One very important point to make is that just because we consider ourselves to be the top of the tree of life doesn't mean that that's so in any meaningful sense. This planet's amoebas are far more successful than we are by number of individuals, biomass, etc. Frankly there seems to be very little selective pressure to evolve intelligence and the fact that we did so may have been something of an outlier. Perhaps life is common but brains are not.

One of the easiest ways to make a job suck is to have rotten co-workers. And Wall Street is not where you go for job security, is it?

Reverse Polish naming. Calm down.

Because websurfers, being a flighty and difficult to please lot, think that .ltd.uk is black magic and refuse to go anywhere near it. Srsly.

Not to mention the fact there are still kids being taught under trees.

Engrave the key on a piece of tungsten. Plutonium powered batteries last a good while (ask Voyager). The pitch drop approach sounds interesting as well, though potentially failure-prone.

Correlation does not work like that. It is likely there have been many other effects working over the years, in particular the astonishing drop in the prices of consumer goods. Yes, crime is complex and has many interlinked causes. However, the ability to carry out a mass shooting relies entirely on the shooter having access to suitable weapons.

Be fair to him. Slashdot has "editors".

[citation needed]

I wonder if a sensible method could be constructed using the properties of radioactive decay. The obvious one is to slip the key in with a nuke set to go off if tampered with, which would of course be safe after a few thousand years (give or take) but I dare say someone smarter than me can figure out a better way of doing it.

You are assuming your ceteri are paribus. Such people are at risk from a whole host of other issues as well, but it's true to say they do not suffer from many of the so-called lifestyle diseases that we do. Remove the crocodiles, malaria, violence, and occasional famines and they would do quite well.

There is evidence that extremely low calorie diets have a significant (years) impact on lifespan, however you're talking about calorie intakes that would leave you barely functional and without energy. So nothing that you can use. But it does open up research pathways to investigate why those effects occur, which might produce something you can follow.

No, people who end up convicted of rape are typically multiple rapists. That's nothing new. It says nothing about the tail, in particular "grey area" sex offences. As for RAINN, they are not saying that the concept of rape culture is incorrect or doesn't exist; they are saying its existence is not an excuse and that addressing it directly is probably not the most effective way of reducing rape in the short to medium term.

Don't attempt to explain your own failures by blaming women for them. And the reason women tell that story, by the way, is because we live in a society where that sort of behaviour is considered "cute". It's not cute. It's appalling. You think you're being a nice guy. You're not. Stop it.

It's 2014. We can stop with the not all men thing.