And when Romans took slaves, the often taught them a trade and, after a time, freed them to become Roman Citizens. Mary Beard (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01gknyq) takes an interesting look at daily life in Rome. Worth watching. I'm watching a 12 hour documentary on New York City and the day-to-day stories of Roman slaves don't seem that much different than those of the immigrants in NYC in the 1800s. Life was shitty and hard, but there was a path up. Some of those large memorials you see in Rome are from freed slaves that went on to become quite successful citizens, who then had their own slaves. There was a lot of death by disease in Rome. Their solution was to steal people and make them Romans.

We've been asking for a meritocracy for a long time, now. How do you expect to prove your merit without some kind of testing?

On the plus side, if you try to go to work for a beer bar you can always just play tapper. Or the minigame in Fable.

Perhaps instead of complaining and characterizing the people funding these projects as "suckers" when you don't know jack about shit, you should visit the site and glance at some of these projects. Next to the donation amounts, it tells you what you get. Some projects never give you anything other than a warm feeling. Some projects will put your name in the credits. Some projects are there to make a thing, and you get parts for the thing for some donation levels, complete kits for some donation levels, and complete products for other donation levels. Some projects only offer kits, some only complete products, some only plans, etc etc. There is usually plenty of information about the developer and their qualifications online, so you can make a relatively informed decision like any other investment. And unlike taxes, there's no reason to bitch or complain or make ignorant statements, because no one is forcing you to participate.

Is that really why you think firefly died? Because I know from experience that sci-fi fans are perfectly happy to watch multiple sci-fi shows at "once" (provided they don't occupy competing time slots.)

Babylon 5 would have been successful regardless of what else was on the air because it is different from anything that has been on before or since, despite its failings. I am far more interested in rewatching B5 than Trek, and I own pretty much all of both. (Literally all in the case of B5; I might be missing some TNG or something still, and maybe one or two movies I don't want to watch anyway.) I have a bunch of box sets etc. I don't want anyone to think I'm just a B5 fanboy, I'm a sci-fi fanboy in general. I like almost all of it, except BSG ;)

yeah, they don't give ratings boxes to just anyone, they give them to the people that fit their economic profile. just another subtle form of social manipulation. I mean, it's not especially subtle, but they're not shouting about how discriminatory their policies are, either.

I've shared this and I'll share it again (and again...) but when I was in third grade I had an asshole, authoritarian teacher who I believe was only at my school for a couple of years. He was a lazy, arrogant, abusive asshole. When one was done with one's work one was to literally lay one's head down on one's desk and wait quietly for the other children to finish. I was in trouble on numerous occasions for "looking at the other children". I wrote so many lines I had wrist problems before I ever owned a computer or even discovered masturbation.

I went to a private school for a couple of years, before my parents broke up and there wasn't enough money because my dad was a deadbeat. I was about to be learning algebra, I was learning Spanish (I had great retention back then, and I never forgot some of the words I learned back then... though "ferrocarril" does have a fantastic ring to it, no?) and so on. Then I was placed literally into kindergarten due to my age and went from actually learning at a satisfying pace to being told lies about American colonization, making flags out of construction paper and placing Dead-President's-Head's stickers on them, and the like. After a year of that I spent two weeks in first grade before being bumped up to second, where I was still doing work inferior to what I'd been doing in my previous school.

Especially if you are smart, but your parents are dysfunctional and can't teach you how to blend in because they know fuck-all about how social situations work.

Alas, I discovered life about the same time I went to college for the first time and besides, by that time I was prejudiced against education. What really shat upon my educational aspirations at that time, though, was a counselor who suggested I take a fully practical case load and save my electives for later. If I could remember who that was, I would send them a picture of my asshole right now. Hated it. Made school just a big bore of a chore. Most counselors don't give one tenth of one fuck about you as a person or even as a student, you're just a convenient unit that can be used to fill out slightly empty classes. What, am I bitter? Why do you ask?

Now I have a two-year degree from going back to school much later, but it wasn't convenient for me to matriculate to a four-year at the time and now what do I do with this extra piece of paper? It's too crisp to be good bumwad.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear about how nothing from Fukushima could possibly have gotten here to cause us any problems. They're called clouds, and it's called a jet stream.

It's part of an unethical system which keeps those people making $1/day (or less) so that they will be grateful to work for $10/day in conditions that are illegal in most of the world.

Shit, they got to him. Thank goodness he managed to click submit.

Maybe they got those parts as surplus and just used them :)