Telling people who collect stamps they're idiots could be a hobby.

Ha! I knew the denialists would come swarming out of the woodwork on this one.

Consider the stem cell paper that we're talking about here. It was published in January and immediately started going down in flames. Here we are six months later, watching scientists gleefully kick the cold corpse of the authors' reputations. And you're still wondering who keeps the reviewers and editors of a scientific journal honest?

Peer review isn't some kind of certification of a paper's truth. It can't reliably weed out misconduct, experimental error, or statistical bad luck. It's just supposed to reduce the frequency of fiascos like this one by examining the reasoning and methods as described in the paper. It doesn't have to be perfect; in fact it's preferable for it to let the occasional clunker through onto the slaughterhouse floor than to squelch dissenting views or innovation.

That's why climate change denialists still get published today, even the ones who disbelieve climate change because it contravenes their view of the Bible. Peer review allows them to keep tugging at the loose threads of the AGW consensus while preventing them from publishing papers making embarrassingly broad claims for which they don't have evidence that has any chance of convincing someone familiar with the past fifty years of furious scientific debate.

Here's what I think is the confounding factor (there always is one): I'd be wondering, "Does that button REALLY deliver a shock, or is it some kind of sham social psychology experiment prop? I bet it's a prop. If it isn't, it won't deliver THAT bad a shock. If it is, I wonder what the researchers will do when I push it?"

The confounding factor is curiosity. They'd have to do *two* sessions with the overly curious.

And, you do?...Not.

It would be interesting to see results of this over generations. My suspicion is that we're much more impatient now than we used to be say 30-50 years ago. I think there's a big difference between people who grew up w/o 24/7 entertainment (I call them the "I'm bored" generation), and someone who grew up like me...only child, spent summers at a cottage w/o access to TV, radio, etc, swam competitively several years...six days a week with my head in the water for several hrs. a day. There's certainly downside to my upbringing, not learning decent social skills at the same pace as your peers.

You make the assumption he was -1 at the time I made my comment, and he wasn't. Interesting to note that I've been modded down for it too, maybe because someone thinks I'm just complaining because I'm Jewish, when in fact I'm not.

I think this kind of thing happens more often that we realize. With all the TV shows where people have pranks pulled on them, I'd love to know how often they go wrong. I'm surprised that more of the pranks don't end up with the person who is pulling them getting their ass kicked, or arrested.

While there may be no direct law banning the use, there is regulation requiring passengers to follow the directions of the crew, and that can easily extend to include telling you to put the phone away.

Conversation isn't the same as background noise. Neither is all music...I know that I can listen to classical, and get work done all day, but put on my favorite rock & roll, and the concentration ability disappears.

People yacking on aircraft are simply inconsiderate of those around them. I was stuck on a red-eye recently, with two young ladies (several rows back) that chatted loudly through nearly the entire flight. Even my headphones couldn't drown them out, which is why I recently purchased noise cancelling Bose earbuds (love 'em). But, even those gals weren't the worst. Another jackass brought a dog onboard, which randomly barked throughout the flight...just enough to prevent people from sleeping.

Seriously? Please keep your racist comments to yourself asshole.

Now if you want to bitch about what they did (as I've already done), that's perfectly fine, but this has zip to do with Zionism.

We're sorry....
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. ...that we got caught.

No, and I got my license around '72. Where did they issue these?

Sign me up for your newsletter. agree 100%

Off-topic Sidenote: I was nearly turned into roadkill yesterday while out for a run in my neighborhood. There's no sidewalk so I run facing oncoming traffic as far to the side as possible. The jackass driver was playing with his cellphone, and drifting toward the side of the road, right at me, and didn't swerve until the last second. I was within a second of making a dive for the side of the road.

Clearly, they would know that a Cretan is just a Minoan a large pool.

Seconded.

Mojolicious is an excellent back-end or middle layer (depending on your data needs), mostly because it removes the need for many of Perl's more infamous convolutions and contortions. With a bit of Bootstrap and/or AngularJS on the front end, you can get a useable online service put together in a very limited amount of time.

Except that if you read the majority opinion they actually open up any provision of the law to challenge on the same grounds. They warn that the ruling should not be taken as covering anything covered by insurance, but presumably any such thing could in principle be challenged on the same basis, and depending on the circumstances might likewise be exempted. The majority has opened the door to challenging the application of any provision of this law to a closely held corporation -- indeed any provision of any law. They just don't know how the challenge will turn out.

It's interesting to note that the court broke down almost exactly on religious lines when dealing with contraception. Five of the six Roman Catholic justices voted with the majority, and all three Jews joined by one dissenting Catholic. I think this is significant because the majority opinion, written exclusively by Catholics, seems to treat concerns over contraception as sui generis; and the possibility of objections to the law based on issues important to other religious groups to be remote.

Another big deal in the majority opinion is that it takes another step towards raising for-profit corporations to the same status as natural persons. The quibbling involved is astonishing:

Which may be true, but it's irrelevant. The question is whether compelling a for-profit corporation to do something impacts the religious liberties of natural persons in exactly the same way as compelling a church to do that same thing. If there is any difference whatsoever, then then the regulations imposed on the church *must* be less restrictive than the regulations imposed on a business. Logically, this is equivalent to saying the regulations imposed on a business *may* be more restrictive than the regulations imposed on a church.