Don't you remember when they started charging the baggage fees? They started doing this in 2008, when crude oil was, what, at $140/barrel at its height?

The baggage fee was the option for many of these airlines (which didn't hedge their fuel costs wisely, as, e.g. Southwest had done) to stay in operation, without scaring all their customers away with fee hikes.

Perhaps today when the fuel cost isn't so high, we are not exactly paying less by getting less service for the "basic" ticket. But it was certainly true in the past (i.e. 2008) that a casual traveler without checked-in bags paid less than he would have, if the airlines had to pay for their costs entirely through uniform ticket price increases, and this may be true again, as oil prices won't be forever in the 70s and 80s.

You always have a choice in a free, competitive marketplace: you don't have to fly with Spirit Airlines.

If you are flying domestic, you can always fly Southwest, which to date has no luggage fee up to two checked in bags (I think).

If you are flying international, any of the major airlines (Spirit isn't even the biggest or second biggest airline) will be happy to take you w/o charging for carry-on luggages.

One could make an argument about whether the airlines have been completely forthcoming about the costs of these "unbundled services" (and that would fall under the government's role of preventing fraud), but as far as choices a private company offers, you always have the choice of not dealing with them.

Let's see how this works:

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Yeah. Police forces always are, always have been, and always will be, fascist pigs. They always respond with disproportionate response in excess of the force needed to violent people, as well as non-violent demostrator or even by-stander who happen to be near, whom the police take special care to teach a lesson. Police officers as "public servant" is an oxymoron.

The high speed chases or other supposed law-enforcement by police officers shown on TV are just fascist propaganda.

Really, tell me... where do you live?
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No one claimed there's no application of force by police—after all, didn't GP admit that about 10, 20% of anarchists were hurt? And I doubt anyone would claim police brutality is as extinct as polio. But they are, however, rare. Proof? If it were commonplace, it wouldn't make news when police brutality is caught on tape—the way when people (even celebrities) are caught jaywalking, that doesn't make the news.

Not having police at these anarchist demonstrations (don't these happen at every G-8, G-20, or whatever summit?) because there might be isolated incidences of police brutality is akin to avoiding vaccine (or the whole modern medicine) because of possible side effects. No one's claiming there aren't unfortunate incidences—but to do away with the entire force because of isolated incidences is, well, succumbing to the anarchist propaganda.

Not that anecdotal evidence counts for anything, but I've had a similar experience.

In my case it was an anti-Europe comment that triggered it, as apparently a large contingent of Slashdotters are europhiles (or actually Europeans).

And really, if someone posts something you really didn't like, wouldn't your impulse be to go look up his user page and mod down every comment that can still be modded? You can mod down a comment that ticked you off only once, but you can hurt his karma far more.

They don't claim their CEOs wrote and sang the songs.

This is as unethical (or ethical) as ghostwriting, where the issue isn't one of legal copyrights but one of moral rights. The only difference is, I guess, for celebrities and politicians, we expect them to use ghostwriters—we do not yet expect students (who should be learning to write) to use ghostwriters.

That sounds completely reasonable, especially the havoc you can expect if you chmod files to 666 in a real multi-user environment.

If you wanted to share files, you would chmod the directory to 1777 (which is good, 7 being a good number).

and let god sort them out...

If written Hebrew is any indication, God doesn't bother with vowels either, apparently.

Lastly: Who would want to print their newspaper in the morning? Physical newspapers are convenient because of their wide format.

Er, really? I'd kill to have newspaper printed letter-size, two-(or three-)column. The size of most newspapers is unwieldy, and especially if i'm trying to read it while walking (a frequent occasion as I commute on foot and pick up a free local daily on the way), i have to fold it over so that it's letter-size; or the wind blows it all over the place.

As for who would actually want to get newspaper on paper, well, presumably people who are not stuck to their computer all day and don't have a Kindle, iPad, etc. And some quaint people still like things printed on paper, like books; I don't understand them but they do exist.

Having a paper in Nature is the gold standard in research

And why do you suppose it is? Impact factor. And what affects the impact factor? Number of citations. And who generates these citations? Academic researchers.

If this boycott/controversy leads to scientists at UC (and elsewhere) disliking Nature, it'll have an impact on its impact factor which may negate whatever benefit non-UC researchers may got from reduced competition.

In any case, the academic journal publishers charging exorbitant fees are ... potentially shooting themselves on the foot—the fewer institutions maintain their subscription, the less likely it'll be for their articles to be cited in new articles published in other journals.

I know this taxpayer is saying, "why can't our idiot local governments publish their routes so Google, Garmin, etc. can include them in their databases?"

If you have a Garmin GPS, one where you can load new maps, you have no excuse: footpaths, stairways, and trails are often listed in OpenStreetMap, although I guess the thoroughness of the map might depend on whether there have been people in your area who have been active in mapping.

Well, I readily admit that I'm not a flat tax expert. (though I believe I described and criticized the flat tax approaches to poverty I'm familiar with; I didn't say there were none). What am I missing?

In case of Fair Tax, you are missing prebates.

I think other "flat" tax proposals include standard deductions (although lower than what we have now) to make sure that the really poor people aren't hit with the tax.

This isn't to say, of course, that Fair Tax doesn't have other problems (mainly the difficulty of doing two things simultaneously; repealing the 16th amendment and raising a new tax), but being regressive isn't one of them.

Somebody could have a big income, but spend like a person with an avereage income. How will you disproportionally punish him for doing well?

Why, by running high inflation and heavy regulation & taxing of businesses.

High inflation ensures that this big miserly border-line treacherous criminal will lose any money he saves in banking account, etc, forcing him to invest that money into businesses, if he wants to maintain the value of his money.

Once you've forced him to put the money into businesses, then you take the money from the businesses with various fees and what-not. (Some tweaking and fixes will be necessary, such as banning of owning gold and silver by members of public, as well as a ceiling on interest rates banks can pay on savings, but the general idea remains the same.)

There are many, many ways to "spread the wealth around" even without a progressive income tax. Progressive income tax just makes it easier.

Illegal immigrants can earn legal income, legal in the sense that they get to keep the money sans taxes.

Illegal income would be drug money and the like.

Not to mention that IRS is charged with taxing all income, legal and illegal. That's how people like Al Capone were brought in on tax evasion charges, rather than the bigger crimes they've committed (but couldn't be proven in court).

And I'd have thought the opposite. Someone stating "I believe there's a supernatural presence here in this room. I have no proof of it. I have no evidence of it. There's nothing that's ever indicated this to be true other than writings that are thousands of years old and were carried by the oral tradition for some number of years before ever even being written" would seem to be operating outside the objective world of science.

I don't know how other believing scientists do it, but here is how I have come to reconciliation: science does not explain everything. Furthermore, if a god like God of Christianity exists, then by all descriptions, he exists outside our universe (otherwise he would be a finite and limited god), not subject to the physical laws that bind this universe.

In physical sciences, we study the mechanisms of the world, but nothing beyond that. We describe how gravity works and how strong nuclear forces work, but not how they came to be. We can break things down to the fundamentals, but as is logically necessary, the fundamentals remain unexplained (there's a saying in mathematics: "God made the natural numbers; everything else is man-made").

As I have said, nothing in the physical sciences today precludes existence of God. Most of it do not even contradict the Bible provided that: (1) you interpret the initial few chapters of Genesis as being figurative, not literal and historical; (2) you allow for miracles—experimental science, just because of the way it works, can only deal with events and circumstances that can be recreated again and again, time after time; miracles are by definition one-time occurrences that cannot be subjected to rigors of experimental methods.

In the end, faith does come down to a personal matter, so any categorical statement may turn out to be wrong. But for every potential reason one might think physical scientists might be inclined less to believe in a god, there's an argument to be made that they might actually be more inclined. One example: you might think that mechanically minded people, who see the world as a big machine with no unexplained parts, wouldn't want a meddler like a god—but then, mechanically minded people also might be more inclined to believe in an intelligent designer who made that machine.

Buddhism is hardly a minor religion (fifth largest according to wikipedia) and one of its precepts is not to take any life.

Indeed. But I think few Buddhists follow that precept. First, only the monks are required to lead a vegetarian life (so that they may not kill in order to eat). Second, I don't know exactly how they justify their actions, but even Tibetan monks engage in acts of terrorism/insurgency against China. (I'm not saying that the acts, if what the Chinese allege are true, are wrong in itself; I'm just saying, as an outsider, that any act of violence, even for a good cause, seems to be in contradiction to the faith.)

I think the biggest strike against Buddhism as a promoter of world peace is its limited impact: its influence is largely limited to Asia; I know of no significant Buddhist groups in U.S. or Europe and not because of any persecution against Buddhists. I think Buddhism is too passive a religion to have any worldwide impact. Even in Korea, where Buddhists outnumber Christians 2 to 1 (or better, I think), the modern culture is more sharply defined by Christian churches and the church-goers than Buddhist temples and their faithfuls (and I think a good number of present and past Korean presidents have been Christians, not Buddhists).