Socialism is the government control of production, and it's largely dead outside of Cuba and North Korea.
Nope, not necessarily. There are many definitions of socialism, and lots of movements defined as socialists. Many of them don't involve State control of production, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
You can find a few outliers (such as the usual crop of left-anarchists who want to smash governments and replace them with, um, different organizations that make people in their territories follow rules through coercion), but they are of no significance and give no cover to the sloppy American tendency to call a capitalist society with a welfare state "socialist".
-The State Department is party to spying on other countries and the UN (really? we didn't know that already? come on)
It's not the same to suspect than to have proof. And this is no little thing: it's another broken international agreement.
-More countries agree with us on Iran and North Korea than I thought (shit, maybe our state department is doing a better job than I thought)
Nope, not really. It has been a surprise (to most, maybe you know more of international politics than nearly everyone else)to know that arab countries wanted the US to go to war with Iran. Not a little thing, too.
This is not watergate. I wish we had half this much attention on other major scandals that have gone on in the last 20 years that were far more important than everything I've seen in here so far.
Then it can also be said that not disclosing also puts lives in danger. Talking is cheap. There is yet no reason to beleive that Wikileaks hasn't acted responsibly.
Well, it doesn't cover the niceties of C99. While I own it, and it'd be the first C book i'd recommend, it could perfectly have a chapter explaining some changes in C since it was written.
The thing is that if you don't remember later what you've read/studied, why make the effort?
Anyway, I also thing «so what?». Even if you think you've forgotten, things do stay in the head, and next time you pick up the subject everything is quicker. Not to mention when learning in one place helps you in others.
«The biggest problem with voting not being mandatory is
that a lot of people don't have the opportunity because
they can't get off work. If you made voting mandatory (or
at least made election day a paid holiday), this
impediment might be alleviated.»
An alternative, as it's done in Spain, is to give everyone the right to leave their jobs in order to vote. To alleviate things for businesses, all elections happen on Sundays.
In Illinois at least employers are required to allow employees to take two paid hours off at the beginning or end of their shift to vote. Also there's "no excuse" absentee vote by mail and early voting available throughout the state.
