I didn't realize that "humanity" included self-righteousness, arrogance, and a large dose of holier than thou.

Lets see if I got this right, you do what is "right" (according to your religion) because your God says that he'll burn you forever if you don't; not because its the right thing to do. And because you do what is "right" you are feel that you have more "humanity" than anyone who doesn't believe in God.

If that is what it takes to keep you acting civilized, I'm all in favor of it.

The name of the nerve is the "recurrent laryngeal nerve".

Think it's stupid route planning in humans? It follows the same route in giraffes.

One of the other interesting facets of the whole area is that it isn't just a matter of having a 3D printer. If you're going to create parts for your own ideas, you have to be able to draw them. If you can't create the drawings/models, all you can do is search around for something the somebody else did and hope that it's close enough. (What's the fun in that?)

Maybe there is no great conspiracy against your wonderful "facts" and opinions.

There's a joke that is probably a better fit.

If one person calls you an ass, you can laugh it off.

If two people call you an ass, you can walk away.

If a bunch of people call you an ass, you should have yourself fitted for a saddle.

There's an URL around here somewhere for tin-foil hats.

Well, now that we've heard from the "Floggings will continue until morale improves" school of management.

Anybody want to work for this guy?

Does it also object if you do a rm -rf .* ?

(I was just trying to remove a bunch of hidden directories in /tmp. Unfortunately .* matched .. all the way to /)

If you want a "killer app", figure out how to make an online barter market that can do barter chains. If that's the right term; #1 wants this, and has that, #2 has the other thing and wants the other other thing, #3 has that.... Stitch all the wants and haves together and everybody gets what they want with no currency being exchanged at all. Currency is just a common denominator and has no intrinsic value.

Well Rick Perry is certainly stupid enough to qualify for the GOP nomination. Now all he needs is the ventriloquist dummy surgery that W. had.

The question is who's hand is going to be running Governor Goodhair's mouth. I don't think Cheney's up for it this time.

Careful, Careful..... You might be establishing a negative correlation there. Doctors have better outcomes when they are paid less?. Heaven forfend!

Don't want to over extrapolate here, perfect health probably won't appear when Doctors are paid nothing.

So why do most of the other countries in the developed world, that do have universal health care, deliver better overall health care outcomes for 60% less (10% of GDP) than the current US system (16% of GDP)?

The original version of the healthcare plan was written 15-20 years ago, including the mandate, by the Heritage Foundation, well known as a pinko-commie-lib think tank. (For the mouth-breathers out there, that's a joke). Go look for other Heritage Foundation proposals and see what you think.

The question of what section of DOMA was covered by the ruling may be academic. The Justice Department wasn't enforcing DOMA before. I'd be very surprised if they started enforcing separate pieces of it now.

Pssst... I think he's got his ranking scale inverted. That would put somebody like Ed Witten as the smartest and D.P. at the other end of the scale. He might be off by one too. Did he start counting at 0 or at 1?

I believe that most people in the world are good and generally trustworthy. I think that most of them will help, if they can. From what I can see, their ability to help is severely limited. Mostly by the laws of physics, mathematics and unintended consequences. There is a limited amount of arable land. There is a limited amount of water. There is a limited amount of energy to use to support a civilization. As a civilization, we don't know exactly where we are with respect to the hard limits, but there are numerous indications that we've exceeded some of the limits.

To just wishfully assume that we'll pull some rabbit out of the hat and push all those limits back just when we need to, frightens me. It frightens me because I think it stops people from thinking about the hard alternatives that might avert the die-off.

That's some of my own wishful thinking too. I wish that we could avoid a major die-off. But, given our history so far. I don't see civilization acquiring enough wisdom, selflessness, or resources to avoid it.

And exactly what is going to get all this extra food production going? Good wishes?

If the food is going to be produced in the western economy it's going to have to be sold for enough money to cover the cost of increasingly expensive fertilizer, seed, land, labor, and fuel that mechanized agriculture uses. If it's going to be produced in the under-developed parts of the world, the productivity of the local farmers is going to have to be increased dramatically. There's no plausible mechanism for that sort of productivity increase.

If you look at the agricultural commodity markets (in particular the price spikes), a lot of the price elasticity seems to be gone, which may be a sign that the mechanized agricultural industry is at maximum capacity. We may be only a couple of crop failures away from food rationing.

Another indication may be the "Arab Spring" upheavals. A number of the press reports credited food riots with starting the unrest.