That too, tho some seem to overdo it after they revert and reach another level of, um, stability.

Purposely interfering with competing businesses isn't part of a free market. People who complain about "free markets" don't know what a free market actually is....

What I really don't get is the nutjobs (looking at you) who don't understand where Taxi regulation has ended up. It's easy to say how bad it used to be but now we have the end game of any regulatory regime where entrenched players totally control the "regulation" in order to tilt the playing field in their favor and erect barriers to entry that are all but impossible for a newcomer to overcome.

It's shameless. In NYC you have to buy a "medallion" in order to have a taxi. Hey, sounds easy, right? I mean, just go to the city and buy one, right?

Wrong.

They sold a very limited number of them and then quit. The secondary market has pushed the price of the medallion into the high 6 figures last I looked, possibly over a million dollars now. Note that's just to run one single cab. The medallions are owned by rich people who use them as an investment and rent them to taxi drivers on a monthly basis.

Now, you tell me: how does that "help" me, the taxi industry, or anybody else besides the people who own the medallions?

In Nashville they had new regulations a few years ago backed by Gaylord (owners of Opryland) to "regulate" the limousine/sedan industry here. Again, utterly shameless. Gaylord was specifically exempted *by name* from the "regulations". The whole point was to drive a company called "Metro Livery" out of service, and hurt others. The regulations force companies to have cars that are no more than 5 years old and prices could be no lower than $50/ride among other things. Yes, they specifically put a minimum price in the ordinance. I had used Metro Livery to get rides to the airport so I knew who they were targeting. Their cars were a few years older but I could get personal sedan service for less than the cost of a taxi.

The entire point was to put a lower cost competitor out of business. Again, how does that help anybody except the big players? Hint: It doesn't.

I agree that this industry needs to be lightly regulated - having a meter requirement for taxis is an example of useful regulation. What we have now is not the regulation that is needed and has nothing to do with helping consumers.

Most diet failures I've observed happen not because the diet doesn't work, but because once they reach their target weight, they revert to their old diet, and naturally revert to the old pattern of weight gain. This is regardless of lifestyle.

Fact is, you have to pick a diet you can live with the rest of your life. Cuz otherwise it will "fail" as soon as you stop following it.

If your brain is responding to sugar like cocaine, get your thyroid checked. That sort of response is very typical for insuffucient thyroid hormone -- the brain is always starved for glucose, so if you provide FREE SUGAR! it suddenly gets a boost, which lasts a couple hours or so.

Just because there's less or no marbling in wild game doesn't mean that "lean meat" was all they ate. Toward fall, wild game carry a lot of fat. And from what I've read, the fatty tissues were the most-prized portions, and consumed first -- being not only the most calorie-dense, but more prone to spoilage with time (fats go rancid, while meat can be preserved by drying).

I've been on /. for 15 years. That's the first time I've clicked an image link here that actually went to the image that I was expecting. Thank you.

Holy shit, dude. It's not the propaganda from the Cold War, it's the tens of millions of dead bodies that Communism produced last century. In my book, that is EVIL, yes. That doesn't mean there aren't other evils in the world or that the US has always been the bastion of freedom that we should be or any of that.

I cannot fathom how someone could be arguing in 2014 that Communism isn't evil.

Fortunate that you had another school to switch to. Many places, you have a choice of one.

And I'm with the other two replies... this was the time to start a rifle club!

I don't think it's coincidence that we also have the insanity of "trigger warnings" lest someone be traumatized anew by the mere mention of whatever evil befell them... in Another Forum[TM] I griped that soon mere breathing will require a 'trigger warning' lest it traumatize someone who once had a sip of water go down the wrong way.

Cuz, ya know, the mere mentioning of something (eg. a gun) is the same as doing horrible things with it.

Because if it's running longer, it's probably using more power.

Which is more efficient, passing over the cat hair with the 2200W once, or with the 1600W five times?

"Unless kid #2 in fact had tried very hard but still failed, and says to himself, "Even my best attempt was not good enough. Next time I won't try so hard; that way, if I fail, I can just claim/believe it's because I didn't try my best."

THAT is what happens when no matter how hard you try, your best is never good enough. Parents, take heed: if you regard anything less than perfect success as "failure", you will raise a kid who is afraid to try.

I hear we've already tried nuking Manure's home ground but nobody could tell the difference.

It's a bit presumptuous of him to be setting out policy for the first government of independent Scotland. Is it not going to be a democracy?

Citation needed there I think.

Mostly on the back of following George W Bush on his crazy adventures. Of course, the government at the time was being led by a Scot and the man in charge of the money was a Scot too.

This is my favorite part about Democrat voters. They don't claim their party has anything good about it - it's just "better than Republicans".

If that's your best reason to vote then, please, stay home on election day.