... says the scientist whose experiment didn't provide evidence that it's true.

I work for a database company. 100% of our customers use Linux. Our computers? Only Mac and Windows are supported. Linux? You're on your own. A few percent of the engineers do it, though.

Came here for this. Thank you for pointing it out first.

:%s/\ \ /\ /g
Problem solved.

Agreed. I sometimes drive my car into Times Square on a Sunday morning, because it's more convenient than the train for my family, and we have a thing every week. There are parking spots available (for a few hours) right outside of $20-$25 an hour market-rate private parking lots. It's ridiculous, but I'll keep doing it while it's free. I'm not sure we'd need to make public transit free, though, if we're planning to eliminate free/subsidized parking. That might be enough to effect change all on its own.

Viewing these words as a mistake is the simplest interpretation of the law. The other option is to re-interpret lots of other sections, and change the law to be at odds with how the people writing it meant for it to be interpreted.

The writers of the law clearly wanted to establish state exchanges for any state that wanted them, and a federal exchange for any state that didn't want to roll its own, and that all of these exchanges do the same thing. This might not be apparent in that little snippet, but it's very much apparent in the text of the law itself.

It's not as though the SCOTUS majority is pulling meaning out of nowhere for just this passage. Quite the contrary, they'd have had to re-interpret a lot of text to infer that the law was written so as to exclude subsidies for the federal exchange.

Legit. Especially given the culture of "it's only wrong if you get caught" attitude towards breaking rules that pervades so many of our high schools and trickles up into college and the work force with every graduation, and then gets reinforced with every performance evaluation or annual bonus.

The mind blowing thing is that even though the money follows the winner (everyone loves to back a winner!) the politicians give their loyalty away for contributions, as if those contributions ensured their victory, rather than the other way around.

+1

Source: I spent 7 years of my life getting a Ph.D. in physics. By the time I got the Ph.D., the only reason left I had for finishing was because I'd started.

A Master's in physics, though, that's legit. You're still having fun, and still learning a lot.

For physics, start by reading an intro textbook.

Be sure to solve the problems at the end of the chapters. You will know physics when you can solve physics problems. If you're not interested in solving the problems, just read some pop physics books.

For astronomy, I would be of no help whatsoever. The math is easier, though; if you can use the Pythagorean Theorem, you're good (I hear).

My background: 36, a Ph.D. in physics, and I work at New York tech startups.

Definitely.

I see parallels between this and any number of other situations that make people desperate:

* Cancer patients turning to stem cell "remedies" from quacks who don't bother looking for evidence

* People with autistic children who can't find a cause so they blame vaccines

* People who can't see any obvious good options, so they turn to psychics

Fear is a wonderful tool if you're a charlatan, as it makes your victims less likely to pause and ask whether you're actually qualified to do (or to know) any of the things you claim.