If you ever believed that any country was the "good guys" on some sort of objectivist good/evil framework and didn't realize that EVERY country is solely focused on its own interests and security, then you're staggeringly naive in the first place.

And you're absolutely correct.
I went back to the book I read that in, and I misunderstood Nixon's role.
However, it doesn't materially change my point that Nixon witnessed the courts siding strongly in favor of the confidentiality of the president and his files, which later turned out to be not quite so when HE wanted to be.

I'm sorry, I think it's pretty well assumed that anything written online is implicitly prefaced with "I believe that..." or "I think that..." - even if they are an ostensible expert (which I'm not, let's be clear, since apparently I NEED TO BE!).

If you're really going to post in opposition to every time someone asserts a fact without explicitly stating these caveats, you better have a fuckton of spare time. The internet's a big place.

Oh, and regarding synaptic pruning, yes, it IS believed to be a thing. Quite mainstream, too. Might want to look that up before your meds fade next time.

How the fuck can you be an "alumnus" of something THAT ISN'T EVEN RELEASED YET?

Seriously, the dizzying anticipatory (or desperately self-justifying, depending on how you view people pouring $70+ million into the kickstarter) hype has now apparently even crossed the bounds of 'pedestrian' chronology.

Any day now I'm expecting the nostalgic articles about how "great" Star Citizen was, along with triumphal marketing videos about how it redefined an entire genre and 'set the standard' for all the games that followed.

It would be wonderful if they'd review apps for needless privacy intrusion. Why does a radio player app need to access my camera? Why does a weather app need to access my contacts? I can't count the number of apps that I uninstalled because the new update wants nonsensical accesses....

Anyway, I know that's not going to happen.

Do we know yet exactly what we are getting with win 10?

I mean, I don't think I'm going to trade in my win-whatever if it means I get a shiny new os....that I have to pay monthly (or whatever) or they remotely kill it.

I understand the point you're making, and while I agree basically, I think the relationship is a little more subtle.

The human brain is fundamentally a language machine. While this certainly ossifies with age as the system prunes neural circuits that it believes it no longer needs, I think the ability to learn multiple languages is in fact hard wired into h. sapiens from birth.

It's this plasticity that makes languages easily learnt, but the APPLICATION of learning - the actual deformation/reformation of conceptual paradigms foundational to a language family - is what grants a person the alternate perspectives that are gained by learning other methods of communication.*

*not, by any means should this be limited to literal languages; math, music, and a number of creative media likewise (I believe) are mind-opening communication alternatives

Plus, paradox has a stellar record of ongoing support for their titles for years, kind of the opposite of ea there, too.

During the McCarthy hearings, this was a primary bone of contention between McCarthy and Eisenhower (who, despite both being Republicans, personally despised one another). Ike insisted that the president's records, and those of the executive branch, could NOT be subpoena'd for McCarthy's hearings.
When the courts tended toward finding that the PRESIDENT's correspondence and files were sacrosanct by the separation of powers rules*, this didn't apply to the State Dept records, so Ike had the State Dept file cabinets physically moved to the Oval Office.
McCarthy, hinting that the President was doing this because he might have something embarrassing in the files, had finally crossed the line by maligning a figure of such public reverence that the public couldn't tolerate it. Logically, he was perfectly correct; it seems unreasonable that Ike would have gone to such lengths to simply defend a presidential prerogative on principle alone, but then again his personal enmity for McCarthy likely played a role as well.

*final curious appendix to this story: one of the Junior Congressmen working for McCarthy, who saw how the courts went to the mat to defend the IRONCLAD sanctity of Ike's files from Congressional snooping would later find that such precedents were little defense in protecting his own files, Mr Richard Nixon.

Phil Plait is a very, very smart man. In fact I agree with misty of his positions on the space program, etc.

However, I don't recall him issuing a 1000 word screed about how "politics is hurting NASA" when Bolden announced that NASA's foremost mission was Muslim outreach? And unfortunately that's where Mr Plait apparently decides to trade his science credibility (which is very high) to make overly political points. He's certainly entitled to do so, but when people maunder about how science skepticism is born, there's your example.

Now that a Republican is in charge, it's "politics" ruining Nasa? Really?

NASA chief Charles Bolden:
"When I became the NASA administrator, (President Obama) charged me with three things: One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."

I'm going to go on record as saying that Nasa has been pretty much fucked by politics since, well, forever.

If you object to the multiplier, simply drive the speed limit?

I'm comfortably-incomed (in about the 85-90% percentile of US incomes, about 75% for overall wealth) and I'd be *perfectly* fine with this.

Since the goal of this is solely punitive, and not meant to be a wealth-generator, I'd say that we take the money into a pool for the local community, and then either give it entirely back to the citizens on a straight "everyone gets 1 share" basis, or, in each election allow the population to vote about what % goes back to taxpayers, and what % goes to local charities in each 2 year cycle.

On the contrary, for me it's *very much* about the humanity.

However, I treat people as intelligent beings worthy of respect and able to make choices for themselves.

First, let's tack down those shifting goalposts and remember that we're talking about executing "people" who have:
- been convicted in a court of law, AND
- had that conviction reviewed (appeal) for procedural, bias, etc errors and still found guilty.

There's just two possibilities at this point.
1) the person actually did it.
2) the person didn't do it and has been wrongly convicted.

In the former case, my goal is in no way punitive. I frankly don't believe that for the most hearty sociopaths, psychopaths, etc that commit the crimes that warrant capital punishment, that 'punitive' measures even reach them (much less any sort of rehabilitation). I don't frankly care. My point is utilitarian: these "people" (as you call them) have willfully made a choice to set aside their humanity and act in as inhumane a way as we can conceive, for some sort of benefit. As rational actors*, they did this but they have to live with the consequences of that choice. The rational thing for society to do in return is to remove this dangerous thing, and prevent it from hurting anyone else.

In the latter case - and I note that in this long, long thread of personal attacks, there has not been provided a single, concrete, contrary example to my original assertion: the cops don't just drive up and grab John Q Public off the street, and charge him with a capital offense. The individuals "innocently" executed are, by ANY standard, the absolute dregs of society, causing harm, misery, and untold pain to the people around them in many cases for DECADES. For every crime that they have on their arm's length rap sheet, there are probably at least a dozen others for which they were never caught. So yes, I'm saying again, as rational* actors they've made that choice, and while they may have been innocent of that particular charge, I'm willing to accept that they were worthless scum that we can simply be better off rid of.

*rational: some people will assert that these individuals are crazy, and thus not responsible for their actions. OK, but that seems to beg the question. If you have an unstable explosive that could harm people around at any moment, do you save it, give it therapy, maybe some counseling in case hopefully it can be useful? No, you dispose of it because it's simply freaking dangerous to everyone, and there's no desperate shortage of explosive that we can't find some later if we need it. There are 7 billion people on this earth. If you have 7 billion of something, you can lose a few and not even notice.

Look, I'm all for removing subsidies from ALL energy industries, and letting the fair market have her way with them - not just the renewables, but absolutely the petro-firms.*
*this includes not just direct subsidies, but indirect: tax breaks, increment financing, free use of public lands and waters for exploration, etc, etc.

But I think you (and the "divestor" movement) have it backwards. The public funding that comes from stocks raises capital, sure, but that's hardly their primary sources of revenue. I'd point to the fact that our modern economy runs on petroleum as the first point. Until that changes, they're not going to lack for profits, ever.
Wave your hippy cred all over the place, and get governments to 'divest' as a sign of your rage, but the fact is that where there's a demand, there's a market. Where there's a market, there's profit. Pablo Escobar wouldn't care if anyone bought his stock. I'd submit that neither would Exxon.
Let's also recall that Standard Oil wasn't built on public shares/trading, it was built on good old-fashioned cut-throat industrialism.

How do you infer that I suggest due process is a "bad idea"?
I'm absolutely not against trials.
I explicitly state that even after a guilty verdict, if there is a flaw in process, method, law, or circumstance, they get an appeal.
I do not believe in an infinite chain of appeals based on the serial presentation of trivial disputes delayed as much as possible as a procedural method of commuting a death sentence to life imprisonment. In fact, I'd argue that is in itself inhumane, the constant dangling of appeals to hope, rather than the swift exaction of the legally-determined sentence.

In fact, it's opponents of capital punishment that want to throw the baby out with the bathwater: by asserting that since there are *some* flaws in the system, it should never employ the ultimate punishment.
If anyone's denying the value of due process, it's them.