bjhoops1

But what could we base 21st century policy on, if not the divinely inspired actions of 18th century European colonists?

This reminds me of a poem my favorite Math professor used to share, about a little boy who was always instructed exactly how to draw a picture of a flower: http://home.bresnan.net/~cabreras/theboy.htm

I have a 13-year-old brother with ODD. And let me tell you, there is more to it than a healthy does of anti-authoritarianism.

We adopted my brother when he was 15 months old, and in his first year of life we suspect he was frequently neglected, leading to attachment issues. Basically, when an infant's needs are not met, they get distressed, and the more often this occurs, the more those neurological pathways become ingrained in their brains. Which means that people with a traumatic early childhood are much more sensitive to stimulus, feel threatened easily, and very quickly move into "survival mode". In survival mode, we will all lie, cheat or steal because our survival is at stake. Kids like my brother spent a disproportionate amount of their time in this state.

They also learn at that young age that their needs are not going to be met, and so they come to distrust authority and other people, focusing on looking out for themselves (since no one else is going to). They also tend to fail to internalize social norms and rules like being honest and the "golden rule". These sorts of tendencies can be considered anti-authoritarian, but it is a reactionary anti-authoritarianism, not a healthy, well-reasoned skepticism of prevailing authorities. The latter is healthy, the former is not.

So while it may be the case that anti-authoritarian individuals frequently are diagnosed a mentally ill, it is probably much more common that some kinds of mentally ill individuals happen to be anti-authoritarian. I.e. causation moves from certain types of mental illness to anti-authoritarianism. Basically, I'd like to say this is an interesting article, but please don't walk away thinking that the entire system is just a ploy by The Man to keep the Lisbeth Salanders of this world marginalized. It is much more complicated and difficult than that.

On a personal note, it can be very painful to love someone with issues like ODD. It requires loads of love, patience and restraint. It can also be very rewarding.

Please tell me you don't actually want these folks armed.

Prions absolutely terrify me. Primarily because they are so difficult to kill, er.. destroy. They are basically the zombies of infectious particles.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080701/full/news.2008.926.ht...

Google+'s photo sharing/storing system is great. Unfortunately, right now you have to use a third-party app if you want your G+ Instant Upload album to automatically sync to a Google Drive folder. I'm surprised Google hasn't added this feature yet. Perhaps they are intentionally refraining in order to try to induce people to share on G+?

Stories like this make me glad I was homeschooled. Mom handed me a Saxon math textbook and I just read it and did the problems. No fear, no classroom consensus that "math is haaaard".

I take offense at this. My facebook activity has yielded hundreds of grains of rice for starving children! I also stopped Joseph Kony and brought about marriage equality.

Me too. blanket... blanks... blankety...? banker.. grah.

I definitely agree for large applications.

But for quickly spinning up a few light service endpoints, Node can't be beat. Especially if you are using JSON-based persistence like MongoDB or CouchDB, using JSON all the way from database to the client is a huge win. I get tired of writing lots of JAXB POJOs to map my JSON objects to and from, especially early on in development when those definitions change rapidly. That's why enjoy using Node, especially for "toy" projects. Less boilerplate and more productive quickly.

Side note: I find myself wishing Node had Annotations and AOP... one of Java's coolest (though oft-misused) features IMHO.

This, just in case noobs were not confused enough by Java/JavaScript? :)

Really. I've recently been getting into node/express after years of Java, and these results make me feel a whole lot less cool.

Wouldn't NoNoSQL reduce to just SQL? Why not add a NoNo no-op to NoSQL as well? Yields a nice NoNoNoSQL.

I've been working with a similar stack lately: MongoDB, ExpressJS, Node and Backbone/Marionette (Sorry, no snappy acronym). I've found it to be remarkably productive and would recommend giving it a try. Also, it's a lot of fun! If you're using Backbone (and apparently everyone is), you would do well to layer some structure on it with a framework like Marionette or Chaplin.

Personally, I like the weight. Between the weight and the all-aluminum, it feels very sturdy, unlike many or all other Android phones. I was coming from an old HTC Evo I'd had for 2.5 years, and that thing weighed a lot more, so to me it was really light!

As for thickness, it technically is a bit on the thick side, but the back tapers towards the edges, which are quite thin. This curvature makes the phone feel much thinner than it is, and also makes it fit nicely in the hand.

If you get a chance to hold one, I think you'll see what I mean and why I for one don't consider these elements to be drawbacks.

The hardware on the HTC One is impeccable! Hold one in your hand and tell me that it doesn't meet and surpass even Apple's design standards. I couldn't bring myself to even put mine in a case, it feels so amazing in the hand. My Apple-philiac family are considering switching after the next unimaginative iIteration comes out and fails to impress (again).

>Switching to HTC One, would be downgrading my camera

At worst, the iPhone vs One camera battle is a push. These things are somewhat subjective, but the HTC One's camera is far from a downgrade.

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/04/phone-camera-shootout-g...

> The free market offers no incentive to give health services to people who cannot pay for it

Yes, thank you. I've said it many times before - the Free Market cares about your problems to the exact extent that you can Pay for them. Any benefits that happen to flow to the impecunious are incidental (though still nice when they do occur).

The tendency among physicians to be dismissive towards remedies that are procedural in nature reminds me of the tendency of programmers to show disinterest in non-technical solutions to problems.

But as Jeff Atwood reminds us, "The Best Code is No Code At All," and I imagine that physicians could use a similar reminder: "The Best Treatment is No Treatment at All."

This was my first thought as well. I live in Kansas City and would be happy to work for a "sexy" startup like 42 Floors. Apparently it's not an option, though.

Or perhaps we could use i18 to detect whether the coder lives in a Guilt- or Shame-based culture, and dynamically load guilt.css or shame.css based on the results!

I'm pretty firmly in the "code as documentation" camp, what can I say? I think that most of the time, if you can describe an action with two or three words, you probably ought to be extracting that logic into a method by the same name.

IMHO comments are best used in a handful of situations, such as:

1) Marking hacks 2) Explaining unusual, non-obvious sections of code 3) Noting historical reasons for doing something in a non-obvious manner 4) Noting pitfalls to be avoided 5) Making passive aggressive remarks about the "business guy" who made you do something terrible

Not an exhaustive list of course, but I do think that it's best to think twice before writing a comment, asking yourself "how can I make this more obvious with my code?"

This is a great idea. Too bad code can't really be isolated this way. I feel that marking a hack is one of the few legitimate uses for comments in code:

//TODO HACK HACK HACKITY HACK

>> when I want to look at a PDF in browser > does that ever happen? I do this all the time. I hate downloading crap that I'm probably just going to glance at once then discard.

Although it should be noted that the Latin itself is a translation, since this quote is attributed to Socrates and would have originally been in Greek.

"Who watches the watchmen" would have been simpler and spared me a google search.

I wonder if it would be possible to generate a DDoS attack by reporting that a site is experiencing a DDoS, causing people to flock to the site to see if it is down.

Private would be huge for me. I wouldn't think of using it without it.

Quite typical.

It strikes me that legislative bodies have nothing that resembles a Quality Assurance effort. A law is passed, and then we just assume it works the way it was intended. Even in cases where it quite obviously did NOT (such as California's Three Strikes Law | http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-...), that horrible piece of legislation lives on for years and years. Only the most atrocious pieces of legislation are ever repealed.

I think it would make sense for all pieces of legislation to have something like a 1-3 year (depending on the type of legislation) review period. At the end of that time, a committee would make an assessment of the programs true impact, keeping in mind unintended consequences, and Congress must vote to either retain or repeal the law.

Just something I'd been pondering lately after reading about legislation which had huge unforeseen repercussions.

Jesus Christ...

I would agree to the degree that "News" refers to shallow news reporting. News on TV? Undoubtedly detrimental. Long form journalism? Lots of merit. Sensational coverage of a kidnapping? Waste of your time. Coverage of the political process? Could lead you to a revelation about certain political entities.

Basically, I would not recommend completely dismissing all forms of news. News consumption can lead you to change your mind about something. If you never expose your self to new data, you will find yourself holding onto stale beliefs and opinions. There's something to be said for remaining an informed citizen.