What I have always wondered is if I wrote something down by hand using a super secrete unbreakable code that was related to a crime can I be forced to interpret that piece of paper for the police so they can understand it or can I tell them to go fuck themselves with a spindle sander? This is really what is happening with encrypted data I am being asked to interpret it for the police and it is data that is encoded in such a fashion that without my help they can't decipher it and at least to my non legal mind that seems awfully close to violating the 5th amendment.

If Alice is off killing trolls what is Bob doing? Looting their corpses before Eve gets there?

That is why I don't support big beef but will buy from a local farmer who is one of my father's friends. Compared to other cattle feeds corn also is very nutritionally lacking, it may be good for fattening them up quickly and cheaply (this part is changing) but it really isn't good for the cattle. Meat from properly raised cattle butchered at a quality shop flash frozen, not packed in CO2, and not treated with ammonia has such a wonderful flavor and smell. It also is a much darker red almost a purple when compared to the standard meat sold in a store. Problem is that unless the farmer has their own customer base for boutique meat they would prefer to pump them full of antibiotics, growth hormones, and cheap grain to get the ~200 extra pounds on each head all while getting them to market quicker.

Let us not forget about beet sugar which is produced in fairly large quantities around the red river valley (Warning xls spread sheet from the USDA). These 2 states produce about 1/2 the entire US crop of sugar beets (~15 million tons out of ~32 million tons) and both are also corn states too.

The Pepsi and Mt. Dew Throwback are still available where I live (Twin Cities metro area). Although I had heard an interesting stat that I don't know if it is true but seem reasonable that Minnesotans have the highest per capita consumption in the nation of Mt. Dew so that may be part of the reasons. Another guess (purely speculative) would be that we grow a lot of sugar beets.

I was thinking of huge tracts of land.

Lies, that would be a veritable heatwave in the middle of winter, especially last winter. Although I did have fun blowing soap bubbles outside when it get really cold. Sometimes the rise like a hot air balloon before shattering, other times they would land on the snow frozen but with a hole and the ice would sublimate leaving tendrils of soap, but most of the time they would crash into the house or tree and shatter. It was always fun to watch, since what else are you going to do when the day time high is -25F.

We do have something similar, although it is called Texas.

I have been following this with interest ever since I discovered the BBC World Service on one of the sub channels of Minnesota Public Radio. Being an American it doesn't seem to affect me but I would be for Scottish independence just because I think it would be neat to have a new country. In reality this doesn't seem to be a good reason for the Scots to choose it so it is probably for the better that I am not a resident of Scotland and instead an American.

I find this statement entirely believable as something they would say to conference. This sounds like a prelude to a request to have their budget expanded. This sets the scene so that they can point to this conference as a public instance where they pointed out how hard of a time they are having and use it as justification to congress in the next budget go around cluster fuck next year.

So now where are corporations going to get their Dutch Sandwiches?

Although with some liberal arts degrees I highly doubt the critical thinking skills. I off up some of the degrees offered by my school:
Avation (learn to fly a plan)
Physical Education (you get to be a high school gym teacher)
Parks and recreation management (be an events coordinator at a local park or if you are lucky a park ranger with the NPS)

All of these were liberal arts programs, all of them had the same general education requirements as a STEM or any other degree, and all of them were much more vocational than a regular degree. I had roommates who majored in each one of these and even they admitted that apart from the vocational skill training they got nothing from these courses.

I wonder with these types of artificial filters would there be any benefit for an otherwise healthy person to have this done?

I would go with more of a convenient US annoyance Putin can keep around to poke the US government with instead of communist spy. Also if I didn't want to find out what is is like to experience extreme rendition or be sodomized by a hellfire missile Russia seem like a pretty good country to flee to.

Now that sounds like a range I would like to avoid. I like the one I go to since they take a very strict approach to those things and it sounds like you did as well while you were at that one. That seems to be how a lot of those things are one person leaves and things get lax.