As of 2008, it is illegal for insurance companies to require any information about a DNA sample.

Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act

http://www.genome.gov/10002328

One of the last things Bush did in Office.

For me Sony stopped being a reputable vendor when a stereo given to me as a present a few years ago was stolen.

Umm I'm sorry, but when in Star Trek did they "beam" as a means of power transmission. Give me an episode reference or it didn't happen.

There will be consumer demand. Marketing departments come up with clever ways of making people think they NEED the new technology. Honestly how many people can actually tell the difference between RGB, YPbPr component and HDMI? or 6 HDMI ports in one TV, because more is better.

Scientists--especially those in academia--are largely funded by government grants (NSF, DOE, etc...). Fanning the flames of a hot topic and launching it into the public spotlight is a sure way to increase the available funding. If we already had irrefutable evidence and a concensus that global warming occured independent of anything man did, many of these researchers would simply be out of a job. When applying for a grant, the unscrupulous scientist may be tempted to cherrypick or overlook inconvenient data/flaws. I'm not saying that this is the case here, but this practice is prevalent in varying degrees in the scientific community. One day it'd be nice to find the time to actually read some of these papers and understand the scientists' methodologies that support their claims.

I don't really see how that will help solve any problems. 9 times out of 10 when people share notes, electronic copies are posted on a noteswap site or emailed to classmates. At the end of each semester I'd simply throw away all the paper notes because I already had electronic versions of anything worth keeping, except for exams--but even then teachers would frequently scan those before returning them to prevent cheating in case you "found a mistake" in the grading. If having previous class notes would be so much an advantage for other students, then I'm sure students have already found a way to retain them or converted them to electronic copies for future distribution.

I enjoyed the inaugural ceremony up until the benediction. I even thought the benediction was fine until the end when Lowery, trying to be funny, added his racist epithets. I am a Christian, but when I hear trash like this coming from those who are supposed to be spiritual leaders, I no longer wonder why so many are fighting to remove any semblance of religion from public view. I found his benediction offensive, irreverent and blasphemous. It makes me wonder about all these black ministers that call themselves "Reverend." It clearly has nothing to do with God, love, or spiritual guidance; the title merely provides a back-door approach for the realization of political ambitions that could not be obtained through legitimate channels. Although I did not vote for Obama, I will support him as president. If he can do even 1% of the things he promises, he will definitely work wonders for this country of ours. Obama has thus far been very careful not to make his campaign and presidency about race, it's a shame this "Reverend" had to go and say what he did.

That would only work if all the ISPs gave in. In most cities it's easy enough to switch internet service providers, if one gives in to the dark side, simply abandon ship and move on to the next. With Gustav hitting Louisiana recently many customers switched phone and internet providers simply because the others were taking too long to restore services after the outage (even though in most cases it wasn't entirely their fault). I even saw a telecom representative going door to door conducting polls and offering incentives to try and retain some of the customer base. This business model would only work IF the lawsuits consistently paid out, which they don't seem to do. Many of them drag on for years, meanwhile the ISP is left to wait, hoping on some sort of returns, all the while knowing they "betrayed" their customers.

There are a few problems in your post. Why would gays be any more educated than non-gays? I can't imagine why there would be any link whatsoever to support that--except for perhaps some anecdotal evidence from your experience working in California. If they're not a minority, then that necessarily means they are a majority. If that's the case then they deserve the consequences of prop 8 because they were too lazy or indifferent to get out and vote. Then again, I shouldn't blame them, they were probably too busy working at their higher-level jobs to vote. A better perspective would probably be something like this: People who are more educated would have the confidence and ability to make their views heard, and would, perhaps, be less reluctant to reveal their sexual preference. That could also explain why gays are occasionally characterized as the "vocal minority." If the gays feel terribly repressed in CA I guess it's time to move because the population trends and ideologies implied by the voting demographics of California aren't likely to change any time soon. The people that discourage expression of same gender-expression are reproducing much more rapidly than those that encourage it (which for the most part, obviously, can't reproduce). That is assuming their children adopt similar views.