He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3-D printer, and the earth's 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store

No flipping way. You'll have to pry my garden from my cold dead hands before I'm eating that shit.

plain, simple, normal SOAP

How simple are you talking about?

chemical (water processing etc) engineers are interested in one of the country's largest man made chemical(water) processing structure.

I'm a chemical engineer, and I too visited several water and wastewater treatment facilities while in college. The whole class went at the same time on these "field trips." But, from TFA:

Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir.

All of the "field trips" we took were during the day, and never "shortly after midnight." And, the trips were made while we were still in school, not after we graduated. The actions of these people seem very suspicious to me.

Money is not speech

Perhaps, but my freedom to spend my money as i see fit, on the candidate or candidates of my choosing, is protected under the 1st Amendment.

corporations are not people

True, but when the government decides to regulate corporations, they have a right to speak, like the individual person does.

I thought it was just inexperience talking, but I'm a grown-up programmer now. 'Senior', by some estimates. And yet I still have a hard time estimating the time of getting things up and running

You need a "rule of thumb." I had the same problem until I decided that the minimum a project would take for basic functionality is 4 hours for each table in the database. If they need fancy ajax stuff or any eye-candy, then it goes up from there.

It's worked pretty well for the past few projects. I've even come in under on a couple.

The Sahara desert was a green and lush place just a few thousand years ago

I believe the change there is due to the precession of the earth's axis.

Cast iron or nothing.

Amen to that. I had a stainless one that we inherited after my wife's grandmother died, and I was never able to get as good a casserole or even roast cooked in it as I can w/ my cast iron one. Not sure about the other commenter who said to take it camping, it's damn heavy.

[then, a huge jar of "jam" smashes into the dish]

Somehow, it's not as funny if you have to explain it.

except some people apparently showed up at the White House, candles in hand, and had a vigil for him anyway out on the street and put pictures of it on various social media

Was it organized by Sean Penn and Danny Glover?

As my Linksys garbage fails, I replace with Netgear, and my problems disappear.

Amen. I used to buy 3Com for businesses and Netgear for SOHO. Now it's Netgear all around.....

...which places US citizens into the unique and perverse situation of moving abroad and still paying Uncle Sam taxes, despite getting no services for that tax.

US citizens working abroad can enjoy the comfort of an embassy and US Marines protecting them in times of war and/or crisis. Hell, they'll even evacuate you back to the US if the shit really hits the fan. I'd pay my taxes for that, especially if I was working somewhere that's dangerous.

the opinion of a professor is much more worthy than that of a manual worker

Unless the opinion being solicited is how to use a shovel. Or thoughts on the NFL Playoffs.

</sarcasm> ?