... This is the opposite of the purpose behind Marx's condemnation of religion. Marx saw religion as filling a bread and circuses role - people would quietly suffer through abuse by those in power, with the belief that they would be rewarded in heaven. In other words, religion is about monopolizing focus and control and communists sought to break away from that.

This is indeed surprising to me. I'm anyone - you're saying that I can find someone's location this way? Or are you saying that only someone with access to the phone company's network can do this?

That's true, but it was always the build team (Kari, Grant, and Tory) doing that. Standard episode breakdown:

1) Teaser talking about something interesting, we'll call this "project one".
2) First steps towards building project one.
3) Go to something completely different with the build team, which possibly has some tangential thematic ties to project one.
4) First steps towards this second project, we'll call this "project blow-up-something-and-laugh-about-it".
5) Show some small scale models of project one, but don't go any further, just to hold the audience's interest.
6) Flip back and forth between the two groups, making sure to hint each time that the audience might actually learn something next time.
7) Finish project blow-up-something-and-laugh-about-it. Watch Kari, Grant, and Tori force out laughter and exclaim about how awesome that thing was when it exploded.
8) Finally get around to finishing the interesting project. Hope that the audience says, "Better late than never..." and comes back for another episode.

Really, I don't have any issues with Kari, Grant, and Tory. They seem like decent people and it was pretty clear that their excitement over the stupid shit was forced. The producers are to blame for the state of the show... In fact, I recall something where Adam was up on stage talking about Mythbusters production and pretty well said as much about one particular producer. None the less, if they drop the build team and don't replace them with something equally heinous the show will be better off for it.

Incidentally, there are fan edits of Mythbuster projects where they cut out the cruft. Search for "Smyths."

Bizarrely, I am encouraged that so many posts are pointing out the missing name. "Wow," I'm saying to myself, "The first three posts are all by people who have read the summary and not just the title." A tiny victory for intelligent discourse.

Maybe I'm setting the bar too low.

Per capita. It's from this report.

Proves that? One anonymous poster's declaration that the researchers are hiding something *proves* your racist nonsense? The researchers did a pretty standard comparison of data on twins to data on the general population, there's a good chance they didn't even have racial information.

And, of course, you're illustrating the real problem with this idea: it would cost money. Money for buildings and money for teachers, and if there's one thing that Americans won't abide by (there are actually many things) it's spending money on stuff that doesn't blow other stuff up. Or medicare. (but not socialized health care! we aren't communists!)

This isn't true. Contacts have come a long way, you can even get soft contacts now which will work with an astigmatism. Talk to your optometrist - I used to think that I wouldn't be able to wear contacts without pain, but for me at least that also has changed.

He is trying to make the claim that Snowden is hiding out in Russia, sacrificing his freedom for the sake of security from American persecution. Ignoring, of course, that Snowden is much more free in Russia than he would be in the United States.

Apparently Oracle has sunk $1.36 mil into lobbying against this because they are using the CFAA to "protect trade secrets." Presumably they're holding the threat of ridiculous prison sentences over their employees' heads to keep them from leaking any of Oracle's precious bodily fluids, but someone must have some idea of what it is that Oracle is trying to hide, even if you all don't know the particulars. Spill.

Is it some special sauce for tricking state governments into contracting with Oracle when they could be working with a different, competent company? Or into buying ten times as many licenses as they actually need? Doubtless there's some reason why Oracle is as rich as it is...

Prior to Citizen's United, trade unions were also prohibited from making political donations.

It's Verizon who is trying to charge for access to their customers (who have already payed for the service that they're not getting), not the other way around.

I... offer to rent you a car with a premium agreement for unlimited mileage and free gas at participating gas stations*.

* Gas allotment limited to one gallon per week.

It's not impossible. I don't expect it from Netflix, but ESPN has already done this. Of course, it shouldn't be taken as an argument against network neutrality, this is an argument for it, but the ISPs try to twist it around...

I says to myself, "That doesn't sound right, Apple doesn't really pioneer anything..." After a little searching: looks like Maltron made the first one in 1978. However, apparently a guy named K.H. Eberhard Kroemer published a paper describing a split keyboard in the journal Human Factors in 1972.

So there you are. History!