You're missing the point. Oklahoma is a 3.2% beer state. So they actually managed to get drunk enough on 3.2 beer to get into a brawl over phone OS's. That is some serious dedication. I'm guessing the bottles were used as weapons because the whole room was full of them, so there was nothing else to grab.

Don't really see how timezone differences come out as a "cost". It would be pretty expensive to fly marketing people out to trade shows in your bigger market areas, but given than the two biggest markets are currently on different continents (one of which spans 4 timezones), everyone has that issue.

Product transport costs should only be an issue if they were also manufacturing in AU. I doubt that, but even if they were that's solvable by using the same manufacturers everyone else does.

If your whole team is in the same time zone, development should actually be cheaper in AU than in a lot of places in the US. For instance, compared to silicon valley, the cost of living is much cheaper in Canbera.

It looks to me reading TFA like they had some recruiting issues in Canbera, and shot themselves in the foot (or perhaps the head) trying to fix them.

I know of at least one hoax from the 80's, invented for local political purposes, that made the local papers, got a memorial built to it, and now appears in several web pages and at least one documentary as fact, with all kinds of made-up details filled in. No Wikipedia page yet, but I'm sure that eventually will come.

And I guess most people here are too young to remember how seriously UFO's and Bigfoot used to be treated back in the 70's.

The only thing really special about hoaxes appearing on Wikipedia is that they can get thoroughly debunked when/if they get found out, and this is much more likely to happen with enough eyes on the issue. Without a user-maintained knowledge base, hoaxes used to be pretty much unkillable.

Seeing as chimps have been observed making and using tools, it would seem at least plausible that our common ancestor 4 to 6 million years ago was making and using tools too.

Chimps have been seen to make wooden tools (which obviously don't preserve very well in the fossil record), and to use stone tools. I don't know of them being observed to make stone tools, but that doesn't seem like it would be a huge leap.

So the difference between early man's use of tools and that of our co-chimpanzee ancestor was most likely just one of degree, if anything.

There are tenure-track positions in nursing? I was under the impression it was literally back-breaking work, where most employers have a use-em-and-throw-em-away attitude to employees. I didn't realize it was a cushy desk job with lifetime employment positions that men were dreaming of breaking into somehow.

Part of the game with novels is to put something intriguing in the first paragraph, preferably the first sentence. Something that will make a browser at the airport bookstore want to read more, if just to figure out how that's even possible. Something like, "Being dead turned out to have its advantages".

I kind of make a game of reading novel first lines. IMHO, starting off with an exploding moon make this one of the better ones I've seen.

WTH are you talking about? Unemployment right now is 5.5, which is well within the range it sat at from 2002 to 2008 before the recession started. The recession ended back in June of 2009 (6 freaking years ago). Our GDP (how recessions are officially measured) has been in the same range it was from 2002-2007 since then.

Most of the rest of your comment doesn't feel right to me either. I see no reason why sociological forces that built the USA would have suddenly stopped working the way they always did before. Normally I wouldn't bring up my "feelings", but since you seem to put more stock in how the economy feels than how it is really provably doing, perhaps that's relevant too.

Interestingly, this is my /. quote of the day at the bottom of the page:

So clearly he wants the kid to do that so that his 7 year old's life can finally begin. Are you anti-life, sir?

...but the problem is that number, like most numbers about this, is complete BS. Nate Silver's website has several articles up about how hard it is to get legit numbers about police shootings.

... but only in Holland?

It is most certainly noticeable when you go over there. I'm 5'11.5 (that 0.5 is important, damnit!). That isn't huge, but most people are shorter, and I'm considered a "big" player on the soccer field. I went over there for business, got off the train in Leiden, and felt generally short for the first time since I was in 6th grade.

They were also ludicrously thin by US standards. At first I was like, "where are the older people? Where are the 40+ year olds? Do they euthanize them all? Should I go hide?" It took a while to realize than everyone looked younger that I'm used to, due to being so slim. I put it down to much less motorized transport use, and smaller portions. But perhaps there's some natural selection going on there too?

• Theorem 2c: Dutch women are unusually financially independent, and thus don't care as much as other women about the wealth of their mates. That leaves only height as the prime selector.

• Theorem1: Richer men get more girls the world over. Wealth being roughly equal, the tiebreaker is height.
• Theorem2a: Wealth is distributed unusually evenly amongst Dutch men, so height becomes the main selector.
• Theorem2b: For some reason height in Dutch men is unusually strongly related to income.

Clearly more study is needed.

If the video you are recording is a murder, and your video will have a direct impact upon the murder's ability to get away with the crime, it most certainly does make you a hero. If the cop had noticed, he could easily have made it two killings, "accidentally" smashed the phone, and got away with both. Afterwards, the videographer's got a murderer and an unknown amount of his buddies pissed off at him. And these are people skilled in investigation with the full power and resources of the state behind them. They WILL find out who he is and where he lives.

I had a relative who reported a cop for assault once. For her troubles, she got to suffer months of pointless traffic stops, parking tickets, and car vandalism. If a murder was involved...I don't know that I'd want to expose my family to what could happen.

This person was either amazingly brave or amazingly stupid.

I bet that came as a line item on the bill, saying something like "government fees". So not only do they pass the cost on to customers, they try to blame them for it as well.