We make allowances for mental deficiency in our justice system, be it from congenital mental retardation or sudden psychotic break from reality by other means. I'm arguing that alcohol is one of those other means. We know that there is a segment of the population who cannot control their drinking once they start, cannot function rationally while intoxicated, and often cannot even remember their actions while intoxicated. Yet, alcohol remains legal for adults to consume, while other drugs with this profile are banned from casual use.

Having seen psychotic breaks from hard drinking up close, I can't make the direct link from someone starting drinking and ending up drunk driving and say that it absolutely isn't an accident. I've seen drunk people doing things far more unlikely than driving a car. I wouldn't hold them blameless, but neither would I claim clear intent, either.

A wrinkle in your argument is that alcohol is a disinhibitor, affecting judgment. A sober person knows better than to get behind the wheel drunk, but a drunk person may no longer have that inhibition. You want to punish the drunk, but the sober person is the one that ends up in prison.

Instead of having computers in everything, I'd rather have robot that checked the milk and all that. What we're really all hankering for are slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H robots shaped like human beings, that we don't have to feel sorry about exploiting. They'll do all the things we don't want to do and won't require everything in the house to have a battery in it. I'd much rather deal with a single robot than worry that every appliance in my home has a brain and its own agenda.

Bluetooth headsets had a similar dynamic when it comes to setting expectations, as illustrated with some hilarity here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSV_CvoaCak#t=01m42 We've gotten used to seeing people walking along apparently talking to themselves; we can get used Google Glass, too.

> LEDs also have better color rendition capability than CFLs.

It would be hard not to.

To some people having a nice warm spectrum from a bulb doesn't matter to them. But to others, inhabiting in a space lit by these new bulbs is like living in a morgue. Where I live it is dark 16 hours a day this time of year and usually overcast during the daytime. To me, the increased energy cost is worth it to live in a space that doesn't make me want to jump out the nearest window in despair. I am glad halogen bulbs will still be available because they are the only acceptable option right now.

Well, no, they aren't equivalent but they can, for example, be the difference between general good health and having your teeth rocking in their sockets from scurvy if you can't afford the produce. Vitamin C is also important for connective tissue repair, which means that if you do hard manual labor, a supplement can produce a huge difference in your day-to-day quality of life for a whole lot less money than the produce.

Hostess management put Hostess out of business.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/labor-union-hostess-twinkies_b_2161368.html

Hostess was in the business of selling sugar and fat in the fattest country in the world, a task akin to selling dung to dung beetles, and they foundered anyway.

God, yes, ban babies on flights. The pressure change messes with their ears and they scream and scream. Ban them or bring back laudanum.

Amazon will spin off another corporate entity for drone delivery service, limiting liabiity. Liability won't be any worse than the truck fleet they already have delivering groceries. The people whose jobs will be made redundant are couriers, people risking their bodies on bicycles in city traffic. Those are jobs well lost. We don't need to legislate things like drones to protect jobs, we need a social contract that protects people whose skills are suddenly made obsolete. In other words, we have to agree to treat people better than we treat machines.

Aim well. In Washington state you're allowed to use deadly force to prevent the commission of a felony, and that includes property crimes. So the drone's escort gunships might just shoot back at you if you miss.

I think it's doable. Most of a route is going to be over hard structures or tree, not roads or people, which mitigates the damage a crash or hard landing could cause. The things aren't going to be landing on front stoops, they'll land on rooftops, so they won't make chop-suey out of anyone's cat. Looking around me, I see that every apartment complex in view has a flat spot on its roof large enough to land a drone-copter or at least to set a package down. Each apartment building will cover tens or hundreds of people and all that's needed is a flat space on the roof and that the roof be accessible by residents. Buildings that don't have a flat spot on the roof can make one when residents start complaining. How hard is it to lash down a piece of plywood and paint a big X on it? The drones don't have to be completely autonomous. They could fly autonomously to the building and then hover until a human OK's the landing zone and pushes a button. Hit the recall button if the landing site looks sketchy or there's someone down there with a shotgun.

A restaurant is a public place as far as the ADA is concerned and that's probably where disputes like this are headed once the disabled start using Glass in large numbers.