Wait 'till the fire turns green

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It's time to push scientific R&D and education the way we used to. We've been suffering from a brain drain for far too many decades now, and we need to re-establish leadership in the area of scientific and technological research in order to keep up with competition from the EU, India and China.

Likewise, any Federal tax code provision that actually rewards US corporations for exporting jobs overseas in the name of "free trade" (or any other Orwellian buzzword you choose to employ) while simultaneously laying off American employees has to be abolished. You can't buy products to bolster the domestic economy if you don't have a job to earn money to pay for them.     

[Error: unknown template qotd]Not taking time off from college after my dad died.

If I had, I would've probably either (A) gotten over the emotional baggage that his death caused or (B) would've transferred to a different university that didn't make language grades mandatory or at least allowed them to be pass-fail instead of weighted. Both of those factors caused my GPA to go straight to hell from the grad school-eligible level it was before then.

[Error: unknown template qotd]What's my favorite rant? The rant I'm writing right now. Right now, some moron is running around wondering if his Tivo recorded his favorite piece of reality TV filth, and is fretting away precious seconds of his life worrying if his local church/peer group/parents will approve of the new girl he thinks he's dating because she smiled at him while serving him the fat-filled deathburger he ordered at a local fast food place where guys constantly "eat" in the back while dealing meth. They're no better than him but they make more money because they don't work at the crappy quickie-mart that he does for 35 cents above minimum wage. His life is a neat, plastic-wrapped sham with no imagination, no future and no class, but he's worried about those dangerous scumbags who rather read books he's scared of and listen to music that would cause him to foul his panys even if the volume was turned down to 5 decibels. People like this MAKE ME SICK, because they....

Uh, sorry.

What was the original question, again?

[Error: unknown template qotd] Oh, this is lovely...

Years ago, when I was working for a department at UIC, I was standing on one of those concrete cutout sidewalks where the turn lane (west to south, in this case) is placed between the main sidewalk and the street light; a car took the turn too fast after a heavy rain storm and hydroplaned directly into the street light support pole. I was standing roughly 10 feet behind it. 

Needless to say, there are some seriously bad/stupid drivers in that area. Always have been and probably always will be.