This is why documentation and unit-testing are important. It's not the exciting part, but if they're not done well, you have no hope of being able to hand the refinement/bug-chasing aspect of the project down to someone else.
My understanding is that the 5-year failure rate of new businesses is about 40-50%. Given that an average 2x-year-old has a much lower chance of being successful enough in his first couple of jobs to (a) stay there for 5 years and (b) have it still be worth coming to work every day, this isn't a bad failure rate.
Those who want talent to trade highly against property are those who believe the best and most capable should be making the big decisions. They have the interest of humanity-at-large at heart.
Those who want the reverse are those who have power but lack talent, and their supporters.
Memo: Evolution is an explanation of fact and contains no moral (or religious, for that matter) position. Accepting evolution as an explanation of what happened does not require that one subscribe to so-called "Darwinist" social and economic ideologies.
If your freelance experience will set you up to get a good job, then you're not in a bad place. Most jobs available early on (e.g. out of college) suck; some jobs available later on are great. If you learn from and enjoy the people you work with, get interesting projects, and are respected, having a paid job isn't so bad.
My darkest hour was when I moved under undesirable circumstances, developed a serious health problem, lost my job, and broke up with my girlfriend in the space of 3 months, while the economy/job market was falling apart but before it started making the news (spring 2008). What was it like? Well, it ended.
People with wealth and connections are the bad guys, while the struggling guy at the bottom is the good guy.
It's not that simple. There are people who have both wealth/connections and talent. There are good guys who are well-connected and wealthy.
The moral battleground is the exchange rate between these two fundamental commodities. Talent should trade very high against property, but often it doesn't. The good guys are those who are trying to make the exchange rate proper; the bad guys believe the talented exist only to serve those who are already powerful. So powerful people who use their resources to advance those who are talented are among the good guys.
Invitation-only events don't belong in the technological scene.
There is an all-out, bitter war going on between property (connections, inherited wealth, resources) and energy (talent, ambition, hard work). One is past, one is future, and each wishes to demote the value of the other. One side has power but lacks the vision and talent to use it; the other has the capability but not the means.
Nerds are supposed to be on the side of the good guys.
For this sort of comparison, mostly-functional multi-paradigm languages like SBCL and Ocaml should be run through the benchmarks twice; once with imperative code, once in the functional idiom. The often-repeated complaint (of which I'm skeptical) about functional languages is that they're only efficient when ugly imperative features are used, and it would be good to confirm or dispel that suspicion.
I read that essay, and I think the reason for their existence is simpler: they make face-on mating more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing, which facilitates pair bonding.
One disagreement I have with the OP is in the assertion that permanent breasts would be a necessary disadvantage, ignoring the size issue. Permanent breasts probably evolved gradually, from unnoticeable to male-like to small to the size they are today. A prehistoric hominid female who sprouted D-cups among her flat-chested peers would be at a disadvantage for the reasons the OP gave-- she'd appear infertile at all times-- but the permanent-breasts/no dichotomy is false. The change almost certainly occurred incrementally.
No. I had a friend whose high school life was literally ruined by cheating.
He was a "pathological cheater": smart, and in the top 5 of the class by his own steam, but had a tendency to cheat on everything, even practice PSAT tests administered by the school. He cheated on an essay contest, his winning entry was published (oops!) and he was called out quite publicly when the paper published a retraction.
Rather than own up to it, he made up a bullshit story about how his story was only superficially similar. In fact, it was word-for-word identical, with the title changed.
He changed schools in order to avoid a failing grade for cheating on an exam (and mounting humiliation) to a Catholic school. He was supposedly kicked out of that school for (you guessed it) cheating.