I remember back in college that the people who were the most concerned for, and passionate about, the textile and rope industries were the ones who got profiled as the "pot heads." Although people usually stereotyped them as hippie anti-corporationists, I was always very impressed with their pro-industrial stances like this.

Are you sure? About the police radar part that is. I'm pretty sure laser radar guns work by time of flight just like LIDAR, not by frequency shift. I would also be very surprised that, in police guns at least, that there is any relativistic correction put in given that it goes as v/c and the difference between using classical vs relativistic is insignificant for automobiles (or at least for those that don't have Flux Capacitors in them).

What does special relativity have to do with police radar?

They fund it because they fund all sorts of basic and applied research.

However, it would make a good Onion article if the title started out with "Area Man . . . " :)

Which, to me, really makes this whole thing a non-story.

Ok, fine, we'll just transport him on a Learjet instead.

You are right, HELP was awesome.

Don't forget DECNET. That completely blew me away when I first used it. I accessed a file from half-way around the world just like it was on the computer right next to me. It was this wonderful interconnected web of VAXes all over the world that acted like a local cluster.

DEC introduced some very handy and useful extensions to FORTRAN and had an awesome compiler, and these non-standard extensions ended up getting supported by non-DEC compilers. They also had an outstanding language reference manual. In my experience, almost everyone who used a VAX for programming did so in FORTRAN while almost all the C programmers did their work on the Sun workstations.

Please forgive my ignorance in though having skimmed the provided links and not seeing any significant information beyond what was in the summary, I did not thoroughly ingest the embedded Petition for a Writ of Mandamus to find the info you pointed out (it must be my browser settings, but even when I do click through into the Writ, "Form 278" does not appear to stand out in such bold font as it does in your copy/paste above, but rest assured I did read "Form 278" many times, but sadly it didn't seem to provide as engaging reading as you suggested it would). And though more so back in my salad days I could fully appreciate any type of well-written prerogative writ (I mean, come on, who can't?), my interests these days sadly seem limited to just simple scire or venire facias writs so I am a bit out of practice.

Although over my career I have had occasion to be required to fill out financial disclosure forms, the OGE 450 specifically, and I have been subject to mandatory training on PII and what constitutes public information, I did have the hubris to attempt to inject into the discussion my obviously inferior and uninformed information on this topic and I fully accept the pilgarlic mockery and derision that should have been showered on me.

Please excuse my complete and utter lack of knowledge on the topic of government financial disclosure forms. I will not ask apology for my attempt at getting my comment "frist psot"; the fact that I tried it two hours and 100 comments into the discussion, not to mention two levels down into a particular discussion thread, does indeed show it to be a deplorable act of having the temerity to try to jump the gun and troll to first degree, and is certainly unforgivable. I do take heart in the fact that the reason I've been coming to this web site for 15+ years is that I can always count on helpful and courteous members like you who provide the important, though underrated, service of transferring your superior knowledge to those of us who tend to be more obtuse than we should.

Aha! I clearly never knew anyone higher than mid-level!

Thank you for your informative reply and please know that the heights to which I hold you in my esteem is in proportion to your courtesy.

Typically financial disclosures, such as the ones covered by OGE Form 450 (Confidential Financial Disclosure Report), are not public information and are exempted from FOIA requests (Exemption 3). There are certain types of personal information that you are not entitled to; for instance, one wouldn't be able to request social security numbers, or bank account info, etc. on people. You are allowed to know things like their position, job title, salary, and stuff like that.

I agree with you, and I've got no problem mentioning his age in the article, but to mention it in the article headline suggests there is some relevance of his age to the story.

It might simply be that whatever it was that was pitched to these two networks just wasn't very good (too expensive, bad casting, bad screenplay, etc.). Or maybe they just saw this as a worn-out meme.