I appreciate having a story that is directed explicitly towards the grammatically sensitive among us. It's good that Slashdot tries to cover its bases as far as keeping pedants appropriately stimulated.

I cannot help but appreciate the logic of a professor who says, "Pass/fail wasn't acceptable. Letter grades weren't acceptable. The obvious next step is beating underperformers."

I run into the same issues with my wife - who does not understand things like the limitations of the conversion of a proposition; consequently, she does not understand me, for how can a woman expect to appreciate a professor of logic, if the simplest cloth-eared syllogism causes her to flounder?

For example, given the premise, 'all fish live underwater' and 'all mackerel are fish', my wife will conclude, not that 'all mackerel live underwater', but that 'if she buys kippers it will not rain', or that 'trout live in trees', or even that 'I do not love her any more.' This she calls 'using her intuition'.

I call it 'crap', and it gets me very irritated because it is not logical.

So now it's my right to be constantly watched by my government? I've always considered it more of a privilege.

I'm just saying - this can be mis-parsed.

I initially read that as "Human" cuisine...as a picky eater, I can say that the meaning of the sentence as a whole didn't change substantially once I noticed my error.

Replying to myself - I realize that the earlier comment was slightly offtopic, given that it was focused on USian politics and not the UKian issues, but I think the overarching theme is the same.

Given a populace driven by misinformation on both sides, a margin this close cannot be considered "What the people want" in the truest sense. The whole reason for representative democracy is that people can't be bothered to get actual facts (or, barring that, some semblance of knowledge for and against an issue). We hire politicians to do that for us.

The fact that the system is populated with humans and is inherently corrupt doesn't change that any. It's still a smaller number of people who can devote considerably more time to the issue than I can, and who have resources to get the necessary information better than I can by using various news sources.

Will they fail? Absolutely. Will they fail as much as if we did phone in voting for every major decision based on which Lord / Senator danced the best? Yeah...I'm not so sure on that one.

Depending on exactly what question you're asking - yes. I certainly do. Not necessarily in an argumentative way, but it's still valid.

We've got a democratic system that has two parties which have a number of wedge issues on either side. In order to stand out from the other party, each of them continues to push deeper into the territory of their respective base.

As a result, you frequently get people voting not because someone truly matches their ideological stance, but because they don't want someone who is further away from their ideologies. Instead of us having two largely similar candidates debating over nuanced policy measures and differing views of how they feel the country should proceed, we get demagoguery that demonizes the opposition and alienates a decent portion of the people who would otherwise claim to be a part of that party.

I think that with a split that is that close to 50/50 (ignoring the actual voter turnout), you have a population that cares strongly about some hot-button topics, but which probably agrees on other hot-button topics (with the results varying from person to person). Presidents seem to have this opinion that they have a mandate from the masses, when in fact they have at best the accession of a plurality.

This is both good and bad. If we saw 80% voter turnout and a 87% vote for one person, it would suggest that the other party has failed so miserably that America completely agrees on what needs to be done. In general, while the parties appear to be moving ever further apart, the average of where they are still seems to be going more or less in the direction that democrazy is suggesting that it wants to go.

Aside: I saw the typo in the last line there, and decided to keep it because, well, its apropos.

I'm not totally up on my corporate accounting / investment info, but this sounds to me like - after a massive recall, they're still operating at a (admittedly tiny) profit. I'm sorry, but if you can have your products explode on people and still be in the black you're doing pretty well.

Of course not, Google is much too courageous for that.

I love the idea of an advanced civilization coming along and discovering that we've made a modern Rosetta stone out of the collected works of Dr. Seuss.

Graduate studies courses in ancient human civilization discuss how we destroyed our climate, and how we had now-extinct creatures who would speak for the trees, and so on.

No, I assert that even given that the activities of screwing the milkman and getting supper are mutually exclusive, now that the screwing is over, surely then, supper may now, logically, be got.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Nothing beats falling asleep underneath hundreds of pounds of The Epic of Gilgamesh. It's a real page-turner (by which I mean I have to send the kids into the study to drag the next box of pages in to me).

Better yet, attempting to intimidate someone involved in an ongoing lawsuit is now securities fraud. Lose faith in your lawyer and transfer some money away from your case? That's now insider trading.

Why no mention of Al Gore? I am outraged, I say!

I'm...I'm interested in both the culture that gives rise to your metaphorical society as well as its outcomes. I'm interested in how you'd position that as an elevator pitch for a movie. I just...I have so many questions right now.