Colleges encourage students to take out massive loans, that are not discharged in bankruptcy, to pay for their education. As if by magic tuition increases rapidly.

While at the same time the NCAA won't allow college athletes to be paid any of the billions in revenue they create for their schools. The money would be bad for them.

Clearly colleges are fine with a student in debt, but not one getting paid. Sad.

The way you "fixed" the quote is patently untrue. IBM one month commercial paper is much more stable than a Treasury bond (note the term bond means maturity greater than 10 years).

Sure IBM has minutely more credit risk, but the interest rate risk (duration) of the Treasury bond far exceeds the IBM paper. Thus, the Treasury bond is a much more unstable (risky) security.

You could then say, well a Treasury is more stable than any security of the same maturity. I would also say that is effectively untrue. A Treasury bond has no default risk, but only because we assume the Fed would print money to enable the Treasury to make the interest payments. But if the Fed does that we get high inflation which is the very definition of economic instability. So buying a Treasury can only be said to be stable with respect to securities in the denominated in the same currency .

A much safer option would be to buy corporate bonds denominated in many currencies, e.g. buy a Toyota bond in yen, an Rio Tinto one in British pounds and maybe Aussie dollars, a Vale in Brazilian reals, etc. This way you would have marginally more credit risk, but you've diversified away not only the risk the dollar will lose its value, but also risk of a single country's economic growth slowing, thereby lowering total risk.

Lastly, you could say that there are not enough of these corporate bonds. Well that may be because government issues crowd out the market. Companies may borrow more and grow if the US government wasn't demanding $1 trillion per year in funds.

In sum, the underlying article, and analysis, are unimaginative at best.

The protesters have been clear that the main goal of the movement is taking back, and protecting, our representative democracy. They have stated that to do so we need publicly financed elections. This means striking down the 'Citizens United' decision which allows entities to contribute unlimited amounts of money to campaigns. I fully support this goal.

I would only add that (1) we need preferential voting, and (2) we need paper trails on votes and clear auditing procedures - the electronic voting machines are way to easy to crack.

The reason why both the corporation and the stock owners are taxed is because they are separate entities. This structure affords stockholders limited liability - stockholders aren't liable for company debts. If you give up limited liability (partnership or sole proprietorship) then you are no different than the firm and you only get taxed once.

So complaining about double-taxation is disingenuous, considering you choose the corporate form for limited liability.

Lastly, quoting a corporate tax rate is misleading when many large firms (through tax credits and grants) actually receive money from the federal government, see corporate welfare and the quote from wikipedia below. Of course this doesn't even count the billions to financial companies through bailouts and the fed's zero interest rate policy.

"In March 2011, The New York Times reported that despite earning $14.2 billion in worldwide profits, including more than $5 billion from U.S. operations, General Electric did not owe taxes in 2010. General Electric had a tax benefit of $3.2 billion."

A summary of the agreement is in the 10-Q here under '8. Microsoft Agreement': http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1045810/000101287000004766/0001012870-00-004766-0001.txt

If I understand correctly, it seems nvidia was concerned it wouldn't be able to deliver the chips that microsoft wanted in a timely manner. So microsoft paid $200 million up front, for anticipated chip purchases, with only the possibility of getting $100 million back if they decided to cancel (the rest would be converted into preferred stock). This would give nvidia $200 million to use to develop the chip, and they would only have to pay back $100 million if they couldn't. In exchange for the $200 million up front microsoft got the right of first and last refusal with respect to any offer for 30% or more of nvidia.

Nope. Previous research concluded Titan's body consists of about half rock and half water ice. They are saying some of that water ice is actually liquid. They aren't assuming anything, but rather just building on prior research like normal.

Yep, I think the internal heat is tidally generated like Europa. Saturn's gravity stretches Titan at some times more than others, and this stretching causes friction and generates internal heat.

Define a function:

f(x) = 1, x > 0, and 0 else.

there is an 'if' in there but its too obvious so its usually not written. Note, 'for all' does this too (and the 'for all' notation is everywhere in analysis). Define a new function, domain is the real line:

f(x) = 1, for all x belonging to the rationals, and 0 else.

As to 'next', for integer n, the next is n+1. Pretty common (see mathematical induction).

As to the concept of 'next' for irrational and rational numbers: 'next' doesn't exist.

The USPS had an operating loss of 8 billion in 2010. This has nothing to do with pensions. The USPS operates at a loss and borrows from the Treasury (taxpayer) to fund its operations.

If you think the USPS is fine then I suppose you would support privatizing it and cutting it off from the Treasury? If the USPS is so solid let it go to the capital markets for funds.

The USPS is borrowing money at below market rates from the US Treasury. Because of our deficits (less tax income than expenses) the US Treasury gets the money to lend to the USPS from issuing Treasury debt.

So the US debt is larger because of the USPS and this statement of yours "Whether or not the USPS exists has absolutely no effect on the national debt." is completely wrong.

Lastly, cool it with the name-calling.