This is what it has come to. The cop used to be your friend, right? But now he's not. Well, the cops didn't change, we did. In the old days a copy could say "Stop or I'll shoot" and if you didn't stop, he shot you in the back... Look at "It's a Wonderful Life"... Bert the cop does that to George (but misses)... no question back in the day, the cops could say "get on the ground" and you'd get on the ground. Now, we don't... we won't... go ahead, shoot me... you'll do time in prison Mr. Cop... you'll go down for 2nd Degree Murder. Watch "Cops" and see people who think they'll negotiate their way out of being dumped on the ground and cuffed. And it's all on the cop to make sure he is polite, doesn't use excessive force (which will be decided later, possibly by a jury) and that when someone spits in his face, he doesn't retaliate... Just put that as an additional charge that the prosecutor will drop in exchange for a plea.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we're asking cops to do everything all the time now... In addition to protecting us, and bringing in the bad guys, and finding them, we want them to use kid gloves and we've tied their hands over and over again. So we are getting exactly what WE deserve, a bitter police force, who feels that the people are not behind them, and thus they move from serving and protecting us to serving and protecting themselves. Congratulations everyone... you got the police force you deserve. You don't like it? Well further tying their hands, throwing them in jail, etc. is just gonna make it worse. Rock on, morons.

In my house, computer engineer Barbie would have ended up just like all the other Barbies in the house... naked, legless, armless, and often headless in the bathtub. We affectionately called them all "Torso Barbie"

Actually, what they are trying to do is find out if you are an addict and are going to be using at work. The rationale is that if you can't stop using any given drug for the 30 days it takes to clear your system, then you cannot control your additiction... different drugs have different times that they remain detectable in the body. But none more than 30 days. So if you can't quit using during your job search, then you can't quit period, and thus are an addict. I, on the other hand, don't much care if you've used mary jane in the past 30 days, so when a candidate flunked his test for being "dilute" twice, my HR people recommended that I didn't hire him. I asked if they were mandating that, and they said no. So I hired him. OTOH, the company I work for today doesn't test. A woman had to be let go because used sharps (needles) started showing up in the ladies room... she was using heroin WHILE AT WORK. So go figure...

I lost track, were you talking about GMO foods or anthropogenic global climate change? Ironic isn't it? To hear the anti-GMO crowd cry about how they aren't allowed to dissent, while I suspect there is a strong correlation between those folks and those who believe in anthropogenic global climate changes crying out "settled science!"

WAY more went wrong on Apollo 13 went wrong than one thing... yes - there was one root cause of the other problems, but there were a multitude of problems that were only revealed because of the that root cause problem. You're putting a huge number of things like O2 depletion, main engine malfunction, CO2 scrubbers, Electrical power disruption, water production, etc. into that one event - which was a tank exploding - at the root

I'm a Christian. I was raised Christian but ended up becoming an agnostic. Then I saw a Nova about the Shroud of Turin, and started researching it. It turns out the information on the shroud is a 2D hologram of 3D information. It is encoded onto the cloth, but the cloth is not painted. Something turned the cloth a different color without the use of pigments. Fast forward through all the options and it turns out the most logical explanation is a burst of radiation. And tracing back the path of that radiation, you'd have to conclude the radiation came from within the body that was covered by the shroud. So what was the source of the radiation? I believe it was the energy from the resurrection.

The essence of being a Christian is that you have to believe that a guy died on a cross, was stone cold dead, not sleeping, not in "suspended animation", not hibernating, but dead dead dead. And then 3 days later, he came back to life. According to Jesus, it's best if you just accept it on faith. But as an engineer, I needed the proof... so even though I'm a doubting Thomas, I have come to believe that he is risen. And I have a much higher than normal IQ, and am not easily impressed with magic tricks, tarot cards, and psychics...

The other day, I googled the 7 Wonders of the World... we talk about them from time to time, and marvel at them, but the list is far from agreed... there are the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and newer wonders often mentioned such as the Taj Mahal. There is a list of wonders put forth by civil engineers, and the Golden Gate bridge is on that list.

What I found most interesting is that human footprints on another world isn't even considered. And when I think of wonders, I have to believe that walking on the moon makes all other human wonders pale in comparison. I, too, was absolutely enthralled by the space program and the Apollo missions. I've watched Apollo 13 like 20 times. I was too young to remember the first moon landing and Armstrong's first steps. I do remember being in kindergarten and being hustled into a cafeteria so the entire school could watch a moon landing on a 19 inch black and white television. I remember building a model Saturn V rocket with my dad, with all the stages were removable. For one of the launches, I dutifully discarded the stages as the rocket took off, and I remember thinking the mission was doomed to failure, having seen 90% of the rocket gone in the first 10 minutes. How could they have made such a mistake I thought...

Anyway, fast forward to today, and I have several friends who are convinced the moon landings were faked and have an elaborate conspiracy theory supporting their assertion. My daughter even explained to me that the cameras wouldn't have worked in space (she just got done with a photography course where they posited this theory). Historians claim that the whole thing was just a cold war artifact. Lots of people make the argument that the money would have been better spent on social programs (as if we had just added the Apollo funding to the supertanker of money already spent on such programs would have just made the difference, and we'd be living in a utopia now if only our swaggering leaders had just thought of the children!)

Rarely mentioned is the fact that having humans walk on another world is perhaps the greatest achievement mankind has ever accomplished. It is more often written off as a publicity stunt. Lost is the inspiration a generation got from that endeavor. And that generation is getting old now and the state of the world and the indifference to the achievement discourages me and others of that time no end.

Getting off this pale blue world is a thing our society should value highly, as like it or not, the longevity of our species depends on it. And while we are currently in the wooden sailing ship stage of our ability to explore space, that should in no way discourage us to continue to push those boundaries. Humans should walk on Mars. We should capture and study asteroids. We should send probes to Europa in search of life. We should do these things, as Jack said, not because they are easy but because they are hard.

Meanwhile, Nasa's funding is abysmal in comparison to all of our other spending. A tiny fraction of our budget, seemingly shrinking every year. I am depressed.

Most people are familiar with the Ammonia that you buy in a store... but it is not Anhydrous Ammonia... it is diluted in water, and even so, you don't want to take a big whiff of the stuff, it will knock you on your butt. Anhydrous Ammonia is pure Ammonia... It requires hazmat suits to transfer that substance from container to container (fuel pump to fuel tank in a car?). It's possible that you could distribute a more dilute formula to "gas" stations, but the effect would be dropping lots of water on the roads as you used the fuel. Do we have enough fresh water for this? Perhaps. Not to mention that the more dilute you make it, the more of it you will have to cart around per mile. Anyway, it is much more likely to cause accidents than gasoline. Don't believe me? Ask a farmer how much he likes using the stuff...

I'd like to know how many people who are advocating AGAINST capital punishment on this forum are FOR abortions including late-term and partial birth abortions. My wife, who changed her views after we got married pointed out to me that being against capital punishment was inconsistent with being for abortion. I thought about it and realized she was right. So I changed my stance. I'm now PRO Capital Punishment. But if your view is inconsistent (Against CP and For Abortion) then ask yourself this: "If I'm against a person who committed terrible crimes being executed, then why am I for allowing an innocent life to be terminated just because it isn't breathing air at the moment, but would if delivered to term or near term?"

I started working on computers in the early 80's... The first one I used was a TI 99 4a. It had tape drives and a TV set as a monitor, and a horrific keypad (note: not keyboard). Then my brother got a PC Jr. and I started hacking with that and then went off to college. As an engineering major, I learned FORTRAN on punched cards. I hated it! Swore I'd never have a job where I used computers.

Then my brother got the family to chip in and buy me a Tandy 1000a. It came with DOS, Deskmate, and Basic. I started programming in Basic using the concepts I had learned in FORTRAN. By the end, I think I had dumped about $5,000 into that computer. Printers, memory upgrades, floppy upgrades, hard drive, monitor, etc. And still was able to do amazing things with Basic and with BAT files.

My first job was with Arthur Andersen. COBOL. Batch COBOL. 2.5 years of it. Learned it in 6 weeks, and spent the rest of my career there either coding it or writing tech specs for it.

Went to work at an insurance company coding SqlWindows, a now obscure 4th gen programming language. But hey, it was Windows programming. Spent 10 years there in a variety of roles.

After that I set up my own web development shop... Wrote classic ASP which is essentially Basic for the web. And then went to work at another insurance company, writing, you guessed it, Microsoft VB.net. Granted, VB.net was a far cry from the original basic, and probably would have been better off learning C#. But that was Microsoft's strategy with .Net - recycle old VB programmers and old C programmers using the CLR. At the end of the day, not much difference between C# and VB.net. Now I don't code anymore, I'm a VP at that insurance company. But I owe a lot of my career for having a tool like Basic available to me in my formative years. Sure, it teaches you some bad coding habits. But just like anything else, you learn from that, and others, and classes (and objects for those who like puns). Those who say that you can't be a good programmer after having learned basic are either elitist snobs or idiots. Sometimes you have to do it wrong first to see how doing it right makes all the difference. So Happy Birthday Basic - I love ya' baby.

"How could anyone reasonably expect him to willfully submit to that? It seems highly likely he would end up rotting in a US jail for life, unheard and unseen."

You are obviously not from the US so let me explain this to you. Our Constitution guarantees a right to a speedy trial. If JA wants a speedy trial, he'll get one, and will not "rot in a US jail for life" unless he was convicted and given a life sentence (Which in the US translates to roughly 10 years depending on your age and the leniency of your parole board)

What you are actually thinking about is Guantanomo, where I will agree we have imprisoned enemy combatants (ie. Prisoners of War) who are not subject to the Constitutional projections that would be extended to JA, like any other US resident...

I bought a PT Cruiser for my daughter when she was in high school. It is a convertible. Her requirement was "convertible." It was by far the cheapest available. Bought it new for $17,500. It was the last one they had in Connecticut. Other than me breaking the seat belt buckle, which caused the airbag system to fail, and a crankcase sensor that needed to be replaced, it has been uber reliable and trouble free. Never stranded anyone, ever. Has 60,000 miles on it now, and have only done brakes, tires and oil changes. Maybe I got the only good one.

We call it the "Barbie Car" because it looks like one, especially when you drop the top and the roll bar sticks out like a barbie car handle. A friend said that every time he sees it, a little piece of him dies in side. It is a very maligned car. Yet it's basically a Neon with different side panels. And she won the category of "coolest car" in her high school year book. All in all, money well spent.

(and one more "perk"... it is a 2008 bought in 2009, right before Chrysler went belly up. So it has an unlimited powertrain warranty. I plan on keeping that car until the only thing that is left is the engine and transmission. Hopefully I'll bankrupt Chrysler with engine/transmission replacements through 2035)

It's just one school issue... not all of them. For instance, I live in the northeast. No creationism taught here. OTOH, the liberal nirvana of the People's Republic of Connecticut goes too far the other way. Take US History as an example. Non-exceptional students get taught US History in two blocks. The first block, the era of small government in the US is taught in 8th grade. It is taught largely as a fairy tale. I've read the book, cover to cover. It's slanted in too many ways to mention. It has ridiculous sidebars - with extraneous and/or irrelevant topics in US History put there to be "politically correct."

Meanwhile, the era of big government, Reconstruction through Today is taught in 11th grade. The focus of this book is things like the robber barrons, with little to no acknowledgement of the standard of living those "robber barrons" brought to the US. It shimmies right up to the notion that WWII for the US was started because the US cut off exports of oil and steel to Japan, instead of the fact that the Japanese bombed pearl harbor. The book glosses over the battles in the Pacific, and instead concentrates on the internment of Japanese Americans and the "questionable" decision to nuke Japan.

I insisted that both of my daughters take AP US History in high school so that they learn the entire history in one year, one devoid of this kind of historical revisionism that our school system foists on our children. Sadly, most of the students get the slanted version, and think that its reality. I doubt Slate will do an article on that, or the hundreds of other things I saw happen on my 9 years on the local board of education.

...and they shall beat their swords into plowshares... That's what $14 Billion can buy.

Melamine laced pet food and baby formula... Awesome... can't wait to try it!