Actually, APK is totally right on this count. Adblock Plus on Firefox mobile is a dog on older, or lower end, phones. A hostfile based adblocker makes for a much better experience in this context. Of course, your phone has to be rooted, which isn't the case with Firefox + adblock.

Actually, in addition to a couple of real keys, a little flash drive and a Yubikey NEO (for my GPG keys), I have a tiny little knife on my keyring.

TSA has bugged me about extra camera batteries, a little bit of water left in a bottle, hotel shampoo that wasn't in its proper ziplock bag, even nail clippers... but not once about the knife on my keyring.

Yes, instead you create an inflexible currency system based on assigning arbitrary value to a physical commodity.

Outside of its industrial uses, gold has no more intrinsic value than a lump of dog shit. I mean, why not peg your currency to Renaissance paintings?

Since value is relative, then being the best currency means being the best currency, even with the shortcomings.

So far as I understand it the US has carried debt uninterrupted since the Civil War (maybe even before). Even in times of war and national emergency (including a few self-inflicted ones like the Tea Party trying to go kamikaze), the US Government has demonstrated its will to honor its debts and back the US dollar. It may be overvalued by some standards, but in general, I think the US dollar remains, and likely will remain for decades to come, the most important currency in the world. It really has no competitor.

No shit. The one thing bit coin seems very good at is enabling black market exchanges and corruption. We all know how Silk Road was such a warrior against criminal and corrupt activities!

Apparently a helluva lot of Argentinians DO NOT agree with you, and just as importantly, or perhaps moreso, international markets do not agree with you.

Your economy and government are being horribly managed, and you're suffering for it. Quit blaming the rest of the world for your domestic problems.

Argentina, like most Latin American countries, would do well to toss the Presidential system. The US, by and large, has lucked out, in no small part to what Bagehot referred to as Americans' "genius for politics". But in other societies, where the legislative and judicial branches have remained stunted as compared to the US Congress, SCOTUS and the Federal Courts, all the Presidential system does is deliver near-dictatorial powers into the hands of the President. The checks and balances may exist on paper in countries like Argentina, but the reality is that legislative assemblies and courts become little more than rubber stamps.

A parliamentary system like the Westminster system would, I think, work far better. The titular head of state of a parliamentary state does hold some potent reserve powers, but is restricted from using them in all but the most extreme circumstances. The "effective" government, that is the governing Executive, only survives so long as the legislative assembly retains confidence in it, and ministers are normally chosen from among members of the legislature, and thus, at least in a nominal way, remain equals to every other person sitting in the legislature. In a parliamentary system, the titular head of state represents a sort of negative power; in that he or she deprives the effective executive of absolute control of reserve powers and prerogatives.

But is it really overvalued? Debt is only part of the equation. When the statement "the dollar is backed by the US Government", that means the whole thing; Executive (including the Federal Reserve, military, and so forth), the courts, and of course Congress, not to mention the collective will of the citizens of the United States. When you look at the greenback in that light, it's hard to imagine a currency in modern times as well backed.

Indeed. I fail to see what the difference between $1 electronically stored in a bank account or being transferred between two banks is measurably any better than a one dollar bill.

A unit of currency, whether digital or physical, is issued by a country's central bank and backed by the country's government. If Argentina burned all its physical currency tomorrow, everything would still be denominated in Argentinian pesos, whose value, by and large, would still be determined by the same mechanisms. I suppose certain aspects of physical currency, like counterfeiting and hoarding, might be eliminated, but it certainly wouldn't prevent monetary crises.

This article seems to have a rather odd view of what modern currencies are.

There's a wide plain between Einstein (who was a theoretical scientist anyway and didn't observe, record, and verify data) and a technician whose only role is to observe, record, and verify data. The GP was referring to PhDs in science, whose role involves making models to explain the data that they collect, not just collecting data and applying it to models that somebody else made.

While anybody can observe, record, and verify data (which isn't even remotely true and many people trained in science are terrible at this, let alone determining what data needs to be collected), very few people have the talent, training, and desire to make models that explain the collected data.

Considering that the vast majority of people have been vaccinated and vaccines aren't 100% effective, the answer to your question wouldn't be the huge blow to vaccination policy that you're thinking it would be.

Here are some more questions that may provide some context:

How many people who didn't get sick with measles were vaccinated?

How many people are there who got sick with measles and were vaccinated, compared to the total number of people who were vaccinated? Now, how many people are there who got sick with measles and weren't vaccinated, compared to the total number of people who weren't vaccinated?

What is the frequency of measles outbreaks since kids started getting MMR and the the frequency of measles outbreaks since the rise of the antivax movement.

Sure, just like all of those other taxes that you don't get to opt out of because you don't use the services they pay for.

Seeing two researchers explaining an experiment, and the first thing you care to say about it is some variation of "nice tits" suggests a misogynist.

And when your special antivaxxer school suffers a measles or whooping cough outbreak, you can shout "YAY FOR FREEDOM!!!"

I think that our government is planning to become increasingly unpopular with its citizens and overreactions like these will prove important to the continued well-being of the self proclaimed important people.