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Comment: Re:Enough with the security theater! (Score 1, Interesting) 289

Its time to privatize the TSA. If it were up to the airlines to contract with security firms, you'd have logical risk management made through the lens of monetary cost. Make the airlines assume the risk for liability if their security is crap, and they will find a good happy medium between the extremes. I'm not normally a small-government guy, but in this area, it simply makes sense.

Comment: As someone on food stamps... (Score 5, Insightful) 1043

by hedgemage (#45934737) Attached to: Doctors Say Food Stamp Cuts Could Cause Higher Healthcare Costs
I currently get food stamps and they provide the entirety of my food budget. I am well educated and know my way around a kitchen so I can keep myself fit and healthy for well under the $187/month I get. But if I wanted, I could buy candy, coke, and chips and try and live off of that. If you are on food stamps you can NOT simply rely on prepackaged heat and serve meals - you'll either run out of money or not get the nutrition you need. You need to focus on the basics: beans, rice, lentils, fresh fruits and veggies, and only occasionally some raw chicken (forget your love affair with beef, its too expensive). In my view, the problem is with education rather than money. Teach people how to cook and what to cook and they'll be healthy. Barrage them with ads for canned raviolis and Doritos and you'll get people who think that cooking simply involves heating things up. The food stamp program needs to be revised so that you are prohibited from purchasing junk foods just like alcohol or cigarettes can't be bought. In addition to restricting crap foods, allow people to purchase things like vitamins, toothpaste, and toilet paper with their food stamps. Being on food stamps is not fun, but for many people it is not a choice (the elderly or disabled) so lets make the program actually work for the benefit of those who receive the money.

Comment: Have the legal questions been tested? (Score 1) 134

by hedgemage (#45656361) Attached to: Watch Out, Amazon: DHL Tests Drug-Delivery Drone
If a drone crashes on my property due to malfunction/jammer/shotgun blast, does the package become my property? Its a fedral crime to tamper with found or misdelivered USPS mail, but Amazon, FedEx, DHL have no similar protections AFAIK. If through no (provable) actions of my own materials arrive on my property, can I salvage them?

Comment: Entirely Appropriate (Score 3, Interesting) 233

by hedgemage (#45426870) Attached to: ATF Tests Show 3D Printed Guns Can Explode
I think its entirely appropriate for government to determine safety standards and inform the citizenry when something doesn't comply. With the manufacturing of /everything/ by 3D printers, the vast majority of the populace has no way to determine which designs are safe and stable and which are junk because most of them are not engineers or materials scientists. I think that testing and rating designs for potentially dangerous items, not just firearms, that could cause grievous harm due to catastrophic failure is good role for government to act in the common good.

Keep the designs free for all, but provide a central database where I can reference a rating performed by experts. I wouldn't mind my tax dollars going for that.

Critics Reassess Starship Troopers As a Misunderstood Masterpiece 726

Posted by samzenpus
from the everyone-fights-no-one-quits dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Calum Marsh writes in The Atlantic that when Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers hit theaters 16 years ago today, American critics slammed it as a 'crazed, lurid spectacle' featuring 'raunchiness tailor-made for teen-age boys' and 'a nonstop splatterfest so devoid of taste and logic that it makes even the most brainless summer blockbuster look intelligent.' But now the reputation of the movie based on Robert Heinlein's Hugo award winning novel is beginning to improve as critics begin to recognize the film as a critique of the military-industrial complex, the jingoism of American foreign policy, and a culture that privileges reactionary violence over sensitivity and reason. 'Starship Troopers is satire, a ruthlessly funny and keenly self-aware sendup of right-wing militarism,' writes Marsh. 'The fact that it was and continues to be taken at face value speaks to the very vapidity the movie skewers.' The movie has rightfully come to be appreciated by some as an unsung masterpiece. Coming in at number 20 on Slant Magazine's list of the 100 best films of the 1990s last year, the site's Phil Coldiron described it as 'one of the greatest of all anti-imperialist films,' a parody of Hollywood form whose superficial 'badness' is central to its critique. 'That concept is stiob, which I'll crudely define as a form of parody requiring such a degree of over-identification with the subject being parodied that it becomes impossible to tell where the love for that subject ends and the parody begins,' writes Coldiron. 'If you're prepared for the rigor and intensity of Verhoeven's approach—you'll get the joke Starship Troopers is telling,' says Marsh. 'And you'll laugh.'"

Comment: Don't be Evil? (Score 2) 65

by hedgemage (#45218469) Attached to: Google Leads Among Consumer Tech Companies Lobbying Congress
Remember when that was the Google mantra? Are they still trying or have they been worn down by the system? Is lobbying inherently evil as some posters state, or is there a good way to do it? If you think lobbying is without a high ground, then consider the case of one of the oldest continuously existing lobbying groups. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCNL

Comment: I can't be the only one (Score 1) 418

by hedgemage (#44514225) Attached to: Talking On the Phone While Driving Not So Dangerous After All
I should never talk on the phone while driving. Heck, my driving ability decreases even with a in-depth conversation with a passenger in the car. Since I can freely admit that using a cell phone while driving makes me a worse driver, I have a hard time believing that there aren't enough others with the same problem to warrant even a statistical blip.

Comment: How much does it cost? (Score 4, Interesting) 160

by hedgemage (#44313261) Attached to: Better Factories Through Role Playing
Sure, it may work, despite the dubious methodology, but who is actually going to pay to have their workers go through this? Since the bubble days of the 90's, training is an area that has been eliminated from virtually all budgets in favor of hiring only 'experienced' workers. No organization wants to pay for training anymore even when there is a shortage of experienced labor. I worked for a chip manufacturer that in the early-mid 90's put new production staff through a MONTH of 8-hour-a-day classroom training before they even got into the fabrication facility. After a couple years, it was down to 3 weeks, then 2, then 1, then layoffs. The modern management culture says that there is a limitless pool of cheap, experienced labor, so why train?
