Incidentally, this is perhaps my only real complaint about io9. I deeply appreciate the welcoming atmosphere — so unlike so much of the internet, let alone the Gawker empire — but I wish there were a few more voices on staff who say yes, books matter. They really, deeply matter — they shape who we are and what we…

How are we supposed to partition out judgments about everything else in the world and our "taste" in books? I have thoughts on the reality of climate change, physics, and other scientific issues; what the subjective experiences of people in various circumstances are and are not like; what constitutes hypocrisy,…

Just finished this last night. I was happy to see the front-page New York Times mention today — that's got to boost sales a nice bit! But I have serious doubts when the editor says, apropos of the unusual publishing schedule, that "we wanted to make sure people knew that there were answers to these questions." The…

Actually, Republicans prefer that SNAP not mean "welfare" either. That's because food stamps are actually a pretty popular program across the political spectrum (or rather, cutting them is quite unpopular), but Republicans who vote for them don't want to be seen as voting for "welfare." And of course, it's doubly…

Can we do one of these with a birdcage? That way the bird could fly free (albeit at the same height) and still remain in its cage...

My point exactly. Why are you bothering?

In common usage, the first definition you provide from Wikipedia is the standard definition. This is the usage politicians employ, for instance, even those on the right who decry welfare. For instance, if you read up on the welfare battles of the 90s, where Clinton did his most famous triangulation to "end welfare…

You can call it that, but that's not what "welfare" means when it's used by politicians, the press, or anyone else in a political profession.

The meaning of the word is how people use it. Politicians don't mean SNAP when they refer to welfare. You might want to define welfare more broadly than they do, but you are going against standard usage in politics, news, and the media.

Weird how some people seem to enjoy defending mass killings. I can understand thinking a specific mass killing was necessary. But I really can't understand someone so eager to actively defend and espouse it.

If you are free to define "social welfare program" as anything that transfers money or delivers products or services via the federal government, then we are all on welfare via social security. OMG!

SNAP isn't "Welfare," according to the standard definitions of "Welfare" either as used by the government, by most people, or even by your Republican party.

The app SnapTell has done this — at least for book covers — for like 5 years now, and works great. But I only use it in big chain stores — sadly, just B&N these days — because I'm old enough to remember that B&N were the evil ones who destroyed independent bookstores, not Amazon.

For those with a glossy screen, one easy way to see this is to hold the setup screen (with the two dots) in front of your face, focus on your own reflection, and then look at the two close-set dots (ie, the middle two out of four that you now see) and try to focus them into a single middle dot. Moving the screen (or…

It's Not the Snow, It's Not the Politics: Blame the Car-Dependent City

Not arguing is your strategy. Mine is to explain to other readers why you are wrong.

"Sounds like" is not an argument.

Every side has its own account of why a war was fought. The South claims that the war was because the North was dead set against secession. The North claims that the war was because the South wanted to continue its horrifically evil practices of slavery and racial abuse.

Like literal left and right, political left and right are relative terms. If there is a large percentage of people with political views to the left of Sunstein or Obama, then by definition they are not far left.

But the image you actually see appears perfectly straight because the brain corrects for the keystone distortion—which is actually much larger than the pincushion distortion from a curved screen. So after watching for a period of time the brain will presumably compensate for the very subtle curve of the screen in the…