Because the people who vote on this change are not technical people. And because most Americans would not understand a good technical name.

I would think that it would destroy most religions.

But my guess is that it would end up being like the episode of South Park where missionaries immediately try to convert these new beings (hopefully getting vaporized while doing so).

What the hell is this crap: "scare-mongering" and "government's overreach"?

Guess what, the weather is unpredictable sometimes.

Would you rather them say a dusting of snow and then get 2 feet of snow? When that happens it takes 3 times as long to dig out, because snow removal efforts are not properly prepared. Every weather report said that it was going to hit NYC hard. And in the mean time Boston has a foot of snow overnight, and more still falling.

If you are going to post something about the weather, at least make it somewhat of a technological story, not this stupid shit.

The first arrest that happens due to this, will result in appeals that will eventually get this rule overturned as unconstitutional.

This is no different than saying your neighbor committed a crime so we want to search your house as well due to proximity to him. A decent lawyer will be able to make the argument that just because you are on a TOR or a VPN does not mean you are doing something illegal.

TOR was created as a method to allow people in oppressed countries to speak freely, it is funny that the country that funded this is now going to be one of those oppressed countries.

Well they did fail to do a conversion from standard measurements to metric measurements on the 1999 Mars climate orbiter. But I do agree with your point, we have successfully landed on the moon which has a lot less of an atmosphere than Mars.

I guess the circuits controlling communications got screwed up, so it was assumed to be lost.

Do you even know part of the reason why the EPA was created originally?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River

Before the EPA began enforcing regulations on pollution it was so rampant that the Cuyahoga River caught on fire multiple times. There were other rivers that were like this as well, but the Cuyahoga fire got a Time story that drew attention to it.

I don't know if you are one of those who believe that company's can self regulate, but the issue here was where the pollution was dumped into the river wasn't where the fires started, they started further downstream. So there was no reason for the companies to even care about this. This is very similar with air pollution as well.

The EPA and other government agencies need to be reformed, but Congress needs to write some laws for that to happen (make it easier to fire government employees, eliminate the crazy amounts of bureaucracy that reasonable regulations have to go through, and go through older laws/regulations and eliminate the ridiculous ones). But this would require Congress to get off its ass and write reasonable laws and possibly even reform an agency rather than just defund it.

But the obvious solution is to just defund the EPA, nothing bad can come from industries having no regulations on their environmental output.

Personally I like the second solution in that Futurama.

We just need to move the Earth a little farther from the Sun. And we would get a longer year, while ignoring the moon in all of our calculations.

The original Forbes article states this in the end, the poster either didn't bother to read that far or just didn't think this was relevant. Most of the article does crap on Google for this stuff, but at the end the guy realizes that this is a long term goal which Google is trying to get ahead on. So this was most likely written as click bait that bad mouths Google, but the actual author knows that Google is playing a long term game here.

Welcome to current journalism, lets bad mouth something we think is intelligent, to get people to click on a link. But at the very end we will write up a few sentences saying why this will probably pay off in the long run.

I am trying to understand this better, a scientist (who is an atheist), angers a few Christians for stating a fact.

OK for those of you about to argue that Isaac Newton wasn't technically born on Dec. 25th, neither was Jesus. There is plenty of research to back up the fact that Jesus was most likely born in September. The reason that Christmas is celebrated on December 25th is to put it in contention with other end of the year celebrations (religious and secular) like Hanukkah.

I also heard him say that the earth is more than 5 billion years old, and the universe is around 13.8 billion years old. Why aren't these people yelling at him about these scientific observations?

The problem with Pluto is that it is a Kuiper Belt object. If Pluto was closer to the sun and its orbit didn't go through Kuiper Belt, it would be considered a planet. That and when Eris was discovered, it became obvious that Pluto was just another Kuiper Belt object.

If you want Pluto to be a planet, then all decent size objects in the belt would have to be planets as well. So your options are 8 planets or 13 planets (that we know of at the moment).

I hope these robots don't require alcohol to survive, steal constantly and dream of killing all humans.

Vaccine adjuvants encourage the immune system to attack the virus cells, thus creating the immunity for the future.

People saying things like this are the problem. Some people cannot get vaccinations due to their own medical conditions (i.e. allergies to components of the vaccine). If you choose not to give your kid vaccines you are leaving them open to diseases that have been mostly eradicated in the last 50 - 100 years and you are thinning the number of vaccinated people, which makes it easier for people who can't get vaccinated to get the disease. Diseases like polio, measles, and mumps, don't exist in first world countries because of these vaccines. But these diseases do still exists in small sections of the third world, because of religious, transportation and other issues.

And the longer diseases hang around and infect people the more likely they are going to mutate and could eventually become a problem for the greater population again. If you really think a vaccine is a terrible thing, do everyone a favor, look up the outcomes of the disease itself, before you decide not to give your kid the vaccine. I would hate for my kids to end up with polio or measles, but that is why I vaccinated them.

I am not even going to get into the "doctors are not scientists" line, because I am sure you are beyond convincing. But every doctor that I have gone to has known what he/she was doing and has helped me with any issues or pointed me toward someone who could help.

Many animals have been known to get drunk. I once saw a nature special where a lot of African animals ate the fruit off a grove of trees and all got drunk. After this happened most of them passed out next to each other. So there was an awesome site of monkeys, zebras and lions all sleeping a few feet away from each other.

I think what the article is pointing out is that our ability to process more alcohol allowed us to eat more fruit without getting drunk, which allowed us to be more mobile and defend territory better while not getting drunk. It also probably helped us defend ourselves better against predators, than those that were drunk.

This moat needs sharks with lasers attached to their heads!!

Hasn't the US Congress by folks with a black and white view for the past 4 years? It just happens that the folks in one part see black and the other see white. And neither will work together, because that would disrupt their worldview.