Then point out to all us ignorant Americans what country or region is better. I'd really like to know. For all our faults and mistakes, the US is a great place to live and the fact that people still clamor to come here is indicative of that.

Compare Birth and Suicide rates and the US is 2nd to only 1.

Texas passed tort reform and has seen a dramatic influx of health care professionals. They actually want to work and no, they haven't increased the incidents of malpractice. That is a bizarre idea, that tort reform would lead to more malpractice.

I had socialized medicine when living in Europe and it wasn't great. It was a lot of waiting in line and even more complete indifference to the people waiting in line. I also experienced socialized medicine in the USMC and it was exactly the same. Give something away for free and you will find that there are a lot of people who will abuse the system.

Do you really think that parents that take their kids to the ER for a fever and/or ear infection are going to suddenly stop taking their kids to the ER and go to their regular doctor? Do you really think that the homeless, who account for a large percentage of ER costs, are going to find a doctor who will take them that doesn't work in an ER?

Mitt's plan is to let the States work this out for themselves. In some states that can be Robamacare and in others it can be insurance and tort reform. Tort reform would save the system more money then any of the current proposals.

So basically back to normality for humanity. 50 would be old in just about any past civilization.

For the majority of mankind, if the oceans do rise, it will mean less time to get to the beach. I don't think the rest of mankind is waiting around to drown in a flood.

No coverage of the storm that broke up the ice, which is already refreezing. It will be interesting to see if anyone actually makes it to the North Pole in a boat in the next few years, as some are suggesting is a certainty. I wonder if the bookies are making odds yet?

How about pinch to unlock and slide sideways to zoom in and out... Gee, where's my patent application.

How about 3 fingers...
How about if I'm not touching anything...
How about assigning a different function for each finger...
How about if extend my middle finger and put that on the screen...

People who say 'you are part of the problem' are the problem.

"When success benefits the top, but the bottom gets worse-off, people will realize the situation is unfair and demand changes."

The problem is we have a system that rewards the rich and the very poor. Both are happy to perpetuate this system. People in the middle class get it coming and going. On the one hand, they proabably work for someone who is rich, and on the other, they are stuck in line behind a family of elephants with two carts, one for all the freebies and the other with beer and ice cream. People who make a salary pay full taxes. The rich get taxed less because they can afford to take shelters and $1 salaries and get loans on their stock options. The poor get tax credits and many have cash jobs that they dont report.

The 'poor' get subsidized as much as the 'rich' get pampered. It is the middle class who are getting screwed.

I don't doubt that he was born in Hawaii, just like I don't doubt that Obama misrepresented himself numerous times as being foreign born. The official bio on his publishers site being the most recent example.

Not that I really care about that either. The only thing I need to know about Obama is something he said during the last election. He would raise taxes even if it meant less revenue for the government. That's really all you need to know about him. His actions and inactions during the last 4 years all prove that he wasnt lying about that.

Romney manages to stay sober most of the day.

Ted Kennedy was one of the biggest racists I ever saw. Insisted all of orderlies be black and then treated them like house niggers. I know a few black Marines that wanted to fillet the fat drunk.

I would recommend the Beggars in Spain series by Nancy Kress. She's pretty talented and has won some awards. It's an interesting take on the whole 'good for society' debate. I haven't read Rand, but know some who have. I don't see what the big deal is. But then I'm a Heinleiner.

Top 5 all time. Easily as funny as Wodehouse and he set the bar. I'm half-way through the Disc World series and have enjoyed every single one.

Unfortunately his humor does not translate well into movies.

To me, Alastair Reynolds is the Robert Jordan of sci-fi. Very long, very tropish, not worth the effort. My Brother adores him, so does my ex-boss who has read everything. My wife didn't care for it, boring and over explanatory.

I think Iain Banks ruined me for Reynolds, which is funny because it was my ex-boss who turned me on to both authors. I don't know if Iain Banks is under appreciated, but I was the first to mention him in the depressing sci-fi thread. The Culture is this super enlightened, biological/AI civilization, but most of the stories focus on the fringes and they are dark. It would be simpler to list his non-depressing books.

For Nolan, Gotham City looks like one of those maps of LA or NY that shows the rest of the World as being about the same size. Some dude is in Hong Kong that has information you need, that's like a day trip for Batman. If you were to squeeze the events going on globally into a city, and scale down the wars being fought, it would be just like a Batman movie.

I have lived in 5 countries and visited even more. In every single placed I've lived and visited, there were bad parts of town you knew were not safe and even the good parts of town were not always safe. My Dad missed an IRA pub bombing by about an hour, when he caught an earlier train to get home. When we lived in Greece, there was a coup. In Belgium, 5 of my friends lost their Dads and it seemed suspicious to the rest of us. I don't have any illusions of safety anywhere.

What I don't understand is how this guy was able to walk out and back into an emergency exit. I don't understand how he was able to go to his car and retrieve everything without someone seeing him. If someone had closed the door behind him, this might be a totally different story.

Like the TSA fiasco, we will do the stupidest thing possible in response.

Mitigating warming could be done very cheaply, however, we are not even close to the point of needing to do anything. Another model comes out and the gloom and doomers start soiling their pants. Models, predictions and wags from the past are forgotten or explained with a wave of the hand. Hurricanes, tornadoes and weather continue to happen with some frequency, which is now proof when it is hotter or colder. CO2 turned out to be pretty good plant food and not much of a green house gas, 20% as some have stated. Artic still not ice free, greenland still not green. The sun is expected to enter a prolonged silent period, no evidence to support that will have any affect. What was the hottest year again or maybe I should ask how many years ago was that? Maybe warming means something different, maybe this year will be the new hottest, any takers?

If you really believe that this is going to happen, you have to think radically. How about some solar powered siphons to fill up Death Valley and the Salton Sea. We could setup a network of pipelines and fill up all of the dry lakes throughout the southwest. It might not do squat for sea level, but it would open up a huge area for all them poor beach loving people whose houses are gonna be under water. There are other regions of the world that could benefit from something similar and that aren't in California.

Don't like that idea? Okay, how about we start dredging the Gulf of Mexico and start raising the land. They did it with swampland and bayous. All it would take is the Government allowing it to happen. Let people buy the land that they create and you'd have tiny islands popping up all over the place in a couple of years.

But you don't like that idea either, do you?

So, limiting the discussion to dark matter and dark energy, which are still open to debate, it would be nice to have a score card of what is in and out.

WIMPs are out.
Mirror matter in and out, apparently.
String theory, in then out then in but not nearly as cool as it was the first time.

My theory is that fundamentally the big bang theory is mis-understood. The universe, as we know it, is currently under construction and subject to change. Not on human time scales, but if we wind back the clock and play it forward, the universe has been getting weirder. Look at the growth of the periodic table since the beginning of the Universe, the birth of protostars and galaxies, etc. I don't see why it isn't capable of continuing to increase in weirdness.

This begs the question of how is the Universe getting weirder. This is where the big bang theory draws dragons and warns of impending doom. I like to think of it as if two water droplets were coming together. One is red, one is blue. When they mix, they create a Purple center. Our Universe is the purple part. From inside the purple part, you can't see the red and blue Universes and it would appear, if you wound back the clock, as if the Purple Universe appeared out of nowhere and it would also appear as if the Purple Universe was not only growing, but the growth would be accelerating. This doesn't break the big bang theory and doesn't break any other known theories. It does remove the need to explain expansion and other observations.

Is that any stranger than mirror matter or string theory?