I thought about this a long time ago, actually. It always bugged the crap out of me that they spent much of the third movie driving to the point that the time machine is a terrible thing and must be destroyed before it tears the universe a new one. At the end of the movie this is accomplished splendidly, only to immediately find that Doc Brown has created a new one.

Instead of a fourth movie, I propose a short series. The story is that Marty realizes that Doc Brown must be stopped, so he teams up with the other paradox Martys and they use the various paradox leftover Deloreans to hunt Doc Brown through time. More paradoxes create more people and equipment to replenish what will inevitably be terrible losses in this war.

The series would be terrible, and I would _love_ it.

I really don't think you do.

By your logic we can reduce the effect of the fine by having them pay it in 50-kroner notes. That way they only have to pay 40 of them instead of 2,000 of them. 40 is less, so it's not as big a deal.

Given a large enough sample set, even the least likely of occurrences becomes highly probable. The universe and several billion years make up a pretty large sample set.

Depending on how long ago and how far away, we might be getting a neutral viewpoint of it right now.

Fair enough. I guess in keeping with the parent post it's more a question of the psychological definition of being "suicidal" rather than the definition of the word suicide. The former may have more of a psychological medical definition than the latter. And even then there would be a lot of interpretation involved in the evaluation of the patient.

The net result is the same. The recipient of the heart, and their loved ones, will be forever grateful. The guy's true motives are between him and any god he believes in.

I wouldn't say "willingly inviting death" but I see the point you're making.

I'm reminded of an episode of M*A*S*H where a soldier was brain-dead due to too much shrapnel turning his head to swiss cheese. The doctors were waiting for his body to fully die (all other functions were still going, but slowly fading) because they needed to harvest some tissue to save someone else. The soldier's friend, recovering from his own injuries, was upset that they were just waiting like vultures to butcher his friend.

The priest asked him if his friend was the kind of guy who would jump on a grenade to save his buddies. The soldier responded that, yes, his dying friend would have done that without a second thought. "Well," the priest said, "that's what he's doing right now." He died back on the battlefield, the rest of his body just hasn't figured it out yet.

This guy is facing a similar decision, he just wants to make it himself while he can before someone else has to make it for him.

Accepting the inevitability of death isn't exactly the same as being suicidal. We all know we're going to die, most of us just ignore that fact in our daily lives. But when someone is directly facing that reality they may choose to want to make it "mean something" as in this guy's case.

"Suicidal" means wanting to die. I doubt this guy wants to die, but he does want his inevitable death to mean something to someone.

Bill Withers. Man, what do they teach you kids these days?

Define "private." There's nothing private about the fact that a person has friends and socializes with those friends. Why should such information be treated as some kind of top-secret embarrassment that must be hidden at all times?

If I were hiring for such a company, I'd be a little suspicious of a candidate who never tells anything to anyone. (Consider how conspicuous and ineffective an "intelligence agent" Colonel Flagg was in the M*A*S*H serious.) They probably favor the candidate who can tell the difference between "something which should be kept secret" and "something which doesn't matter and can be public knowledge." (And, God willing, "something which should be public knowledge, but that's another case entirely.)

Man, if only that were the case. Then they would be nothing more than an evolutionary anomaly that would take exactly one generation to correct.

The key problem here is that, in cases such as the given example, it's not dirty laundry. The social issue at hand isn't so much the retention of information, but the ability (or, in this case, inability) of people in society to properly parse and understand that information. A company would seriously be fooling itself if it thinks it preserved some kind of integrity by not hiring someone who occasionally unwinds with friends at a party. They already have employees who do that, they just ignore the fact that they don't actively know about it. The fact that they can't distinguish between the two is a problem.

Slashdot doesn't filter them out very effectively, it's forever plagued by them. What it does have is ways for knowledgeable users (it's entire userbase) to reduce the noise and bring out the signal, all the while knowing full well what trolls are and how to ignore them. A local newspaper has a much smaller and much less savvy audience and needs to actually filter it out somehow, which can be exceedingly difficult if even possible at all.

Exactly. If the parents are buying the computer as a teacher in the same sense that they bought the TV as a babysitter then they're doing it wrong. Kids who want to learn and grow will see it as a tool to help them perform that task, whereas kids who want to play Farmville and watch YouTube will see it as a tool to help them perform _that_ task. Perhaps the presence of the computer in the home strengthens the divide, but the divide has already been there. The student has to want to learn. There are exceptions, but generally (at least in American culture) low-income households and neighborhoods don't place a very high social value on education, and kids pick up on that at a much earlier age than a home PC can affect.

The threat of violence is much closer to "violent" than "non-violent." If one believes that the person asking for (or demanding, in your example) money has a firearm, compliance with their demands would probably be the wise choice. I would, however, characterize a willingness to give money to anybody who calls me on the phone as an unwise choice.