Nice try. But my head was built with paradox-absorbing crumple zones.

How can any manager sit there and support this measure?

Look carefully, I think you answered your own question...

So, suppose this "methodology" is used to predict a bubble in a particular industry. Suppose that it is wrong. It will still trigger a huge selloff. Suppose, again, that someone using this "methodology" is motivated by personal gain (turns out economists are human, too. Who knew?). Buy low, sell high, as the old adage goes. Well, how better to buy low than to trigger a massive selloff, then swoop in and buy, buy, buy when there is no actual bubble.

Besides, this is all moot point if you abolish the Federal Reserve. See: The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle

It's called the First Sale Doctrine

Sure it works for trade. Just think of all the fluids Baltar traded with the 6es!

I cover this every time the "sweatshop" discussion rears its head, so here we go again. These companies build these "sweatshops" precisely because operating costs, including labor, are cheaper in countries such as China. You can go on and on about how they should pay their workers "fair" wages and provide better working conditions. Let's ignore for a moment the fact that a "fair" wage is whatever the company is offering that the worker is willing to accept. Instead, let's focus on what would happen if these companies were forced, presumably through legal action, to pay workers the same, and provide the same working conditions, as would be required in, say, the US. If that were to occur, there would be zero, absolutely zero, incentive for these companies to open up their "sweatshops" in these countries. Why bother to assemble parts in a poor country at the same cost as assembling them in a rich country, if on top of that cost you then have to export them for sale to places where people can afford them? If that happened, all those workers earning "unfair" wages would have no source of employment at all. Their bare subsistence wages would turn to no wages, and they would starve. So, all these misguided "humanitarians" who cry foul and demand that sweatshops be shut down are actually demanding that the workers in the sweatshops be put out of work and left to rot in the gutter. When the choice is a crappy job and some food in your belly, versus unemployment and destitution, the crappy job is clearly preferable (and to those who don't agree with that sentiment, they are always free to pursue destitution).

Yeah, they don't think much of us Earth-centric monkeys. Hell, the plans to doze Earth to make way for a new hyperspace bypass have been sitting in their offices for months, and we haven't even bothered to send someone to look them over!

Except that what is, to you, a few false reviews in an ocean of useful ones is, to the businesses impacted by them, everything. It's all fine and well to say that most of the reviews you see on Yelp are legit, and it's just a few unfortunate businesses being unfairly targeted by shady salesfolk, but to the targeted businesses, that's their entire reputation being flushed down the tubes. If Yelp, or rouge members of it's sales staff, are targeting businesses which don't buy advertising, those businesses have every right and reason in the world to seek redress of their grievances.

The hell did you say about my mother?!

What's next, pre-digesting the food with enzymes inside the thing and just inserting a hose down your throat?

You, sir, are a GENIUS! Where do I preorder?

Let me summarize that for you:

I can't be bothered to take responsibility for what I eat, and I want the government to do it for me, and everyone else can go along with it.

If you don't want to eat high salt processed foods, don't. If you don't want to eat a meal at a restaurant with an unknown salt content, don't. But don't presume to dictate other people's diets because you can't be bothered to take responsibility for yours. If you want to avoid a particular ingredient in your food, then you are responsible for reading ingredient lists. You are responsible for your own nutrition, and your desire to delegate that responsibility to a third party does not give you the right to delegate responsibility for everyone else.

I've been using 7 since the beta, and have seen absolutely no evidence to support this. I have 8GB RAM, and swap disabled. Running the OS, three VMs (1GB assigned to each), a couple firefox sessions with 20-40 tabs each, a game of Civ4, and an HD movie, I won't come close to maxing out my memory. Divide the available memory in half to 4GB, and assume that most people aren't running VMs with 3+GB memory usage, and the picture painted in TFA appears highly unlikely. Unless they're gauging systems running Win7 with 2GB memory, I call BS. And if they are gauging systems running Win7 with 2GB, then who the hell cares? You can't be surprised when you're running an OS on a machine that barely meets minimum specs and you start to max out the hardware.

Yes, except that means that EVERYONE in the district is forced to pay for the decisions of elected (and non-elected) officials who they did not support. Everyone, including those who voted in opposition, and including non-voting anarchists and anarcho-capitalists. You're not promoting the idea of responsible government, you're reinforcing the (correct, as it happens) notion that government screws you coming and going. That's a lesson I'm already intimately familiar with; I don't need a refresher course courtesy of the ignorant masses.

Fry: "Why's everyone wearing those rings?" Amy: "Guh! Because nobody wears them anymore! Rings are stupid!" Fry: "I think they look cool!" Amy: "Shh, don't let anyone hear you say that!" Man: "Hey, did that lad just say rings are cool?" Amy: "No. He said they're stupid." Man: "Cool!"