Hey, if something works for you, great -- even if it doesn't have the proper evidence to support it. Everyone needs a good placebo in their back pocket. Hell, there's even a remote/outside/small/minuscule chance that something about you is different than the rest of us and said treatment does actually work on you in some unknown way. Great. But really, I don't care how far out and strange a treatment may sound, it can be tested, but that takes time and money. People truly interested in helping their fellow humans out will spend the time and money to do the proper testing and those just trying to make a buck off the gullibility of our fallible human minds won't. Where do you want to put your trust?

Don't we all do this? Maybe not on the same level, but everyone makes mistakes. All I ask is that you correct your mistake and learn from it. How many projects, business decisions, or other collaborative efforts "get it entirely right the first time"? Failing is the better part of success.

> "They're interested in getting the most effort out of their employees for the least possible reward."

That's because we all keep shopping at Wal-Mart. We all want the most we can for our money. Employer's are just meeting the demands of their customers. Since we, "the customer," want as much as possible for the least amount of money as possible, employers must cut costs to meet that demand . . . or die off and leave a more competitive company (one which likely pays it's employees less) to fill our need for cheap products/services.

Surf using a virtual machine and revert to a stored snapshot upon close. Problem solved.

(helps to preview) Here's the fixed link: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html/

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has an interesting discussion on TED (<a href="/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html">http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html</a>) about 5 distinct moral values and the different ways liberals and conservatives score on each of them. I can see where those mental differences/preferences might expose themselves physically in dress or emotionally in facial expressions. Speculation yes, but it seems plausible given that there are so many subtle visual clues we each give off that we are very much unaware of.

... and my first thought was, damn - I wish this screen was bigger. Plus as much as I despise the iTunes store (for numerous reasons), especially loaded on a PC, accessing it over the iPod Touch directly, wasn't so bad. It will be interesting to see how this thing takes off.

"In a moment, all of your plans can change" - This is true in all aspects of life. Loss of job, loss of family, and other catastrophic losses are difficult to deal with. Looking at your situation as rationally as possible and making the best of what you have left is the only way to reduce the suffering that goes along with such painful situations. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" depicts a great example of someone that did just that given an awful situation, the magnitude of which most of us, hopefully, will ever be exposed to.

One would have to delude themselves to think the rate of technical progress has slowed, I would argue that it is advancing faster then most of us realize. Furthermore, every single "advancement" or "invention" is incremental, usually in many ways. Sure, many people want to turn the brains off and assume the implementation of the car or the airplane or computers just magically happened one day, or that the inventor was some super genius that was able to create something revolutionary out of thin air, but the fact is every single invention is made up of a tremendous amount of hard work and the piecing together of many existing technologies.

Pull your head out, we are living in amazing times.

Sprint allows this, and I think AT&T does as well. Don't know about the others. Elapsed time of my message? < 3 secs
"you know what to do" <beep>

And once the "god" database is complete, you will never have to lock anything again. Everything and everyone will be tracked...all time.

"In the mean time, I simply have utterly given up, I think we would need 3 or 4 generation of basic scientific education from the 1st grade onward to change the trend."

I too have been frustrated and felt like giving up when facing the human desire to believe. "If they could only **see**", I tell myself. It's just so damn frustrating and sad, especially when the person you are talking with is suffering needlessly. I have to remind myself that I was 40 or 41 before I even "allowed" myself to question my beliefs.

I grew up in bible churches and attended a private Christian high school. So it took many things and 4 or 5 years to bring me to where I am today. A poignant question from a friend that still professes to be Christian forced me to actually question my beliefs. Other contributing factors, in no particular order included a wife that supports me no matter what, signatures of various Slashdot members, the logic of Mark Davis (a right wing radio personality in the Dallas market), the study of statistics upon return to college in my 30s, my reading of Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", and a strong desire to "understand".

I now jokingly call myself a rightwing conservative atheist, and I am more hopeful and optimistic than I was as a Christian. I also am very sympathetic to human beliefs in general, especially those centered on doing right and helping others.

The fallout of my conversion has been amazingly light to non-existent. My wife, who is one of the smartest people I know, has always had some doubts about religion but she never voiced them strongly for fear of getting into an irrational argument with her steadfastly believing husband. She joined me on much of this journey and our relationship is better than ever. All my long time friends are still Christians, and most still accept me despite my rejection of my former beliefs. I do have a couple of friends I'm afraid to tell for fear of loosing their friendships, but our friendships now suffer a little because of the secret. Another interesting result of my conversion was the need to actually grieve the death of my father from 35 year ago. All in all, this journey has had a very positive influence in my life.

I wrote all that so I could offer the possibility that it may not take 4 generations and that there may be more of us out here than any one of us realizes. Hold strong, there is hope.