I hate to get political, but there is a barrier beyond which I feel compelled to speak out. The ban on stem-cell research during the Bush Administration, and the current Tea Party's attacks on the NSF (which I see as probably the premier force keeping America at the frontier of science and tech, at least when it comes to high-tech entrepreneurship like Google, not flashy web 2.0 startups that contribute little science) are really dangerous.
This is what stem-cell research looks like.