It makes me feel uneasy when I see people cheering "taxes" as a concept. I'm pretty sure taxes have existed independently of nice things like democracy, education, infrastructure, justice, etc. People have been paying taxes for thousands of years without it somehow causing Western democracy to spontaneously break out.

Taxes don't automatically create a nice society. Correlation != Causation.

A healthier view would be to see them as a necessary evil. Inherently dangerous due to their confiscatory and mandatory nature. One minute you have a nice functioning democracy, and the next you have all the political parties taxing people they don't like and funding people they do.

That's actually the best argument for a "flat" tax, come to think of it. Not man-hours saved or loopholes closed, but the reduced possibility of taxes being used as a weapon.

Or rather, other people buy it for you. And they're rather impulsive shoppers. (Not very thrifty either.)

At least they kinda sorta vaguely listen to you, though. People in totalitarian regimes pay taxes too, and I'm not sure it buys them very good civilization at all.

I think he's defensive because people are attacking his career, and making veiled threats about him being "first against the wall".

No chance. People will always complain about grinding. If there's a leveling system, they'll say they have to "grind" to the level cap. If there's better equipment then they'll "grind" for that. This isn't the days of Everquest when grinding meant killing the same enemies over and over, or other simple and repetitive tasks.

Anything in between now and "endgame" (however it's defined) has been classified as grind by modern MMO players. Doesn't matter if you have fun and fast-paced combat, awesome quests, or a tightly integrated story where it feels like you made a difference. Some people will make an obstacle out of anything.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to grind through some coffee.

I'd say there's significant value in professional-level editing. One of the last "books" I read was self-published directly to the web, and while it was good fun and had an interesting premise, it was in dire need of editing/revision. Community input can only do so much.

Of course, just needing editing and maybe a little promotion cuts out a huge chunk of the existing book publishing business. Not to mention retailers.

(If anyone's curious, the novel I mentioned above is The Salvation War. The writer is a military geek, which can be interesting or a bit cheesy sometimes.)

Are we sure those complaints are accurate? This person(s) could have been connected to some guy's personal wifi hotspot. Or just be tech illiterate.

I guess I'm asking for proof that people used the capitol's wifi to connect to that site before Friday.

It'd be also nice to know what whitelist package they use. Heck, for all we know it's not a whitelist at all. It could just auto-blacklist anything above X hits an hour, until said site is explicitly exempted.

With how much this story is getting passed around, you'd almost think this site was temporarily blocked as a publicity stunt.

But that's almost as crazy as the theory from the article: that this particular pro-union site, out of god knows how many, was purposefully blocked because they thought that'd make everyone go home. That it wouldn't just give the protesters another talking point.

You have to ask, why do we resort to standardized tests to "bust" bad teachers? Because the better alternatives were shut off.

It's almost impossible to fire a bad teacher nowadays. School principals should have the power to discipline and dismiss bad teachers at their own discretion. Teachers may rant and rail that this will lead to favoritism and other bad -isms, but it's better than using a dry, standardized test designed by some committee thousands of miles away.

You mean like recycling nuclear waste with breeder reactors?

Fear tactics indeed.

Every other nation seems to have claimed this right at some point in history. That's basically how most of today's large, well-defined nations formed. At some level it's just humans defeating other humans, and then later saying they're sorry.

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it seems like Israel is getting flak for acting in a more humane way than historical standards. Had they just kept the land they won through war and drove everybody out, we might not even be talking about it today. It'd just be another sad footnote.

I keep hearing that, but I've never seen any proof.
Most likely some passage or provision of the old health plan is in the new health plan, but that doesn't mean they're similar.

Pretty sure Honeycomb being dual-core only was proven untrue.
http://erictric.com/2011/01/06/android-honeycomb-doesnt-require-a-dual-core-cpu/

It was probably a mistranslation or misunderstanding about it having added support for dual-core processors.

The current WoW quest formula seems to be:

Main Questgiver: Go over there and do (something interesting and/or plot critical)
NPCs Nearby: Hey, while you're over there, could you (kill/collect/rescue) some of those (enemies/doodads/victims).

Which is kinda nice, since it fleshes out the main questlines and exposes you to more enemies/environments.

Another main quest type is using a few simple quests as a gateway to a major quest.

Main Questgiver: I'll repair this awesome mech suit for you to use, but first I'll need X, Y, and Z.

So you're working towards a goal for yourself (piloting the mech suit), instead of just for XP and gold.

[Citation Needed]

Because I'm pretty sure that hasn't been proven. It's just a conspiracy theory that's been kicked around a lot.

FYI, infant mortality rate comparisons are mostly meaningless. Everyone has their own standards when deciding if an infant is "stillborn" or not. Generally, if the baby is in a condition that they can't treat at all, it isn't counted. That's what the U.S.'s rate is comparatively high -- they try to save more infants.

http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060924/2healy.htm