Not absurd, just not economical. Systems are born in a finite community.

Engineers seem to have emotional difficulties - a poverty of emotion at times and excess emotions at other times. They also aren't great communicators, so the feelings they do have aren't expressed clearly, or at all. This leads to frustration and isolation. When you present a flat personality most of the time, people disregard you as an emotional being. When you then develop strong feelings about something, you don't have the usual outlets for them, as you haven't cultured any. You can only stew about it and resent the people who "don't understand you." Without others to help mirror and redefine your feelings, they can only be chewed over and warped within.

A terrorist act (or suicide, murder) is an exertion of those warped emotions, and a way to communicate. It's done for an audience, as a statement. It forces people to "feel your pain" and appreciate/validate your emotions.

PepsiCo as an organization is not interested in any layman's definition of "nutrition."

So what? It's a democracy. People vote with their dollars. If people cared out nutrition, they'd educate themselves, as you have. Would the world be better without snacks?

This is a company designed to maximize profit by exploiting the still-ingrained hunter-gatherer instincts in us all

Yup. They wouldn't exist if they didn't. And what about using sex to sell? Damn our primitive urges!

You're right in that no one has explicitly stated how they "naturally" got to the mission statement, you're just supposed to know that it's an obvious bit of text to check against this hashing algorithm, and then shout "stupid" at people like you.

Exactly. My brother, who works for a Dow 30 company, said that during a company seminar on HR, the speaker made an analogy regarding an individual's role in the organization. He asked them to think of putting their hand in a bucket of water, and then withdrawing it, then asked "how fast does the water replace your hand when you take it out?" Instantly. "That's how quickly you can be replaced."

They don't care if you're exceptional, only that you're adequate, because it's a lot of work to identify exceptional workers and there aren't many of them. Unless you're the CEO or a VP, you're not setting policies, you're only following them, so followers are needed.

So? Iron as a source of phytoplankton blooms, and phytoplankton as a carbon sink isn't news. The "news" is that whales are doing this, and in uselessly small numbers. Tell me what I missed.

"They've well and truly bypassed being carbon neutral. They've actually gone one step further,"

What? They did? Fuck me. What is the point of this article? The whales don't know anything about this, they're just taking a shit. Maybe this supports seeding the ocean with iron, but I bet the same authors would blanch at that idea. This is just useless, idealistic drivel. Jesus Christ, slashdot.

Isn't it odd? It's been around forever, works on many platforms, and supports just about any feature you might need. I started using it a few years ago for a scientific simulation project, and I haven't looked back. I think the main hindrance, in a circular argument manner, is that is hasn't been as popular as MySQL, so there're a smaller community. It wasn't as easy to find a good PL/pgSQL book as it was to find material for all the others.

My only other complaint would be the relative immaturity of the pgAdmin software. It works fine, but does some odd things like doubly importing data if you don't know not to click the OK button after completion, and not refreshing views after actions.

This strikes a chord with me. I program training software - modest stuff - and recently have gotten into more detailed user tracking. Every click a user makes is a web service call whose return value is required for the program to continue (without notifying the user). Previously, I would say our audience was used to software without an Internet component. They watched material and took a test. The PDF printout was the proof of use.

We get calls saying "the computer ate my homework." This can only be true for one transaction, but varying claims are made which don't agree with reality. I'm asked to inveigh in some circumstances, and it's hard to say "they're lying." Can I unequivically state (and logically convey) that they're wrong? Do I know every possible path of the program? I feel that I do, but I've had genuine glitches in the past.

This reminds me of welfare. Back in the 30s, through the WPA, the government essentially operated a welfare for work system with their many public works projects. People dug ditches or cleared land or built things. What if we required current welfare participants (within their ability) to pedal a generator for a few hours a day? It would eliminate the argument that they get something for nothing, cut down on abuse, get people in shape, require no skills, and partially offset the system costs by producing something of value.

Of course, it would be easy to paint this idea as slavery or abuse, so it would never survive the political test. Maybe China could implement it.

just don't buy the bed with the huge parabolic headboard.

Politics. Some day, if something happens, someone might ask "why didn't we do this?" Fear of "common" sense.