Mod parent up

I agree wholeheartedly that this is how you should approach it. I'd put special emphasis on that lawsuit aspect because this throws up all sorts of red flags. At best, it's legal grey area.

Personally, I'd tell them to give their tenants a 10% coupon and call it a day. Or heck, nothing (save technical know how) stops them from having a daily registration page (or redirect their initial page) to get onto the internet with some advertising on it. It's still a dirtbag move, but it deeply decreases the possibility of lawsuits.

to line his own pockets, actively work against his constituency, and claim it's for the good of the people.

I don't understand this impulse to make the monitor wider and wider. I'd like my monitor taller so I can see more of my webpages, not less. Maybe I'm just an old fogy so get off my digital lawn.

That's really yet to be determined. For all any of us know, this $70 plan is a loss leader to attract interest and investment. Ceasing to do the 'right thing' tends to happen after you become a market leader or have significant market share. Make no mistake, I think what Google is doing is great but I maintain no illusions that Google can't 'go bad'.

It's even more than that though. It's just outright contempt for education in many areas and 'the bible is the only education one really needs' philosophy.

I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with being a career politician any more than managing to stay working for the same company all your life (albeit a rare feat these days). Being there longer means you know how things work and can get it done more quickly and efficiently. It's the greed messing everything up, as usual

...which wasn't the question. You stated that 'educated in science' is an oxymoron. I said otherwise. It's pure sophistry to claim that scientific fact/theory established previously is history (or even mostly history). Yes, certainly, someone established it in a given year and did it in a certain way, but this is irrelevant from the scientific perspective. We simply care that 'this is fact or theory and here is the evidence'. In what rational way can you say that 'nitrogen is generally not found in its elemental form, but typically found as N2 in a triple bond', history? And that's the point, it isn't history. It's something that's just as true today as when it was discovered and still just as relevant to understanding the world. It's integral to understanding something like crop rotation because of nitrogen fixation.

I can only wonder if you're trying to cheapen science by making the comparison to history, where proving anything is nigh impossible. And it's bullocks. Science's trademark is being verifiable or demonstrable but [insert obligatory quotation that not everything is]. And dear god, this is dull. I need some yeast-fermented liquid science. Please excuse me.

Utterly foolish so far as I can tell. Or do you advocate someone practicing being a doctor without any training?

I'm afraid don't agree.

What exactly does taking courses in Biology or Chemistry or Physics mean then if not being educated in science? One learns the 'rules' that govern this reality. These rules are foundation of understanding the physical world and making conjecture about it.

I tend to work in production-based environments and everywhere I've worked had too few people trying to do the job of several more. I'm utterly sick of the words 'six sigma' and 'leveraging'.

I understand my experience is anecdotal and statistically insignificant, but it's hard to believe what our dear professor is saying. At least I will agree with him that many of us find our jobs meaningless.

but it's just an accident waiting to happen

Over in Boston, they spent a decade on The Big Dig, a 'measly' 3.5 mile underground tunnel to try to deal with their traffic issue. The price tag was roughly 22 billion (when interest is factored in). It had several major lawsuits, mostly notably the epoxy used to hold up the ceiling tiles collapsing literally crushing a driver. In addition, it has some 400 leaks that will steadily destroy the tunnel.

And they want to make a tunnel 36 times longer? Take a country that isn't particularly concerned with safety and a trillion dollar project and tell me cutting corners isn't going to happen.

I gotta say, this whole thing seems a little ridiculous. Unlike Hollywood, any such weapon would be incredibly limited by power source (batteries or burning hydrocarbons) and limited ammunition. I'd also like to point out that there numerous ways to disrupt robots such as EMPs and strong magnets.

Besides, I'm looking forward to the giant robot spiders that sound like children.

Beef (and meat) takes the most amount of resources (aka feed/grass) to make 1 pound of meat. Generally speaking, you lose 90% of the energy for every step up the food chain you have to go. So the 100% of energy that made the feed/grass only becomes 10% of that in meat.

And there are plenty of ways to make 'worthless' land valuable. Irrigation, hydroponics, etc etc. Or a solar farm. If anything, leaving the land fallow like that is inefficient because you're not really generating that much feed/acre.

I can't say I agree

Free market capitalism implies EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is for sale. (ex. politicians, laws, etc)

The true measure of a country is its wealth distribution. The average person's life is better as the wealth distribution increases and vice versa. There are numerous ways to accomplish this but certainly a system where the wealthy can alter the laws to suit themselves is not a valid method.

Honestly, it isn't Comcast I'm scared of here, it's Netflix. By even attempting to broker this deal, they have effectively just given power over to the ISPs. They may have well have said "I, for one, welcome our toll-internet overlords."