@4: you need not worry. The eggs you buy in the supermarket are unfertilized, so no murdering has taken place. Menstruation, yes.

Whether or not Scientology fits any one definition of a cult is not the issue. The issue is that a teenager is getting prosecuted in violation of his freedom of speech. If someone had a sign "Judaism is a cult" then sure the public reaction might be different, but the legal one should not.

That public order act is absolutely insane, and this application of it is disgraceful.

I try to keep from having a knee-jerk reaction to this sort of stuff, but, regarding whomever decides these sorts of things, does having tons of money and power actually make people all of the sudden this greedy and evil? Or are most executives at ISPs actually people who really hate the internet? Like, I'm seriously asking - I just don't understand this.

@16:

Rice for many Asian and Asian-American families is ubiquitous for nearly every meal, and in fact at least in Vietnamese, the word for 'rice' is the same as that for 'food' or 'meal'. As such, it's extremely handy to have a device that can prepare a large quantity of rice, do so unattended, and keep at the serving temperature for hours.

A good analogy I think is coffee makers: it is easy enough to brew coffee and filter it, or to use a french press, but people who have coffee every morning more often use an automatic drip machine. In Vietnam, surely rice cookers outnumber coffee makers many-fold.

Appliances are worth only as much as how often they are used, and this is why rice cookers are extremely popular with Asians and Asian-Americans, and why they will perhaps never be adopted in the West.

I don't understand: to those that own a Zojirushi, what does this do that the cheap ones at the Asian market don't? Can it cook more rice, or cook it faster or something? I've seen some rice cookers that can scorch the rice on bottom of pot, but the one I have now cooks my rice perfectly and it cost me $25.

I guess mine can't cook risotto, but, seriously, who is looking for a risotto-cooking appliance?

#6 makes a good point. However, isn't there an element of fraud here? This profile was designed to appear as his own, and as he created it. Surely there is a difference between observing someone's public information and impersonating someone, right?

#25:

I do not think vegan/vegetarianism is absurd, merely a bit silly. As I said, I think there are three possible motivations for living a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle: for better health, for better environmental stewardship, and to avoid a moral problem with killing animals to eat them.

The first two I feel are just as easily accomplished without the arbitrary rule prohibiting animal products. So for these issues, I think vegan/vegetarianism is a bit silly in that it imposes this unneeded rule. That leaves the moral problem.

As I said before, I respect that other people will think differently on the moral issue. However I personally do think the notion that killing animals to eat them is somehow morally wrong is an absurd one. It is a fact of life that all animals consume other living beings to live. You know, "circle of life" and all that.

And fwiw, I do not think human life is necessarily more valuable than that of other animals, just different. I respect the meat I do consume, and the animal whose life was taken so that I could consume it. But yes, I treat other animals differently than I treat humans, because they are different. And by the way, the analogy of meat-eaters to people-killers is the most absurd thing said here yet.

I would encourage any meat eaters here to go personally witness a slaughtering if possible. Everyone should know where their food comes from. And if this is something you can't stomach, then perhaps you should question your decision to eat meat.

Regarding calling this a 'vegan' bread: it's true that many breads, like focaccia, are vegan. But (do I really have to say this?) many are not since they contain milk or eggs, so it's useful for some people to have this label.

As for 'bashing' vegans and vegetarians, people only make fun of them for the same reason they make fun of a lot of other things: they think it's silly. And I kind of agree. Yes, I appreciate that vegans and vegetarians are making healthy and responsible eating choices, but the rules they insist upon seem arbitrary. You can be very healthy and environmentally conscious while still eating animal products. Veganism and Vegetarianism just seems to be another example to me of the very American culture of having to impose weird rules on our food.

Other than health or eco-consciousness, the only case I can think of for vegan/vegetarianism is that some feel it is morally wrong to kill animals to eat them. As it's a moral question, I respect that people are going to think differently on this, but frankly I find this absurd, and think this is the source of much of the ridicule.

Of course, I think there are many other things far stupider and sillier that deserve to be mocked. Like calling a healthy and responsible lifestyle an eating disorder.

I think this is really nifty. Yes, probably no one will wear that anywhere but on the runway, but that's not the point. No one will decorate their house with the Duchamp toilet or dance to most modern music. We seem to understand that art in these mediums can't be judged on their practical worth, but exists for its own sake. Why should it be any different for high fashion, which is another art form, one that glamorizes the human form and in this case clearly makes an indictment of the human culture around it.

I grabbed several handfuls of coins out of my change jar and they averaged 2.35 cents/gram. But the standard deviation was a whopping 0.68 cents/gram, so the distribution of coins in each handfuls was rather volatile, to the point where this calculator seems largely valueless.

Also, there's no way to account for the weight of the jar.

clearly these should have been called podsicles.