Replace the regulations with a functional equivalent. Don't just magically figure that the free market will figure it out. I hope it works.

Why not allow all schools, daycares, babysitters, etc. to require up to date vaccinations before providing services?

Binzel's proposing sending astronauts to asteroids that pass very close to Earth, not just robotic missions - which I agree with. From the source article:

If you build a massive transportation infrastructure capable of hauling people & cargo for numerous several month journeys, you've pretty much adapted humanity to live in the space between worlds. At that point, why limit yourself to just Mars? As much as I'd love to visit, climb the mountains, rappel the canyons, and explore the lava tubes, there's a lot more solar system to see. Colonizing Mars adds one element of redundancy, but numerous self-sufficient space colonies, living off sunlight and the rich (and accessible) resources of asteroids would be far more robust - and interesting.

"Deserve"? According to who?

Sure there is. Evolve. Locally reduce our own entropy at the expense of the universe, and change to something better adapted to survive in the universe than humanity presently is.

True, but only one of those - ACE - provides definitive storm strength and arrival time, by sampling the solar wind directly upstream of Earth for magnetic field & plasma properties (density, speed, and temperature). SOHO and STEREO let you know that something left the sun using imagery and estimate the arrival time. All of those are old NASA satellites long past their design lives, and never intended as reliable weather forcasting assets. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) will take over for ACE next year.

Grid operators respond by reducing the output of baseload power plants (nuclear, coal, etc.) and bringing up small local generators (e.g. natural gas) to reduce the load on long distance transmission lines and their transformers. That is sufficient for the more common small events. Probably not for events like Carrington and the May 1921 geomagnetic storm, but at least they will be in a position to respond. The big danger would to be blindsided because the government couldn't get their act together enough to fund reliable forecast & warning systems. The worst events can take as little as 18 minutes from a satellite at L1 to Earth.

Only two are in common with the people Peter Seibel interviewed for his book "Coders at Work" - Donald Knuth and Ken Thompson: http://codersatwork.com/ Arguably just as valid a list.

Good luck with that. Also, keeps out White Walkers and giants.

Indeed. Renewable energy supporters often sound like they aren't convinced that their solution is actually better - just that it's more ethical - and fail to bring up the measurable benefits. Non-renewables right now enjoy an implicit subsidy because all the damage they do isn't showing up in their price at the pump or electric bill - it's being absorbed in higher taxes, medical bills, business expenses, and the like. A carbon tax is a way to make that cost explicit and make the energy market more functional with better information.

Not a repeat, just another project, and it is TIG. Another project called Strongprint is using TIG because the mass of the print head can be quite low and move over a large, fixed print surface. The one you cited uses MIG and moves the print surface under the print head using a delta robot, while Strongprint mounts the print head on a delta robot, and Delaire's printer moves the TIG head on a gantry. http://reprap.org/wiki/StrongP...

More transparency into government and business would, I think, have a lot more benefits than incrementally regaining a little privacy.

This is about the best press coverage that open source can get, when an aggressive, innovative, and successful CEO with the ear of the press & public challenges the idea that patents actually help "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts..." It's a rare day when I hear the words "open source" on NPR's Marketplace.

You can hook ELIZA to autorespond to email and fool some people.

A company called Wesll developed leaning suspension on a prototype quad. It uses motorcycle wheels & tires so it can maintain surface contact on the curved tires while leaning. http://wesllcorp.com/