In a legitimate publication, the editor is a person responsible for ensuring factual accuracy and good writing style before an article is published. On Slashdot, an editor is a person responsible for taking factually accurate, well-written submissions and ensuring that they lose at least one of those attributes before publication. So we can't really blame samzenpus--he's just doing his job.

Aren't all successful actors outliers to begin with?

That's not a police power, it's a spending power. Congress can spend all it wants on the general welfare. The question that the Supreme Court will have to answer is whether Congress can force an individual to spend money on something directly, namely health insurance. They are very distinct issues.

They're actively bad examples for the additional reason that they are both requirements of state law, not federal.

According to Wikipedia, the original flavor in 1964, and only flavor available until 1972, was Taco. Perhaps flavoring was novel at the time, but Wikipedia also points out that Doritos was the first brand of tortilla chip to be launched nationally. So I'll go with your last option: He accomplished essentially a marketing coup.

Let's just go ahead and blame a Doritos-brand chip being stuck in the submitter's keyboard (and the editor's spell-checker) that caused Mr. Arch West's name to be misspelled in the story.

How tall are you? I'm 6'2", which is above average but probably not outside the median for Western men, and while the knee room on most flights is a bit tight, I attribute that to most of the flights I'm on using regional jets and it's rarely bad enough to cause serious discomfort.

Regarding KLM, while my experience with them is limited it was better than any other airline I've flown.

I'm not that guy. I just hate having to turn my nook off below 10,000 ft. Your assumptions about the world around you say more about you than about the world.

Abstinence is effective even against rape. It just takes a little more than a spoken "no" to accomplish. I recommend a .40 caliber "no" where it is legal to carry one.

The average smoker also has trouble judging distances, as evidenced by the accumulation of cigarette butts right next to "no smoking within 40 feet of entrance" and similar signs.

My understanding is that the 787's wings, under no load, curve upwards noticeably. And here is a video of the Boeing 777 wing stress test to failure along the lines of what you mentioned.

Comfort is a function of passenger density and other factors, including cabin pressure, ambient humidity, air circulation, noise levels, etc. The factor you focus on is itself a function of passenger size, where on full-size commercial jets (of which the 787 is one) I have never been uncomfortable with an economy-class seat for any reason other than a supersized passenger seated next to me. And I'm not a small man. You have to be seriously obese for your main comfort problem on full-size jets to be how many seats are on the plane. Regional jets and turboprops are another issue, but the 787-8's maximum takeoff weight of 502,500 lbs. is more than 6 times that of the CRJ-900 in which seating comfort is an issue for non-obese people.

On some recent planes, mostly smaller regional jets like the CRJ-900 and the Embraer 175, I have noticed the lack of no smoking signs. They had been replaced with "Turn Off Electronic Devices" signs, which we can only hope will be obsolete (and for the right reason) soon, as well.

What point are you trying to make? The latter only occurs with any statistical significance in TV and movies and neither of your examples has any bearing on the discussion whatsoever. Of all the safe-sex methods available, which of them do you recommend rape victims employ?

The solution is 100% effective for those who utilize it. Your rationale applies equally to a vaccine: It is less than 100% effective for the people who do not receive it. I would certainly question which empirical documentation you can point to that shows that abstinence from both unprotected sex and shared needles "simply doesn't work" in this context.

In short, you should have stopped with the point that the abstinence argument ignores human nature. But then again, if it were human nature to abstain from all risky behavior then we wouldn't be having this conversation and there would be no abstinence argument for the simple reason that there would be nothing to argue about.

Does abstinence work? Yes, with absolute effectiveness for those who choose it. Are all people capable of sticking to that choice even if they are rationally capable of making it? Of course not. But that does not mean abstinence doesn't work. It just means that people suck at behaving rationally, which is simply not news.