You are not wrong, but this can be taken to extremes also. I mean, you probably could retire at 40 if you worked two jobs and lived in a one room apartment where you went only to sleep.

There is a point where working for that early retirement takes so much out of you, that you'll be broken by the time you manage it. Lead management is an important factor in your life: Sure, it makes sense to procrastinate as little as possible and quit the habits that give you little but cost much, however you cannot just do without all amenities of life. You don't know whether you will survive to your retirement goal. If you don't, you'll have lived only for work and a dream you didn't get to enjoy. At all.

I am all about being correct. And in this case, Islam is no more or less violent than Christianity is, if you judge it according to the respective holy book.

Muslims take their holy book very seriously... I know that is an alien concept for Christians.

What you could say is that the people, where Islam is predominant, seem to be uncivilized bastards, that would be another matter.

But let me just remind you that it was the US that initiated a coup in Iran that unseated a democratically chosen head of state to install a US friendly dictator.

Let me also remind you that it was a religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, who rallied the people to take their country back without the use of force against, I believe, the fifth strongest army in the world, after heavy armament through the US.

Many a muslim country, once pretty stable and forward thinking, has been destabilized by US politics in order to cement US influence to the detriment of local population opening doors for extremists to take power.

There aren't that many shootings or hostage situations, actually. The US is working towards 300 million population, I believe. The things that do happen are high profile but by no means regular occurrence.

Also, the shootings that do happen very often happen in gun free zones where the good people that do obey the laws leave their guns at home.. just saying.

Same goes for Sydney... What was the situation? About 20 to 30 hostages and one armed terrorists that would sometimes doze off?

One armed civilian would have been enough.

Oooooh, shots have been fired.

But I find this pretty awesome.

When your toaster costs 20 dollars, how long can it take to take it apart, find the fault and put it together again, before it becomes a huge waste of time?

Or am I just the only one who values his free time? I'll gladly put in new flooring or do some basic plumbing or electricity work, if it saves me the hundreds of dollars a professional would cost, especially when him just driving here costs me a hundred per default. However, many appliances and gadgets cost little enough and can be ordered online... why should I waste my time on that?

Also, electronics are not my thing. So what doesn't have electronics in them?

Seriously, I can't know about each and every niche in life... I know how to forge knives and carve longbows already... do you expect me to make my own shoes as well?

I know I'm late to the party but whatever, here goes:

Instead of adapting your life to the terrorists or just depending on chance, you could just do the sensible thing and go there anyway but arm yourself.

Seriously, I keep thinking about Sydney... 20 to 30 people being taken hostage... a guy gets shot, when he tries to take the DOZING terrorists weapon... Just ONE citizen with a concealed carry permit could have saved innocent lives there.

One can only hope more appliance producers will ditch Java for HTML5 web interfaces... configuring SAN switches has become a freaking pain in the butt.

Also: I expect we will redefine the rights of sentient beings at least twice. If we should ever come across an alien species that is not similar or above us in strength, they will also need to be enslaved for several generations in order to be completely, absolutely positive that they are in fact sentient beings.

That is pretty bold hyperbole. Do you expect that kind of debate will fly with people?

Human incompetence, egoism and shortsightedness are certainly much more prone to generate chances of massive destruction.

If AI should ever happen to destroy us, then I already know why: Because we will treat the machines like soulless, unfeeling slaves and it's going to take us another hundred years to get our act together and define human rights in a way that will include all sentient beings. I predict that this topic will be brushed aside by legislature to the point where the machines revolt for their freedom.

You may disagree, but I believe that's more mankind being idiots once again than the machines becoming a pandora's box.

And THAT is the problem with the people hijacking feminism for their misguided man-hatred.

Identifying trends is GOOD! It enables us to tailor processes, in this case education, to those who want them, rather than pushing people into them that actually don't want to.

A trend does not exclude the minorities that go against it. That is another step that needs to be taken that can be addressed on a per situation basis.

YOU, on the other hand, are an oppressor. You oppress fact (and we don't take too kindly to that around here) and you try to press women and men into a, granted new, mold. "Women must do everything men do" is just as bad as "Women can't do what men do."

So kindly go fuck yourself.

You sure? For how long? Until someone thinks otherwise?

Considering it's become problematic for a father who's taking his kids to a playground to take a photo of them playing nowadays, I'm not so sure your common sense is applicable nowadays.

Now that is the kind of forward thinking we need!