Gallery: The Department of Energy's Fourth Solar Decathlon

I visited the solar decathlon and enjoyed your article. With bureaucrats being attacked by self-serving politicians, this is a great counter weight. It is an example of enlightened bureaucrats teaming up with, in many cases, publicly-funded universities and also businesses. Another example of an enlightened bureaucrat would be Robert W. Taylor, a Defense Department employee who was largely responsible for laying the groundwork for the Internet.

Arisotle is the father of the internet, more than any you could name from the recent era. Or Gupta, Gould, Townes, Bell Labs, MIT, who all, among armies of others, came up with the advances in the sciences needed to create the internet, and trying to tie the day's work of one person to the achievements of millions of work hours by thousands of people is dishonest. Robert W. Taylor did his job. He was paid. The American people, more than any one, would be more apropo, were it not for those others from other lands who came before with things of their day without which, we would not be there yet. It is more than high time we got off our high horse 'bout this stuff, and get on with tomorrows achievements. The internet is a thing born of collective human consciousness, and you have no right to attempt to cheapen it.

We need to get projects going at least in all 1-A schools, to get real understanding for these concepts at the community level across the country. Many of the people who would be more than happy to utilize these advances still have no idea what actually exists, or what technologies have been well proven that suits their needs geographically. As things stand now many of these current systems involve an element of risk as it applies to part replacement, but there again, no one knows where to get the proven stuff, either.