Re: That G+ thread is quite clearly epic fail

The two things Reader gives you that feed readers generally don't are firstly, automatic synchronization between devices, and, secondly, a memory of all the items in the feed back to 2006 (or whenever).

Re: Wrong school tie

Well, sure, there's a lot of minions in HMRC, but what about the people at the top?

Re: Sanctimonious crud for the rubes.

They should improve efficiency by merging the NHS and the military, as killing is the primary competence of both organisations.

Re: Scott 49

I hate normal people ... a fanbois life is always intense.

Re: Democracy

Democracy is the rule of the most convincing liars. It has nothing to do with ensuring limited government or moral government. The fundamental reason our governing classes are going to pot is that we don't have the same resistance to democratically elected governments that we did to monarchical governments, so that democratic governments can behave like drunken sailors with hardly a peep from the populace.

Re: capitalism

The term "capitalism" is used to denote collusion between the state and corporations by the socialists, and free market ideology by the libertarians.

In my opinion, the main problem is not so much an "-ism", but more that most countries are way too large, so that most people cannot judge the state of the nation, and so consequently there is not enough resistence to the unsustainable growth of government that most parts of the world have seen over the last century, and which is now 'coming home to roost'.

We need to restrict countries to be about the size of Liechtenstein or Iceland, to keep ambitious politicians in check.

Re: Can see

One might even suggest that if most politicians are corrupt, keeping money away from the taxman is ones moral duty, and highly praiseworthy.

Re: Tory 'Get Even' time

It possesses a monopoly on the right to tax the ownership of televisions within the UK. While that remains the case, it is and must be a political football.

Re: EE 'Doc' Smith? Larry Niven?

Ja, but these are human colonists.

Re: Next

The only "need" for the EU is to provide employment for tens of thousands of failed politicians and incompetent bureaucrats in a desperate attempt to be like the USA.

Re: @foo_bar_baz

Stalin, Mao, etc were not merely "assholes", for Marx's sakes: they were ideologues whose actions were based on Communist ideology, which is in the Enlightenment tradition, and which was at the time one of the wider strands of atheist thought. Saying they're not atheists is like saying Torquemada isn't a theist, because he acted based on one small strand of Theistic ideology.

Re: As one of the 65% who look for...

The whole point of having the BBC in the first place was to bring culture to the proles. If they just use the license money for popular stuff, why not just have commercial broadcasters instead?

Ketchup is not allowed under any circumstances.

Re: US leadership in space

Petty nationalistic rivalries provide the impetus to get us to the stars.

The Europeans would never have conquered the oceans if they hadn't been divided into competing nations.

Re: Gold Medal to the NASA team!

If humanity has a future, it is going to depend a lot more on space travel and engineering than on running and jumping up and down and round and round, no matter how good the Olympians are at that.

Re: Metric? Imperial?

I assume you mean Apatosaurus lengths.

Re: If we have to be federated with anyone

We don't.

Federation only appeals to power hungry politicians, and people hoping for handouts.

How much Euro-failure would it take to convince you that Federalization is a bad idea? Given the EU has been staggering from one miserable decision to another for almost 2 decades, surely giving them even more power has to be a bad idea?

I like Matlab. What would you say are the advantages of R over MATLAB?

Re: @Norfolk 'n' Goode

It is not about being "better than the perpetrator" - that is hardly a meaningful statement in a society that no longer pretends to have a common system of morality. Rather than trying to score goody-goody points, you should ponder how society works better or worse with the policy.

Re: With every passing discovery,

Why assume that Jesus only saved THIS world through his sacrifice? I don't remember anything in the Bible claiming that salvation was limited to planet Earth. Indeed, I thought a large part of the point of Chrisitianity is that, unlike Judahism, it is Universal, and that one should therefore spread the good news.

Re: With every passing discovery,

Is there any serious theologian that has ever stated that life on other planets would be a problem? Why do you guys seem to all think there would be issues with this?

The main Christian powers before 1000 AD - Byzantium, the Carolingian Franks, and, to a lesser extent, Anglo-Saxon England - were far more important for the preservation of knowledge that kicked off the Renaissance than any of the Islamic powers. Indeed, the Renaissance was to a great extent kicked off by refugees from Byzantium after it's sackings by the Turks, and, earlier, by the 4th crusade.

Consumer?

Surely the title 'consumer' is more appropriate for the fellow who spends way more cash on high specced cameras, music players, portable computers, and totes them about everywhere, rather than someone who just keeps a simple smartphone on them. What do you do, run around with a Batman utility belt on?