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!

The point that I was trying to make is that comparing smallpox to a gun, or even a nuclear weapon, isn't accurate. Using smallpox as a weapon is MAD even if you're the only one using it. The purpose of pointing a gun at another armed person is the idea that if you shoot him first, and do it thoroughly enough, he then won't be able to shoot you. That is not the case with smallpox.

Having live samples available is also not needed or useful for producing the vaccine. The only argument that I've heard in favor of keeping some samples around which isn't totally loony, and this is a recent development, is that genetics manipulation has reached the point where artificially creating something comparable isn't insurmountably difficult anymore. So smallpox is less of a threat, basically by obsolescence. As this is a recent state of affairs however, this does not justify holding onto it as they have for the last few decades.

That is not the argument. I don't know what the argument is, but it can't be that - it doesn't make any sense. If we voluntarily destroy all our samples, and some other nation doesn't, then there will be that much less smallpox. This is a valuable goal in itself, even if it doesn't mean that the virus has been completely eradicated.

No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it, and the idea that we would need samples of our own to retaliate is preposterous. For one thing, the entire premise of this scenario is that this other country has just given us all the samples that we could possibly want. For another, we still have tons and tons of missiles and bombs just sitting there, looking for a way to justify all of the money that we paid for them.

Could you elaborate on the substantial reduction in titles? I've recently moved to a rural area without the broadband that I'd need for streaming and have been thinking about Netflix's disc service. The other things I've heard of, but why would they reduce the number of titles that they offer?

It sure sounds like he's talking about Consumer Reports here. But the solution already exists, and he got burned anyway, so maybe the real solution is complaining about it on Slashdot. That gets things done.

Namely, our native poor aren't as desperate as they used to be.

I'm confused by your question. What exactly do they do with the taxes? They pay down the debt, they fund infrastructure, they fund education, they fund the military, they fund the arts, they fund research, etc, etc... Most of all, for this case, they fund the environmental clean up and disaster relief resulting from the pollution. What is the confusion here?

This has come up before, and I ended up in an extended conversation with someone who was absolutely insistent that the universe was infinite. But he wasn't able to actually explain this. I don't see the basis for this assumption and I can't understand why it seems to be so widespread, is this some new(ish) theory that I haven't heard of? It's my understanding that the universe, as we currently know it (in other words the area effected by the big bang), extends only a few hundred thousand light years beyond the point of last scattering. Further, since the observable universe is slightly larger than last scattering, whatever may be beyond what we can see is unlikely to be familiar.

The problem with "publish or perish" isn't the fact that scientists have to eventually share their results, it's the volume of publishing that's expected which gets in the way of actual work. When a scientist has a data set and the first thought is "How many papers can I get out of this?" it's an indication that something is wrong.

Well, you could have phrased that a little better... I do think it's odd that a Superman costume would be so integral to this monument when the only suggestion that the kid cared about Superman at all was a single comment by his abusive father.

Random Stranger who's organizing this didn't know the kid at all... which is itself also rather odd. Monuments like this aren't for the dead, after all, they're for the living, those who still remember and care about the people who have passed, and Random Stranger never knew this kid. Random Stranger doesn't know the first thing about his personality. Why is it so important to Random Stranger whether or not the statue is dressed like Superman?

Try looking at it this way: the 2012 election cost our economy just shy of $2 billion. If we do it through the voucher system, one of Mayday's proposed solutions, we can set that amount to whatever we like. Say $200 million, roughly the same as funded through FECA. That's a dramatic improvement in efficiency.

Now how you see that depends on your attitude towards money: the efficient method comes out of taxes (partially paid for by you), while the inefficient method is paid by third parties. In other words, the cost of the election in the inefficient case effects you indirectly rather than directly. As long as you are in any way connected to this economy though, you would feel it.