If you'd read the article, you'd know that sponsored ads are excluded from the ban; the cougar ads will not show up in the content network ads--e.g. in advertising space on other sites, such as (but not limited to) ask.com, YouTube, or MySpace. Apparently the policies for ads appearing on the so-called content network and for those appearing next to search results are separate.

That being said, even after CougarLife suggested changing the ad to use one that didn't show an older woman with a younger man (instead showing only a (presumably attractive) older woman), Google declined, asking whether 'the company would be open to changing “the ‘cougar’ theme/language specifically (including the domain if necessary)”' (from the NYT article).

Not clear whether they wanted this merely from the ad or from the whole site, however. If the former, it's fair to say the 'sugar daddy' sites are getting by via being surreptitious about language. If the latter, it's harder to defend them disallowing a cougar site but allowing the suggar daddy or 'arrangements' sites.

Not really familiar with the content network ads for the sugar daddy or 'arrangements' sites, but if GP is correct that 'sugar daddy' is not allowed but 'arrangements' is then it seems most likely that this is a matter of disallowing ads using the word 'cougar' in a sexual conquest sense rather than the concept of a cougar dating site.

The summary and the beginning few paragraphs of all three articles seem to be trying to draw attention with some misleading descriptions of what the experiment discovered. What they describe studying was not the ability to act morally, but to judge morality of a hypothetical scenario after the fact (i.e. with known outcomes). It might indicate the possibility of an effect on the ability to judge the morality of one's actions before performing them, but it doesn't really tell you what. Moreover, the only portion of morality judgment it seems to affect is the consideration of intent. Essentially, they're saying people in their experiment no longer cared what an actor in their hypothetical scenarios was trying to do, but what happened. So, if you're trying to hurt someone and you fail, that's cool, but if you're trying to help someone and end up breaking their arm, that's not cool. It doesn't really have anything to do with the "inherent" moralness of an action, but only of the outcome. So if you're saying, "My philosophy is if doesn't hurt anyone, it's cool to do", then as long as you successfully manage to never actually hurt anyone, a person affected by this alleged phenomenon would be cool with you, too. If, however, you're doing something that shouldn't hurt anyone as far as you know but, for whatever reason, ends up doing so, then they would judge it to be wrong.

Not border guards, but RCMP officers, a.k.a. Mounties. They're our federal police, and they've been having and getting into some trouble lately, and giving themselves a pretty bad image. Dziekanski's case is just one high-profile example.

I'm just worried they'll succeed in getting their drake-conian copyright enforcement laws passed in my country.

I agree with this 100%. This game is all about identifying seemingly insurmountable obstacles and planning incremental steps to surpass them. It's a great lesson to reinforce.

I didn't find New York pizza thin at all. I agree it's bland, but that's probably not a problem with their recipe, but with the lack of good quality fresh produce and dairy.

In Uruguay there's this joint called "Venecia" that makes a very thin -but flexible- crust that they cover with the best selection of toppings, and lots of mozzarella.

I had pizza in several countries of América (the continent) and I think this place is number one.

Anything that supports the full 8-bit range of code units supports Unicode in the UTF-8 encoding.

Yes there is. The Skeptic clearly understands the evidence for the theory and has opposing evidence that is genuine. The Uniformed Judge makes false claims to support his point, or doesn't understand the empirical support for the theory. Suppose I am arguing that Einstein's Special Relativity is correct. I use atomic clocks to determine that Einstein's theory predicts time dilation correctly, or muon decay. The Skeptic at this point shuts up. His evidence isn't precise enough, so he now changes his mind. The Uniformed Judge then launches all kinds of irrelevant attacks.

As a non-American, I may trust Google's ethics, but unfortunately, I don't trusts America's. I don't want my personal data subject to American DMCA, wiretapping, or other laws any more than I have to. Fortunately my country hasn't gone that route... yet. I'll stick to my ISPs DNS and my local privacy laws.

Yes, if you hop on WoW and tell a 13* year old girl you want to meet to have sex, you can be arrested in Canada. If you tell her you like drinking, you're fine. You have to have an inappropriate conversation with the purpose of facilitating a future crime. If you're telling this 13 year old girl you want to take her drinking, yeah, that's illegal, you're facilitating breaking a law. In this case, the defense tried to argue that although he expressed an interest in doing so, since he took no overt action to put this desire into action, he didn't break the law. That is, since the law says the conversation is to facilitate a crime, you haven't broken this law until you try to break the law you were "facilitating" the breaking of. In this instance, he was having cyber sex with a 12 year old, which though icky, isn't illegal. However, he told her he wants to do it for real some day. He got arrested, and tried to argue that those are just words, and they can't prove he intended to go through with it, because he never made concrete arrangements. So he was found not guilty. The Supreme Court overturned this conviction, because that was incorrect jury instruction. The law requires only that you have a conversation with a child in order to facilitate committing a crime involving that child. Unlike conspiracy, no overt act is required outside the communication. He said he wants to have sex in person some day. The idea that if you're trying to meet a 12 year old for sex, it's not illegal until you set a specific date is absurd. If a parent walks in and sees this in the chat window, the guy is A OK law-wise, unless the parent lets him keep going and sets a specific time and place? I would pull the plug ASAP and call the police, and be deeply offended that he walks because I caught him trying to rape my 13 year old daughter before he set a specific place to meet her!

Scream all you want about a slippery slope, there is no slippery slope here. The law wasn't broadened. It still requires communicating an intent to break the law. What it does is throw out the idea that you need to make an overt physical act to fulfill those plans. The guy told a 12 year old he wants to have sex with her. He then tried to argue it was just empty talk, he would never really do it, no sir, cybersex with a 12 year old is enough for him. Maybe you believe him. That's fine. It actually is a fairly reasonable argument. Lots of married men browse adult dating sites and craigslist etc, but few of them ever intend to go through with it. The internet is full of people who get off to a variety of unhealthy fetishes, but probably have no intent of having a dominatrix cut their limbs off, or make them eat excrement, but still say how much they want it online. However, that's up to the jury to decide. They were told it doesn't matter his intent because he never made concrete plans. The Supreme Court said that's incorrect instruction, so now he gets a new trial. If he convinces the jury that he had no intent, he's free to go. And he expressed intent, so that will be hard for him to prove, he has to prove he wasn't serious, and its hard to convince a jury you weren't serious, when you were certainly serious about having cybersex with a girl you thought was 13 (she was really 12 but it IS about what you thought, not about what was real).

* You may think I chose 13 instead of 17 to make your arguments look worse. However, I did not. You say a child is LEGALLY somebody under 18, but you are mistaken, my good man. That's a minor. A child, and this law is about children, not minors, is under 14 (in Canada anyway). So, while I may have appeared to be making a strawman argument, 13 is actually the oldest possible person which this law applies to. Were you telling your 14 year old buddy on WoW, not your 13 year old buddy, that you want to take him drinking, you'd actually have to do so before you broke the law. Anyways, you can see I barely called you any names, so Canadians ARE nice, and I read TFA and the ruling before talking about it, so we're also sensible ;) Also, "Whaddya mean, you people eh?"

That is correct, but Emperor Norton of the United States was already in favor of it in the 19th century.

I've been to Google and found it down for a few minutes at least twice and there are numerous instances where gmail has been unavailable. Most financial systems would suffer insane losses if they had the kind of downtime that Google users won't even notice. If Google goes down for a few seconds, you hit refresh and blame your ISP. If, for example, the telephone company's accounting system goes down for a few seconds then they lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Am I the only one who finds statements like this funny? Holding up "talking on the telephone" as being "actual human", but writing off instant messengers as if it's in some way inferior?

Don't get me wrong, different forms of communications have their place, but the idea that hearing someone's voice is inherently superior to reading what someone writes makes me imagine luddites in the time when telephones were just becoming wide-spread saying something like "Let's be actual humans and talk face-to-face. Directions to my house are..." and yet people like the parent now hold up the telephone as if it's an "actual" way to communicate.

Maybe for some people a technology isn't "real" or "valid" unless they grew up with it.