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I'd say he was beaten out for most thought-provoking coverage of this phenomenon. But I don't think anyone's ever topped his take on a peculiar kind of coffee.

Ya, people who say that conspiracies cannot happen and secrets cannot be kept have never studied history.
More then a few things have come to light involving entire government branches and multiple big companies that kept secrets for decades (and of course any that lasted longer then a normal human life are less likely to come to light after that).

What people are usually saying is that large scale criminal conspiracies can't be kept under wraps. It's too easy for one person to quietly leak the secret if they feel it's justified.

Also, they usually point out that the large scale criminal conspiracy theories make no sense.

Easily Offended Overly Dramatic Atheist Guy Who Takes The Slightest Excuse To Announce His Atheist Atheism. I keep hearing stories about you but it's nice to finally meet you in person.

Nice to meet you too. Hey, did you know I also don't have a television?

You can not own a television.

So you're like the "I don't own a TV" guy.

Nobody cares that you don't care. Get over yourself. Seriously.

From The Onion: Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids

http://www.theonion.com/video/in-the-know-white-house-announces-everything-is-gr,14169/

Well there's the Schizophrenic Party and the Batshit Insane Party...

This guy's pretty straightforward compared to you:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fiscally-im-a-rightwing-nutjob-but-on-social-issue,20486/

Must've been a confusing time for the Sumerians. http://www.theonion.com/articles/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-god-creates-worl,2879/

God must be a consultant. He comes in near the end of a project and takes credit for everything.

They have revised the date a bit. Sextus Julius put it at 5500 BC, while the current estimates, based on the Masoritic text of the Tanakh, are all around 4000 BC. (This also conveniently pushed the date sextus picked for the apocalypse (6000 years after creation) up by about 1500 years.)

Must've been a confusing time for the Sumerians. http://www.theonion.com/articles/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-god-creates-worl,2879/

every now and then, the Onion gets it right [about Gillette Fusion]

That and a slightly exaggerated article about the digital television transition, and an article about someone who doesn't own a TV that someone mentions in every single Slashdot article about cable TV or Internet VOD.

every now and then, the Onion gets it right [about Gillette Fusion]

That and a slightly exaggerated article about the digital television transition, and an article about someone who doesn't own a TV that someone mentions in every single Slashdot article about cable TV or Internet VOD.

The frightening thing is... every now and then, the Onion gets it right.

As usual with the xkcd comics that people always link to, there was somebody else who did it better...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mars-rover-beginning-to-hate-mars,2072/

1. Is it a correct thing to allow interpretation of Constitution? 2. Is it a correct thing to allow the government live on debt? 3. Is it a correct thing to allow the government control money supply and cost? 4. Is it a correct thing to give the government power to insure people in any way (from deposit insurance to health and retirement)? 5. Is it a correct thing to give the government power to tax people's incomes? 6. Is it a correct thing to give government power to provide security against criminal activity by diminishing individual liberties? 7. Is it a correct thing to allow government regulate business? 8. If these same questions were posed differently, would you have recognized them in their true form? --- The correct long term answer to items 1-7 is always a 'no', it cannot be a 'yes' under any circumstances, but that's the long term thinking.

Oh ffs. To believe that the "correct" answer to those questions is always no demonstrates a breathtaking ignorance of history. What's worse, you consider yourself a "sophisticated" voter!

Those questions have been answered no repeatedly, by similarly-minded people, and have repeatedly ended in widespread, disastrous, often violent failures.

Are you unaware of the violence and damage wrought by strict literalists of various types? It continues to this day. Why would you think constitutional literalists would differ from biblical or koranical literalists? How many more examples of this guy do you need -- http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-passionate-defender-of-what-he-imagines-c,2849/

Have you learned nothing at all of the depths of depravity to which industrial will stoop if unregulated? Refer to the Sago Mine disaster for a recent example, if you can't bother with the countless examples from centuries past.

Do you recommend preserving the individual liberties of violent felons --murderers, rapists, extortionist thugs, etc-- at the expense of security?

Replace "government" with "people" and run through those questions again.

People who don't use Facebook are so superior. Whenever someone says that it reminds me a bit about this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/

By the way I of course don't use Facebook.

I can't wait for some religious nutbar to claim that an "intelligent" gravity theory should be joined to any other existing theory in scientific discussion.

You mean "intelligent falling"?

Exactly. I think this commentary sums it up best: http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-cant-believe-the-tv-they-make-me-watch,10893/

From The Onion:

April 13, 2005
DEA Seizes Half-Built Suspension Bridge From Bogotá To Miami
http://www.theonion.com/articles/dea-seizes-halfbuilt-suspension-bridge-from-bogota,9607/

It's been a few years, but your comment reminds of the band Matchbox Twenty whose style of music was perfectly captured and critiqued.

An oldie but timeless.

Man doesn't own a TV

http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/

A couple suggestions...

Step 1: replace "throw away" with "give away". Your local library or school would probably be THRILLED to get a bunch of empty DVD cases. Or, there's also craigslist (as mentioned in #2) or freecycle etc. (Speaking of libraries, also consider donating anything you watched but didn't love. DVDs typically have low resale value but you can claim the full value or close to it (note: I am not a tax accountant) as a deduction.)

Step 2: Binders cost more but are WAY easier to flip through. We have a couple hundred discs and it's typically a minute or less to find one.

Step 3: In addition to alphabetizing, arrange y category. It's tough with some things that span categories (and the more specific your categories are, the harder it gets) but a basic breakdown of action/comedy/romance works pretty well.

Other than that, I'm curious (in a nice way, not an area-man-doesn't-watch-TV kind of way)--how did you get/what do you do with 4,000 DVDs? That's one DVD every day for eleven years! My family (for the most part) quit buying DVDs a couple years ago when we realized there's plenty of good stuff on and we've only watched about half of what we own. Pretty much all we get now are kids' DVDs (most of which are gifts anyways) which DO get watched heavily. Even things we got into late and love, like Boston Legal--we bought Season 1 two years ago and I said we wouldn't buy Season 2 until we finished watching Season 1. I think we got partway into Disc 2 and we haven't touched it in over a year.

All seeing eye?

http://www.theonion.com/video/obama-axes-pentagon-plan-to-build-billion-dollar-t,14351/

The all smelling nose?

The Onion has a lot to answer for; http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/

Obviously, they saw this report (I'm Thinking Printers) and realized that they're about to get left behind by the swiftly-evolving market.

Obviously they saw this report (I'm Thinking Printers) and realized they needed to not get left behind by the rapidly-evolving market.

I thought it was Russian hackers that got that water pump in Illinois, not the Internet Water Army...

http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/

Spoken like someone without the first clue of what the Constitution and its construction were really all about. You remind me of people like this.

The problem is that no amount of "oversight" will ever be enough because you are essentially asking the government to police itself. You simply cannot separate the oversight body from the rest of the government without creating a quasi-police state with a bunch of unelected people having "oversight" over the elected ones. That sounds very much like Tyranny to me.

Which is essentially what happened to the US under the "Articles of Confederation": 13 tyrannical states that proceeded to act like spoiled brats, impose taxes/tariffs on each other, harass each other's citizens, and so on with no legal recourse for resolving the disputes between states because the Federal government lacked any enforcement power. The solution was a STRONG federal government, with equally-powerful legislative and executive branches able to contradict each other and a judiciary with final-say veto power but who were limited to stepping in ONLY in the event of a conflict filed by affected parties (citizens or governmental bodies).

But please, go back to imagining what you think the constitution says, rather than paying attention to what it ACTUALLY says and what ACTUALLY happened and what the Founding Fathers ACTUALLY wrote and said on the matter. It'll make you feel better in your ignorance.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mars-rover-beginning-to-hate-mars,2072/

This will inevitably happen to MSL as well.

It's not an Occupy Wall Street thread without an onion article http://www.theonion.com/articles/bank-executives-on-15th-floor-gambling-on-which-oc,26565/ .

You thought your government represented you?

Think again.

The current distraction is the Tea Partiers, being fed a steady bullshit diet of "OMG GAYS ARE GOING TO FORCE YOUR KID TO GET GAY MARRIED" and "OMG THE GUVMINT IS GONNA TAKE YOUR GUNZ AND YOUR MUNNY IF OBAMA IS ELECTED AGAIN" through the Beck/Rush/Fox noise machine.

You think that the standard idiots even NOTICE that a congressional hearing is stacked one way or another? These are the cud-chewing moron crowd who think that watching C-Span is "boring" and to be avoided at all costs. These are the ones who think they know what the constitution says despite never having read it or done even the most rudimentary study on it - they think "god" is in there somewhere, they think a bunch of other things are in it that aren't, and let's face it, it's scary when all the Onion has to do is profile one of these boobs and you'd totally think that was a news story if you didn't see the word "Onion" up top.

But don't worry. They're happy to take their daily brainwashing from Rush and the local hate-radio purveyors and "vote" accordingly. It's like we're living in oceania - they've even come up with their own version of Newspeak to handle their hate. The Affordable Health Care Act, passed with bipartisan support? Oh yes - "Obamacare Health Control." Pissed off that Obama is black? Don't mention race, just quietly insinuate he's "Kenyan." Oh and for good measure, mention that he "might be a Muslim."

Of course, when they're trying to keep their lies straight, the veil tends to slip. Rush The Druggie regularly refers to the President of the United States as "uppity." In defending Herman "Pervy old man" Cain from the allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior, the right wing noise machine went on some of the worst misogynist screeds we've seen in the past 3 decades - surpassing even their amazing hatred for Hilary Clinton, Elena Kagan, or Sonia Sotomayor.

...five cores. http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades,11056/

I have to disagree. This change is not undirected. It seems you're missing the key point:
If you look at the stated goals, the main theme is always "simplicity". But those UIs don't feel easy to use. Let alone efficient or useful. They feel limiting and slowing down.

Now I've said for years, that our second* error in UI design, was to oversimplify the goal of highest efficiency to highest simplicity. And that they key thing that got lost because of this, was that we stopped caring about achieving "more with that less". If it made it simpler, then suddenly "just less" was OK.
It is quite obvious that that results in a useless, limiting UI over time.

But why did we oversimplify it? Well, I blame the Dunning-Kruger effect, natural selection's pressure to be efficient with resources, and developers generally being rather socially insecure geeks (included me ;).
I watched the whole process for at least 15 years, and it basically always goes like this:
10 People complain about problems they have with the UI.
But the Dunning-Kruger effect results in louder complaints from the lower part of the Gaussian distribution curve of intelligence than from the higher part.
20 The developers listen to their users, and logically hear mostly complaints of it being "too hard". But instead of trusting their own knowledge of how to make something better, and only using the user input for correction and inspiration, they bow to users in fear of not being loved anymore (sorry for being so harsh, but it's true) and adapt the software by making it simpler, at the cost of it becoming less efficient. (Which ironically results in them not being loved anymore in the long run.)
30 Humans, being life-forms in a world of limited resources (time/energy/etc), adapt to this simpler UI by saving those mental resources.
40 BUT: Since this now lower level of brain use is not a single number but again a Gaussian distribution curve, we again have a lower area that again thinks this is too hard. (One of Murphy's laws: Nature just invents a better idiot. ;)
50 GOTO 10

Repeat this often enough, and you end up with
- Clippy / MS Bob
- The iPad / ClickWheel laptop ;)
- Ubuntu Unity / Gnome 3
- Basically any piece of GUI software designed since the Xerox Alto. (Or: Anything UI-like that's not like VIM/Emacs. ;)

* The first error, as seen in all CLI shells, VIM/Emacs, etc, was to not know / ignore the fact that "The user does not know what he wants, until he knows what he can get.". Example making it obvious: Add a Sidebar to VIM showing the currently available actions (where ": -> Command" is e.g. a state-changing action and in its state, "% -> For the whole text..." is a action.), and suddenly, your grandma can use it after understanding the basic principle.

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

And brings to mind one of my favorite onion articles: National Pork Council: Many Americans Suffer From Pork Deficiency.

This could be part of the solution to the US budget problems.

Obligatory

http://www.theonion.com/video/shelby-cross-teaches-us-how-to-protect-our-childre,26438/

Of course over exaggerated, but not too far fetched.

Probably about the same time all those wind farms start blowing Earth off it's orbit.

And The Onion was sure they'd have all merged to just form one giant corporation by now:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/just-six-corporations-remain,551/

There's plenty of other ways to get your news.

Exactly. Get your news like this great story, Apple User Acting Like His Dad Just Died from The Onion, America's Finest News Source.

What's the difference between The Onion and mainstream media? Everyone at The Onion knows their product is 100% fictional.

Often, the Onion is closer to the truth than real news media. To paraphrase Stuart Lee: Now, that story about an apple user isn't true, but I feel what it says about apple users...

Hopefully, as much as anyone hates Apple, they'll be the only american company left that knows how to build a PC.

Relevant

There's plenty of other ways to get your news.

Exactly. Get your news like this great story, Apple User Acting Like His Dad Just Died from The Onion, America's Finest News Source.

What's the difference between The Onion and mainstream media? Everyone at The Onion knows their product is 100% fictional.

I'm so tired of seeing this argument. Politically voting with your wallet almost never works, precisely because of what you have already noticed: not enough people will do it. Mostly because they don't care, but even if every single person bothered to become moral buyers 100% of the time, it still wouldn't work. You have a very limited amount of time to concern yourself with researching everything you buy, so while you're avoiding Sony products because of the PS3 Other OS debacle and Apple for their excessive and anticompetitive litigation, what about orange juice? Do you buy it from a company that pay their employees a decent salary? One that itself buys oranges from a farm that does not hire illegal immigrants so they won't be able to complain about work conditions? Do they use renewable energy if possible or just go with the cheapest? Are the oranges they use genetically modified and patented? Is the package fully recyclable, in practice? There' a plethora of things you should care about and if every purchase of every item requires interviewing and investigating eight or nine different companies, you'll quickly die of thirst before you're able to buy the damned orange juice before even finding out if the thing is actually made from real oranges.

And then there's the second highly impractical part of voting with your wallet: there aren't that many parties to choose from. The Onion puts it better than I do, with an article that's probably supposed to be funny but ended up being too truthful: "The nerve of you people. Treating a longtime patron with so little respect, like I'm just another walking dollar sign. If that's what passes for customer service around here, you sadly leave me with no choice but to have the exact same experience at another giant soulless multinational corporation somewhere else. Maybe one that knows how to rob its customers of a fraction less dignity." Here's the full article, if you want an excuse to start drinking early today: http://www.theonion.com/articles/well-i-guess-ill-just-take-my-business-to-another,21357/

The problem is that the last American that knew what the fuck he was doing just died. http://www.theonion.com/articles/last-american-who-knew-what-the-fuck-he-was-doing,26268/

See here

The Onion's story was an excellent summary of the event in advance I believe.

During a highly anticipated media event held today at the Apple corporation’s world headquarters, CEO Tim Cook announced the new iPhone 4S is good and people should buy it. “It’s a good phone,” said Cook, walking out onto a stage and gesturing at a picture of the device projected on a large screen behind him. "It's got e-mail, the Internet, and you can get apps on it. Everybody should get one. It's good." After standing in place for another four seconds without speaking, Cook walked off stage, at which point the houselights came up and all in attendance were asked to please file out of the auditorium.

The description of the cheap kindle reminds me of this:
http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no,14299/