I'm another ex-IBMer (left of my own accord and glad to be out), a friend of mine at the lab was asked to lower an employees PBC rating as the yearly cull needed another target in their team, he refused as the employee was an ok performer... they insisted he change the rating to a 3 as they had already told the employee that he was to be put on 'a plan' (IBM code for go f%ck yourself). He gained my respect and admiration that day when he said that he wouldn't do it and that the employee would likely have good grounds to start legal proceedings as this rating was out of the blue and unjustified and he was ready to quit over it. Suddenly the employee was welcomed back and all was forgiven. All three of us have left the company now (of our own accord) and are doing fine but my abiding memory of IBM is of a place with such low morals as to be almost non existent, HR are just Sam's hitmen and the execs have created a culture of fear and resentment... then they wonder why they struggle to innovate as a company.

Optomechanical Crystal Allows Confinement of Light and Sound ..... Upon hearing the news, General Zod was heard to say... "ohh crap"

Yes, today's placebo is almost twice as powerful as those used as little as 5 years ago.

I work as a usability engineer and I can't say that I agree with your points. The ribbon was created to address the MS defined problem that users were only using about 10% of office functionality and they wanted that percentage to go up, that is not a usability goal. Its more than possible that users were only using 10% of the function because that is all they need to use. The ribbon is there to be a pimp for neglected MS features, it could work well for very simple tasks that only have one path... but if your task calls for you to use features from many tabs then it is just a hindrance.

I'm guessing you haven't sat in a room and watched somebody painfully scream and cry their way to their end. My church going, Irish catholic grandmother begged my mother to kill her in her last days as the cancer ate her alive, I sat in a hospital room for a week with my Father in law and his family after he decided to stop treatment to avoid a more painful drawn out end. Modern medicine can keep you going much longer than nature ever intended, where do you draw the line?, how long do you fight a losing battle? Personally, I don't see an end full of agony, that smells of bleach and includes being hooked up to machines to replace failed pieces of my body as what God intended, I chose not to judge anyone who makes these terrible calls.

Nah, I've been there too and maybe you saw the tourist attraction tribe but Africans living off the land do more exercise in a day than most Westerners see all month. Leanness and being fit are a response to a lifestyle we evolved for, diabetes and obesity is the Western response... we just like to label athletes as freakish to avoid the fact we have become lazy.

Genes are most definitely at play, they dictate the amount of fast twitch (explosive speed) and slow switch (endurance) muscle fibers an individual is gifted with. What I object to is the characterization that these people are "freaks", good genes will take you only so far. Many people are given similar abilities but, like any walk of life, success is achieved by those who work at it. These people devote their lives to training their bodies - using the word freaks dismisses their huge perseverance and mental strength.

Yes they look like distance runners, lean and skinny... not all elite athletes have huge muscle mass.