The US has become a kleptocratic oligarchy.

Morality and justice slowly fade away in the process, as everybody clambers over each other to get as far away from the bottom as they can. I think this process has occurred countless times in history and that the ones at the bottom, the ones who constantly get boots in their face, the ones who feel they have nothing to lose are the ones that effect change.

Obligatory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That is an exaggeration. There are definitely some issues in Win 7 (no independent dpi settings for different monitors), but after a bit of tweaking it is absolutely fine.

This is an exaggeration too.
1. You can always set the resolution to 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 (at the dpis common for 4k monitors, scaling artifacts are hardly noticeable)
2. AA is not really required at 4k on typical monitor sizes (which saves a lot of processing power)
3. Most games aren't that demanding, considering a lot of them are console ports or built to be in line with console quality.

I have 2 AMD 7950s, but for a lot of games I don't even bother turning Crossfire on, as it is unnecessary.

Finally: Forget gaming; 4k is the second coming for productivity tasks (if you have good eyes). The amount of information on the screen is obviously not going to be 4x as much as on a 1080p screen, but it is pretty damn close.

My apologies. Apparently I misread your 'I left the US as well' as 'I went to the US as well'. The 'as well' and the rest of the thread must have thrown me off.

Fuck Searle and his Chinese Room. Seriously.

The Chinese Room thought experiment causes so much lack of understanding it should be banned. Take your Chinese Room and ask it this:
"How many fingers was I holding up ten seconds ago?" (your single-state basic lookup table is not going to work, baby)

Such questions require ever more hacks and additions to the original thought experiment to the point where the most apt analogy for the guy in the Chinese Room is that of a hand. Determining that hands don't "know" anything is hardly ground-breaking.

And don't get me started on the extremely vaguely defined notion of what it means to 'know' or to 'understand'. The fact that humans attribute those things with an almost mystical quality is a testament to the (quite effective) arrogance instilled in us by evolution. Is it really that hard to accept that we're not the deliberate, free-willed agents we think we are?

Although I agree with you, technically autonomously driving vehicles can take away some of the logistic issues in car sharing and car rental services. Being able to drive anywhere, then get out and have the car return to the place the renting agency needs it to be would greatly increase the attractiveness of occasionally renting a car.

Maybe. Sometimes. It depends.

Your question is like asking "So, is water bad?"
The worst thing in dietary advice is trying to shove individual types of food into some ill-conceived set of two boxes labeled 'bad' and 'good'. It really destroys the discussion.

1. Depends on what you mean with sedentary life style. IIRC, 30 minutes of daily mild exercise (walking) is enough to let almost all the increased risk of being (reasonably) overweight disappear (it is enough to move the caches of visceral fat to the more external fat storage locations). Link: http://news.aces.illinois.edu/...

2. Diabetes is a disruption of insulin response that is brought about by insulin spikes. Insulin spikes are generally caused by food with a high insulin index (generally proportional to the glycemic index, with dairy as a clear exception to the rule). Although this depends in part on whether your blood sugar is low before eating (and a number of other factors). See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

3. I believe the prevalence of engineered foods is higher in the US than in other developed countries, simply because people in other countries tend to be chauvinistic about (the purity of) their traditional food. Engineered foods are bound to elicit effects in the body that are driven by outdated but powerful mechanisms in our bodies ('engineered' means getting you to want more of it, either right then and there or the next time you're buying food). As it happens, sugar and carbs in general are one of the if not the most physically rewarding things to ingest. Just try to do a little bit of your own food engineering: it doesn't always work, but 9/10 times you can make pretty much anything self-prepared taste better by adding sugar. There's a reason pretty much every sauce in existence has a very high sugar content (20+% for ketchup and Sriracha).

Sadly, medical science has, for decades, had a better understanding than you seem to think. The problems arise from advisory organs (from the individual dietitian to the WHO) having to justify their existence by coming up with some kind of advice.

"In general, we're not really sure about a lot of things, but it is pretty obvious that nutrition raises your blood sugar levels, with the speed of the increase related to the glycemic index of the food and that both very high and very low blood sugar levels have negative effects on your body, so you should manage your nutritional intake based on your blood sugar levels. Oh yes, and don't forget the buffering effects of glycogen storage in your muscles and liver" makes for great but very unmarketable advice.

"Fat is bad, mmkay" and "High cholesterol will kill you" are a lot more palatable.
Who cares about scientific accuracy nowadays? Most 'journalists' don't. Most politicians don't. The average Joe certainly doesn't (at this point he doesn't even trust those scientist fuckers, always 'saying' different things in the papers).

Take it from me: the science is out there and has been for a while. Believe nothing you read about the subject of dietary advice, unless it is actual research or the stating of hard facts:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
(note the years of publication)

Don't forget the rock-solid references. That is one quality paper!

Don't be an idiot.
1. Those referendums said no such thing. They were about accepting a set of laws under the name 'European Constitution'. Most of the people who voted didn't have a fucking clue what any of the laws were and didn't want to know. They just collectively wanted to vent their nostalgic love for their old currencies and similar hatred for the newfangled Euro.
2. It is not a mess. It's doing great and improving every day. You haven't the faintest clue what an ineffective and internationally unattractive clusterfuck Europe would have been without the EEC and the EU.
3. Representative democracy. There is a reason for the existence of specialization and that reason is efficiency.
I really feel for many of the good politicians: they work their ass off to understand the material to be able to make tough decisions and then literally millions of fuckwits who have no idea about any part of their job or the subject matter come along and bitch at them, tell them they should do it differently and to generally go fuck themselves.

Honestly, imagine the second dumbest idiot you know who has no idea what the fuck your job is about, let him abuse you, tell you how to do your job and then just smile and say you're doing your best.
Relevant XKCD: http://xkcd.com/793/

You used to live in Romania?

That is an interesting distinction I was not acutely aware of. +1 Informative

Please do.
Europe can do without people who fail at reasoning.

No, most of them do not. Social mobility is provably higher in most EU member states with high taxes. It's pretty simple: wealth/income redistribution provides a lot of people in the lower part of society with freedom. Many (less affluent) Americans have little choice but to take on any job they can get and then work as many hours as they can get, crawling for their superiors for fear of getting fired. That's not freedom.

Wait a minute. You actually believe that Europeans can't choose at which company they get a job? Really?
Also, wrong: http://www.nationmaster.com/co...
Or perhaps founding a company is easier in the US, just less of an option to most people.

Bullshit. Private investments are hardly regulated and not taxed at all.
But don't let reality spoil your preconceived notions. Just keep waving that banner, man.

The point was that some people would choose non-monetary benefits over monetary benefits. As they say: money can't buy you love or friendship.

False. Unless you wish to invoke a No True Scotsman-fallacy.
1. 'Europe' does not have a centralized policy for funding of 'most of the interesting jobs'. The member states of the EU differ wildly in the extent to which they 'finance' certain jobs.
2. In general: art and research are subsidized, not 'financed'. There is nothing stopping anyone from attracting private investments for their activities. In fact, there are European anti-state aid laws to prevent anti-competitive subsidization by the governements of the member states: http://ec.europa.eu/competitio...
Many universities in Europe cooperate tightly with institutes that are oriented towards commercial(ly viable) research and the associated private investments.

News flash: unless it's your company, you're not deciding what you get to do. You bloody well have to do what was in the bloody job description when you decided to take the job. If you believe that a private institution gives more of a crap about 'what you think is right' than a public one, you're deeply misguided.