I guess you have a different definition of old-timers, since it was founded in 1824 and became an official Institute in 1832.

The hidden truth is we could not afford the Blue Angels last year either; the country spent $1.1 trillion more than it took in in fiscal year 2012. What the US is doing is issuing debt in the form of bonds to keep itself solvent. Some day that debt will have to be repaid, which means not only balancing the budget, but becoming cash flow positive. That will require true cuts beyond anything any politician is willing to stomach.

Disclosure: My wife is a 3rd party merchant through Amazon's Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) program. I guess I'm her "CIO".

The online retail space has been evolving over the past couple of years, as we all can tell. Since 1992, when the US Supreme Court ruled that sales tax could not be collected from a state where there was no physical business presence, online retail has operated in an essentially un-taxed environment. You were always supposed to track online sales made to customers in your own state, but there was a competitive advantage over brick & mortar (BM) retail stores. Companies like Amazon could locate their warehouses in Arizona and do business in California without being taxed in California; the Californian citizens were supposed to calculate their tax and remit it on their tax forms. You can probably see that individual citizens wouldn't report this, and the states felt they were losing out on a lot of revenue.

So, the BM stores lobbied the states to implement collection policies; it would become the online retailer's responsibility to collect the sales tax and remit it to the state. Additionally, many states have been changing their nexus laws, such that 3rd party sellers that use Amazon's warehouses to hold their products, a transaction is taxable if it is shipped from a warehouse to a customer in that state, even if the object owner is out of state. This will make online retail less competitive on the pricing side.

But, what BM retail stores forget is that they have a competitive advantage too, they are located closer to the customer at the point of sale. When someone goes into the store, they can check out and walk out of the store with the item in hand (no 2 day wait on getting your item). Additionally, they can impulse shop from the store's inventory. Amazon looks at this and says, if I'm going to be taxes as if I have a physical presence, then I might as well have a physical presence, and they have begun building "micro warehouses" in major cities across the country. Now, you will be able to order online, get the vastly superior inventory storage options that a warehouse provides, and get same-day shipping to the customer, so the customer can have the item in hand by the end of the business day.

At $22k for a 3 year life, assuming 24x7, it labors for $0.84/hour with no outages. The other video had $3/hour. Add that you can save on transportation costs, customs, etc and its a no brainier that manufacturing will become "local".

As far as job creation, i can only see it create technician jobs to repair the machines. What this will not do is create the manufacturing jobs themselves. The age of low skill labor is over, those jobs are lost. That segment of the US population (poor, undereducated, entry level) will continue to be unemployed. It will also create Chinese unemployment.

I think you forgot that the Democrats have controlled the Senate from Jan 2007-Present, and the House from Jan 2007-2010. They were in control of the committees and budgets during the financial collapse of 2008, and steered all of the "bailout" money. Technically everything leading up, causing, and continuing the recession was approved by the Democrats.

But, the public is apparently ok with all of the spending. They voted for it, and re-elected the same people, so what can you do.

If we add that A123 is the sole provider of batteries for the Fisker Karma, would you start to care? That A123 is a provider of MW-scale batteries to AES Corp, for use in windfarm smoothing and grid services?

I would have preferred that the government not gotten in the business of payouts to its campaign contributors, but elections have consequences. Usually corrupt consequences, but what can you do.

To me, this sounds like someone's join isn't all that unique. Let's say you have two voters, Joe Smith, at two different addresses, that both voted. If you join a registration list with a vote list, on first and last name and not address, you actually end up with 4 combinations instead of 2, for twice the votes. Other things to check are overlapping effective/terminate date ranges, and compound primary key fields. Rookie mistakes, but big consequences.

In 1980-1981, a year of Tuition at MIT cost ~$7,400 before scholarship, a year over year increase of 17%. [$70 million in tuition & fees / 9,365 students]

In 1988-1989, a year of Tuition at MIT cost $13,400 before scholarships, a year over year increase of 8.2%.

In 2000-2001, a year of Tuition at MIT cost $31,900 before scholarships.

In 2011-2012, a year of Tuition at MIT cost $40,732 before scholarships.

In 2012-2013, a year of Tuition & Fees at MIT will cost $42,050 before scholarships, a year over year increase of 3.25 %.

I think you meant 1930s. There are newspaper articles noting the decline of glaciers back even then.

What is amusing is that photos from that era show that there is more ice volume today than the 1930s.

Didn't we just cover this a couple of days ago? Colleges don't face a risk of default; the loans are provided by banks and are underwritten by the federal government. Because 90% of the risk is mitigated by the gov, the colleges can raise tuition and the banks don't balk. A small % of students get in over their heads and default but that is baked into the interest rate, which used to be variable until congress messed with it in 2005. Like housing, the scheme breaks down when normal graduates can't pay the bills... Because there's no jobs.

Somehow Facebook is too big to fail, but MySpace can flitter off into the night without people caring? When we finally approach the end of the natural life of Facebook, people will transition into whatever the next big social media gathering site will be, little by little until Site A is empty and Site B is the new hot stuff. It's not going to happen overnight, no "rush to the exit", and definitely no need to legislate a "fix".

You're telling me. Between three adults we have two wifi-capable cell phones, a kindle, iPod touch, three desktops, two laptops, a net book, a synology nas, a wireless printer, and an Internet enabled flatscreen tv. If I could find the time to run cat5 I would, the poor wifi router is getting a workout.

Global Warming is fact, and Anthropogenic Global Warming is truth. Take care that you do not confuse the two.

I'm pretty sure that the interest in reviving the Titanic movie has more to do with the 100th anniversary of the original sinking of the Titanic on April 15th, 1912. It's like free advertising for everything Titanic-related. And, if there's any movie that squeezed more money from the public the first release, I can't think of it.

If they only had some kind of information on the card to tell you who gave it to you, like a name...