What the monoliths are and do in 2001 is pretty self-explanatory from the first scene, not a question or mystery at all. Beating people over the head with further explanation would be boring and make the monoliths less mysterious and impressive, because you've defined strict constraints on their behavior and intent, rather than leaving those as open questions, where we don't know if maybe they'll become malicious later.

The sequel, 2010, made a similar but much larger mistake. (spoiler) It explained away HAL's murder spree as just a programming mistake, when it made more sense that approaching the giant monolith was making him self-aware, like the apes in the opening. If HAL's behavior wasn't affected by it, then it's a side-plot that didn't get properly set-up, and isn't really relevant to the story, oddly enough. I actually like 2010, as an independent movie, more action, adventure, and less mystery. But as a sequel, it really takes the air out of one of the greatest movies of all time, robbing it of the existential philosophical questions of what it means to be alive, conscious, intelligent, etc., and how we differ from the animals, and the advanced machines we've created to assist us. I don't believe it was coincidence that we start with apes killing to survive, then the rest of the film is HAL killing humans, then humans killing HAL to survive. Perhaps Artur C Clarke didn't intend it, but surely Kubrick did. It's far from the first movie that improved upon and eclipsed the source material, taking it in another direction. Though, obviously the reverse is vastly more common.

They completely missed Santa Claus Conquerors The Martians:

https://archive.org/details/santa_claus_conquers_the_martians_ipod

From WP: "a week after Earhart disappeared, a Navy plane searched Gardner Island. It saw signs of recent habitation and the wreck of the SS Norwich City, but did not see any signs of Earhart's plane or people."

So they made it onto the island, but their plane did not, and they very quickly died somewhere hidden from aerial view? Possible, I suppose, but rather far-fetched.

There's a lot of water in the Pacific Ocean, and very little land. It's infinitely more likely they splashed-down, somewhere, and sunk, but I guess you can sell more books with an unsupported fringe theory...

Am I missing the joke? Straw figures are common in Japan. It's no mystery:

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/10/19/the-giant-straw-sculptures-of-japan-%e3%80%90photos%e3%80%91/

Cheap cameras work just fine in full bright sunlight and with stationary subjects. They are worthless, however in low light conditions, and pretty poor with any motion. You might notice that expensive cameras have a HUGE lens up front... That allows them to gather far more light, in far less time, which makes all the difference with action or low-light shots.

Brazil did largely the same thing, building Brazilia from nothing in the middle of the jungle, and making it their new capitol. There were many problems and untold critics calling it mad and ill fated. But it seems to have worked out well enough, now, with the benefit of much hindsight.

The guy with the SUV clearly knows what he's doing... He has a tall snorkel coming out of the engine, meaning he drives it through deep water for fun. What's more, even if he got washed down-river he would merely need to wait for an opportunity and could drive right out of it. All cars should come equipped that way...

You didn't actually link to io9...

Cats obviously don't read headstones, so how does he even know that location is significant?

Vastly better explanation of the strategy here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-I0bAuEUE

"The magic of this solution ISN'T that it gives better odds for any single individual to find their [instrument], because it doesn't [still 50/50]. It's that all the successes or failures are forced to happen together. Everyone wins together [30% of the time], or everyone loses together [70% of the time]. Your fates are linked..."

Think of it this way... Just by random chance, each instrument COULD end up in its correct box. Or they could all end-up one-step removed, two steps removed, etc. Then EVERYONE would only have to try one/two/three boxes, and they would ALL (not just one or a few of them) succeed. If instead they tried opening boxes in a random order, somebody in the group would invariable need to try all 10 boxes before getting it right, and you'd never stand a chance of everyone winning.

Fast food in schools sounds fine to me... They can't screw up any worse than schools did. I remember frozen pepperoni pizzas cooked harder than crackers, egg rolls burnt to a crisp, and horrid low grade hamburger meat between stale buns, and NOTHING ELSE... Not a slice of tomato, lettuce, zip. This for nearly $2, back when fast food dollar menus were respectable, and shortly before McDonalds introduced their $0.29 hamburgers. Oh, and I forgot to mention the lines... I actually had days where I got in line a couple minutes after the bell, and was several spots back when lunch ended. I hated school lunches with a passion, and can't imagine any changes could possibly be bad...