I'm guessing the revised term reflects the current economy.

Kicking books doesn't really do it. I recommend waterboarding or electro-shocks. In the case of novelizations of TV adaptions of novels (yes, that happens), both should be applied simultaneously.

Not all Fundamentalists are Christian. Most aren't. Most "Christian" ones aren't, either, but that's a side-issue. Fundamentalism is merely an approach to religion, it says nothing about which religion and all religions have Fundamentalists.

I wish! It would be great to go to NZ for "earthquake prevention" purposes.

The patient only has to be legally alive. I would be astonished if hospitals didn't add the occasional day, week, month or decade to a patient's death certificate date in cases where hospitals thought they could milk the insurance company and/or government for a little bit longer.

Well, I'm not entirely sure on that one. First, there are disputes over how to even perform CPR for maximum effectiveness, with some saying that chest compression alone produces better outcomes than a mix of chest and breathing. If the doctors aren't in agreement over what CPR should be done, and different methods are being rolled into a single line item, then the statistics for the outcome really don't mean anything useful. It tells you that *something* is ineffective, but it cannot tell you what that something is.

Second, all doctors either swear to the Hippocratic Oath or implicitly sign up to it by becoming doctors. Since the Oath is witnessed by an independent third party, it is arguably a legally-binding common law "gentleman's agreement"/"verbal contract". Technically, the Oath states that doctors should do no harm and minimizing suffering is technically doing just that. However, very few Western nations interpret things that way. If they did, assisted suicide under well-defined conditions* would be legal. It isn't because they don't. As such, doctors end up in a double bind. Do they do the clinical least harm or the legal least harm? Whichever one they do, they violate the other.

*I am not a fan of assisted suicide, but the only way to bring the ethics and law together is to have some cases where it is legal. IMHO, the Oath should move from common law to contract law and be the defining standard. It's a "floating" standard, since different levels of technology and understanding will alter what least harm is actually achievable, and it is a far more credible benchmark than the religious and political whims of the day.

Coffee is bad for you, apparently. I recommend a nice healthy cup of tea instead.

You sure? I thought it was research into novel torture techniques.

I dunno. I was there for a year and there wasn't one.

William Hill, in the UK, will take a bet on anything. So will most other bookies in the UK. If they can calculate the odds, they'll wager on it. However, I suspect that you'd need to make an astronomical bet before your winnings would even cover the commission.

There have been such sects throughout history, but the extreme religious radicalization and right-wing shifts globally make this a particularly dangerous apocalyptic prediction. I don't think that any will succeed in causing global mayhem, but I don't recommend hanging out with any fundamentalists that particular day - regardless of religion. (Mind you, I don't recommend hanging out with fundamentalists at all, but if there's a day they're likely to be dangerous on then that will be it.)

More realistically, I would expect Mexican archaeological sites to suffer widespread damage and looting as the date approaches, with fanatics determined to find "proof" of a reference that actually states there will be anything happening then at all. The only two references so far officially discovered say nothing of the sort*, so believers are likely to want something more tangible.

*What the two references DO say is that a god is supposed to return on that day. Not to pick up or drop off, seems more of a social visit.

Sell Mayan calendar countdown apps for phones, offer an end-of-the-world insurance policy to those escaping to that village in France, produce a filter that kills links to any web page with references to the Mayan calendar -- lots of ways.

They will have it again, but as the Mayans added an extra digit every time the clock reset, it won't be for a very long time.

Who is the post supposed to be a shill for? How is pointing out that Microsoft's support for rival OS' is more likely to be for regulatory purposes than interest in users in any way dubious? Most here know the history of MS Office on the Mac, of MS support within OS/2 being deliberately broken by changes in Windows 3.11? Of sabotage against DR-DOS and other rival systems? Why should we believe Microsoft supports Mac OS/X for anything but blatantly self-serving reasons, when the customers have been trodden on time and again?

Google's policy of "Do No Evil" is, at best, dubious. I like Google a lot but I would never claim that they are above reproach. Nor should anyone. They have grown at a fantastic rate, to the point where their share price has been known to dip whenever they exceed official revenue expectations by a smaller factor than usual. I'm willing to accept that their initial growth was merely through cost-effective engineering, but their applications have a high degree of tie-in and Google certainly leverages one to get traction with another. The chances of there being anti-trust potential should not be ignored and the chances that they're covering themselves (rather than their users) are not insignificant. We should take the possibility seriously.

Don't know who marked you as overrated - your points seem entirely valid and interesting.