Fighting a land war on the Asian continent is simply economically infeasible. The US Army is only econmically feasible for any significant duration when it can be supplied by ship.

$1 million per year doesn't surprise me much.

What surprises me is that 19 guys with box cutters could inflict $2 trillion worth of damage on the United States.

Acquistion - from its founding until about 1850 the United States agressively acquired new territory by conquest and purchase.

Exploitation - from 1850 to 1945 the US expanded its agriculture and industries throughout its geography. First came the Robber Barons and then the great industrial complexes that provided weapons and supplies for WW I and II.

Dissapation - from 1945 we used up many of our natural resources, such as Minnesota iron ore and Texas oil, spending beyond our means to go from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest debtor nation.

In a business, the next stage usually requires a change of control and new, strong hands to reform the business. This has not happened yet because Congress is filled with elderly men and women who are psychologically wedded to the idea of American exceptionalism and unable to face reality.

The self-service gas stations have a higher fraud rate than other credit card uses, since a driver can use a fake credit card made by "skimming" the data off of a legitimate card. They try to control this be having the driver enter their zip code or other information, as well as by limiting the dollar value of purchases, looking for patterns of purchases, etc. They also charge a higher fee to the gas station for use of credit cards.

Presumably these techniques can also be applied at in-store self check out.

Lee DeForest had a PhD in Physics from Yale. As with other inventors, it was not easy for him to make money from his 300 or so patents.

He began tinkering and inventing things even in high school, often trying to build things that he could sell for money. By the time he died he had over 300 patents, but few of them ever met with much success.

A major reason for the decline in US innovation is the decline in major industrial research laboratories. Instead research funding is consumed by military projects or parceled out to research Universities. The latter is done inefficiently, since grants are small, research teams are small, and results are also small. Part of this is the system of grants to "principal investigators", where each faculty member wants to be a principal investigator and is supported only by a small team of post docs and grad students.

Fire all the non-teachers except a small office staff, nurse, janitors, and the lunch-room staff.

In other words, go back to the '50s.

Military power is declining in importance as economic power takes center stage. Technology makes defensive weaponry more effective, especially more cost effective. The US, which is spending half of the world's military budget, will be more and more frustrated by the passive-agressive resistance of the rest of the world, not just China.

Pharma is dying in the US. The good bits are being acquired by the European drug companies and the rest will merge and die.

In fact, I think that the CBO estimates of net interest are too small and the gap is worse. Once the dollar erodes more against other currencies, our foreign lenders are going to want more interest in order to roll over all the short term debt that we have accumulated.

Radon has a half-life of 3.8 days. Therefore, any radon brought to the surface decays to less than one millionth part in 76 days.

It would seem fairly easy to separate the radon from the water and exhaust it into the air.

It is fine for the Israelis to have all the land. But the US taxpayer should not send a dime. The world should put up a wall around Palestine and leave the Israelis and Palesinians locked inside like two scorpions in a bottle.

I've never been an elementary school teacher, but judging by, for example, the behavior of several 9-year old boys at a birthday party, or of several older boys on a scouting trip, it does seem that just putting them together in a room with a lot of PCs is unlikely to result in anything but a lot of chaos. The teacher has to keep them focused, interested and productive. The scoutmaster has to keep them from getting lost and reasonably safe. There are also the inevitable interpersonal issues that have to be dealt with before bodily harm is done.

However, if the elementary education is done right, a lot more self-directed study can be accomplished in middle and high school. It also would be an advantage to have the older students teach the younger ones (as do the scouts), and to have the students move through the curriculum as fast as they can master it.