I'm glad y'all weren't advising President Kennedy when he planned to put a man on the moon. Unlike the pie-in-the 'investments' of the current administration (that were payoffs for campaign kickbacks), the space program has a proven record of spinoffs that have been good for the country and of all humanity. The computers you are reading this on, the satellites that move countless terabytes of information, even the fuel cells that might power the next generation of MacBooks all had their genesis from NASA research.

Not to mention that the BEST place to get experience with a serious Mars trip is our own moon... at least convenient to Earth. If you want it to pay for itself, read The Man Who Sold the Moon. How many of those dreaded 1% would shell out big bucks for a piece of the ACTUAL FRIGGIN MOON. Plus, you could probably pay for it with the rounding error from the pork barrel programs we should cut anyway, heh.

I don't dispute his claim that Edison was 'green' but this comment was beyond stupid:
How can inventor-entrepreneurs like Edison make a profit if every time they try to make a technological advance some nut in Congress pulls the rug out from under the them and their breakthroughs?

Basically, what he's saying is that inventor-entrepreneurs can ONLY succeed if someone bans their competitors. WTF? If you have the better mousetrap and assuming no one gets government help of any sort, you'll win. If you aren't winning, then go back to the lab and make it even better.

This is something Thomas Edison understood well but his Professor-of-English great-grandson obviously doesn't get. Hey, Prof, leave economic theory to people who understand it and stick to poetry or whatever it is you do.

I was hoping they replaced the articles with million-monkey random gibberish... at least then there would be the chance of some accuracy slipping in!

Subsidies distort the market and are, let's be honest, just a way for corrupt politicians to use our money to pay off their big supporters. Funny how so many of those companies going bankrupt were big Obama supporters... and got juicy loan guarantees.

I'll be straight with y'all: no political party or politician is smart enough to properly apply a subsidy even if they do it from the noblest of motives. We need to remove the ability of our government to do it in any fashion and we'll all be better off.

All the technology COULD work better, but not the way it's being used now. You can't throw one of the coolest toys around at kids and say, "Okay, now only use this for schoolwork."

My wife's a teacher and I'm a tech guy and we are both passionate about this subject (pros and cons). Here's how an effective model could work:

1) Lock out almost ALL functionality during school hours. Specific functionality (perhaps to research a paper online) could be enabled on a 'as needed' basis.
2) Make teacher monitoring of usage integral to the 'in school' experience.
3) Offload rote activities (on the devices) to homework and have automatic tracking and reporting of usage for (perhaps) automated evaluation/grading.
4) Only use technology in-class for things that are enhanced by the technology (quizzes/test with automatic grading...heck yes!).

You notice that turns pads on the school grounds into basically glorified e-books+pencil+paper. This is the RIGHT answer... for now. Sure, some novel apps will be invented that could enhance certain topics but the vast majority of those could be used as easily off-campus. School time should be about talking with the teacher and getting specific 1-on-1 help as necessary. And I can easily envision some fun stuff that could be done in a teacher-directed environment, but those programs haven't been invented yet.

During my travels, I came upon a culture with an interesting custom: Each time a doctor's patient died, they were required to hang a plaque with the patient's name on it. As it happens, I took ill and went in search of a physician. I passed up a doctor's office that had 35 plaques out front, and another with 40 until I spotted one with only 10.

The waiting room was crowded with fellow foreigners but eventually the physician was able to see me. When I asked him how business was, the harried man said, "Great! I've only been open two days and I can barely keep up!"

The Motto: Don't be the first patient of a 'doctor' that has spent most of their training using computers.

In the full article you'll see that it's only a 90-day exclusivity contract. A good book has more staying power than a mere three months so the author gets a bit more money, possibly some good exposure, and then they are free agents again.

If this works as planned, Nevadans will be kicking themselves for the next century over their protests over Yucca Mountain. They were almost in the position of having tons of FREE nuclear fuel sitting in nice caves, ready to be hauled up for cheap power. Whoops!

I thought Red Cross had a deal where UNICEF would have the REALLY stupid opinions. Will there be a stupidity escalation now? Today CoD, tomorrow Super Mario Bros!

The local unions are always behind Kay which is why she keeps getting re-elected. Tech workers (especially ones in other states) don't have a union that contributes to her campaigns, so it's okay to **** them over. Here's hoping we can get her out of there next time!

If she were smarter (and more conniving), I'd suspect that this was a way into backdoor socialism. The front door would explicitly limit the work week to 40 hours (or less) as has been failing in other countries. And thus companies would be forced to hire more people. This way, a bunch of programmers might shrug and say, "Eh, 40 hours is good enough." But I don't think she's that clever.