"terror (induced by reading my letter? Realizing he had made a big mistake)"

That I can understand, because probably he realized that she's completely rabidly bat-shit psychotic, and sometimes it's just not worth inflicting oneself by getting into fights with these types of people ... as they say, 'never wrestle with a pig, you just get full of mud, and besides, the pig likes it'. I've run into people like this and sometimes it's best to just let them find someone else to focus their insane deranged attacks on. This woman is clearly completely unhinged and very probably dangerous ... I would not be surprised at all if she tried to cause him physical harm in some way.

You mean there are no ways to at least try find middle grounds in particular situations? Gee.

If only there could be some sensible approach to solve that problem, like simply allowing an exception for easily provably exceptional circumstances like kidnappings. If only that was possible. Unfortunately it's not, so we must follow one extreme or the other, always a warrant or never a warrant. Too bad.

Politicians are free to say: 'I think people on drugs should be punished because drugs are immoral.' That's a moral call, albeit a rather stupid one in my opinion. What they shouldn't do is say: 'I want to reduce drug use, and sending all users to prison is the most cost-effective way to achieve that.' That's not a moral call, it's a factual statement; as such it should be evidence-based

Our natural rights do not derive from statistics. What a dangerous idea. What if statistics really showed (hypothetically) that sending drug users to prison was effective at engineering some 'greater goal', would that make it morally OK? Precisely not.

I could probably show "evidence" that slavery helped reduce the economic costs of picking cotton. Such "evidence" - even when true - is clearly not what ought to be the foundation of our political and moral reasoning.

Henderson is right that politics should be evidence-based, but he gets it precisely the wrong way round. It should precisely be the moral claims that are evidence-based and reason-based (e.g. whether drug users should be punished).

Politics is basically all about when violence should be applied, and politicians should not be free to claim "violence should be used against drug users" - that notion that such "morality" subjective is very and dangerously wrong - such a claim must in itself be able to be objectively backed by facts and reason. It is objectively wrong (using facts and reason) to initiate violence against (i.e. put in jail) drug users who are harming nobody --- the moral claim is precisely the one that ought to be attacked. And the statistical claims, while peripherally interesting, should be utterly irrelevant to politics --- again, our natural rights do not derive from statistics, any more that hypothetical statistics showing (say) that slavery had economic benefits, would in any way be a valid argument for slavery. Slavery was wrong because it involves the non-consenting initiation of force against the slaves, not because of statistical evidence relating to indirect consequences.

It is correct that scientific thinking should be applied to politics, but it should be applied in the sense of using scientific thinking properly to determine the validity of moral claims, from which law must then be derived.

Because even though I hate the ribbon, no actual power user really USES Windows Explorer as a file manager.

ALL of them? So the people running the lottery don't even draw salaries? What do they do, use volunteer labor?

I don't think it can be a "tax" if it's voluntary.

It's not really a "tax" because it's completely voluntary. Private casinos are also allowed to rig the game in their favor, and that's fine, that isn't the problem. All a state lottery really is, is a casino operation, but with a measure of state protectionism against the free market. Think of it the same way you would think of, say, government operating a dairy farm and selling milk. Or government offering broadband. It competes with free market operations that provide the same service, but with protection from free market forces. It's government offering services. It's basically the same also as if a casino operator (or dairy farmer) bribed state officials to enact laws to protect his/her business specifically.

If a decent security programmer/expert earns say $50/hr, then this covers only 10 hours of work, and that ignores actual cost-to-company equivalent costs of hiring an expert (e.g. desk, HR, equipment, admin, accounting overheads, so it's actually closer to 5 or 6 hours worth of programmer time). Do you mean to tell me that if they hired an expert internally, they expert the cost of that expert equivalent finding a bug every 5 hours? This is highly patronizing, they are basically treating the security experts out there as children who are supposed to get excited wasting their time doing virtually-free work for the great Facebook just for the so-called "prestige". In fact, most will spend many hours and are likely to earn nothing. Facebook, hire some programmers out of your own damn pocket. Security experts, retain some dignity.

It is human to do it, but I think it is counterproductive to confuse "nostalgic value" with "value".

I really enjoy reading very good books that stimulate my mind, but I am puzzled when people say 'the joy is in the experience' and refer nostalgically to 'turning pages'. When I'm reading a really good book, I couldn't care for the 'experience', it's about what I'm reading. I do find reading text on a screen somehow less "engaging", but I won't go so far as to say 'the joy is in the experience', and frankly if I was a young kid today and my grandpa was trying to encourage me to read because I get to 'turn pages' and 'the joy is in the experience', I expect I would probably find that a rather lame argument and would go back to my e-everything. I think if you want a kid to read a physical book give him an interesting physical book.

For books, true "value" though is in the text, not the medium. Our children will grow up not missing turning pages, but will develop arbitrarily associated deeply nostalgic feelings for the particular look and user interface of the (relatively primitive) e-ink and e-reader standards of today. Then they will grow up and try to explain to their (eyes rolling) children how the joy of reading on these primitive screens is "in the experience", and that their kids are missing something because they only read books through, I don't know, the direct-brain-reader-interface of 2040.

I love pixel-y old low-res video games and side-scrollers because it takes me back to my childhood, but I'm not going to push my children to play them somehow hoping they will get the same "feeling" out of them - they won't. The good news is your children will develop equally deep nostalgic feelings for whatever is the norm their day, so they're not missing anything --- provided you figure out what's actually valuable --- e.g. great books.