I am utterly unimpressed. Maybe it sounded better in context of a bigger argument. Just turn the questions around: "Name one good, moral action that could not have been conceived by a person of faith. Name one wicked action not committed in the name of religion". I suppose the first question was intended to prove that religion isn't necessary (which to me it doesn't - I don't need God to tell me what is good, I need His help to *be* good), and then when the first question had you off balance the second by contrast was supposed to prove that religion makes things worse (which it doesn't prove - there have been plenty of *secular* atrocities in history). That's just rhetorical trickery, IMO.

I'm not sure either of you are right. Boiling is when something changes state from liquid to gas. If you lower pressure enough, your blood (the water in it anyway) would literally boil at room temperature. However, decompression sickness - gases coming out of solution - is a different phenomenon that would probably happen first (at a higher pressure).

Define "better". If you mean better by some human standard, then if humans don't exist, the human standard goes away, too, and your statement has no meaning.

Jen: "It's so light!"

Moss: "Of course, Jen. The internet doesn't weigh anything!"

I read the article and I'm still not sure I understand:

So, is that saying the turbine heat powers something like a heat pump that then cools the computers?

I thought "ghoti" was pronounced "".

Note that is an index of the PERCEPTION of corruption. The ones scoring better than the U.S. might just be better at hiding it.

One interesting thing about geckos - their feet continue to stick even after walking through dirt and dust. If this tape can really work like gecko feet, the dirt and hair might not be a problem.

Good point. I have no mod points, but I can loan my karma.

My first thought was that it was some disturbance in the air between the photographer and the clouds causing diffraction that made the cloud appear to warp, but the ice crystal explanation seems to fit the picture better. It does remind me of pictures I've seen of ice halos - but I never heard they could "move" like that.

I keep hearing the phrase "just world fallacy" lately. Is it possible there's an "injust world fallacy" out there as well? Or maybe just on slashdot? Everything I hear here seems to be about how horrible and unjust things are everywhere.

While we're all impressed at your use of big words, I don't think GP was implying that the current distribution of wealth was 100% based on merit. I don't think it's 100% luck either, tho. Warren Buffet's wealth doesn't make me poorer. There are finite resources in the world, but for the most part wealth is created, and it isn't created by sitting around collecting unemployment (no offense to those who do so - I understand people are unavoidably put in that situation sometimes)

My point was that some (I suspect most) of the debt in this country is voluntary. I had a student loan at one point in my life, but I made sure it was relatively small because the terms sucked. I paid it off quickly after graduating. I sympathize with people who are not able to pay theirs off as quickly, but that is a risk you take in getting a loan. I believe most Americans could live just fine without getting mortgages and loans and incurring credit card interest. I even believe most people would EVENTUALLY have a better standard of living by doing so - they just have to accept a lower standard of living up front. I include myself in this - I hope I don't sound like I'm talking down. I also know I would be healthier in the long run if I ate less and exercised more.

Regarding my math, I'll try to explain what I mean. I'm not suggesting they define wealth differently, I'm just trying to interpret the numbers. When I drive down the road and hear that 1% of people own 50% of the wealth, I look around and think ... they surely don't own 50% of the cars. 50% of the land? 50% of the money in banks? It just doesn't sound very plausible. I don't have the data from the study but yes, I would like to know how the numbers come out if they count negative net worth as zero because including negative numbers can give weird results.

For example, let's say your wealth is $900,000 and mine is $100,000. Between the two of us, then, you have $900k/($900k+$100) = 90% of the wealth. But if you have $900k and I have negative $100k, I *could* say you have $900k/($900k - $100k) = 112.5% of the wealth, but to me it would make more sense to just say you have 100%. They do a similar thing when calculating Gini coefficient - they throw out negative incomes.

Now in the 1% study, maybe they did zero out negative wealth. I don't know for sure one way or the other (If anyone knows for sure, I'd like to hear).

There, I took some more time to think and as a result I'm posting later in the day and probably no one will ever read this.

I don't agree that only science, technology, engineering and math are useful to society. Take law for example, as much as we love to hate lawyers, they are a necessary part of society. I might argue that a law degree is more useful to society than a math degree. I love math, but it's the application of math to science and technology that is generally useful. As far as I know, we haven't found any practical application for Noetherian rings yet. Even if we all did agree on what degrees were most useful, I would disagree with having the government pay for those degrees.

Also, I don't get your metaphor. What exactly is this "snake" that needs it's head cut off?

Some quotes from the article that stood out to me:

I was very skeptical of this "1% of the population owns over half the wealth" claim, so I read a little about the study that came from. Apparently, they define wealth as basically net worth - assets minus liabilities. Well, how much of the 99% actually has a NEGATIVE net worth, and does that drag down the numbers? It may be that by this measure the top 50% has more wealth than the whole country put together. Be outraged! You're part of the 100% that has less money than the top 50%!