Ummm, when you equate genocide with migrating, facts you dislike with complaining, and recommend that people who disagree with you leave the country, having a useful discussion becomes unlikely.

Not a straight line continuation, as you noticed, but there are a lot of forces at work here.

We're talking about people and mass influence. It takes a while to shift from being afraid of the "Red Scare" to fearing a "Cold War," to worrying about the "War on Terror." You have to allow time for memories to fade, if you try to shift enemies too quickly the people might see through the lies. Also, slip in there a "War on Drugs" whose funds don't all show in military spending. There isn't a one to one correlation between "Forever War" and military spending, given the messiness that is people and policies, but perhaps this goes some way toward explaining the peaks and valleys, and generally upward trend, of the Defense Spending graph.

It's complicated, money and lobbying and jobs are part of this too. The "Forever War" presumption is just one of the strategies used by the military-industrial-government complex to justify spending. Necessary for war profiteers because of the lack of actual enemies, and the lack of attacks on the US.

Also, there's the effect of public influence. Which at times is strong enough to change government spending. As the 1970s dip shows, probably largely due to civilizing protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Then a jump in spending partly due to the laughable fear of Grenada, but mainly the manufactured justifications in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Central America generally. "They are just a three day march from the Texas border" was the rallying cry, which was baseless yet scary enough to justify huge spending increases. Oddly enough, baseless FUD is the basis of the "Forever War."

Then a dip when the Berlin Wall was symbolically removed, when USSR Cold War fears went poof. Followed by a slow build toward fearing Iraq, growing into fearing a violent strategy (i.e. terrorism). There's a lot going on here, and I'm summarizing decades in a few sentences, but maybe that's enough to be of some use.

Odd indeed. Or maybe not so odd... It's pretty easy to believe your own lie, especially if you tell it frequently. To believe your policies are the reason the world is mostly safe. Then like you say, "mishaps" occur because dissenters stopped you from implementing your full policies. Never suspecting that your policies are more the cause of than fix for mishaps. Well, almost never. Alan Greenspan finally saw one of his wrong presumptions, and some hawkish general (that I can't recall the name of, maybe Shoup?) after long reflection wrote a factual essay on political lies and the real causes and beneficiaries of war.

To stick with your (bad) analogy, here are photos of Michael Phelps' pee in the pool.

Just to add to your excellent post, the "Forever War" is more a continuation than the beginning. Before the "War on Terrorism" there was the "Cold War." Before that, the "Red Scare." And so on. Each an excuse to build up the military and grab political power by frightening the public with exaggerations. Quite effective, really. What would it be like, to make up an enemy that is whatever you say it is?

True, we were only talking deaths (as numbers and statistics, which is creepily abstract). My first guess is that increased injuries are somewhat proportional to deaths, but that proportion could be exponential. With a bit of research you might find that out and write an informed article for a Texas newspaper.

Your "entire history" starts a little late. The Native Americans know the facts are different. Their land is still occupied by terrorist religious zealots.

Short answer: buy a crappy used computer which you two can talk about as you figure it out.

Most kids are curious, they're also influenced by your passions. So if you're into hardware, your kid will be too. I can't help recommending, along with an interest in technology and programming, that you offer opportunities to explore nature, art, and people. In that vein:

How about taking him to a yard sale. Bargain with the seller for a used desktop, they often go for around $50-$100 on CraigsList. Talk to your child about how the price of things is determined by the buy and seller agreeing, how to re-use something useless to someone else. Take the computer home, tear it apart, blow the dust off, explain what the pieces do and how they go together. Plug it in and watch how it sits there doing nothing, until you turn it on, explain a wee bit about electricity. Watch the fan spin while the computer does slightly more than nothing until you install programs (operating system and applications). I don't think you want to risk boredom by compiling from scratch, so install some fancy open source system, perhaps Edubuntu. Look at science software, graphics programs, play a few games. Install a kid-oriented programming language or several, see if there's any interest.

Watch what really fires the kid up, and indulge. One thing will (eventually) lead to another. Maybe he wants to draw, color, catapult rocks; but as you already know, frequently he'll be watching you to see what you react to, just as you're doing with him. Building things, fixing them, making them do new stuff, being frustrated by what can't be done (yet) when you don't know the reasons, the rules, the logic and physics. Talk about how people like you and him wrote all those lines of code if you two start writing some yourselves. Eventually a better part (e.g. memory, video card) or even computer might be needed, which is a chance to discuss why you might buy cheap and used at first, and better later if/when it's needed. Sell or give the old one to a friend, so your kid can be the helpful expert. What happens if you just throw something away, how is selling a used but whole thing different than recycling pieces?

Doubt is fine, you can question any number of studies for a huge variety of reasons. Unfortunately, after an all-too-brief search, I can only find results and not the studies themselves. However, perhaps seeing results from Canada, which is not quite as famous for politicized science as the US and unknown nerds, will provide a little more confidence to an event that, to me, is basic physics.

When parachutists are in free fall, their speed increases until they reach a terminal velocity due (largely) to air resistance. The actual speed is determined by body shape and positioning, materials, air density, and other factors, but I think we can safely ignore those in this case. When first jumping out, a skydiver accelerates at the speed of gravity (9.75 m/s/s, 32 ft/sec/sec). The faster they go, though, the more wind resistance they experience, until the wind resistance is as strong as the pull of gravity and they fall no faster--they've reached terminal velocity. This is also why some cars are designed to lower wind resistance, and why some trucks have a big louver above the cab to smooth the air flow around the container. Now obviously cars are not falling down, but you could say they're falling sideways. And as they fall sideways faster, as their speed increases, they encounter higher wind resistance, requiring more force to match the resistance (e.g. stick your hand out the window, at 10 mph you can barely feel wind resistance, but stick it out at 85 mph and you definitely will). This time, though, the (terminal) velocity is determined by wind resistance and the engine's output (your foot on the accelerator), instead of wind resistance and gravity.

This is how Science is like a failed software project: they value their process more than their goal. I could go out and make the most amazing, society-altering discovery ever, but I wouldn't be allowed to tell AAAS Science Magazine about it, because it would be "original research" and it would require "peer review." If or when Science dies, this, along with the oft-reviled entrenched fiefdoms, will be the reason. [emphasis added]

Speed traps (financial influence) and trucking associations (delivery time beats diesel costs), while effective for political and popular influence, are likely biased sources of scientific info. My brief research, confirmed by personal anecdotal experiment, shows that driving slower (up to a point) does save gas. Cites: FuelEconomy.gov, MPG for Speed.

Instead of using your 1.8 versus 2% figures (which I'm not sure where they came from), let's return to the article, which states: "A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health studied traffic fatalities in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005 and found that more than 12,500 deaths were attributable to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads." You can divide 12,500 deaths by 10 years, getting 1250 deaths per year caused by higher speeds.

I want to say you can't divide 1250 people by the 310 million population (0.0004%) and get anything meaningful. Death rates are 0.8%/year in the US. Accidents account for 118,021 of 2,437,163, or about 5%, of those deaths. Making 1250 higher-speed deaths about 0.05% of all deaths. So even though I don't like it, I begrudgingly see your point. On the big list of things to improve, high-speed deaths are a small, even minuscule, concern.

Yeah, you pretty quickly get to questions that can't be answered; do we really want to measure everything in time and money? Are you on vacation, thinking while driving, headed home to wonderful family, awful family, alone for dinner, or surfing the Internet at home or at work? How much time do you lose waiting for higher-speed accidents to clear, allow more time if you're in one. Is that $5.60/trip for gas (41 miles, $4/gal gas, 30 mpg car) a better trade-off than paying 20% more, or $6.72 per trip? $1.12 doesn't sound like much. That's just for 1 trip though. How about the commuters over a year.

Starting with time:
41 miles/ 65 mph = 38 minutes
41 miles / 85 mph = 29 minutes
38 - 29 = 9 minutes/trip
0:09/trip * 2 trips/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks/year = 75 hours/year
Over 3 days extra driving every year, yikes.

Now for the money, presuming 20% worse mileage for higher speeds (YMMV):
30 mpg * 80% = 24 mpg
4 $/gal * 41 miles / 30 mpg * 500 trips/yr = $2733/yr
4 $/gal * 41 miles / 24 mpg * 500 trips/yr = $3417/yr
We should probably include the toll, which I'm guessing will be around $1/trip, or $500/year.
$3417 + $500 = $3917/yr
So how much is this 85 mph instead of 65 costing per hour?
$3917 - $2733 = $1184/yr difference
$1184/75 hours = $16/hour
Plus extra wear and tear on your engine and tires.

So what does that all mean? I don't know, it's up to the individual. I presume the rich will pay without noticing, while regular people will lose 3 days or give up a few days of their vacation.

What say we put some very rough numbers to those percentages. Not counting differences in injuries, in 2003 there were 42 000 people killed in auto accidents in the US. 2% of that is 840, 1.8% is 756. 840-756=84. Does 84 people living instead of dying every year impress anyone, statistically speaking?

Ever calculate the costs of driving faster? For example, driving 55 mph instead of 65 saves about 10% on fuel. Driving 85 would, I suspect, result in increased fuel costs of some 20%. Saving fuel, money, and carbon monoxide emissions are a few reasons for choosing a slower driving speed, but then I surely don't want to be a complete pussy. What a dilemma.