Who the fuck is Bennett Haselton and why should a give a single shit about what he says?

Tort reform has been aggressively resisted by half of the US political system for decades, despite its issues exerting a pernicious effect on everything from education to medicine to the economy.

https://www.opensecrets.org/or...

Notice which party they're giving to.
Vote accordingly.

"Future historians will place tremendous blame on China's government ..."

Unless, as many suspect, they'll be writing in Chinese. Then perhaps the 'memory' of events will perhaps be slightly different.

...is that the main barrier to efficient algorithms for exiting Burning Man would boil down to "Rules are a drag, man."

FWIW I was only about 50 miles south of Tower MN when they hit -60F (-51C) and was outside a fair amount of the time that evening.

Honestly, from the POV of a northern MN resident, there isn't THAT much difference in feeling between -50C and -35C (unless there's wind), and the fact that I can say that authoritatively would already suggest that I'm a giant step more psychologically capable of accepting a martian equatorial climate of +20C down to maybe -20C, than is some mamby-pamby Californian or Floridian.

And why it'll never get solved?

"always Republicans (Score:5, Insightful) "

Who's been responsible for our worthless education system breeding generations of ignorance that elect these congressmen? Democrats.

Who's inculcated a culture of 'victim mentality' and balkanized the US population into enclaves of entitlement and grievance? Democrats.

Who politicized science away from a simple, relatively objective process into advocacy, spinning facts to suit political goals? Democrats.

Just sayin'. There's PLENTY of blame to go around. As much as the Republicans seem to be a party of know-nothings, Democrats (with their recent political successes) are more of an arrogant, patronizing party of know-it-alls. Let's remember that the Democrats position on nuclear power since the 1970s has, for example, made global warming immeasurably worse.

"...The outcome is pretty clear, either science wins or humanity looses."

When one is railing against ignorance, one needs to make sure they use words correctly.

I'm just sayin'.

"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."

Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?

That quote above is pretty much normal life for 6 months every year in MN...he said, looking out the window at 10" of new snow on April 4.

I'm only 80% joking. I kind of wonder if the people from here (and northward into America's hat) would be just psychologically better prepared for this sort of thing from a lifetime of having great chunks of your year sequestered inside.

...I mean, mainstream Islam is seriously anti-gay.

So all these folks hounding this guy for his (relatively trivial) political support for a cause 6 years ago must certainly then be ardent and vocal in their anti-muslim rhetoric?

Because hounding someone out because of their 'intolerant' views is one thing.
Picking on someone because you know they're not going to fight back just makes you a pussy.

"...The only way to get HD versions of the episodes would be to re-render every single CGI and comp shot, and Warners will never, ever pay to have that done..."

Considering the processing power today in 2014 vs 1994-1998 (series run years), fans could probably render all the CGI scenes into HD on their Ipads between watching videos of cats over the span of a weekend:

For example:
Intel Pentium 90 (March 1994)
Transistor Count: 3.2 million
Clock Speed: 90 MHz
Process Scale: 600 nm
Thermal Design Power: 9 Watts
CTP Benchmark: 90 MTOPS
Benchmarks: 0.09 GFLOPS
Dhrystone: 107 DMIPS

Core i7-3770 (Ivy Bridge) (April 2012)
Transistor Count: 1,400~ million
Clock Speed: 3,400 MHz
Process Scale: 22 nm
Chip Size: 160 mm2
Thermal Design Power: 77 Watts
CTP Benchmark: 136,000 MTOPS (Base)
Benchmarks: 108.8 GFLOPS (Base)

So in turn you support Evangelical Christian companies boycotting people and causes in favor of gay marriage, abortion, etc? How do you feel about the Hobby Lobby case at the Supreme Court? OK with CEOs limiting services to people who disagree with them in their company?

Just making sure you're not a hypocrite, nor that High Horse you're riding in on.

The story's not that incredible (I wouldn't be surprised if the US government mandated all children be encased in bubble-wrap before leaving home, frankly), but this made me smell an April Fool joke: "... 13 to 15 deaths and 1,125 injuries may be prevented with the implementation of this new requirement...."

If serious, that's ridiculous. More people are killed by plungers every year.
If not serious, then very well played. A joke that's so subtly on the border of credulity that you have to actually figure out you're being pranked is well done.

By slashdot's standards (if applied objectively) the whole IPCC is flamebait, you tendentious fucks.

Not just because I'm a bit of nihilist on Mondays, I suspect that it has a great deal to do with the ossification of the various national and international systems.

We've had the longest span of great-power peace really ever in modern history...of course that doesn't actually mean "peace", but it does mean an absence of outright war.

Which means that there haven't been any cataclysmic shocks to the system. The dirt's not getting turned over, so to speak. The closest thing to a 'rewrite' since 1945 was the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact...but this means that the West has churned on obliviously for 70 years. The only time I can think of before that was the end of the 19th century and likewise we had a massive agglomeration of wealth and governmental systems that disregarded the masses (until they needed them in 1914, of course...).

More importantly to this discussion, in re the US, is that the US has been essentially free from any threat since 1812....200 years of safety has made our elites indolent, lazy, and self-indulgent because frankly they haven't been put up against the wall by an angry mob since well out of memory.

As long as they keep us distracted with TMZ, the Kardashians, the latest MMO release (and for the "engaged" the very meaningful red vs blue arguments between Republicrats and Democans, or are we arguing over abortion today?) the benighted public is like a cheerful herd of milk cows, happily tromping out in the morning, munching nice grass during the day, to be called in the evening to be milked. It's not a bad deal for the cows, actually.

"Really, the sky is falling! Really truly, we mean it this time. Don't pay attention to the previous reports that predicted the end of glaciers, an ice-free arctic, etc by around now, we were slightly off. But this time, we're absolutely positive the sky is falling.

Really.

Seriously."