"Oh boy!" thought Milton, "A article on football! And not the soccer version, the American football kind!" He could barely contain his troll-citement. He never fully recovered from the traumatizing memories of high school where the sports jocks viciously bullied him, and this was a perfect opportunity to remind the world how stupid the concept of this sport was! He put his fingers together, pondering on what kind of "insightful" comment would get modded up by his fellow neck-beards. A reference to hand-egg and the stupidity of the name? Nah.. been done before.. Perhaps a comment on the overall barbaric nature of the sport and a jab to all the rednecks and jocks that enjoy it? Better.. but maybe...

"Wait a minute..." he thought. "Maybe I should be contributing to the contents of the article? Perhaps I should mention how government funds shouldn't be involved here, but they'll be there anyway due to close ties between football and the military. Maybe something on security theater and a reference to airports and perhaps a lack of any terrorist related activities in football games?" But the thought quickly left his mind, as there was too much bitterness towards those jock types he worked with in marketing (and couldn't stand) and instead posted "HURRR maybe they should up the radiation on the metal detectors so the in-breed hicks that attend the game get sterilized!!"

Maybe they could replace the header with "medical science" - as every example the TFA deals with some issue dealing with human biology. Science is not failing us (as the sensational headline indicates) in physics, or chemistry or even social / behavioral science. And it's not *failing* us in the medical department either really, there's just a lot more complexity when it comes to the human body. And when you throw in some other factors you don't see in other sciences, such as the placebo effect, or realizing that the body heals itself eventually, then maybe trial and error just doesn't work so well.

The story seems to focus on the pharmaceutical industry specifically, maybe that's the problem here and not the scientific method. Most of their money is made by spending billions into R&D, then hoping they get a useable drug out of it they can patent and make money off of. Well maybe the problem here is the corners that are cut and they're essentially racing to get it FDA approved (and with as few side effects as possible). That's bound to bring up some bad science, and questionable or skewed results in the name of profit. That's not "Science failing us" - that's greed and human error causing the problem.

Jesus, how many "thought crime" references does this thread need to have? This man was not arrested for *thinking* about blowing something up, it's because he documented it and wrote it down - which has already been discussed multiple times.

Here's why half this thread is freaking out over the arrest - and why it's littered with references to thought crime & Minority report : Intrusive thoughts . Everyone's had these from time to time - maybe one day you're looking at your wife sleeping and you might think something like 'I could strangle her right now' or something equally perverse, then you wonder why the hell you would even think such a terrible thing. Intrusive thoughts. I'll bet half the slashdotters here have secretly thought to themselves how cool it would be to blow something significant up - maybe a Walmart or Monsanto, Apple, IBM or Microsoft HQ, or a parliamentary building etc.. But the thought only sticks around for a few seconds, before you realize how bad an idea that is and you wouldn't do that in a million years. But the point is, you briefly thought of it for a few seconds. That's why there's such a disdain here for what appears to be *thought crime* - because we all have dirty, perverse thoughts about things very illegal - and that this ruling sets some sort of precedence.

So what do we all do when we have some intrusive thought? Well hopefully if you're smart, you never mention it to anyone ever. What you don't do is download bomb making plans and write a letter saying you have prepared yourself physically and financially for jihad. Hell, he even had a list of prices of some weapons and things, including a motherfucking grenade launcher. That's no longer 'just a bad thought', this is elaborate investigation into killing people.. Simply having bomb-making plans probably wouldn't be enough to justify this an arrest, but the other info (like the list of weapons and prices, and the 'jihad' reference) is more than enough for a conspiracy to commit murder charge. I don't know if that's the actual charge he was arrested under, but it would seem fit.

This man was not arrested for 'thought crime'. This is a clear 'conspiracy' charge. *Apologies if this is the 2nd post, didn't seem to go through the first time

I choose option B - not getting groped, and I'll take that risk of dying in a fiery inferno. Could you direct me to an airline or airport where this option is available? Oh wait...

FTFY

Farnsworth : "Amy, technology isn't intrinsically good or evil. It's how it's used. Like the Death Ray."

Perhaps slightly off topic, but what are the odds this has been done on most of the current representatives in congress? Given the recent news regarding SOPA and whatnot, it seems that the majority of them are clueless on how the internet works (and therefore less likely to have websites registered under their names). Would be some delicious irony if a bunch of them had their own domain names bought up and ended up losing re-election time (possibly as a result of an anti-site being set up).

"It's a stupid waste of time, and so is Facebook."

I'm not surprised that most of the "insightful" comments on this article basically say how pointless and stupid high school reunions / and or facebook is. The majority of the people on /. probably weren't popular in high school and likely got bullied. A lot more chess club members than players on the high school football team. One thing I noticed at my wife' high school reunion was that it was pretty much only the popular people that actually attended so I'm not terribly surprised at the Slashdot reaction here.

Another primary reason why they still exist - gossip and comparison. People want to know what's happened with all those people they knew back then (without re-friending all of them). They're probably only facebook friends with a handful of people they knew 10 years ago (maybe that number is rising now), but with 2 or 3 degrees of friendship, chances are that almost everyone in high school is known by someone at that reunion. And people (maybe women moreso?) really want to know what's happening with all those people they may not be facebook friends with. Bob was a real bully, is he in prison now or something? I hope so. Jenny was a real bitch, I hope she's all washed up now. Dan was a real quiet guy and shy, I hope he's doing good for himself. Kathy was really good at music, did she make it big? Carl and Suzy were really in love, are they still together? Mike seemed gay, I wonder if he really is? These are all questions that people want to know. If you were bullied for example, wouldn't you like to know what happened to that guy, and secretly take pleasure in the fact that your life is better than his now? I may be somewhat ashamed to admit that yes I would, but that's just an aspect of human behavior.

There's a reason that and trashy tabloids and magazines are littered in supermarkets and stores everyone - people like gossip, it's a huge guilty pleasure for a lot of people out there. I don't expect most of the readers here to share the same notion, but you could at least see it from their perspective.

What are you joking? Do you know much overhead would be involved in scanning every message, post & status update for "questionable content"? That's a huge chunk of potential profit right there. Sure, ethics probably aren't a consideration (they probably value the good press for "freedom of speech" over the potential loss of indian FB users or something like that) but implementing some sort of post checker is a logistics nightmare they want nothing to do with.