And boy let me tell you, the items that are controversial in the USofA are not the same ones that are controversial over here in Europe. Of course we get a smattering of IS and Ebola related news this time of year, but in general political discourse tends to not involve discussions on what one should be doing with one's penis, vagina, uterus or the contents thereof, but much more about the re-distribution of wealth and the state of law.

I see that both in Israel and the US, to be honest: A focus on the irrelevant. Case in point being that the security craze and hype surrounding 9/11 has caused a spike in ground traffic that killed more people than the 9/11 incident itself. It seems to me that both the US and Israel have a greater tendency than normal to hype relatively small risk factors and completely and blatantly ignore evidence for large looming risk factors, even in the face of mounting evidence.

The more progressive a society gets, the more balanced people's view is on risk. Whether the one causes the other or vice versa, I do not know. The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland are decidedly more earthy in their political discourse, even if obviously we do have some fear mongering rotten apples. Case in point in the Netherlands being the fascist reactionaries that crawled from under all the rocks in the country in the wake of the discussion on whether blackface is a good idea, but I digress.

So while the findings are interesting, firstly 83 subjects is a piss in the pond and secondly the original poster is right: Is this finding universal for all the cultures we find on the globe?

Lastly, by US standards I would be a flaming liberal. There's nothing wrong with smoking a doozie, I am atheist, I think abortion isn't even worth a discussion since babies only really become sentient some 2 months after birth, obviously I am in favour of gay marriage and last but not least I think the proliferation of weapons amongst civilians (and even the army, but I digress again) is a really really silly idea.

However, I self identify as a Left Winger in terms of economic re-distribution politics, as a Constitutional Conservative when it comes to safeguarding the state of law in my country, a Conservationist in terms of the environment and indeed finally as a Liberal in terms of sexual practice and tolerance and the tolerance for people of other color. But when it comes to my atheism I am quite extremist. I think people who are god-believers are simply lesser beings and I do strive to stamp out god-belief and related silliness wherever I encounter it.

Now I wonder, given all my views and thoughts on things, whether I would be deemed a "Conservative" or "Liberal", and what selection criteria would be used for classifying me such. Because none of those were mentioned in the article.

Why post this anonymous? Now it won't be +5Funny.

I wanted to ask why Star Wars and Galactica, but no Culture novels, but then I realised that neither GCU Fate Amenable to Change or dROU Frank Exchange of Views had any sort of catch phrase.

You, as an individual, are not statistically relevant, even if what you describe is the actual truth. I say that last bit because infants, as soon as they are born, start sucking up language from their parents / caretakers, and I cannot really imagine you growing up in a total vacuum.

I do tend to agree most people learn best from people, because of the simple reason that there is so much evidence all around us that supports that claim. It is wired into us to mimic and learn from the people in our environment.

Konami Magical Tree, Yie Ar Kung Fu II and Namco's Bosconian, is all I have to say.

Maybe King's Valley II and Boulderdash too.

If you infer that this post has a get-off-my-lawn type of feel to it, you're right. Point is that the games I grew up with were all at least 10-15 years before 20 years ago. ;)

Since then, from my perspective, the largest two "Good Ideas" were packed in Leisure Suit Larry / Space Quest I and potentially Wolfenstein 3D.

I must admit I think Masters of Orion is one seriously underrated game. I'd love an update on that where the original gameplay is kept as is and ported to MacOS. ;)

Which would likely be the owners of 90% of the computers in botnets. Gullible of plain ol' stupid. So, I guess that's a match made in heaven.

One might even argue that subjecting your fellow Slashdotters to horrible puns is cruel, but that would lead to even sillier (and pointless) ideas.

The whole thing where innocents get the death penalty because of mistakes, is why you keep them in jail until you're absolutely sure they -did- do it. And in most cases, you can't be absolutely sure they did it, so... you keep them there for life, instead of killing them. If they're escaping from jail too often, you've got another problem anyway. And the populace won't notice the difference between a death and a life imprisonment, other than having to pay slightly less tax because apparently life imprisonment is cheaper. And you have the benefit of not killing the innocent.

I'd say there's quite a few reasons to reserve executions for very few cases, or ban it outright. That said, I'm biased, I'm European. We're all progressive and shit.

The economy seems to always adjust to whether people can afford stuff though. Otherwise nobody would sell anything. If people can afford another $30000 in emergencies because they have some organs to sell, the cost of the stuff an average person buys in their life would just go up by a total of $30000. In that way, being able to sell organs while alive would become just another insurance scheme: spend a bit extra over time, so you can afford something big when you really need it.

Personally, the thought of having to actually use that insurance freaks me out. We'd be better off just getting a mandatory regular insurance of said $30k or whatever those organs are worth.

Think of debts due to hospital bills of a loved one, or having to choose between having two kidneys and letting your kid go to college. If many people started selling "redundant" organs, even for the best of reasons, then standards could shift so that others might do it for not-so-great reasons.. and we get a drop in the average health of poor people, for the advantage of those that are better off.

Hell, imagine having cancer and knowing it hasn't spread to some of your valuable, sellable organs yet... and you can't afford hospital bills the normal way. Most people would do it.

I know I'm invoking the slippery slope argument here, but I think it might be justified.

The butchering argument is one I hadn't thought of yet... And I'd say it's pretty much on equal footing with the "forced to sell kidney to pay debts" scenario. Good one.

An analogy I found earlier today was that those countries are a bit like babies. Making noise, occasionally hurting others or themselves by accident.. But if a baby drools/pees/vomits all over your sweater, you do not obliterate it. You teach it, or just trust that it's causing almost no damage. The well-established, loosely-allied countries in the world are the adults in this simile, who should be teaching the less well-off countries.

If we just showed the residents of those places how things could be, and gave them an anonymous, secure channel to voice their opinions through, that would give us plenty of information to know what to do next. Instead, the US gathered up some cronies (sadly, the country I live in was one of them) and pretty much just crushed any problem countries.

Obviously you have never heard of Fjallraven G2000 cloth. Then the US Marine Core uses cloth in their uniforms that is designed by a company residing in Almelo, the Netherlands. So in terms of cloth that can withstand fire, wear and tear, wind and rain, we have some of the most techy gear on the planet in Europe.

Then when it comes to regular clothing, I find that the US and Canada have an absolute horrid industry. Clothes are baggy, ill fitting and generally just look like bags rather than shirts or trousers. For nice, form fitting jeans, suits, shirts and such I rely on G-Star (Dutch), Diesel (Italian), Boss (German), Van Gils (Dutch again), Eton Shirts (Swedish), Ledub (Dutch) or Sand (Danish).

When it comes to hand made shoes for business or evening wear, I would point to Van Bommel (Dutch), Van Liers (Dutch), while for casual wear and golf I enjoy Ecco sneaks and golf sneaks (Danish).

All of these clothes are not particularly cheap, but they fit the body, they look really damn good and the quality is generally excellent.

So whether it's hi-tech (polar, wetlands, desert) gear or actual clothing for regular use, I tend to favor (Northern) European brands any day of the week.

Thanks for the link. I care not for Apple, but seeing that Cycles will get proper OpenCL support was almost enough to make me squee. Almost. Good to know, anyway :)

Probably, though I wouldn't know. I hadn't looked into mining until Bitcoins got so difficult to mine that graphics cards were completely irrelevant already. It's all ASICs now, and if you try to buy one you won't get it until it's become worthless. Expect to be scammed. That's mostly why Scrypt was made, afaik: to put power back in the users' hands, by making it difficult to mine by graphics card (failed) and by ASIC (hasn't failed yet; might later)