Sorry, I admit that I was slightly off topic there, responding to the separation of church and state comment. I was trying to point out that separation of church and state doesn't practically exist. I'm not saying the company is trying to make it difficult, I'm saying the religion as whole is trying to make it difficult for EVERYONE, not just their adherents. Mind you, why should one employer be exempt based on religous grounds but another employer not be exempt from paying for work place safety because the owner of that system is a free market capitalist who doesn't believe he should have to pay for worker safety? Why is religous objection special? Why do we even entertain these arguments, but not say technology company that doesn't want to have to pay for medical costs related to cancers with incredibly high mortatlity rates regardless of treatment. Or CPR, which has something riduclous like 4% chance of being successful. These arguments are based on on a sincere belief in that data and backed by evidence.

Looking from the outside, your separation of church and state in the U.S. is a joke. The fact that issues like abortion and contraception are issues of state/federal policy and not individual conscience is only the most obvious indicator of this. Then there's the disproportional political clout of the bible belt in your politics. Yes, while technically the U.S. is a secular state with freedom of religion, the electoral system links the church and state in non-explicit ways. Practically speaking, the U.S. is a Christian nation which tolerates (very impressively in most cases) the practice and observance of other religions, but for the most part it's laws are drafted from a Christian moral background, and generally benefit Christians above others.

In general religions can be organised according to their permissiveness, and Christianity is fairly permissive. But when it comes to politics, we don't like to talk about permisiveness. We prefer to call it liberty. Some religions believe in some incrediblby harsh punishements for minor social/religious infractions. But no, in a modern democracy, where some people (i.e. 'Us Christains') don't believe those infractions are infractions at all, or merit such punishments, we call it 'liberty' and say people can't be punished that way. I agree with this, personally. Up a level, some religions don't allow the eating of pork. But some people like pork and eat it (i.e. 'Us Christians' again), so we can't ban prok products outright becasue that would infringe on my liberty. You are free not to eat pork products, but you can't stop me from having them. That's called 'liberty' buddy! Some religions don't like people having casual sex (generally women are judged more harshly in this than men, but I'll ignore that for the moment). But some people do like fucking around, so we can't interfere with their practices ... well actually, fine! we can't BAN it, but we can make it difficult, i.e. interfere with their actions, for those people to have access to the medical care that supports their choices. Because that's 'liberty' buddy, I'm free to do as much as I (a modern Christian) want to do, but anything I don't like... well that's different.

The insurance provider is required by law to provide coverage for contraception, but it's still free to charge what it wants for that coverage based on risk. Why don't they create a plan which they offer only to specific groups people where that plan still provides coverage for contraception/maternity/etc, based on a vastly reduced risk factor. The risk of a nun wanting contraception is very small, but not non-existent I'm guessing. The risks of a nun needing maternity care are slightly higher (e.g. in cases of rape, where the nun would never choose to abort or prevent pregnancy with a morning after pill). The point being, because the risks are low, the insurance provider can say: Hey, on our plan, you won't pay for cover of contraceptives, maternity, family planning etc, but we will still provide the cover if it happens, because the risk is so low the cover can be paid for out of a little bit of the general risk pool. Every insurance provider manages has a general risk pool, where they aggregate all the possible events that occur so infrequently as to be entirely stochastic over the time periods in question, for example, a year, 5 years etc. They just can't plan for covering the expenses down that level of risk detail, because the stats don't work at such low frequencies. I'm sure there will be cases, but very rarely, in which maternity care and even possibly contraception might be medically necessary for someone who hasn't acted against their faith. Again, the case of rape springs to mind, but there's also the use of oral contraceptives to deal with disease related hormonal imbalances, and probably others.

There are sensible ways to do this where faith doesn't need to be compromised, so yeah, this is about a certain group of people trying to enforce their own way on other people. Cristian Scientists refuse a wide variety of modern medical procedures becasue it goes against their faith. Will they get to challenge mandatory health care in it's entirety?

instructions unclear; got tumour stuck in revolving door

(For anyone actually wondering, 95.45% is actually the percentage of data expected to fall within two standard deviations of the mean in a Gaussian distribution. Five standard deviations is much, much more stringent—and not really standard outside of particle physics. As we all know, most amateur scientists have the knowledge and ingenuity to discover novel quantum interactions and particles on a regular basis, and merely lack the necessary funding to access synchrotrons to test their theories.)

I really don't think his intention was to discredit amateur science by linking to the search results of "proof that amateur science sucks."

Storing value on a or other physical token that is clonable and/or manipulable basically means you can create 'value' out of nothing. This is government sanctioned. Created value isn't taxed, can be used a anonymously as cash, and can be used to transfer money (real or fake) without the governments knowledge. Granted, I don't see your local drug dealer accepting cloned MiFare cards... actually, chances are local organised crime already distributes them, so they are already part of the same economy, so if they can be sold, they could be accepted. But bitcoins are bad? I don't get it.

Well, it's sort of complicated.

On one hand—it's probably worth pointing out that the American punitive system is absolutely insane, and the mildness of this should not be taken as evidence of a defective process simply because it doesn't follow suit. Indeed, there are some fairly involved legal and philosophical reasons as to why the punishments aren't more extreme. Here is a paper on it. (I haven't read all of it, but it seems sensible enough from the first few pages.) One of the key points is that a lot of money goes down the toilet on dead ends and genuine errors anyway; another is that scientific misconduct isn't actually illegal, so the power of funding bodies to defend themselves is somewhat limited. In the end, the top priority is still getting them out of science.

It's not. After this no one will touch him; his career as a researcher is over. For professors, three years of no federal grants is generally enough to kill the entire lab, and a three-year lapse in publishing is enough to kill any career on its own, with the possible exception of the most hard-boiled tenure.

Somewhat irrelevant trivia: in Toronto there is a moving company called "El Cheapo." Their motto is "Don't be a shmoe call EL CHEAPO" (replete with missing comma.) Ecce!

That is the definition of uncool.

Yes, different tool for different jobs, but presumably you expect your plumber to know how use his tools effectively and productively. Same for your electrician, car mechanic, etc. Also, you expect these guys to be able to do basic diagnostics and repairs on their own tools. Why then do you think it's okay for your local government admin clerk, or bank cashier, or receptionist to be able to competently use their tools, i.e. computers. Sure, they only need to know how to use MS Word, how to connect to the network, the internet, the filesystem, excel, how to burn a CD/DVD, ... wow, actually there's quite a bit to know. So much so it takes some time to learn it all. If you don't know all of it then you are not qualified to do your job. Yes, not everyone needs to know the command line, but everyone who uses a computer professionally does need some basic admin skills.