I'm so glad you asked! This is a common misconception. Indeed, unicorn farts are methane! They come from the intestinal bacteria of unicorns, of course. A microbe's gotta eat, ya know. Unicorns only shit rainbows. They don't fart them.

Bennett Hasselton IS Ramble-bot 1000. The ramblings are being posted by the same type of machine that has been getting academic journals to publish its articles. Dice wanted to pad their page hit numbers, so they bought a Ramble-bot and named it Bennett.

You think I'm joking, and so do I, but really, just how far away are we from enough Markov chains that Dice can order the Ramble-bot to write 300 words about the frumious bandersnatch and the Ramble-bot will dutifully crank something out that is indistinguishable from a Bennett screed? It's not exactly a high bar to clear.

None of these stories are about today. All of these stories are about trajectories, and the shape of things to come. And the self-evident fact that unless something changes, the 'poor' as you condescendingly call them with your snide quotation marks, will not be walking around with smart phones and have internet and cable TV at home. When the market value of the things the robots produce is greater than zero and your ability to earn any money is precisely zero because you and 100 million of your neighbors have been displaced, you will not be buying anything.

The poor will be sleeping the sleep which sees no awakening. You can't eat dirt, especially when someone else owns all of the dirt.

As opposed to the security needs of consumers, which are obviously non-existent. No doubt it will come with a CALEA exemption, because Boeing. (Watch for a one sentence rider inserted into an otherwise totally unrelated bill some time in 2017.) Of course they will be absurdly expensive, but the Citizens who possess them will easily be able to afford them. If you can't pay, you definitely don't deserve security. But you can't have one unless you are on The List anyway. After all, they're CALEA exempt. You must have been background checked, approved, and sponsored before you can get on The List.

Remember, Service Brings Citizenship! Enlist today!

Does this sound paranoid? Think about your answer for a second.

Sounds like Lum the Mad, except in annoying video format.

A shame that site is gone... Turns out Lum can't design very well himself, but he's a good analyst and critic.

His lazy all-afternoon hunting down of young people could have been ended with fewer deaths if Norwegian youth had ever heard the phrase: run from a knife, charge a gun. No one else needed to be armed to have stopped him far short of the 70-odd deaths he caused. They just didn't know how.

While you're at it, I'd say, given how much less the per capita debt of the nations in question have risen compared to American debt (presumably the bastion of the "free Market" the AC was referring to), maybe it's worth dropping the "cost" tag too.

But really, you shouldn't be responding to the obviously deranged. Arbitrary capitalization of words, arbitrary scare quotes everywhere, and spamming all caps words? Deranged.

Well yes, but humans have a long maturation period. Getting us to reproductive maturity necessitates keeping our parents alive as well, not just us. A human with at least one parent who survives 15 years after its birth has a decided evolutionary advantage over a human with no parent surviving a year after birth. A human with two present parents surviving at least 20 years after birth has an even bigger advantage. A human with two present parents surviving at least 20 years after birth plus at least one grandparent surviving at least 20 years after birth has the biggest advantage evolution has yet found.

Characteristics from the human lifespan to human sex drive can be explained in these evolutionary terms. Humans live approximately 60 years in good health, which is their own maturation period plus the maturation period of one offspring, plus the maturation period of that offspring's offspring. The male human sex drive and the female's ability to accommodate him year round (extremely rare in mammals) have been described as the evolutionary mechanism that ensures not just two surviving parents, but the presence of two surviving parents.

Evolution may not care if you get ugly after your 20s, but evolution does care if you contract cancer and die at 35. It's a disadvantage to your offspring.

(Pedants who want to complain about us anthropomorphizing evolution are invited to take a long walk off a short pier. It's shorthand.)

You have a six digit user ID and you don't know how the moderation system works?

Probably because the best you can do is agree with a post claiming that because we don't have a video of the cop deleting the video, he must not have deleted it. Really? And he can't even spell "alleges" right.

You eventually get moderator points if your own posts get modded up. If you fail to contribute to the conversation, you don't get to affect the moderation of those who do.

Yes I do.

It's called culture. Humans have been producing it for thousands of years. Claiming it is some sort of property that can be owned is a legal fiction created only in the last few hundred. The vast majority of consumers of culture throughout history and pre-history did not pay for their consumption. If authors got paid at all, they got paid once, by their patron, and forever after the cost of spreading the media was the marginal cost of duplication, and the cost of consumption was zero.

No, no, no. If you assume the existence of unicorns, you can predict how much global warming they cause.

Tropical cyclones form an average of 6.3 times per year in the northern Indian Ocean (crosses the equater), 14.3 times per year in the south-western Indian Ocean (southern hemisphere), 11.0 times per year in the Australian region, and 11.4 times per year in the southern Pacific. Of those storms, an average of 1.5, 5.0, 0, and 4, respectively, per year achieve hurricane strength. Only an average of 13.6% of hurricane strength tropical cyclones form in the North Atlantic.

The frequency of tornadoes in North America is the lowest it's been in recorded history for the three year period running up to the present day. Discussed on Slashdot yesterday.

Changes caused by El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Everything you said was either useless or wrong. Which is why he's modded +5 and you're at 1.

On the contrary, it is very definitely cash. Walmart Corporation pays dividends to the tune of $0.48 per share every quarter for the past four quarters. Walmart has raised their dividend every year for the past 41 years. That amounts to $3.1 billion in cash paid to the Waltons this year. The Walton family still controls a simple majority of the company, owning more than 50% of the 3.223 billion shares outstanding.

That's cash money. No loan, no promissory note, no sale of shares. Of course the Waltons have built an edifice of fictional corporate entities to hold their stock that exists mainly for the purpose of avoiding taxes, so it's not like there's a single bank account that goes cha-ching +$775 million every quarter, but the difference is only significant to the tax man and the lawyers.

You don't understand what wealth is. It's ownership. And ownership PAYS. And pays and pays and pays.

It has nothing to do with prejudice. It has to do with two very different, very stressful jobs, with very different training. Or are you going to try to claim that infantry procedures are appropriate for civilian law enforcement? Are you one of these people who thinks the county sheriff needs an MRAP? Or a Stryker, perhaps?

Ten years of my professional career writing software for the US military, some of which is currently in use by the Navy, Marines, Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard, in roughly descending order of frequency. Yes, all five services. I've done more to "support our troops" than half of these assholes with US flag bumper stickers on their cars.

You're welcome.

Uh, I didn't. Not until this thread, though I've seen that image before.

No, it's not in the least like blood diamonds or poaching endangered species. No one was enslaved, no creature was killed to produce that image. No population was oppressed, no species went extinct to produce that image.

Depictions of naked people, in whatever medium, do not automatically objectify all members of the person's sex. Nor does it automatically objectify the person depicted. In fact, depictions of naked people that were created specifically to elicit a sexual response still don't automatically objectify the person depicted or members of the person's sex. Whether or not a painting or photograph or sculpture or video objectifies the subject is entirely orthogonal to whether or not the subject is clothed. This is proven by the fact it is possible to objectify clothed people.

The entire American movie genre called 'horror' objectifies people, nearly all of whom are clothed. That is, in fact, a large part of what makes such movies horrifying. Photos of Nazi concentration camps objectify people. That is, in fact, a large part of what makes Nazi concentration camps horrifying.

Conversely, Playboy does not ever objectify women. The women in Playboy photos nearly always have visible faces, and are frequently looking directly at the camera. They are always in fine health, uninjured, unrestrained, and are exemplars of female human beauty. The poses (and photo retouching) used display their bodies to the best possible advantage. The poses are frequently dominant in nature, such as on top of the backs of furniture like sofas and chairs, on top of tables, on top of vehicles, and especially at the top of staircases. You will notice the preponderance of the phrase "on top"—the dominant position among all mammals, including all primates.

The uncropped photograph of Lena fits the mould precisely. There's a link to it a few posts down. I just looked at it for the first time, and it fits every single point above: she is standing (dominant), resting one knee on top of an old piece of luggage (dominant), obviously in fine health, and beautiful. Her face is visible, obviously, and she's looking directly at the camera. I am reminded of another aspect of typical Playboy photography. Articles of clothing, while not concealing her sexual attributes, are often chosen for dominance. She's wearing black leather boots with heavy heels.

In short, Playboy photos are the polar opposite of objectifying: Playboy models are depicted in positions of power, with many of the trappings thereof. Baring their sexual characteristics for a camera is an expression of their power—Playboy models are comfortable in their own skin. Comfortable and more than comfortable. Judging by the expressions on their faces, they know they are beautiful, they know they are sexually attractive, and they like being both.

Just because some lunatic social engineers say naked people are automatically objectified doesn't make it so. When you get right down to it, most objections to depictions of naked people are thinly disguised Puritanism, nothing more.

Is it possible for a depiction of a naked person to objectify the person or people of their sex? Certainly. Modern sexually explicit depictions objectify the men far more often than the women, when both are together. The pictures and videos have her name on them. They seldom have his. She makes most of the money. He doesn't. She often speaks. He doesn't. Her face is always visible. His isn't. The camera frames her, not him. He rarely looks at the camera. She often does. The poses he is required to assume are often awkward and physically painful to hold for any length of time. Hers can be as well, but not as often. He is there to showcase her. He is an accessory, a piece of furniture with a penis. Even the much-maligned cumshot is evidence of her sexual prowess, not his. She made him orgasm under stressful conditions, and give up his genetic material. This is no mean feat, as sales of Viagra indicate. Inability to achieve or maintain an erection is most often evidence of emotional distress on his part, not a physical dysfunction, or Viagra wouldn't work. Viagra forces performance, despite his distress.

If you insist on shedding a tear over objectification of humans in porn, shed it for the male of the species, not the female.