Speaking of ludicrous, your scales seems a bit off. #1 would be more accurate as: While married, have you ever glanced at someone and thought to yourself, "Wow, they're attractive!" or: have you ever been eating delicious cake and think "wow, that pie looks good too"? And the sexual side of your second example would be more like "you were horny one day, so you kidnapped and raped someone and then murdered them so your partner wouldn't find out."

I'd just like to point out that an alternate (and just one of many) perspective on sexual relations beyond those with your partner is: I love my partner's pies and I've even said there's no other pie I'd rather eat. One day, however, someone brought in a pie to the office and I decided to have a slice. Might my partner be hurt to find out that I liked this other pie as much as theirs? Maybe, but then I wouldn't marry someone who's so childish as to believe theirs is the only pie I'll ever want or even try. In the end I'm with them not because I'm a sellout for whomever has the best pie, but because I enjoy the whole process of baking it with my partner.

Hmm the food metaphor is a bit tedious at this point. Maybe I'm just bitter that I didn't get any pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving this year. And that's not a euphemism.

I'm not advocating giving the rich people a break, far from it but you can't keep expecting to have a fair tax system when half of the people in this country don't pay federal income taxes.

Wow really? Did you even read the article you linked to? Hell, even the title? Here let me help: "The 50% Of Americans Who Don't Pay Income Tax Will NEVER Be A Good Revenue Source"

It's hard to not just copy and paste the whole thing but here are a couple points:

"It’s wrong to rail on the 46 percent of people who don't pay income tax," said Paul Caron, a tax professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. "A fairer analysis takes into account all taxes paid—and by this measure, everyone has tax skin in the game," he said.

"It’s going to hurt the economy more if you raise taxes on the poor than the rich, because the poor spend every penny they’ve got," Williams said. "If you take a dollar away from them in tax credits, that’s a dollar they don’t spend."

Point is, there's absolutely nothing fair about wealth distribution or pay in this country so why should there be a "fair" tax system? Not only is it not going to help the economy or deficit in any way, it's just cruel.

Oh good, you can read Wikipedia. You might be surprised to learn that I can as well. In fact since you failed to actually fully comprehend the first line, I'll repeat it here:

Basal-cell carcinoma (BCC), a skin cancer, is the most common cancer. It rarely metastasizes or kills. However, because it can cause significant destruction and disfigurement by invading surrounding tissues, it is still considered malignant.

So yes, I'm aware that basal cell carcinoma is rarely fatal. However, we're still talking about a serious condition and one that demands something more ethical than a no-op control group. Which was my one and only point. You know, since I was responding to a post more-or-less arguing to throw out ethics since it doesn't allow you to test all conditions. As for your misquote below, may I suggest additional reading, courtesy of Wikipedia?

Except that we're talking about a life-threatening medical condition. This isn't like arthritis medication or ED pills. It's one thing to conduct a study where you give one group a known treatment that improves patients' chances of not dying a painful death by X% and another a new treatment that may or may not do anything. It's quite another to say that whoever gets put in the control group is just SOL. You have to balance ethics with scientific efficacy. Surely you wouldn't suggest an acceptable protocol for a heart attack treatment would be for anyone randomly placed in the control group to have a team of doctors stand there and watch while they died/suffered permanent heart damage? Even if you do find that acceptable, I doubt an ethics review board will agree.

Peanuts are just fine. Not great, not bad, just fine. For the paranoid, there are issues like aflatoxin (not really an issue for peanuts you'll find in the US) and some evidence to suggest that they are atherogenic in other animals, despite their fat profile (personally, the data seems scattered and mostly associated with wacky diets and the like so I'm ignoring it). The good is that they are higher in good poly-/monounsaturated fats than many other common foods and have a decent amount of protein. The bad is that they are fairly high in fat and calories and easy to overeat (at least for me, I love em!).

Basically it boils down to there being plenty of better, healthier snacks out there but if your choice is between peanuts and sugar processed into some novel new form, don't feel bad about taking the peanuts.

It's not even about the work involved in making the bed. It's about having a brain that's not fundamentally broken. Caring about shit like bed making is a sign that your priorities are entirely screwed up.

Yes! I too have discovered that training and discipline is only for feeble brains. Similarly I have nothing in my apartment except my computer, a cheap mattress, a blanket that I never fold, and some storage bins for clothes that I only wash when I get complaints. Of course I also never workout or do anything but order in because that would take time away from the only thing that matters: code! Seriously, can you believe the stuff people think is important?

Most of the rest of that list is a bit of a stretch of the imagination to pull out of my post

It's really not though. I pulled all those just by skimming down your comment.

• Women are overly sensitive. The only men that are overly sensitive are gay (or if it's their profession to care/pretend to care). You've already agreed to this one.
• Women are thin skinned. In the context of women being overly sensitive: "Going through life with such a thin skin as to be offended by this sort of stuff is not a good thing" and "... but you as women need to grow thicker skins as you grow up."
• The way women process interpersonal relationships is "crazy." You said: "Guys don't have the same sort of crazy databasing of "everything he's done wrong" that most women seem to have, so we tend to generalize more. " Subtext: The stereotypical male handling of interpersonal relationships is not crazy and therefore, superior.
• Women are too specific about their grievances. You said: "We complain about women, and women complain about men, they're just more specific about it." Each sex complains about the other, however (subtext) the stereotypical woman is more specific about it (i.e. more negative, whereas the stereotypical man brushes these things off).
• Women internalize things incorrectly. You said (paraphrasing due to length): Men often bond and show respect and affection for one another through teasing and insults. The stereotypical woman does not understand this, due to men and women internalizing behaviors differently. Subtext: I'm a man and this behavior seems completely normal to me, thus anyone who doesn't understand must be incorrect.
• Women make the world insane, and sanity can only be achieved by hiding from them. You said: "I should also mention that men throw off the adaptation around other men, and for a long time the internet was 95%+ men in most of its dark corners. Some guys will push back because they're losing one of their few remaining bastions of sanity where they can say what they like." No need for subtext here "few remaining bastions of sanity". There's also an "old boys club" thing here of woman encroaching on a man's domain and keeping them from being "men" that I missed the first time.
• It's acceptable for men to treat women as possessions, or at least discuss them as such. You said: a borderline silly analogy of men to grizzly bears and how grizzly bears "view everything in the world around them as objects to be possessed." You further said that while nearly all men understand that woman are not possessions, it's still OK to pretend like they are as long as no woman are around to hear.

Look my intention here is not be combative or to try to make you look like a misogynist or something. As I said, I believe you made your post with the best of intentions which (unfortunately, for you) made it the perfect target of what I'm trying to say. The point I'm trying to make is that all of this is so completely baked into our culture that it's difficult for men (and many women, even!) to see the problems. The goal is to get you--get anyone!--to look at this and say "hmm, what if he's right?"

I know first hand how hard it is to accept this stuff. It feels like you have to give up fun and harmless jokes and lose out of the feeling of camaraderie with other men joking about taking an us-vs-them approach to women. The first knock on the door of understanding for me was a Sociology 101 course I took in college to (easily, I thought) fill a humanities req. One day the professor said something to the effect of "gender is not intrinsically linked to sex." As you might imagine, I was horrified and nearly left because I thought this must be some sort of psychotic feminist propaganda.

It seeded that "what if" though. What if we realized that little girls tease and play in the dirt, just like boys, at least until we beat it out of them by telling them that girls have to be dainty and put on a kind face. What if we treated women as if they were just as capable and intelligent as men? Yes the sexes are different and pretending like there's some unisex isn't going to solve anything. Just toss out the stereotype book. Don't assume that you can't tell a woman the truth because she's too sensitive to handle it. Don't assume that you can never tease or joke around vulgarly with women; you should learn when this is acceptable, however (with friends/family/usually coworkers after hours: ok. Talking about penises, blowjobs, female ass, etc. in public/professional settings: not ok). Progress is being made so now is not the time to give up and say men have done all they can.

Let's just start with a short list of how you portray women in your post there:

• Women are overly sensitive. The only men that are overly sensitive are gay (or if it's their profession to care/pretend to care).
• Women are thin skinned.
• The way women process interpersonal relationships is "crazy."
• Women are too specific about their grievances.
• Women internalize things incorrectly.
• Women make the world insane, and sanity can only be achieved by hiding from them.
• It's acceptable for men to treat women as possessions, or at least discuss them as such.
• Women are completely foreign.

Really, each one of these deserves at least a good paragraph of exposition but that's more than anyone will read or comprehend. I'm inclined to believe that your post is in earnest and that you didn't even notice writing these things and still may not even see what's wrong with them. That's the true nature of sexism: it's incredibly insidious and it pervades every single aspect of our society. As men, we have been taught since we were little boys about how men and women are different and the myriad ways women are inferior. Not directly, mind you. At least in my own experience, no guardian or role model has come out and said things like "women talk too much" or "they're terrible drivers." No one needed to however, because if you tell a lie enough it becomes the perceived truth and these little lies fly freely and masquerade as "jokes."

So you're right, in a sense, about internalization: what men and women have internalized is quite different. See common "sense" like men are strong, hunters/warriors, dominant and natural leaders. Common "sense" about women is that they're weak/uncoordinated ("you throw like a girl!"), (overly) sensitive, and better at domestic activities. If you stray from these boundaries you are mercilessly attacked by your peers. Men who are sensitive are either gay or not real men. Women who are active or dominant are tomboys, dykes, or just plain bitches. So let me ask you: do you think any of this crap about women is actually true or just "the way it has always been so it must be true?"

Regardless, if you continue to treat and expect women to be completely foreign to you, they will remain so.

Except for all the new people getting extra tax breaks,

"Extra." You realize you're arguing that it's good and right that currently a certain class of people (opposite-sex couples) has special privileges (tax breaks) that another class (same-sex couples) don't get. If you want to argue it's somehow "not fair" that everyone can now share in that benefit, then take away the tax breaks for everyone if you want it to be fair.

and all the new people forcibly placed on your employers health care package

Oh dear this sounds horrible. Wait, why is my group plan through my employer cheaper than a personal plan for the same coverage? Ah right, the more people that participate, the bigger the available pool.

Correct. But 0 F is much closer to the mark than 32 F, which is a temperature that most people can still do a good deal of work outside without worrying about frostbite and things like that. Except in unusual circumstances, extended human outdoor activity generally starts getting significantly harder (and requires more care) somewhere around -10F to +10F. 0 F is a reasonable approximation.

So just note your dangerously cold mark as -20 C (-4 F) and be done with it. I hear this all the time when people learn that I use the metric system internally even though I'm an American. They're usually sympathetic saying something like "yeah the metric system makes a lot of sense, but I could never switch for temperatures" and this baffles me. Metric is easier IMO. 0 is (literally) freezing cold, 10 is cool, 20 is comfortable, 30 is hot, 40 is dangerously hot if you don't know what you're doing. People on Slashdot always bring up 0 F >= T <= 32 F but this maps pretty well to -10 C and -20 C as well. But really, 32 F is still a risk for hypothermia and frostbite if you're not already taking precautions so what's the difference?

If rich are to pay taxes to a point where they are on par with upper middle class, or anywhere close to it, then you would not have any rich people at all. There is no incentive to work hard and be filthy rich. No innovation... no competition... no big tax contributions (27%)...

Bullshit. I'm so tired of seeing this bullshit argument. Let's take an example of an absurdly high taxation rate for the rich, say 80%. Someone with a revenue of $1 million is still netting $200,000 there, significantly more than the vast super majority of people can ever earn (even before taxes!). I actually do fairly well for myself, being a skilled knowledge worker and making a few times what the average family of four makes, but I would trade up to that income with an 80% tax rate without the slightest hesitation and I suspect everyone else making under $250,000 would as well. I would make that trade, or even "work hard", to achieve that income level even if offered a 0% tax rate to stay at my current income.

I doubt I need to continue to expound on this for you to see my point. Once the input numbers are high enough, the magnitude of the percentage rate becomes unimportant, relatively speaking. With a high enough income, even grossly unjust taxation rates still yield financial outcomes wildly better than even the most skilled and experienced member of the working class can ever achieve. So yes, there's still plenty of incentive to "work hard" and "compete". Back in reality though, reasonable people aren't demanding that the rich pay some ridiculous 80% of their income in taxes. Just that they pay something proportional to their income as compared with the rest of the populace (i.e. less income inequality).

In case it isn't blindingly obvious, I say "work hard" and "compete" because I reject the notion that anyone not rich enough to build houses out of $100 bills simply isn't working hard enough. I wouldn't be caught dead suggesting that someone struggling to make a living off two jobs simply isn't working as hard as me in my 40-hour-a-week desk job.

Basically, not only do I disagree with your argument, but it has no bearing on the point I made.

My argument was directed at and even paraphrased the point you made, which is that "suicide is selfish because it's like saying that my wants are more important than my loved ones' wants." Perhaps that's even true, but my demonstration was to turn that argument back around and it works just as well. What I was hoping to illustrate by that is that phrasing the topic of suicide in terms of selfishness is not helpful or accurate.

It is possible for those who wish someone to not committ suicide to be selfish and for the person committing suicide to be selfish as well.

This should simply reinforce the point that I'm making which is that the selfishness or non-selfishness of a person really has nothing to do with whether or not they will commit suicide, nor with their motivations behind that act.

Flip that statement around: claiming that suicide is selfish is proclaiming that the temporary grief I will experience by the suicide of a loved one is more important than the constant suffering of that loved one. Or to put it another way, my wants are more important than the wants of those I love.

It's the same thing. I don't think you can so easily find and take a moral high ground in such a complex philosophical issue. I think most people would agree that anyone contemplating or attempting suicide needs help, I'm just not sure that insulting someone in such a fragile mental state by calling them selfish is very helpful.

Two-finger swipe is much, much more comfortable to use than edge scrolling because it works from all over the trackpad and from many angles. As for buttons:

• 1-finger tap = left click
• 2-finger tap = right click
• Command tap = middle click
• Fn + arrow up = page up
• Fn + arrow down = page down
• Fn + delete (a.k.a. the backspace key on PC) = delete
• On and on

Really though, it's ubiquitous for a compact keyboard to have a Fn key which does all the above so it's not even learning icky Mac-specific combos. The point is, the Mac trackpad is vastly superior to any other trackpad and nearly as good as a mouse (enough so that I'd guess that most people with MacBooks no longer carry around an extra mouse).

Is this a joke? Education correlates positively with productive value for society and negatively with burden on society. Put simply, without society paying for childhood education we'll be left with a bunch of drooling half-wits that cost us way more to support than it would to simply give them a K-12 education. If you must see it that way, it's very much self-serving to educate children. In all likelihood, I will never have children of my own so I'm not even talking about it from that angle. Someday when I'm old the current batch of students will be running things and personally, I'd like it if they were at least semi-functional insofar as the average human can be.

There, no moral discussion needed (a blessing since any that puts "moral right" and "fruit of someone else's labor" in the same sentence will always devolved into some mind-bending justification for how it is noble to exploit human beings).