No they aren't.

This is the defence I hear from the worst representatives of religion. The kind that need to pretend they're victimised in order to make their claims about society make sense.

If you go and ask a Buddhist monk if he's mocked and denigrated, he'll smile. If you ask a vicar in the CoE if their mocked and denigrated, they'll say "of course not, my child", if you ask a redneck Baptist preacher if they're mocked and denigrated, they'll say yes and give you a sermon about hell.

The only religions that are mocked and denigrated are those who make a nuisance of themselves. The Jehovah Witnesses that knock on your door, Scientoloists that sue people for criticising them and so forth.

I'm an Atheist, what one believes is one's own choice and should not be foisted on anyone else. I prefer to keep religion at arms length but that does not mean I'm offended by it. If a Buddhist monk or Christian priest were to offer me a blessing, I'd take it with the good intent it was given. If a preacher wants to give me a sermon, I'll ask them once, nicely to stop before telling them to naff off in a very unkind, faith shaking manner.

So these experiments were done in the name of science?

Or were they done based on a different philosophy, say one about racial purity?

What you're describing is the co-opting of science to support a malicious philosophy. Science is not a philosophy in itself and does lend itself to whatever the user intends. In other words, science is like a hammer, you can use it to build a house or bash someone's skull in. Just because it can be used for evil purposes does not mean that it is evil in itself. This is why science is guided by ethics, not because science is evil, but because people can use it for evil purposes.

People fucking hate call centers because they have to traverse some hellish phone tree, wait too long to talk to a representative who is generally underinformed and insufficiently empowered to actually do anything about the problem.

This...

But people are half of the problem. They want champagne service at beer prices.

My car insurance is with RAC here in Western Australia. They aren't the cheapest but they have a local call centre that operates on Western Australian time, well trained staff and I've never spent more than 10 minutes on hold. Sure some cut price insurer might be $10-20 a month cheaper, but I know RAC wont give me the run-around during a claim as their policy is to pay out even under suspect circumstances (and if they think its suspect, they'll refuse to insure you again).

Also RAC were the only mainstream Australian insurer to give me an online quote for my Australian delivered Nissan 200sx (S15). There are companies that provide good service, but they aren't the cheapest and unfortunately, a lot of people only think about the bottom line when choosing an ISP, Insurer, bank and the like.

Lets compare this to a certain large global bank... You get on the phone and have to enter a 117 digit customer number, then a 6 digit passcode that I use maybe twice a year that I never remember. Beyond this when I talk to a person, for verification purposes I have to tell them my mothers maiden name, place of birth, how my ancestors were related to king Richard III, so and so forth. At least with my bank their call centre is in the Philippines where they have a good grasp of English (even if it's En_US, its still somewhat English) and an understandable accent. That being said, knowing what it's like receiving abuse over the phone I'm never rude or abusive to call centre staff.

First thing,

Taxi mafias are not the same world wide. The actual Mafia's operating in SE Asia that use violence, threats, intimidation, bribery and coercion are very different to regulated fake taxi "mafias" in the west where drivers must be trained, insured, licensed and customers have a means of addressing grievances.

Second thing, this is the Philippines.

There is a saying about the Philippines, "The Philippines has an excellent legal system, but a terrible justice system". It means that the legal framework is as good as any western country, in fact its based off US laws. However the laws are not applied equally, every level of the police and judiciary are corrupt, laws that people dont agree with are outright ignored (and the police are paid to look the other way) there is an unofficial bias to the system (locals and wealthy will have more rights than foreigners and poor) and the existing Mafia is too well entrenched.

That last point is important. The Jeepneys are not threatened by this. There's no way Uber is going to be cheaper than that, however the existing taxi/trike industry wont take kindly to competition, they never have and have never had any compunction against using violence as a first resort. Another unwritten rule in the Philippines (for foreigners) is that you never get between a man and his money. When I lived in the Phils, I knew two people who were shot because they forgot this rule. Uber drivers who aren't part of the taxi mafia will be taken out and beaten until they get the message.

Like you I enjoy driving, we don't need to worry about autonomous cars as adoption will be incredibly slow. The people thinking that their next car will drive itself are living in a fantasy. The technology will take decades to roll out and the steering wheel attendants wont be permitted to go to sleep or get drunk as they'll be required to monitor the vehicle. I imagine the people who see driving as a dreary task will find it even more tedious when they have to watch the car drive and I have no doubt this will be enforced (we have technologies that can tell if you're distracted already).

In the mean time, those of us who enjoy driving will continue to do it. There are a lot of people who will continue to buy manually operated cars because they like driving.

We haven't moved on from credit cards because most people will resist change.

Recently in Australia we elimination signing for purchases (a major source of fraud) so everyone who used to sign now has to use a PIN. Banks were flooded with calls complaining that using a PIN was too hard and if they had a choice they'd keep signing.

It takes at least 25 years for any new technology to integrate itself into our lives. For early adopters this may seem like a long time, but for the laggards its not enough time. A replacement for CC's will need to be implemented soon, but it will take decades for it to be accepted. Also knowing banks, it will probably be insecure until governments force them to secure it.

The only real defense against this is not to use your credit card so blithely.

The more you use a card, the more you open yourself up to fraud. This is the forth biggest reasons I use cash for most of my day to day transactions (cash is #1 cheaper, #2 faster, #3 a great way to proactively stick to a budget). Given how vulnerable credit cards are, people have to become more attentive as to where and when they use them. Realistically cards should never be let out of your sight, especially when in conjunction with with your ID which in many cases has your home address on it. Personally if I go for a night out, I'll pay in cash. A lot of pubs price drinks in whole dollars (instead of $X.99 like the supermarket) because they want to get paid in cash.

You may not agree with it, but surely you must understand it?

They dont understand it because they've never lived anywhere without taxi regulations. They don't know what an unregulated industry actually looks like.

I have lived in places where the government simply didn't give a shit about taxi drivers. It may seem nice now, but eventually oversupply has to be dealt with. If the government doesn't do it then the drivers themselves will and their methods are far less pleasant than overpriced taxi medallions. Where I used to live, we called them a Mafia because that is exactly the way they acted. They had territories, there were fights between rival taxi gangs, if a driver picked up a fare outside his territory he would be beaten up (they at least had the courtesy to wait until the passenger had exited the vehicle, but this was only due to the concept of "face" in their society).

The net result of this for a paying customer was higher prices. They wouldn't even turn on the engine for less than US$5 when the minimum wage in that province was US$3.5 and this province had the highest min wages in the country. To get across town you'd be looking at Australian taxi prices. Unprovoked violence against passengers was not unusual in a place where unprovoked violence was unusual. Every driver carried a gun and none of them knew how to drive safely.

Many dont understand the dislike we have of Uber, this is because they have never seen what Uber will inevitably become. When driver income is threatened, drivers will organise and that turns out bad for the customer. Given Uber's track record of "we're not a transport company" chances are they'll ignore it.

Its still incredibly wasteful. All those extra resources just so you can make a crap cup of coffee.

Once you learn how to make a proper espresso you will look upon pod machines with disdain and disgust. Personally given the choice between pod and instant, I'll take instant. They're both crap but the instant is faster, cheaper, less wasteful and doesn't make me feel like a hipster.

Actually, single payer fixes that as well because it essentially means you have one customer. Ergo, the customer has a lot of power to set terms. Even in countries with both public and private health care systems, the public system sets the ceiling for prices and a minimum floor for service, so if a private institution wants to charge more, they need to provide greater service and service that is worth the price being asked of it. Basically it eliminates the "you pay what we say because you're too sick or powerless to negotiate" that causes that kind of fraudulent pricing.

So every patient receives the buying power of an entire country. Any funny business and it will be investigated.

Single payer also cuts down on hospital administration and allows health care workers to get on with their job of caring for patients.

Reality disagrees with your assertion.

Just about every country that has a public health system run by the government spends less on health care than the United States does. Hell, we spend less on health care than the United States Government alone spends on health care per person, not even thinking about counting the amount of private monies spent.

If you don't think an American can handle it, just outsource it to Australia, Canada, the UK or anywhere else that spends less on health care than you do. We've literally got decades of experience with reasonable cost health care provision.

With most countries, liability is decided by the courts, not the doctors and insurers. So you can count on the medical professionals caring for you, but the state or insurers may sue you for some of the cost if it is warranted (and there are damn few cases where it is). The only limitations on the NHS, as with most countries is with eligibility, only citizens, tax paying permanent residents and people who are citizens or permanent residents of countries with reciprocal agreements with the NHS are covered. As an Australian, I can travel to the UK and be covered under the NHS because Australia and UK have a reciprocal agreement with medical systems (so an Englishman is covered under Australia's medicare in Australia)

However even if you're ineligible, they're not going to leave you to die on the pavement. They'll just issue you with a bill afterwards and because the NHS has no profit motive, it wont be as high as countries with an entirely private system.

OTOH, we dont have the issue of "well you're costing us too much and threatening our profits, so we're not going to insure you any more".

What gamer in their right mind installs their games on their system drive.

Doubly so for their SteamApps folder. I don't want to have to re-download 100 odd GB of games when windows goes tits up.

Not sure about the 24th century, but if you asked an engineer today if he put the batteries in the right way around you'd like get a punch in the head captain or not.

Yes, the US media are propaganda mouthpieces of their own recognizance.

At least the Russian propaganda is honest about being propaganda.

Every Eastern European I've met has told me this, "the difference between American propaganda and Russian propaganda is that we [Russians] didn't beleive our propaganda".

No, he means he's using the Ethernet cables on his coach... Which is fine, if you're into that, we're a modern ./ and dont judge.