they need to send Knife Guy and Double Shotgun Dude to Afghanistan and this will be all over in no time.

The results speak for themselves.

This is good advice, and gives me an opportunity to speak to the community at large: some of us who go to cons and are in a position to shake tons of hands politely decline. It's not because we're being dicks, it's because we know it's a good way to substantially decrease our chances of catching and spreading any germs.

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.

ps - It isn't pleasant, but denying people is pretty much always cheaper than treating them. As that process goes on, it gets nastier and nastier, but if you're into cost avoidance, you didn't much care anyways. Nothing is cheaper than denying people care, if you go all the way.

We apparently wasted half a billion dollars to stop "dozens" of criminals from claiming benefits. Doesn't seem particularly cheap to me.

It works great in Germany which has a system we could most easily implement - basic coverage through the coverage with private insurance for anything you want beyond that. Which is pretty much the public option the Democrats are pushing for.

What nobody really ever talks about is how great a job the US private sector is doing with health care.

That because while people can cherry pick a few stats ("people survive prostate cancer 6 months longer!") or a few anecdotes ("a Canadian woman came here to get rid of a cyst while mortgaging her house to pay the bills!"), taken as a whole, our health care system is a failure.

The US gov't can hardly do worse than a system that, unless you're rich, produces poorer outcomes for fewer people with longer wait times at a significantly higher cost.

A Romulan from the TNG/DS9/VOY era goes back in time to kill Kirk and blows up the ship Kirk's father is on. His attack becomes the Federation's first encounter with the Romulans and radically changes history.

TNG Era Spock goes back in time and tries to set things back on course.

Which means the programmer doesn't have any confidence in his/her product to declare it finished.

So why would I want to use it?

This is why my motto (and fundamental rule for life) is Don't be a dick: it's simple to understand, and reasonable people can agree on what it means.

Is that the downturn in newspapers is coming at the same time as a massive recession. Under normal circumstances, newspapers might have been able to weather the transition to on-line reporting but right now, a lot of them are simply going to die.

For example, the much-speculated on-line edition of the Seattle PI looks like it'll be less an on-line newspaper and more a web portal that'll disappear within a year of the print edition dying.

One of the things I like about Puzzle Quest and Castle Crashers is that failure doesn't have much penalty. Certainly, you have to restart a level or boss fight, but any XP/gold/etc you've acquired stays with you so the "time penalty" is minimized. You may have lost but you've bettered your character in the process and can make another try incrementally better.

# 71.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
# 82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
# 88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)
# 56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

Only 34.1% could NOT correctly say Obama beats his wife!

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!

"Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of....We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state."

What she actaully said was ten times more stupid than Fey's "satire".

OTOH, we do have this survey from 2004 where Bush supporters misattributed a slew of Kerry's foreign policy positions to Bush and then expressed their support for them.

Sony BMG spokesperson: We're pleased to announce we are the final major music corporation to release electronic tracks without that pesky DRM! All you have to do is leave your house, go to a selected retail outlet, buy a special card there, go back to your house, scratch off the back of the card to find a code, go to our special MusicPass Web site, enter said code, and download one the 37 titles we have available, from Celine Dion to the Backstreet Boys!

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can't trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what's with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?