There are posts for and against the efficacy/necessity for these drugs but isn't the real issue that most of these things people are trying to feel stimulated by, and interested in, esoteric ideas that don't fit nicely into the range of stimuli the hunter/gatherer homo-sapiens evolved to get excited about.

Does it not seem entirely obvious that a hunter/gatherer would rather be shooting zombies than searching for binary bugs in code, or a missing file in an archive?

Use the drugs if they help you and you feel confident that you aren't screwing up your liver but the diagnosis that these kids are diseased because they'd rather be catching frogs than parrot learning the menu commands of Microsoft Office, or a list of the Monarchs of Britain is sadly misguided.

Let me throw up a few other revelations:
There is less psychological illness in populations that live near parks.
People who get to walk in parks recover quicker from illness.
There is a statistical link between suicide and strong electro-magnetic fields.
Humans generally feel pleasantly excited when visiting an expansive wilderness.

Surprise surprise!

You can take a human out of the wild but don't expect him enthusiastically conform to the needs of industry or the propaganda of elites who follow Edward Bernays' view:

"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest."

We humans were engineered by the eco-system we evolved in. We obviously struggle to conform to the engineering of 'progress'. Conform if needs must, just don't accept the labels: sick, lazy, delinquent, trouble maker.

We are humans: this stuff IS boring!

"They don't innovate. They scrape the internet looking for ideas, making products that are "just different enough" to avoid existing patents, and they buy up startup companies just as you describe."

On what basis is this insightful? Surely some facts to go with the opinion are necessary?

Here is a fact:
In the last 25 years Apple has bought 25 companies. That's one a year.

Here's another:
In the last 4 years Microsoft has bought 45 companies. That's just over 11 a year.

Here's another:
In the last 4 years Google has bought 40 companies. That's 10 a year.

And a final one:
"Apple is not an exception -- stop dodging this just to please the fanboys" , aside from the bad manners, is not insightful and is not borne out by the facts.

"I must make myself available weeks or months after the fact to provide passwords"

My those are very secure passwords. I thought 10 characters was enough! ...(ducks) ;-)

With regard to Thatcher's austerity measures the amazing thing is that she managed to prevent investment in:

social housing
schools and universities
National Health System
sewers and sewage treatment
railways
post office

sold off public assets like:

public housing
British Coal
British Petroleum
British Airways
British Airports Authority
British Sugar
National Freight Corp
British Ports
National Bus Co.
British Leyland
Rolls Royce
Rover Group
Girobank
British Steel
British Shipbuilders
British Gas
National Electricity Grid
Regional Water Authorities
British Telecom

received the bulk of the receipts from North Sea oil during the years of highest output...

and STILL was collecting more in taxes at the end of her three terms in office than when she first came to power. Despite that enormous level of subsidy she failed to reduce the cost of UK government by even a single pound.

This can be partly explained by her belief that 7 million unemployed, on benefits was a good way of curbing inflation. Though her government took the time to reinvent how to count them (to hide a few). She also believed in educating the minimum number of people necessary since graduates on benefits were, in her opinion, no more productive than uneducated oiks, and perhaps even more dejected. She clearly didn't understand the concept of wealth generation by a vigorous, educated middle class.

Essentially she was a middle class snob... a would be Victorian... a hankerer after an entitled elite sitting comfortably atop a competitively inhibited middle class. Her vision of the future was 1900.

The one thing she did that benefitted the middle class was to increase the availability of capital but she did it in a demand driven property market... which then swallowed (and continues to do so) every single disposable middle class pound in a desperate bidding process for a roof over one's head.

For those who don't know the English property market the UK has not contained immigration (the principle cause of population growth there) while at the same time they have constrained the building of property. A policy of protecting farmland around cities, the 'green belt', prevents horizontal growth, while another policy of historical conservation prevents vertical growth which would spoil the traditional skyline.

The result is that the British, and particularly those of the South East, have had to chop up existing property into ever smaller rabbit hutches. Margaret Thatcher's Victorian vision did not extend to noticing that her peers were now living in the servant's basements, mews cottages and converted stables. A time travelling Victorian arriving today would be 'horrified'.

Crocodiles show some ability to regenerate certain tissues:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1563441

Teeth regrow in healthy individuals, too. The larger species are thought to live 70 to 100 years, and the animal isn't known to suffer unduly from cancer.

It does have an awful time in the everglades working out what sex it is. (Oestrogenic pollutants)

Google do not want a privacy bill in the US as it would inhibit data-mining.
The obvious strategy for them is to encourage government to allow data accumulation for national security reasons.

Though currently Google is just playing the politics of the situation to its advantage as it becomes more invasive it will become more important/dangerous to government.

Google is growing into a big problem for US/world citizens: either the US gets a strong privacy bill or Google gets clandestinely plugged into government.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/

This comparison isn't like for like.

"By all metrics, the US healthcare system is delivering comparable medical outcomes to other industrialized nations at about 2 times the cost."

The UK system uses collective bargaining (the NHS areas collectively) to purchase lower cost drugs. That is illegal in the US.

The NHS bill then includes many drugs subsidised and sold at the price of a prescription... about £6, I believe. US patients' insurance often does not cover drugs, or all drugs, and those drugs are more expensive than the UK due to that big-pharma favouring ban on collective bargaining.

Factoring in US patients' drug bills the UK savings are greater than 2 times.

Apple user bashing is insightful?

How about considering that the press has been portraying the Android/iPhone competition as Open vs Closed platform and, thus, is spinning this exploit as a good thing? I have seen the anti-Apple rhetoric rise to such dizzy heights as to suggest that this mirrors the Windows/Mac competition of the 90s... conveniently forgetting that both platforms were proprietary and that Microsoft was the arch proponent of domination through proprietary technology, working diligently to pervert open standards with proprietary code and even going as far as cramming the ISO with customers to railroad through the new, proprietary code dependent, Word doc format as an 'open' standard.

Here's a well respected Apple blogger commenting more accurately on the misrepresentation of this exploit:

"Yikes. It’s odd how the press is mostly covering this as “jailbreaking now more convenient” rather than “remote code exploit now in the wild”.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball.

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

hmm...

"As an online discussion grows sooner or later it's going to attract Glenn Beck."

Fixed it. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1s4fj-5zlk

Office: leveraged the Windows monopoly to break Lotus. Even if the "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run" myth isn't true Lotus inevitably was late out of the gate for new versions of Windows, and the secret API accusation persists.

IE: leveraged Windows again. Microsoft won this battle by giving away the product free, and then perverting HTML and Java.

Outlook/Exchange server: free front end, proprietary back end... they're leveraging Windows again with great results.

Windows Mobile: The many versions over the years have had to stand on their own merits. The current situation is that market share is shrinking and reputation is poor. Microsoft are in full shameless post-ME, post-Vista advertising mode: the next one's gonna be great!

Zune: Without the Windows monopoly coming to the aid of another product Microsoft failed to catch up. The Plays for Sure DRM debacle didn't do their reputation with the music industry much good so the plan of domination through a proprietary format (WMA) failed to provide the anti-competitive leg-up on which Microsoft had previously relied.

Xbox: No Windows leverage possible with this stand alone product so Microsoft go for brute force to beat Sony. $10 billion dollars lost and a decade later some people consider that they have done a great job. Others wonder if a company that relies on squandering a sum the size of the GDP of oil rich Brunei should be allowed to exist to batter into submission more competent companies with fewer resources. Last quarter the Xbox made $165 million... so in about 15 years it should break even.

Ramming through a subsidised product with the result that profitability takes almost 3 decades isn't a business strategy, it's a pissing war. "My steam last longer than yours'. Microsoft's record developing products that cannot leverage Windows is pitiful.

I screen printed my face on the driver's door.

The near-side passenger door has a cartoon dialogue bubble: "My pedophile step-father keeps stealing my keys for his hunting trips"

I don't understand the decision not to, at the very least, release a model with the keyboard & trackpad combined. In what situation will it be more practical to have them separate? For people with four arms, perhaps? Drummers with complete limb coordination independence?

There is the rationale that keyboard and trackpad can fail independently but I don't think that justifies the inconvenience of their separation in a wireless, mobile product.

Should we consider a modular design for cars? Hey, let's separate the steering wheel from the pedals and strap the customer into both halves to keep them together!

The problem with this debate is that it is characterised, particularly within the US, as ID (or Creationism) vs Evolution. It is not.

The debate is Superstition vs. Empiricism.
Supporters of I.D. appear to believe that they can throw out the 'Theory of Evolution' but maintain the science that goes into making the soles of their shoes. One cannot. If one abandons the empirical method for evolution you introduce that as a concept.

Tuning into your hackles to gain a sense of reality becomes a valid method of research.
Blind faith in old books becomes a valid method.
Obedience to the political machinations of a popular religious hierarchy becomes a valid method.

I.D. attempts to portray itself as valid scientific scepticism but that is a disreputably small fig leaf to hide Creationism behind. Advocates of I.D. display a wilful ignorance of Evolution and a contentment with schoolboy errors. Risible misrepresentations of the definition of the word 'theory' and 'proof', for example. Abuse of the scientific method of construction of hypotheses based ONLY upon best empirical evidence.

What I.D. proponents will not face up to is that when you abandon Empiricism you embrace the politics of religion. In embracing the politics of religion you put all of science at the mercy of the political ambitions of charlatans.

Religion is essentially a protection racket for the gullible, and a mafia politically active against the intelligentsia. As the political power of whatever superstition rises it MUST suppress the intellectual development of society. The only difference between the Taliban, or Spanish Inquisition and a Southern Baptist Church is the level of political control actionable.

The implementation of a false reality always results in tyranny: whether than be the tyranny of superstition or the tyranny of madness. The attempted mapping of a false reality over true reality results in conflict, and the false reality characterises the friction created as a struggle with some imaginary dark force.

The details of the friction are often arbitrary: they may be the prohibition of eating shellfish, or of education for women. The only guiding influence that reality has over a superstition is that it must be compatible with psychology of the believer. Thus, a male insecurity over female fidelity can translate into a deity's command for women to be covered up in public and kept under house arrest. A superstition must also be compatible with the needs of a controlling elite. So a belief that a deity speaks to everyone personally and no ecclesiastical hierarchy are acceptable will never gain a dominant position in society since the ruling elite cannot adopt a position as leader chosen by 'God', or 'God' himself. A superstition of that type may gain a foothold in some community but it will lose out in any battle for religious supremacy.

In short: when I.D. attempts a selective abandonment of Empiricism it opens the door for the mafioso protection racket power struggle to begin. That door must be held shut by everyone who wishes for the rule of reason.

A good reply, chebucto, but I beg to differ on the ambiguity. Consider the phrases bit by bit. I'll mix the order where that doesn't alter meaning but allows brevity:

"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare."

and

"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."

No ambiguity here:
He's in favour of some form of toxic gas as a means of control of 'uncivilised tribes' (there is no controversy over the fact that Churchill was a snob and a pretty unreconstructed Victorian... but back to the issue at hand).

"It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas."

No ambiguity here:
Churchill is saying that he sees nothing wrong with the use of tear gas. This phrase defends no other type of gas.

"The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum."

No ambiguity here:
Again, Churchill is clearly in favour of non-lethal gas.

"It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses:"

Possible ambiguity? I think not:
The issue here is the use of the word 'only', but Churchill is not advocating gas use here, he is describing the spectrum of possibilities. In the light of the great clarity of the three previous quotations this cannot be interpreted to mean something that contradicts immediately the preceding opinions. Not given that we are discussing a highly intelligent individual with a famous talent for the use of the English language.

"gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected."

Possible ambiguity? I think not:
Here the issue is the use of the word 'can', but again, Churchill is defining tear gas as existing within the spectrum of gases that could be described as poisonous.

Bearing in mind that tear gas is not usually considered a 'poison gas' but, obviously, as toxicity is dose related, can be considered so it appears to me that Churchill quite liberally labelled tear gas with the more severe term and deemed it, thus, necessary not to ban use of toxic gas in warfare.

Thus, one must consider whether Churchill did this in order to leave space for more toxic, lethal gases to exist within the law or in order that the benign use of tear gas not be outlawed? On this matter he offers only one opinion:

"The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a MINIMUM."

That is as clear a statement as one could wish for from the English language.

We should represent our greatest heros with care. Churchill was by no means perfect but he was one of the best of us and is still held in the highest regard in Britain. There's no reason to sully his reputation with truncated quotations:

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes,”...

let our hero continue: ... “making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory [i.e., tear] gas.”

The theme is concluded thus:

“The moral effect should be so good as to keep loss of life reduced to a minimum” and “Gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror yet would leave no serious permanent effect on most of those affected.”

I think you'll agree that the full text befits his reputation as Britain's visionary saviour, whereas the person who first sought to sully his reputation by offering up into popular currency the truncated misrepresentation of his view deserves shame.