Unequal application of the law is always a challenge to our freedoms, including free speech. When two men are fighting, you are commiting far less of a crime by pinning both down than by pinning just one down while the other pommels him. If libel laws were "loosened" to apply only to liberals and not to conservatives, that would not be a gain in freedom as you propose: that would become far more of an affront to free spech than the fully implemented law ever was. Allowing trademarks to some and not others is the same sort of distortion.

Trademarks are a (very limited) restriction on free speech, but they also increase our freedom to express ourselves through the cultivation of a particular symbol. A government which decides it will make political assessments on whether to grant that freedom is not upholding the principles of free speech. Whether the term Redskins is actually offensive is a matter of ongoing social debate, and the government should not be deciding the answer.

Or set the tone yourself by posting words of encouragement. As someone who has never quite mastered the hug or unsolicited complement or prying into what's bothering people, I find the broadcast medium of facebook a means of providing what I can. I mostly post humor (which has helped me through dark times), mix in occasional inspiration quotes from people like Emerson, Longfellow, Thoreau, Kierkegaard, some art I find beautiful, and try to be open about my struggles and the good places they have lead.

Over the years many have taken time to thank me for encouraging them (sometimes they are persons who have never interacted with me on facebook but eventually tell me in person), occasionally I receive a private message from someone who needs a friend, an ear, or advice, and other times they post something about their struggles and I am able to approach them about it. There is a lot to be said if you have the social skills to offer these things in person. But most of us are accustomed to the "Hi, how are you?" "Oh, I'm fine" routine where it is impolite to turn someone's general courtesy into a demand for their time and sympathy. The rules are different on social media, where all information is broadcast and can be ignored as easily as it is read. Why not let us introverts do something good with that?

I don't know if I can claim credit in anyway, but over the years the character of what is posted among my peers on facebook has definitely become more positive. Perhaps people have simply realized they don't enjoy the drama and the complaining. Or maybe a few of us have had an impact. But this study seems to show that having a positive impact is something you can set out to do. Pursuing that may be worth considering.

It actually stems from the Latin word tenere meaning to hold, as in tenant, tenacity, etc. It's not etymologically related to the number ten.

Children are assumed to lack the capacity to make intelligent decisions for their well-being. They receive both additional protections, and are denied most of the rights which are granted to adults. Regulating toys may hold up in that philosophy, in as much as they are intended for children. However, adults are still allowed to purchase products which contain lead, such as solder, because the assumption is they can adequately assess the risks, and have the right to decide accordingly.

Certainly, we can treat average citizens as too ignorant to tend for their own welfare, and provide state protection, but just as with children, these adults are being denied certain rights and freedoms in exchange. There are many proxies for this question, among them, whether people should be allowed to purchase firearms or drugs, even though they are capable of doing damage, depending on the decisions of the user.

The question is how necessary are the regulations, and, especially, how applicable the regulations which were written specifically for taxis in a different era are nowadays.

This is one of the major problems with government solutions--they have an awful lot of momentum. It's hard to make changes when changes are warranted.

Do I really care how well-maintained the transport car is? Why does it need to exceed rules established for cars in general? Are poorly maintained vehicles as much of an issue with modern automobiles as it was when the law was passed? Does the ability of users in Uber and Lyft to rate drivers completely solve the problem since they can vote down drivers with unpleasant or unreliable rides? Is it now so easy to flag down a new driver that the car breaking down is not a particular issue?

How important is a multimillion dollar insurance package? Is this actually improving the situation for people who would otherwise be walking or taking their own vehicles or a friend's vehicle without such a high insurance coverage? Would it possibly make more sense to transition to a system in which passengers carry insurance instead of drivers?

The situation is simply not the same as it was when these laws were passed. Back then, these laws provided possibly needed solutions. Now, if the problems they were intended to solve even exist, there may be better solutions. The question is whether the state is going to step in and forbid citizens from pursuing these solutions, on the premise the state is once-and-always-correct, or if we are going to let citizens experiment and make their own decisions.

Actually, I had plenty to add, but since the ability to engage in civil discourse eludes you, and you would rather smugly demonstrate that you're more of a subject matter expert than everyone else, I have desire to engage in any discussion with you. Seriously, do you really talk to people like this, or does Slashdot just have this effect on you?

I would have been happy to discuss this with you, but you've chosen to eschew polite conversation. Good luck with that smugness, my friend.

You mean, like CAN bus? Most already have.

Santa Fe has had a living wage since 2003, presently at $10.66. San Francisco implemented a living wage shortly thereafter, presently at $10.74. I'm sure there are others at this point.

Anakin Skywalker spent a lot of time with the dark side and look how much body mass he was able to lose.

If you don't care about things like memories, about six billion bits: http://www.tmsoft.com/article-...

By all means, less likely views should be marginalized, but they should be marginalized as a side effect of their having only a marginal chance of being correct, not because you've built up some vicious characterization of their adherents. It's interesting that in the reasons you list for your opposition -- politics, religion, mental illness (?) -- you forgot to include anything about their explanations of the observed phenomena being less satisfactory.

My first problem with this attitude is, who decides when the best response is simply treating the adherents as unworthy neanderthals and making sure that no legitimate scientific criticisms get swept in? Will that be you? I don't trust that this is always going to work out. I do, however, always trust in a dispassioned comparison of evidence, or at least, there's nothing I trust more.

My second problem is that it much more difficult to reason with people when you start your arguments by giving them a bloody nose. At that point they're just in it to retaliate for the bloody nose, assuming they don't stop reading entirely. IMHO you are making it ten times more difficult to actually stamp out these bad thinkings just so you can have the satisfication of wielding a few insults. What does referring to anyone snidely actual accomplish in the scientific discourse?

IMHO the article written is not of publishable quality. (The journal it *did* get published in has a very low impact factor of 1.3.) It's badly written, poorly supported, and subject to substantial methodological errors.

Each subject comparison is based entirely on the subjective evaluation of a random med student. It doesn't seem like they even provided them with standard protocols. They just assumed that any discrepancies represented factual errors in the wikipedia article. They didn't make comparison to other sources or even internal to the literature.

It would be lovely if they would actually include some of the assertions they evaluated. But frankly I would put infinitely more faith in the Wikipedia articles cited than this particular report. Certainly they represent better and more substantial writing.

I picked up one of those cheap toy projectors. They great thing about them is that they use standard halogen bulbs. So I went to Home Depot and got the brightest version of the bulb I could find which was double the original lumens.

I found that the limiting factor was the heat. After a few minutes a black circle started to appear on the image. It was the bulb melting the LCD panel. I had to put a little desk fan next to it to keep the air moving sufficiently to keep it cool.

These little 75 lumen projectors with a low resolution are likely running into the same problem. Obviously much brighter LEDs exist but there's not enough space to properly cool them.

The resolution is good enough for a smart board which only can handle 480 vertical lines anyway. I opted to get a the $320 proper projector with a 1024x768 resolution. Smartboards are easily replaced with a much simpler HD document camera.

"Now the downside to this is more time on hold."
Do we really all want to converge on resources for the hearing-disabled and make their wait time even longer?

I would call sparsely populated a significant security advantage. Post proper signage and you don't have to supply much doubt than any unauthorized person in the vicinity is up to no good. None of the fake delivery guy nonsense that works in the movies. You stand a good chance of intercepting the hostiles before they even are close enough to see the facility.

As any bank robber can tell you, the most important part of the operation is the getaway. Walking in and taking what you want at gunpoint is comparatively easy. The next step is to get out of there and lose the authorities by getting to where you can hide and blend in. When the getaway involves hundreds of miles of empty single access road? You're screwed. No criminal or terrorist force is going to come close to matching what the government can dish out for firepower. Their only hope is to get away before the government can mobilize, which, in this case, they have plenty of time to do.

Also, I believe these contaminants are buried deep underground. That's foolproof security. A lock can be picked to bypass having to use the official key. When the security mechanism is a million tonnes of rock there is no shortcut, the terrorists are stuck using the exact same equipment and accessways as everyone else to extract the waste.

The final step is to get the radioactive waste to the target, which is a population area. Terrorists might not care what population area it is, which means by storing it near *any* population area you have saved them the trouble of doing any work to get it to its target. Having access to it for just a few minutes could be enough to do all the damage they want to do. Not so with a remote site.