Why do you feel it needs fighting? I really don't think it's critically important to communicate gender with every use of a pronoun. We don't have separate pronouns for different races, young vs. old, short vs. tall, fat vs. skinny, smart vs. stupid, obstinate grammar nazi vs. speaker of contemporary english, etc., so what makes the detail of gender so important that it alone must be embedded in the pronoun? I really can't see a purpose for automatically referencing gender every time you refer to a person other than to reinforce sexism.

We don't have a "proper" gender-neutral singular pronoun, so we use "they" and "them" instead. It doesn't matter if this behavior has precedent dating back to the 1300s or if it started last week. What matters is that it's currently widespread and unambiguously understood by most (if not all) modern english speakers. The dictionary should be descriptive, not prescriptive. You are witnessing the evolution of language in action! Don't fight it, be fascinated and pleased!

This is my all-time favorite apocalyptic scenario:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8&ob=av3n

I'm not really sure what line of scientific research leads to it though...

No, they don't. If anything vegans are more healthy because they actually tend to pay attention to what they eat. I suppose it would be possible for a highly ignorant vegan to give themselves health problems with malnutrition, but most don't. Most omnivorous americans, however, do suffer massive health problems because their diet contains too much fat, salt, sugar, and protein, but not enough vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

Now, I'm definitely not advocating veganism. I think they're being pretty silly, especially the ones who actually believe that eating meat is unnatural (sadly there's more than a few). It is possible (and even ideal) to have a healthy diet that includes some meat. But the amount of meat that most americans eat is unhealthy and unsustainable.

My experience has been exactly the opposite; it's the city cops that are totally unforgiving asshole revenue-generation machines, while county sheriffs and highway patrol are much more likely to let you off with a warning (and more likely to be kind, pleasant, respectful, and helpful human beings and not just an armed bully drunk on their own power).

Well, I stand corrected in this particular case. Occasional shitty individual employees are a universal constant regardless of even the best working conditions. But shouldn't it be relatively easy to fire those problem employees for incompetence/failure to perform job duties/failure to meet quota/etc? I have always lived in an at-will state, so I'm not super-familiar with how it works elsewhere, but I always assumed that "not doing your job" was pretty much always valid grounds for termination.

Oh, that's why you had decent working conditions. The company was small enough that it was still owned by an actual human being, and not some faceless corporate monstrosity whose only concern is short-term shareholder profits.

I will bet you that these "bottleneck" employees were being paid an hourly wage and would be sent home early if the day's work were completed early. Many hourly workers find themselves in a situation where they wouldn't be able to afford their rent if they don't get all of their hours every week, and getting another job to cover those missing hours isn't even an option because the first employer still expects the worker to always be available for their scheduled 40 hours even when they aren't actually working and being paid for all of them, so "bottlenecking" is really a matter of basic survival for many. Pay your employees an actual living wage and this problem mostly disappears. The best places to work are the ones that offer performance-based compensation (bonuses for finishing early, or the opportunity for a faster worker to make a per-order rate that ends up being better than the minimum hourly rate). Sadly, most companies seem content to incentivize bottlenecking by punishing their fastest and most efficient employees with reduced hours and corresponding reduced pay. I once very gently pointed out this logical fallacy to one of my employers (I was a "lead" worker and had noticed this behavior in some of my team) and was fired (for no stated reason; "at-will" strikes again) not long after.

So you're ok with punishing innocent people for the crimes of their tyrants? It's not like the people who are suffering from the sanctions have any influence over the actions of their government. Their leaders aren't even democratically elected. Additionally, the people at the top who are actually responsible for the evil that the sanctions are in response to are incredibly well-insulated from the effects of those sanctions. In fact, the crazy dictators who run these countries actually use these foreign sanctions to their advantage, as a rallying cry to motivate their people to hate the "evil" western powers that are making them suffer.

Your incredibly short-sighted revision of history is appalling. You are the type of person who believes that corrupt dictators represent the will of their subjects, and that punishing their subjects somehow punishes them. I hope you're just a troll.

I have a good friend who is a proud owner of a very large TV. He is also one of those weirdos who likes to watch everything squished. When I ask him why, his response is that he feels like he's not getting his money's worth unless every inch of the screen is in use. Black bars make him feel like he's just not getting full value out of his expensive, giant TV.

I don't really understand it, myself. I have a very hard time watching incorrect aspect ratio TV for more than a couple minutes (unless it's animation). If I'm watching squished (or pan & scan) content, I don't feel like I'm getting full value out of the content. I don't even notice black bars if I'm enjoying what I'm watching. Different people have different priorities, I guess.

You can't get good drugs? That sucks man... maybe try hanging around your local college campus?

You mean like google?

This country's addiction to fossil-fuel-intensive travel is inappropriate and unsustainable, and actively fucking the environment of the entire planet from multiple directions. This conspiracy to make travel undesirable/expensive might actually be in the service of a greater good.

Or it could just be about good old totalitarian control, restricting the movements of the slave class.

Most likely both.

The in-between unit isn't missing, it's "half". Perhaps you don't realize "quart" is just shorthand for "quarter gallon"?

I agree 100% with your point about digital copies being preferable, but as long as we're still buying media on discs, this may be the best $17 I have ever spent:

http://www.amazon.com/SkipDr-Manual-Disc-Repair-System/dp/B0015ACUKC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1301969120&sr=8-3

Ok, you're probably a troll, but I'll bite. This has nothing to do with socialism or communism. Socialism and communism are economic models. They are both quite neutral on the subject censorship of political speech. What's going on here is called fascism. Fascism, defined as a system of absolute governmental control, is compatible with any economic model, including the form of capitalism practiced by the western world.

I understand that the american media deliberately makes this point hard to understand, but socialism/communism are opposed to capitalism, while fascism is opposed to a democracy/republic model. You can easily have fascist capitalism, and you can easily have democratic communism.

This is a true statement. However, it is still a true statement if you take out the word "muslim". Let's not contribute to divisiveness....