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I don't think you understand the mindset of today's Republican Party:

1. The only fair tax is a flat tax, and the only purpose of government should be to push that tax rate as close to 0% as possible. Charging fees for government services is OK. For example, national forests do not manage themselves, so those who visit should have to pay a fee to cover the costs of managing the national forests.
2. Building and maintaining the roads and bridges you drive on should be the responsibility of private corporations. The state should auction off all public roadways and use the proceeds to pay off all public debt. The new owners should be allowed to collect tolls, and by the magic of the free and unregulated market, any roads worth maintaining will be maintained.
3. Law enforcement should not be a financial strain on tax payers. Private security firms like Academi, previously known as Xe Services LLC, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide, do the job of maintaining law and order for efficiently that government agencies like the local police department, state troopers, FBI, CIA, or US Army. Under the current system tax payers still have to fund the hiring of these firms, but ideally individuals who care about law and order will contract with such firms to patrol their neighborhoods and keep skittle-toting thugs away from their property.
4. The US court system is bloated, backlogged, and too expensive to maintain. Private arbitration firms can dish out justice more efficiently. Eventually all of the US courts can be privatized, especially the meddlesome US Supreme Court that is still stacked with FDR appointed activist judges who constantly trample on the Constitution.
5. The original signed copies of the US Constitution should not be preserved in bloated and wasteful tax-payer funded government agencies such as the National Archives, Library of Congress, or national institutes/museums. The Constitution has such a high value that it should be auctioned off to the highest bidder, along with the holdings of all these other government agencies. Private depositories and wealthy collectors can preserve our national treasures more efficiently. Museums that house such artifacts should be entirely self-funding from ticket sales and the private sale of over-priced artifacts, such as the Declaration of Independence. Those who cannot remain solvent should be allowed to fail.
6. Fire departments should not be tax supported. Those who wish to have fire protection should pay fees to the fire and rescue company of their choice. Here is a great example of an efficient operation: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/
7. Sovereign-provided privileges, immunities, rights and services should not be the responsibility of a tax-supported government. All privileges, immunities, rights and services should be treated as commodities to be auctioned off and/or privatized so that the delivery of such privileges, immunities, rights and services will be more efficient.

Bottom line: Asking tax payers to pay for anything is morally reprehensible.

OK. Here's a link that suggests that Bush polled ahead of Kerry in the military vote: A Link.

Now where did you get the idea that Kerry led over Bush among the military? Citation, please.

"assassination arm" sounds so subordinate. But yes, there is sufficient confirmation that MEK and Mossad are working together. The US provided the training. Articles about US and Mossad involment are at foreignpolicy, msnbc and the newyorker(in order of publication):

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag
http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/08/10354553-israel-teams-with-terror-group-to-kill-irans-nuclear-scientists-us-officials-tell-nbc-news#star3
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/mek.html

Don't know who modded this offtopic but the number of infected machines seems germane to the discussion. And AC's correct that the infection rate was dropping rapidly even before this tool hit :

"The number of Macs infected by the Flashback malware has gone down by more than half, from 550,000 to 600,000 computers last week to 270,000 in the last 24 hours, Symantec said Wednesday."

Now whether this is because of an overestimation of the original infection or due to the Apple community being energized and taking action (or a combination of the two) is up for discussion.

As ar as I know, Hezbollah is military force which is not very concerned about modesty issues etc, unlike so called Jewish Talebans:

• Silence! Jerusalemâ(TM)s Jewish Taliban want women to refrain from singing in public
• Jewish Taliban Attacks Elderly Woman for... Something...
• The Jewish Taliban
• Thousands in Israel protest against Jewish extremists
• Haredi teargases woman for using 'men only' sidewalk

Fair enough. Of course I live in the "communist" state of Canada, where we believe in universal health care. I am not really well versed on the specifics of the American model, other than that it costs more per capita and covers a smaller percentage of Americans. Also, I don't have to worry about walking into a hospital and worrying if my insurance company is going to deny my lifesaving treatment because I forgot to cross a 'T' in my name (thankfully, there are no Ts in my names).

I'll just rely on a quick google search, with the first few hits challenging your earlier assertion regarding the coverage situation, at least as it relates to "your sides" arguments.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/08/05/289117/hannity-blasts-insurance-coverage-for-birth-control-defends-viagra-that-is-a-medical-problem/?mobile=nc

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91538

http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/09/10622742-bill-oreilly-viagra-should-be-covered-birth-control-should-not

I find it funny that I got roped into this. I think I'm slipping. My main point was how you started with an argument against funding fusion research, and some how you compared it to the ongoing and sexist controversy regarding women's reproductive health. Kudos. You, sir, are a grade A troll.

Fortunately it can be replaced. For example, instead of buying a math textbook on economics, you can simply use Khan Academy for free instead. When momopoly printing creates a vacuum, something with disruptive propertys will move in. See the series on The Cupcake Factory for more info on this.

http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.khanacademy.org/finance-economics/current-economics/v/economics-of-a-cupcake-factory

As affordable alternatives move into the market and become better, the entrenched market will feel the pain. The Pay TV market is having issues with this now as Netflix and other online streaming content is disrupting the pay tv market.
http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/more-us-are-cutting-cord-pay-tv-667429

Once you have government, and law, and an economy, most people do not want to earn their living by risking being shot at.

And yet the US military employs about 3 million soldiers.

When I think of US, I don't know why, it is not the economy but the debt that pops into my mind. Granted, there are some signs of improvement and, GDP percentage-wise, others are much worse.

Well, unless you're Cheny. Near the end of his interview with NBC about him shooting his buddy in the face, he said that Vice Presidents can declassify (and therefore divulge) whatever information they want.

OK, so according to this other article, the Da Vinci robot has been used in the UK already, meaning that this isn't the first laparoscopic surgery in the UK in 3D. It may have the novelty of letting the rest of the team view the procedure in 3D, but that's irrelevant because only the guy manipulating the instruments needs it.

The real difference compared to a Da Vinci is that the robotic arms are hand-held rather than held steady by a large robotic mounting. The advantage is simply that just having a couple robotic arms is much cheaper than a whole Da Vinci robot.

Note that this is not even the first use of 3D with this handheld robotic arm system. That was last year. It may have been the first use of this combination in the UK, though.

Also, I've never seen a Da Vinci used in a separate room from the console. In my experience they generally use it with the console and robot in the same room.

dom

I'm pretty sure that the police do not have jurisdiction to shoot down aircraft.

You may want to talk to the NYPD who has said they can shoot down planes, likely speaking of Barrett .50 caliber rifles that can be mounted on their police helicopters.

How many Slashdotters argued voraciously that Hans Reiser was innocent before all the facts were in? How many people signed the anti-Apple-FoxConn petition before the basis was found to be a hoax?

Aren't those protesting -- asking for "justice" (code word for arrest and conviction) -- engaged in the same sort of vigilante justice that got Trayvon killed?

Yes. I know, it's more politically correct to demand Zimmerman's head than to wait for facts to emerge. It's better to react to the distorted photos and the doctored 9-1-1 tapes then to wait for those who are dealing with all the facts.

Please, go ahead, mark this as "troll" because it doesn't fit your world view -- and you certainly can make all the correct decisions without really knowing what happened.

What you're missing here is that had the roles been reversed, Trayvon Martin would be sitting in a jail cell, probably without bail (or some huge amount that pretty much ensures that he'd stay in jail), awaiting trial for murder and/or manslaughter. What's pissing people off is the lack of equal treatment under the law.

In addition, an eyewitness, 13-year-old Austin Brown, told police he saw a man fitting Zimmerman's description lying on the grass moaning and crying for help just seconds before he heard the gunshot that killed Martin.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/28/10909475-witness-mom-says-police-told-her-trayvon-martin-shooting-wasnt-self-defense

Do you have a link for me?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/30/trayvon-martin-lawyers-evidence-leaks-zimmerman
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/20/neighbor-trayvon-martin-shooting-wasnt-self-defense/

Like I said, the witness story is inconsistent; the problem is that either side cherry picks the lines that support their case. Which, to me, is a clear indication that this should go to trial, where they can properly examine the evidence, question the witnesses etc

How many Slashdotters argued voraciously that Hans Reiser was innocent before all the facts were in? How many people signed the anti-Apple-FoxConn petition before the basis was found to be a hoax?

Aren't those protesting -- asking for "justice" (code word for arrest and conviction) -- engaged in the same sort of vigilante justice that got Trayvon killed?

Yes. I know, it's more politically correct to demand Zimmerman's head than to wait for facts to emerge. It's better to react to the distorted photos and the doctored 9-1-1 tapes then to wait for those who are dealing with all the facts.

Please, go ahead, mark this as "troll" because it doesn't fit your world view -- and you certainly can make all the correct decisions without really knowing what happened.

I don't doubt it in the lease bit. Much of the talk from vets has been a harsh resistance staying abroad and wanting to come home. Then you get this little bit of fun: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/29/10927844-child-witnesses-to-afghan-massacre-say-robert-bales-was-not-alone

I doubt it. Now a days, there is very little hope of winning when it comes to your word against theirs.

It has worked in the past and probably still is. Additionally there was this bit on /. a while back about the number of bits used when doing the A to D conversion was too low (12 bit A-D converter where only 4 bits were used) which basically showed the values to be to course to be of any value on the low end.

I'd be curious if any big companies are doing this. This seems like the kind of thing a small shop would do. It seems legally dubious enough that big companies would fear lawsuits.

Well the Virginia State Police is not a company at all, but they are a pretty large employer. They don't ask you to turn over your passwords, but they do require you to log into your account so they can check out your postings. In fact, from what I have seen, it appears that most of the organizations doing this are government organizations like police departments and government agencies.

So this whole thing is misguided, as they are targeting private companies for the restriction, when in fact all of the examples of employers do this that I have seen are actually government bureaucrats themselves, which of course are always exempted.

I doubt any head of any big multinational corporation give a rat's ass about anyone's life except their own. Otherwise there would have been doors on Purina's elevator in 1959 and my grandfather wouldn't have been a vegetable for the next fifteen years until he died, and the Sago Mine wouldn't have exploded in 2006, killing two dozen men.

Do you really think a 1%er cares about anyone but himself and close friends and relatives? If your death will make him richer, you'll die. Damed hard to become a multimillionaire unless you're a sociopath. Possible, yes, but damned hard.

They missed the obvious explanation: namely that the "24 separate samples of lunar rock and soil" are actually "24 separate samples of earth rock and soil", much like the petrified wood fiasco

A quick Google search turned up this article. It gives the names of two people who were asked for passwords, one by a prospective employer (he refused and withdrew his application) and one by an employer he was returning to (he gave his info because he felt he had to). For the second of those, it names the employer: the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Evidently they stopped asking for passwords after complaints by the ACLU.

This article http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/23/10831821-mysterious-cloud-spotted-on-mars says that it has 'since' been found in images going back to the 12th.

Correct, and they're banging this out for comparative pennies on the dollar. The take-away is that we've chosen our direction, and it's the only way to make real progress.

Another space truck is below NASA. They did it for decades. Now private companies like SpaceX are in the process of providing those services, including plans for manned flight in their Dragon capsule.

NASA is, and arguably should be, working on exploration. New, exciting, difficult work... not spending their entire budget on trucking rations to the ISS in old, expensive clunkers.

People smarter than us have seen this new direction coming and it's working out well.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46826631/ns/technology_and_science-space/

Yep soil bacteria can even improve mood:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18082129/ns/health-livescience/t/soil-bacteria-can-boost-immune-system/

And increase learning ability... in mice ;) http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=soil-bacteria-might-increase-learni-10-05-24

Many like the smell after rain which partly results from bacteria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin

Generally, people with allergies avoid "fish", not "pacific bluefin tuna", and wouldn't try to eat atlantic bluefin tuna (conservation status of the two aside). It'd actually be rather dangerous to do the trials to determine exactly what is safe and what isn't.

It being fraud is absolutely true. OTOH, personally I wouldn't care if I got "Salmon or similar" so long as it's tasty and safe to eat. Overfishing a specific species for no reason beyond marketing is stupid but profitable. OTOH, when pufferfish gets substituted for salmon, that's bad.

I might just take a prosthetic testicle, given the option and all other outcomes being equal.

Though I wonder if they don't render most of the nasty bits of this herpes virus inert. I seem to remember reading something similar about an HIV based one.

Yep, harmless, modified version of HIV used as treatment for lukemia:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44090512/ns/health-cancer/t/new-leukemia-treatment-exceeds-wildest-expectations/

i'm sorry? what?

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/28/9070661-double-amputee-battles-triathlon-and-wins-silver

Done: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2008/12/16/4351315-fusion-we-can-believe-in

You can always make anecdotes about hardware durability. My 4-year-old Macbook Pro runs hot because of clogged fans that would require lengthy disassembly to clean, and is falling apart at seams that were presumably glued together.

Unless you're compiling statistics on these things on a large scale, anecdotes aren't useful.

Ok, how about this "large scale" statistic?

Oh, and note where the article appears. Hardly an Apple fan site...

Your move.

I'm from Connecticut, and while we've had several high profile ones we can't compete with Illinois.. Between 1976 and 2006 Illinois had 79 elected officials found guilty by either a judge, jury or plea. It was such a banner year in 1991 with no convictions or indictments the Chicago Sun-Times ran a front page story! I don't think any other local jurisdiction in the country can compete with that.

It should always happen when cost for R&D is payed for. Brazil broke Mercks patent on AIDS retroviral drugs. Merck had offered to sell the drug for $1.10 per pill, down from $1.57, while Brazil was seeking to purchase the drug at 65 cents a pill, the same price Thailand pays. Brazil provides free AIDS drugs to anyone who needs them and manufactures generic versions of several drugs that were in production before Brazil enacted an intellectual property law in 1997 to join the WTO. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18490388/ns/health-aids/t/brazil-break-merck-aids-drug-patent/#.T1-j_xHy92A

Actually it can and has been done...to a reasonable point anyway.

As far back as 1950's experiments were done that took what we believe the early earth atmosphere was and ran electric shocks (lightning) through them.

Viola, amino acids, organic building blocks, were formed. So yes there is a way to produce the building blocks of life from no life that is testable and repeatable.

Is it tested through from acid creation to swinging monkeys? Of course not. But it is the 'aha' moment that proves that organics CAN be created out of inorganic material naturally and reliably given the right conditions.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14825048/ns/health-heart_health/t/yrs-after-transplant-heart-patient-healthy/

Here's an example of how unions can be incredibly counter productive.

Note that its not the union that's forcing these them to stay employed. That's the rules of their contract that say they can't be fired without documented reasons. Most of them there will probably be fired as soon as the city figures itself out and finished the hearing. The others are being forced to not work while false/fraudulent accusations are leveled against them.

Those rules (requiring termination have a substantial basis) are there to protect tax payers just as much as they protect teachers.

The problem is a screwed up court/mediation system that cannot process them fast enough.

You'll find that teachers (the ones who are actually teaching) hate the teachers in those rubber rooms just as much as you do. Yet, you're quick to paint them all as scheming and lazy.

I'm not the OP, but perhaps I can expand on his points.

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head that some parents just don't care and this is going to have a negative impact on their child's education. I'm not even sure if that can be fixed as some of that may be cultural or rooted too deeply to fix in a practical manner.

The unions can definitely be a problem at times. The general assumption is that a teacher's union will place the good of the teachers ahead of anything else. Here's an example of how unions can be incredibly counter productive. Unions certainly have their good points, but they can become entirely self-serving and more harmful than good as well.

We can easily define the problem as "our students are not doing as well as students in other first world countries and we feel that they should be performing at a higher level and learning more from their education." Some posters on /. have even pointed out (whether it's true or not I don't know.) that education in this country is getting worse compared to where it was in the past. From there it follows what it is that we'd like to improve.

However, even if other countries have good solutions, America isn't the same. In certain parts of the country, there are a lot of people who don't grow up speaking English as a first language or don't have their English language skills as developed as other students. This already puts them at a severe disadvantage. Other parts of the country don't have a culture that values education, whereas other countries may have a population that values education highly. Simply applying their methods may not work and in some cases may leave us worse off than we are now. That's why this is such a hard problem.

Just because they get married doesn't mean they stay married or hang around as part of the household. His figures might be off, but most of his points still stand:
http://newsone.com/nation/newsonestaff3/children-single-parents-u-s-american/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39993685/ns/health-womens_health/t/blacks-struggle-percent-unwed-mothers-rate/
The US blacks have a self-destructive culture. They glorify what keeps them down.

Legal dangers? Students have limited rights when it comes to the first amendment in the U.S.:
* http://articles.cnn.com/2007-06-25/justice/free.speech_1_principal-deborah-morse-banner-case-school-policy/2?_s=PM:LAW
* Some public schools feel they need to the decide what students wear, public uniforms. I know my school tried to enforce uniforms after a suicide threat by a kid who brought a knife into school and after seeing this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epeo8Pfm1xM . They just made us tuck in our shirts when the district and the parents refused to pay for uniforms.
* Webcam monitoring was already attempted: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-20/justice/laptop.suit_1_webcam-district-court-laptop?_s=PM:CRIME
* And requesting social media passwords aren't unheard of considering other things: http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10585353-govt-agencies-colleges-demand-applicants-facebook-passwords

Requesting passwords seems to be well within the gray area where a non-timid district would be willing to make a power grab, and hope to gain such abilities. The gov is brushing up against warrantless cellphone searches (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/obama-admin-wants-warrantless-access-to-cell-phone-location-data.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss), so an organization tasked with keeping our children safe from even themselves could easily make the argument to sympathetic members of the public that they need this power.

Actually, reading the article I see that last statement is a bit truer. They brought in law enforcement to force a hand over of information without a warrant. The Superintendent's response to the lawsuit: [quote]"We're taken aback by it," he said.[/quote]. Worrying about the legality didn't seem to even cross their minds it seems.

The part that has me tweaked is they did this. She's twelve. Facebook, last I checked, requires you to be thirteen. They had a perfectly jerkwad path to take to get her off/limit her Facebook activities already if they could get the company to comply, and possibly a lawsuit they could win if Facebook didn't.

While what happened in this story is tragic, she knew the consequences. I don't agree with the parent's response of lobbying for new laws, either- theft is illegal, but that doesn't mean people don't steal.

My point was that such things will be fought over between the left and the right, between the educated and the ignorant, between the moderates and the extremists. The actual details of any specific case are irrelevant but I chose the Texas textbook case as something recent and highly contentious.

With regard to your post, you should provide references to back up your statements as they appear to directly conflict the references I posted.

From the Washington Post article I referenced:
"The curriculum plays down the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions the separation of church and state, and claims that the U.S. government was infiltrated by Communists during the Cold War."

Another example, staying in Texas, is teaching creationism (aka intelligent design) vs teaching evolution (aka what all of science tells us to be the actual way things happened):
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/21/7135995-creationism-controversy-again-slips-into-texas-textbook-debate

You are correct. It was Radovan Karadzic. My apologies for unintentionally spreading misinformation.

And he is not bound by any law prohibiting the distribution of these files

I don't think that issue is as clear as you do. There's little stopping Congress from passing a law granting themselves some sort of worldwide jurisdiction (assuming the law would be otherwise valid). The better question is whether any of the rest of the world would care. If they refuse to extradite, the point is moot.

In this particular case, I see little reason not to extradite. His actions would be illegal pretty much everywhere, which is one major factor to the extradition process. Prosecutors could simply assure they will not seek the death penalty (assuming it's even possible; it depends what he would be charged under) to defuse another. Though it's debatable on a philosophical level, the vast majority of these nations also recognize our legal system as fair and capable of a fair trial, defusing another. If the US really does have a sealed indictment, it's already declared that he has, in fact, engaged in behavior that can be reasonably construed as breaking US law insofar as being deserving of bringing him to trial. I see no reason for other nations to second guess that declaration as a matter of policy, which means they would be making exceptions for Assange and quite frankly opening themselves up to problems in the future in terms of equal protection within their jurisdictions.

How did they get the indictment? I don't know. We haven't seen it, obviously, assuming it even exists. We don't know what it's for, so it's hard to even speculate. I've seen some interesting theories with regard to the Espionage Act. Quoting a law professor's interpretation of the act, it "prohibits the willful communication, delivery, or transmission to 'any person not entitled to receive it' of 'any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.'" That certainly seems to apply, at least superficially enough to bring to trial. Assange's propensity for running his mouth and making comments about how he hopes to bring governments down makes it awfully hard to backtrack on his intent as well. You can probably manage jurisdiction pretty easily since the information was originally hosted on, and thus disseminated from, Amazon servers -- Amazon being an American company and the servers likely, at least in part, on American soil. And that's just one way. (The whole article is interesting if you want to read it. You can see each parties' biases shine through, but they all bring up a lot of good points that would be raised at trial.)

I'm not making any judgments about the case itself, by the way. I'm simply saying that whether or not he should be brought to trial or should be extradited is not nearly so simple an issue. In fact he probably should be; I think the burdens on that end have been met. The better questions are whether he should be prosecuted and if he is, if he should be convicted.

If it goes to trial, there are a ton of huge issues. First Amendment protections; the definition of journalists; the requirement of intent; application of not only the law but First Amendment protection itself to foreign nationals (on foreign soil); the very definitions of espionage themselves. I think he has a lot of damn good defenses -- probably more than enough to generate reasonable doubt. I simply believe they should be adjudicated in the United States if you United States makes those allegations. The other burdens to extradition are met in my mind.

Well that seems to be the iPad approach!

On a iPad, kids won't steal your data. Instead they can steal your money

Yes, we need an "artist exploitation watchlist", so that Elvis Costello and Motörhead don't have to go out and publically WARN their fans against buying over-priced box sets made to line the pockets of record company executives.

He was actually doing pretty well until he said the economy looked like it was doing fine just before it collapsed. Of course Democratic partisans will say that he never had a chance, but as a middle-of-the-road decline-to-state voter it really looked like a close election up til then.

Are you kidding? McCain was a doddering mess of flip flopping incompetence that was disliked and distrusted by his own party. Running for the presidency after said party destroyed the economy, trashed the constitution, and became mired in endless corruption scandals.

2008 should have made the blowout of '64 look like a nailbiter in comparison....and it would have, but for three reasons:

1. Obama's race brought out the racist troglodytes - see the "birther" BS
2. The media loves a horse race and always gives the underdog a boost
3. Obama was too darned nice to clean McCain's clock

Unless you'd tell us with a straight face that if Obama confused Shiites with Sunnis no less than six times while running as the foreign policy candidate, called Petraus chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and went on about Iraq's border with Afghanistan (it's called Iran), that he would have gotten a free pass from the media and the Republican Party....

He was actually doing pretty well until he said the economy looked like it was doing fine just before it collapsed. Of course Democratic partisans will say that he never had a chance, but as a middle-of-the-road decline-to-state voter it really looked like a close election up til then.

Are you kidding? McCain was a doddering mess of flip flopping incompetence that was disliked and distrusted by his own party. Running for the presidency after said party destroyed the economy, trashed the constitution, and became mired in endless corruption scandals.

2008 should have made the blowout of '64 look like a nailbiter in comparison....and it would have, but for three reasons:

1. Obama's race brought out the racist troglodytes - see the "birther" BS
2. The media loves a horse race and always gives the underdog a boost
3. Obama was too darned nice to clean McCain's clock

Unless you'd tell us with a straight face that if Obama confused Shiites with Sunnis no less than six times while running as the foreign policy candidate, called Petraus chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and went on about Iraq's border with Afghanistan (it's called Iran), that he would have gotten a free pass from the media and the Republican Party....

http://www.csvr.org.za/wits/papers/paplvsl.htm - Africa rape culture
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8107039.stm - Rape is common and expected
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31835572/ns/world_news-africa/t/rape-culture-condemned-south-africa/ - Rape is a culture there.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/a/aids-virgins.htm -- how some africans believe the yunger the rape victim the more potent the cure to AIDS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misconceptions_about_HIV_and_AIDS -- even more about this nutty belief.

Everyone that modded him down is a head in the sand idiot. Africa is a Nasty Horrible place for women. it's flat out hell.

I wonder how many Yuan it will take to "show" that...

$10 million and they can buy iPad from Proview China "A Hong Kong court document shows that once the dispute arose, Proview demanded $10 million for the iPad name in China."

10 million is what, about what Apple makes in an hour? Just pay it.

In the absence of that though, I really feel we should all just live and let live. If you don't believe in God? Fine. I don't hate you for it. My best friend is an Atheist. He doesn't hate me because I do though, he realises that it makes me happy, and he's happy with that.

With the exception of a few militant Atheists who want to purge all religion from the world, the vast majority that I have met (and myself ) really are like that. We're totally fine with the whole "live and let live" thing. Believe whatever you want, no matter how crazy it might seem to us.

What I and many others do not tolerate is when that belief causes harm to others. That is dangerous and something we wish to end. I don't want to see another child die because his parents thought he could be made better by just praying. I don't want to see Scientology (or any other religion) succeed in infiltrating our government. I don't want to see the Catholic church succeed in keeping birth control out of the hands of impoverished women.

Far too many religions take the benefits of society while giving little or nothing in return. Religious hospitals who do not respect civil rights and law. Religious charities who don't hire someone because of their belief (or lack thereof). Institutional discrimination in everything but name that they get away with because of their freedom to believe.

If they don't help our society via charity (and play by the same rules - I'm looking at you, Catholic Charities), they shouldn't get shit for tax breaks or any other kind of government support.

Of course. There's a difference between food, and a fuel for humans that's certified safe by the FDA:
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/31/10282876-mcdonalds-drops-use-of-gooey-ammonia-based-pink-slime-in-hamburger-meat

I think it'll be pretty easy. The vehicle will have to stop if it detects a collision[1]. So the question is: after bumping the car from any side, how fast can determined thieves get to the GPS (or the communications device), disable it, hook up a tow truck and get away?

I'm betting faster than typical metro police can get to the last reported coordinates.

[1] Google's autonomous car rear-ended a car last year and stayed around for the accident. Apparently the accident was a result of "human error" but still, it stayed put.

A goat-boater who doesn't wear a wetsuit in seventy-degree water like the "real" surfers here do.

I'm gettin' sprayed and dumped into 58-degree or less water(surfed on Thanksgiving and Christmas days last year before dinner) , full of storm-runoff sewage pollution, and all of the "real" surfers are wearing hoodies and booties and full wetsuits. I'm in the soup with nothing on but a pair of boardshorts.

Granted, I'm not exactly surfing at Trestles - but any self-respecting surfer wearing a wetsuit in 70 degree water ought to be beat to death by the Bird Rock Crew[bullshit warning] and hung out to dry.

-- Ethanol-fueled