"Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence."
While less intelligent (or often just less applied) people might decide to believe anything, it is the intelligent, applied types that can, if they make a few mistakes, really hit the slippery slopes of irrationality with a vengeance. If you're good at argument and rationalizing and have a good imagination, but are weak in the scientific principle or critical thinking, you might be a religious lunatic soon.

However, for those properly educated and lacking those mistakes or equivalent childhood inculcation that sticks too much, more education, especially about critical thinking, science, and religion itself, seems to strongly push towards rationality.

I let many companies and people abuse me because I couldn't afford time or attorneys to take them to court. Then I turned my attention to learning enough to be competent enough to put a stop to that. Way overdue.

People should be comfortable representing themselves more. Perhaps not for a crucial criminal trial, but for everything else it should be considered. Basics of the legal system and navigating it should be taught in high school. The fact is that you can combat many opponents well if it costs you next to nothing and they feel they have to pay a lot for attorneys. True to some extent even for well-funded opponents in some circumstances. A major problem is that a lot of information, like process / procedures / formats, is hidden, but you can get it eventually.

I've successfully run a couple civil actions and successfully contested a couple low-level parking / traffic tickets. I just appealed one in California Appellate court, raising some interesting (to me) constitutional issues. (Waiting for my loss letter...) Good to do A) to work out the details of the process, B) to learn the law better, and C) protest annoying and not-helping-safety/society abuse of laws to meet a quota. I even recently figured out the details of filing citizen's arrest requests to maximally complain about a very dangerous, and illegal, maneuver of a CHP to give someone a speeding ticket. The officer was the only unsafe driver I saw between SF and SJ. (Next time, I'll get positive ID.)

In California, additional "fees" were added to traffic tickets that make a typical speeding ticket >$500 and really minor infractions start at $240. That's enough to be worth contesting at every point. In fact, it may be enough to change the rules of evidence in some cases.

I need to populate my pro-se site soon with some of these as examples, if people are interested.
http://pro-se.org/
And yes, I want to attack the overbroad "unlicensed practice of law" statutes that exist in 49 states. Of course you can't fraudulently hold yourself out as a bar-certified lawyer, and you shouldn't (can't, according to those laws) give people advice about what they should do. (The latter makes sense in a narrow sense: Besides what the law means, and what past cases have found, to actually advise people, you should know what the local custom, practices, probabilities, leanings, etc. the local judges and prosecutors have. That is separate from talking about the law or your own experience or analysis / opinions. First amendment rules there. That's the best I can understand the real legal line for conduct.) People aren't confused about who is a doctor just because they suggest that you eat better, get exercise, and take Ritalin or whatever. It is a ridiculous abuse of the public to enact laws so clearly designed to prevent sharing of information to protect blessed professionals.

Would he be eligible to run for Premier?
This could have some possibilities in 4 years...

Interesting how much of the world is interested in our politics.
Several years ago, I was walking around Porvoo, Finland, taking pictures. I talked to a few teenagers doing skateboard tricks. In their perfect English, they were very curious how we could have elected Bush II twice. It's all they wanted to talk about.

Emacs is far better as a web application framework than VI. QED
And you could test the web browsing within Emacs. And debug most languages right in the editor. ;-)

Are you the only one who realizes that "Honeycomb" refers to the cereal product? Really?

1st amendment to the US Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The constitution restricts the government. Hamas is acting as a government, not a corporation.
Conflating corporations with government would be bad: Corporations are people. Your suggestion that "all corporations and individuals would be also bound to respect it" implies that people would be restricted in their religious choices. In a broad sense, this conflicts with the 1st amendment.

This is exactly the area I've been feeling pain for years, and recently have been working to address. My key innovations are around interface / visualization methods, automation, and collaboration. Please email me at sdw@lig.net if you have a wish / idea list, pointers to interesting related ideas / technology, or want to be a beta tester.