Wait, what??? "If armed drones are ever proposed then we can deal with the proposal." Is this along the same vein as, when the US government gave the CIA and NSA armed drones with Hellfire missiles, there was a very public and conscientious debate about their use, when to use them, when not to use them, and who will provide oversight and transparency to the process of killing by armed drone?

I agree 100% with the grandparent poster. We'll know when the drones are armed after the trigger is already pulled.

Um, no. Just like the freedom of speech is not 100% absolute, there are reasonable limits to owning weaponry. Felons, especially with violent crime histories, and people with mental illnesses rendering judgement suspect have NO BUSINESS owning firearms or gaining access to them. The regular citizenry, with a few exceptions, doesn't need to own heavy weaponry (what some people arbitrarily separate into "ordnance").

The truth is, every right, including every constitutional right, has its logical limits. What they are is up for healthy debate. But until the fringe of the gun rights crowd can mature enough to realize that yes, healthy limits do exist, they will be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Yes, because conservative views have turned the tech industry off from flocking to Texas for jobs. There's a sarcasm tag embedded there.

This is a nicely sanitized story with a pro-Russian jingoistic slant, and is nearly identical to the propaganda coming out of the Putin mouthpieces. Completely missing are the brutal suppression tactics by Yanukovych and his cronies on the protesters in Ukraine, the looting of Ukraine's economy and corruption that occurred under his leadership and his puppet status to Moscow.

This is like a setpiece on Syria and Bashar al-Assad that neglects the fact that al-Assad imprisoned, tortured and killed tens of thousands of his own subjects in his quest to retain power, even before foreign extremists started supporting both sides. Oh yeah, little details like that.

Citation, please. Extraordinary claims... I just ran a google search on Dianne Feinstein calling for Edward Snowden to be killed, and turned up zero hits. Now I also found a ton of articles saying Feinstein and other career politicians butthurt in the scandal were calling him a criminal. But please, feel free to support your assertions.

A safer, and more intellectually sound, option would be to become an anonymous whistleblower, like Deep Throat / Mark Felt. You don't get the notoriety, but then you also don't become Vladimir Putin's sock puppet when it becomes convenient.

In 2025, they probably will be stuck in their Buy 'N Large hover recliners, with drones delivering everything and informercials streamed directly to their heads-up or retinal displays. They won't need silly things like "interfaces" for antiquated notions like "choice".

And honestly, you may be waiting a while! For there are surely legal consequences for such things, but the police and judges are human and tend to view unexciting assault and battery cases as exactly that.

I mean, seriously, how many people as a percentage actually serve jail time for bar fights? Not many, and there are some serious injuries from those. And let's not forget extenuation - if Peter gets up in the face of the elderly mother of Paul and starts screaming at her for road rage and Paul punches his lights out, Paul may be congratulated by the arresting police officer after he's let off with probation. If Paul claims Peter was harassing him with his Glassholeness Sarah Slocum-style, Paul likely walks with community service.

And let's not forget, the police only have so much manpower and funding. Hell, they can't even muster up enough time here at my hometown to shut down any of the massage parlors for blatant sex trafficking of illegal immigrants. Robberies may take a while to investigate. Do you think police officers, who most likely already view Glassholes in a dim light, are going to be spending much time about finding out who Random Guy A was who punched the Glasshole recording him at a local bar?

That's weird. I didn't realize because X and Y are worse on a continuum of bad things, it means Z is somehow A-OK!

I hate the NSA and it's intrusions. I hate CCTV and the casual police state. Oh, and I hate Google Glass and its commercialization of the surveillance state.

See? Is that so hard?

No, the US used to get away with so much of it's foreign policy because the idea of foreign aid and economic trade with America made it very palatable to poor developing countries. See how everyone is starting to bend over backward to China as it begins to assert its economic weight.

What rock have *you* been living under for the last 100 years? Have you been paying any attention at all to US foreign policy in Latin America and the Middle East for, I don't know, the last century? Has there been a time when the US hasn't acted exactly as it has? Has there been one significant change in dipping their toes in other countries' affairs? The only change, ever, has been international press coverage of events. People interested in foreign policy have always seen the US for exactly what it is - it's just until 20 years ago there was a Soviet Union and a Warsaw Pact that made the US much more endearing.

Which is exactly as far as they would have gone before! Do you think bullshit brush wars are a new thing? Or that developed countries with strong militaries intervening in neighboring countries with weak ones is new, either? Wake up. The only international law worth a damn is the international law that's enforced at the point of a gun.

So this is the most job-like game on the internet?? Awesome! Sign me up.

Less facetiously, I didn't think the answer to the common complaint of, "We're sick of killing 10 generic monsters to collect 5 generic trophies to advance a quest" was, "Here's more stuff to grind!"

If you're spending thousands of dollars for genetic testing for a $4 a month drug like warfarin, you're doing it way wrong. It's like the proverbial million dollar cure for the common cold. You could either use one of the newer warfarin alternatives with more consistent pharmacokinetic profiles at a higher price or use the old tried-and-true trial and error dosing.

Either way, you're still doing weekly to monthly lab testing for warfarin dosing. And your warfarin effectiveness (or bleeding risk) is still going to be thrown way off if you vary your diet significantly or start new medications.

A much better example of genomic medicine payoff would be targeting therapies to specific cancer types, like the EGFR receptor mutations in some varieties of lung cancer.

You realize the Scientific American article that you point to backs up the OP's point? Let me quote the article summary directly:

"whereas female brains are more connected between hemispheres to combine analytical and intuitive thinking"

So, women are supposedly more wired to perform analytical and intuitive thinking? And what is coding and software engineering, exactly? It's certainly not a showcase for men's supposedly superior motor skills!

I don't believe many parents (there are a few) who directly point their children away from STEM. But I know a lot of parents and family and friends who indulge all day in Disney Princesses and makeover parties and introduce their peers to the wonders of staying connected all day to social media.

It's not malignant, but there is a social bias present. It may not have been in your immediate family, but taken as an aggregate, social pressure does steer little girls' interests away from STEM. And interests often turn into exploration for careers.

Hey, guess what? Just because you get away with going 100 mph on the highway for the first few months doesn't mean you get to avoid the speeding ticket when the cop does pull you over later.

"Well, gee, officer, I've been doing this for months now, and no one's bothered to stop me before!! It must be OK then, right?"

As an object lesson in expected social etiquette, you should hold up your cell phone the next time you're in a movie theater (preferably on opening night), leave it pointed at the screen with the camera/camcorder app on without actually taking pictures, and see what happens.

Fine, how about this? I'm not the original poster, but I'll amend what he said. It boggles the mind that an idiot wore a wearable videocamera to a movie theater and pointed it at the screen, and some people are beyond themselves that the idiot got into trouble for it. There, no need for the word "apologist".

Is there anything more arbitrary than the line drawn between "animal" and "plant"?

See, I can do this too!

Drawing a line between humans and everything else is easy. Are you a member of homo sapiens, or not?