We could also talk about the advantages of steel roofs compared to shingles.

I clearly missed your point.

There are continued challenges in attempts to provide opportunities to all members of society in a just and equitable manner?

"And I wouldn't argue that we always need the most outstanding outcome possible, but I think there's an argument to be made that you shouldn't just muddle your way through life, doing the bare minimum to accomplish acceptable outcomes."

Why not? Isn't that a moral argument?

I'm being a bit extreme, but I think it is important to examine the underlying assumptions when making judgements about others.

Fred is a happy person, and feels he has a fulfilling life. Fred does the bare minimum to accomplish acceptable outcomes. Why should we as a society piss on Fred for not achieving more? Sure - incentivize "excellence", but implying that Fred has a "problem" when in fact it is the rest of us who have the "problem" (one of perspective) I think is a bit of a stretch. Give Fred a break.

Nicely explained. Results of similations with various numbers of modified and unmodified males would be interesting. My intuition is that except for situations with a small number of modified males and some bad luck for those starting males, that they would always dominate unless there are isolated groups. I can't see how the unmodifed ones would ever go extinct until all the females are gone, and and can't see how the unmodifed ones would ever increase their fraction of the population - but simulations would give some wieght to those intuitions.

You don't or you shouldn't? With torrents people generally look for the album many of which are small enough that they aren't even compressed. From there they can download a single track listed in the torrent (bad for the sworm) or just download the whole album and delete the songs they don't want. If the album is well seeded, the benefit of a higher downloads speed and selection is often worth dealing with torrents, even for small files. Then you have the private trackers like jpopsuki that seed singles and package files so you can download them individually.

I don't necessarily agree with this. I think that the number of people already on facebook is definitely an obstacle, but just look at its own history. You just need to create momentum, which is difficult to do but not impossible. When I first joined facebook, hardly anyone I knew outside of one specific circle of friends were on it. But I would tell my other friends about it, and eventually they'd try it out, and presumably do the same to others. I don't doubt it would change, but I doubt it would change like facebook did, at least in regards to privacy. The set-up alone would make that seem like a non-starter. All facebook needed to do was change its TOS. That doesn't seem like it'd work here. What I think their biggest challenge is going to be is to make it as easy to use/join as the more centralized social networks. Anything that starts out by saying "allows you to set up your own node" is going to turn off a vast majority of people.

I love how mixed up people are these days, and the mere idea of hallucinating is associated with the most harmful of effects any chemical could have on your brain. When in reality, there are several natural, human made substances (like DMT, check it out) that cause you to hallucinate (near-death experiences anyone?). If magnetic fields do cause people to hallucinate, there aren't inherently any health problems. There may be health problems with hanging out in that much magnetic field, but if there's not, then this would be really awesome, and there's no reason on earth why we should "think of the children"
I know you were being sarcastic, but people really do think that way :P

I love the suggestion that these turbines somehow reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We don't use any foreign oil whatsoever to generate electricity. Sorry Mr. Salazar.

The yellow light (inter-green time) is not just a margin of error, it is supposed to be a warning. If it just turned red you would have people applying emergency braking levels to avoid entering the intersection. This would lead to a lot of accidents. There is a margin of error typically 2 to 3 seconds that is built into an all red period where no lane is supposed to move, this also allows slower pedestrians to clear.

The light timing specifically for yellow lights is highly variable and is based on a number of inputs including typical traffic type, sight distance, reaction time, and speed limit to name a few. In the case of TFA it is entirely possible to "short" the light, whereby they do not allow a reasonable reaction time or allow enough distance to stop with normal braking. Reference any highway design text or specifically HCM2000 chapter 16.

I would argue that it isn't that the Constitution hasn't kept up with the time, but that our government has failed to live up to the Constitution.

When the federal government wishes to grow, it should do so by amendment - there is a process in place for that, and it works.

As for the "services" you mention, the Constitution fully supports the FBI as a federal enforcement agency. As for the standing army, we *technically* don't have one - we have an appropriations bill go through Congress that authorizes the continued expenditure of federal funds to maintain it. If Congress wanted to do away with it, all they would have to do is not pass a bill, and the funding evaporates. While I don't think this was the intent of the Framers, it certainly falls within the bounds of the authority granted to the federal government.

The rest... well, they are unconstitutional. They should be either authorized via amendment, or they should be repealed. I acknowledge that some of these programs are now part of the fabric of the American culture, but that doesn't make them right - it just makes them hard and slow to repeal.

I'm no Paulite. While I think he's got the right idea on domestic and monetary policy, he "bring them home tomorrow" foreign policy is insane. Indeed, he seeks to restore constitutional government - a noble goal - in many arenas, but he seeks to do so overnight. That would be catastrophic for this country.

As for the Second Amendment. I'm sure you're aware that the Supreme Court recently shot down the collectivist interpretation of the Second in Heller. As for the "civic purpose" part - well, yes and no. Yes, individuals were expected to be able to serve as militia to fend off attackers and to keep the peace - but that is not the rationale for the amendment, that is only it's primary use. " ... necessary to the security of a *free* state ... " is the rub - our Framers recognized that a state whose citizens where unable to purchase arms was not a free state.

Finally, as for effectiveness --- having a gun does not make you an effective fighter any more than having a hat makes you a cowboy. It takes motivation, mindset, training, and practice to become proficient in the use of firearms, and to maintain that. I agree that both sides of the argument are guilty of inflating statistics and hyperbolizing (is that a word? It is now!), but in the end, the effectiveness of the weapon is not relevant to it's status as a natural right.

I can give you the best security tools

Well according to this article, it seems the vast majority of your peers cannot even be irked to do that much. Blaming users for not knowing how to use software they were never given in the first place takes a special kind of jackass.

Also, password expire times are idiotic that probably do more to reduce password security than increase it.

Have you worked in health care...recently?

I think it was only regulations that made us do it. Well, made them do it. When they came to me and asked if I installed their encryption product, I told them that I had been encrypting my drive for over 3 years on my own, and unlike most others, my job really is easier if I run linux than windows, and then I tossed the key size and encryption mode at them (figured if I made their eyes gloss over they wouldn't want to continue the discussion) and told them I would be happy to talk to whoever I have to to get proper approval to use this instead.

They gave me the check mark and moved on. Good thing too, had to send the laptop to the shop a couple of years ago, and they replaced it/kept the old one with hard drive. Had I not been encrypting, that would have been a much bigger deal.

-Steve

One of the craziest aspects of all this is patented genomes.

I saw an incredibly sad documentary on GM crops where a farmer was forced to give up his family's seed bank developed over decades because the crops had been contaminated with Monsanto GM pollen from an adjacent farm (wind pollination).

If you think software patents are bad, genome patents are far worse. They are corporatism incarnate. The practical aspect for farmers is that instead of planting their own seed season after season, they're forced to buy new seed each year from the megacorps.