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These people disagree. Both say most Amish do vaccinate, and both agree that the autism rate amongst the Amish is lower than in the general population (though present). It would seem likely that either 1) the Amish hide/do not diagnose autism or 2) there is something else about modern society other than vaccinations that cause autism. Maybe the Amish have children younger (it's known that older fathers have a higher chance of autistic children), or maybe it's something dietary, or maybe it's something chemical. The differences between the lifestyles of the Amish and the rest of the country are so multitudinous that I don't know how you could immediately correlate any health differences with vaccinations.

You think that's bad, check out Down Syndrome rates as the female gets older.

couldn't find a pretty chart, but it works

There's a subtle flaw in your logic, mi. Article I Section 10 refers to the several States, and not to the Federal Government:

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

The First Bank of the United States was chartered shortly afterwards, which started the process of tying thirteen separate colonial economies into a single national economy.

As far as gold-backed currency vs. fiat currency, this article explains the pros and cons pretty easily. In general, fiat money allows the economy to respond to the market more flexibly than the gold standard does.

Since changing the US constitution is too much work

Fortunately, ignoring the Constitution is very easy — as long as you have "bipartisan support". And no, I don't mean the Guantanamo and the like, which are, actually, arguably legal (however distasteful).

A lot more profound example is the requirement, that all the government can only use "gold or silver coin" as means of payment (Article 1 Section 10):

"No State shall make any Thing but Gold and Silver Coin a tender in Payment of Debts"

When the US abolished gold standard in 1971 and the dollar became "fiat money", all State tax-refunds, welfare payments, salaries of the State-employees, etc. became unarguably unconstitutional.

And yet, chances are very good, dear reader, you read about the issue here for the first time in your life... Now, I don't claim the economic acumen to argue whether or not Gold Standard was (or would be?) a good idea. But I have that "ideological rigidity" to be disturbed by a violation of the Constitution, that is so blatant and yet so ignored...

The difference was that his powers came from the Constitution. Martial law had been declared because of the Civil War and the nation really was in danger.

However not all Lincoln did was constitutional. He suspended habeas corpus which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in Ex parte Merryman.

Falcon

Oh?

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/f/f/get_a_brain_morans.jpg Stupid Anonymous Coward is stupid.

This is why people hate the US.

No no one's...

http://www.yahoo.com/
http://www.msn.com/
http://www.about.com/
http://www.ask.com/br? etc

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/f/f/get_a_brain_morans.jpg Stupid Anonymous Coward is stupid.

In rare situations, some people may experience anaphylaxis after being bitten by mosquitoes. Other people may have experienced whole body urticaria and angioedema (hives and swelling), or worsening of asthma symptoms after being bitten. Typically, these symptoms occur within minutes after a mosquito bite, compared to Skeeter Syndrome, which may take hours to days to occur."

Nice side effects from non-malaria carrying insects. Thanks, Bill, you tosser.

There's no information about the interface of this device to the patient. Blood flow to the liver is rather unique (http://biology.about.com/library/organs/bldigestliver.htm), with 3/4 of its bloodflow coming from the portal vein and 1/4 from the hepatic artery. The blood mixes before being processed by the liver.

Is the device similarly fed by both arterial and venous sources? How is the pressure compensated? Where is the output reintroduced? Does the device run in parallel to the natural liver or in series? If the latter, which receives the blood first? Does it attempt to handle any of the other numerous functions of the liver such as the creation of bile or lymph?

Wow, this is a ridiculous comparison. Maybe they should outlaw cars too? They kill and hurt a lot more people than games do.

What Australia really needs to outlaw is vending machines. They kill more people than sharks.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2005/06/29/are-vending-machines-deadlier-than-sharks-repost.htm

Really? The first thing I did was pick up one of these, which I already had on hand at the house. Mine is *guaranteed* effective. :-)

I live in Canada, but I think even I understand what the problem is that is presented in the story.

It looks like in this case the problem is not with the foreigners, it seems that the problem is with these banking institutions.

Do you realize that they have just received billions of US dollars that are really supposed to be money that came out of taxes that the US citizens/corporations are paying? If this is so, then the question is absolutely legitimate and your objection to the story becomes off-topic. The question is this:

If the US citizens are good enough to bail out the US banking institutions, why are they not good enough to be hired by these same institutions?

That's the story here: the fucking politicians that the fucking US citizens elected supposedly, are in it together with the fucking banks, who just gave themselves enormous fucking bonuses (and boners) to the tunes of tens of billions of fucking dollars that came out of the fucking taxes. These same fucking politicians are allowing these same fucking banks to hire people who had nothing to do with paying these fucking taxes that were given out as these fucking useless bail out packages. Well, they really are useless for fixing economy, but they are reaaaaally fucking great as fucking bonuses. Don't you fucking understand how this can and should drive the fucking US citizens* fucking nuts?

*oh, and I should have really said 'US consumers', citizens is an outdated term and is no longer used to describe people there.

With the constant advances in programming languages with the "new" cool technology being released every year (read AJAX, Web 2.o, RIAs), I would argue that 3 years between development tool releases is too long. Though if we go by the release dates, than yes VS2008 was released early.

SQL Server 2008 was delayed past M$ announced release date.

I would have expected the opposite. I figured the 2-year term House would be all for this, while the 6-year term Senate wouldn't really care. Quoting because they said it better than I would have:

All members of the House are up for election every two years. In effect, they are always running for election. This insures that members will maintain close personal contact with their local constituents, thus remaining constantly aware of their opinions and needs, and better able to act as their advocates in Washington. Elected for six-year terms, Senators remain somewhat more insulated from the people, thus less likely to be tempted to vote according to the short-term passions of public opinion.

source

Check and mate.

Is it really true that you have to edit the registry to turn off autorun? There isn't any clicky? Amazing.
No it's not true. There are lots of ways to do it. The registry editor is just installed by default and pretty simple if you already know how to use it. TweakUI is a free addon Microsoft Powertoy that's worth having and gives you some control back.

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article03-018
http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/ht/autorun.htm

You mean this statement?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/179530?from=rss

The fact that he didn't commit to following up on sweeping criminal prosecutions for people in the previous administration is not at all the same thing as saying he is in favor of continuing the same policies of Mr. Bush in this area.

In fact Obama has been one of the most severe critics of the Bush administration in this area.

http://usliberals.about.com/od/extraordinaryspeeches/a/ObamaTorture.htm

http://www.barackobama.com/2007/10/04/obama_torture_and_secrecy_betr.php

So let's be a little more reasonable about the level of cynicism here. Yes, I don't expect miracles, but I do expect an big improvement over the Bush policies.

Are you attempting to imply moral relativism as a mode of rationalizing your own bigotry or that of others? Moral relativism as a philosophy attempts to rationalize the exclusion of human rights because of some cultural, social or political designation. This designation is usually made so that the group being excluded can be stigmatized as "other" and than further dehumanized. Do I need to spell out to where that can lead? Remember, Rome almost stamped out Christianity before it was used as a tool to win a war.

As a human I believe that human rights should be inclusive for all and I will fight against anyone who attempts to subvert that. In that vein I am also vociferously pro-life but not because of any religious conviction but the belief that human rights that require one to arbitrarily demarcate the boundary at which human life and therein rights begin is exclusive. The day will come when we have the ability to use a artificial womb to bring any child to term regardless of the state of its development and the women who aborted their children will be remembered sadly with suspicions of their motives like the women of Sparta who left their children to die of exposure.

Read the poems of Martial, Juvenal, and Catullus, and look at the architecture and decorations preserved at Pompeii, and tell me that the Romans were.

Women in ancient Rome had little importance as independent citizens, but could be very influential in their primary roles as mothers and wives. Devotion to one man was the ideal. A good Roman matron was chaste, honorable, and fertile.

Yes, except for the fact that a California law will not override the Defense of Marriage Act signed by Clinton in the 90's.

There is NO legal difference between the current "civil union" law and the marriage rights granted by the court as far as California benefits are concerned.

Prop 8 took away nothing, they get no benefit from the FEDERAL taxes because DOMA overrules the state laws and the tax law remains the same.

Overturn DOMA, and both civil union and married people will get the same rights. Don't overturn it and they will never have the same rights no matter what the California courts or laws say.

In fact, they likely are shooting themselves in the foot. Obama could likely issue a executive order saying that civil unions are to be treated the same as marriages and the problem is resolved.

But Obama is unlikely to suggest overturning DOMA because he does not support gay marriage:

http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/lesbianactivism/p/BarackObama.htm

he does seem fine with Civil Unions.

We have voted on this 3 times, and this is the first time I voted for the measure. Not because I don't think gays should or should not marry, but because the courts stepped on the will of the people.

And in doing so they did a great disservice to the very people they intended to protect. Had they waited a few more years for society to adapt and come around on the issue it would have been resolved. Waiting would make no difference, as the state cannot override DOMA.

What I don't understand is how this comes up at all. I'm straight, too, but I don't discuss my sex life with coworkers. It's just not their business. So, how are they being discriminated against unless they are bringing very personal and non-work-related matters to the office? Do homosexual people want to be able to discuss their intimate sex lives at work without repercussions? Because straight people cannot do that without fear of a sexual harassment lawsuit. Seems to me that equal, non-discriminatory treatment would mean that everyone leaves sexual, non-business matters at the door when they walk into the office. I suppose you can't have political movements and protests and large organizations and campaigns and controversy if it were done this way, and we act like we need those things for their own sake sometimes, so perhaps that's too simple?

You are equating "gay marriage" with a sexual fetish, which is not what is at stake here at all, no more than traditional marriage is some strange sexual practice that no one talks about.

And here's a short summary opinion piece on how marriages are more protected in law than civil unions: Link here

I'm not sure how you can say "such a minority out there" as San Fransisco and LA are the 2nd and 3rd largest population of homosexuals in the country, and CA may actually have the largest overall population in total.

Overall, current estimates of the population that identify in some way as gay (Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgendered, etc) range up to 5%, that number actually increases if you ask people if they have felt attraction to a member of the same gender (link). According to demographics, black or hispanic people account for 13% and 14% of the population respectively (link), yet if this were a law revoking the right of black people to marry, there would be a revolt. Yet, that was what was just done to gay people in CA.

Apple's RDF did its job, and your post is a prime example of it. It managed to convince you, and at least a few moderators, that the Nomad Jukebox (I assume that's the player what you're talking about, as comparing the ipod to the Nomad makes no sense) has a 45min battery life instead of about 6 times that number (on rechargable AAs), or that it can't be used as a portable harddrive, or that it has terrible interface. Let's compare how one adds songs to the playlist. On the Jukebox, you go to an album or track and push "Add to queue". On the ipod... you wait four generations until this is possible, and then look up the feature on about.com.

You will never decrease your tax liability by making less enough to compensate for making less, all other things being equal, even under a system as complex as the US tax code.

True in general, but there are cases where the working poor have effective marginal tax rates of over 100%, because they lose benefits as their income increases.

Hello, Homeland Security? Yes, this is a cynical citizen here, totally disgusted with our trashing what our Founding Fathers intended with your tyrannical intent to create a police state. May I suggest a better solution rather than destroy relations with friends and give more people abroad to make fun of America's Security Theater? I don't have the space to fully explain the concept here but please visit these following web pages for a primer on doing your job:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_psychology
http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologycareerprofiles/a/forensicpsych.htm
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~mlyount/MySites/ForensicPsychology/CriminalProfiling.html

In a nutshell the principle is this: if one does not fit into a "psychology profile" then one is very likely (probability approaches 1) not going to be a ter'rist. The concept is called "profiling," and guess what? It's not based on skin color so tell the political correctness bleeding hearts to fuck off and start practicing actual forensic science! There is no need for a protestant minister or 75-yr-old jewish or hindu woman to be harassed and documented like a criminal. Here in America we have welcomed both visitors and (legal) immigrants from the very beginning. Please do not make it any less desirable to foreigners. As it is most already hate us thanks to the likes of you.

Signed,

An American citizen loyal to the thirteen stars and stripes who is descended from Polish, Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants.

Yes, it can.

I am using Fedora Core 8 on a laptop with a Atheros AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor. The drivers wrk perfectly.

First of all, the broadband router was not configured to enable wifi - that required some grokking of the installation manual to get the IP address, username and password to access the configuration menu, all on the same channel/frequency.

Then there was the configuration to follow various Security Tips.
Regardless of my location, six or seven different wi-fi networks will show up on the configuration manager.

The default setting for the wifi configuration menu was "ad-hoc", but nothing would happen until "managed" mode was selected.

Ad-hoc vs Managed mode

Then there was the problem of getting the wifi driver to be automatically seleted upon startup (there are two possible communications modes: Ethernet RJ45 vs. wi-fi).

Until thes security key was set using iwconfig, nothing would work.

Setting up a WPA pass phrase

And cracking a WPA passphrase, which makes the above seem a bit pointless.

In all probability, the need for all of this has probably gone away with more recent distro's - I had similar problems in the past with various other drivers.

Anecdotal evidence, however, isn't sufficient. Cracking down on the entirety of people pulling unemployment because there are some people who abuse it isn't reasonable. It's not efficient and there is no service to society; those people will still abuse whatever system they come across.

Honestly, it sucks to have to support people in our society that don't pull their weight. But I suspect two things. First, the people we most point to as not pulling their weight are not the ones costing us the most money. Only 37% of jobless workers are covered by unemployment, regardless. Secondly, is that really the big money sink we should be worried about? A mere $33.55B? The Iraq war utilizes $12B a month, by comparison. The Defense Dept as a whole uses $650B a year.

What would be the cost of restricting what you can use that money for? What would you really be getting out of it? In fact, I'd argue that such restrictions would simply create a situation in which lobbyist groups simply have one more pork barrel to bargain over. I don't see how that helps society. If Unemployment Insurance does 80% of what it's supposed to do, then the rest is probably not worth dickering over.

Russia has a long record of acting irresponsibly in scientific endeavours.

While USA never participated in irresponsible scientific endeavours...

No. I place as much value on a Palestinian life as an Israeli one. My values are not what is under question, though. What I'm saying is that the IDF values, and should value, the lives of the citizens that it is their duty to protect over the lives of Palestinian civilians (which they are under no obligation to keep out of harm's way).

So yes, innocent Palestinians do have as much right to like as innocent Israelis. However, the hostile militants that they put in power do not.

Your last comment is simply ignorance. Suicide bombs that purposefully target city buses? http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E5D7123FF935A35750C0A9659C8B63 How about hotel lobbies - on passover? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/suicide-bomber-kills-19-in-passover-feast-massacre-750377.html More recently, how about a shopping center? http://middleeast.about.com/b/2008/02/04/first-suicide-bombing-in-israel-in-over-a-year.htm Try searching "Hamas target civilians" compared with HAmas target military" on google. The results are pretty self-evident.

Suggesting that Hamas militants habitually target anything other than innocent civilians is astonishingly naive. But that's not the point. If I had my way, everyone would simply forget past deaths, get over it, and live together. However, that's not going to happen anytime soon. Until it does, until the Palestinian populace says "hey, maybe we shouldn't vote in bloodthirsty psychos to lead us," there will be no peace. The IDF has always attacked military targets in immediate retaliation or, very rarely, pre-emptive strike. But always military targets - buildings or personnel. Therefore, the burden is on Hamas to stop attacking or on the Palestinian people to get them out of power.

These non-trivial changes were done without breaking backward compatibility with the original standard, not because of government protection, but because of market forces.

To be honest, the development of what we know today as CEA-608 (previously EIA-608) Closed Captioning was a private-public partnership, started in 1970 between the National Bureau of Standards and ABC. Then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare provided funding to the engineering department of PBS starting in 1973 to finalize the work (including developing captioning consoles and caption inserters). Further HEW funding lead to the creation of the National Captioning Institute which provided a good deal of the Closed Captioning work out there.

Finally, the FCC mandated that broadcasters caption all new content, ramping up the number of required caption hours between 1998 and 2006, so that after 2006 all new content must be captioned, and currently 75% of all content produced before 1998 must be captioned as well.

Stereo TV (MTS aka BTSC) was pretty much the same as the previously-developed Zenith VHF/FM radio stereo technology where a suppressed-carrier AM subcarrier carries the 'difference' signal.

DTV in the US began as a government desire to be competitive with Japan (based on demonstrations of Japanese HDTVs to Ronald Reagan). Then broadcasters saw it as a way to secure their bandwidth in an ever-converging world, but later broadcasters realized that the change would cost a lot of money (at least $5 billion spent by broadcasters already if not more) and were a bit surprised.

While I tend to agree with the main ideals of your post, I do feel the need to point out a few small errors in the hope that they won't be brought up again here:

Ridiculous MS Bashing: This is slashdot. No MS bashing shall be referred to as ridiculous.
During a depression: You folks are in a recession at the moment. The common consensus is that a depression only occurs when real GDP growth declines by 10% or more in a year. America isn't near those numbers yet.
grudge with MS: Again, here most people have one of those. Please find a better argument.
fact that you have some imaginary grudge: Look, either it's real and he has one, or it is imaginary and therefore he cannot have it. Your statement contradicts itself and confuses the reader.
that's 15000 people with families: Now, the real point of this whole post was to argue this point. These poor sods getting laid off, working for a software developer, these software developers, these NERDS. They don't have families, they are considered almost iconic if they have gotten to second base! Microsoft isn't laying off 15,000 family members, they are shit-canning 15,000 geeks who live in their parents basement, play Warhammer 40K on weekends while eating pizza and come home after work to play World of Warcraft!

Now back off Anonymous Coward! Back away with these dangerous ideals of yours!

"nobody now remembers who introduced the small waved underlines .. tutorialized tasks .. the ribbon"

WordPerfect highlights poor grammar or incorrect word usage with a wavy blue underline

Apple Guide Isn't Help

tabbed toolbars or the Component palette as it was called in Delphi

Agree with the rest of your post, but...

This is, consequently, why I think English has ended up being a global language - because it's so absurdly flexible.

It has more to do with the military and economic dominance of the US. In the 1800 and up to WWII French had the role of English. Being flexible is no advantage at all for a learner, who has to learn what is the difference between "forbidden" and "verboten", or between "royal", "regal" and "kingly", whereas other languages have just one word. In my experience (I speak Italian as a mother language, English, Norwegian and German) the kind of flexibility you talk about is actually a major hindrance (or an obstacle?). In any case, get ready to learn Mandarin.

When's the last time French decided it was ok to add a word?

I think it was 2003, and the word was courriel.

The Commerce Clause, given its widest interpretation, would only allow for national regulation of the internet (I'm guessing this is how the ban on an internet tax got done), not building out the network.

OK, then how about the clause authorizing federal post offices and post roads? When the US Constitution was written in the 1780s, the framers envisioned post offices to carry both information and parcels. But in the 1830s, electric telegraphy became practical, showing potential to perform some of the functions of a post office, and in 1843, the US Congress authorized a $30,000 pilot project to run a Morse telegraph line from the Capitol building to Baltimore. By the 1980s, technology had advanced to the point where the Internet, a global packet-switched telegraph network, was becoming practical. I would imagine an interpretation of the post office clause that allows for construction of a telegraph network in the same way that the army and navy clauses allow for establishment of an air force.

When developers ask for a new monitor or dual monitors, let them have 'em but mandate that the monitors be in a vertical orientation as opposed to the typical horizontal orientation. That way, they'll have to use the monitors for efficient viewing of code rather than watching movies all day long.

Well, look here. There's a lot of personal preference involved in efficient text handling, and arbitrarily forcing programmers to work in landscape or portrait just so they don't watch movies is ridiculous. Matter of fact, if you have coders doing that on the job, either give them the requisite attitude adjustment, or just fire their happy little asses and hire some responsible citizens. Maybe in their next position they'll be a little more focused.

Furthermore, I don't know about you but the apps I develop are generally not used with the monitor in a vertical configuration (matter of fact, given the nature of the software I work on that would be completely inappropriate) so it would nullify the advantages of a dual-monitor setup if I were forced to use them the way you describe.

Continuing this theme, you can't just say, "programmers work better with monitors oriented THIS way." Sure, if you're hacking assembler code a vertical setup might (might!) be better for you because the lines tend to be relatively short, unless you're like me and like lots of comments. If you're coding in .Net or Java, you're probably happier with a horizontal layout given how wordy those languages are (.Net in particular, Christ on a crutch and I thought Cobol was verbose.) I've also found that when I'm editing source code, it's often nice to have the IDE running vertical, with the other, horizontal monitor for both my debug output and the application display itself.

So, I'd say this: give your developers the tools, training and any good advice they need, and then let each of them figure out what works best. Otherwise you're just another overbearing manager more interested in exerting his authority, rather than running an efficient, productive development team. Beware of arbitrary constraints ... they're rarely helpful and usually counterproductive, because of considerable variation between individuals. We're not all alike, and we're not all maximally productive in the same identical environment.

It's such a simple idea that I'm surprised that more businesses and coders haven't caught on to it.

Well, now you know.

When developers ask for a new monitor or dual monitors, let them have 'em but mandate that the monitors be in a vertical orientation as opposed to the typical horizontal orientation. That way, they'll have to use the monitors for efficient viewing of code rather than watching movies all day long. It's such a simple idea that I'm surprised that more businesses and coders haven't caught on to it.

Never used eclipse, I see.

When developers ask for a new monitor or dual monitors, let them have 'em but mandate that the monitors be in a vertical orientation as opposed to the typical horizontal orientation.

The point of wide screen monitors is that you put two source files on the screen side by side. A cpp file and its header file. A java file and its unit test. You get the idea.

What irritates me is that most IDE's won't let you do this properly. Emacs has this built in though, and I've made it work with other editors (slickedit).

Anyway, if you don't trust your highly paid engineers enough to not spend all day watching movies, then you have other problems.

When developers ask for a new monitor or dual monitors, let them have 'em but mandate that the monitors be in a vertical orientation as opposed to the typical horizontal orientation. That way, they'll have to use the monitors for efficient viewing of code rather than watching movies all day long. It's such a simple idea that I'm surprised that more businesses and coders haven't caught on to it.

Overall I have a lot of faith in science but when there are multi billion-dollar markets involved like the one pharmaceutical companies are in, there tend to be some less than scrupulous people around and as a result it wouldn't surprise me if results are skewed for the sole purpose of maintaining their hold on the market.

This was exactly the case with Synthroid. In the 1990s the patent had run out on levothyroxine (the generic name for Synthroid.) Knoll Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Synthroid, suppressed a study that proved the generic forms were equally as effective as the brand name, and convinced many doctors to tell their patients to only purchase Synthroid-brand drugs. Knoll finally settled in 2000 for about $100 million dollars, which was a bargain considering the business they get from people who are still afraid of the generics, driven by doctors who still don't know the difference.

The difference between this case and the alternative medicine believers is that the case revolved around legitimate science on both sides of the issue, and it was humans tampering with the data that made the difference (just as you speculated above.) The alternative medicine purveyors, on the other hand, have no such data but tries to claim the same types of protections. Without actual studies, though, they deserve nothing. It's just a shame that some people believe that because they're mocked it gives them some kind of moral high ground, when they truly deserve nothing but mockery.

...and many pharmaceuticals (read: synthetic or chemically purified and processed medicines) have limited value as well. Plus, they can often kill you.

Luckily we have the FDA looking out for our health and best interests (joke!).

Meanwhile, as far as herbal medicine that *does* have value: Even to my surprise, a study from a couple years ago showed that Echinacea has been found to more than halve the risk of catching the common cold:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6231190.stm

I'm sure if more research was done into natural and traditional remedies, many others would also be found to also have value. Problem is, if you can pick it from a forest or a field, there's no money in it for the shareholders... unless you can purify/extract/synthesize and patent it (after all, aspirin was originally derived from willow bark).
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blaspirin.htm

Just to offer an alternative viewpoint, not all agree with the viewpoint that Margaret Sanger was a racist. Furthermore, some would argue that she adopted the language of eugenics because that's what was popular at the time -- the United States had a eugenics program which was studied by Nazi Germany, and actually was praised by at least one high-ranking Nazi official during a visit to the United States. (Clearly, this was well before World War II started.)

Time Magazine gives a brief biography of Sanger, and here's another article which gives an even shorter, but I believe equally balanced, portrayal. The Wikipedia article about Margaret Sanger seems to need a lot of work -- it seems particularly biased toward the view that Sanger was a racist and eugenicist, and most sections are marked as probably misiterpreting or misrepresenting the cited source material. That's pretty bad scholarship, IMHO.

Personally, I don't see a big problem with eugenics in general. The problem is, the term has been villified because of what some groups (e.g., the Nazis) did in the name of eugenics, especially atrocities such as forced sterilizations and abortions. This is why I think any kind of state-sponsored eugenics is a bad idea -- such a program can too easily be abused. Instead, I think a more Libertarian approach is warranted, so that couples should be allowed to go to genetic counseling (a form of eugenics) when they plan to have a baby. When genetic engineering (a tool of reprogenetics, a form of eugenics) becomes available to weed out disease traits and select for desirable traits (e.g., high intelligence), parents should be allowed to avail themselves of such techniques.

But you were really trying to sling mud at Planned Parenthood by associating it with things that everybody "knows" are bad. In the end, Planned Parenthood is more about distributing condoms and birth control pills than it is about performing abortions, because the goal has always been to stop unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

Stalin told us: "It's not who votes. It's who counts the votes,"

Long thought to be an urban myth, someone has discovered an intriguing possible reference:
Dear Reader (updated):
I'm in the process of revising my comments below, but in the meantime am pleased to inform you that a source has been found for a variant of this quote -- Boris Bazhanov's Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary (published in 1992 and only available in Russian, so far as I know).
The passage in question, which appears near the end of chapter five, reads (loosely translated) as follows:
"You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this â"- who will count the votes, and how."

Heref: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiousquotes/a/stalin_quote.htm /

Doesn't mean you can't work on your upper body. Gaining a pound of muscle in a year will usually shed about 2-3 lbs of fat if you do light aerobic exercise, stretching as well as the weights. I have a 10 and 20 lb dumb bell at my desk and I often do tricep extensions and bicep curls. After about 6 months I could do a 20 lb weight and I have stuck with that for the last 3 years. If you plan on losing weight find a lotion you like and order it in bulk you will thank yourself to save you from the 'losing weight' stretchmarks.

Okay. But it's important to note that Bill Clinton didn't get an absolute majority of the popular vote either. In fact, Barack Obama is the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to win a majority of the popular vote.

[citation needed]?

I'm not sure where you got this. I'm but a stupid euro, yet a quick search shows that Bush was the first elected US president to lose the popular vote since 1888.

If my country had a president who got half a million votes less than the other guy we'd be up in arms.

15 is legal in some states.

Only with a partner between the ages of 15 and 18, excluding marriage, in many states. Statutory rape laws and all that. Not the best citation, but it works.

You are correct! Look at this list of Christian ISPs. They have names like Integrity, Internet Safety, Safeplace.net. The only question is: Are they widely available, or am I still stuck with the Verizon/Comcast duopoly?

http://christianity.about.com/od/practicaltools/tp/christianisps.htm

Maybe they should tell that to Tom Delay...
Most celebrities seems to know that not to smile for ID photos/mugshots, except for a few like Tom Delay and Bill Gates.
http://crime.about.com/od/history/a/mug_shots.htm