We have to love it since we can't leave it.

How come it's so easy to justify and fund a war to fight a (justifiably ruthless and disgusting) enemy who physically and mentally scar children, while there's a ton of foot-dragging to justify and fund a "war" to alleviate conditions in this country (lack of jobs, improving education, and needing social safety nets) that can physically and mentally scar children (lack of food stunting growth and academic development, lack of social guidance)?

You can read comments in source all day until you turn blue in the face, but you won't truly understand how something works or why it was put together the way it was unless there was some high level document describing major components and how and why they were assembled the way they were.

Recently I revisited code I had to put on the back burner from early last year. Of course my memory of the details had atrophied and didn't remember how it worked. But because I had written both in-line comments and high-level documentation describing how and why I did what I did, I was able to get up to speed in a minute. Granted someone else who looks at my stuff would take longer to understand it, but IMO it'd take them longer if they had just in-line comments.

Who's paying for this legislation? Is it the same cast of characters that does the same shenanigans in the US?

That's what Obama essentially said in his Signing Statements attached to the NDAA. He said he'd promise not to exercise the powers given to the Executive, but who says whoever else won't be so benevolent???

I've got an after-market Sony bluetooth-enabled head unit installed in my car that I have paired with my iPhone. Whenever I (rarely) talk on the phone while driving, I've noticed my vision actually partially blurs or blanks out (that never happens when I listen to the radio).

Meanwhile normal highway speeds can be >65mph ~= 1/50th of a mile per second.

Automation will replace more than just the simple and routine. IMO software like Watson may start to replace jobs that require people to do low-level, intensive research. Paralegals, junior lawyers, and clerks who help prep for a case may be replaced by a system that can scour and analyze tons of materials far faster than any human could. What about transportation? Automated cars are in their infancy, but how can we not imagine we could have a world full of automated (non-Skynet) taxis, buses, subways, container ships, or oil tankers?

Some may say those people displaced can re-educate themselves to find jobs requiring more skills, but after they graduate will we be sure they will be there?!

IMO this is ultimately a race to the bottom. It's still a ways out in the future, but I imagine there will be a world consisting of a few managers who control the computers and robots, and the masses who were replaced by them. We may need a new social contract.

"Businesses may do a lot of shitty things, but they don't have the power to take your money through taxes or revoke your right to freedom/life."

They did in the past; they can do it again...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#Military_expansion

In every professional environment I've worked in we choose the best tools for the job; it was usually Windows, Solaris or some form of Linux. I've only seen one instance of using FreeBSD and even then we were migrating to CentOS. Why? It's the maintainability and time-savings, stupid! Not only are the tools you need widely available for those platforms, the updates are easily accessible as well, they're generally configured to work out of the box (granted it may not be optimized but you can "spend the extra time to tune it"), and far more people know how to use those platforms vs FreeBSD.

I've heard many a player interviewed when they say they're OK with umps making a mistake during the regular season because they all even out during the course of those games. During this last ALDS I thought the umps were terrible with calling balls and strikes, especially during Game 3 of NYY @ DET. There were many instances of CC Sabathia not getting strike calls when his pitches hit the edges of the strike zone (pitchers would very often get that call during the season), while Justin Verlander would get strike calls when the pitches were sailing over the inside edge of the other batter's box. Mistakes like this cannot be evened out during the course of a 5- or 7-game series; such mistakes have an obvious impact on the outcome of a series.

It seems like webOS is going to die an undeserved death. It was conceived by a company too small to survive and came late into the game, and it will be killed by a company too stupid to know what it has and what to do with it.

"Americans in general need to learn more science." There - fixed it for you.

Representative democracy is working just fine - for those with money for buying off^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hlobbying politicians.

I find that to be somewhat ironic considering Manning is a member of the anti-science American far right:

http://newsmeat.com/sports_political_donations/Peyton_Manning.php