Does that place him on their payroll? And, what happens if he immediately responds to that by resigning?

The nation is full of people who cannot even control their own waistlines, let alone something with a will of its own like this.

I really hope people are waking up and deciding to stop being so passive and unwilling to take a little responsibility. I really do hope so. If that is happening, it's not the sort of thing that would get reported by the mainstream corporate media. After all, that might encourage it.

Because the police state apparatus could not function if these people remembered their humanity.

"Seized the records" probably means the same thing it means when individuals are raided for computer crimes: grab all hard copies, all hard drives, and all other electronic storage media believed to be holding said records.

Maybe the next Snowden works for one of these police departments.

What I wonder every time I see this: do the law enforcement officers involved ever think something like, "wow, by doing this I become one of the jack-booted thugs working hard to bring tyranny and corruption to this nation!" Are they complete myrmidons? Are they "true believers" who really managed to convince themselves this is all for some kind of nebulous greater good? Are they simply sociopaths with no conscience? Are they somehow brave enough to take on an armed criminal yet too cowardly to refuse bullshit orders?

What exactly goes through their minds? That's what I wonder.

Only those who wish to force their beliefs on others have an obligation to back them up.

Actually it is the person who refuses to perform the slightest proofreading or spell-checking who arrogantly believes in their own perfection. See how that works? Those of us who are more humble recognize we will make such mistakes so we plan for it.

That's especially true when it happens time after time, when it will be submitted to a large audience, and when it's part of his job. In this case, all three of those conditions apply. That's just fucking sloppy. My boss would never tolerate such careless, sloppy work from me, nor would I want him to. With several Slashdot "editors" it's well past the point of unprofessionally sloppy work; it's reached the point where it shows a lack of self-respect.

Do you have reason to believe that the National Department for Education Statistics (the source of his link) didn't already adjust their numbers for inflation? To suggest they never thought of that is a severe accusation against their competency and requires substantiation to be believed.

When you hear about a street mugging, do you also say "What's amazing, is that there are still thugs out there who think that just because they're on the street, that norms of proper human behavior don't belong to them" too?

If not, what's special about "... with a computer!"

Yes the name-calling satisfies the berating I had anticipated.

And when we do, it's almost always caused by faulty assumptions we didn't have to make. Depending on what sort of conscience you have, it can lead to a "damn, I should have known better" feeling. Sometimes this feeling is called embarassment.

Of course others prefer to believe these are not matters of cause-and-effect in which they actively participated, preferring to convince themselves it's more like a roll of dice. This certainly avoids a feeling of embarassment but it does nothing to reduce future occurrences and prevents them from learning from their mistakes.

I think you're onto something here.

It's certainly been a long time since I could read a single Slashdot discussion without witnessing the following behavior: 1) Read a post. 2) Note that it sounds vaguely like something you really find offensive, at least, if you twist most of the words around, put words in the poster's mouth, ignore context, and pay no attention to the actual point they were making. 3) Rail against that person, hellfire and brimstone, using various name-calling, ad-hominems, and other invectives while being careful not to actually refute anything they said.

Optional steps follow: 4) Continue bickering and splitting hairs long after they correct you and show you how easy it would have been to understand what they plainly said and plainly didn't say, being careful never to admit your mistake no matter how obvious to everyone it may be. 5) When you run out of excuses and methods of attempting to save face, just suddenly stop replying to the thread, employing the old "ignore it and hope it goes away" strategy.

The main reason I am starting to look at Soylentnews and other Slashdot alternatives is not the incompetent and bumbling "editors", not the choice of stories, not the Beta redesign, etc. It's because deliberately misunderstanding plain black-and-white text just to have something to moan and bitch about has become trendy on this site. I don't want to be the only sane person in a lunatic asylum, nor do I want to be the only adult in a roomful of screaming children. That's what Slashdot is becoming.

And here I was thinking my comment was so absurd, so over-the-top, so obviously hyperbole, that no one would actually take it seriously.

Because of you, sir, I admit I was wrong. Someone did decide to take it seriously after all.

That feeling of embarassment you experience upon reading this will quickly pass. You can cover it up by denying that it happened. Or you could take the offensive and berate me some more. Y'know, if you believe such things will save face.

I love meeting people who are smarter than me. That's when my personal policy of listening much more than speaking really pays off. If I meet such a person who is also emotionally mature enough to be humble and modest, that's better still.

Real bigotry and prejudice does still exist, sadly. Note that I never once denied that. What I said was that the specific word "racist" has lost all meaning. It lost all meaning because a lot of knee-jerk types with no skill at argumentation found it politically useful to brand everything they dislike as "racist". For example, lots of people who disagreed with President Obama have been called "racist" simply because they thought a different policy would work better, despite showing no actual prejudice.

Speaking of growing up, one sign that someone has done so is their ability to fully understand and calmly respond to something instead of instantly getting offended and emotional. You tell me I need to grow up and you lecture me about life and you throw in a gratuitous "fuck you" because you thought I was denying the existence of all racism. Re-read my post (god damn do I get tired of asking volatile people to do that...). Not once did I say that. My prior comment was about the word "racism" not the existence of racism.

I'm glad you had a personal transformation concerning bigotry and prejudice. Perhaps now you will recognize a need to make another transformation concerning actually understanding what you read before making knee-jerk reactions to it. It'll definitely reduce your stress levels, if you are in need of a self-centered reason to give it a try. If you really want to be a grown man or a grown woman, you can write a new post admitting that your failure to control your emotions blinded you to what I said despite your obvious intellectual capability of understanding it.