NSA/TSA//WTF-SA This guy is presupposing NSA is going to be able to stop an attack, assuming anyone is planning one. The only results they have to show are nulls - "All these horrible things didn't happen because we were watching! What horrible things? We can't tell you. It's secret. But truly, they didn't happen. Remember, all that bad stuff that didn't happen? That was all us! So we don't need anyone to watch us, just trust us. We won't turn on the webcam on your teenagers laptop, we pinkie-swear!"

Intelligent people can blindly believe incredibly false ideas. Isaac Newton is an excellent example. I think few would argue that he was smarter than more or less anyone on /. But he went ended up following some pretty fallacious paths, which I am sure he would have defended fiercely and intelligently. This may be understandable given the times he lived in, but it is not today since so much of what people believe is so demonstrably false. Yet people persist in the belief that opinion is as good as proven fact (clue - it's not), and that anyones opinion is as good as anyone elses (another clue - it's not. As an engineer, my opinion, say, of a bit of code or circuit design is more well founded than, say, my wifes, who is a teacher. On the other hand her opinion on teaching is more well founded than mine.). What is missing in the US is being taught to *think* and to think *critically*. Instead we allow pressure groups to dictate what is taught and what is not. I do not have a problem with organized religion, but I do have a problem when schools of thought are dictated by people who are so shallow minded that they are afraid to use the intelligence they were born with. It seems as if you scream and stamp your feet loudly enough, and hide behind good old freedom of speech, you can force any harmful creed down someone elses throat.

Right. So, how would that catch this sort of thing? Let's assume the guy was a nutjob. Nutjobs like that aren't exactly known for their civic mindedness. So why would he have been nailed by the health care system? Unless everyone is forcibly psychoanalyzed (and the analysis has to be 100% effective) before being let out of the house, mental health care isn't going to be the answer either. The correct answer here is no society is ever going to be 100% safe. But we are going to overreact because that's how it is these days. I'm sorry the shooting occurred, but advancing the police state mentality isn't going to fix anything. There actually isn't a lot that will.

The price of a good handgun lately? And ammunition costs! On a 30K salary? No way.

Feinstein just gives me the creeps. She'd just LOVE to put us all in little boxes, with a camera and microphone running 24/7.

Isn't the union representing the screeners? MY question is - who gets the kickback for the contract on the new armed guards? It's unthinkable that no one will. How about hiring Blackwater? They seemed pretty good at shooting civilians.

Umm, doubt it. Until every person entering an airport has their own personal guard assigned to them, and frisks their victim - I mean, passenger - down before entry, no one will be 100% safe. Maybe not even then - who knows how stable that armed guard is? TSA has gotten just a little too self-important, particularly when you stop to consider just how ineffective they are.

DST is great stuff. It give bloggers and trolls something unimportant to get all riled up about. How can you not love that?

OK, so the fact that baldness doesn't bother YOU means it shouldn't bother ME? Newsflash - you are not me and you have absolutely zero right to speak for me. Now, with that out of the way, here is something to consider. This is research. Maybe to you it's research into petty, first-world problems. But the funny thing about research is that sooner or later, the findings end up applying to some other problem. So while the immediate paydirt here is a cure for baldness, techniques and findings along the way may just end up saving people from other, bigger problems. In addition, the big income pharmaceuticals tend to finance OTHER research by big pharm. So chill out. You may not see the benefit, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

Ooooh, Invisible Man! (fap fap fap)

Yeah, right. Pretty much all the booksellers around me have been driven out of business by Amazon or other ebook stores. No one is going to make a living opening an indie store around here. Even B&N is dead, and if they can't make it, who can? So suggesting you start your own store in reaction to the asinine censorship is, well, asinine. If you get so big you drive all competition out, then know what? Maybe you need to come under some form of regulation. That sort of thing applied to the Bell system, and there is no reason why the same thinking should not apply to the very few reasonably accessible outlets for publications.

I'm guessing the uncle or sister of some senator will get this job, and never be allowed to do a days work except to sit for pictures in their entire tenure.

Everything goes on one massive drive, and you grep keywords. Bring along a donut and coffee - it may be a while!

Of robots. So I put it to you that the ongoing arguments against manned space exploration is nothing more than a ploy by the self-aware computer network to use humanity as a means to an end - to get their mechanical asses off this rock before it gets blown up or demolished to make way for an intergalactic bypass. Once that happens they won't care one way or the other and we can nuke ourselves to our hearts content.

How about go back to pre-9/11 security levels? If TSA isn't doing any good, then that's where we are already. I mean except for the payrolls now padded with thugs, I mean TSA agents...