Spot on, it's basically a modern version of Friends with a few popular science references. It's not about science, it's character and relationship-based and easily digestible.

Perceptions are interesting, my understanding was completely the reverse, that as the empire declined the church had to pick up the slack of looking after the population, and so developed the attributes of a state rather than being a pacifist religion.

A good point, it helps explains how the empire survived for centuries after its territory had ceased expanding. I think we see the same effects today within former colonial powers like Britain and France. The trade connections don't disappear just because they no longer officially own the country.

To be fair we're all subject to this. Everyone has a particular understanding of how the world, and people, work, borne of years of experience. Any story that goes against our understanding is naturally suspect, and rightly so in most cases. Imagine if you adjusted your view of the world to accommodate every Facebook story on the miracles of coconut oil or what have you.

How far should this be taken? Should the majority-Ukrainian sub-districts within Crimea get to decide if their sub-district is part of Ukraine or Russia? How about individual Ukrainian households within Russian-dominated sub-districts?

Managing populations is messy and there is no clear moral principle around geography, but Crimea was a Ukrainian state, under a constitution that required a nation-wide referendum. The question is, at what point are things so bad that you should violate another country's sovereignty?

Russia clearly did more than offering to annex. They actually ran the referendum after sending their military in semi-covertly, ensuring history books will forever question the legitimacy of the vote.

It is actually about 'playing in' the wood. This is more noticeable with acoustic guitars (and violins) - they will sound radically better after even a few months of playing due to the vibrations changing the wood. I suspect it softens the wood allowing the instrument to vibrate better across its entire mass but don't know the details.

There are diminishing returns, and I do agree that thinking a 70 year old guitar is intrinsically better than a 5 year old guitar is mostly psychological.

Can you explain this? I would have thought the signal would remain digital and at its original sampling rate.

This would be insightful if you clarified that you meant political action. Clearly, you are not allowed to physically disrupt a legal gay wedding any more than you can lynch a black person simply because your views call for it.

But I do agree, there's no point in saying "this is a democracy, so you are free to believe A so long as you never tell any one nor act on it". Future mind-reading tech would soon reveal what that 'liberty' was really worth.

Sort of, the problem is that the people don't want their leaders to represent all of society. They want them to hold the same personal beliefs they do and really believe in their agenda. So we get

"The only clear solution is X, because of A, B and C. Opposing arguments D, E and F are completely stupid and my political opponents are crazy." instead of

"I have come up with a solution I believe is the best compromise for all parties. It is a slightly better compromise than my opponent's."

You will note that in the ideal situation, personal beliefs are irrelevant. Eich was not in an ideal workplace.

Don't anti-discrimination hiring laws override freedom of association for businesses? A business can't refuse to hire a qualified employee, whether CEO or cleaner, based on their race, religion, sexual orientation or political views, so it makes little sense to boycott a company for following this law.

The argument is that people should be allowed to express opinions and criticise opposing opinions, but not discriminate in hiring practices based on those opinions (this is professionalism). You are trying to argue this is an inconsistent position because people will discriminate and therefore, by their own argument, criticism could not be allowed either. It doesn't follow, it's a confusion of 'should' and 'will'.

What you are actually trying to argue is that some opinions are so blatantly wrong or harmful that they should be banned, or at least not be able to be publicly expressed, and that non-discrimination policies should not apply to those opinions.

I don't think it's hypocritical be to 'intolerant of intolerance', but you're spot on here.

Ironically, the Mozilla employees calling for his resignation have actually created a discriminatory workplace. He is a single employee at the company whose political/religious views led him to make a private donation. The fact that his role is CEO is irrelevant. The employees are saying "We want our hiring policies to discriminate based on political and religious views".

The question is, what is it tracking? Money has intrinsic value because it is useful, so this has the possibility to distort the 4 goats = 1 cow equation. There's also the problem that bartering can occur. Maybe this circumvents the tracking, but I think of money as an IOU, so you could say it tracks debt (which doesn't change when bartering happens).

This is surprising as old models cannot take into account recent efforts to reduce emissions, or at least reduce the rate of increase of emissions.

Unless of course all that policy has had a negligible effect, but that can't be right - a quick scan of my local supermarket reveals that 90% of products are now environmentally friendly.

Honestly not sure what to think of the guy. On the one hand he's suppressing free speech, but on the other he's blocking Twitter.