Cleverly crafted propaganda will overwhelm objective scientific studies every time.

Voting the way the TV ads tell you to vote is worse than stupid and further entrenches the status quo. You can rant and rail about "sheeple" and idiots, but as long as Big Money rules the media, nothing will change.

Actually, we get the government corporations and the NRA want us to have. The People, or as you call them, the electorate, are propagandized by Big Money and vote the way Big Money wants. The majority of Americans make their voting choices through TV, and the loudest voices there are paid ads.That's the truth, like it or not.

The IU machine at 1 PFLOP would rank around 24th in the world and 11th in the U.S. (http://www.top500.org/list/2012/11/).

All that stuff was only "science".

A tricorder à la Star Trek to keep tabs on my own health and that of my family.

For the record, it's "Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory". I worked there for 15 years.

As a private pilot, I'd say if there's a mid-air with a drone and the passengers or crew of the manned [PC: personned] aircraft is killed or maimed, the drone operator should get a punishment in kind. It's nuts to have those things flying around in the same space with fair-weather (VFR) traffic and others like parachute jumpers, gliders, hot-air balloons, not to mention the commercial and military traffic that traverses this space on their way to somewhere else.

Just what we need: another quick, mindless way to increase our credit card debt!

An addendum to the pharmaceutical patent suggestion: After the 17-year patent expires, the compound and its "obvious" derivatives, e.g., those product tweaks that could have been anticipated when the original patent was issued, should never be the grounds for a new patent. NEW! IMPROVED: timed release. NEW! IMPROVED: combine with an OTC pain killer like acetaminophen. These are shams to keep the original patent cash cow alive and prevent the drug's emergence as a cheaper generic version. A blatant ripoff that needs to be stopped.

Just so. If there was a standard for medical records storage, as there is for electronic billing for medical services, it would provide a much greater incentive to join the pool. As it is, installing a medical records system from the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Medical Records and Storm Door Company (credit: Bob Newhart) might get your medical practice an electronic records system, but interchange with the hospital you admit your patients to? So sorry, just fax us the hard copy and we'll re-enter the data here.

I once asked the CIO of a major medical facility (top 10 in the nation in many treatment areas) why credit cards from ANY issuer will work in EVERY little swiper in the world (some but not egregious exaggeration) but medical records from his facility had to be printed and transferred via sneaker-net whenever a patient moved across town to a different hospital. His answer: The Fed insisted on standards for credit cards, and healthcare doesn't have a Fed. Realmolo has it right - but the benefits to patient care of a standard system are not adding to anyone's profit, so are ignored. And the patchwork we have today offers scant prospects for improvement to a small, or medium practice. Hence old systems abound, and paper systems still flourish, as they're "good enough".

The tablet thing has worked out well for Ballmer and Windows 8, hasn't it?

Well, they are doing an effective job at keeping the Confederacy alive!

Webmaster adept with HTML, Javascript, CSS, PHP and MySQL and lovin' it!

'Nuff said.