Interesting, so why do "laymen" in the US keep electing zealots, crackpots, and "entrepreneurs" who are clearly lying to their face for fun and profit? Do you guys enjoy being treated with contempt?

Funny you should say that, the diplomatic cable leaks showed that high level western diplomats in Syria were concerned about a civil war erupting due to the severe "fertile crescent" drought fuelling internal migration from rural areas to the cities (10% of Syria's total population simply abandoned their farms due to lack of water). The drought caused food prices to rise sharply and food riots became a regular occurrence in cities across the middle east and North Africa.

"flash point" - Have a look at why that protester set fire to himself in the public square and why it resonated so strongly across the Arab world, it wasn't because they all logged on to FB and suddenly realised their governments were tyrannical. Predicting this sort of social unrest is like predicting an earthquake in LA, you can be pretty confident that your prediction will come to pass but have no idea when.

As I said it's a cultural thing, whether you believe it or not the vast majority of Aussies would strongly disagree with your statement as would the citizens of many (but not all) EU countries.

It may also surprise you that the laws here in Oz were promoted and enacted by John Howard who was the most conservative right wing prime minister we've had since the 60's. There is no discernible left/right divide over gun laws and socialised health in Oz, decades of surveys consistently report 80+% of the population support both initiatives (which is why the right wing embraced socialised health as a "God-given right" back in the 80's).

Disclaimer: A close relative of mine owned a hand gun collection of about 30 pieces under these laws for about 10yrs, he had a safe concreted into the floor, he had the cops knock and ask to look about 2-3 times in those 10yrs. None of this particularly bothered him, what caused him to sell his collection to a licensed dealer was his eldest son's heroine addiction.

Personally I don't see random inspections of private armouries as "tyranny" any more than I see random breath test as "tyranny", I actually see those two things as protecting MY right not to be killed/maimed by a drunk with a car/gun.

I for one do stare at black holes and wonder what's inside?

Coincidently Conway's game of life got me interested in programming way back in the mid 80's. The original argument you pose is of course the same one posed in the matrix. Douglas Adams does the best version of the counter argument.

From an Aussie POV it looks like Americans are paying caviar prices and being served dog food. The Aussie health system has statistically better results that the US system, however a 'single breadwinner" Aussie family of four is paying about one tenth what a similar American family pays for health insurance. To add irony to injury, one tenth of what the US family spends on health is already included in their tax bill and spent on government health schemes.

It's been said that the measure of a nation is found in how it treats it's weakest citizens - the US does rather badly on that score compared to other (modern) western countries.

You do realise there are 27 nations in the EU, dozens of different languages and hundreds if not thousands of provinces, all of whom have been at war with each other for at least the last 2000yrs. Agree the US is far more diverse than most non-American's realise but it's diversity was inherited from Europe, not only via the early settlers, but also the gold rush days, and the two world wars.

That's odd, I haven't noticed an increase in local warlords since we implemented similar hand gun laws here in Oz about 25yrs ago. It's definitely a cultural thing, hand guns have never been popular in Oz or the UK. Even when they were legal if you claimed you needed a gun to protect yourself you were seen by "polite society" as a either thug or a coward, probably both. This is also reflected in Australian law since "self defence" is no longer a valid reason to own a gun, "hunting" and "sport" are ok. Under the heading of "sport" you can own a handgun for target shooting, provided you keep it at the range, or submit to "surprise" inspections of your home armoury by the cops.

He has clearly stated it was his mistake. The third option you hint at is of course "Admit nothing", it's the preferred option for 10/10 corporations, governments, religions. This guy is an engineer, one who's moral compass points to option 2, he has stood up publically and owned his mistake so others can be aware of the problem and do something about (coincidently "what to do about HB" was the topic of discussion at work today).

Correct, doing the "right thing" doesn't require brains, it requires principles and the balls to live up to them.

You seem to be arguing against a different quote than the one you posted? Also "weather" is the correct term since he speaking in the ignorant words of his antagonist's voice.

From a "big picture" POV, there are two schools of thought, the first says if you reduce everyone's hours there will be more jobs, the other says it will just shrink the economy, both schools of thought have valid points. I suspect the answer is somewhere in-between the two schools, neither is a clear "winner" because we are dealing with a very complex system called the economy.

Exactly, it's one of the reasons why soldiers have been predominately 16-25yo males since the dawn of time, they are much easier to indoctrinate.

Remember that back when that was written most people believed that things that appeared in the sky were gods in their own right, particular importance was placed on the sun and the moon because of the influence they have on the seasons and the timing of animal migrations and fish spawning's. Understanding these cycles is critical to forming a civilization as evidenced by massive structures like stone henge dotted all over the planet, these are basically gigantic "farmer's almanac calculators", telling the owners when to plant, harvest, look for salmon runs, birds eggs, etc. They certainly did not think of the Moon as a lifeless rock circling the Earth, it was the physical manifestation of a God in the heavens. The bible changed all this by claiming there was one true God and what went on in the heavens was his doing.

There was no such thing as astronomy and the claims made in your post would appear to be gibberish to them, they could see with their own eyes that the gods played in the heavens that encircled the Earth [hamburgeruniverse.com]. The idea of the dome is reflected in the domes of temples and churches. Genesis waffles on about god separating the waters above from the waters below with a dome, not sure if that's referring to rain, the fact that the sky is blue, or something else.

As an old fart "gamer" I find temper tantrums and trolls in the chat window of most games are relatively easy to ignore but the constant flow of bullshit does get in the way of useful communication between teammates. I like the common gaming feature where you can quickly filter a particular troll/spammer out of the chat window by clicking "ignore" on their name. It's a simple and very effective way to clean up the chat window on the spot. I don't use audio chat but it wouldn't surprise me if it had a similar feature.

Win, lose, or draw, I call 'gg' when I die, a lot of kids don't understand old fashioned "sportsmanship" so it sometimes confuses them and they respond with something like - "How is it gg? We lost!". Problem is, if they are old/sober enough to type coherent comments into a chat window and still don't get the "play nice" thing, they probably never will.

There are two mutually exclusive sets of frequencies, "can hear" and "can't hear".
Max(can hear) = 20k.
Therefore 320k and uncompressed (above 20k) are both in the "can't hear" set