This is what I miss most. At one time Yahoo and Google were competing in desktop search and you had two powerful engines to choose between.

And the way they dropped their desktop search application was infuriating - it was dropped with less than a week's notice, which was little publicized (I missed it) so you did not have a chance to save the installer (assuming it was complete in itself), and they did not open source the code base so that others could maintain it.

Now the best I have for Linux systems is Recoll, it seems. Pretty effective on common formats, but clunky, and no features to keep the index up-to-date. (If anyone knows something better, please tell me.)

Yes, there at least three levels of "second guessing", the first is harmless ("did you mean" suggestions) but usually stupid, these don't change your results; the second level is "improving" your search by deleting various terms from a multi-term query (how else to get specificity?) in the top list of results; the third level is deciding you really wanted to search for something entirely different, and searching on that instead. And all of this is in addition to their type-ahead suggestions, which prompt you for popular searches right from the get-go.

The (insane) premise seems to be 'of course you really want your search to return an ocean of 10 million hits, rather than narrowing down to 10 or 100 actually relevant ones'.

Wow.

Stunning ignorance and arrogance (from someone who cannot find the shift key).

Excavations of the ancestor of other primate lineages are quite common.

All you have to do is type "primate fossils" in Google or Bing and be buried in links to same.

This is impossible. Long distance ground line systems cannot be constructed without easements of private property, a restricted but real form of abrogating property rights for the benefit of the private enterprise laying the lines.

The fact is communication companies get to use other people's property for free so that they can profit.

Your link does not support your claim in any way.

Old lame stunt: the fake "supporting link".

The EPA employs 16,000 people full-time and contracts out work to many more, so that is 3 studies per employee per year. I fail to notice anything ridiculous about the number.

Do tell us, what is the "right" number of studies?

Googling "Queen of England is really a lizard"... whoa! 16.9 million hits! The top one: Reasons The Queen Is A Bloody Lizard. Will wonders never cease...

Perhaps you should reply. Currently I would say on-lookers would conclude he decked you in a fight you jumped into, and then you ran away claiming you were "too proud to fight".

Between the CIA, which spied on Mandela and tipped the South African secret police off to where to grab him, and the Apartheid regime itself, every scrap of dirt about Mandela was vigorously publicized by the supporters of the regime for 30 years. I'm sure it would have pleased them that their efforts did not go unheard, that violent oppression still has its fans.

Because those with power would never, ever use their power to punish people who say things they dislike?

If you spoke in the public square in days past those words would not be easily retrievable by anyone in the world, forever. Lack of anonymity then was fundamentally, profoundly different from now.

Hmm... perusing definitions of "espionage", both common and legal, they all have as a common element that the obtaining and disclosing of classified information is done on behalf of a foreign country.

I have never seen the U.S. government allege that Snowden was acting as a spy for any nation.

So: no espionage.

See the difference?

I think you are on to something. Right-wing extremist oil/energy money has been a potent factor in U.S. politics since the 1940s, witness the John Birch Society founded and run by Fred Koch. Its in-your-face craziness led to it being rejected by the Republican mainstream in the early 1960s, and then marginalized, but this very small group had enormous financial resources, and patience and has built up an enormous infrastructure to push their policies over the years, not just at the national level but in states around the country. It was an odd spectacle when the newly elected Governor Walker of Wisconsin took a call he thought was from Charles Koch and assured that citizen of Kansas that he was on board with his anti-union legislation program; evidently this resident of another state who could not cast a vote for him is Walker's real "constituent".

With the Tea party the John Birch Society in effect took over complete control of the Republican Party.

Just as the OIl Birchers have been taking control of the politics of states they don't live in, they seem to be pushing their politics in Canada too, no doubt with the assistance of much Canadian oil money. Farmers are being threatened with losing their farms in Nebraska so that a pipeline of Canadian tar-oil from tar sands project partly owned by the Koch brothers can get to Koch refineries in Louisiana.

Anyone opposing oil money will certainly get crushed, sooner rather than later.

He meant this yellow cake! That other stuff is just uranium ore.

According to this article lawn darts killed 4 people (3 of them children) and injured 6700 before they were banned. The article ranks them as the most dangerous toy.

Citation please? Just you because you believe it does not make it true.