And yet we strive to prevent heart attacks, despite their natural nature.

We strive to prevent heart attacks but we don't consider them a crime. Saying that a lot of natural "abortions" happen therefore it is ok to cause a few more is the same thing as saying a lot people die in accidents so its ok to kill a few more.

Logically the religious view is consistent here, and this argument is as silly as the one often made about the alleged hypocrisy of religious people caring fanatically about fetus right to life and yet supporting the death penalty - not inconsistent where you realize that "right to life" is a shorthand for right to life of innocent people, in this case the unborn ones, not an absolute in all cases.

I think the correct argument for abortion is the libertarian one of absolute property right over one's own body. Fetus may have the right to life or not, but it does not have the right to use another person's body in order to survive without that person's consent.

BS, they are not refugees. Mexico is a middle income country with per capita GDP higher than some European countries (mostly due to being close to the USA). Yes there is a lot of crime and the GDP doesn't give the full picture due to inequality but still a person is far better off there than almost any African country and a lot of countries in Asia, S. America, etc. If the purpose of immigration is to help the immigrants escape danger at home, then lets send the Mexicans back and bring a whole bunch of people from Africa.

Native Americans are a great example of the dangers of remaining a primitive civilization using stone tools, failing to invent the wheel, non-magic medicine, education, roads, bridges, decent agriculture, legal system, government, housing solutions better than primitive huts and caves etc etc.

What do you expect the world to do, leave an enormous continent full of natural resources to a few million savage who didn't know what to do with it. Of course it got taken from them, and look at it now.

Enjoy seeing more and more of your country turn into another Mexico. Gringos built the greatest country in the history of the world. Mexicans build a sewer of a country.

"Good" in this case is access to the event, not getting a piece of paper.

Banning scalping would be like banning retail. Buy goods for less, sell them for more. None of government's business except when the ticket says "not for resale" in which case it's a breach of contract.

Ballmer should have lowballed the sleaze bag and refused to give him even the amount is was valued at
 
Since Ballmer was far from being the only party interested in purchasing Clippers, what purpose would that serve other than having his offer rejected?

A company is making stuff expensive - EVIL!
A company is making stuff cheap - EVIL!

Something is wrong, somewhere, IMO. This Slashdot story is apparently about a PR release by Millward Brown, which is owned by Kantar Group, which is owned by WPP. Notice that the WPP web site is badly coded. It doesn't adjust for font size choices in browser configuration. The web site has, to my eyes, an ugly, cheap look.
 
Not sure what your point is regarding the web site design. There is no way to accurately measure the brand value but these rankings are legit as far as being respected and widely reported in serious press each year.

Here is a better story than the one linked: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d8ea...

Here are the full rankings: http://www.millwardbrown.com/b...

This is a better article than Guardian crap: http://www.wired.com/2013/10/l...

- June 28 - warrant for metadata for one user
- Lavabit fails to comply
- July 16 - warant for SSL keys
- Lavabit freaks out and still refuses to comply
- August 5 court threatens contempt and $5,000/day fine and Lavabit shuts down

Not making a comment on who is right. It's just misleading to ignore the first part hence you've been mislead.

We ARE better. We are not perfect and we are a lot harder on ourselves. A Chinese and Russian "Snowden" would have quickly disappeared with nobody knowing or caring.

The truth behind the story is that the government had a court warrant "to monitor a particular Lavabit user's metadata (name not disclosed, most likely Snowden), defined as 'information about each communication sent or received by the account, including the date and time of the communication, the method of communication, and the source and destination of the communication.'" He refused to comply with a court order and provide the metadata (email headers, not the body) after which the prosecutors obtained a warrant for SLL keys. Warrants for email headers are commonly obtained in criminal investigations and its not unusual or surprising that they wanted Snowden's as he is a subject of federal investigation for multiple serious crimes.

Silicon Valley tech employees are being abused by their employers!? Wow, what a ridiculous failure of perspective. I think those Google Bus protesters are pathetic scum, but reading comments like this make me feel just a little bit of sympathy with their view.

Libertarians are not against unions. Show me one source that shows that libertarians are against the right of people to associate or not associate however they wish. They are against laws that force employers to recognize unions and bargain with them as well as the laws that force employees to become paying union members even if they don't want to.

If all our senators were like Al Franken, the Senate debate would have sunk to an even lower level than it is today. His debate style seems to be calling his opponents the most vulgar names he can think off and trying to be a sort of Rush Limbaugh of the left except that his show had no listeners and his network went bankrupt. Then he stole an election.