I know the water is fine, but if I lived in Portland and they hadn't emptied the reservoir I would have been looking at the tap water a little more suspiciously, and if I was someone who sometimes bought bottled water I probably would have been a little more likely to buy some. I have no doubt many of you are the same.

Someone peeing in the tap water is icky, it doesn't matter if it's irrational, we are irrational, and as costs of irrationality goes emptying a single reservoir is pretty damn cheap. There's times to stand on scientific principal, this isn't one of them. There's no point in grossing out an entire city, reducing confidence in the municipal water supply, and impacting human health and the environment by pushing people towards bottled drinks, just because it's irrational. Sometimes the most rational thing you can do is accommodate your irrationality.

Which is not a problem, if the legislators, governor and regulators are working for the public. The public needs a grid and base generation capability, and the utility is guaranteed a safe and reasonable profit if it provides these things.

Bostonian here.

My work has taken me to cities all over the country, and I have to say that I've found New Yorkers to be the most considerate and helpful big city denizens in the US. The picture of the typical New Yorker as an obnoxious ogre is a phony movie and television trope.

People mistake adaptations to the pace and concentration of urban life as unfriendliness. Yes, people don't smile and nod at everyone they meet as they stroll the length of 5th Avenue, because after three or four blocks they'd need a chiropractor. But approach one of those people on 5th Avenue for directions, and most of the time he'll be pleasant and eager to be helpful.

Of course, you take your chances approaching strangers in any big city, but I also think that a lot of the treatment you receive is determined by the attitude you bring with you. I've heard wildly different reports on the infamous rudeness of Parisians, but the reports are usually a reflection of the kind of person making the report. Courteous people tend to be met with courtesy wherever they go, and obnoxious people get a rude reception.

You obviously are not familiar with Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is a firm Republic state, and past experience tells me this will be legislated.

I live in NYC, and I'm a bit indifferent. I don't know about the horses in depth, but I'd tend to say that if the horses are treated badly, then make laws/regulations on how the horses should be treated. If it's a problem to have them on the street, then don't allow them on the street. I don't see think that having horses pull carriages is cruel in itself, but I also don't see the need to jump through hoops to keep the carriages around if they're presenting real problems. They're slightly charming, but smell like horse shit.

That's rental when not new. New rentals from amazon and others right after release to DVD, as well as pay-per-view, tend to be $4.99.

Yeah, I *hope* my interpretation is correct and he's saying, "If you're into CS, then don't change to another major because you think it'll be easier and you think getting good grades will set you up better for the future. A more challenging course load with mediocre grades is more impressive in the real world than getting great grades while studying something you're less interested in, but that you think is easier." I would certainly agree with that advice. Your grades might possibly come up on your first interviews fresh out of college, but they very well might not. Over the span of your career, your college transcripts quickly become irrelevant.

If you're a CS major taking "Advanced Basket Weaving" in college because you're interested in that and you like that kind of thing, then good for you. Go do that. It may even be interesting and difficult, and someone might be impressed that you have diverse skills and interests. If you're taking it for an easy A+, then you're probably making a bad decision, because nobody will be impressed that you did well while taking the easy road.

Yes. That's probably what it is. You're probably me in the future.

That's bad news for me, because that means I'm going to lose most of my net worth, start earning well under half what I make now, and become really, really stupid. And I'm not sure how I'll reconcile my experience doing things like "presenting in board meetings of large companies", and "planning acquistions and deciding on company valuation" with what will be my newfound understandings of how these things "really work", that deep understanding that you have based on paying off your house and buying windows and retiring on $500,000. All these revelations I'm about to have will be very disconcerting. Maybe my university will give me a refund on all those economics, business, and accounting courses?

I guess I'll also be 3 or 4 years younger - and I'll also be extremely confident, impervious to reason, and desperately smug about my stupid cynical worldview. So I guess that's cool too.

or by making more and more ludicrous statements which can be more easily dismissed

Yes.. I've said some crazy stupid crap here - that the stock market is a zero sum game, stock prices don't affect executive pay, "the ability to access money.. is 'solvency'", and that stock prices don't reflect earnings.

Oh wait, those were all you. Or maybe you're right about all those things, and it's basic enonomic theory and observable reality that's wrong.

Soylent needs a lot of improvements though. If Slashdot died tomorrow or classic went away, then there is no replacement available today.

Soylent is hard to read though. Yes, it's not Slashdot Beta, but it still is too beta. Ie, opening a comment loads a new page instead of expanding them and that effectively makes it difficult to browse. Sure, I can read the articles from the link but the comments I have to skip.

I never really understood what was so taboo about adoption. Why the intense focus on fertility where there are unwanted children? Some couples spend more on fertility than an adoption would cost.

It would help too if more men shared in child rearing. Instead society still seems to think it's just the mother who has to give up the career.
And along that line, maybe there should be a way to freeze sperm too because as men get older there is evidence that sperm quality declines.
And along that other line, why are so many opposed to adoption?
But I digress.

I've seen a lot of manuscripts that follow this basic template in my writing group. You have an enemy (often Muslims speaking dog-of-an-infidel Arab-ese) who launches a ludicrously successful EMP superweapon, and in the collapse that follows a charismatic leader with a military background emerges to lead the building of a new, and looks-likely-to-be-better society.

I've seen enough of these to justify doing some research on the physics of nuclear EMP, and have yet to see a Ms that is even remotely scientifically accurate. These stories come out of a sense of dissatisfaction with where 200 years of democracy have brought us. These authors long for rule by extraordinary men (always men), unencumbered by the dead weight of by-definition-mediocre 300 million ordinary people. Remove technology, remove most of that 300 million people and set the remainder to the task of survival, and there is no longer any constraint on the greatness of the extraordinary few.

Of course there's nothing wrong with an authoritarian fantasy, any more than there is anything wrong with a story about the restoration of the "rightful" king. You can enjoy such a story without *really* believing you'd be better off under a charismatic military leader or king. The key to enjoying such a story is "suspension of disbelief".

How many times do you watch each movie? Generally they're $15 and up to own when new, versus $5 to rent, which will be included as a netflix in a year anyway. Sure, I can understand if they kids always watch Lion King every weekend, then owning is a bargain.