As was Lego Creator before that.

This is not Lego's first round in the "creative game" genre.

Right, and that's why I excuse my double standard.

Considering the poor quality of the submissions, and the flood of nearly-identical comments on other stories, I'm suspicious of the intent. It wouldn't be the first time Slashdot has been used to slander others, and the irony of having one Dice subsidiary embarrass another Dice subsidiary makes this a particularly appealing attack.

I saw several submissions, and frankly, not one of them was decent journalism. I voted them down.

Copying a juicy bit from the article and saying "Link to original source" is not a summary.

If I rearrange the letters in that first sentence, I can't make the latter one. I end up with an extra "eeefgghhlmtt", and still need "aiopsvwy".

Lying is evil too, right?

I'll point out that even reporting the money's use doesn't really mean anything. They just report that they entertained potential donors, and their big party is a perfectly cromulent expense. Of course, they have to show that the fundraising was somewhat successful, so they'll be sure to invite a few retired politicians who kept their own PACs and run their own parties. It's all a big cycle, where the money and champagne keep flowing.

The main difference between libertarians and liberals is in their preferred solutions.

Ultimately, the liberal philosophy is that society can and should take care of everyone. The libertarian philosophy is that everyone should only be required to take care of themselves. From an antagonist perspective, liberals have their heads in the clouds, and libertarians have never heard of the tragedy of the commons.

Both are able to see problems in the government programs that Sen. Paul spoke against. When it comes time for a solution, however, the libertarians would fight to abolish the programs entirely, reducing the size of government and ultimately the burden on citizens to support what little benefit the programs may bring. On the other hand, the liberals would usually rather fix the flawed programs, to preserve that benefit while removing the harmful details.

For completeness, we should discuss the conservative position as well: Government should only be involved when someone can't take care of themselves. If someone is able to manage their life without dealing with the government, then the government shouldn't interfere with that. The offending programs should be fixed so that their flaws are covered or resolved, but ultimately don't interfere with society's operation.

The libertarians are mocked because they throw the baby out with the bathwater. The liberals are mocked because they just keep making the system bigger. The conservatives are mocked because they rarely actually fix the problems. Welcome to America, where the most common use of free speech is to complain about someone else.

[citation needed]

I used to work in medical data, and SSNs are actually explicitly prohibited in a number of states. I never encountered any state that required them. I'm also particularly skeptical of your "ANY care" comment, as that would prohibit care for foreigners, vagrants, emergencies, and many accidents.

Unfortunately, it is true that many doctors' record systems require the field. I quickly lost count of how many different patients apparently had 123-45-6789 for their SSN.

Isn't it the whole point of society to improve people's lives?

Recently, improving my life meant making some major renovations in my hometown... Repaving roads, clearing an old nature trail, awarding scholarships, and the like. One particular city official started making those things happen, so he got my support when he ran for mayor. I suppose from one perspective, he bought my vote with my own tax dollars. From my perspective, my taxes were spent on very worthwhile causes.

The GDP serves as a reference point, because it's independent of demographics. It provides a scale for normalizing other ratios, so the numbers that come out of such analysis can be applied usefully. It also avoids the issue of whether production comes from individuals or corporations. If you want those numbers, you can derive them pretty easily.

Do you have any evidence of this generalization? The politician's I've dealt with usually want to maximize GDP, but maximizing a tax/GDP ratio would suggest they'd be better off decreasing GDP.

And that is precisely my point. The world was different in 1940, in many ways. Why should we, as tompaulco suggested, treat 1940 as some ideal standard for running today's government?

I think the basic standard of living has increased somewhat since 1940. Just guessing here, but I suspect that today we have a few more roads, better schools, better healthcare, better law enforcement, and of course, we can't forget that in 1940, we didn't really worry about ICBMs, orbital weapons, or instantaneous ethereal attacks from the other side of the planet. We also didn't have satellites, global surveys, or anywhere near the level of scientific study we have today.

Sure, we can probably keep 300 million people breathing for far less than we spend today, but our lives aren't the same as they were 80 years ago. The equivalence is false.

I just rebuilt my Windows desktop at home.

The first thing I did was to install Google Chrome, because I'd rather not tolerate IE while fetching other stuff. Next was Steam, mostly so I could get it downloading a game immediately. Once my game was underway, I downloaded PuTTY, followed by a few other utilities.

From my perspective, you're all very close, but wrong nonetheless.

Utterly offtopic...

Regardless, the answer (assuming your unasked question is "why not?") is pretty straightforward: God won't let you. God gave you a life, and no, he didn't ask if you wanted it. You play a particular role, but you don't get to choose whether to accept the part or not. Depending on the particular brand of theism, you might get to choose how you'll say your lines or hit your marks, but according to other schools, you are simply a soul experiencing the story (including your internal thoughts and emotions) that God has laid out for you. Even if you "choose" suicide to escape, that may very well be exactly what God has planned, or it may be a grave insult to your director.

My perspective: Why bother? Either God is or he isn't, and if I have these thoughts and emotions, I might as well play them as my own. I'm not so arrogant as to demand that my free will actually be cosmically and ultimately free.

-Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of the Will, 1839

A legal insanity defense means that he was so out of touch with reality that he didn't know that what he was doing was wrong.

It does not actually have any relation to whether he was behaving in a reasonable manner.

There's nothing wrong with people rocking the boat. That's the claim politicians make to get elected, and it's what they try for to get reelected.

What scares the government is when someone tries to capsize the boat. If your anti-religion rants are a means to radicalize people against a supposedly-religious government in an effort to spark a civil war, then yes, the FBI should be watching. That's a large part of its job.

I've been involved with a particular group of people who like to build rather energetic exothermic chemical devices, and set them off (legally and safely). We had the FBI come out and watch us for a while, and a few folks had some probing questions, but they've left us alone ever since it was clear that we're a bunch of nerds with no political ambitions whatsoever.