So, as soon as we "solve" world hunger, humans will irresponsibly reproduce until there are too many *again*. Somehow, I don't think you thought your cunning plan all the way through.

The problem isn't "enough food" the problem is "too many humans". Increasing the food supply just increases the number of humans.

Yup, that's what happened! It was considered problematic to administer anesthesia to infants, what with the small dosages and all. The advice for doctors was just to use enough tape to prevent the baby's arms and legs from squirming around and disrupting the operation.

Ghoulish, but then again my personal experience with doctors has pretty much done away with any respect I ever had for them, pretty much like how Rathergate destroyed my respect for journalists. It's a sad, empty world without any idols. :(

It's gone where all CPU gains have gone in the past 15 years - into sloppy development and rushed schedules. I was just browsing the reviews of the new version of Google Maps today and users are complaining that it is slow, slow, slow. Who cares about efficient programming done right when you can just sit back and wait for Moore's Law to catch up?

It's not a fortune-teller's tool, and it's just plain disingenuous to say so. It's about 70 percent accurate, which is more than any other method. I don't like polygraphs either, but at least be honest.

My 8th grade English teacher told us that books were written in the third person, and sometimes the first person. I raised my hand and asked about books written in the second person. She told me there was no such thing. The next day, I came in with "The Mystery Of Chimney Rock" and got a frown from Mrs. Sampson. She had what I found in later life to be a common reaction from the literati when they encounter an inconvenient truth: she disparaged it as garbage literature and said it didn't count.

Mrs. Sampson, you really disappointed me. Here was a chance to learn something new, and you refused because it threatened your existing view of what literature is.

Big city residents have a long history of considering anyone who doesn't live in their city an idiot, so you've got that going for you.

By the way, "how cities are supposed to work" is not point-to-point individual transportation, which is highly wasteful and unsightly. They're called "jitneys" and they are hated by the professional urbanists you seem to know so little about.

Paper isn't some magical solution. The PRI in Mexico rigged elections for eighty years using nothing but paper. Did you not know that?

Slashdot is unabashedly an American site and always has been. Here's an idea, instead of complaining, why don't you start your own news tech website? No, seriously.

Let's completely ignore the fact that the Obama administration unabashedly used the IRS to persecute its political enemies, the Tea Party.

Hey, let's play a game! Are you totally OK with the fact that this happened? You win a prize! It's called, "more criminal than Nixon". Seriously, you have to really try to achieve this goal. Even Richard Nixon wasn't as criminal as Nixon. All he did was burglarize Democratic Party headquarters. What Obama's IRS did was much, much worse.

At least Nixon had the shame to resign. Will Obama do the same? Of course not...he doesn't think his people did anything wrong. Denying American citizens political representation? There's nothing wrong with that - the Tea Party opposes the governing party! What do dissidents expect to happen? This is normal under a left-wing government! (well, the left-wing governments of the 20th century, plus 21st century Venezuela, Boliva, and Cuba.)

Lest we forget, McCarthy was right. There really were communists in the State Department, and they really did mean to use their position to undermine the US government and replace it with a communist one. Let's just get our history straight. It is entirely appropriate for the people to be protected in this way.

All this software does is make predictions based on averages. It explicitly does not recognize outliers. This is the road to tyranny. It looks great, and offers us much better efficiency than before. We use it to get things done, there is no time lost with needless discussions. If it's wrong 10% of the time, then so what! We consider 90% to be acceptable.

And then, people start altering their behavior because they know they're being watched. Articles start appearing about how to conform to the mandarins' idea of a model citizen. Viewing these articles is, of course, a black mark against you. And on and on it goes, led by society's best shouting the battle cry, "it's for your own good!"

My ass explained that George Lucas doesn't know his ass from his elbow, and the one time that he used science in Star Wars, he managed to screw it up.

I love how ignorant Americans admire the Chinese education system. Their system is cruel and forces children to study, study, study without any attempt at being well-rounded. There are few or no extra-curricular activities at Chinese schools. Just endless toil and make-work homework assignments.

As for the "endless petty partisan bickering", that's called a "representative government". The Communist Party represents nobody but itself. It is very worrisome how today's modern, educated leftists openly admire a tyrannical government, because they "get things done". Aren't midwesterners endlessly mocked and ridiculed because they have the same values?

The Chinese education system is a cruel disaster. Chinese parents love nothing more than putting their kids in international schools. Your admiration of their system is wrongheaded at best and ill-intentioned at worst.

I love how you spin it so it sounds like some sort of EEEEVUUULLLL plot to make the Chinese suffer the pollution, when in fact it is much like all the other US industry that left - laws were crafted that deliberately made their businesses uneconomical, so they took the hint and stopped.

You also in the same sentence remove any moral agency from the Chinese, assuming without thinking that the only thing such people can do is pollute. Like they're some sort of children who can't make choices. Nice one, there. Well done.

Bill Gates is a robber baron who made his money through despicable behavior and monopolism. Now he's buying his way to respectability and people like you are fooled by it. Just look at how you view the names of cruel tyrants like Rockefeller and Carnegie.