I got pissed off when Bally's Health Club and Sam's club required a photo ID. Might as well take a thumb print too. Now, with hi resolution cameras and sound imaging, this will happen at every traffic stop, ATM, or government facility. RFID tags embedded in everything can be tied to everything too, and provide a more error resilient method. If you go to a protest against the next war, I am sure you will be kept on an enemy list. I fear that next, they will require a blood / saliva / sperm sample as in the movie Gatica?

I wonder if at this point it makes more sense to push an alternative, E-coins. I better go out and push it!! Maybe just as a contingency in case Bitcoins have technical issues.

Worse, in this day and age, after he got fired from his patent clerk job, his wife would divorce him for neglecting his child and family. After being unemployed for 6 months and not being able to land a job even shoveling shit, a divorce court judge would sentence him to weekends in jail for falling behind on his child support payments and to help motivate him to be a better father. He wouldn't be able to get much work done inside prison, as he would be spending his time avoiding getting gang raped or fighting with the asshole inmates all weekend and be drained from the experience.
Any one have experience to add to this insight, as I know a similar thing happened to someone I know.

What if you have interests and talents completely outside of programming? What if you read philosophy and quantum mechanics, practice piano, tutor young kids English and History instead of developing a dumb ass web gizmos which are already out there if someone spends enough time digging.

Something that is not considered is that the world is big and so is our body of knowledge, as well as the body of knowledge which exists out there that we haven't found. I studied math and even at the onset, I realized that each branch was incredibly large. I worked on certain architectures, and had an interview for another position a couple of years later where the emphasis was on a close field. Great, even though I knew a lot about my field, how it was used by others wasn't something I knew much about. There was a large gap in my knowledge. I believe that that happens everywhere.
For every situation, you are going to find people who excel in your criteria and others who just don't. There are brilliant kids and housewives out there and there are Ph. D's whose field of knowledge isn't what you think it should be. Maybe the housewife took a path that intersected yours and maybe the Ph. D. managed to miss yours during his studies. A case in point was brought up during a view of the Harvard Enterance Math Exams from the 1920's. Today's Harvard math entering students just don't study the same stuff these days. Do you know how to calculate the cubic root of a number? Ironically, the way that a [post-calculus] HS student could solve the problem is via Newton's iteration, which is a lot faster than the old (2500 yo) fashioned algorithm.
Sometimes, people have off days, and sometimes they just don't relate to you. Albert Einstein was incredibly talented, but did not speak until 4 and seemed to be not concentrating in his primary education. He failed his college entrance exams both for undergraduate and graduate studies, yet managed to publish world class research working as a patent clerk. I bet most patent clerks today would be fired for "not paying enough attention to their primary work these days."

When our "elected officials" are being flown around on corporate jets with the help of lobbyists, is that also taxed? Worse, there is an implied reciprocation, for if you don't scratch my back in return, you are not going to get more "freebie". There is a huge "return on investment" on these perks.

Where does this stop? If the IRS can search your mail, why not the other agencies. Maybe the forestry department thinks you have printed the document on paper which was from an endangered pine tree.
I guess if you had encrypted that email, you would also be expected to provided a decryption key because of some other law about citizens having access to encryption technology. Shit, I bet even rot13 is considered an encryption technology.
I heard about a story about some guy who was growing pot inside his house and out of view. Apparently, if a cop can smell the pot, he has "probable cause" to search the premises. The case went to the Supreme Court because the cops brought a drug sniffing dog, which indicated that there was pot inside, and that was "probable cause". This case seems to have lost, but just like "The Miranda Rights", which were quickly regressed within 2 years of that ruling.

You forgot a very important part of the equation. Preferred vendor’s lists to keep out talented independent small shops. You, Jane Blow, cannot work on a project unless your pimp represents you to the client. You might be the sexist girl doing the hottest shit in town, but if you want to preform, you got to pay Guido.

Or book publishers could just give up and concede the Texas biology textbook market to Bubba's Biology and Word of Christ edition Then the rest of us won't be held back by this nonsense. Unfortunately, the same forces that influence Texas will spread over the rest of the US and the Texas edition will become the backbone of American education.

The biggest draw is that it is a chance to pay back some of those student loans which you accumulated.

This system works well for the universities as well. A professor needs educated slaves to help him conduct his research. You'd know what I am talking about had you ever been a graduate student. Even simple stuff like using students to help cross verify research done elsewhere takes time. You need to try certain things by doing them to see if someone doesn't come up with a better way.
I have heard that England complains that it loses too many smart people to the US due to the brain drain. Well, what about countries like Haiti or Russia? If the top of your students leave to go elsewhere during their career, this is definitely a loss to your economy. The organization employing people makes a back a minimum of five fold on the salary that it pays.
Many companies give away free samples to customers in the hope that they will come back later and pay for the product. Once you learned and adopted American standards, you will be a virtual spokesman for the originating organization. Even simple stuff like getting foreigners to learn and publish in English helps spread the Gospel. Get them to use MS Word and you have a happy addict for a long time.

Lets not be naive about factory jobs. Yes, there are clean factory jobs, but many of them are dirty. Most industrial processes give off some sort of waste and byproducts. The list starts with air born particles from handling the materials (via grinding, polishing, heating, etc.) to solvents and chemicals used to process the products. EPA guidelines are limited and often discount the cumulative effects of multiple byproducts. Even common stuff like a little bit of unburned hydrocarbon and gas additives are not healthy. Now, over times, thus accumulates in your system, and our medical procedures are not advanced enough to properly attribute a cause and effect in many cases. I used to work in an exotic chemicals lab where we had in stock lots of synthetic chemicals on hand. We use to joke around that if someone was exposed, we could sooner describe the quantum chemistry rather than suggest a cure. Also, most of us have dealt with blue collar workers. Yes, some are nice and genuine, but most would kick the shit out of you just for a joke. They know that most educated folks don't want to be in their position and resent you for that. As a child, I used to live in Wisconsin, cheese and paper mill country. Most of my classmates were junior thugs. Even though everyone in my school was of White European descent (mostly Germanic), I saw so many cases of school bullying because some did not fit in. I heard that the same thing happens on the job.

My wife does not want to have sex because she says she it too tired. Furthermore, she won't let me have sex with other women [or men or animals].

I am sure that Iran fears a real attack using atomic weapons on the pretext of revenge. Hitler used such an occasion before Krystal Nacht. The Gestapo managed to find out about a bunch of Jews who were planning to bomb the Ministry of Intelligence in Munich. Instead of doubling up on guards and taking additional precautions against such an attack, the Gestapo decided to withdraw all security measures for two blocks around the target. Once the Jews bombed the building, they were rounded up and paraded for all to see and blame. The follow up events became known as Krystal Nacht. This tactic quelled all dissent and allowed the Nazi's to carry on with a far greater assurance against internal rebellion. This tactic, called "Divide and conquer" was used quite often by Alexander the Great.

MIT is a school where professors make a lot more money doing industry sponcered research. As an undergraduate, you will likily be ignored because the graduate students will get most of the time and attention by the professors. The graduate students are unpaid slaves conducting research on behalf of the professors who hope to graduate and get out of their predicament ASAP. Most professors at MIT are there because of their great research record and previous accomplishment and not because they can explain themselves well or teach.
OTOH, a school like Dartmouth values undergraduates and rewards professors who teach well.