That's ridiculous. It's like saying it should be illegal to carry cash because people with guns could steal it. It should be a crime to do something bad, not to do something that might allow someone else to do something bad to you.

They finally found the Prothean ruin!

These comments all make me feel much better. I sleep for around 3 hours after work (5pm-8pm) and then 3-4 hours before work (3:30am-7:30am). Obviously I don't have kids. I find that when I skip my post-work sleep I have to be doing something active to avoid being completely exhausted and useless. After my long nap/short sleep I am much more rested and can read and write more complicated things much more easily.

Everyone I know thinks these hours are weird, but it works so well for me that I intend to keep doing it as long as I can. These comments all serve to make me feel like a little bit less of an outsider. Thanks! :-)

Below are some other recommended magazines for depth. These are worth supporting much more than your average newspaper.

The New Yorker
The Atlantic
Harper's
Lapham's Quarterly (not news coverage, exactly, but still great)
(Canadian) The Walrus
(Australian) The Monthly
(Australian) Quarterly Essay
(UK) Standpoint
(UK) Prospect
(India) The Caravan
(Spain) Catalan International View

"It will have an immeasurably miniscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean's tides than comet Elenin ever will."

Exactly. From TFA:

"These people announced on their Internet sites that they planned to come here and cause disruptions, and told their friends. We were able to contact other foreign ministries and simply give them links," Palmor said.

Facebook, the company, didn't permit Israel to do this. It was Facebook users who don't know how to restrict access to their groups and posts.

Phillip doesn't take criticism very well. You can read through the comments section of any of his articles to see how he responds to those who disagree with him. Usually he just re-states a phrase from his article while implying that "you just don't get it" rather than rationally addressing the content of the argument. I've never seen him acknowledge a comment that conflicts with his article's premise as being valid or reasonable, though I've mostly stopped reading his stuff. All the rationality in the world won't change his mind when it's set on something. His constant, overly-defensive nature when someone critiques his articles, combined with his tendency to "Like" only comments that agree with himself suggest that he is probably relatively insecure and needs the acceptance of others to feel good about himself. He may have placed so much of his self-worth into these articles that it feels like people are critiquing him, not his argument. Just a suggestion, Phillip: try to be a little more flexible and receptive to criticism. You're still a valuable person regardless of what random people on the internet think of your arguments, but you'll expand your mind considerably if you remain open to rational viewpoints that run counter to your own.

Seriously, though...Roy Halladay is a machine!

Additionally, from Penny Arcade... http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/10/19/

I don't have mod points, but that's ok because what I really want to do is buy you a beer. Interesting, reasoned comments like these are why I read slashdot -- thanks.

Precisely. And what was released on June 12, 2008? Metal Gear Solid 4.

This is the most hilarious thing I've read in a long time. You, sir, are awesome.

Right-click on a search box and choose "add a keyword for this search." I use wp for Wikipedia searches and az for amazon ones. Very convenient, but I'm not sure how this new command line function will be any different.

You seem to be taking this idea seriously, so I'm going to seriously discourage you from implementing it. It's noble to have faith that if each citizen is given a blank slate and the power to shape a governing structure for themselves, something wholly democratic and wonderful will come out of it. But it's also hopelessly wrong. Someone on Slashdot has a sig that I really like that says "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner." I wouldn't trust the average citizen with filing my taxes, let along determining my country's monetary policy.

Now, you sound like a smart person. And you seem to be fed up with the current electoral/legislative/governmental processes. I can understand that. But please don't put your energies into fashioning a way for every citizen to come together and instantly form some new system of government that could be anything from direct democracy to elected dictator and somehow have the flexibility to become the very opposite on a whim. This will never happen. And if it did happen, it wouldn't work out like you hope. You don't have a plan for a new government system. You have a plan for allowing other people to figure out a new government system. Pardon my harshness, but that's intellectually lazy. Instead trying to figure out how to create an infrastructure that would allow everyone to create a new governing structure, I encourage you to come up with your own idea for a new electoral/legislative/governing structure. Think you know the perfect system that can satisfy Libertarians and Socialists, Centralists and Decentralists, Rich and Poor, Rural and Urban? Please, for the love of god, tell us! But if you think that getting all those people together in a virtual room is going to spontaneously generate the perfect system of government, you're fucking crazy.