You see what I mean, folks? Assholes. They show up everywhere.

Were you using SMS or iMessage? This is probably fixable in iMessage -- they get routed through Apple's servers and could probably be sanitized so that the offending characters can be byte-aligned to avoid the crash -- but SMSes go directly through the carriers and would require an OS update.

Her defense wasn't delayed by injustice; it was delayed by assholes. Injustice is a thing, a concept, one not entirely tied to reality; it is an abstract aligned to our moral beliefs. We don't consider the vicious treatment of pedophiles in America injustice because we hate them, even though empirically we can make some arguments about mental health and the fermentation of social pressures forcing people with an internal sickness into hiding, stress, and then the shape of something they could have avoided with proper social support. We consider victimization of Jews injustice because we've started this moral narrative about how hating on Jews is bad.

The fact of the matter is it's people who made decisions about their regards toward and actions about race that delayed this Ph.D. defense. It's assholes. It's people who decided to bar this from being heard. Injustice is a diffuse thing, like the injustice of a court system which executes more blacks than whites on similar evidence; it lifts blame off the participants and onto the mode of society or of misfortune. We pretend these actors don't exist, or at least that they aren't directly responsible for their actions, even though the victims are directly burdened by them. That nebulous ideal is immaterial to the consequences of society; the fact that people went along with it instead of using their human reason and empathy to decide against these happenings is squarely the fault of those people, not the fault of the speculation about what those people did.

What happened wasn't wrong; *you* were wrong for doing it.

The only way to ensure the possibility of a good paying job is to match labor supply with labor demand; that is, to make sure there aren't 100,000,000 computer programmers and 4,000,000 programming jobs.

"Keeping the US Economy competitive" is ludicrous. It's like eating shitloads of donuts to keep a sumo wrestler competitive: your body gets sick and you die, and all you really need is good sumo skills to wrestle people in your weight class successfully.

The US economy won't be competitive if it's completely and totally ill from a glut of computer science specialists and the constant suppression of salaries by state-subsidized college education. If the US economy runs well, a well-tuned machine with all of the parts correctly built and sized for need, it will outperform any other economy on earth. An arms race to stockpile perishable goods we have no intent nor ability to use before they expire is only going to make us a poor and shaky economy weak in the things we sacrifice for stacking up tons of tomatoes that are going to rot away next month.

Nerd fail, invalid use of significant digits ;). Though I was thinking the same thing, one in a million doesn't seem very significant. It's like 5 people dying in my country of 5 million, that's one bad car crash not exactly dropping like flies.

Apple used to ship iSync with OS X, which could sync calendars and contacts with a wide variety of phones via bluetooth or a cable. It also had a nice plug-in architecture for adding new sync clients (and new kinds of data to sync). They also had some Bluetooth integration with the address book app, so when someone called your phone you'd get a pop-up on the screen of who it was and could send SMS directly from the address book. All of these features disappeared with the first OS X release after the iPhone and were replaced with cloud-base syncing that only worked with the iPhone.

Fair enough, many climb Mount Everest for no better reason.

Well mostly you'll be living in a bunker living off a long supply chain from Earth. It'll be a lot like living on a submarine that you mostly endure rather than pioneer. Many will envy you going, not so many the actual living conditions.

Name the third guy to set foot on the moon. I'm not saying there's no fame, but there's many easier ways to celebrity status. Except if you're the next Neil Armstrong.

True. But I imagine it'll be a rather unglamorous and unthankful task. Remember that you're a million miles away from any fans or fame, no vacations or time off and it's unlikely any amount of money will get you fresh bacon and eggs.

And as for changing the world, they won't send you up there just to be a warm body. If you can change the world up there, you can probably change the world down here too. There's thousands of people who can say they contributed to the Apollo program, even though they never went to the moon.

I do not know a single politician outside the US who would think that even remotely considering pushing an agenda as harebrained as creationism is anything but political suicide. ...well, except in Canada these days. A couple years ago, our minister of *science* was refusing to answer questions about whether he believed in evolution. More recently, Alberta also had a creationist minister of education.. So unfortunately, some of the madness has escaped North of the US.

Well then, it's like a traffic jam when you're already late.

Yeah, but malicious intent is only a part of the threat equation. I'd rather have one completely incompetent malicious guy trying to kill me, specifically, than a thousand incompetent but well-meaning drivers around me.

Just because malice feels more dangerous doesn't make it so. It may well be more reprehensible, but decisions affecting foreign policy and national security shouldn't be made based on feelings.

Yeah, but if you're talking about ground shipping, $4 is about what you pay to ship a cube a foot on a side.

I think the general point is that the OP confused the National Mall with a retail mall, and the GP was mocking his ignorance.

Work harder! Millions of Americans depend on YOU!

Sure... in exactly the same way, and to the same degree, that I depend on them. Actually, I may depend on them slightly more, since they provide a disincentive against foreign countries just laying claim to my home. But otherwise, great point.

Regression? What the hell is that??? Everybody attack!!!

The problem with voting is the same as the problem with Facebook: It doesn't capture dislikes. The majority of voters who liked a candidate in 2004 may have liked Bush, but maybe more people disliked him than liked him. Capturing dislike would allow people to go to the polls and register their displeasure with the candidate(s) offered, even if they don't like either of the choices. If someone can't exceed the number of dislikes with likes, then they probably shouldn't hold office, regardless of whether or not they have the most likes in absolute terms.