So you'd actually need to genetically engineer the pickers, turn them into cat people. Then they would pick the good beans with their mighty cat powers, which would be force fed to the caged civets,

HIghlighted portion is not cost-effective because of redundancy.

You already have civet-cat people. Have them eat the coffee cherries and crap the beans. You can encourage this by paying them not by the hour, but by production weight... same as you pay agricultural pickers now, but with the requirement of an additional "processing" step.

It's all civet crap, right?

A dowser is less effective than a geologist and bears, at the minimum, a higher opportunity cost over the average (of instances of people searching for water with a dowser instead of a geologist).

A fine economic analysis, but you're forgetting the balance-of-costs comparison.

If what you saved using a dowser (who, by your own scenario, is cheaper than a geologist) is more than the cost of two wasted wells, the dowser was a cost-effective alternative. In that case.

If, on the other hand, the dowser wasn't much cheaper, or you had to sink 5 dry wells, or your dowser never finds water, the dowser was a net loss.

I think that on balance, the latter scenarios are more likely. If you're thinking about choosing dowsing, you're better off just throwing darts at a large map of your property and saving that cost for the same effectiveness.

But if you're going to do an economic analysis, show all your work.

+1 Got It In One. Complete with correct parallel construction.

Still, Americans work more night and weekend hours than people in other advanced economies,

I believe the correct definition of an advanced economy is one which enables, empowers, and encourages a worker to be fully engaged and continuously productive at all hours of every day of the week, maximizing shareholder value and business agility while minimizing costs.

Question for the reader: Am I joking, trolling, or serious?

Is true. Only great motherland can make correct power wires.

Glory to Arstotzka and its great Patriotic Wire and Cable Harness Factory #4!

All of that said, the spectre (or joke) of Google Perpetual Beta would be worrying, if it were still a thing. Assuming it's really not a thing anymore, rather than a thing that's been carefully buried out of public view.

False dilemma. An autonomous car with manual controls does not invalidate the experience gathered in autonomous driving, as long as the vehicle logs whether the car is under manual or computer control at any given moment.

What, 100% of driver-operated cars are guaranteed to crash?

As enamored as you are of the technology, dial back the hyperbole. It doesn't do the cause any good.

It's called "paying your dues". No one gets away without it. You prove, by extended experience over a long period of time, that the new technology is superior to the old. After a couple of generations (of people, not technology), it's accepted and the shackles of the old can safely go away.

Wait, wut? The cops are coming after Social Security participants?

Hundreds of millions of hard-working contributors, SCREWED.

I always figured Jesus Christ predated Owen as a socialist thinker which, incidentally, also causes me to be amused over how so many socialist hating conservatives also claim to be devout Christians.

All the believers were together and had everything in common.They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

-- Acts 2:44-47

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

-- Acts 4:32-35

The first Christian church in history was a festering den of socialism.

This tells me that a lot of "Christians" need to reconsider their politics, or at least their committment to cut-throat capitalism.

I dunno; if the serial number is emitted over bluetooth, or guessable/brute-forceable, a range of 100 feet may mean dozens of people in which one troll may lurk, waiting to make your prosthetic go all Dr. Strangelove on you.

I'm not seeing the security here, other than the comparatively small attack space.

Perhaps it was habit? Perhaps it was that the gas was 5cents cheaper a gallon?

A nickle a gallon? I'd buy gasoline made from pressed baby kitties and the condensed death agonies of the last endangered whales on earth for a 5 cents a gallon less than the local competitors.

I guess that makes me part of the problem.

And, of course, as other responders have pointed out, the BP pumps were stocked from the exact same local distributor as the Shell pumps across the street, and the Exxon ones up the road, and the "independent" one across town... and quite possibly all from crude from the platform and oil field that went "boom!".

So unless you were willing to completely give up all petroleum products (including textiles and agro-chemical based foodstuffs), or drill your own well in your own back yard and build your own refinery, you aren't going to be able to avoid feeding the machine you hate. Welcome to the 21st Century.

You're saying Spain should oppose Scottish independence on the basis that they don't want to give Basque or Catalan seperatists any ideas?

Interesting idea.

I know this is Slashdot, and R'ing TFS is almost too much to ask, but please note that we're focused primarily on the impact of withdrawing the UK's nuclear capability from Scotland. In this sense, I put forth the very narrow example of the civil workforce at HMNB Clyde and working very specifically on Trident II and Vanguard-class operations.

I was just pointing the absurd underestimation of Simon Brooke's claims of less than 50 affected jobs, which I must surmise was yanked out of his ass.

Yes. Withdrawing MoD's entire impact on the Scottish economy will be a substantial effect, even if pro-independence partisans promise that everyone thusly rendered unemployed will either find employment in the Scottish government or somehow continue to be able to work for the MoD... somehow.

FWIW, I sense a lot of handwaving on this issue from that side. Something akin to "It'll be fine because STFU."