Where did I put that Z-machine compiler again...?

Meh, Douglas Adams has 'em beat:

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.

How dare those Indians! If they actually wanted to eat they should have had the good sense to be born in America just like me.

I understand you're trying to be funny, but billionaires do not typically pay almost nothing. The (in)famous Warren Buffett says that he's paying a lower rate, not a lower amount. As another example, Theresa Heinz-Kerry had to release her returns when her husband was running for president. She paid $627k in federal income taxes on $2.3 million of AGI. How is $627k "almost nothing"?

Puhleez! What is necessary is density that Americans won't put up with and mass transit proponents who don't get pointless hard-ons for trains over busses. Mass transit makes sense in the dense cities that have always had mass transit (e.g. New York, Chicago). Mass transit in sprawling Phoenix or Seattle is just sowing seeds of transit hate.

Hate to break it to you, but we're not living out "Fight Club". There are many different alleged "smoking gun" memos, but the one I'm most familiar with is the Ford memo. I won't tell you what you think it said, but I will tell you what it really said: NHTSA allowed that safety improvements that would cost more than $200K per life saved were not cost effective. In 1973, NHTSA wanted to change safety standards to reduce the posibility of a post-rollover fire. Ford then wrote and circulated a memo that showed that the compliance costs for that change were 3x the NHTSA threshold and should be opposed. Now for me, personally, an appropriate regime would be to have the auto manufacturers put a notice on the steering wheel, to be removed by the first owner, that says "We're insured to $X dollars in the event of death due to a design flaw." If that number is too low for you, buy a different car.

Magnuson-Moss, which has been on the books for nearly 40 years, already makes most of what you are pissing and moaning about illegal.

My guess is that this is for people in the "Chair Force", not those at the sharp end. Even if AT&T offers 3G in Kandahar, how far do you think the coverage area is? ;)

That's strange. I use my Streak 5 to make voice calls all the time and have since the moment I pulled it out of the box.

The Streak 7, although still an Android device, makes you work harder to unlock the phone capabilities.

Wrong. The percentage of income spent on food, housing, clothing, etc. has been declining for at least 30 years. What has happened is that US consumers have traded that decline in prices for more luxurious goods: Average house size is up ~ 50% since 1980, consumers eat more expensive foods, they eat out more often, they drive cars that are larger and fancier, etc.

His math is actually a little bit off, but when it comes to wealth, anyone that lives in the US is in the top ~12% of the world. Meeting physiological needs takes a tiny fraction of the average US income, which makes it less likely that high Gini coefficients will actually lead to unrest. The US Gini coefficient is 40 (equivalent to the whole of the EU BTW), but the IPF is essentially 99%.

It's a Guy Fawkes mask? I guess that explains my confusion at why people were dressed as Jack White.

If the real issue with education is parents, then why the fuck do we have these continual rants that society's failure to pay teachers more is leading to the decline of western civilization? If it sounds like I'm ranting, well, I am. I'm fucking tired of the teachers unions trying to have it both ways: "Why do you hate education?" when we won't pay them more and "Blame Johnny's parents" when we do and it doesn't amount to shit. I understand that they're trying to do right for their members -- that's their job. But for FSM's sake, don't wrap that shit in a giant appeal-to-emotion.

You're missing out on the point: Linking to the article from slashdot improves the pagerank score of said article, making the claim that "147 corporations control the global economy" more truthy for the Mother Jones set.

You're really going to go there? A small number of political action committees that are tightly regulated by the FEC makes us more lied-to and manipulated than, say, North Korea? Really!?!