us to live as long as we naturally can -- but to live forever? Even beyond whatever is currently our max (maybe 120 or 130 years)? It poses ethical questions itself -- not the opposite that it's WRONG to not live forever.

1) A system of education designed to produce a graduate with a broad yet substantive grasp of human knowledge in art, literature, humanities and basic sciences?

2) A system of education designed to promote a commanding, in-depth knowledge of a specific discipline like engineering, law, medicine or physical science?

3) A vocational system designed to produce employment-ready workers with a sound working knowledge of a specific area of business or government?

4) A finishing system where young people learn the social skills and cultural knowledge necessary to aspire to the elite class of society? While it sounds free from anything like education, these things may require things we do consider education, like learning foreign languages to demonstrate worldliness, and where political history is personally embodied in the elites themselves (aristocracy and nobility), and where proper social manners may be barely distinguishable from what passes for politics and diplomacy.

I think it's mostly grown to be 3 and 4. You go to college to study an occupational field so you can get a job. It's different than 2 because you're not studying as nearly in depth. Accounting isn't mathematics. Before the 1960s you belonged to a fraternal organization to learn to participate in formal society as an adult. After the 1960s its where you go to experiment, find yourself and in practical terms learn to live on your own (pay rent, feed yourself, etc). In more expensive schools there is still a strong emphasis on the social component both from tradition and from aspirational goals of joining some of your fellow students' elite socioeconomic class.

I think for most of the past few hundred years its mainly been 1 & 4, with a strong emphasis on four. When we began indulging girls in education, college was a fine place to find a suitor of suitable class and ambition. But for all, a solid grounding in the liberal arts was socially useful, eliminated provincialism and promoted useful skills in basic mathematics and literacy.

The in-depth education of 2 probably started out ecclesiastically as the means to produce priests and preserve religious knowledge and church canon. Not until the enlightenment and the industrial revolution were most of these subjects studied with any rigor. Until mathematics was applied, engineering was just skilled trades like carpentry, stonemasons and blacksmiths.

It really was not until the Manhattan project and post WWII cold war that government became the patron of scientists. Was Diract writing grant requests? Bohr? Heisenberg? Shockley (et al)?

This is a really encouraging sign and should be looked upon favorably even if it is not prefect. Philanthropists have been on the sidelines for a long time now and it will be a learning process for all involved on how to best utilize funding.

As I said in my previous post, if it did exist both Apple and the carrier would tie any such functionality to an iPhone cellphone number.

For Apple, this would guarantee you would have to own an iPhone to get the functionality and prevent you from using an iPad/iPod as a phone without buying an iPhone.

The advantage to Apple would actually be more of an enticement to buy other iDevices since you would gain phone functionality on them you wouldn't get from other vendor products, plus they wouldn't need to offer a phablet since they could basically claim iPads were phablets for people that bought into the extended phone service.