I'm really glad somebody shared this, and that it was modded up.

I read it for the first time two days ago, and as someone who is currently teaching math, science, and standardized test prep, it really spoke to my experience with my students. Many of them are incredibly bright, to the point where I wonder why they're in for tutoring (my guess is that their parents want them to go from B's to A's or to get a 30 instead of a 25 on the ACT), but they often have difficulty applying skills outside of the narrow area in which they've been taught to use those skills.

But A Mathematician's Lament is the best thing I've ever read on mathematics instruction, and I've recommended it to probably a dozen people in the past couple of days. Thanks for spreading it around.

ABET (the big engineering accreditation board for colleges and universities) also has criteria for certification of Software Engineering programs, which is perhaps a bit more important as all engineers are going to go through academic programs certified by them, but not every engineer is going to get their PE or even take the FE exam that is a lead-up to getting their PE license. I pretty much completely agree with you, though. Some programmers are software engineers and therefore are engineers because they perform engineering work, but not all people who have the title "software engineer" are actually engineers.

I feel similarly with regard to Mike Resnick losing in editor, short form. He took second place after "No Award." He's a good writer, and Kirinyaga (for which he won his first Hugo award) is a spectacular and nuanced novel. I'm somewhat surprised the Puppies like him, but their taste doesn't seem to be all bad, as evidenced by their only victorious nomination: Guardians of the Galaxy.

Bill Gates is throwing billions of dollars at Gen 4 nuclear power through the company Terra Power: http://terrapower.com/

It's chemical and GMO free, too! I'm excited to receive this vacuum bag. http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Him...

So he's going to take a decade to make a version of Guncraft his bitch? This sounds like comedy gold waiting to happen.

Clearly what this means is that any kid who writes any assignment about any subject is going to carry out the contents of what they wrote. There are thousands of schoolchildren writing about the Holocaust who should probably be locked up before they commit genocide.

More importantly, it also depends on the design of fusion plants, since the current plan with tokamak-style magnetic confinement fusion reactors (like ITER) is to use lithium to produce tritium that will be consumed in the reactor. There might be more of a risk associated with inertial confinement (like the NIF), but I think you're right that the proliferation concerns from fusion are less worrisome, particularly when compared to a fast breeder fission reactor.

Have you never been to an Apple store? They charge $20 for a freaking USB to iPod cable. Think different (like everyone else).

I'm surprised to see all of the anti-libertarian sentiment in the comments above. I haven't seen this much anger at straw-man libertarian views outside of Salon. At least based on people's comments about libertarians, you'd think that libertarianism were some unified Kochtopus front ready to take away everything they hold dear, rather than a fairly divided set of political views and philosophies that share a few bits of common ground. I guess the angry folks don't read the same people I do.