How quaint. Somebody who thinks that their internet use is anonymous.

If you act as if everything you post can eventually be traced to you and you're wrong, no harm done. If you act as though stuff will never be traced back to you and you're wrong, that's a different story.

Unfortunately it's against that law to just leave you to die for your own stupidity in such cases and society invariably ends up bearing the costs. It's far less expensive to vaccinate people than it is to deal with the fallout from not doing so. Up until we can agree that you can contractually permit society ignoring any consequences for your poor decision, the pragmatic solution is to require it.

One could also take a position that not vaccinating your children is tantamount to neglect as they are incapable of making such a choice at that age and you're merely forcing your own beliefs on the child whether they would objectively want to make that decision in later life or not. Again, were there a system by which society could be absolved of having to deal with the consequences of an individual's poor decisions, this wouldn't be an issue, but we do not live in that world.

It's not morally justifiable, but the laws that are in place make coercion necessary from a financial point of view. If the government is going to force me to pay for something, I'd like to pay as little as possible and that means vaccinating the population to the greatest extend possible.

You insensitive fucking clod, my wife read that, got all excited, and left me. Said something about wanting to have your babies. You must get that a lot though.

Slashdot kooks are getting like that crazy uncle who brags about not having email. Or a computer.

Samsung is SOOOO gonna sue those bastards.

I think the wireless charging will be as important as curved televisions a big meh. Some folks will buy a charger, then discover they need a number more. We'll not always going to be in the same room with the phone, and instead of the crimes upon humanity horror of actually having to plug something in, you'll have an invisible tether to a nice big monitor.So you get a wireless charger for other rooms. Then they'll need their regular charger, unless they want to lug around the wireless one.

A serious amount of trouble just to avoid plugging in a wire.

Yeah, it'll probably be big hit.

Do Slashdot users still need to be taught to "hold their beliefs up to experimentation"? And do they need to be taught this by a reality TV show?

My concern with pop skeptics is that they don't believe in holding their beliefs up to experimentation, and instead decide what is "woo" based upon their feelings.

Well done!

You are oh so damn right, the Southern Democrats, or th Dixiecrats, used the federal coffers like sailors in a whorehouse bar.

!00 percent, not a possibility of being wrong, and very glad you admit it. They were racist as hell, very conservative, Many were in the KKK. All Democrats.

One small issue.......

http://cjonline.com/blog-post/...

During the "Civil Rights" era when the liberals in Washington were trying to ram their agenda down the South's throat. The Dixicrats became Republicans. This is the problem when trying to force-fit the Democrat and Republican labels to all times. The DIxiecrats eventually became what is now the ideological core of the Republican party.

So yes, I agree, the Southern Democrats were a nasty racist, pseudo-states rights group who opposed the federal Government except when they could extract money from it. Not a whole lot unlike today's Republicans. Not surprising - because they are today's Republicans.

Great to find common ground, eh?

Until Mythbusters confirms it, I'll just say it's Plausible.

Mythbusters' pop skepticism is the very definition of junk science.

If you're waiting for confirmation from Penn Jillette or some other aging magician or Skeptical Inquirer, you missed out on a successful career as an economist.

Skepticism is healthy, and when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. However, this is being repeatedly validated by multiple credible sources, which means that it should be accepted. If the crowd here is skeptical, it's only because we've see so much junk science over the years that has been latched onto and all the damage such things do. Look at the anti-vaccination movement, which has resulted in an increase in cases of diseases that were practically non-existent for decades.

Everything that's generally accepted today went through similar amounts of skepticism at some point and was borne out by repeated studies to prove its validity. Anything less and you've got something more akin to a religion and articles of faith.

I disagree. Canada is just as bad as the U.S. in some regards. For example, if you want to purchase blank media, you're paying a piracy tax to the media companies because they lobbied that legislation successfully. There are plenty of other examples of the Canadian parties bending to the whims of various special interests.

From a purely theoretical stand point, it's a lot easier to lobby/bribe a party (single entity) than it is to bribe a large number of individual representatives. You even point out that the individual MPs are simply expected to vote with their party. Given that most probably don't understand the stuff they're voting on (same thing in the U.S. for most topics and the average Congress critter) voting the party line is an easy cop out, so it only becomes a matter of getting the person pushing the party line in one's pocket.

I think that there are better solutions for dealing with lobbying issues such as enforcing single term limits for every position at a federal level and forbidding collecting campaign contributions or campaigning while holding office. The only way to bribe a representative would be to do so before they are elected and because they can only have a single term, there's no incentive for them to stay bought.

Just because you're not receiving ownership of the company does not mean it isn't an investment. Whichever dictionary Google uses for results defines the word as follows:

The Kickstarter backer rewards or eventual product is the material reward in this case.

Also, have you ever heard the phrase "Improving education is investing in the future of our country." or something similar to that effect? Clearly no one is talking about owning some part of future generations or anything along those lines.

I'm a spherical cow. I say "roolllin' roolllin'", not "moo moo"

"If there is constant debate about whether we are currently in a bubble, we are probably in a bubble."

Supply-and-demand works, who knew.