You are right. The executives giving themselves massive raises as the company's finances circled the drain (some amidst the bankruptcy filing) was indeed a case of short-sighted people thinking they deserved something the company couldn't afford.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/gregory-rayburn-raise_n_2147043.html
With corrections to some of the incorrect, inflated numbers floating around Facebook.

Hostess blames the unions, but if you look at the company's management history and how many times they've been in bankruptcy there's clearly a set of problems that runs far deeper than the unions. The union blame game is mostly a smoke screen. I can almost guarantee that, if not the Hostess brand, the individual brands like Twinkie and Ding Dong will rise again with new corporate masters and little else will change.

What "same thing"? That there are certain things that are inherent to the human condition? Sure, but what we surround ourselves with does affect that baseline. I prefer scientific studies to "history books" when it comes to analyzing human behavior in the present.

Not at all. Let me quote you here:

"Sure, but the parenting that is recommended by the 'experts' is the bad parenting. Even the recommendation that children should have screen time is caused by the 'experts' making conclusions and then looking for evidence to support it. The reason that you see a correlation between poorly developed kids and large screen times isn't due to the screens. It is due to the child being exposed to an extremely limited set of information."

You say that expert-recommended parenting is bad parenting, and you just leave that open, general statement to flap in the wind with nothing to hold it up. I certainly take issue with that assertion. Further, I think there's a dearth of evidence that these 'experts' you like to put in single quotes are simply looking for evidence to support their position. When doing research you do have to have a hypothesis, and that means testing a particular assertion. You have only the current research when doing evidence analysis. I certainly wouldn't want them trying to incorporate "common sense" into their results, because most analyses I've seen of "common sense" indicate that such stuff is usually anything but correct in most cases.

How do you know the cause of a correlation between poorly developed kids and screen time? Have you done research on the topic? That assertion requires evidence, not just gut feeling or common sense. It needs a citation or two to hold it up. It is a very specific claim and therefore needs some backing evidence.

Yeah, I think I can speak for all other rational human beings in demanding to see some evidence of those assertions.

I'm an American and I love food. I eat a wide variety of plants and animals and, yes, I do often have a problem with eating too much of it. But I do have taste buds, I do appreciate quality food, and I'm capable of both eating and differentiating between food at the top AND the bottom of the food quality scale.

Generalizations like this, especially in such heated terms, really do nothing for meaningful discussion. Then again, it's pretty clear from the tone of your comment that you're not interested in discussion. You're interested in being superior to everyone else. Good job. Work on your grammar and sentence structure a bit and maybe someday you'll actually impress upon someone that you are superior.

It is the fresh water issue that is the problem. Most of the earth's water is salt water, which isn't much good for growing crops, though I do largely agree with some of your other points.

Actually, while grass is water-hungry, cows can graze on a variety of plants, many of which are not water-hungry, and they can graze in areas which are unfit for crop production. Many of Africa's desertified and arid areas could be made green again by integrating native plants with smaller crop plots. This experiment has already been done in a couple areas and confirmed to work.

So yes, if you drag cows out onto a manicured lawn with modern, water-hungry grasses, it will prove to be less efficient than feeding them corn, but allowing them to graze plots of land sown with native plants which grow naturally in harmony with the local water table behavior you can feed cows more efficiently AND end up with healthier, if not more profitable, beef. Besides, I have yet to hear anyone griping about the effect free-range animals have on local water use compared to growing crops like corn which are known to be hard on the soil and water supply.

Well, let's get pedantic for a moment, shall we? Theft (or stealing) is about depriving people of physical property by taking it. Theft is defined rather clearly in most criminal codes because it is illegal. Strictly speaking, getting a benefit without paying for it isn't stealing unless it involved the illegal taking of physical property owned by someone else, thus depriving them of use of that property.

AdBlock isn't illegal, and it doesn't deprive owners of physical property by taking it from them. Therefore it is not theft and is thus not stealing.

You can make moral and ethical arguments about blocking ads without going to the "stealing" or "theft of service" stupidity, and I think this discussion is better if we avoid that particular line of thought, not the least because it is an improper argument.

Well, the WSJ article calls Muller a physicist, not a climatologist, so I'd like to think his handling of energy and radiation topics will be more spot-on than an unrelated field.

L. L. Bean is the same way. I actually didn't return an item to them because I got years of use out of it and didn't feel like being a jackass.

Well, I read the archived FAQ and TOS and I didn't see any disclaimers. Technically, a company that lists something like a lifetime guarantee or lifetime warranty can get away with only warrantying or guaranteeing the product or service for its market life. Meaning my frying pan with a lifetime warranty is good for what the company deems the lifetime of the frying pan, modified by federal and local laws on what constitutes an acceptable minimum lifetime period. On the other hand, the ad you linked via the Wayback Machine didn't say lifetime, but rather the life of the company. If they've been bought and changed hands they could be considered a new company. Either way, I'd say there certainly seems to be the possibility that they could be legally liable for breach of contract. Just make sure if you decide to take them to small claims court that there's no activity in your own history with their service that violates their TOS and Acceptable Use provisions, because they can use that against you.

Nathan Myhrvold is just a sock puppet for Wallace Breen.

"Well, we’ve had that name for a long time. I think we do a whole lot more good for the world than GigaOm does. How big is their malaria research project? How much effort do they put into polio? I’m quite curious! What on Earth have they done that is —"

vs

"Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can. You have destroyed so much. What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing? I thought not."

I have a pair of Sony PIIQ headphones. They are circumaural, superaural if you have large ears, and they are quite comfortable. The color scheme is a bit garish, but some are more acceptable than others. The bonus is that they sound great for their price. They are a Consumer Reports best buy from last year's Christmas gift season and now that I own a pair I know why. They have held up OK since Christmas for me. I don't have longer-term experience with them for that.

There is NOTHING less honest about not using the DMCA first. Honesty doesn't figure into this situation on the photographer's end in any way at all. And correct? Well, legally he's in the clear. I think your assessment of this situation is seriously warped.