Is it me or does it sound a bit underwhelming for $1000? I don't mean the price is non-competitive, it just seems like I'd want something more capable if I was going to take the plunge. Burn $1000 and in a week won't you be hankering for a much more capable machine?

Yeah, can't figure out how a gender studies major ever gets anything other than the type of job gender studies are supposed to eliminate.

Law enforcement began as [any given region's] largest street gang, long before recorded history.

You mean that that was in the brief period where it was a relatively popular idea to make law enforcement something better than that

As a Californian, it sure would be nice for the drought to end, but the last time El Niño struck, a mountain fell on my house. It's still there, the house holding back the mountain. I'd like to not repeat that experience.

Here in California we have four seasons just like everywhere else:

Sunny
Hot
Flooding
On Fire ...what, you don't have On Fire where you come from?

dry wave power=wind

feed the energy into water to produce hydrogen, I think he means.

Or just in an emergency, raise the gate on the wave device and let the water wash UNDER it.

Most moralities, that's true. For one, however, it is implied by the physical universe we live in, and is as objective as physics.

The post doesn't even pretend to be balanced, which is a shame as this may possibly be /.'s one and only Scottish Independence post.

Of course there are risks involved and uncertainty, but the English Tories, champions of the NO vote (do not split) are the ones demanding a split from Europe, using the same arguments that the YES campaign (for an independent Scotland) are using to rally their cause! They're also the ones who decry "dependency" and act as if the entrepreneurial spirit is chief among all human traits, while trying to shut down such blooming attitudes in the Scottish people who wish to set out on their own and make a go of things.

The Right wing English part of the NO campaign seem to want soverignty above all else for themselves (with regard to Europe), while telling everyone else (the Scottish 'splittists') that's a bad idea!

If a liberal arts degree holder actually had critical thinking skills, he would never have gotten a liberal arts degree.

Here, let me pour some gasoline over your strawman and strike a match.

When have people from Africa appeared at the borders of any country "cap-in-hand [...] demanding their 'rights'"?

People do try to escape violent, torturing, oppressive, corrupt murderous regimes though. We call them asylum seekers; fleeing to escape persecution from their fucked-up governments. Maybe that's what you're thinking of? Or maybe knee-jerk xenophobia is more your cup of tea?

The original Liberal Arts (a term which literally means, more idiomatically translated from ars liberalis, "skills [needed] of free men") were, funny enough, mostly things that we would consider branches of mathematics today, and thus STEM fields.

First there was the "trivium" (from whence our word "trivial", because these skills were considered so basic and elementary):
- Grammar
- Logic (now considered a branch of mathematics)
- Rhetoric

But then there was the "quadrivium" which followed that:
- Arithmetic (obviously a branch of mathematics)
- Geometry (obviously a branch of mathematics)
- "Music"
- "Astronomy"

The last two are the most interesting ones, because "music" was not about playing instruments or singing, it was essentially harmonics, the study of "number in time"; and likewise, "astronomy" was not about the actual particulars of celestial bodies, but was essentially dynamics, the study of "number in space and time". These complemented geometry as the study of "number in space" and arithmetic as "number in itself".

In short, the quadrivium, which was over half of the original Liberal Arts, was entirely things we'd now consider mathematics; and a third of the remaining portion in the trivium, logic, would also be considered mathematics today. Five sevenths or over 71% of the Liberal Arts were all math subjects.

These were all intended to prepare one for the study of philosophy, which at that time encompassed what would become the natural sciences of today. (In the middle ages philosophy was in turn considered to be essentially in a support role to theology, but of course you'd get that kind of attitude in the continent-wide theocracy that was old Christendom.)

The Liberal Arts were to teach people how to communicate their thoughts coherently, rigorously, and persuasively, and to be able to think quantitatively about things in themselves and also their relations in space and time, all of that for the purpose of conducting the kind of broad and deep critical thinking about of the world we live necessary to live life as a free individual and to preserve the freedom of one's society.

Dismissing all of that for "science lol stem envy much" is the start of the road to serfdom.

We are all human, we all have extremely similar DNA. Nietzsche was an idiot. There is only one morality that actually works.