I can't have anything but a viseral reaction to your entire post. Critical thinking should be taught as early as possible, its habit, and you want to get good habits ingrained as early as possible. Brains are not really even capable of critical thinking until around age 8, so its a great time to stuff heads with rote learning like multiplication tables I agree with you there.

But by the time you are teaching history and algebra you should also be teaching critical thinking, because the two are all related. Your write protect bit concept is a off base too. Teachers at those subjects should be able to earn the respect of their students, enough to at least trust the information if not the opinions. If a teacher can't do that they are the failures.

Most our societies problems stem from blind trust of authority and people not engaging in thinking let alone critical thinking.

The "if you like your insurance you can keep it scandal" is the perfect example. It does not matter which side of the political debate you come down on. Everyone listening reasonable should have know in the context of a bunch of new requirements many even most current plans did not offer this statement was some place between a lie or incomplete. Instead three years later a bunch of people seem surprised and last moment measures have to be taken. Why because people don't think...

There isn't anything in any of these revelations many had not guessed or spotted. There were and still are tons of people who just wanted to live in denial about it. Snodens stuff is making that hard for them as they can't just dismiss the people saying it as tinfoil hat clad conspiracy nuts, with actual evidence floating about.

No the problems start at the top, Senators, Presidents, powerful Congressmen, generals. The problem is the system has no way to deal with them because at those levels it basically depends on the punishing themselves and they have learned to circle the wagons when the people get riled up.

The only option is to target their enablers, folks like clapper. If enough political pressure can be brought to bear and you give them the option to toss someone like Clapper under the bus along with a few low level admin types like snowdens coworkers who broke some rule somewhere some time they will.

Do this often enough and they won't be able to find these facilitators who are willing to go a long with what they know to unethical, immoral, illegal or some combination there of because they will also know that when it comes to light and it will someday, it's going to be them that pays for it.

It's time to demand Clapper be hauled away in handcuffs

Burnouts may be showy. But you get better acceleration from a standing start if you DON'T break traction.

What I'd find more useful is a "button" for automatic maximum-traction acceleration (to a presetable speed or until you let off the gas). Think "anti-lock brakes" but in acceleration.

(Though what I'd find FAR more useful is integrating "tow-haul" mode with the speed control.)

As a Discordian Pope, I don't care what monuments they put up only that there are five of them, and I'd kinda like one to be a cabbage but am flexible on that.

God bless those Satanists

yes they are trying to get an army of disposable low quality coders. Yes they need some good folks and will always need to some good folks to put together the infrastructure.

A company like facebook though is a little bit of technology developed by good people, and whole lot monkeys that know just enough about it string it together with the presentation layer.

Speaking as someone who would not be offended to be labels a TEA party member my problem with illegal immigration is its a basic question of rule of law. If the law does not work or we don't want to enforce it, than it should be repealed or amended. If its on the books it should be enforced. No exceptions no playing favorites, collar them a prosecute them; deport them. Its a stupid policy but we should change it not just ignore it and fail to enforce it.

The problem here is there are people who are middle class and people who think they are middle class. You are middle class if you have a professional job or are a tradesmen with some savings and the ability to make choices. You quit and move to a different city because you want to for example. If you nothing but debts and your credit is maxed out and would be looking at foreclosure after a few months if you lose a job, you are not middle class. I don't care how big your McMansion is or have many SUVs you have parked on the driveway with no equity in. You sir are still poor.

The actual middle class has savings in investments and that 15% tax rates helps them lots. Its what enables them to save enough to retire and maintain their standard of living. Does it also function as give away to the very wealthy yes, but rates should be the same for everyone. Maybe it should be 15% on the first 100K and go up from there but just blanket raising the capital gains would be bad for middle class America.

Its not their responsibility to train you but we probably should ask the question whey they don't want to. Is it because the American education system is not turning out young adults that are even fit for entry level positions in tech firms?

Is it that other nations are turning out young adults that are so much better qualified?

Do companies no longer see a benefit from developing and retaining talent in house? People used to have entire professional careers at just one or two organizations. Why has this changed?

It is a problem that companies don't seem to want to hire anyone without a decade of experience now. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have than but young enough not have ageism close the doors to us as well can do okay, for now...

I like many of my peers I talk to at different organizations, get great reviews but never "promoted" I mean we get title promotions where they add additional roman numerals on our business cards and pay bumps but the job does not really change. When something like a team lead position opens up they almost always hire an outsider. It was clear at one company I spent a lot years at I was never going to get moved up in the organization sense. As soon I left an went somewhere else laterally for a little while though, I saw the position I had wanted their open up and got the job with no more than a phone call "So you want to come back? Great!". I am certain though had I still be occupying my old desk I never would have been considered for the potion.

As I have stated before I have many friends with very similar experiences. Its weird as a policy I don't really understand it. Maybe the idea is it brings outside ideas in. I can understand seeking to do this if the business practice/unit at a given organization is immature in terms of process or unsuccessful but when you have a sub organization that is working why not promote from within?

What is going on?

Yes if you consider shipping it off to some place in the third world to poison them instead of us a tolerable solution.

Most of solutions to other toxic waste were really only ecologically sustainable when the population was a few billion people small. We are going to eventually run out of places to dump stuff.

No probably just some nasty brownish sludge. All of the volatiles including the alcohol will be gone. The rest of the what was once there will probably be heavily oxidized and taste pretty nasty too. Its not instant coffee ( which is generally pretty bad itself).

Right, the problem is solved but we need to get real about the proliferation issue.

I say the genie is out of the bottle at this. The policy might have made sense in the past but now our insistence on not having breeder reactors around is creating more risk then its preventing. Lots of people we did not want to get the bomb have the bomb now. China -check, North Korea -check, Pakistan -check, India -check, and Iran is so near it now that the Iranian nuclear issue is a political play thing. The President can send the Secretary of State out to strike a meaningless deal where the various parties don't even agree on what the language means just to distract from domestic issue, because it no longer matters they take the final steps anytime. All of these plays could without our ability to stop them spread it farther as well.

So it comes to the morals issues now. Firstly is clearly immoral to leave future generations piles of toxic waste for which the only solution for dealing with is one we have deemed unacceptable in our time.

Secondly though, what right do we have to deny another sovereign people nuclear power. We certainly under no obligation to give it to them but to deny them is wrong. Look what convulsions our own economy goes through whenever there is a oil price shock. It should be clear that cheap, abundant, reliable energy is critical to, if not the driver for success in the modern world economy. As a practical matter support for nonproliferation policies at this point is synonymous with support for poverty and inequality and war.

Except that as a practical matter coal will never run out. The only thing that could really disrupt the supply of coal is the NIBY crowd and the regulators. Most estimates suggest we have centuries of supply in domestic coal.