I did look through it before I posted. I get it. My point is that the book shouldn't contain any pictures of 9/11, because that is not an example of a disaster that a child today is likely to hear about on the news or encounter personally. It was a one-shot event almost eight years ago.

Banning knives and boxcutters on planes was probably useful too. Yes, lots of dangerous stuff can still get on, but the restrictions make it harder for a terrorist to threaten the passengers into submission. Closing the "secure" areas of airports to people who don't have tickets was probably a good idea too. Many other countries already did this before 9/11, but it took 9/11 to change the policy here in the US.

Yes, but the kids who were traumatized by 9/11 are now at least 12 years old. They don't need a coloring book to help them process any residual emotions about the event. A coloring book to help kids deal with traumatic experiences is a good idea, but it should have pictures of traumatic events that may be relevant to those kids. It's not very likely that kids are again going to experience airplanes flying into twin towers, so images of that event are not particularly useful. The book should be re-issued with more relevant images replacing the 9/11-specific ones.

Yes, but when taking care of your customers involves standing up to the government, it has always deserved applause.

Did you look at the photo at the top of the page? To an untrained eye, that might well look like "pursuit", rather than "escort".

You're confusing criminal and civil law. There is no prosecution or defense in a civil case.

That aside, you've misunderstood the RIAA strategy. They file John Doe claims so they can subpoena records from the ISPs that identify who the defendants are. Once they know who the defendant is, they can proceed with a normal case. The RIAA bends the rules in multiple ways in the course of doing this, but the dodgy part is not the John Doe claim itself, but other details in how they go about it.

Nice straw man argument. That publishing house is presumably not engaging in copyright infringement or in helping others to do so. For an organization that does help people to infringe on copyrights to call itself "Pirate Bay" is pretty good evidence that they knew their service would be used to infringe on copyrights, and that they intended that to be the case.

What you name a place has NOTHING to do with the law behind it. You can't be convicted based on what you called something, unless the name itself is somehow illegal.

Except that the name may indicate intent. I don't know about Swedish law, but in the legal systems I'm familiar with one of the requirements to prove a crime is to prove intent. A website that helps people to violate copyright might be legal if the operator is unaware that it is being used for that purpose, and does not intend for the site to be used that way. Take the same site and name it "Pirate Bay", and it may become illegal, because the name of the site is evidence that that operators intended the site to aid in violating copyright.

There seems to be a distinction your argument is missing. There is a difference between providing a link to copyrighted material, that some user happens to copy, and providing a collection of links to copyrighted material with the intent of providing a resource for users who wish to copy such material. In the latter case, you are clearly aiding in copyright infringement. If the court is satisfied that this aid is deliberate and done with foreknowledge, it seems perfectly reasonable that it should be punishable.

This is not a "problem" with the lumen scale. This is what the lumen scale is for. Lumens rate the utility of light sources for human vision. Green is weighted heavily because the eye is much more sensitive to green than to red or blue. A light source that can't produce green efficiently will not be highly efficient for illumination. If you want to know how efficient a light source is as a grow light, then you need to use some other measure than lumens per watt.

This whole "gay marriage mess" is a side effect of the fact that the US Government has decided to meddle in something that EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET views as a primarily religious matter.

This isn't true at all. Marriage is primarily a civil matter. It is an arrangement in which society recognizes two people has having formed a bond that imposes some responsibilities on each toward the other. Religions have overlaid religious significance on this civil arrangement, to varying degrees. While the Roman Catholic church has gone as far as to make marriage a sacrament (comparable to baptism or communion), not all religions (Christian or otherwise) go this far. Many do not consider marriage to be of great religious significance.

In some European countries (Germany, I think?) churches are not even allowed to legally marry people. Couples are legally married in a civil ceremony, and then have a religious ceremony if they wish, but the religious ceremony has no legal effect whatsoever.

I think there was also a problem with the quality of diesel fuel in the US until a year or three ago. IIRC, US standards allowed the sale of a lower grade of diesel fuel than is allowed in Europe. The European diesel engines that perform so well fail early if run on the fuel that was then available in the US. I think the situation has been improved, but I don't know if US fuel is up to the same standard as Europe now.

Your math is off. I would do it this way:

-Gas is $3 /gal.
-Cost to drive Corolla: $3/gal / 30 mi/gal = $0.10 /mi
-Cost to drive Prius: $3/gal / 40 mi/gal = $0.075 /mi

You fill up a 13 gallon tank once a week, so you are driving about 13x30=390 mi/wk

-Corolla: $0.10 /mi x 390 mi/wk = $39 /wk = $20,280 over 10 years
-Prius: $0.075 /mi x 390 mi/wk = $29.25 /wk = $15,210 over 10 years

So, the Prius saves you $5070 over ten years, so in the long run you pay less than $1000 more to do something good for the environment and drive a nicer car. You also have to ask yourself how the resale values of both cars will compare at the end of that ten years. If the Prius is worth $930 more than the Corolla, it wins.

How would you handle licensing? This is an important feature of patents: the inventor doesn't have to do the product development herself. Indeed, it is often unfeasible for an inventor to take an idea from the genius concept stage, to a marketable product on her own. It is important that the person who had the idea has the option to sell/license the rights to that idea to someone else who has the potential to bring it to market.

With your proposal, potential licensees will just proceed with the product development themselves and not pay the inventor a dime. If the patent clock runs out before they finish their product development, they are free and clear. If it doesn't, they start selling the product anyway. If the inventor can't sue, she has no recourse. Even if the inventor could have potentially developed the product, nobody will finance that because larger competitors will likely beat her to market.