Music is medicine for the soul.

Did they? I missed that episode.

I always thought that the ideal tricorder could accept a broad spectrum of natural radiations in 3 dimensions and use that to construct a bio-chemical-mechanical model of the subject. Thus the name "tricorder" being equally used for both medical purposes (medical tricorder) and general exploration (for example, Spock's tricorder).

Think about it. Every nanosecond we are being constantly bombarded by radio waves from Jupiter, the Sun, and the stars, cosmic rays, neutrinos, natural radioactivity from the ground we stand on and the air we breathe, light at various frequencies, including UV and IR, sound waves of all frequencies and that's not even factoring in man-made stuff like WKRP AM/FM, the local police/fire/rescue/transportation/etc and business channels or cell phones. Some of that stuff goes straight through, some reflects and/or refracts, some is absorbed selectively by various tissues, some is blocked. All you need is sensors, a computer powerful enough to correlate it, and software that can reduce it to usable data.

Well, if EVERYONE decides they'll mooch off their neightbor, it's Communism!

And if no one actually HAS WiFi to mooch off of, that's Soviet-style Communism.

That's a cop-out. Voting the party line is just pushing the process back a level. SOMEONE has to select who the party candidates ARE.

The reason that political parties were so despised by Founding Fathers is that they take on a life and allegiance of their own. People do things for the Party, not for the Country. Witness what happened to John McCain.

Parties, in turn devote their allegiance to Ideology. Id(iot)ology is basically adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to problems, whether that size helps or hurts.

In short, too much of American politics operates less on careful thought and more on knee-jerk reaction to a litmus test (to mix metaphors). If the voters would responsibly select who their parties represented, the parties would field responsible candidates. Instead it's all duckspeak and litmus tests because the people who actually vote aren't really interested in thinking things through themselves.

That's what makes drafting people in to vote willy-nilly even less appealing. If we do so badly with those who will at least make the effort to show up when they don't have to, then what would we get if they were joined by people who simply blindly checked things just to get out of the polling booth as quickly as possible.

Never mind. At this stage, we'd probably be better off with random chance anyway.

Problem is, we ALREADY have too many ignorant people voting in elections. Do you really want the apathetic-ignorant ones in there as well?

You can lead a horse to water, but..

A harpsichord is quite different than a piano. A piano (pianoforte) operates by the action of key-driven hammers striking the strings. A harpsichord operates by having the keys drive a plucking mechanism instead, like picking a guitar. It makes for a very different tonal quality.

The more important issue here, however is that this is the well-tempered Clavier. Or, more accurately, the even-tempered Clavier. Earlier instruments were tuned more precisely to the key that they would be played in. Bach was showing off a new technology where instead of precise tuning, the tuning was warped just enough that you could play in any key without retuning.

So a modern piano would actually be more faithful to the sound Bach was intending than an authentic Bach-era instrument that wasn't even-tempered.

I don't. People who wrote apps that assumed that I was running IE or Flash have literally lost big-ticket business from me because I don't run IE and wouldn't trust it within 100 miles of my money.

I'd feel sorry for all those people who built IE6 web apps, except, well, no. I don't feel sorry for them. I was there when they did it and I warned them it was a bad idea to lock yourself into a monocultural world even then.

NewSpeak was predicated on the idea that your language controls your thoughts. It's true, but only do a degree, which is how NewSpeak-minded people managed to make "special" or "challenged" an insult. Then again, the English word "nice" has flip-flopped several times without artificial assistance.

German is in many ways the hardest language for me because a lot of the old words took on meanings in very different directions. A classic example is let/lassen. "Ich lasse mein Haar schneiden" doesn't literally mean "l let my hair be cut", although presumably it was a voluntary thing. However, the more precise translation would be "I have my hair cut", meaning, effectively that instead of permitting it to be done, I've ordered it to be done.

Actually, words are only part of it. The intonation that you use to ask a question in Russian sounds to an American like the other person is about to commit assault.

Yep. Darrell Sweet's stereotypical covers were stiffly posed and had a certain aura that some of the characters could benefit from seeing a dermatologist.

I don't even want to THINK of what the average cover for a bodice-ripper featuring Highlanders, Lords, cowboys or werewolves is like (other than basically all alike).

Well Duh. In Windows, the browser must be (squeaky Ballmer voice) "an Integral part of the Windows Operating System".

Because that works so much better than OS's like Linux and MacOS where the browser is a mere application program.

Don't you mean rusty tetanus-infected hook?

Go far enough down that path and you end up handling snakes in church.

Most people realize that God isn't going to protect them against things that they can protect themselves against.

Killing, however, is a one-way street, whether it's of self or others. God both can kill and resurrect - at least so we're told. People are only half that capable, as Gandalf once noted.

Yeah. All You Have To Do Is...

(screams)

Suicide is never directly named a sin in the Bible. In fact, King Saul committed suicide.

Theologically speaking, however, suicide is considered arrogating the right of God to determine when and how you will meet your end and putting oneself on a plane with God is considered at least one deadly sin (Pride).

Which is why we have good Christian people demonstrating for the right to forcibly hold vegetative people alive even when they would not be able to live without artificial assistance and are likely enduring at best a living Hell, because "life" and "living" are 2 different things.

Then again, many of these self-same good Christian people have absolutely no problem with a Death Penalty, even though it removes even the slimmest chance that the person so convicted might wake up one day 50 years hence and repent. Or for that matter, be exonerated.

He wrote stories that were witty, entertaining - and full of knives.

The essence of Terry Pratchett can be summed up in one of his more frequent observations: that in the eyes of society, living in a vermin-infested slum practically makes you a criminal, but own a whole neighborhood of them and you're a pillar of the community.