Hipster is all about defining oneself as a hipster.

The rest of the world actually doesn't care.

Those are not rights in civilized countries, and Canada is one of them.

There is no shortage of examples in business or politics of people making short-term expedient decisions even knowing the long-term costs.

Usually slaves were the prisoners of war who were allowed to live.

Maybe death is preferable to slavery, but it's hardly unequivocal.

It depends on what exactly you mean by "the Soviet system", but the speech where Gorbachev convinced the CPSU to hold competitive elections might qualify.

And who does he think he is praying for them without their consent? To a spiritual person, surely that's the greater breach of privacy.

Ideally, a licensing should be to verify that a particular individual has a licence in good standing. The person supplies the already-known information and the government only confirms that it's valid.

It's not the same as other public records where there is a public interest in having all the information.

You seem to be agreeing with his assessment.

Usually I like hearing about research that 'confirms' very obvious features of human nature, because it's valuable to measure things, even obvious things, quantitatively. But this experiment doesn't sound all that rigorous.

Some people seem to be 'denying' that that actually is the rational attitude.

I'm guessing he has experience with Microsoft, with respect to which his opinion is highly informed.

There was a crime, and Oracle was a willing accomplice.

Which part? The part where he disagrees that buying a vehicle one can barely afford and has no practical use for can be equated with hunger, satiety, and metabolic levels, which are driven by instincts and at least 25 different chemicals in complex feedback reactions?

I applaud Blanke for conducting this research and perhaps it will generate quantitative data that will eventually help epileptics and schizophrenics, but I'm not clear why any of this would be surprising. If you are in a building where there are low frequency sounds, that you can perceive subconsciously but cannot hear consciously, you may get a feeling that it is haunted. If you see a light in the sky moving so slowly that your brain interprets it as simultaneously stationary and moving, you may feel that you are seeing a UFO. The "region of her brain responsible for integrating different sensory signals" should be the logical place to associate with feelings of the paranormal.

Presumably a false vacuum would be different from nothing.