Explain the reelection of George W. Bush and Barack Obama then.

In the last few elections, it's been worse than just picking the lesser of two evils. It's more like having to choose between Satan and Cthulu. You know you're screwed either way. One will only corrupt you and steal your soul, the other one will drive you insane, turn you into a gibbering eldritch abomination and unravel the fabric of reality. I voted for the minor third party candidate Kodos. Who did you vote for?

Add my anecdotal evidence to the pile. In my own case, I have been depressed on account of the amazing suckitude of my life, and have deliberately turned to the distraction of multiple forms of media (books, TV, music, interwebs, beer, etc.), often simultaneously. Recognizing the external factors of my life that make it suck are beyond my control, and thinking about these things leads directly to depression, it is only reasonable to prevent thinking about these things by occupying my mind with anything else at all.

Now Petraeus won't be testifying before Congress about Benghazi. This "affair" is a perfect excuse for him to disappear. No one will wonder why he's not coming into work, or why he's not at home. Don't be surprised if his body is discovered in a few days, and it's called a suicide, complete with a handy explanatory suicide note. Just my suspicious opinion.

Subject says it all. It's a maxim I've observed for a long time.
My dad also taught me that prejudice saves time.
He's right.
And before you get all upset and "that's racist!" over that statement, just remember that prejudice can apply to anything. I am prejudiced against Toyotas, Saturns, Microsoft, anything requiring the use of iTunes, DRM, CocaCola, Disney, cats, small dogs, assholes and liberal Democrats. Some of these prejudices are arbitrary and others are clearly deserving.
Thus, just as the people described in the article, I have more free mental space to think about things that are more important to me.

Yeah. Socrates tried that "introduce critical thinking and logic" thing a few thousand years ago. Didn't work out so well for him, and doesn't seem to have made much impact.

I just made myself sad.
Humans suck.

You're describing devices that were not specifically designed to perform (or stop performing, rather) in this manner, therefore these cannot be counted as actual implementations. However, the soft-bodied alarm clock I had about ten years ago was specifically designed to be turned off by throwing it across the room. (Whacking it also worked, of course). The unfortunate design flaw of this particular alarm clock was that not everything else in the room was designed to be struck by an alarm clock hurled at it.

According to OO.o, there are 85 words in this post, all of which are DHS keywords. Some of these words are duplicated, so, if I were you, I'd expect a knock on the door pretty soon.

Brohoof!
I wish I had mod points and you hadn't posted AC. Me and my SO both laughed at this.
And to answer the original question, start with DS9. It's absolutely the best series of the bunch. I started her watching earlier this year and we're already halfway through season seven (we skipped the Maquis episodes because the Maquis plotline was stupid). She insists on watching an episode or two of DS9 every night - she's a bigger fan of the show than I was. Then we mixed in a few TNG and TOS episodes for fun when DS9 had a few too many dark episodes in a row. Don't bother with Voyager; it rapidly becomes unwatchably retarded after the first few episodes. I couldn't even watch the whole first season when it first ran. I have no opinion on Enterprise, since I've never seen the show.

As a writer who is doing self-publishing, my answer is to do it myself. I have significant experience with both editing and design, so I felt completely comfortable doing the work myself. If you don't think you're up to the task, you can always pay someone else. I've published through lulu.com and createspace.com, and both offer editing and design services. It's not cheap, but not terribly expensive either, and if you're not confident in editing your own work or coming up with your own design, it can definitely be worth it. I've seen plenty of self-published books where the author clearly should have taken advantage of these services.

On a quick look at Hugh Howey's cover design, I can't tell whether it's professional work or he did it himself, and the preview amazon provides does not include any copyright notice or artwork credit indicating it's his own work or someone else's. I don't like the cover design, and from the snips I read, I don't care for the writing style. It just doesn't grab me. YMMV.

I did two different covers for my book, one for the ebook, and one for the printed book, due to odd licensing issues I won't describe here. I personally prefer the second design (print version) to the first (ebook). Interestingly, cover preference on my book seems to be split on gender lines. Women generally prefer the unicorn leaping through a portal version, while men prefer the staring eyeball version. See for yourself here: ebook (first design) and paperback (second design)

Yeah, I would like the marketing effort a big publishing house can provide, but for first-time authors, they rarely risk much effort to promote them. It's a complete crapshoot, unless you have a friend on the inside (or a very good agent) with some influence, which I don't. In my situation, it's kind of a wash. For subsequent books, I can show sales figures and reader reviews for this one to support a pitch to a publisher. And who knows, if this one actually takes off (I have better chances winning the lottery, I know), I can ignore the big publishing houses altogether and keep a much bigger slice of the pie than they typically offer. I have a real job that pays pretty good, so I can afford to play it this way. Thank you for having a look at my book, if you do end up liking it, or you think of someone else you think will enjoy it, let them know.

One thing I wanted to mention in my previous post was that the eBook price for the HP books is higher than the print price. Really, WTF is up with that? Why do the big publishers think this is a good idea? It makes no sense. We already have all the HP books in either paperback or hardcover, and we also have multiple eBook capable devices, but we're not going to pay that much extra to get the eBook version, even though it's my preferred reading medium. Oh, well, I guess that's only one lost sale to them. There's probably plenty of other more avid fans of the series who are willing to pay up, but I'm seeing a lot of complaints about the high price they want. DRM free is win, but the high price is lose.

That actually made me crack a smile. Thanks.

This is exactly the reason I released my book without DRM. Also set the price at $2.99 because that seemed to be the most popular price point. Still isn't helping sales any, but I figure that's because few people know about it. I guess I could point people to it from slashdot: Cerberon on facebook click about for complete list of eBook availability.

Goodbye semi-anonymity for Ira Sponsible.

This is one of the main reasons I gave up on windows. No multiple desktops out of the box? Seriously? It's a basic feature of any modern desktop OS. Having to search for a good utility to add this capability to windows was among the many reasons it was much easier to switch to linux than to keep putting up with it. I didn't read the first post above as a troll. It's actually a reasonable question. Is there any real reason you would rather add basic functionality to an incomplete OS, such as vital programs, utilities, or games that won't work on anything else? If not, it's really worth considering giving it up altogether and using something that suits your needs better. For myself, I still have windows on my system, but I only boot to it on the rare occasions when I must sync to iTunes, or palm desktop, or run the current version of photoshop, none of which perform adequately (or at all) under WINE. Other than that, I don't miss windows at all.