I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.

82 million xBox 360 owners can't be wrong right?

And how many million people bought Kylie Minogue and Madonna records? They can't be wrong, right?

:-)

You make it sound like starving people are getting fat too.

If they are becoming obese, the particular individual has a surplus of caloric intake, if only for this year or month. This is not to say that they have proper nutrition. So I am not at all clear that the fact that there is obesity in the third world is confounding evidence.

Chairman, CEO, CFO, CIO, Executive VP of Sales and Marketing and Executive VP of something to do with engaging the outsourcing suppliers with the starving peasants working 80+ hours a week for a pittance in undeveloped countries.

Furthermore, your religion doesn't own the word marriage.

Anything that is not a Sacramental Marriage is not a marriage.

Actually, they did. Verizon has just yet to deliver. Apparently they don't expect to deliver until the end of the year in any case.

The only way the Russian's can "win" this propaganda war is if they can somehow convince those Europeans who make decisions about sanctions that they had nothing to do with the downing of the passenger jet. People will want to know where that Buk missile launcher came from, who gave the order to shoot, and where that missile launcher is now. If there is any evidence that the Russians had any direct involvement with this, no amount of propaganda will help them outside of the regions where they have complete control of the media.

For most of the existence of mankind and indeed all of mankind's progenitors, having too much food was a rare problem and being hungry all of the time was a fact of life. We are not necessarily well-evolved to handle it. So, no surprise that we eat to repletion and are still hungry. You don't really have any reason to look at it as an illness caused by anything other than too much food.

Considering the lousy end products I have to deal with on a daily basis, paying programmers more money won't improve the skillset. You want to be paid more money? Produce a better product.

When the PHBs conspire to make that (producing a better product) impossible, it doesn't matter what engineers you employ or how much you pay them.

The relentless push to cut costs, do "more with less," let the staff numbers dwindle through natural wastage and lack of vision, invent fantasy project schedules (requiring weekend, evening and holiday work) and no resources (what do you mean you need physical hardware to develop and test on? I just sold the test kit to a customer. It was revenue just begging to be had...) catches up with every company eventually.

My current employer is now in this state, and almost everyone (who knows anything) has left and I'm about to as well, however as far as the PHBs and VPs are concerned, everything's fine and dandy. Targets are at 100%, the share price has doubled and we're making a consistent profit.

The fact that tumbleweeds are blowing through Engineering hasn't quite registered...

It's the natural cycle these days. They call it "capitalism" but it's not the capitalism I understand.

So really, merely asking them to leave

"Quit before we fire you, and we'll give you a severance package, otherwise, you get nothing" -- hardly a choice there...

The church has done much worse in the past.

So, because a human institution (though divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit, it's still a human institution) did bad things in it's History -- everything should be thrown out.

You're advocating throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Which is fine, but considering the Catholic Church is what created the first Schools and Hospitals -- well, you better close those right now (or not use either) because someone may have burned a witch 500 years ago.

People are doing the opposite of calling vices virtues.

Well this is just complete BS. Homosexual contact (not the attraction, but the sexual contact) is sinful. It's a vice. The virtue would be abstinence -- in other words, celibacy. Which is the same virtue for all unmarried people.

But that's not what the current culture says -- it says, well, "be who you are" and promoted the idea that a deviant behavior is mainstream and one that should be celebrated. I'm not advocating judging gays, I would not support any law that restricts what two consenting adults do in their bedroom -- but stating that the relationship is a marriage is folly, and that it's a virtue to be aspired to (gay marriage) is completely backwards.

Society has fallen far, and very fast, from the way God intended it to be.

And just like Sodom and Gomorrah, the Roman Empire, and Babylon before it, God's judgment WILL be poured out.

The barbarians are at the gates, you just don't realize it.

Martin,

The last time I had a professional video produced, I paid $5000 for a one-minute commercial, and those were rock-bottom prices from hungry people who wanted it for their own portfolio. I doubt I could get that today. $8000 for the entire conference is really volunteer work on Gary's part.

Someone's got to pay for it. One alternative would be to get a corporate sponsor and give them a keynote, which is what so many conferences do, but that would be abandoning our editorial independence. Having Gary fund his own operation through Kickstarter without burdening the conference is what we're doing. We're really lucky we could get that.

Users agree: adding a progress bar makes a thing faster.

Simply moving them from mythology to a superhero universe is already a fundamental change. Marvel has made many, many, many other changes to Thor. In fact, when he was first introduced, it was as a normal human finding Thor's hammer in a cave and turning into Thor. There already have been "what if?" stories exploring the scenario where his wife/girlfriend found the hammer instead. Storm has wielded Mjolnier on several occasions and turned into Thor. An alien has turned into Thor.

Fundamental differences compared to the mythological Thor are central to Marvel's Thor.

And so is this. This is also an interesting new twist to the character. It's not as if they're turning Thor into Spiderman or something. It's just that now, a woman is Thor.

Did it take anything away? To a lot of people, it most certainly did add something. There was nothing stupid about making him black.

I feel like we're getting to the heart of the matter here. You associate black with "otherness". Let me guess: you are white? And male? Do you associate female also with "otherness"?

Do you realize that there are people like you who are black and/or female? That to them, there's nothing "other" about black or female? And if culture continues insisting that black and female are "other", then they will be forced to see themselves as "other", or all of culture will become "other". Wouldn't it be better to accept blacks and women as people just like yourself?

Well, apparently it exposes these kind of preconceptions. That's something.

To you maybe, but to many others, it's a wonderful change. And even you may eventually see something interesting coming from this. I hope you will.

Errr, yeah, but they could have just used Intel chips like everyone else. Ultimately it would have given better performance, saved themselves a lot of pain in switch over, and put themselves ahead of the curve selling to people who wanted to dual boot. So did IBM save them or cripple them?

We do charge entry to the convention. We get really nice facilities for the people who actually travel there and for the speakers. Last year's location was subperb. But I don't see why they should actually subsidize the folks who do not attend.