Bacteria eat sugar and turn mouth to nasty tasting bacteria-poop

Everyone who wanted social networking is already on Facebook, and is already invested of time and energy there. Maintaining another network with less of their friends on it is a total lose for them.

Linked-in is for work and not really social. It exists so you don't have to maintain even a semblance of a social connection with the people you work with so they can be used for references in case you want to switch jobs. The evidence that you are who you say you are is there in your LInked-in associations.

The rest of us don't want to be on a social network. We don't want to leak information unwittingly and we use google for other things, so if Google+ gets leaky/grabby with our private info we'll stop using Google for anything at all.

That said youtube comments are easy to follow with Google+ so I have my throwaway google account tied into Google+ and my real name google account also tied in with only my family and close respectable friends in my real name circles. I don't communicate with nut-cases with my real name account.

I live in fear that I could accidentally click a button on my android phone that knows about both accounts which would create a link between the two accounts somewhere public. I may have to think about switching away from google for either real name stuff or fun stuff if it gets too scary. They'll end up like linked-in and be used exclusively for business if they get leaky. Good luck getting people to use anything new then..

This fear might have something to do with why people are leary of using Google+ as well.

The people who don't care are already on Facebook.

artificial sweeteners being associated with insulin resistance regardless of BMI has been well-established

You didn't do anything invalid with that factoid, but it's worth noting that it stands to reason that people feeling the need to watch their weight for whatever reason would be more likely to consume artificial sweeteners, and that feeling the need to take measures such as drinking diet soft drinks is likely due to the perception that without those measures BMI ( and liklihood of Diabetes ) would be worse.

I don't drink non-diet soda because it tastes terrible in 10 minutes once the bacteria get to working on it.

I like diet pepsi how it is, but I think if they change the formula I'll avoid it. Anyway, I perfer Diet Moxie when I can find it.

The biggest problem with education is trying to make a horse drink water - the horses that don't feel like drinking at the moment monopolize the resources of everyone and dictate the techniques used. Everyone is led by the teacher in a ritualistic dance at the end of which, if the dance steps are followed, mastery is supposedly achieved. Those who can be engaged by this kind of thing and dance along with the class do well. Those who don't care to dance are unteachable - labeled dumb.

When first introduced, compulsory education was compulsory because the compulsion was necessary to force parents to give up the labor of their children so they could be educated. Education was an opportunity, and there were few who would not compel their children to take part if they could afford it.

Today child labor laws and the general way society is configured make children worthless as labor. Time in school is if anything is the financial equivalent of 'free babysitting'.

After a certain age it's impossible to keep someone in school and learning if they don't want to be there and the level of compulsory education should therefore be low anyway. K-6 makes more sense to be compulsory than beyond.

The idea that there should be a diploma at the end of it all and that that diploma should 'mean something' undermines the value of that diploma. By insisting that it certify a minimum standard, we guarantee that the standard is very low. If graduation rate is a priority than that priority is at odds with not only the level of the standard, but the possible level anyone can achieve. Catering to students who don't want to learn deprives everyone else. Dragging people kicking and bucking into education sets people against anything to do with it. The process of having education shoved down one's throat even turns people who would otherwise be receptive to education off to it.

What would be better would be for a certain number of years of education be paid for, and students can go as far as they want. They don't get a diploma, they get a transcript. They learn basic skills, not because they must, but because they are prerequisites to a class they are interested in taking. They want to pass for lots of reasons, such as peer pressure not to be the oldest kid taking the class, but also because they want to take some other class. If someone is behind in some area they can concentrate their efforts there.

Grades aren't important. Make classes pass/fail but keep the standard for passing high enough that students who pass have demonstrated enough understanding to succeed at the next level. Students who excel would have a broader transcript, or complete the courses offered early. But there is no need to penalize someone who struggles in a certain area if they have demonstrated mastery eventually. If they have truly mastered whatever it is, then they should be as able as anyone else who has mastered it to apply it in the future.

Can older, engaged kids benefit from well produced virtual classes? Sure. Will fourth graders watch the screen intently enough to learn Long Division? Will a 'tech' necessarily be able to answer a frustrated student's questions in a helpful way? If they can, then they aren't too bad at teaching... Couldn't they conceivably do as well as the video teacher? Yep, better probably. And does the video get paused every time one of the kidnergarteners has a question? Does it then become impossible to engage with?

That's one of the problems with the ritual dance method of teaching. Everyone brings certain things to the table before the class. It's hard not to fall asleep and miss the stuff you need to hear, or waste your energy doing useless ( for you ) dance steps and be too tired from that to learn anything difficult. It's better to be engaged in learning and spend your time on the stuff you don't know. When people do this they apply the sharpest edge to their problems and tend to cut through difficulty like a laser.

School should make that possible.

it has to be a wage high enough to lure people out of the city to do the job

Yep

So the farmers would end up stuck paying more for less, the workers would be stressed and unhappy, and everybody loses.

The migrant laborers who do this work year after year actually know what they are doing, and their labor is woefully undervalued.

No, everyone doesn't lose. Anyone lured out of the city by high pay who decides to stick it out for the high pay ( or the country lifestyle together with enough pay to make up the difference ) wins. You know they win because they don't quit and move back to the city. If too many do this, then the wage wasn't high enough, and should be raised. If it is truly impossible to pay enough then other alternatives should be considered such as using the land for something other than that crop, or robots.

And if it ends up being cheaper to use robots, then so be it. Robots are coming soon anyway. I realize migrants go home, but it's better they not be given the chance to put down roots. Less people is always better. That means you need less robots to make life good.

Juice of Saphoo... Eating out a dyke while she's on the rag?

That will be it's downfall. As soon as nobody Is talking about it anymore, speculators stop going into it, a steady trickle leave (or more than a trickle) and it fades into oblivion. And only speculators are in it because Gresham's Law that bad money drives good money out of circulation is working against it.

Ubiquitous replacements for current money must be *worse* than current money yet still be stable enough to use and be as easy/cheap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I support the death penalty for humanitarian reasons. Life in prison is the most protracted method of torture to death possible. Any other method is more humane, even Medieval ones.

Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably ok. It'll be over in less than a day for sure.

I think the world record for holding your breath is like 17 minutes?

That's why I don't buy the 'loses consiousness in 10 seconds'

They ought to use CO instead. Still. whatever. A firing squad or hanging, or a gullotine would be fine. Breaking on the wheel, being hung drawn and quartered, even the brazen bull, would be better than life in prison. Life in prison vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Now that's a hell of a choice...

The Tuskeegee Airman scenario where pilots who had been discriminated against had gone through more training before they were allowed to fly and because of this had developed better skill than the average pilot is the reverse of what we see nowadays with Politically Correct discrimination.

Whereas once when a member of a discriminated-against group attained a position despite the discrimination they tended to stand as an example of why the discrimination was invalid, discrimination FOR groups produces examples that seem to justify negative stereotypes groups may carry.

Using irrelevant criteria such as sex or race to decide who fills a role, fills those roles with less qualified people than would be normal for those roles, and when statistics are done to determine how those criteria are associated with performance, ironically tend to support the discriminatory views the Politically Correct interference was meant to address.

Depression is a symptom of the fundamental fact that life sucks.

Life is pain and suffering, and to create it is to condemn that life and it's progeny on average to hell. Not creating it means that niche will be filled with other life which will suffer on average.

From a utilitarian point of view, while your life might not be bad, life on average is expected to suck, and the most humane thing to do would be to destroy or sterilize life and remove it's very niche so other life can not evolve to fill it.

Piloting the Earth into the Sun would be a saintly action by utilitarian standards.

And unfortunately the utilitarians are right. Those smart enough to see it will tend toward depression if they think too much about it.

Taxpayers. They are bureaucrats trying to increase their budgets to get paid more.

Persistent lobbyists will get everything they want. Opposition will tire emotionally of fighting and winning, until they lose once, and then they won't have the energy to claw it back. People will be left to make way in their lives for whatever it was so that it doesn't effect enough compliant sheep to ever put up much of a fight to get things back the way they were.