Learned to play the guitar (badly). Learned to dance (just enough to look and feel confident). Learned to cook, and present the output nicely on a plate. Got fit. Ignore any fad diets, the best way is to grab a "Get fit for the army" type poster from your local armed forces office and *follow* it. Went to lots of parties. If you can't get any invites, start some of your own. Relax. It takes time for you to become more personable and socially aware. It takes time for people you meet to know you. Outcome? Epic win. I'm going out with a British model, who is also a programmer!

A mechanic was removing a cylinder-head from the motor of a Harley motorcycle when he spotted a well-known cardiologist in his shop. The cardiologist was there waiting for the service manager to come take a look at his bike when the mechanic shouted across the garage "Hey Doc, want to take a look at this?"

The cardiologist walked over to where the mechanic was working on the motorcycle. The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and said, "So Doc, look at this engine. I open its heart, take the valves out, repair any damage, and then put them back in, and when I finish, it works just like new. So how come I make $25,000 a year and you get $160,000 when you and I are doing basically the same work?"

The cardiologist paused, smiled and leaned over, then whispered to the mechanic...

"Try doing it with the engine running!"

You're linking two not-really-related issues. Bailouts for large companies are intended to avoid a chain reaction of collapses and thus preserve economic confidence. Publicly funded "Blue Sky" research will provide for very long term improvements to the human race from scientific progress. If you're wanting to increase the money supply to prevent a recession, you're better off allocating the cash to areas that can absorb them readily (such as construction and consumer finance). Or just get Ben Bernanke a helicopter...

You have misunderstood the OP, and basic economic theory. Dealing with a rush job is costly to the IT staff, and to the other customers whose jobs are delayed in response. Recovering the full cost of such a job is the only way to not waste resources. Without such cost recovery, people will gladly cause a loss to other internal divisions of $80000 to save their own division $500, and everyone will flag their jobs as "rush".

He is not advocating getting paid twice for the same job.

As NZer, one of the huge issues with have with hydro is that the capacity varies, and due to environmental regulations we don't have enough fossil backup. As a consequence, in winter there is a period where everyone prays for rain, and if there isn't enough of it, the lights go out and the country incurs hundreds of millions of dollars in costs due to lost productivity.

There is a "loss" that comes from building a natural gas AND electricity infrastructure, instead of just one or the other. It's easier to go from electricity to heat, instead of natural gas to electricity.

Yes, I am a molecular biologist by training. This won't work. The reason genetic engineering is carried out in labs is because it requires expert knowledge of protocols, and expensive equipment. In TFA, one of the people interviewed is trying to insert a targeted florescent marker, and struggling. This is fairly trivial to do in the lab, but only with good understanding of basic principles, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear and consumables, and tested/documented protocols. You can't build a space shuttle in your backyard, neither can you successfully build a recombinant bacterium that meets spec in your garage. Just because cells are squishy does not make this equivalent to software development!