No, if Iran sides with the US in stomping out ISIS, they are definitely not choosing the lesser evil...

No, just lying in bed, working from home at my highly paid job, wondering when it was that slashdot got so lame. Used to be people came back with facts. Or counter arguments. Or opinions of their own. Or experiences of their own.

But it's been reduced to the point where the only opposition I ever get to my statements is from idiots who try to paint me as something I'm not and attack that. It's sad. You're sad.

I'm everything I ever said that I was. My life is stranger than fiction most of the time anyway, I have no need to lie to get people excited.

I agree... there should be a color for this. In between "Free" and "Partly free"; there should be a "Technically Free but de-facto censored" category

Why are you so afraid to call a spade a spade? The USA is NOT a free country. They censor people, they incarcerate more of their population than any other country, they make debt slaves of the people that remain... they are NOT FREE, and they're using war to spread their NOT FREEDOM everywhere they can because they hate OUR freedom.

Yes, they do. But not all of them and certainly not in the manner that the GP presented. One needs to actually understand how the system works before one condemns it and/or proposes fixes for it. Incidentally, most of the people in politics hate the system as much as you do. You think they enjoy spending so much of their day begging people for money so they can fund their campaigns? The real world isn't House of Cards, most people actually enter public service for noble reasons, ranging from the mundane fixing of potholes to the desire to advance a social cause. The problem is two fold:

1) Campaign finance reform is inherently suspect because it's passed by people who have an incentive to make it harder for incumbents to lose elections. There's a reason why opponents frequently referred to McCain-Feingold as the "Incumbent Protection Act"

2) Meaningful campaign finance reform would require a Constitutional Amendment; the idea I most liked was the notion of precluding private donations but giving every American citizen X dollars to allocate as they see fit. It's an awesome idea but one that's utterly unconstitutional. Perhaps you should start building a network for this concept rather than spouting talking points about money going into Senators pockets?

Having everybody live off a high protein diet is unsustainable. There are whole segments of American society that couldn't afford it, never mind the third world, and even if money was no object it would be completely unsustainable from an environmental standpoint.

It's cute though that you took what I was saying and morphed it into "cutting sugar is unsustainable"; all I did was condemn your silly paleo diet, not the notion of cutting sugar or making other healthy lifestyle choices. One can cut out soda (or even enjoy it in moderation) without adopting a made up diet that claims to be what our ancestors ate.

Of course, physical activity is even better. I eat whatever the hell I want. You can do that when you're averaging 30 miles a week of running. Pass the cheesecake, mmm'kay?

You know that talking point is total bullshit, right? What you describe would be a felony offense in the United States. Nor can corporations give money directly to campaigns. They can donate to PACs, which are a special animal in the American political system, but they can't donate directly to campaigns or candidates. When people tell you that "Big oil/telecom/Hollywood/whatever gave X dollars to Y candidate" they really mean that the employees of those industries gave X dollars to Y candidate. Work at a gas station and donate $20 to your State Assemblywoman? That's added to the total donation from "big oil" when her opponent needs a talking point.

I realize such intricacies don't make for good talking points but it would be extremely helpful if people would at least learn how the system works rather than spreading FUD that only serves to undermine the tenuous amount of faith we have left in our system.

Your ad hominem attack is irrelevant to the topic at hand. It's also flat out wrong; I've traveled to numerous different countries, and spent several years living outside my home country.

You talk about infrastructure like it's the be-all-and-end-all of everything. It's not.

Try doing any cardio of moderate to heavy intensity (which you really ought to be doing, if you want to live a long life) without carbs. Your diet is a fad and an utterly unsustainable one (from an environmental standpoint) at that. If you really want to live like our ancestors did start having sex at 10 and forgo modern medicine. You'll be dead in your 20s and the carbon impact of your selfish lifestyle will cancel itself out.

Takes some seriously Orwellian doublethink to pretend copyright enforcement isn't censorship. The idea that the USA is a bastion of freedom... wake me up when there's a study made by people who aren't batshit crazy.

What's wrong with coffee?

Except she won't be. And that's the problem. If they take their blood pressure and cholesterol meds they fucking live forever and just keep on eating. Meanwhile the rest of us get to subsidize their lifestyle choices because our healthcare system doesn't allow insurance underwriters to take lifestyle choices into account. The 40 year old sedentary fat ass pays the same as the 40 year old marathon runner.

Try running a marathon while being anti-carb and let me know how it works out for you.

You also might consider the sustainability of your little protein fetish.

Fat metabolism doesn't work that way; your body can metabolize a finite amount of fat in a given time and when the muscles call upon more energy (as they invariably will if you're sprinting) the difference is going to come from glycogen. It does take a few minutes for the fat metabolism to get going -- this is one of the reasons why distance runners warm up and/or start slow in long runs -- though there are interesting studies that suggest caffeine can accelerate the process.

The human body isn't "designed" for anything but it is remarkably adapted to endurance events. You almost can count on one hand the number of animals that can keep up with a human through a moderate endurance race (5k or 10k) never mind a marathon. Horses, dogs, the ostrich, and a few others. It's no mistake that we domesticated the first two in that list. Humans have even been known to beat the horse at a marathon on particularly hot days.

Point being, I'd question your claim that the human body is "designed" (adapted is really a better word, FYI) for long periods of rest w/short bursts of activity. What you've described there are the big cats and other ambush predators.

Get her addicted to cigarettes and cocaine. And pull out her molars. That'll get the weight off.

That may be true but at the end of the day it's still going to come down to self control. We're one of the few (the only?) animals blessed with the ability to override our base instincts. I guess some people are too powerless to do that.

Run 20 to 40 miles a week and you will sneeze at a 1.5 mile "jog" :)