In an ideal world I would tend to agree. However, that does limit the number of people who can vote to maybe 10% of people, if that. It's a hard sell.

I lolled.

Because they've had this "dream" pounded into their heads since the day of their birth by their equally-brainwashed mothers.

Because if your daughter is going to have kids, you want her to shack up with some loser who can't make a commitment in front of all his friends and family, and her friends and family. After that loser cuts and runs, your daughter will be trying to keep her kids clothed, fed, educated and inadequately protected by herself - and doing a half ass job of all of it. Unless your daughter is an amazon and has been training martial arts since age 5, she won't stand a chance vs the average male with bad intentions.

And sure, there are people out there whose commitment isn't worth the paper it's written on. In the old days before easy travel around the country (and world), they were shunned in the community and this had some effect. Now a woman needs to learn how to gauge whether her mate will honor his commitments. It's harder for sure. But marriage as an institution is still definitely a valuable institution for women, primarily those who will be having children. Such a woman is foolish in general for forsaking it. And a parent is foolish for not inculcating a desire for marriage in his/her daughter, especially knowing how silly some young women can be and the irrevocability of decisions such as having children to a non-committal loser.

Same deal with the perceived need to have kids. Gotta get those buns in the oven, you know. How many times have you seen mummy's little girl pushing along a wee toy pram with a wee baby doll in it? Who brought that damned and damning prop into the kid's life?

Honestly, what is the big problem with having kids? If we didn't have kids our species would die off. And anyone who has had kids knows that boys and girls are different, and on average have very different drives.

You've never heard of the term "clucky"? There is an instinct to want to have kids, too. May not be present in all animals though, just as there are some humans with an instinct for sex but no instinct to have children.

I would like to see XKCD's working out on both his "Tr0ub4dor&3" password and his "correctbatteryhorsestaple" password. What is the N and what is the L, and how did he come to that conclusion?

Nevertheless, using an English dictionary as a source of easily remembered, huge L is a good idea. Unfortunately most of the world limits passwords to something in the 8-20 character range, making this idea something of a Dvorak keyboard layout in terms of its superiority but general impracticality - as the world has standardized on a potentially inferior password creation idea. It's got more chance of catching on than Dvorak though, because there is no cost to each individual website or application enabling long passwords.

That being said, anyone using the password generation feature of a password manager will always have more bits per number of characters than the XKCD scheme.

It's not only rare, it's even common. When I went to school, the Dean remarked to everyone that it was worrying that people studying engineering tend to become or stay conservative. Perhaps it was in relation to several of the mandated categories of classes for engineers all having a leftist political bent, which would tend to make the average person adopt leftist views. Perhaps the thinking went "Hey, we'll force them to take a 'choice' of several different classes of political indoctrination masquerading as learning, and then they'll think that their all-knowing professor is correct and then adopt his or her views. The same general idea has worked for the MSM for years, why not here?"

The problem they were facing is that they were attempting to modify the opinion of intelligent individuals who have firmly adopted the engineering mindset of rigorously seeking truth, and doing their research. If a political stream of thought does not benefit them they are not going to adopt it.

I suspect that when you mention Shockley you are referring to the media's interpretation of his views, not his actual views. There was a reason that he took to taping his conversations with reporters and then providing them with typed transcripts.

It is surely true that plenty of high IQ people make mistakes from time to time. (e.g. Your friend was obviously not doing her thinking with her brain.) However, the strange opinions that they have are very often right. The mainstream view has been wrong about many topics repeatedly throughout history, and that holds true today. When the paradigm begins to shift, it is invariably started by a lone high IQ individual who publicly states their own theory, which will be in opposition to the consensus.

It kind of disappoints me when I read an article on slashdot that is about something worthwhile that humanity really needs to get behind and fund, yet there won't be many comments. This is one of those types of articles. Normally the surefire comment magnets are trolling articles, or feature a topic that has a lot of fanbois, or better yet a technological holy war between several factions of fanbois.

However, that shouldn't be a sign that no one is interested or cares about such things. We do. This site is about Stuff That Matters. Researching and preventing low probability cataclysms now we have the technology to attempt it is a very important and noble goal. Whether the average person realizes it or not, those goals are more important than 99% of other charitable goals, because without a habitable earth or human population there is no point to any charity.

So in future while I can't usually add much more than a boring "this is great, more of this please" or a dumb joke if at all, this stuff is important and yes, we need more of it. Don't take low numbers of comments for lack of interest or perceived priority.

I know I'm setting myself up for a flood of "that's what she said" jokes, but perhaps the only reason this hasn't been raised before is because of that very reason. So here goes.

What I could never understand about Subway is the distinct lack of options between the 6 inch and 12 inch. The 6 inch is not quite enough food, and furthermore it is much more expensive per gram than the 12. The 12 inch is much better value, and though it certainly can be eaten in one sitting I feel like a lard bucket for doing so. Something between 8 and 10 inches would be perfect.

Every other fast food joint has a range of different sized options suited to my specific caloric needs but not Subway. What gives? Is it part of their marketing strategy to encourage every cheap bastard to get the 12 inch option? Have they considered dividing a foot long sub into 3 segments (4, 8, 12) but realized that lots of women would order 4 inches instead of 6?

One of my all time pet peeves is the term "price point" - they can't just say "the price"; no it has sound like some sort of scientific data point. And unfortunately, I'm hearing regular folks using that "term" in everyday conversation now.

Not sure what the problem is with this really. Use of the term "price point" implies a relation between a certain level of features/benefits and the cost to the purchaser. It also tends to imply that there will be a cluster of competing products or services that offer similar features and are at around the same price - a price point.

The reason for this is that it's cost prohibitive for manufacturers to produce and market a near infinite number of items with various combinations of features to satisfy everyone, and so they choose a set number of products to manufacture, each targeting a specific demographic or price point, with features to match. Their competitors do much the same thing, and what results is a set of discrete price points at which you can buy a given item with an associated set of features, with not much in between.

e.g. Customer: "Hey, can't I buy a DSLR for $Y that has $A feature I want?"
Store Sales Guy: "Sorry, they don't manufacture them at that price point. You either have the entry level types for $X and the cheaper prosumer types at this price point up here at $Z. If you want that feature you'll have to fork out a lot more."

With the rise of competitors to challenge it, Microsoft is not seen as the big ogre it once was. And yet its reputation for reliability has never been exceptional.

HomeOS... would you really feel comfortable turning your back to it? Leaving your children alone in the care of HomeOS? And if you were in the shower, I can imagine that HomeOS might allow you to set the temperature on command, e.g. "Four degrees warmer, HomeOS." - "Fabulous!". But if you dropped the soap in there with HomeOS just how would that work exactly?

Call me old fashioned, but I'm just not yet ready to flirt with HomeOS. The whole thing might just be one big PITA.

I'd be wrapped to have a missile array on my roof!

I know! It'd be the bomb! (...especially if manufactured on Friday).

Then you are ignorant. Please go back and review your history.

Here is some modern history for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg

And here is the longer term history, which certainly has reduced over time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homicide_in_America_over_Time.png

Despite our modern bureaucracy and technology, something certainly made violent crime skyrocket after the non-violent times (domestically speaking) of the 1930s-1950s, despite the increase in police technology and effectiveness that IMO has driven violent crime rates down over the longer term. Over the longer term, you have to compare likelihoods that you were going to get caught for a crime, as that certainly affects the decisions of the vast majority of people who would be tempted to kill someone. It would be a lot easier to commit a murder and not get caught for it back before the days of telephones, cars, accurate time keeping, analysis of blood types, tests for human vs animal blood and a lot of the medical techniques for determining modes of death. Comparing that to modern day conditions is apples and oranges.

As to us living like kings, in some ways that is correct, in other ways not. I used to make the same argument you are making, btw. Quality of food and entertainment has improved for sure. Information and communications technology is amazing. Having a large family is harder, if that is what you want. The available land per person has certainly dropped.

No he wasn't I refuse to take Episode I, II, III as cannon.

Indeed. It is clear that they were works of much lower caliber.