This isUSB is a standard. The USB on my kyocera will work on your HTC.

This is where reality differs from theory. In theory, all micro-USB devices would be able to swap chargers but I know of one person (anecdote, but true nonetheless) who upgraded his phone, used the charger from his old phone, and fried his new phone due to differences in voltage and power.

Also, if compatibility is mandated then how will new features be developed without potentially damaging legacy devices?

What's really boneheaded about this rebuttal is that people who speak to the police provide material with which they can be convicted. Making a mistake when speaking to the police, which all of us do even under the most relaxed conditions, is called "lying" and is a felony in and of itself. In other words, misremembering something and telling the police about it is a felony.

For my money, I will take the advice of every defense attorney who has spoken on whether one should talk to police which is DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF YOUR ATTORNEY.

Article? My link is to a book which, to my memory, contains examples of many kinds of arrestee cases, some of which ended in acquittal.

In the US since the late 1980's, getting arrested for any (and no) reason has become a huge socioeconomic problem as many employers, including low-tier employers, run background checks on prospective employees that flag subjects in the Federal NCIC database which records all arrests regardless of conviction, acquittal, guilt, or innocence.

As a result, many people (but especially black males and LNWI's, or Low Net Worth Individuals) are relegated to a lifetime of poor employment prospects, unable to land jobs even as burger-flippers. This is true even if these arrestees are innocent!

Dale Carson, a criminal defense attorney with experience as a police officer and an FBI agent, has written a book called "Arrest-Proof Yourself" which basically makes the argument that individuals should do anything they can (within the law) to avoid arrest for the simple fact that in the United States being arrested will bring incalculable financial harm to people who find themselves arrested for any reason.

The book is enlightening and can be profitably be read by almost everyone, even if one's risk of arrest is low.

Both the Death Star and the Cloud City seem, to my mind, are outside the usual milieu for Star Wars action and development. The Death Star was hyper-polished and space-age minimalist, unlike the maximally baroque surfaces of the Millennium Falcon or the claptrap hulls of the rebel alliance X-Wings. In a sense, the Death Star was the home of the Other, the mirror world of the Empire that (arguably) was one part of a two-chambered narrative setting that was "A New Hope".

The Cloud City seemed even more a "respite" from the action of the Star Wars narrative. It was a political and environmental paradise and the Star Wars narrative resumed the moment Calrissian revealed he had purchased the safety and sovereignty of his city by selling Jabba Solo.

tl;dr: The Death Star and the Cloud City in some ways are exceptions that prove the rule that Star Wars "happens" on the frontier.

I don't personally care, by the time I was 8 I was already smarter than most of the adults I came into contact with.

With all due respect, I doubt you are as smart as you believe you are if you honestly believe this to be true.

In the United States of Politically Correct America, it is very hard to prove reverse discrimination

I know it's difficult for some to understand, but THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "REVERSE" DISCRIMINATION. There is only discrimination, regardless if you are white, black, brown, male, female, or transgender.

I call my penis a "groin finger".

Uhh... never mind.

He worries that social media encourages us to create "surrogate versions" or "celebrity versions" of ourselves.

Creating a surrogate or celebrity version of oneself is precisely the point of Facebook. It is a version of the self that can be exchanged through a social medium with others. That "surrogate" self can be be cited, exalted, devalued, and circulated. It's "celebrity" for people who don't necessarily have access to major media channels and networks of people to promote a traditional media celebrity self.

Everyone's gonna get their 15 minutes.

The question, to my mind, is why Matt Smith believe this is any different than the media that have made a surrogate version of him.

Sure, I did not mean to suggest Confucianism always provides optimal results (for whatever optimum one may be seeking). I only meant that misunderstanding deference to one's elders may not be an issue of hate.

That said, my experience with this aspect of Confucianism--of being deferential to one's elders--has little to do with wisdom. It's simply the way hierarchy is established and observed among Koreans. Many times, younger Koreans will complain to their same-age peers when selfish, greedy, and foolish elders are not present to be offended.

For example, when an elder asks juniors to work with little to no compensation, the younger group may (will!) grouse about how greedy and insufferable the elder is (a direct confrontation is likely to cause drama and this, too, happens very frequently). Confucianism can "prescribe" roles for both inter- and intragenerational behavior, in this case bonding members of one group while enabling the "superior" to extract a profit.

Not to say such roles are good or bad. My take is that Confucianism produces a different set of cultural effects than, say, Western Individualism. Declaring one approach to be "better" than the other is not the same as trying to understand and describe how different ideologies condition cultural behavior.

You're right that Confucianism is not the only ideology that inculcates hierarchical deferentiality. However, the types of behavior that prevail in hierarchies in the (general) US context are distinct from the deference to one's elders that prevails among Koreans (and Korean Americans) who have been raised with Confucian principles.

I can't speak to whether Confucianism contributed to any human error for Asiana Flight 214, but I do know that Confucianism will frequently allow poor judgements rendered by elder persons to carry over the (often unexpressed) better judgements of younger people.

According to MetaFilter user backseatpilot:

According to the recorded meteorological reports (METARs), the weather was good and the airport was conducting visual operations, which means the pilots use their view out the cockpit window to approach and land. However, the NTSB is probably going to be investing [sic] this Notice to Airmen (NOTAM):

06/005 (A1056/13) - NAV ILS RWY 28L GP U/S. 01 JUN 14:00 2013 UNTIL 22 AUG 23:59 2013. CREATED: 01 JUN 13:40 2013

The Instrument Landing System (ILS) for runway 28L has been out of service since June 1. What that means for a pilot flying is unclear right now; if the pilots were trying to use the ILS as supplementary guidance for their visual approach it may have simply not worked (red flag shows up on the panel and no information is given), or it may give erroneous information with no indication that the system is not working. I can see a situation (and this is PURE SPECULATION) with a flight crew with little experience flying into SFO, not checking the NOTAMs or forgetting them, flying the approach with an ILS giving false readings, getting distracted in the cockpit for one reason or another, and suddenly half the plane is floating in the bay.

My sense (IANAP) is an automatic landing would not have been possible given that the Instrument Landing System for runway 28L has been out os service since 1 June.

As someone who is half Korean and was raised in an household where respect for one's elders was taught, I would not necessarily say the GP is expressing a racist opinion as much as an ethnocentric opinion.

Both racism and ethnocentrism can have negative effects, but ethnocentrism is not always coupled with hate.

Only pedants mistake precision for correctness. You're using a tertiary definition of "terrific" and non-idiomatically at that. In its less common negative senses, "terrific" cannot be used as a predicate adjective, only as a predicate.

You know how to use a dictionary, sure, but you don't know shit about English grammar.