What does this story have to offer?

The world is a competitive place, except when it isn't. And why is that, exactly? Why do social insects exist? Why, for that matter, do social mammals exist? We wouldn't even have social networking unless the roots of cooperation in our genetics and culture are nearly as deep (and indispensable) as nature red in tooth and claw.

Competition will never not be present, which provides an excellent enclosed gondola for all the slippery-slopers out there. How nice is that? You can never be entirely wrong arguing that competition will always exist. Safe! Secure! You'll never say anything insightful, either, about how competition self-regulates into ritualized displays of dominance/submission without goring every participant.

Who gets to decide how much is too much?

Point me to any country where you can identity any small group with sole authority for this kind of decision, and I'll wager they mainly discuss among themselves the problem of too much being not enough. In societies where decisions are reached by a process (in which many people can participate and where chance also plays a significant role) there's at least some potential for antitrust legislation to pass which enacts a ceiling low enough to echo-locate.

Really, America had it right before they repealed the estate tax. It should have been called the hereditary git tax, to remind Americans of what their forefathers were so intent on escaping in the first place. Since when did it become an American value for the children of privilege to cruise through life on daddy's deep pockets without earning it themselves, generation upon generation? Just wondering.

This is great advice. It's been my policy for 10 years. Every ticket, every citation, every time. No exceptions. (If you have the possibility of jail time, all bets are off, get a lawyer).

And if you get a criminal citation (as opposed to a civil infraction), you are entitled by the Sixth Amendment to a jury trial. When arraigned, you will be asked to sign a jury trial waiver (In most states). Decline, and at every opportunity, opt for a Jury Trial.

For the general community, here are five tips that I try to follow.

1. On your Court date, take the entire day off from work. Often these matters are scheduled early in the day, like 8AM, but that's mostly a scam. It will take a good chunk of the day. The system is rigged to pressure you - financially - into settling. That's how they win. Even if your time is early in the day, pack a nice little lunch and bring it with you. Charge your phone, bring headphones, and a paperback book. Wear comfortable clothes that show you are READY AND WILLING to sit and wait all day.

2. When you show up, the clerk or judge will call in everyone and have them watch a video or hear a description of your rights. They ask you if you understand. They can't move on until they get past this step. Raise your hand and ask a question. Tell the judge or clerk you couldn't hear the video or speech. Ask a question about what they say. Ask if this is the right place for divorce court. If you break the ice, several others will probably ask a few questions. Remember, this is a factory. They want to process you as quickly as possible.

3. In a lot of States, you will have an initial appearance where you enter a plea. In many States, the Judge essentially pushes every into meeting the prosecuting attorney. You basically don't enter a plea, you say "negotiations" or "mediation". When it's your turn, tell the judge or clerk you plead innocent, and would like to have your trial. Do not request mediation or a meeting with the lawyer - this is a scam to take your time. The attorney makes a huge list and then calls people in for 5 minutes where they offer something or try to get you to plead guilty. If you do, you don't have to go back into the Court in most cases. That's the hook they use to get you to settle and pay the fine. Do not say anything to the attorney or clerk other than the fact that you would like your day in court, and would like to call witnesses. If it's a criminal citation, remind them you want a jury trial.

4. Once you demand a trial, you'll probably have to go back into Court, and then re-affirm your plea. The purpose of this session is for the prosecutor to ask for a stay of the trial. The Judge will ask you to agree. Firmly and politely tell them that State is the one bringing the case, it is your right to a speedy trial, and that more time will not change anything. You must specifically ask for the case to be dismissed for failure to prosecute in a timely manner. On the first Court date, you will probably be denied. In my experience it's about 25% chance you'll get your case dismissed by the judge. Typically they will grant an extension. Then the date will be brought up - if it's a long ways out - more than a few weeks - ask the judge for closer date. Ask if you can come back after lunch. Ask if you can come back tomorrow. The prosecutor will object. Ask if you can come back in 7 days. Ask why they need so much time to prepare such a simple case.

5. Once you come back, the whole thing repeats. The prosecutor knows that most times people don't come back for future dates. They simply give up. Don't give up. You'll lose and maybe end up with warrant. As soon as they pickup your file and see this is the second court date, they'll probably offer to file your case. This is like winning, but if you get another ticket in a short period of time you basically lose automatically. Don't agree to this either. Re-iterate you want a trial, or you'll accept dismissal. The attorney will now use big time pressure. He or she will try to tell you that it will be worse on you if you loose after going to trial. In most states this isn't true, and suggesting it is a serious offense. They will tell you how difficult it will be for them to get the cop to come to court, it will cost the State a lot of money, etc. Remind them you'll accept a dismissal. My experience is this is a 50% chance the prosecutor gives it up right here. If not, they have to go the judge and make a case, or ask for a new date. On the 2nd time through, you'll have a much better chance of winning a dismissal.

..and this is a well known fact before it was in the news. Local authorities tweak lights in order to generate revenue. One bad stretch of a highway (192) is timed so that if you follow the speed limit you would run a red - but just barely - everytime.

It's a bad recipe for fraud. Florida has auto-insurance system designed to wring $10k settlements out of insurers. You are driving along, and on each side is a blocker car. Ahead, a car stomps his brake just before a red light.

If the set of primes is finite, form the product of all primes and add 1, creating a number not divisible by any prime (making the number formed prime by definition) yet not included in the set of all primes by construction. At this point you can smoke some weed or you can begin to suspect that the set of primes is not finite.

Let p = 10^-googolplex.

With enough patience, you can win this lottery 100 times in a row, and you can do that as many times as you like.

All this new result gives us is further evidence that in the unextinguished coincidence of short spacings, the distribution of primes resembles a random process. There's a structural reason why both N and N+1 are never prime at the same time. It appears, however, to be rather difficult to identify any other structure of the distribution of primes taking the form of permanently extinguished gap distances.

Our list of viable gaps grows thin. (I did wish momentarily to mark that up as <e>thin</e> for Elvish italic.)

I worked at an NRC institute from 2002-2011. It was a fantastic place though it had faults. Each Institute was a mini-fiefdom in which the respective Director Generals held all the power. A lot of blue sky research was done, however in reality a lot of it would be considered "mental masturbation"; papers were published but never referenced. Or papers would be whipped up so people could attend conferences in nice locales . For too long NRC acted like an academic environment where money didn't matter: there was always a new bag of money next year.

Many Institutes had overlapping work with other Institutes but didn't collaborate. In fact the way the IT infrastructure developed was also very silo'd, it was next to impossible to work with other sites because of various local policies.

NRC has needed a good kick in the ass for a number of years. Previous presidents talked the talk but did nothing. In the end the Old Boys Club endured. The current president has been given his orders and is executing them. He's collapsing ~15 years of pain into ~3. Much of the blame for this should be put on the previous presidents.

That all said, I'm not a big fan of everything that is going on, but if you look at this as a soft reset for NRC, things will get better.

Bottom line: if anyone at NRC says things were Just Fine before, they are delusional or lying.

The three martini lunch is dead?

I haven't eaten bacon in 21 years, and it still smells DELICIOUS.

First "I do", then 10,000 followers fill his shoe, then pussy-whipped and Zucker-punched. He should have ended his complaint by confessing that he feels so ruthlessly dis-empowered he hasn't had a decent erection in three weeks.

I just want a plug-in that reliably warns me:

This page contains DRM markup, would you like to [hang around] or [bugger off]?

If Google still cared about search, it would provide me an option to down-rank all DRM-containing search results. I'm not philosophically opposed to DRM. We all know that sex and money are deeply connected. But it shouldn't be the first question.

Are you rich?

Wanda should never be your top search result.

I've been happy with Wickr. No ties to the company, just a happy user. https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/wickr-self-destructing-secure/id528962154?mt=8

You're not trying to be precise, you're shit disturbing.

if you are born to a Muslim father, then Islam considers you to be a Muslim by birth

Since only people who accept their Muslim identity by choice give a shit about what "Islam considers" (and not even all of these, if Muslims are anything like Catholics), by this criteria Obama would only be Muslim in the eyes of a hard-line Muslim, despite not taking it on board himself (or his parents taking it on board, either).

You're operating from the "taint" school of categorization, where Tiger Woods is "black" despite being twice as Asian and just as white. Secularists such as myself consider Obama to be whatever the hell he professes himself to be, which isn't to say he's immune to what's bred in the bone.

But what is bred in the bone in his case, if we're being precise about anything that actually matters?