The user should have a total understanding of the thing they are manipulating

Unfortunately the market reality is that this is simply not going to happen. The machines I code for are in medical labs all around the world. There is a shortage of trained lab technicians and as a result, more and more needs to be automated. Your average (even well trained) lab-tech has to operate radically different instruments from a number of different manufacturers within the space of a few minutes. I've visited labs to get a feel for how the techs work and the workload of a busy lab is insane; it's all too easy to make mistakes.

There is more and more emphasis on the manufacturer to make it as easy and error-proof as possible. Deep training on a single piece of machinery is often not possible except in a sitation where that's the only thing the technician does all day. Most manufacturers are trying to ease this by putting similar user interfaces on all their machines and making the workflow as similar as possible. But that only helps across the product line of a single manufacturer, not when you have to deal with Bayer, Siemens, GE, and Hitachi machines all in the same aisle of the same lab.

It's not an easy problem to solve by any means and we are all too well aware of the consequences of failure.

I just don't define myself by my job

Neither do I, and I used to think everyone was like that. But a while back I mentioned that to a woman I'd just met, who was working on a Master's in Psychology or some such. She was quite amazed to hear me say that because, in her words, "most men get so much of their identity from their work that it's hard for them to imagine what they would be without it."

I don't get the whole "I am my job thing either." If aliens just dropped $10M in my lap tomorrow, I could find tons of interesting things to do. None of them would involve "working."

I also have my doubts that merely SMELLING peanuts is actually dangerous for certain people, and not merely a purely psychological reaction brought on by nutty parents.

OK, let me add a data point: I am allergic to shellfish, among other things. It won't kill me, but I will be ill for a while. Simply smelling cooked shrimp is enough to bring on a mild allergic reaction. I don't tell people not to eat lobster, I just avoid sitting right next to them as they do so.

No one is saying that kids should be brought up in a bubble, but even if you're being treated for an allergy, the best treatment is still to avoid the allergen. My kid's elementary school requests that children not bring in peanut-containing foods. It's not a hard rule, they're just trying to accomodate the sensitive. Just like some schools offer soy milk to kids with lactose allergies, and like we now have wheelchair cutouts on city sidewalks. Some people need extra help to get through life and that's what this is all about.

but the guy who sells me my eggs and has only a dozen chickens probably isn't going to pony up the $500

And here is the problem! I sympathize with exactly this statement because it's why I don't sell eggs. You want freshly laid eggs? Ask me and I'll just give them to you because the regulatory compliance overhead of selling them isn't worth it to me to make a few bucks. Even though it would be nice to break even on the cost of feed & materials.

As far as NAIS, I haven't been keeping track recently. I got sick enough reading the original drafts! We have horses and chickens. I just gave a rooster away to someone who wanted to breed chickens. Under the full NAIS, I would be expected to record the movement of that animal, even though it's going to a farm where it will probably stay until it dies.

Under NAIS, if my wife decides to go for a quick after-dinner ride to the end of the road (about 3-4 miles round trip), she is required to file an animal movement document with the USDA because the horse left our property. For a fscking joy ride down the road! Same goes if it's a trail ride, except then you also have to report the ID numbers of the horses your horse was in company with. This shit is so stupid it's insane. Whatever good intentions they may have had are totally lost in the stupidity of the implementation!

I can only hope they come to their senses before NAIS is fully implemented. Go visit these guys: http://www.nonais.org/

It's because you only hear about the outliers. Most divorces I've known of (and my wife and I are considering a rather weird one! (*) go quickly and easily. I have only known of one with the classic "battling lawyers in court" scenario. Here in Minnesota, we pioneered Collaborative Divorce in which the point is to avoid fighting and the lawyers sign an agreement that they must withdraw if the parties want to go to court.

(*) As far as my own situation goes, my wife and I will (probably) get divorced, but we will stay together. Simply put, we want to be together, but we independently figured out that the concept of "marriage" changed us both too much and for the worse. Since deciding to get divorced about 9 months ago, our relationship has never been better! That's why I said it's weird :-)

Sure. You even mention one in your little rant: cheese. And eggs - they keep just fine for weeks if kept cool. Even at outdoors temperature, I find eggs my chickens laid in an out of the way spot days before and I'll pick them up and cook them. They're fine. Hell, they have to be kept at 99F for 21 days before they'll even hatch!

Lots of meats like real salamis and pepperonis don't need refrigeration. Most vegetables. Some, such as onions or potatoes do better if not refrigerated.

In short, the poster was right: a lot of the stuff we stick in the fridge really doesn't need to be there.

You sneak up on the point then just go whizzing by it!

Unless you live in a high-density area, it's not reasonable for most kids to walk to school. In the one mile between my house and the nearest major road, I will pass about 8 houses! I drive my son about 1/2 mile to the school bus stop each morning. The actual school is about 12 miles away. Unless you wanted a local school to have only about 20 students, walking an average of a mile each way, there is no way that would work in my area, or in most areas of this state.

We don't all live in San Francisco or NYC!

uhh, in the winter your roof is covered by snow anyways

No, it's not. And I live in Minnesota: within a day after a snowstorm, the wind has blown most of the snow off my roof. The house is well insulated, so there's little escaping heat to melt the bottom layer of snow to hold it in place.

That said, this is still a dumb idea. Even with a well insulated house, having a roof heated by the sun slows down the heat transfer from the outside.

Do you really believe that it's that rare?

I'd have a hard time having sex if I thought my wife was "giving" it to me. Likewise I'm sure she would be disappointed if she thought that I was "giving" her love in exchange for sex. Rather it's that we both love each other and really, really, really like having sex with each other.

In the words of a pissed-off ex-girlfriend, "I considered withholding sex from you but then I realized I'd be hurting myself just as much."

I really don't get the love/sex man/woman dichotomy. In my experience, it's more related to the individual than anything else. Some people have hangups that don't allow them to separate the two, others don't. From talking to female friends, it occurs in men a lot more than society lets on.

I'm guessing your place is fairly small & clean already if a Roomba does a good enough job. We have a Dyson (used to have several due to the wife having a housecleaning business) and just to do the living room carpet requires emptying twice because of the two 85lb dogs and three cats. A Roomba would choke within minutes.

Vacuuming is actually the easiest part. The harder parts of housekeeping that I would love to automate are: picking up stuff off the floor before vacuuming, putting away magazines & misc 2nd grader school paperwork, mopping kitchen floor, putting dishes in dishwasher, doing laundry, etc.
And don't get me started on the 2 (of 10 total) acres that I mow. Yes, it is possible to choke an 18hp engine with a ball of twine around the mower blades!!!

Yeah, get me a housekeeping robot fast.

you don't have to feel bad when you plow into a group of pedestrians who are crossing the street too slowly

[Shrug]
I don't now!

OK, then I did misunderstand. No, they specically say they won't cover reversal. I'm not worried: I have enough trouble raising one kid to want to have more :-)

Not necessarily. The high-build rate just funds the building of the Lego-like datacenter infrastructure. Then once that infrastructure (design, manufacturing, distribution, etc.) is paid for, it becomes cost effective to build all datacenters that way because it's now cheaper and faster. And the guy building them makes money hand-over-foot.

As soon as I saw the topic, I giggled, wondering how many posts it would take before the pedantic undercurrent brought this up :-)

And you won't find an insurance carrier that will even consider paying for that operation

For a vasectomy??? Either I misunderstood you or you're out of your mind. I have plain ordinary Blue Cross and they covered my vasectomy at 100%. It's just another birth control method.