I wouldn't call it a metaphor, nor would I say that Asimov's point is that you can't codify morality. His point is more subtle: a code of morality, even a simple one, doesn't necessarily imply what we think it does. It's a very rabbinical kind of point.

I nominated "dingleberry".

Spin, sure, but it's a waay bigger minority than I expected. I'd even say even shockingly large.

The genius of Asimov's three laws is that he started by laying out rules that on the face of it rule out the old "robot run amok" stories. He then would write, if not a "run amok" story, one where the implications aren't what you'd expect. I think the implications of an AI that surpasses natural human intelligence are beyond human intelligence to predict, even if we attempt to build strict rules into that AI.

One thing I do believe is that such a development would fundamentally alter human society, provided that the AI was comparably versatile to human intelligence. It's no big deal if an AI is smarter than people at chess; if it's smarter than people at everyday things, plus engineering, business, art and literature, then people will have to reassess the value of human life. Or maybe ask the AI what would give their lives meaning.

Dear moderators: "Troll" is not a synonym for "I disagree with this".

That said, I disagree with this.

We've known since the investigation of 9/11 that suicide bombers are not necessarily dead-enders except in the literal sense. Economic powerlessness might play a role in the political phenomenon of extremist violence, but it is not a necessary element of the profile of a professional extremist. These people often come from privileged backgrounds and display average to above average job aptitude.

Mohammed Atta's life story makes interesting reading. He was born to privileged parents; at the insistence of his emotionally distant father he wasn't allowed to socialize with other kids his age, and had a lifelong difficulty with relating to his peers. At university he did OK but below the high expectations of his parents. He went to graduate school in urban planning where his thesis was on how impersonal modern high rise buildings ruined the historic old neighborhoods of the Muslim world.

That much is factual; as to why he became an extremist while countless others like him did not, we can only speculate. I imagine that once he decided modernity was the source of his personal dissatisfactions Al Qaeda would be attractive to him. Al Qaeda training provided structure which made interacting with his new "peers" easier than ever before. And martyrdom promised relief from the dissatisfactions of a life spent conscious of his own mediocrity. Altogether he was a miserable and twisted man -- but not economically miserable.

Banning Mosques is cultural self-defense.

You mean cultural suicide. After all, it violates the freedom of religion, which is absolutely vital for the marketplace of ideas to exist. That marketplace is the essence of Western Culture, underlaying every currently reigning local ideas.

The only thing mosques do is give the local populace a chance to copy whatever good ideas Islam might have, and of course the other way around. And the only ones it threatens are those who are on top in current status quo and wish it to remain.

And that point is encapsulated in a single adverb: still. "Still" is what makes this news; it wouldn't have been news twenty or thirty years ago.

I am old enough to remember when genital equipment was considered employment destiny. When my wife went to oceanography graduate school the sysadmins of the school minicomputers were all female. The all-male faculty called them -- I kid you not -- "Data Dollies". Data dolly was considered a good job for a technically inclined woman because it paid well for an entry level job, involved computers, and was an easy job to hand off when you quit to marry the professor you'd snagged. Plus they'd have a hard time getting work in industry. Clearly that was a transitional moment because there were a substantial minority of women graduate students in the program, but *no* female professors, much less senior administrators.

But given the strong cohort of women in that class, it is surprising the thirty years later there is still a lingering perception in this country that science isn't for women. But maybe it shouldn't be surprising. Change doesn't happen instantaneously, nor does it necessarily ever become complete. When I was in college the notion that women had to become full time homemakers was still predominant -- not among students, but of people over thirty or so, practically everyone in positions of hiring and authority. That attitude seems weird and foreign to a young person today; I expect it's hard for a young person to grasp how pervasive and indeed how genuinely oppressive that belief was. It's a bit like the difference between the way I experience watching Mad Men and the way my kids do. I actually *recognize* that world where smoking was everywhere, big shots drank during office hours, and "womanizing" was a word people actually used without irony. It was fading fast, but still there. To my kids it's like an alien civilization in Doctor Who. So yes, the news that many Americans see science as a profession that somehow belongs to men is a bit like discovering a Silurian in the closet.

The women of my generation fought hard to establish a beachhead in male dominated professions, and if they're sometimes a bit snippy about it, well they earned the right. It wasn't easy to be an oddball among your peers and freak to your parents, teachers and and people in authority generally. And this was at a time when there was no such thing as geek chic to offset the disadvantages being an oddball. Being a geek was bad, period.

Now that cadre of pioneering women is at or approaching the apex of their careers. They're still a minority in their age cohort, but they left a wide open hole in their wake for the next generation. It's taken awhile for that hole to fill up because when opportunities open for a group they go for more high-profile professions (47% of medical students are women, as are 48% of law students). But in another generation I am sure the view that science belongs to one sex or another will be a truly fringe belief.

Raise the tax rate to 75% of the corporate profit and see what happens...

Companies will reinvest revenue rather than pay it out as dividends. Also, stock prices fall as future expected dividends are cut by 75%, and then rise again as said reinvestment makes economy grow faster.

Actually, this could be just the stimulus economy needs...

The only way to do that is raise prices.

If you can make more profit by rising prices, why haven't you done so already?

If I am unable to raise prices that far, then I'll invest the $10 million of capital somewhere else.

"Somewhere else" is taxed too, so it'll do you no good. You'll simply have to settle for a level of profit the market can offer, the same as everyone else. Of course, you could sit on your $10 million and let inflation eat it away.

If my current profit is $1 million and you now say it will be only $100K due to new taxes, then either my prices have to go way up, or the product/service won't be offered.

In the latter case your profit will be negative due to inflation. $100K is the best option you have. And, should you decide to pass as a protest or whatever, that's okay too, your competitors will gladly expand their market.

Definition of irony:

a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

But if you're aware of the concept of irony, and people find it amusing, and that people are fond of posting things they find amusing, this logically means that you're expecting something unexpected, which thus is not unexpected, thus nothing can be ironic to one who knows of irony, not even this very fact.

There is no parsing of the OP that indicates he's talking about suicide.

If you drive someone to suicide, is it really a suicide or a homicide?

Sure, they're dead because they were too weak to deal with your shit, but then again, the guy I shot is dead because he was too weak/slow/unobservant to shoot me first.

Why just two people? That seems like it discriminates against people who want three people in a marriage...

It does, but removing gender requirements from marriage law is much simpler - and thus less likely to have unintended negative consequences - than allowing 3- or n-way marriages. The law doesn't have proper encapsulation or interfaces, thus every change could interact with anything else - but other laws are already supposed to be gender-neutral, so it shouldn't.

But if you're a polygamist who adopted, who gets the kids...Sue or Molly? Who gets the house? Which one makes the call to keep you on a feeding tube while you're in the coma?

Wouldn't these issues be solved by what this post argued for: incorporated marriage? So the answer to all these would be "the legal entity created through the marriage contract", which is controlled by its members.

Abandon all that, and telling your wife that you hate the boss at work, can be used against you when they find that the boss was run over at work.

If this is indeed true, then you have bigger problems than marriage. Freedom of speech - or chilling effects on it - is not a minor matter.

Because it is one of the very few institutions found in all human cultures. Any legal system that doesn't deal with marriage in some fashion is profoundly deficient.

That's just not true. Until fairly recently in human history, marriage was largely a religious and private issue.

Until fairly recently in human history, religion was the law, and no issue could be both religious and private.

Except I don't see how that applies in this case. Stay or leave -- it's not the bank's call. But if politicians are putting leaving the EU on the table, even as an empty gesture, then naturally the bank has to start thinking about contingency plans. That's just common sense, even if you think the very idea of leaving the EU is mad.

It's also common sense to keep that on the DL to prevent misguided overreaction to what is after all still a hypothetical scenario. The Bank of England a central bank and so people must be constantly scrutinizing it hoping to glean inside information on future monetary policy. That's to say nothing of having to deal with the conspiracy theory nutters.