"a kid will never misplace a fingerprint" until they break a finger and it's in a split and can't be scanned, or newly bandaged stitches, or worse; have lost the finger in an accident. To say nothing of those who don't have fingerprints, either temporarily (hives, psoriasis, chemicals) or permanent (a genetic condition).

The students are already "surveilled", in that attendance is taken. The question is more should surveillance be done with humans in the loop or out of it? Is that the kind of culture we want?

What I can't figure out is, how did we ever have schools before the days of fingerprint scanners, ID cards, and other high tech gear? Is the quality of the education measurably better as a consequence? Do fewer students get kidnapped?

Frankly the "more money from the state in many districts" tells me this is a Prisoner's Dilemma sort of thing. There's $X million to spend on schools, which is allocated to the schools which can prove the highest attendance. One school uses a new technology to improve those rates, so gets more money from the pot. Less money goes to other schools, so they respond by using the same technology.

Once everyone has it, the proportion of money handed out reverts to the original level, except now there's the cost of maintaining all this near gear. The only benefit is to the companies which manufacture the equipment, and that's money taken away from education.

"the deadliest terror attack on American soil until the Oklahoma City bombing 75 years later"

Here I thought it was the Bath School disaster in 1927, which killed 45 people including the bomber. If I count right, one was killed in the first bombing of the day, 38 in the second, and 5 in the third.

The Wikipedia page for the Wall Street bombing even notes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing#cite_note-1) "It was surpassed in fatalities by the Bath School bombings in Michigan seven years later."

I suppose the Smithsonian is considering a single bomb explosion, rather than three within a short span of time done by the same person?

Mr. Awwsome, tsunamis when they hit land are going no more than about 50 mph. Videos of the 2004 Boxing Day and 2011 Japan tsunamis clearly show speeds under 100mph.

The Swedish word "älg" is "moose" in American, Australian, and New Zealand English, but "elk" in British English. Most Swedes learn English from a British influenced source, so often translate it as "elk."

(See http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Älg#.C3.84lgen_i_kulturen )

Depending on definition, the mouth of the Amazon is 15, 180 or 325 km wide. So says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River#Mouth .

Obligatory reference to Penn & Teller's show on bottled water: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPAjUvvnIc

"no monkey" - I was stuck on that, thinking perhaps they wanted specific monkeys ("rhesus monkey", "squirrel monkey", etc.)

My problem wasn't knowing the ratio, it was translating 9.5 times the basketball circumference into linear distance. 23 feet or 7.1 meters is the answer. 29.5 inches around a basketball. 4.1 inches around a tennis ball gives a ratio of 8. Moon is 6790 miles around, Earth is 25,000 giving a ratio of 3.7 . As a double check, I know the angular width of the Moon from the Earth is 0.5 degrees, and the other way around is 2 degrees, giving a ratio of 4.

In other words, the tennis ball is too small! (or the basketball is too large)

Using "their" in the singular is perfectly fine. Quoting from the "Language Log" blog:

"singular they" is deprecated by a few authorities, but is supported by most informed grammarians, and has often been used by great writers over the centuries

or more harshly:

use of forms of they with singular antecedents is attested in English over hundreds of years, in writers as significant as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, and Wilde. The people (like the perennially clueless Strunk and White) who assert that such usage is "wrong" simply haven't done their literary homework and don't deserve our attention.

The sin/cos arm motions were 180 degrees out of phase when they should be 90 degrees.

If my math is right, I came up with a 2% chance that that would happen in the US and 31% it would happen in the world.

My numbers are a bit iffy since I assumed everyone was alive and that births are equally likely across all the days, but the change is minor.

BTW, with only 4 birthdays on the same day there's a 99.8% chance of happening at least once in the US, and likely 10 such families.

Again, assuming my math is right.

Quite a few caves are also underwater, and there are caves in glaciers.

Liquid nitrogen isn't expensive. It's roughly $1-2/gallon.

My favorite is the Swedish word gökotta: "to go out early in the morning, traditionally on Ascension day, to listen to the birds of spring, especially the cuckoo."

Regarding this topic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilunga which says "When asked for confirmation by one reporter, representatives of the Congo government recognized the word only as a personal name." and see the commentary at Language Log at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001104.html .