Send payment and if I have mod points I'll apply them to your posts (or to those on the other side of whatever flamewar you're in) in a totally unbiased way of course:

• Funny $5
• Insightful $4
• Troll $7

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Buy 14, get one free !

Gun laws do keep guns out of the hands of criminals, all over the place. They can be effective and that's why the FUD is spread about them.

The hypothetical member of the insurance industry AC had it right.

Take my health insurance for example. I can't be charged extra for a pre-existing condition. But I don't qualify for the discount for not having the pre-existing condition. It starts with "discounts of up to $35 per month" available if you participate in the health screening (blood analysis, BMI etc.), so you participate. Then "oh, and by the way to qualify for the discount you have to answer the online survey (you guessed it, lots of mental health questions). Then "oh, you don't qualify for the full discount because of your girth/height ratio. You should take action".

last I checked my waistline was pretty similar last year.

Insurance has become a nickle and diming game based on taking your personal information and either losing it, selling it or using it against you directly

This is clearly a bug asteroid. It's your duty to sign up into the Mobile infantry immediately.

It may be better for the employee too. After all, if I were working out my last couple of weeks I'd be paranoid about making some critical mistake and screwing something up. I'm careful anyway, but things can go wrong and if they do at a time when people are suspicious anyway then there'll be a law suit.

I've had the opposite experience. I try to do a lot of jobs myself and that means that it's not generally an emergency when I call someone and I can wait for someone who is getting good reviews or a personal recommendation from a friend/neighbor, but the roto-rooter guy had a root cutting tool that I will never own and he was quick and efficient at getting my drain line unplugged, the heating guys spent days crawling around under my house, a service I was very willing to pay for having done far too much of that myself. I could never have done as good a job making the kitchen cabinets as the carpenter I employed. In general the people coming to the house have been courteous, fair and competent.

What about sincerely held non-religious convictions. Oh that's right. the protection of the law is only supposed to extend to followers of the book.

No-one is born jewish.

And assuming sexual preference is a mental function then I'm not sure that such function is present in a newborn either (I know the brain is still developing).

Being Romanian is merely an artifice to do with the parents' legal status and the place of birth, not anything intrinsic to the newborn's biology (the baby is a citizen of Earth).

So of all of the things you list as being innate at Birth I would say that skin tone is innate, Sexual Orinetation may be innate, nationality is not a biological issue and jewishness is an add-on later (or a take-away if you count the Bris I suppose).

Have you ever seen a movie where the bomb was defused with 3 minutes left on the clock. No-one will be interested until its in single digits of seconds to midnight.

I'd buy it too. I suck at remembering people's names, its an embarassment. Even people I've known for a while I just can't come up with a name for sometimes.

Just how does one reproduce a temperature measurement from 150 years ago ? Aside from photocopying the handwritten record ?

The problem to my mind is that so many voices try to convince us that all politics has only an X axis and that every issue lies far to one end or the other on that axis.I'd love to hear a discussion on, say, abortions might be reduced, with the intent to find some workable steps to reduce the incidence of abortions instead of the sole purpose of the debate being how to perpetuate two-party politics.

When I was a kid my bed time was marked by the TV schedule, I had to go to bed at the end of Star Trek. I used to hope each episode would go on longer. The whole thing brings back happy memories of childhood. I especially enjoyed the episodes where some presumably sensitive and complex circuit board under the main console in the bridge had to be repaired by Spock using some kind of crude welding process

going off at a tangent, isn't Spock proof of god's existence (leaving aside the nit that Spock is fictional) ? There's no way evolution could account for the breeding compatibility of an earth woman and a vulcan man

reminds me of a tv documentary, I think of an investigation in Ireland. The perps had left an apple at the scene that had some unusual bite marks in it. The Dentist they showed it to gave a full description of the guy, down to hair color, how tall he was. Apparently some rages/genders/body types were genetically predisposed to gnawing on apples in that way. Of course, now I know about parallel construction... But it made for a great tv show.

I don't see that the privatization of government services is necessarily a "dark side". If the services can be delivered more effectively and efficiently by private organizations then they should be. My only problem is with those that would campaign for privatization when there is good evidence to suggest things will be worse as a consequence just because they are anti-government.