JVirissimo

Being a "genius" is not the same as a "programming prodigy". In order to be a "programming prodigy" you have to "program" something. The above comment was asking for evidence that this very smart girl "programmed" something. Neither claiming Pakistan is a poor programming environment nor that she is an MCP (very impressive BTW) constitutes such evidence.

"Who is John Galt?" is expression of helplessness and despair in 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. A very popular (in the US) book that is somewhat controversial, mainly because a number of admirers take it too seriously.

I think you mean John Gatto rather than John Galt, but it was a somewhat fitting mistake.

Is this a joke? Last time I checked, professional athletes make huge amounts of cash.

Really, you're not going to wait a few weeks and see if Google fixes things?

Because the law was written by lawyers?

Are you bothered when professional sports leagues are racially homogeneous? Would you prefer that they practice affirmative action?

"Regulation" causes investment strategies to be more homogeneous, which often means one large bubble instead of lots of small ones. It is far from obvious that this is a better situation to be in.

Good risk management requires discrimination. And no, there isn't anything morally wrong with "discrimination".

The assumption that gay women have the same risk profile as gay men seems very weak. Almost any group of women will, on average, engage in less risky behavior than an analogous group of men.

911 Operator here, most cities won't follow up a 911 hangup call from a cellphone unless there is reason to think there is an emergency. In large cities, you get hundreds of accidental 911 calls a day and finding all of the phones (even if they are WPH2) would take more than the entire police department only looking for 911 hangup calls. In many cities, a 911 call from a land line will automatically dispatch PD to the address.

Following the advice above is very dangerous.

The Teaching Company philosophy lectures were significantly better than what I got at a state university, but were a very small fraction of the price.

Politicians that "have some balls" stop getting elected to public office. Your comment is simply a less precise restatement of the Median Voter Theorem, which is very well known to political-economists.

I think by "education" you mean "schooling". The conflation of these two concepts causes all kinds of mischief.

If it was indeed made by GlaxoSmithKline, then this is a good example of "big pharma" greed. Only, in this case, "big pharma" greed might end up saving millions of lives.

I played Deus Ex when I was in high school and was more impressed by its storyline than anything I read in English lit.

Time is a constraint and mental effort is a resource of our physical environment.

True, but what solves the forced rider problem and why presume that it is more benign a problem than free riding? One man's public good is another man's public bad.