You are confusing "America" with "the US federal government". They are two different things. North Korea...really? As a Marxist state, that is a much nicer place.

It's not from Wikipedia. We don't spend all of our time on that website, only you. Why are you all butthurt? What difference does it make? The point is valid, chess is a waste of time beyond learning the basics.

English is the world's second language. Moreover it is the language of science. What other language would you choose for a worldwide contest? Some obscure local language? Or perhaps the slender budget of IAU should be spent on translating their website into 75 different languages? Ridiculous.

It's bizarre listening to intelligent adults defend the US government. What the hell? Aren't you the ones who thought that the US government was the devil from 2001-2009? Have we always been friends with Eurasia?

"[Chess] is certainly a pleasing and ingenious amusement, but it seems to have one defect, which is that it is possible to have too much knowledge of it, so that whoever would excel in the game must give a great deal of time to it, as I believe, and as much study as if he would learn some noble science or perform well anything of importance; and yet in the end, for all his pains, he only knows how to play a game. Thus, I think a very unusual thing happens in this, namely that mediocrity is more to be praised than excellence."
-- Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, 1528, Book II para. 31, Singleton translation

You're quoting a work of fiction. It didn't really happen. It doesn't support any argument, ever.

It has been my experience that those exact same people are very quick to label anything but their own thinking jingoism. They can't even accept there might be such a thing as patriotism, and if it did exist it surely wouldn't apply to America, the nation that is worse than Nazi Germany. How do you have an argument with people who believe that borders shouldn't exist?

Education is funded by property taxes, not sales tax. In Austin, people are being priced out of their homes because they voted for every social program out there, and now the taxes are too damn high.

"I'm at the breaking point," said Gretchin Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8500 this year.

"It's not because I don't like paying taxes," said Gardner, who attended both meetings [of "irate homeowners"]. "I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can't afford to live here anymore."
-- Austin American-Statesman

There is no culture in rural areas. There is no learning. For the active mind, it is a fate worse than death. Intelligent people want to be around other intelligent people. Who wants to live in the country with a bunch of bigots who dismiss any ideas they don't agree with?

No, the heavy hand of government would have shut the private company down.

I will never understand people who like big government. What is your freaking deal? Do you hope to get in and control the rest of us? It ain't gonna happen, you're not an elite, otherwise you won't be wasting your time posting on Slashdot. The boot is going to stomp on your face just like everyone else's.

This article is precisely why we need to NOT worship science as the end-all, be-all of solutions to our problems. Science will happily lead us down the primrose path of racism. Something for the science-worshippers among us to contemplate. Again and again we see Slashdot users angrily condemning competing belief systems and saying science is the one true way of thinking. It's not, and this is precisely why.

Just to add, Joseph McCarthy was right - there really were communists in the State Department. They would have overthrown the US government if they had had the chance. I know this sounds looney but it's absolutely true, and after the NSA revelations then loonies don't look so looney any more, eh?

What a bunch of B.S. You run red lights because you're on a bicycle and you know you won't get pulled over for it. Gimme a break with playing the victim! Bikes obey traffic laws only when it's convenient.

Funny, the US Army would like nothing more than a straight-up fight in Afghanistan. And yet the enemy hides among civilians and blows up schools and churches. Where's the shaming for the enemy? Oh, that's right, you don't do that. Only Americans can be wrong.

Funny, here I was thinking that Republicans and Democrats were two sides of the same coin. Now, they're uniquely and blameably wrong? I swear, this is exactly the same "we have always been at war with Eurasia" doublethink that Orwell wrote about. One day, the first idea. The next day, the other - with no acknowledgement of the other idea ever having been uttered.

I thought it was idiotic when I read 1984 way back when, but here it is, live and right in front of my face.