Obviously, there's smaller cost if you just don't fight in the first place, but that's almost always been the case. War hasn't been a profitable enterprise for nations for quite some time.

That's why you shoot the space based weapons of your enemy first....Satellites are really pretty easy to destroy, seeing as they're very predictable, carry very little protection, and can't be put into position very quietly.

Manned, air-breathing hypersonic flight is probably a long ways off.

In any case, of course I was ignorant when I was 12 years old. I'm still ignorant now at 27, I don't mind saying it.... there's a universe of phenomena out there that I cannot explain.

You cite France, but France is doing fine, and it certainly isn't bankrupt. It's also not scaling back it's social expenditures; it is increasing them. They just elected a Socialist president, and he just raised taxes, and is implementing policies of increased government spending.

Then there's countries like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland...

Anyway, the US can hardly look at Europe and give them grief for being in debt... The US has the same debt to gdp ratio as Germany... without nearly as many social programs. For instance, Germany has universal healthcare and free higher education.

The US has put themselves in a situation where they are spending as much as Socialist countries, but without getting any of the benefits of social programs. Instead they get lots of bombs. Fantastic.

Isn't it likely that this rampant inflation is the result of the Fed, and a deregulated money supply? Blaming it on social programs seems kind of irrational.

Also, that figure is rather misleading. Population levels have exploded in that time period. It's only logical that prices will have gone up as well. After all, there are limited resources... increasing population is logically going to mean that prices will go up too, even with constant wages.

Many ignore the principle message of Jesus, the whole love everybody, care for the sick and poor, and accept everybody, even if they disagree with you.

But yeah, I agree. I don't know how people can possibly say that *their* god or belief is the right one, and others are wrong. How they can say that the old testament is right, while the ancient Greeks and their Pantheon of deities were ridiculous. It's just stunning.

There's no point in trying to find logic or reason in it though. Christians spent centuries persecuting and kill Jews, and yet their whole religion was founded by a Jew who said you should love and accept everyone, and the entire old testament basically IS Jewish. It just makes no sense at all. I gave up a long time ago trying to figure it out, I just accept that there's a significant part of the human brain finds the idea of the supernatural very appealing.

What's worse, is that my sister was always kind of an outsider, and when our family moved to Texas, she finally found acceptance in evangelical religious groups who were happy to bring her in and tell her what to believe.

Now she goes around the world on a ship, selling religious texts to poor people the world over, converting them to her brand of Christianity. Ah well. To each their own, as long as they keep their preaching out of our classrooms.

I consider ethical behavior to be a phenotype, so yeah there is.

The study of consciousness and the brain is also scientific, and directly related to philosophy.

I figure... just in case...

Majority? Not yet. Vocal minority? Sure.

Then I moved to Texas, where the first day of school I met a kid who believed in God, thought evolution was a hoax, and that the Earth was 6000 years old.

I didn't know what to tell him... the only thing I could come up with was something like "...but... what about all the bones...?"

In my mind, I must say that Football or Basketball are probably a little better than NASCAR for teenagers. At least with those, teens could join a team and play the game themselves. Physical activity is good for the body and mind, and there's all sorts of good lessons to be learned from being on a team. It won't turn teens into geniuses, but at least it will keep them healthy and involved with their school.