Learn about the Laffer Curve. It's theoretically valid and verified by experience.
You mean someone has actually managed to put more than two numbers on a Laffer curve (0% and 100%) ? Do tell.

But there is nothing to stop you buying the parts from the local hardware store, and I never heard of anyone being prosecuted.

Of course, if the insurance company finds out your house burned down because of your dodgy electrical work, good luck making a claim.
If someone died in the fire, good luck in gaol.

In other news, "the world" recently found to consist of only the UK and Australia.

Now that I think about it, yeah, I guess I was one of the beta users. What the hell, I tried that with Gmail, years ago, and that worked out pretty well ...

The pre-public-release G+ was kind of odd-looking, but my God it was fast. I'm really sad about how quickly it went downhill.

I'll just re-quote from the article the passage I quoted in a previous post:

Understanding this is pretty easy; if you choose not to do so, that's your business, so to speak.

No it's not. The summary (and the article, which is essentially the same fluff as the summary repeated several times--I RTFA'd so you don't have to) says to avoid technical jargon, which has actual meaning and is therefore terrifying to people who want to be executives. The bullshit list is business jargon, which is inherently meaningless and is therefore very useful to C*Os and those who like to imagine themselves in such positions.

For any /.er working in an environment like that, I'd like to think this would be a sign that it was time to get the hell out.

When G+ started out, it was clean, fast-loading, reliable, and did exactly what it was supposed to do and no more. You know ... like Google used to be. I had real hopes that G+:FB::Google:Yahoo.

Every change since then has made it uglier, slower, and buggier; with the latest interface changes they've not only caught up to but actually surpassed Facebook in the amount of irritating crap they shove at the user. Google may be able to coast on people's affection for them as a search engine (especially when the competition is Bing) but they're going to find it increasingly difficult to break into new markets if all they do is ape the worst behavior of the existing market leader--which in this case emphatically includes "adding a bunch of new 'features' when the ones we already have are kind of crap."

I still use Google as my primary search engine, Gmail as my e-mail provider, and Google Maps when I want to figure out how to go somewhere I haven't been before. Nothing they've done since then has provided any reason to switch from whatever solution I'm currently using. And I really don't think I'm alone in this.

:)

I'm pretty sure GPP is making fun of Ken Ham's thought-stopping advice to his followers, which is supposed to immediately make "evolutionists" stop dead in their tracks, fall down on their knees, pray for forgiveness, and embrace the obvious Truth. Or something like that.

Reducing the BAC to 0.05 and implementing random breath testing has been very effective in reducing road deaths. We reduced the BAC limit to 0.05 in the 90's and this is why Australia has 5.7 deaths per 100,000 people (8 per 100,000 vehicles) and the US has 12.7 deaths per 100,000 people (15 per 100,000 vehicles). Because it sure as shit isn't because Australian's can drive.
For reference, Victoria introduced a 0.05 limit in 1966, NSW in 1980 and Qld in 1985. I'm not sure about the other states, but the only one I can imagine holding out until the '90s would have to be the NT.
It's interesting to hear older folks talk about drink driving in their youth, however. My father (now in his late 60s) worked in insurance and used to do a lot of driving in western Queensland. His habit after finishing his rural appointments was to buy a carton of beer and start the 2-3 hour drive home - he reckons most times he'd be 1/2 to 2/3 through it by the time he rolled into the driveway.
Of course, the roads were a lot emptier back then as well, which probably saved a lot of lives.

Anyone who drinks regularly is like not that impaired at those levels. If I am as impaired at 0.1 as you are are at 0.05 why can I not drive at 0.1?
Because laws aren't personalised.

The introduction of RBTs ("Random Breath Test" stations - basically a roadblock where large numbers of vehicles are stopped and drivers tested) in Australia led to a significant reduction in road fatalities.
Source.

At the same time, a 0 limit means you'd pretty much have to avoid all substances with trace amounts of alcohol, which would be difficult from a practical standpoint. Start looking at how many brands of mouthwash and similar products contain alcohol, and you'll see what I mean.
In Australia (and I imagine, most other countries) the breath test is not what gets you charged, it's the blood test that follows. This prevents the mouthwash problem.

You left off the rest: "with his most mundane statements breathlessly repeated as though they were great wisdom." It's not Tyson's being an effective science popularizer that bugs me--I'm all for that--but the cult-of-personality aspect which seems to follow. Again, this is very much as it was with Sagan.