The difference is that McCarthy was right about nearly everything.

You're missing the entire point of the story of the woman caught in adultery. Lev 20:10 prescribes the death penalty for _both_ parties, man and woman. The scribes and Pharisees brought Jesus a woman, alone, saying she had been caught in adultery. The obvious question is "With whom?" and also, "How did these super-religious types know where to find an adulterous woman?" It's not unreasonable to suppose one, several, or all of them had slept with her and were under the death penalty as well. Else why would these men, hot on the idea of stoning, be stopped in their tracks?

with regard to cellphones - do you *like* living in a world where the only reasonable choices for a smartphone involve software wholly controlled by Google or by Apple? Firefox OS may not be able to replace those today, but it's a step in the right direction - a platform for mobile apps that aren't tied to a single vendor.

There are larger genetic differences between different groups of the same "race", than between individuals of "different race".

This is called "Lewontin's fallacy" and has been debunked far and wide.

Come now, this isn't any worse than the Scientific Temperance Instruction required in American schools in the previous century. Perfectly normal.

So you think the platform for useful apps should be owned by Google instead of being open to everyone?

Yes. This is the inverse of NIH -- the "Invented Here" syndrome. I'm particularly frustrated by this because I very much prefer bzr to git, but the hype and community coalesced around git instead.

Ice-IX is less exciting than one might hope.

Probably there was. The Hugos seem to be given to a particular set of people as a matter of course.

The really nice thing about releasing documents a few at a time is you have so many more opportunities to directly contradict the official reaction to the previous release. Dump 'em all at once and the government gets much more opportunity to control the narrative.

Please note that "Christian Science" is not a Christian sect and as others have noted it's not particularly scientific. As http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science points out, "Christian Scientists" are devotees of Mary Baker Eddy and follow a rationalist-idealist philosophy that both opposes and is opposed by Christians -- it certainly would not be recognized by most of the names on your list. That said, I would hope that everyone on Slashdot can evaluate the merits of an article even if one disagrees with some opinion or position held by the organization or person posting it.

Tungsten? Oops, http://gizmodo.com/5221787/army-stops-making-eco+friendly-tungsten-bullets-because-they-cause-cancer

you left out football fields and Libraries of Congress.

Having my browser railroad me into certain website, because of what some algorithm perceived to be my interest is defying the purpose of web browsing.

You didn't read the article, I think. The proposal is about finding ways for users to have the option to share information about themselves with a site, rather than the site having to use tracking cookies to collect your browsing history.