Kanye = the best artist in the world

How did you not get rated +5 funny for that?
Kanye's a great example; if that no-talent douche can make millions, then really, that proves the bar's not really set very high.

...I'd just be happy if our local news stations would share with us such basic facts as the skin color of the bloody suspect.

They seem to avoid it unless the criminals are white or asian, for reasons that likely depend on your political bias; they are failing to describe brown-skinned criminals ....
a) because they're conservative, and assume that you assume 'criminals are brown anyway', or
b) because they're liberal, and they don't want to confirm the stereotype that criminals are mostly brown

I'm not saying to strip ALL information away, but certainly in the above cases, none of them would be improved, from an objective point of view, by the jury knowing the ethnicity of either party, for example?
Or by being able to tell, by a person's language, accent, or clothing what economic demographic they come from?

Obviously, some information critical to the exposition of the case would be necessary. I'm saying to use technology to strip away the inessentials as much as possible, to remove the widely recognized racial, social, and economic biases everyone brings into the jury box.

Is this story sort of like the ones that told us how 'pirate downloaders' and 'the internet' were going to bankrupt the music industry and drive musicians into the poorhouse?

Let me call Kanye and Rihanna, see if maybe I could send them a donation and help them out a little bit? Those poor kids, just struggling to get by. Like the whole music industry....clearly, they're doomed.

I'm going to the Mall today.
I'll be there from about 4pm until about 8.

See you there, bitches.

Curiously, you still managed to avoid discussing (or more specifically, disputing) his facts, which was precisely the previous poster's point?

I can find no reference to him in the recent Congressional Records. I am a skeptic of the phrase "One of scientists they quote most often is Wei-Hock Soon" as this is the first I've ever heard of him. And you would think the Congressional Record of floor debates and speeches would be the place to find a mention of him if "elected officials who want to block the EPA and legislation on climate change frequently refer to [him]." Does anyone have a reference to back this statement up?

If they're selling them as realistic copies, then is there even a problem? Is there copyright on 100 year old paintings?

...I'd like to see technology deliver a true veil of ignorance between juries and prosecutor/defendant/court.
It would be the job of prosecutor, defendant (under the eye of the judge) to present a basic outline of events with neuter models in a visualized space. Witnesses could be questioned and cross examined in real time, but with the judge having a time delay circuit allowing the to excise any non relevant information to the case...defendant would not be a white man or black woman, just "defendant", etc.

I actually live near a REAL one.

http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blo...

No, seriously, it's a hole in the ground, into which half of a decent-sized river dumps.
They have put everything from dye, to pingpong balls, to (amusingly) a car - and none of it has ever come up anywhere.

That quote from Banks (damn I actually miss him) illustrates that as much as academe might sneer at 'space opera' as not "real literature", this man demonstrated in one observation a better, more fundamental understanding of the development of civilizations than several shiploads of professors and a whole ark of anthropology grad students.

...that he will be strongly in favor of whatever the audience is in favor of in whatever venue he's speaking (because he won't really talk to Republicans anyway, so in that sense self-selecting).

Honestly, where do you live that consumers would tolerate having to ask the clerk to hand them stuff?

Here in the midwest US, sure, that's true for small high value electronics, jewelry, and cosmetics - none of which is commonly packaged like this, as you observed. Then again, they are what, 1% of purchase transactions?

Not to mention that the game is very sensitive to (perceived) reward levels.
Tweak some values up or down (or you don't even have to tweak the actual rewards, simply the perception of reward values) and the outcomes can vary radically.

Moreover, I think we can all agree that when it comes to mating strategies - which are really the only one that matters, evolutionarily - choices are not always based on cerebral, cogent weighting of costs, benefits, risks, and rewards...more often "opportunity", "desire", and frankly, "alcohol".