<sup><sub>If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness.
- Tadao Ando</sub></sup>
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I was just reading today about a 16-year-old high school student who was curious about how some common household chemicals would interact with each other, so she took them to her high school chemistry lab and mixed them together. The reaction caused a small explosion - really just a 'Pop' and a puff of smoke - but the State is pressing charges against her for felony firing of a weapon.

I have to say... What. The. HELL?! Hasn't President Obama been going on and on about how we need to encourage more children to get into the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and how America has always been a country of great innovation and so he wants to support innovators? Well... this is not showing that attitude at all.

Science is the process of coming to discoveries by using logic, reason, observation, and EXPERIMENTATION. Experimentation is a vital process toward making discoveries, yet today, experimentation is criminalized in America... Wanting to see how two chemicals interact, especially in an appropriate setting like a chemistry lab, is perfectly responsible. It's in the nature of great innovators to be curious, and to test their ideas. Sometimes experimentation results in accidents. That is the nature of science and invention. It should be commended, not criminalized.

I myself have had instances where an experiment went a little awry, not endangering anyone's property or life except my own - a consenting adult who knows the risks - yet people have threatened to sue me for reckless endangerment.

This is outrageous. Stop killing the spirit of discovery, America!

Stay strong, Kiera Wilmot... The independent inventors stand with you. Or at least, this one does.

- Schematic Maniac