I was a little confused when I saw that wording in the story, and now that I'm hearing this wording is the important part, I'm getting a little concerned. Are we not all citizens? Have we been divided into citizens and ruling class, now?

We've always been divided into serfs and lords. Human spirit simply doesn't have the strength to resist using power to get more. The lords, blinded by the seeming invincibility of their position and the system which grants it then end up draining that very system to the point of collapse and revolution, and the cycle repeats.

Whether it can be broken is anyone's guess. Democracy has slowed and complicated the gravitational collapse of current system somewhat, but it couldn't alter the end result, since all manifestations of power in our societies are not under democratic control, and are thus free to join biggest existing masses of power and make them even bigger.

I'm all for popularizing science among all citizens, but I'd rather we word that as "science for the masses" or something.

That very desire should already answer your question. As our masters keep telling us: if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.

You say that now, but when someone starts making kits to build trebuchets into the back of pick-up trucks...

(The more I think about this idea, the more ridiculously awesome it sounds.)

inorite? When I think back on it, I'm utterly amazed to have survived childhood.

Incoming legislation in 3... 2... 1...

Pot, meet kettle.

The difference here, of course, is that neither side refrains from indulging in fatty pork products, but only one of them is claiming government spending is bad while doing so.

That the thing about dark matter... it has a perfectly reasonable explanation (WIMPs). It's not that weird of a "thing".

I dunno. Usually when a theory requires more and more unseen entities over time it's a sign that it's time to replace the theory. We know General Relativity is incomplete, both because it doesn't take into account quantum effects and because it has internal contradictions - specifically, it assumes a continuous spacetime geometry but predicts non-continuous points (black hole singularities). Most likely Einstein simply missed some observer-specific assumption - for example, GR assumes mass-energy has an exact distribution rather than probabilistic one - and thus GR is not completely general.

A question I've had for a while... if space itself is being inflated (or any sort of mathematically equivalent scenario) - everything inflating in all directions at all scales - wouldn't there be some sort of weak radiation signal from electrons expanding into a higher energy state due to dark energy and then collapsing back down?

No, because a continuous force wouldn't drag electrons up and then let them drop back down. What it would do is alter orbital structure and energy levels. But how they'd be altered depends on how quantum mechanics and GR combine, which we don't currently know.

It appears this German guy knew that, and was hiding his problems from his employer and the regulatory agencies that license his operation of giant passenger aircraft.

So what happens when you remove doctor patient confidentiality? The other depressed people will not see them and will still fly, only without having received psychiatric help or medication. That makes the risk larger, not smaller.

Experts on suicide say that the psychology of those who combine suicide with mass murder may differ in significant ways from those who limit themselves to taking their own lives.

No shit, Sherlock.

"Esp. of a woman: sexually promiscuous or provocative, esp. in a manner regarded as vulgar or distasteful.". So you're injecting your subjective views into what looks mean and attaching a value judgement into that.

That description is what whoever picked the booth babe "uniform" probably went for. It's catering to a specific fantasy: "You're a pimp and these are your bitches, if only you buy our product." You know, the exact one a cynical - though not necessarily very smart - marketer would use to sell to a stereotypical nerd.

No it doesn't. It means more demand. Read up on Jevon's Paradox. As a resource (including labor) is used more efficiently, demand for it goes up, not down, because of greater opportunities. It would only go down if the Lump of Labor Fallacy wasn't a fallacy.

The problem is, people aren't coal. A coal seam can sit unused for a hundred million year with no ill effects. An unemployed laborer can't. He either gets a job fast or falls into poverty. Supply of labour cannot go down in response to market situation; the only thing that can go down is the price. And as price of labour falls, demand for products falls, because people who get paid less can't afford as much. As demand for products falls, more people get unemployed, and you have a nice little vicious circle going.

It's what's happening now. Cheap credit kept a fundamentally broken system going for a while, but now that well has ran dry and it's collapsing. Keeping it going forever would require citizen pay, or credit without expectation of repayment. But I doubt the rich and powerful will accept the economic independence this would bring to lower classes, but will continue fighting tooth and nail to retain their power all the way to another bloody revolution.

As a side note, economy is full of "fallacies" that only apply with certain preconditions, for example that the resource can go unused with no ill effects. Ignoring those preconditions makes them a fine way to explain away any need to change. The problem is, reality won't go away just because you ignore it, and reality is that lots of people are unemployed, those still employed are living under constant pressure and fear, national and personal debts are sky-high, and nobody seriously expects any of this to get better in the foreseeable future, at least outside official speeches.

Then explain why an American worker today can be more productive than his or her predecessors, yet paid a substantially smaller fraction of the proceeds from his or her labors?

Greater productivity per worker means less demand for workers. Less demand means lower price. Thus, more productive workforce means worse-paid workforce.

Yay capitalism.

The real question, to me, is, why was the flight attendant not on the flight deck while the pilot was away?

Because you can regulate anything, but in reality the pilot is not going to announce every time he has to pee. Nothing has happened before, so nothing will happen this time.

Except when there is a terrorist threatening the pilot outside, asking him to enter the code...

But that terrorist will be bum rushed by everyone on board and beaten to the ground. Even the hostage knows his best bet is to take the knife between ribs - better odds surviving that than the destruction of the plane.

Terrorists - or anyone - stopped hijacking airplanes the second such hijackings stopped meaning a delay and started meaning everyone aboard dying.

People don't lose their humanity just because they work for (or own) a corporation.

But neither does it extend to the corporation. Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC doesn't have a religion even if its owner(s) and employee(s) do, and thus can't refuse anything on religious grounds. An employee of Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC may feel servicing sexual, ethnical, political or other minorities is unacceptable, and if so Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC must deal with the issue as it sees fit within limits dictated by law; but Aardvarkjoe Catering, LLC is not that employee.

You don't get to put down your corporate shield whenever that suits you, yet hide behind it the rest of the time.

The fact that no attack occured gives the talking heads leeway to claim there was no "terrorist attack."

A terrorist is a person who attempts to bring about political change by "illegitimate" (i.e., non-state) violence.

Mass murder is only terrorism if it is an attack on a political entity, or is an attempt to scare a nation's population into something.

Unless someone says, "We're going to keep crash your planes until you do such-and-such", this isn't terrorism. There's no attempt to bring about political change involved, only murder, motive unknown.