Thanks for the video link. Watched it, then watched it a second time with my wife. We're convinced.

As of now, I'm cutting bare fructose out of my diet as much as possible.

It's a good thing I already kicked the Mountain Dew habit as part of my effort to cut out excess calories... I've already gone through the caffeine withdrawal, which was a major deterrent against changing my habits.

Have you ever considered offshoring some of the hosting to services like Last.fm so you are more likely to reach a wider audience?

Couldn't be more true. I "purchased" my home three years ago. Only after I did so did I fully realize how much I truly "own" it.

I have to pay the government ransom in order to keep it, and I have to submit to extortion in order to have the ability to modify it in any meaningful way. And even if I do pay all of my protection money like a good, responsible citizen, the government can still come in and forcibly take it away whenever they feel like it.

Less work?

Fixed that for you. I'm in the States. I pay to receive calls and texts (AT&T GoPhone).

I wonder who says that... certainly not someone with a large ship!

Here I was, thinking it was just me! I have all of my best ideas while I'm in the shower. I think I've solved every major world crisis in the shower, but as soon as I step out, I almost instantly forget.

I requested the "free" Windows* CDs for my grandmother shortly after she got her first computer. Because neither of us knew about the charge in the event the third CD wasn't returned, I was charged not only for that CD, but for the next two shipments of CDs delivered to her even after she called to cancel.

An expensive mistake. I never got that money back.

* I originally set her up with Fedora/GNOME, but she was completely lost. After I set her up with Windows, she was able to get around relatively easily.

Well-put. I concede.

This.

When I was growing up, I was never allowed to get dirty. Germs were bad, and playing outside was considered hazardous. Whenever I had a spot on my skin that even resembled dirt, it was scrubbed until the skin turned red.

Fast-forward to today. My immune system is basically shot; whenever something "goes around", I get it without fail, and when I do get sick, it's nearly incapacitating; I have allergies to some medications, plants, and animals; my asthma (which I've had since birth) gets worse, not better; and I'm currently battling with CIU (chronic idiopathic urticaria), or hives that keep coming back without any known cause.

Please let your kids play outside. Let them get dirty. Their bodies will thank you.

Keep in mind that asthma is an autoimmune disorder that happens to manifest itself in the respiratory system. It is not in and of itself a disorder/disease of the lungs. The act of solely treating the symptoms of asthma is akin to spraying a fire extinguisher at the top of a flame, instead of at its base.

Ever since I read about the "hygiene hypothesis", I've considered infecting myself with hookworm (called Helminthic therapy) to keep my immune system busy. There are certain species of hookworm that aren't harmful to the body (under normal circumstances in first-world countries), are not hosts themselves to bacteria, viruses, or other parasites, only feed on a small amount of blood, and can neither reproduce within the host nor lay eggs while in the host. They're just enough of a nuisance to prevent the immune system from attacking random things in the body, and they work around the clock.

The only reason I haven't actively sought out this therapy is due to my primary care physician's recommendation against it. He grew up in a country where hookworm is common, and his sister died of an asthma attack; the fact that she most likely had hookworm and had asthma severe enough to kill her was convincing enough to me that this research may not be completely accurate.

I'd argue that our biological features were designed by natural selection and evolution.

Or instead of a cut-and-dried two-tier system, editors could vote on the veracity of the content. Wikipedia could adopt Slashdot's karma system, and editors with higher karma would be considered more "expert" than those with lower karma, so their votes would carry more weight. Editors with karma below a certain threshold wouldn't be eligible for voting, so that should eliminate sockpuppets.

Instead of uber-locking certain articles, what Wikipedia should be doing is something like this:

• If the entire article is "flagged":
  • A single message would appear at the top of the page, and the background of the article could be a faint green, for example.
• If more than 50% of the article's content has been reviewed and "flagged":
  • Put a message at the top of the article explaining the situation
  • Put a message on top of each "unflagged" (yet to be vetted) section
  • Color the background of the "unflagged" content a faint red, and give it a thick, dark red border. (I know, red/green colorblindness is the most common kind. These are just examples.)
• If less than 50% of the article's content has been reviewed and "flagged":
  • Put a message at the top of the article explaining the situation
  • Put a message on top of each section that has been reviewed and "flagged"
  • Color the background of the "flagged" content a faint green, and give it a thick, dark green border.
• If the entire article is "unflagged":
  • A single message would appear at the top of the page, and the background of the article could be a faint red.

If an entire article has been "flagged", then it could be treated as a released, stable version. It would be the default version a visitor would see (by default). Anybody would be able to view the most recent version of the article by clicking on an appropriate tab on the page. Viewing this version would be analogous to downloading the nightly build of a program, and it could come with a disclaimer on top of the page.

tl;dr: Color-code vetted/"flagged" articles/sections. Treat "flagged" articles as one would treat stable versions of programs. Treat articles that haven't been "flagged" yet as nightly builds of programs.

This would still use a two-tier system, but it would be much more fair to editors who haven't yet jumped through Wikipedia's hoops, and it wouldn't hide any edits from anybody.

Saliva???

Do you chew on your books?