If a job's worth doing at minimum wage, it's worth doing badly.

All those Foxconn factory workers are earning a hell of a lot more than the Chinese minimum wage+benefits, you know.

I blame those Japanese minorities, always bringing down our math scores.

Anyway, a rat race of artificial scarcity is a stupid way to run the world. What matters is not that we're the best, but that we're good enough - to maintain nutrition, health and shelter. Everything else can be done at leisure.

...China is shit in one way, but America is shit in another.

Combine the best of both worlds and you have something good.

But combine the worst and you have something awful.

Polyculture, like many human endeavours, tends to increase both risk and reward.

Expect this to be misinterpreted as "We're #1!"

It is cowardly to set up an account just to troll. A good troll does not fear alternating between insight and subtle nonsense using the same account.

Don't forget that God is just a representation of human weakness/suffering.

The sort of character which would otherwise go to Church every Sunday can manifest itself in other ways.

Indeed. They did their dirty work via NATO. The West are too well-managed to recognise an engineered regime change unless GWB spells it out carefully.

I'm hopeful that Libya will experience less hell than Iraq, but I fear that domestic religious fanaticism is going to be used as a tool there too.

I think we're broadly in agreement on what the West shouldn't be doing.

This reminds me of the pro-US demonstration when Iraq was first occupied.

Actually, I lie. That probably comprised a few dozen genuine hopefuls, while these people's banners suggest fear of American reprisals. Which, looking at the last decade of US foreign policy, is quite understandable.

Cue a hundred posts on how awful Islam is, even though this is just a pretext for more hatred for the Middle East and distraction from the way the elite classes are behaving at home. Cue a dozen people mourning about the loss of another spoilt diplomat who did the nasty government's bidding while hundreds of US soldiers continue to be engaged in unnecessary military activities and civilians continue to either be killed or to die from lack of resources.

Yes, Islam is silly.

Yes, it's just like all dogma in this respect, whether or not accompanied by a sky fairy.

Yes, Mohammed was just some strategically brilliant warmonger with an ego.

But don't allow yourself to be riled up like the desperate fools who are encouraged to violently protest just so their behaviour can be used against them.

I know so many words. If I ate them all, I would get fat. And then what would George think of me?

Not content with erecting straw men, you ask me to waste good people's time to help fight them.

Don't be dull. The problem isn't that Intel may decide not to support Linux but that Intel may be creating a vertical agreement with Microsoft, viz.:

Isn't that the very problem the parent was describing? The judiciary should not be concluding that particular laws are fundamentally good, but applying them indifferently.

If nothing else, more law guarantees more work, so an impartial judiciary would not even celebrate the existence of some body of law.

Are you arguing that someone having suffered sexual assault would object to the promotion of a principle of not blaming the victim?

Well my Tetris watch is still computing meaninglessly.

No, I lie, I think I traded it in nineteen eighty-something. Can't remember for what, though. I hope it was good. I miss that watch.

A WiFi router is not like a car. It is not a deadly box zooming around at 30+ mph. Its usage is not regulated by licence.

Never seen a "blaming the victim" section in a manual for a wireless router.

Ignorance of the law is not being plead, merely its nitwittedness.

Hey, thanks for showing me how she managed to get elected in the first place.

You are a dullard. I shall not be reading any further response.