My boss also experienced awful headaches when he tried to quit drinking coffee. The headaches lasted for days until he finally gave in and started drinking coffee again. It's a very common withdraw symptom.

The problem with coffee is that not only do you build a tolerance for it, but the withdraw symptoms match the symptoms you were originally trying to treat, namely alertness. See this (for example, I've seen other studies that come to the same conclusion): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602211940.htm

If you consume caffeine regularly, you won't receive any net benefit at all. With gum, at least you're getting fresh breath for a while.

What he said is based on several studies (not conducted by Mormons). Here's one, just for example: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602211940.htm

Caffeine is highly addictive, and you cannot simply quit without severe side effects if you drink coffee daily. My boss tried to quit once years ago, and had the worst headaches of his life.

You can quit, but you have to ease off of it, not simply stop unless you want to experience terrible pain.

I would guess that he's a sociopath given his grandiose view of himself, can't do any wrong, lies constantly, is always the victim, etc. However, most sociopaths aren't that stupid. I've only ever known one personally, and he was brilliant--which is a hell of a lot worse than a guy like this turkey.

You don't need to convince me. While earning my aerospace engineering degree we were forced to use both imperial and metric units. Metric was far easier to use in many cases, especially when dealing with calculations of force and mass. The unit for mass in imperial is slugs. To see why it's so inconvenient, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(mass)

That's not exactly the purpose of the electoral college. The primary purpose was two-fold:

1) For the federal government to not step on states' rights. Leaving the decision of how to allocate each state's votes to the individual state was a way of allowing them more power over federal elections.
2) To ensure only qualified candidates are elected. The hope was each state's legislature would be smart enough to only nominate people to the electoral college who wouldn't vote for a ridiculously unqualified person for president.

However, both of those points don't really apply any longer. The party system's primaries are now responsible for qualifying for president. Every state has essentially designated its ability to choose people for the electoral college to each party with the legislature having no role in the decision process.

I have no idea why we should continue to have an electoral college. It isn't serving the purpose it was originally created for. The only thing it's doing is giving less populous states more power towards choosing the president at the expense of larger states. IIRC, a vote cast in Wyoming has roughly the same power as 17 votes in California.

It's funny. The military, in some ways, is the most progressive part of the American government. Where was metric first widely adopted? Where was racial integration first introduced? Where did we first phase out the use of pennies?

Cut the politicians out of the bureaucracy and you can actually make some progress.

No, we didn't come from a single, common ancestor. However, that doesn't mean we aren't related to each other.

Think about it this way: You have two parents, four grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, etc. If you go back just a few dozen generations, you will reach a number that exceeds the population of the world. Obviously, you couldn't have that many individual ancestors at that generation. Instead, some of your ancestors were related to each other.

Geneticists have done a study of the smallest possible population of humans that could give rise to the current amount of diversity. Based on their study, the smallest population possible was a few 10s of thousands a few million years ago IIRC.

I argue that Al Gore had more votes. Your counter argument is something rather orthogonal to that. You're trying to argue whether one should vote for him (I'm guessing...). What does that have to do with him winning more votes?

I'm not sure that's any better. Many elections lately have been close enough that a single state could throw the result.

With a standard, national election system both parties would be interested in fairness. With each state in charge of their election with a member of one party or the other in charge of the election process, they have incentives and the ability to tamper with ballots.

They don't have mail-in ballots where you live? In Colorado, it's pretty easy to get your ballot mailed to you. Then you can either mail it back or drop it off. A heck of a lot more convenient than waiting in line to vote.

You seem to be forgetting about Thomas Edison, the most prolific inventor in American history. Or the Wright Brothers and their rather handy invention. Einstein was greeted as a hero when he first visited the US in 1921 and was more than welcome to immigrate here later. The US certainly wasn't anti-science then.

They also didn't view it as a conflict between religion and science except for evolution. Many of the original NASA astronauts and engineers were deeply religious. That didn't stop them from figuring out how to make multi-stage rockets capable of landing on the moon.

If you go back enough generations, everyone is related to everyone else. The claim I found (but couldn't confirm) is that Obama is George Washington's 2nd cousin, 9 times removed. Their common ancestor is 12 generations back, George Washington's great grandparents. Do you know how many 2nd cousins, 9 times removed you have? I estimated it to be nearly 300,000. The population of the US around the time George Washington was born was less than 3 million, giving Obama a 10% chance of being related to him.

Those are very rough odds, but it hopefully gives you an idea that having such a distant relationship isn't improbable at all. Also, the source I found for that information isn't reliable, it's possible they aren't related (or at least, their relation is even more distant). We are all Nth cousins, Y times removed from each other after all.

Al Gore had more votes nationwide. Bush won because we have an archaic, balkanized voting system.

Alas, it's the same for me. I've never bought an Apple product and never will. Most people who would buy Apple products probably couldn't care less about how many people commit suicide in their factories in China or how underhanded they are in anti-competitive practices elsewhere. They are the model corporation (in the worst possible sense), yet I bet more than a few people in the occupy movement love to use Apple products.

They are very similar to the European Galileo satellites. They are similar to GPS, but use different frequencies than GPS.

Originally, China was involved with the development of the Galileo constellation. They backed out because they didn't feel like they had a big enough voice in its development.

The Chinese constellation, Compass, is intended to be as accurate as GPS. They will almost certainly have their constellation fully deployed long before Europe gets their act together and finishes the Galileo system.

By the way, GPS doesn't only provide positioning service. Each satellite also has a detector for nuclear explosions and can quickly locate the position of any nuke going off on, or above, the surface.