Uh, so what? World War II enabled me, too. Without it, Indian independence probably would have been delayed, my grandparents may not have met and I would not have been born. Should I thus celebrate Hitler's invasion of Poland? What an odd line of reasoning.

Yes, you're right, because if the planet, say, heated up enough that liquid water couldn't exist in our atmosphere, we would certainly benefit.

Your notions of adaptation are extremely optimistic. Life is not inevitable or omnipotent; it cannot overcome any adaptive landscape. If it could, the Moon would be teeming. It is entirely possible for extinction events to eliminate all life. It is entirely possible for us to create such an extinction event. Stop assuming that just because it can happen, life will recover, or that these events are somehow noteworthy and beneficial.

People need to get over extinctions.

Why are people lauding this dude? He's celebrating our imminent deaths. You can have your own death party, buddy. Me, I want our species to survive at least another few million years, not precipitate a mass extinction event right now.

Some useful reading.

Only someone with zero understanding of selection could make a statement like this. Natural selection is a pretty precise knife - it multiplies exponentially over generations. Even a minor selective disadvantage - a tiny fraction of a percent - results in removal of deleterious variation.

I'm a diligent bug-filer. I don't think a single bug I've ever filed has been dealt with, except by the feature being completely elided by a major software revision (e.g. KDE4). It's always mystified and annoyed me that free software projects don't make better use of the fact that their process can be completely transparent. Developers are too egotistical about their code.

Well, surely you aren't suggesting that forcing kids to do schoolwork for no pay -- the status quo -- is somehow more likely to turn them into writers/poets/scientists than paying them to do schoolwork. So what's your alternative?

What? That's exactly what I'm suggesting - I'm saying that kids who are paid to do schoolwork are more likely to turn into drones and less likely to turn into writers/poets/scientists. That is, they will learn, "The reason I am doing this is to get money," not, "The reason I am doing this is because science/art/music/literature/philosophy/dance/woodworking/programming/math/history/writing is fun."

Quit your job, dude. Quit your job. You're hurting yourself.

The compensation is deferred, but we already do pay students to do well in school. I had a full ride plus in college; that was a direct result of doing well in high school.

However, there's research[citation needed] demonstrating that the ability to defer rewards is an indicator of an individual's future success. You're surely familiar with the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, right? Right?

all that matters is RESULTS

Okay, yes, I agree: all that matters is RESULTS. But you're ignoring the other RESULTS you'll accidentally succeed in achieving, viz. teaching the kid that remuneration is the only acceptable form of reward.

I suppose that's acceptable if you're only interested in creating drones to staff your factories and offices, the kind of people who ARE "incentivized" by bonuses and pay raises. Personally, I'm interested in intelligent, creative kids - writers, poets, scientists, kids with real curiosity who want to do things because they love to do them, because the problem fascinates them, because they want to KNOW, goddamnit. Not because they're going to get a buck. That's a recipe for producing amoral scum.

If you had bothered to watch the demo video, you'd see that the linux desktop he plays it on is, in fact, recognizably Ubuntu.

I can't bring myself to adequately ridicule your "newbie sheep masses" comment. It's puerile enough that it ridicules itself, I suppose.

Shit, yeah. As TFA says, corporations have already got it so tough, man.

Yes, it IS good for them. And bad for you. You're talking about one of the most powerful entities in the world - Exxon Mobil is larger than most countries - with no accountability to anyone. The government that you hate so much is being steadily dismantled BECAUSE private tyrannies (i.e. corporations) are using their vast coffers to break and twist it into the form they desire. Why, exactly, do you think the government gives money to banks or the MIC?

The more power corporations have, the more they can resist the controlling influence of democracy, the worse off we are. Observe Exxon's use of their power to confuse the debate on global warming for years, assuring that nothing gets done to compromise their profits and that the planet continues to choke on the waste gases their products emit.

As someone who's been an anarchist most of my adult life, I find it bizarre when so-called libertarians cheer the destruction of democratic government and the increasing devolution of power into the hands of the people who have, for the better part of this past century, been largely in control of our society. If you're REALLY in the favor of liberty, why are you such a fan of enabling so much power going into such few hands?

Wait, really? The joke made in the comic wasn't accurate? It was an exaggeration made for possibly humorous effect? This is insightful?