First of all I think you are attacking a straw man. I never said that I was opposed to evolutionary theory. It seems to hold up well in many ways, and I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the religious zeal that defends evolution to the point of denying its weaknesses.

I happen to believe in guided evolution. I think there are enough questions about evolution and abiogenesis that blind evolution is unlikely.

Secondly, while I don't have a problem with language reconstruction, I think there are valid questions to be asked in that realm as well. I am not a linguist, so you can take my opinion for what its worth, but I think it is pretty humorous that we think we can accurately reconstruct a language that hasn't been spoken in thousands of years. There isn't anyone to confirm that the assumptions behind the reconstruction are correct, and there is no way to verify. That doesn't invalidate linguistics or the reconstruction process completely. It does mean that we have to have at least a shred of humility and acknowledge the weaknesses inherent in the process.

This isn't quite the same thing. A spoken language dies when its speakers die. Evidence only remains if the culture had writing that is on a substrate that can survive long periods of exposure.

When a species dies out there is at least a possibility that there will be some fossilized evidence. I don't think we would find complete fossilized skeletons, but we should be able to find some evidence of intermediate species. I think it is disingenuous to ignore the very real questions about intermediate steps in the evolutionary process. We may find more fossils in the future that demonstrate the evolutionary transitions, but right now this is an area that is lacking

Dr. Cal Lightman in Lie to Me. He works with a crew, but he is a badass hero.

That cracks me up. It's because of a Big Idea that 1/3 of the human population even eats. Big Ideas is exactly why many people put food on their table.. not just food, but an abundance of food.

We have an abundance of unhealthy food. Simple carbs and fat laden crap. Most families can't afford to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. Add to that the vast urban tracts that don't even have access to a decent grocery store and you can see that we have a real food problem that isn't being addressed.

The promised land is a goal you set to always be better. Here are some thing you might want to consider: Polio, pretty much GONE. Most childhood diseases, gone. Between those two things, child death has moved from expected, to tragic. I can sit in my home and watch pretty much any movie any time. I can also go tot he park and play with a baseball. A purchase which helped put food on the table on the other side of the world. Contrary to what some people trying to choke this country have said, life is better then it was even 20 years ago.

It is great that childhood diseases are gone. We have picked the low hanging fruit. We are making very little headway on resolving diseases of aging such as dementia, Alzheimers and cancer. The options that are available are so expensive that they are only available to people with $$$. We continue to defund research and pay pharmaceutical companies billions to create drugs to treat symptoms, but don't actually solve problems.

Because of the highway system, my work option are far wider, my life style is higher, everyone's in the US's is higher.

You can drive your car to a non-existent job? Well goody for you. Again, there is a large and growing underclass in this country that can't afford a car or the outrageous fuel prices to run it. Employment has stagnated and the options for employment have narrowed. It is a choice between something in the tech field or a low paying service job. Middle class jobs are becoming extinct.

The current economy? would have LOVED for it to be this good in the 80's. Safety Crime? Way the fuck down since the 70's and 80s.

I think you need to look at history and see that the majority of Americans are not benefiting from big ideas today. The gulf between rich and poor widens, access to basics like health care and education is becoming more difficult and real income is shrinking. Some things have gotten better. Increased access to broadband internet and by extension all kinds of information is nice, but that doesn't address basic needs. We are not better off as a society than we were 20 years ago when you look at the big picture.

Disillusionment with "ideas" permeates our culture and has lead to a lack of interest in pursuing and discussing new ideas. Despite all of the grand ideas of the past 125 years, our wealth gap is widening and for the first time we are losing ground financially, educationally and socially. All of the past ideas have not changed one thing about the realities we live with. As a matter of fact we could argue that many of those ideas got us into the mess we are facing today.

People are tired of ideas. Ideas don't work in resolving the issues of survival most of our society is facing, they don't put food on the table, and they haven't lead us to the Promised Land envisioned by many Enlightenment and modernist thinkers.

It isn't the job of businesses to take care of anyone - even their employees. The number one job of a business is to maximize profit.

Ideally, the individuals who profit from the operation of a business would be interested in taking care of the individuals in society. Unfortunately those people seem to have take the attitude that they have gotten their piece of the pie and don't care about the reality others may be living in.

I agree with the analogy of the Romans used by unity100 upthread. The wealthy have no reason to care about our society any longer. The analogy isn't perfect but it seems like we are headed in the same general direction.

Drupal is uneven, missing features that you would expect from a full CMS and enabling functionality via contrib modules that I have spent months coding in the past. Features show up that are clearly not ready for prime time and are slowly developed into useful modules that become a core part of the Drupal developer's toolkit. It really seems like the archetypal open source/agile project in that way. Unfortunately, that style doesn't work well in a dead tree format. It will be interesting to see if a second edition hits the shelves that fixes some of the glaring problems.

I just signed up for Mozy for a measly $54/year. I have almost 9GB of data backed up to their servers that took about a week to completely upload from my laptop when I was occasionally connected to the internet and not using it. I have a very small consulting business and I don't have time to juggle hard drives, run to the bank to keep a secure offsite backup or spend time worrying about my data.

If I don't pay my bill, the data does disappear. So What? I probably moved to a different service or a local backup solution at that point, or my business failed and the backups are the least of my concerns.

You may think it is expensive, but I find it to be a deal. I don't know what it would cost me to replace my data, but it far exceeds the cost in time or money of backing up using Mozy. You may have a different cost/benefit balance sheet and find that these services are too expensive and you may have other reasons you are not comfortable using them. That is fine, but understand your needs are not the same as the millions of people who do find value in online backup.

Excellent insight! The reality is that optimism proffers an advantage in our current American/Western society. At other times or places pessimism may well be a better choice.

I have read similar studies and find that amazing when considered in the light of the fact that successful people tend to be more optimistic. So, seeing a "clearer view of reality" doesn't seem to confer any advantages. I lean toward the view that intelligent people are more depressed because of the fact that they see reality more clearly.

The problem you are describing here isn't a self-employment problem, it is a project management problem. If you had created a project plan and built realistic time expectations with your customer, then he could not have been irate. He would have signed off on the project plan, the schedule, and would have been kept abreast of the project's progress via milestones and a strong communication plan.

This is going to be a problem whether you are self-employed or work for $MegaCorp.