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> People don't seem to be faking this pain, but it gets confusing. I have back pain. My editor has a herniated disc, and he works harder than anyone I know. There must be millions of people with asthma and diabetes who go to work every day. Who gets to decide whether, say, back pain makes someone disabled?

I dunno, maybe the difference is that you don't have a job where you have to STAND ALL DAY?

If you're in a wheel chair you can still do a desk job. Does that mean you're not disabled?

Here's a thought: You don't need to post every single thought you have on twitter. So many of these controversies can be avoided by following that rule

The problem is that "suicide" has been getting expanded to the point where it it means any harm, not actual destruction.

> I can't see PlayHaven hiring mr_hank back ... I would guess it'd be slightly awkward.

It would certainly be awkward, but it would be a pretty big PR hit not to take them back.

The problem, though, is that Fox news actually backs up the kind of stuff Limbaugh says. So people can "watch the news" and still see their worldview validated.

Well, I think it depends on whether you count only "news" or if you count stuff like blogs or "social media". I'm very up to date (I think) on politics, but I don't feel like I need to read the NYT every day.

In the Essay Aaron isn't talking about just the concept of being informed about the world, but rather the up to the minute 24/7 generalist news stuff.

It seems like most major events have books written about them later. There were good books written about the Iraq war, for example.

I also think you could learn a lot more about culture by reading non-fiction books then by watching the news. I don't think I learn anything about culture from the news, other then which celebrities people are paying attention too these days.

sure, but think back to the last election. 95% of the coverage was about stupid stuff like Mitt Romney's campaign manager talking about an "etch a sketch" or whatever.

Instead of looking into the details and explaining Romney's bogus tax plan, they just invite a republican and democrat on to yell at each-other to stay "ballanced"

Well, there is a difference between reading "the news" and reading a specialized website about stuff you're interested in. I would have heard about this from the various blogs I read.

I'm actually pretty informed about "the news" but I don't read any newspaper sites unless I get links to them, and I certainly don't watch TV news.

Part of the problem with that is some people might end up getting all their news from websites that feature crazy conspiracy theory stuff, like Alex Jones or whatever.

I would appreciate it if people stopped making up or repeating ridiculous pseudo-scientific explanations for whatever it is they want to believe.

> We have normalized porn very recently and it is just a piece of modernist faith that it is harmless.

Which is true of everything. How do you know eating chicken is harmless? What about cellphones? What about under arm deodorant? Laundry Detergent?

There are tons and tons of new things added to society all the time.

The only reason anyone has a problem with porn is because some people have moral hangups about it.

Why do you think he wrote that article?

> Each time you view something new, your brain gives a hit of dopamine.

Oh dear god. That is not how dopamine works. Dopamine is a chemical that your brain secretes when you are trying to get something, not once you get it - so when you're hungry, for example, you'll have higher dopamine levels. Then when you eat, they go back down. The actual sensation of higher dopamine levels is stress and anxiousness - it actually doesn't feel good at all.

Here's an NYT article talking about the common misconception: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/science/27angier.html?_r=0

> they're addicted to the chemical sensations that their brain provides.

EVERY experience is a "chemical sensation" in the brain. Good. Bad. Whatever.

> In fact, now that I have learned about this, whenever I see a post on HN about how someone has lost their interest in programming or other activities, the first thing I think of is probably this person has a porn addiction.

What the fuck? This is the dumbest thing I've read in a while. There could be a million things that cause a loss of interest in programming. Maybe they got girlfriends or started families? Maybe they suck at it, and just realized that?

It sounds like you used to be obsessed with porn, and now you're obsessed with "porn addiction"

What are you talking about? The requirement would be that the articles be published in open access journals, or else published elsewhere after being published initially in closed access journals.

The high prices you linked too aren't an impediment, they are THE REASON TO DO IT.

Also, when it comes to tax payer funded research, it's already, you know, funded.

Right, but being a Olympics sponsor is mainly something people find out about on TV, not by actually going to the games.

Where is the evidence that actually preventing people from using mastercard helps?

Yeah, but this is like: only allowing people with Lexuses to enter, everyone else... just can't get in.

Neither did Steve Jobs. What's your point?

> If Google needs to have some of my money in order to ensure that the relationship is, well, sensible, so be it. Give me that option.

What makes you think these cloud servers are going to be free? They may have a free teir like amazon for messing around with stuff, but I assume they are going to charge money for any serious use.

You know you can have as many Google accounts as you want, right? You could create a new gmail account just for this, to try it out.

Nice, some competition with Amazon should be good. Their previous cloud projects were too esoteric. In order to use them you had to program to their API, and how usage translated to billing was a little obscure.

The gates on these chips are 22 nanometers. "microchips" have been measured in nanometers for a while.

They can't get by with a 15% annual tuition hike? Jebus.

Rick Scott is an idiot. He demanded welfare recipients get drug tested, the net result was that hardly any of them failed and it cost more money then it saved - oh and of course he owned the drug testing company - he was basically shoving taxpayer dollars directly into his own company (Oh which he handed off to his wife before he took office, but come on)

Seems unlikely. Good researchers care about research, and don't really care about teaching. While people who care a lot about teaching may not care much about research. A lot of profs don't like teaching and prefer spending time in the lab.

There may be some people who are passionate about both (and of course, people who don't give a crap about either)

because it MAKES A PROFIT

Back when I was in school, the CS dept was kind of ghetto. We had an old run down kind of grimy building, while the Computer engineering department had this massive new building with great architecture. We also had a research facility that was some kind of interdisciplinary engineering thing - all people did was program but it was part of the engineering dept and probably had as much money as the entire CS department. At least a lot of CS students got to work there. Seems like CS invents all the stuff and engineering gets all the money to actually use it :P ---

"Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year. The increase alone would more than offset the savings supposedly gained by cutting computer science."

Okay, I'm not a fan of sports but universities spend money on their sports programs because they are PROFIT CENTERS. First of all, they sell tickets to the games, which makes money. Second of all they foster 'school spirit' which helps in getting donations.

If you look at Penn State (before the whole scandal) there's a perfect example of how that plays out. People donate to the school because they are nostalgic for the time they spent going to games and so on. It's stupid, IMO but it is what it is.

So really, saying people Universities should cut sports and focus on academics is like saying the government should save money by cutting the IRS's funding, or that drug companies could save money by cutting advertizing. No, those are the things that make money. If you spend less on them, you have less money overall, not more.

Again, I'm not a sports fan. I'm just pointing out the reality.

So in that case LaTeX is supposed to be pronounced like the spanish word for milk, "Lachee"? (Or I guess 'latechee', technically but if that were the case everyone would drop the 't' sound)

You're missing the obvious: Green = MONEY.

Delete all the users you don't like.

Libertarian leanings and predisposition towards compliance with authority?

And who don't look at pornography?

There are lots of people with high IQs who have ADD type issues.