Actually, we would have had a much less expensive plan, but we couldn't get it by the conservatives. It's called single-payer, and I've used it in Canada. It has also been available to me in a dozen other countries that I've worked in, but fortunately I never needed it there. It works pretty well. So well indeed that most civilized countries have it.

I'm sorry that you didn't understand my presentation. Or that you understood it and can't accept it. I've thought about it for a very long time and I'm pretty sure of it.

The whole personalized ads gimmick is a worthless exercise for exactly the reasons you mention. From a marketing view, knowing that someone is interested in something is irrelevant compared to knowing when someone is interested in something. That is why it's much better to target contents rather than viewers, when someone is browsing a content then they're actually interested in related things at that point in time.

Facebook is the creepy salesguy sitting down at your table and trying to sell you something when your chatting with friends in a pub. Compared that with the guy coming up to you're browsing hi-fi stuff in a mall and suggesting you look at this amplifier, etc. Temporal targeting; without it you're just wasting time and money.

I think you have to look at where the funding comes from for Republican and conservative causes. Don't just look at candidate funding, even election advertising has a lot of funding that isn't straight to the candidate.

Although there might be no shortage of self-employed Republicans, they don't really call the shots for the party. It's the very deep pockets who do.

And why all computer users need free software in all of their computers. I don't want someone I don't trust vetting the software that has the ability to ruin my project or kill me. Those who get to audit code may be expert in someone else's opinion, but I would rather have software freedom.

It's not enough, true, but we need to get Americans trained in the practice of being more politically active and to seriously consider the consequences of their consumerism. Today, encouraging people to think of encryption as required for increased secure communications is good. We can't fix anything "once and for all" because any change to anything can be reverted (hence Andrew Jackson's warning "...eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing" applies here too). Software proprietors and others who want to rob computer users of their freedom spend billions training people to think ephemerally (in fact, /.'s chosen "firehose" structure of fast and frequent updates usually from corporate repeaters exists to further that end). We need ordinary people to become more aware of the consequences of ignorance, make better choices, and train future generations that the acceptable social norm is lifelong political involvement. I think failing to meet this need is one of Snowden's fears ("The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change..."), and why Stallman says things like "I don't want any fans I want Freedom Fighters, who could actually help in his revolution". I have no doubt that whomever follows that murderous war criminal Obama in the US White House will follow the same behavior he both chose to follow from George W. Bush and ramp up. I'm not certain what will stop the horrors of "Terror Tuesday" killings, indiscriminate NSA spying, and more, but I won't object when groups want to raise awareness and help normalize objecting to the loss of our civil liberties.

have a great deal of respect for you

Sorry, I should have made it more obvious that I was writing tongue in cheek about the monarchy. Not about SpaceX though. I'm pretty impressed.

It doesn't work to do this with a democratic government. We need a monarchy :-(

It seems to me that SpaceX is on the path to a solution that might be affordable by a single administration, though.

I don't quite get how what he says would go against what is known about depression? Apart from a short time of excessive popularity for the serotonin theory of depression, most of the time multiple neuro transmittors and brain regions have been implicated, with frustratingly difficult to trace causes and effects. Failures in the reward system could easily feed back into lower motivation leading into failures leading into depression, just as the other way around would lead to similar effects.

On the topic of smoking, tobacco contains harmala alkaloids which have reversible MAOI effects. They would be a strong contender for the anti-depressant effect. And yes, did the quit-smoking, spiral into depression and burnout thing.

The striatum is implicated in ADHD and several studies have indicated reduced grey matter volume in that region for ADHD sufferers. Failure in the dopamine pathways will generally cause engagement in dopamine releasing activities, as a method of self medication.

So it's not like finding a correlation between dopamine seeking and striatum deficiencies is unexpected. And the most likely direction of causation is that the deficient reward region causes the increased porn watching.

Frankly I find the gleeful reporting on the issue to be somewhat offensive. Insinuating that what is probably an inherent handicap is something the handicapped did to themselves by being 'immoral' is quite disgusting.

Maths are just an abstract concept so a finite universe has no bearing on the existence of infinite number series. Apart from the ability to actually write them down on paper in their full glory.

However, there's nothing preventing the extraction of specific subsets and playing that subset in a music player.

Except that the vast majority of people do not think what you think they do. They do not think having sex with passed out people is ok. They do not consider dress code consent. They do not think she's playing 'hard to get'. Most people would and do call those examples rape.

You're extrapolating the justifications of a minor fraction of the population, the rapists, and trying to somehow apply that as a 'culture' to the rest.

In fact, the only time I can even recall seeing someone justify having sex with a seriously drunk and reluctant woman it was another woman

Yes. If she can reasonably assume that your judgement is significantly impaired due to alcohol consumption, in a lot of places you can claim rape. That's one of the reasons why 'rape' statistics are rapidly equalizing between the sexes. The shift in classifications and the fact that women apparently engage in sex with partners under as dubious circumstances as some men do, but with even less restraint or legal risk means they are quickly catching up.

I expect actual charges filed will start rising quickly as well, as more men realize it actually goes both ways and taking advantage of someone just because they're inebriated isn't ok whatever sex the partner is.

Yeah, I'm quite sure the vast majority of men I know are nothing like the deluded fantasies this guy spews out of his mouth.

I am, however, beginning to suspect that this guy and others like him are projecting some quite nasty things they're getting from themselves on to others. If he actually believes that 'we need to get that', then (unlike most men) he certainly does need to get that. And help. Because unlike most men, he actually is a fucking creep.