Do all the people replying here not realize that Gandhi_2 was joking? Let me spell it out. Gandhi_2 is making fun of our western tendency to be so hyper-sensitive to cultural issues that mentioning, or even noticing, that someone is from another culture or genetic group is likely to elicit a charge of racism from someone. The fact that that many people didn't even get it shows how accustomed we have become to hearing these charges.

The first time I used Lotus 1-2-3, I recall thinking "It's a good thing I'm sitting down." I'd toyed with Visicalc and Supercalc on Apple IIs, but they were crude toys. 1-2-3 left me breathless. The scope of the product, the ease of use (remember the "/" as the command introducer, so much easier to hit than Excel's "Alt" key?), the almost unlimited potential for mathematical, financial, geographical, statistical, and you-name-it-or-even-imagine-it modelling ... a beautifully conceived and developed product. As another poster put it, "goodbye, old friend."

Freedom of speech isn't absolute in the U.S. either. Try (falsely) shouting fire in a crowded theater. Or any speech intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action. Most governments just draw the line well to the left of where the U.S. does.

Not to mention "animal husbandry".

In WWI, the British Army had a problem with their soldiers dying from snipers' head shots. So they switched to metal helmets, and the proportion of head wounds went up. Counter-intuitive, until you realize that most of those head wounds would have been head-deaths before. Same thing here, I suspect: with the mosquito nets up, naturally you get a higher proportion of bites after 5am, when the villagers leave the nets and get up to work in their fields. Maybe there's more to this than meets the eye, but at first glance it's just the result I'd expect.

With power as finely balanced as it is in the US, a party doesn't need anything like a third of the vote. A percent or less of the vote - if concentrated so that it elects one or two congressmen - can give a party power way out of proportion to its actual electoral vote. Countries like Israel have long suffered from a tail-wagging-the-dog syndrome where tiny parties have vastly disproportionate power for that very reason: if they leave the coalition, taking their two or three votes with them, the government loses its majority.

Peter Bright argues that the ban should persist. Not because of interference with aircraft control systems, a self-evidently silly fear (if there were any quantifiable danger, we'd be strip-searched and relieved of our gadgets at the gate) but because it would keep our attention safely on the plane during the more dangerous take-off and and landing phases. In addition, he argues, the ban gives us a spiritually refreshing period during which we must part ways with our gadgets and smell the metaphorical flowers. I dunno. If a sudden gut-wrenching roll or nose-down doesn't make you look up from your iphone, I'm not sure banning them during those times will make you more attentive. As far as spiritual refreshment is concerned, listening to the fuss and noise of my fellow passengers, most of whom I'm forced to sit closer to (and certainly for longer) than most sex partners, does not encourage spiritual cleansing. Playing Air Attack on my Galaxy and doing my best to pretend no one else is there is way more relaxing.

The flip side of this is what I got in Ontario (Canada), whose curriculum 25 years ago required the teaching of creationism as well as evolution. After spending a week or so looking at all the evidence for the theory of evolution, our grade 13 biology teacher announced "I am also required to teach an alternate theory known as creationism. You've seen all the evidence for evolutionary theory (he went on to list it). But there are some who believe that this is all false and that god did it. It is up to you to decide which theory you find more plausible." And on to the next topic. When I read about teachers having to "teach the controversy", etc., I'm not too worried. I suspect that, even in Tennessee, a majority of science teachers have the same severe doubts about creationism as the rest of us.

Given the amount of discussion, this is obviously not a silly question. I worked at a company in Palo Alto for a while, and one of the things that appealed to me was that they let users name their own workstations. You got a completely random mishmash. They didn't reflect the machine's purpose (more secure, if that worries you); they're easier to remember (betty, veronica, larch, elm, etc are way easier than random alpha strings); you don't have to change them if someone moves; and when someone quits you reimage anyway, so let the new owner choose a new name, or stick with the old name if you prefer. It's also more empowering than some faceless (and finite) naming convention imposed by the trolls.

As far as I can tell, there are three reasons people don't vote: they don't care; it's too hard; and it's not cool. Voting looks to some teens like picking up trash on the street: something only the Martin Princes of the world do. It's too hard because it requires going to a physical place with physical pieces of paper, and making a conscious decision who to vote for. And, of course, many voters feel that politicians are all clowns and liars, so it doesn't matter who you vote for. Online voting - presuming that it's implemented securely, if that's possible - would make it easy and, if not cool, at least not overtly dorky either. The third issue, the feeling that one bunch of clowns in parliament is pretty much like another - doesn't have a technical solution. But two out of three's not bad.