Verizon has a net income of upwards of $10 billion per year. Upgrade the damn lines already and stop trying to squeeze usage.

Or we didn't have to start trading with China, or could have imposed tariffs tied in directly to indices of abuse and waste as an incentive for them to improve. Or a thousand other ways we could have gone about the issue without giving the base of our economy away wholesale.

Fundamental atheists are a strawman.

In that situation, you probably would be paying 100 times more for your car, food and house. Because they're nicer. You see, if you have more money, you're going to get more benefit from it.

The guy who is earning 10000 a year might get a welfare check and foodstamps for his taxes, as well as some environmental and health protection. At 1000000 a year you'd be getting police protection of your stuff, military protection of your assets and investments, political power (that comes nearly free by virtue of just having the money), subsidies for your investments or business, the kind of stability that allows your business to even function, etc.

The other guy is likely to be hassled by the cops as much as protected by them. He has no foreign investments that require a powerful military and diplomatic structure for protection. A much smaller military would be sufficient to prevent invasion. Most of all any benefits that keep him alive and not starving are keeping your workers alive and well and not rioting outside your door. Like someone else around here said, taxes buy civilisation.

Correction: Bankers tell politicians how to tell bankers how to bank, and bankers tell politicians how to tell car makers how to run car companies.

And we're not the ones they're saying should tone down the rhetoric - they're saying the politicians should tone down the rhetoric.

It does if you like Jack Lemmon http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053291/

If an uninvolved 3rd party bringing information to people isn't a messenger to you, then I'd like to hear what is.

They had legal drugs in Brave New World. We don't have eugenics and hate is a primary political tool. Also, we've got boots stomping on heads and all that (Tim Profitt at the Rand Paul rally). Sounds much more like 1984 to me!

I did - I picked up a 5770 this time around. It's my first ATI (AMD) card ever. The other ones have been Nvidia and I think there was a 3dfx in there somewhere. I suppose I should send them a letter letting them know why I switched as well.

The fact that you take this idiotic statement as a gospel truth -as indicated by the certainty with which you write it- illustrates the problem. If the rest of them think like that (and it seems they do) then you have proved GP's point. The first part is correct, sure, but the second statement wouldn't be worth responding to if it weren't such a depressingly common "fact".

The point GP is making is that many of those diseases cause people or animals to act/move/look slightly "off", and noticing that was key to avoiding them and avoiding infection. The rabid person doesn't look normal. It's not so much a physical thing, it's a behavior thing which still plays into "appearance". It's perfectly natural that a revulsion reaction would be an evolutionary defense for this.

Likewise computer animations are often slightly "off" in the same way - the muscle groups may not work together like they should, or reactions may not be what we expect, or slower than usual.

Thanks to the 'Citizens United' decision, there's nothing non-US-citizens and indeed completely foreign entities from contributing to certain campaigns, nevermind voting on a blog. The Saudis can legally pay for campaign ads now. What a wonderful time to be alive....

Friending you for having the patience to write that out. All true, of course.

Fuel is free. Capital and maintenance costs are something that another power plant would have, in addition to fuel costs.

I think this is a pretty good indication that the general public would like faster access to the internet, despite the telcos' claiming that people are pretty satisfied. I for one welcome our multiplexing digital overlords, and would like to remind them that I'm not interested in cloud services until I get at least 2 9s of at least 10Mbps connectivity with overall uptime of 4 9s or so.