ck@10: Exactly my concern. On the one hand, it supports participation in government, which is good. On the other hand, it's Web 2.0 for phone spam, which is evil. Although, what's the worst thing that could happen? Politicians will phone screen and learn to ignore certain classes of calls, just like we do every day at home. If the database is turned on "the people", I'll just get more calls on my answering machine that I can safely ignore. So this is probably an overall positive. Unless it gets used for a distributed denial of phone service attack... oh, where's my unicorn? I NEED A UNICORN!!

Nelson.C@6: Great idea! As long as none of those 11 plots fit into Polti's list of 36 universal plots, you'll make millions!

MLambert@10: that amount of content lifting makes a great deal of difference, although since it's referred to as a concordance it's (1) unlikely to be mistaken for another Harry Potter novel and (2) supposed to quote sections of the text; it's a list of words in their context. The lack of attribution is worrisome, but might just be sloppy scholarship rather than an attempt to fool people into thinking it's Rowling's work.

Jeez, all this fuss makes me want to take a look at this wondrous item. Not enough to actually go looking for it, but, you know, idle curiosity.

Kennric@24: I think you're probably right, which distresses me, because I can't for the life of me think what those "deep and powerful" reasons are. It would be helpful to see them enumerated somewhere, if only so that those of us who apparently lack them can be educated. I mean, it's not like I can just decide one day that I'm going to start believing in God. That doesn't work any more than saying I'm going to start believing that things fall up. It might be convenient to be a believer; religious people supposedly live longer on average than disbelievers do. But that doesn't make it possible to become so.

Nex@5: Answer #1: Only real Panzers wear lederhosen.

Answer #2: the Panzer (Panther) was a famous German tank during World War 2, the tank that made the blitzkrieg possible. There were a lot of differences between the Panzer and other tanks, such as the American Sherman tank. I don't know what they were specifically, but I expect the experts can tell. (In the same way that I'd expect an expert on sports cars to tell that somebody's scale model Mustang isn't actually a Corvette.)

rlangg@22: Thanks! o/~ "the more you know..." o/~

radiationvibe@8: why would 'brother' have anything to do with 'tune in'? I'm baffled; I have no idea what chorus you might be talking about.

EvilRooster @305: 'Must we therefore request said flag, or burn an effigy?'

Drat! I was paying too much attention to the order of the I and E. Yeah, that's the ticket. OK, one flammable effigy, and some salt for my hat while I'm at it.

Nelson C@336: Yes! Possibly even Viking kittens. Taking our poor, defenseless vowels and defacing them with umlauts, macrons, slashes, and whatever else it is they do up there.

@216: 'I just wish he'd figure out that my last name isn't Hayden.'

It's not? I don't doubt you, it's your name after all, but in the absence of a hyphen or a widely-known non-English name particle (e.g. von, van, ap, or ten) it's the natural assumption. (And if it's not Nielson Hayden, then I'll have to ask for a flag on the play, or burn the ref in effigy or something.)

@198: Oh, that's so Formula 1 of you.

She's no Edison Carter, but the application of the tech is an interesting touch. And she's back on the low side of the uncanny valley for now.

TNH (15), "Christ, what an imagination I've got." (An exclamation forced out of me time and again by BB.)