Is it bad that I am still using MS BOB?

On a different note: Does anybody know why Slashdot doesn't render correctly anymore?

Does this mean that the founding fathers of the USA have all gone to hell? They did effectively disobey secular authority... the King of England.

So, when the population of earth doubles again, are we then to redefine personal living space at say 400 sq foot? Maybe we should all just accept our 1 sq meter per person now. Then what?

At some point we are going to have to reduce the population of the planet. Either we do it, or mother nature will do it for us. Until then, I plan to live comfortably in a much larger house than what scientists think I should live in.

Humanity will never accept an egalitarian life style. There will always be have and have not's.

Just because 70% of the population wants something, doesn't mean it is a good idea. We may well end up with a single payer system. Good luck finding a doctor when we do.

There are many things we could have done to bring down the cost of medical care. eg. Force doctors to post their prices. Not force insurance agencies into "must provide" plans. Allow insurance to be purchased across state lines, etc... Hell, just bring back the free market's risk/reward concept to the medical world. Sadly, none of these options will ever see the light of day. But don't let my ranting get in the way of your utopian view of how a single payer system will solve everything.

Meanwhile, I will sit here and wait quietly in the VA hospital for my chance to be seen... I am told it might be next Thursday.

The theory about self-regulation works just fine. It just doesn't stand up so well, when governments step in and bail out the industries and or insurance companies.

You don't think the insurance company might have a problem with this? If the shipping company was insured, the insurance company will eventually step in and demand the shipping company fix the issue or start denying claims. If the shipping company wasn't insured, well... they end up going out of business. Either way, the problem is self correcting over the long term.

Nice try, but the libertarian philosophy doesn't get rid of litigation. If you buy a toy for your kid and the kid dies of poisoning, then you get to take the company to court and put them out of business. Then you can say the market corrected. The whole point of free market philosophy is to bring back the risk to companies such that they do the right thing. When you constantly bail out companies with government tax money, where is the incentive to self correct ones bad business strategy?

The military frequently uses charter flights to get troops into and out of the theater of operations.

I know everybody is blaming the UAV here, but there are two other possibilities to this story. 1) The pilot of the passenger plane is at fault. 2) The air raffic controller is at fault.

I once heard it described as...

When jumping from a 100 foot building, the view is great for the first 99 feet.

I know that you were being trollish, but I actually have to agree. I didn't spend my time in the dorms except to sleep. My study time was spent down at I-Hop, or in the library. I did find it mildly annoying when somebody was yelling down the hallway, but you can get used to it.

Personally, I am waiting on Tau day; June 28, 3185

On a side note, does anybody know a good cryogenics lab?

From Diablo 2...

The secret cow level.

If this is a joint military/police exercise, then it isn't the US Military, it's the National Guard. These are people from the local area.

Very true, sadly unless the mainstream media starts demanding answers as to why they are conducting drills with machine gun fire over populated areas, this will become the norm and vastly more dangerous to society as a whole.

Red Herring. The military wasn't asked to continue doing the same at more universities after the Kent State incident. As somebody mentioned earlier, the first incident that puts the military in a bad press will kill the common soldiers will to continue. It might even take more than one indecent, but I can guarantee that eventually moral in the military deteriorates with bad press.

If you really want to learn from history, take a look at what happened with the Berlin wall. The East German soldiers had orders to kill anybody trying to cross into the west. Yet because the soldiers moral was so low, they put down their rifles and let people cross, eventually the government conceded and changed the soldiers orders to accommodate the population's wishes.

Also, remember that the US military isn't the uneducated military of the past. Many enlisted have college degrees. All have at least a high school education. Upper leadership in today's military has to show how their orders benefit society. If those orders start to conflict with the mainstream press, it won't take long at all for the moral to disintegrate. With the most likely outcome being mass desertion.

Ah, yes... the nuclear red haring...

Kind of stupid to use a nuke for self defense.