Because in most cases the "purchasing decider" is actually an over-worked network admin with a real job to do who desperately wishes they could spend 30-60 getting familiar with something.

I see at least one possible benefit to insects. Most food-borne illness (at least in US) comes from under-cooked meat or cross-contamination, which is basically just under-cooked meat that gets on your veggies. With the smaller mass of insects it should be much easier to make sure they are cooked completely.

That's kinda why the article focuses so much on methane hydrates. I don't like the environmental impact but as a petroleum reserve it's a massive game changer. Consider this from page 3:

"Estimates of the global supply of methane hydrate range from the equivalent of 100 times more than Americaâ(TM)s current annual energy consumption to 3 million times more."

There are a lot of different qualities one can look for in an energy storage device. Petroleum products have one of the highest energy densities that is very easy to extract (until we get Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future). In many cases losing the mass of the storage device when we can no longer get energy out of it is a good thing (any vehicle). Of course, converting that mass to pollution of some type is a bad thing.

Rechargability is also "good" in many cases, but not all. Different scenarios result in different priorities for what "good" is. Petroleum products do win some of those. I'd just like to see the environmental costs factored in better.

If you make any effort to include the externalities of petroleum production in your cost then renewables already win. From what I've seen including just the current annual healthcare costs incurred due to petroleum production tips the scales in favor of renewables.

Ignoring theses costs isn't going to make them go away either, despite many peoples valiant effort to do so.

I certainly hope people are taking that into account (as well as payment processing fees) when setting their targets. If they don't take that into account then they don't have much business sense and I wouldn't want to fund such people. I have seen projects with expense breakdowns showing they have factored that in.

I'm a bit disappointed in kickstarter over this as well. They're clearly doing quite well and really don't seem to be doing much to make their site better for either backers or starters.

My method is to click on the category at the bottom of the page (or click Discover at top and then the category) and then to click "see more popular projects" below the "Popular this week" section. That's the only way I know to see everything, but you still can't sort/filter in any way.

My impression is definitely that kickstarter itself is just a bunch of lazy bums sitting back while their clients are frequently risking everything for their big dream. From occasions when I read their blog and other communication it seems to me that they think way to much of themselves too. If possible I prefer to back at IndieGoGo because they don't seem to have quite the delusions of grandeur that KS has. I'm tempted to go straight through Paypal for projects that set up that option, but I'm not a big fan of them either.

The last update said they'll start shipping on March 28th. That's still the first quarter of the year so I don't think it's too big a stretch to call that early 2013.

If you check you'll note that on the original kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console) March 2013 was the estimated delivery date for physical consoles. I'm incredibly amazed that they're actually hitting that. I expect every kickstarter to deliver at least one quarter behind the estimated date and probably add another quarter each time they double their original goal.

If you're favorite kickstarter is farther behind than you would like I have good news for you: SimCity shipped on time!

The only song there I even recognize is Hey Jude, and it doesn't ever get stuck in my head.

I don't think any of those have the same power as TV show themes do. I can get anything from the Facts of Life to Thundercats to the Knight Rider theme stuck easier than anything else, as well as several Phineas and Ferb songs.

I'm not sure that even those can compete with the dark power unleashed by Friday's announcement of the remastered Duck Tales game. Odds are good that was an evil plot to study the effects of getting the same song stuck in millions of peoples heads at the same time.

Just about any resistance bands are workable. Grab any of the hundreds of options like this (first hit at walmart.com) http://www.walmart.com/ip/Gold-s-Gym-Long-Resistance-Tube/12167856

At an absolute minimum you can sit on it, grab the handles and stretch. I just loop the handles over the armrests on my chair and am quite capable of forgetting its there for months at a time.

Keep in mind that this is a small part of a large appropriations bill. I'd have to dig into the details but I believe the main point of the bill is to protect the Dept of Defense from the damage of the recent sequester.

That's not to deny that the Dems are suddenly less into transparency lately. I was very disappointed that only one of them supported Senator Paul's filibuster.

Doctors and Nurses are sometimes brutally honest in their documentation. If you've been a difficult or non-compliant patient you can expect that it was documented. Some people get quite irate about that when they see it in their records, especially if insurance is refusing to cover something because they were non-compliant with treatment. Some people even get upset with the description of morbidly obese, even though for these purposes it's a strictly defined medical term.

I imagine most doctors could identify some patients that would benefit from full access to their records and some patients that they'd rather not even tell them their blood pressure because they'd insist that the nurse did it wrong because their BP is never that high.

Any company that gets you to a human fast is likely only doing that so they can give you a sales pitch. I'd rather have a screen I can just click on "no". It wastes less of my time that way.

In most fields of economics it's nearly impossible to do real science because it's hard to find a country that will let you have control of their economy - For Science! You probably can't even get a small company that would do that. The best you can generally do is study historical data. Attempting actual experiments with controls and tests isn't going to happen.

There are certainly some micro-economic things you can study, but it's just not going to happen on the larger scales. There has been a really strong emphasis lately about having micro-economic foundations for absolutely everything, but it's not clear how well that's working.

less than 30 seconds with google produces this:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical