There is some irony in Boys from Brazil speaking with a Jewish accent.

Graduation rate rising does not mean more minority students with diplomas. If you cut the number of minority students in half, but increase the graduation rate by 50%, then you have 75% as many minority graduates. Though this does mean a more efficient use of university resources.

However, having that $8/hour job available does not guarantee it will "save" anybody by giving them job skills. Not every employee who gets that $8/hour job can use it to move up to a higher paying job. Having that $8/hour job be a $11/hour job that somebody can actually sustain themselves on is more useful for pulling people out of poverty. Otherwise you just have a lot more people starving on the $8/hour job.

So what your saying is, that since the Schulze method has no chance of becoming the next big voting system, and that since you dislike the winner take all system, you're strategically voting for the Approval Voting? Oh the irony.

1. 1. Either an event has a cause (determined), or doesn't have a cause (spontaneous)
2. 2. A decision (like joining a religious group) is an event
3. 3. Therefore all decisions are either determined by something else (a gene, a loss in the family), or are spontaneous (there was no choice, it just happened)

Or:

1. 1. The past determines the present
2. 2. You cannot change the past
3. 3. You cannot change the present

I might have butchered the argument a little, but the basic premise stands. I'm a compatiblest though, so there is some free will, its just not some god given right.

I kinda agree with the 3rd one. Palin is going to take the biggest political hit for all this, thanks to her casual use of gun references when dealing with opposition.

But really, this is simply a tragedy caused by one mentally unstable person, who was pointed at a congresswomen as the source of all problems.

Was that Nimoy? That must mean Courthouses just unlocked, woot to less City maintenance!

I was about to call this the "Free Market Solution" but really its just applying the common sense of the second amendment to solve a seemingly unrelated problem.

Children

If your argument for the flat tax rate is that it will help close loop holes for the rich, fine, at least that has some logic behind it. But please don't tell me you want someone below the poverty line to pay $2,500 in taxes.

There we go, if Apple did funny commercials this would be perfect. 80 year old women with walkers or hoverounds buzzing forward to be the first one to get the iPad. It would be priceless.

Yeah, it seems to me a weekly number would have been more accurate.

In that case, rather than vote 0, I would have put down 3.

Any Sci-Fi that discusses the topic?

The introductory programming class at my HS last year was taught in VB6. When I took the class my teacher would spend class time reading "VB6 for Dummies". Some of our projects were 3 pages of just copying down code straight off a worksheet (and praying to $DEITY you don't get a typo). Overall I enjoyed the class, because VB6 is decent fun if you just want to make spasmatic games. Having to go back through the basics again in Java was a pain though.

Except when a Traffic trailer needs to take one. I don't think anyone could navigate a round-a-bout in a tractor trailer.

Although, I would love to see most of the intersections in DC tore up and replaced with Round-a-Bouts. I hate the fact that you can get intersections which are practically 20 feet from each other.