Of course, neither political party is anything like they were when Abe was around. In most issues they have swapped position.

Actually, in most places people have been propagandized to THINK they swapped position. But when you look at how they actually voted on various subjects (civil rights laws and Internet censorship, for two of a host of examples) or how the programs they produced actually worked out (The Great Society for just one in a host of examples), expect to find that the alleged swap is mostly smoke, mirrors, and very effective political propaganda.

If Bill Gates is involved, I suspect some devious plot, though not necessarily Microsoft based. Actually, history would suggest that it's also Microsoft based, but he hasn't been in charge for awhile now, so perhaps he's got something else to push.

Every time I've checked one of his "benevolent" actions, it's turned out to be control motivated (or wealth motivated) so I'm now suspicious whenever his name appears.

FWIW, axioms cannot be understood. They can only be postulated. If they are said to apply to reality, then they can also be observed to be invariably true. (Well, actually they can be observed to be true when you are noticing them, except in minor edge cases that can be explained away.)

What *can* be understood is how the axioms interact to describe an instance. (I'm being general here, so that I'm not *just* talking about math, but math is included.)

One useful way of talking about axioms is to use metaphors, some times historic. E.g., the equals sign is a symbol representing a balenced set of scales (as used in Babylon). In this system numbers are mapped to weights. So the scales remain balanced if you add or remove the same number from both pans of the scale. But this is an analogy, and there are places where it breaks down. (E.g., a square root has two valid answers...which doesn't fit the analogy, but does fit the axioms.)

Yet.

But automation is continuing at a rapid pace. Currently the designs are such that complex machines are often replaced rather than being repaired. (When is the last time you heard of a disk drive or a keyboard being repaired? Refridgerator?) And that's NOW, not when those currently in grade schoold have graduated from college/vocational school.

FWIW, I would have no idea what to recommend people learn...beyond certain basics: logic, critical thinking, how to evaluate reliability, etc.

A few decades ago I recommended that one should "be a garbage man", on the grounds that this would probably not be quickly automated. Well, automation hasn't advanced quite as quickly as I expected, but garbageman has remained a viable career path, if not a particularly attractive one. Part of the reason for this recommendation was that there aren't many openings in top management, and they are the ones who decide what jobs won't be automated, so that's the last job that will go. Today, though, I'm not so sure. Automated trucks are on the horizon, and that will eliminate huge swaths of jobs. And garbage collection has already been redesigned to increase the automation. (I'm not real inspired by the efficiency of the automation, but it has reduced the number of workers/truck and, perhaps, increased the speed of collection.) Further redesign is clearly needed, however...and by the time that happens, it's quite likely that the truct will drive itself.

Supermarket checkout clerk? RFID tags are already changing that. Currently there's no requirement that the cashier be more than very minimally literate. Self-checkout is spreading. How far will it spread?

Have you heard about the automated paralegal? It does searches through legal cases for useful references. This is work that used to be delegated to the entry lawyers of a firm. I don't know how widespread it is, but it's clearly something that is amenable to improvement.

Etc. I can't predict where automation will strike next, or how rapid will be its proliferation. But predicting what will be needed 20 years from now seems more than a bit risky. I might venture 5 years. At 10 years I'd be likely to overestimate the changes. At 20, however, I'd be likely to grossly underestimate the changes. That's enough time for something to be expected to come out of left field that will totally change things in unexpected ways. And education is supposed to prepare one for the long term.

One of the main problems with the current system is micro-management by distant administrators. This isn't going to improve that. The tax system restructuring that was supposed to fund schools equally has, surprisingly, resulted in schools in poor areas subsidizing those in wealthier areas.

I don't have a good answer, as high mobility has basically destroyed most local communities (and by local I'm including neighborhoods, as well as small towns). But it's also had lots of good effects. The basic problem is the increased spread of inequality of income, and the abuses of power that it leads to. (If it didn't lead to abuse of power, I'd be more willing to listen to the "free market" people despite the fact that there has never, in all of history, been a free market larger than an extended family, and even that size is uncommon.)

Well, FWIW, I was against the reform that replaced basic arithmetic via memorization with set theory. I'm still opposed. Mind you, I hated that memorization, and I'm not really convinced that it's a good idea as calculators become more ubiqutous, but "Set Theory"? Logic I could see, though I doubt that the students would like it much more than they do memorization, but it's a basic tool. Set theory was dreamed up by people who wanted to reduce the observed world to a minimal number of beliefs. Useful, but hardly appropriate for elementary math. Particularly as it leads immediately to things like the secretary of the non-secretaries club, and the Spanish barber. Wait at least until high school. (Even there I think classical Geometry, algebra, and trig, with possible analytic geometry is a better sequence. Set theory should be mentioned occasionally for those who want to investigate it, but not be central.)

I haven't investigated was the Core Curriculum is about, but if Bill Gates is in favor of it, I'm skeptical without checking further. If he proposed it, I suspect malicious entrapment. He may sometimes have done more good than harm, but I don't know. His PR agents tend to whitewash his deeds, and ignore any commercial ties. Whenever I've actually looked carefully, it has seemed to me that he has done more harm than good. (Admittedly, I usually rely on presuming that current actions are similar to prior actions, and don't investigate.)

Now my "disable advertising" checkbox doesn't work. :-(

That's what it says on the cover. It also says on the cover that Ada has optional garbage collection...but somehow nobody implements it, and no program dares to rely on it.

When I was in school we often did not get even half way through to mandated text...I don't think optional extras will get much coverage..

Seems to depend on a case by case basis.

My math worked out great. Previously I paid 50% of the premium for my company's blue cross PPO group health insurance plan to the tune of $400/mo. It had a $60 copay, $60 drug copay, and $5000 annual deductible.

Now I pay $350/mo for a blue cross Silver PPO with the same doctors I had before. It has a $30 copay, $150 drug copay (the drug copay seems to be where the insurance companies are really jacking up prices, I guess since they can't stop you from signing up if you're already sick) and I think a $4000 annual deductible. Thanks to my employer not being an asshole and giving me the other $400/mo it used to contribute towards my insurance, I'm coming out on top even after the extra $150/mo for my meds.

As well it should, compared to designing, building, testing, and launching a new probe manning the ground station has to be downright cheap so as long as they are getting useful scientific information out of it it seems shortsighted to cut the funding.

Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.
Arthur Dent: And are you?
Slartibartfast: Ah, no. [laughs] That's where it all falls down, of course.

This has nothing to do with applying banking regulations to Mt Gox. It is about applying laws about fraud and theft. The difference is that regulations put a burden on innocent and guilty alike but potentially prevent problems before they occur, whereas laws simply attempt to punish the guilty and compensate the victims after the fact. If people do in fact recover any money as a result of this, it won't be particularly ironic since libertarians fully support laws on fraud, just not banking regulations, and complete federal control of currency.

ReFS on a parity storage space also solves bitrot and it's built into Window 8.1. Plus you can use an SSD as a cache.

You can do the initial seed as a local backup and then take that offsite to the friends location, that's what I did with my brothers, we traded HDD's around to seed the backups to each other.

This is because of two reasons. 1) Truly clean coal technologies are expensive - more expensive than solar powered or wind power. So practically nobody uses it. and

2) Coal companies - more than any other power industry - have found ways to avoid complying with regulations. Specifically, they campaigned hard to allow existing plants to go unregulated until after they 'modernized' in the normal course of time. Then they refused to modernize - for the past 60 years.

Tuna fish is one of the healthiest cheap foods you can eat - or rather would be EXCEPT for the mercury in it which comes from coal. Coal burning plants are more radioactive than nuclear power plants because small bits of thorium are in coal and when you burn it, it gets wafted up into the air and settles around the coal plant. Not to mention the acid rain and the green house gas issues.