The problem, then, is that the average American is easily duped into overpaying for limited utility. Going without and not giving the company money sends a much clearer message than letting them soak you and begging for a discount. In case you've not paid attention for the last, I dunno, 50 years, there is no such thing as "loyalty" any more.

Oh come on. You know better than that. Then it'd be "But NASA *paid* you to claim that these were your photos.

Hell, even if they went themselves, they'd claim that it was mirrors dropped by previous unmanned trips. Or swamp gas. Or they never left Earth at all and were in some kind of simulator. Though I suppose there's an easy way to fix that last one: offer to open the airlock.

There was a study a while ago that concluded that drivers of big vehicles tend to drive less safely because of a false perception of greater safety provided by the larger vehicle. Less attentiveness and visibility, not to mention the drawbacks when driving on icy roads. IMHO, if you buy a car because it makes you feel safe and not because you're confident while driving it, then you're probably worse off than a guy in a small car who knows exactly how to get it out of a bad situation. Driving isn't a game. If you can't handle it, might I suggest public transit or carpooling?

Since the summary is direct copypasta of the terrible abstract, does anyone have a tl;dr on this?

I wish I had karma for you, sir.

You realize that there are denizens of the web's seedy underbelly reading these comments, right? Don't come whining to us when 40 pizzas delivered by 20 hookers show up at your door... By the way - your stupid is showing.

I agree with the assertion that you should never whine about "leaving where you've been all your life" because it's rooted in an unreasonable aversion to change. Yes, there's a lot involved, but it's not something that's never been done before.

However, going back to the oil problem, in some cases there is no fitting compensation other than uprooting your fishing business and moving to somewhere completely different - on an ocean instead of the gulf. Is BP going to pay for that expense? Or will they get out of it on the grounds that asking them to move you and your family and your entire business to a different, possibly more expensive area is "unreasonable"?

And how do we properly account for what might amount to irreparable damage to that particular source of food in the near- to mid-future?

If my company has a tanker full of gas, and that tanker explodes outside your store due to my company's negligence, cratering the street and making your store unreachable for months. By your logic, my company shouldn't be liable for monetary damage to your store. How would you feel about this? You can say "adapt! change!" all you want, but the bottom line is, there should be no legal justification for this kind of negligence.

You don't have to buy a school lunch.

Stop all the downloadin! Help computer!

Side note: if anyone can explain to me why my carriage returns are never preserved, I'd be happy to make my posts not look like run-on paragraphs!

Interesting article. I wasn't aware of so many such incidents occurring. Your source is probably at least a little biased, but if we assume at least some of them are true, it's still unacceptable. However, it's important to remember that there's a difference between persecuting someone for their beliefs and persecuting them for how they *implement* them in ways that affect your life. Your comparison to Jews doesn't work because the Jews were a scapegoat, whereas the pro-Prop 8 folks actually had a hand in the measure's success. I'm not condoning the physical violence or graffiti. I'm also not willing to admit that a punch in the face or some spraypaint in retribution for measurable actions is the same as brutal murder because of dislike for how someone lives his or her life when it has no effect on the persecutor.

Also, we have protections for such things as harassment in the form of *other laws*.

Not in this specific example. The gay community isn't exactly going out of its way to violently oppress those who oppose it, while the other side can't say the same. In fact, I'd be surprised if this were anything more than the traditional belief that "since they should fear retribution from me, I should fear equivalent retribution from them." It's a pretty common belief among modern social conservatives.

You write idiocy in quotes. Is this to imply that Palin isn't actually an idiot because she has 12 million dollars? Why do conservatives rabidly believe that possession of money has a direct relationship with intelligence or aptitude? Just because you're the smartest mentally handicapped kid in your special needs class and you've convinced all the other mentally handicapped kids to give you all of their candy doesn't mean you're in the same league as even the most average mainstream students.