Look, I'm all for civil liberties, but we can't even begin to have a conversation about those if one agency is refusing to even be accountable to its overseers. This is/was a bigger deal. This is "dad beat me, and when I told mom, he killed her." You don't say "boo hoo" to that, you say "holy shit."

To be fair, one person was forced to retire.

Officials said a former CIA interrogator named Charlie Wise was forced to retire in 2003 after being suspected of abusing Abu Zubaida using a broomstick as a ballast while he was forced to kneel in a stress position. Wise was also implicated in the abuse at Salt Pit. He died of a heart attack shortly after retiring from the CIA, former U.S. intelligence officials said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

If a gang kills 6 rival gang members in one incident, does it count as 6 murders or 1? I'd argue that such a place would actually be "safer" than having 6 independent murders taking place.

And how exactly would you argue that? Please show me one place where gang violence is the dominant contributor to the death rate that's an otherwise great place to live.

If J-Pay is for sending money to prisoners, then what is J-Date?

Superheated steam lubrication and steam bubbles? Pretty sure all current theories hold that plates move over molten rock, aka magma, not steam. As far as steam bubbles, I think you're confusing earthquake activity with magma heating groundwater, aka volcanic activity.

Idiot or malicious person. Honestly I don't think that's even thinking far enough outside the box. Unmanned drones could be used to wreak all kinds of havoc with low risk of getting caught, especially as lifting capacity increases. They're already being used for smuggling operations, but I suspect they will be used for offensive capabilities in the near future, targeted or otherwise. Hell, they could use the devices themselves as a weapon, or drop heavy objects on unsuspecting persons below, where "heavy" is basically anything over a few ounces. Small meteorites still manage to crash through houses, and that's just at terminal velocity. IEDs would make them even deadlier.

I doubt we'll do anything until something actually happens, though, at which point we'll promptly freak the fuck out and probably invade some third world country.

AC 91-57: Outlines, and encourages voluntary compliance [emphasis mine] with, safety standards for model aircraft operators.

The FAA has some tough-sounding language on their website about enforcing compliance with these guidelines, but they go on to say "the agency has a number of enforcement tools available to address these operations, including a verbal warning, a warning letter, and an order to stop the operation."

It's not clear what could happen if someone violated an order to stop the operation, or that there is anything they can actually do beyond making a fuss.

about a third of those polled think no one should be able to fly drones over urban areas.

It's much easier to disallow something than to disable it. It's all well and good to disallow people from flying unmanned aircraft in urban areas, but is there any way to actually stop it? If not, it's useless to disallow it, and the best you can hope is to regulate it. Perhaps a more practical solution is required, and one day we will have nets covering all of our streets and houses.

My mom (love you, mom) has not been responsible for any accidents in her many years of driving, and yet, she is a horrible, horrible driver. She does not speed up above 35-40MPH on the entrance ramp, she does not look before backing up, she will make last-second exits across solid white lines, take tons of time to wait for a gap before turning, and yet still (inadvertently) cut someone off. Amazingly, she has only been in one accident, and it when she was rear-ended while stopped at a red light -- neither her fault nor her cause. I honestly have to give more credit to the drivers around her though. Thank you for not killing my mom.

Honestly, it's parenting. Parents pamper their daughters and cater to their every desire like princesses, and then that's the model for love that they learn.

Once someone becomes an adult, they either have to face the reality that their model is unrealistic, or not. Since there are men who will cater to this model, the model is validated and the cycle continues.

I can't honestly say whether one model is better than another, or whether one is "right," and another is "wrong." I can say that, if you want fewer entitled women in the world, don't spoil your daughters before turning them loose on the world. Most people want their daughters' life experience to be zero risk and high reward though, so I don't expect this to change.

instant access to vast libraries or pornography is liberating men from the need to hitch themselves to a woman for sexual satisfaction

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. In the first place, how many people would rather watch porn than have sex? I'm not saying there's none, but in most cases it's probably rooted in anxiety as opposed to an actual preference, all else being equal. A choice made out of fear is not the same as a preference made out of desire.

In the second place, porn wasn't a prerequisite for masturbation the last time I checked. And I checked pretty recently.

Yeah, I watch Vice too. They have some interesting stories, but then, that's the goal of the hipster-cum-SMEs. Not everything on their show should be taken as a full picture of reality, let alone retold as gospel without citation in a Slashdot post.

In some amazing leaps of logic, the [NSFW] "documentary" cites low birth rates and then, taking this to be self-evidently a problem, finds a couple of people who say they're basically afraid of women, and then goes on to paint an entire culture in broad strokes. But here's the thing: Industrialized nations have the lowest birth rates in the world, so one might as well conclude else that Japan is the most advanced nation on earth, which is a distinct possibility. Indeed, overpopulation is perhaps best viewed as a problem, not a goal.

I'm hardly a Japanese fanboi. I lived there for six months, for work, and I wouldn't go back if I had the choice. There's some stuff there that certainly seems weird by western standards, but I didn't see any indication that it's a culture in decline. Their GDP growth rate might not be off the charts, but that's hardly the most important indicator. India, for example, has both an amazing GDP growth rate AND population growth rate. If you want to know what it's like to live there, well, there's another Vice story about that.

Even if there was some approved curriculum for dating based on scientific evidence, which there isn't, it wouldn't be politically correct to teach. Teaching that there is "a way" to reduce rejection implies manipulation. Teaching that people can or should change who they are in order to be more attractive goes against "be yourself" and getting awards for doing nothing.

Most teachers I know -- and I know quite a few -- have hopeless romantic lives anyway. Listening to them lecture about dating is like listening to Rob Gronkowski wax philosophic. Learn from people who don't know what they're doing at your own peril.

Well played, sir. Well played.

And the police wonder why they're no longer treated with respect, while being people who regularly abuse their power and ignore the law.

No longer? Police have never been the embodiment of the Officer Friendly persona, on the whole. There are bright spots here and there to be sure, particularly in laid back suburban communities with high pay and low crime, but police have a history of abuse and extortion. See *any* third world country for an example of what our own police used to be. Police behavior has actually improved quite a lot since, say, the early 1900s, but, sadly, it was never better than it is now. The golden age of Leave it to Beaver and Andy Griffith is nothing but a fantasy.