I agree with the judge; To be a REAL religion, the Western kind that counts, people need to KILL and DIE for it. We have not seen that from these so-called Pastafarians, so OBVIOUSLY they're just fooling around. ...and no, ptomaine poisoning from bad pasta doesn't count.

So if government funding doesn't drive innovation, where do the generals get all those wonderful toys they love so much?

What bullshit. This is NOT Land of the Free. We're all guilty until proven otherwise. Just stand accused and see how much of your money and resource is required to buy justice regardless of whether you're guilty or innocent. Snowden is a hero fighting a totalitarian regime and if we're very lucky, someday his statue will stand on the DC Mall.

The debacles are fewer bet when the nuke disasters come around, they're impressive; Chernobyl. Fukashima. ...and when you compare nuke deaths to coal, are you counting the deaths from nuclear contamination related health problems? When nuke power proliferates I suspect we'll have much worse problems than coal mine collapses. The Germans have already figured all this out but the lure of the money is strong in the USA.

The Germans are phasing out nuclear. I guess a good lesson taken to heart from the Japanese debacle. But we love centralized power. It makes lots of money for the Fat Cats. Lessons be damned. There's profit to be made!!!! Out of the way!

The Federal government is unlikely to ever put itself in a subordinate position to any computer system because computer algorithms don't like bad bookkeeping. Our government has all the worst attributes of an evil AI and none of the disadvantages for those humans at the top who seek power and money.

Exactly. ...and there is a distinction between corporations and unions as far as speech is concerned; corporations don't generally give a hoot about the political agenda of their workers whereas unions might. Also, a lot of corporations have offshore workforces whose rights aren't even covered under the US constitution at all. Not so the unions. I recommend that as an extension to Citizens United, any corporation with offshore workforces should be stricken from making campaign contributions either directly or through any PAC.

agree with you 100%. Apathy is problem #1.

Historically, tech developments like gunpowder, splitting the atom, air flight and GPS are double-edged swords and it's rare that they don't entail some risks to human society. Once the tech is invented, fighting it with an axe is pretty much pointless. There's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. The best thing to do is promote the beneficial uses and try to take the edge from the destructive uses. All the guy with the axe did was cost the taxpayers some money.

You can always try it for a few semesters and then put your kid back in school to see if he's keeping pace with rest. generally if your kid gets some fresh air exercise great food great literature to read and some good learning experiences from you it will be far supirior to most elementary schools.

I'm an agnostic apatheist. I don't know and I don't care.

Good. When US industry outsources their IT jobs to these 'software engineers', I hope they get totally screwed up by people who cheated their ways through school. It will serve them right.

Pardon my cynicism but this is just another opportunity to confuse children even further. 'Math teacher' is generally an oxymoron. The real problem in math education is that the system requires math teachers to be 'math people'. Nerds who do math but can't communicate worth spit. In the elementary grades, we need artists who can teach math. They're rare but they do exist.

I was taught in my Theory of Programming Languages class that the effectiveness of available IDEs for a language was one measure of a language's useability and I wholeheartedly agree.

Snowden is a hero and deserves to be paid back monetarily for the damage to his life and reputation. This would happen if our country was not run by a bunch of amoral quasi-criminals.