The Minnesota treatment of sexual offenders is starting to get a lot of questioning by the courts, so that's some progress, at least here.

I have known an MBA who could program pretty well. (He's also about the most left-wing person I know, FWIW.)

Usually, Firefox remembers the URLs that were open. Thing is, it only appears to remember for the last closed window. If I'm going to reboot, I close Firefox myself, making sure to close the window with all the tabs last.

This may be a Firefox issue rather than a Microsoft one.

There is no accountability. With very few exceptions, software companies disclaim all responsibility or accountability.

Dowsing and astrology are actually relatively harmless. Homeopathy has the potential to kill people by making them not go to a real doctor in time. I'm very much against relying on alternative medicine for anything important.

Or the NSA. Not that there's really much of a difference.

How many experts in any field do you know who would stand for being called fraudulent just because they got something wrong? People screw up sometimes, despite the best of intentions.

You have to distinguish between what people more-or-less believe and how much they believe it. Most people in the US were raised more or less Christian, and tend to see religious things in Christian terms. If they turn atheist, they specifically don't believe in Christianity. If they start wanting religion, it's Christianity. I find myself doing that sometimes, and I've been, both theoretically and practically, a non-Christian for decades. Therefore, if they "get religion", it's usually not Buddhism or Shinto. (When I was young, there was a trend to adopt Eastern religions, typically Buddhism. It would be interesting to know how many people who were raised Christian and turned some form of Buddhist are of which religion nowadays.)

Did Stephen Hawkings say the Universe created itself? It would seem very odd that a physicist would say something about the creation of the Universe.

Therefore, this "all humans will die" has not been statistically verified at the 5% level. (Also, check those 100 billion. For most of them, we don't have any actual record or evidence of death.

Common sense isn't always right. I don't see a good mechanism, but I'm not going to assume dowsing won't work without a decent study. Currently, I figure it's an interesting story with some not-particularly-convincing evidence, but I have no actual need to either believe it works or believe it doesn't.

If dowsing did work, why do you think scientists would necessarily investigate? There's lots of stories that tend to be overlooked by science (typically for good reasons). Now, it doesn't cost much to get some equipment to check out haunted houses, so amateurs can do it. It would be very expensive to test properly, as somebody would have to get enough land and drill both dowsed spots and control spots.

The traditional method is to use a forked stick, so it isn't a magnetic field. If it works (and I've seen comments for and against), it works by making it easy for some sort of subconscious feeling trigger something observable. This would mean that there are some perceptions that get processed unconsciously to make the whatever move or jump. At this point, I'm leaving it to somebody else to figure out what perceptions those could be.

Somebody's got to keep the electricity running. There's actually quite a lot of stuff that has to be staffed 24/7/52.14.

Depends on the company and the job. A lunch break is mandatory under certain circumstances (which should not be construed as meaning everybody gets one, of course), but it doesn't legally have to be paid.

My pay does not depend on my exact hours, so if I come in at 9, take an hour lunch, and leave at 5, the worst that will happen is that the boss will tell me to work more. (Of course, I don't get overtime when crunch time hits and I need to get something done before going home, but that's rare.)

I don't see it as the Russian National Socialist propaganda. I see it as the neo-Tsarist propaganda.