Yes, a spending problem. We spend far too much on the military, and too little on infrastructure, and other investments in the future. But it's not a money problem, it's a printing problem, or rather, a philosophical problem. Many in our government do not understand how a fiat currency, (or the economy), works.

Yeah, my god, this article, if true, really blows my mind. Ninety-percent of what I see in comments sections is pure idiocy. It's difficult for me to imagine anyone looking at that dreck and taking it seriously. Of course, half the studies reported are reported incorrectly, or completely bogus themselves.

Educated people generally skew towards liberalism. Why are you here?

You haven't had much experience with cops, right? Besides, even if you're only getting a traffic ticket, they'll want to take it back to their car.

It can't be easy to be "even-handed" with today's Republican Party. Believe me, I'm no supporter of The Democratic Party, but the Republican's have pulled much of the lunatic fringe under their "big tent." There's no comedy without stupidity, and the Republicans seem to excel in that.
As for the news being fake? It's all too real. The Daily Show is more informative than any other cable news show. This is not just my opinion, it's been studied, although it certainly is obvious. Only ideologues can, (and certainly will), argue with that.

Yeah, me too. But he's right in that there's been a movement away from POP to IMAP and especially to webmail. Judging from most people I know, I'd say most people access email via a webpage, and that their saved mail resides on the provider's server.
But even if, as you say, you download and delete from the server, there seems to be no guarantee it's gone from the server.

People still seem to think they own the equipment, devices, or media they pay for. In time, they will learn...

A sixty-something is probably gonna go with the Beatles and the Stones. But you're right, for most people, the music they were into as teenagers is what they listen to for the rest of their lives. That's because most people aren't really interested in music per se, but rather obtain a group identity by adopting whatever their peers were listening to. Later, it becomes nostalgia.

But the truth is, most commercial music is schlock, and always has been. There have been exceptions, of course, (hmm...the Beatles and the Stones?), but when people talk about how awful, say, 80's music was, I'm thinking of Minor Threat, or the Feelies, etc... If you only hear commercial music, of course it will seem to you like all music is shit.

I think the generational thing is gone, though. This is the post-modern era, after all, where people listen to music from all eras. That's why we haven't seen a revolution in rock since 1977 - there's nothing to rebel against if your parent's (and grandparent's) music is "cool." I haven't given up hope, though.

It definitely has. There's a lot of effort to master from original tape, and a lot of new releases are being recorded to tape. Shelby Lynn's "Just a Little Lovin" is a good example, recorded on, mastered from the original 2" tape. A lot of recent releases sound incredible. "Digitally Remastered" is now a label people avoid like the plague.
Still, few people today own a hi-fi. Most do their listening on computer speakers, earbuds, or boom boxes. Of the people buying vinyl, a large percentage think that record noise is part of the (retro) experience, and I suspect few have the equipment needed to reveal the difference between analog and digital. In short, for many, it is just a fad.
As for myself, I'm buying as many titles as I can. Who knows what the future holds? I still cringe everytime I think of the boxes of records I sold, just to make moving more convenient.

Right. I've never torrented music. There are easier ways to get it, where you're going to find a much better selection.

Stories about zero tolerance are always quite amusing. Astonishing, even, when you consider that adults are behind these policies. But just because LotR is mentioned, seems a very tenuous reason to be discussing it here. Just saying'...

Right. If he's gonna play on the Terminal, he oughta learn some unix-y stuff. These key commands work in all text fields:

                ctrl-a = brings cursor to the beginning of a line
                ctrl-d = deletes the letter in front of the cursor
                ctrl-e = brings cursor to the end of a line
                ctrl-k = erases an entire line in front of the cursor
                ctrl-o = acts like return, but cursor stay in the same place
                ctrl-t = brings the letter that is behind the cursor forward one, switching places with the next letter.
                ctrl-v = moves cursor to the end of a document, or line
                ctrl-w = deletes everything behind the cursor.

I think these commands were originally from emacs, so I'm not sure if they work in vi. The HOME and END keys simply bring you to the top and bottom of a document, respectively. I can see how a person coming from Windows would not find Mac OS intuitive. You have to unlearn a lot of bad habits.

It's been shown over and over that a similarly configured PC costs as much or more than a comparable Mac. It's just that you can't buy a stripped-down Mac, like you can with PCs.

Of course it's ridiculous. I mean, what constitutes an event, or a choice? We always think of it in terms of people making choices, but surely every bacterium that wriggles this way instead of that, every mote of dust, every atom, every photon, would have its parallel universes of possibility. And possibilities are infinite for each. Not that these things aren't worth thinking about.

It's not a paradox if life is unique to Earth. This idea that, because there are trillions of stars, and because many of them have planets, ergo, there must be life on many of them, is a statistic based upon a sample of one. Until we understand how life began, I don't know if we can really say anything about the chances of life elsewhere. It's pure speculation.