I have an engineering degree and the college I went to had a general philosophy of trying to make "well rounded" engineers by forcing us to take various liberal arts courses. I don't have an issue with the general idea but I can tell you from first hand experience that colleges that try this almost invariably fail miserably at it. Mine certainly did. I got a great engineering education but humanities? Not so much.

I can assure you that the random smattering of non-STEM courses I took as college grad did not meaningfully expand my mind. I'm kind of a naturally curious person and I learned far more about humanities outside of classes than I ever did in a formal classroom. Forcing engineers to take a few randomly-chosen-whatever-fits-my-schedule courses really doesn't accomplish much. The problem isn't with the concept of learning about disparate subjects, the problem is with the execution of that plan. Learning about engineering by necessity takes up a HUGE amount of the credit hour budget for a degree. There simply isn't a lot of left over curriculum space for a meaningful humanities education to fit in. I do not really see how a school could deliver both a quality engineering AND humanities education in the same four years.

I didn't choose the word fuel by accident. You will note I did not say gasoline or diesel. Fuel can come in the form of stored electrons. You can tax electricity just as easily as gasoline. You can also adjust the tax rate to adjust for improving fuel economy.

Traditionally that is done via a fuel tax. Usage of the roads correlates strongly with the amount of fuel consumed. Lots of public goods can be tracked with a good that correlates strongly with the use of the public good.

Not one of those forms of discrimination causes societal harm. Whom you chose to date does NOT cause the same problems as denying someone basic civil rights because they are a woman or a minority. There are some forms of discrimination that are plainly harmful to society so we protect classes of people against discrimination. No it is NOT ok to pass over someone for a job or pay them less because they have a vagina. No it is NOT ok to refuse service to a well behaved patron in a restaurant because of their skin color. Do not confuse basic consumer choices with civil rights.

Say what now? You think it is ok for a business owner to refuse service on the basis of skin color? Business owners merely were required to actually follow the constitution (not to mention basic decency) which they could have been doing all along but didn't. "Don't get the logic"? Are you seriously that daft?

100% wrong. These "religious freedom" laws are simply sneaky attempts to enshrine and protect bigotry. Someone's religion should NEVER form a basis to refuse economic transactions because economic transactions are the domain of the state. That is a plain violation of the separation of church and state.

Exactly how is a religious person being harmed here? Harmed in a tangible way that we both can agree is real. A religious person claiming it is a "sin" for them to make a wedding cake for a gay couple is a mental block in their own head. This is nothing more than an attempt to justify a bigoted fear response. This sort of bogus argument is why we have separation of church and state in the first place. Economic transactions are the domain of the state and personal religious preferences should have NO bearing on them at all. Ever.

A religious person's imaginary rules for themselves are not and never should become my problem. If they want to live their life putting crazy imaginary restrictions on what they are ok with doing, that's their problem. They have NO right to make it my problem. I don't follow their religious law and I your argument is basically the same argument used to justify abominations like Jim Crow laws.

No it is not. It is an attempt to enshrine bigoted ideology into law against a group of people who have done them no harm. Just because it is pandering does not mean it will not do real harm.

BULLSHIT. Plenty of racist homophobes actually support this nonsense. This is legislation that specifically targets minority groups that by definition do not have the population to fight back directly. "Ohh, 1% of our customer base is angry with us, whatever will we do..."

Do you seriously think that the owners of Chick-Fil-A or Hobby Lobby wouldn't force their religion on others if given the chance? Companies are guided by people and people have biases. It's not even remotely difficult to find examples of companies discriminating against entire classes of people including women, blacks, hispanics, asians etc even when doing so is explicitly against the law. Ask women how that equal pay thing is going these day.

If it were a fair world I would agree with you but reality frequently doesn't work that way.

Exactly where in US law does it say that one should be immune to mockery based on your religious choices? Rest assured that I fully plan to mock you and your invisible friend. I'll just won't deny your marriage license as well.

That is EXACTLY the excuse used by bigots to justify Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination. That's just a fancy way of saying "we don't want your kind here".

Actually the entire idea of these special entitlements that destroy individual rights TO DISCRIMINATE is a power grab by the insane government that is out of control.

Individual people discriminate every day. As a potential employee you can choose to work for a one legged Brazilian tranny and there is nothing any of the other potential employers can do to stop this obvious bigotry and discrimination by you against their businesses, NOR should there be anything they could do to force you to work for them. That's EXACTLY the same thing.

PRECISELY the same thing, since you working for a company is exactly like a company doing work for other people. When you buy a product you are buying work done by a company for you. A company is people standing behind it (corporations are in fact people, not as in 'Google is a living person', it is not. It is as in Google is owned by people, that's the people corporations are). A person that owns/runs a company has his or her right to discriminate and the Constitution of the USA is there to protect that right.

A right is a protection against government oppression and abuse, nothing else.

A government telling somebody that just because they are employing somebody they now lost a right is abuse and oppression and a power grab and unconstitutional and illegal and immoral.

Should people discriminate against each other based on sex, gender, age, race, colour? We know that some will and some do. If a business does so, it will face consequences whatever they are in the market. As to a belief that just because a business exists somewhere you automatically get an entitlement to their service - that is hubris and destruction of the people running that business as individuals and it cannot stand.

Fair enough. Explain to us then the rational opposing position then. Explain to us the pro-discrimination position whereby we should be permitted to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, or even sexual orientation when none of those things should matter. Explain how these laws trying to push laws purporting to support "religious freedom" are actually anything other than an attempt by bigoted people to discriminate against others.

It sounds to me like you have an ideological issue with "some of the left" and are trying for some reason to justify what is plainly an attempt by right wing religious conservatives to codify bigotry into state law. 50 years ago those laws were called Jim Crow laws. This is just a later day version of separate but equal. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom to discriminate particularly on a religious basis.

Which "average" are you comparing against? If you are comparing me (an average non-racing driver) to an F-1 driver then no, the electronic assist won't matter. If you are comparing and average F1 driver to the best F1 drivers then chances are it will very much make a difference because the differences in their skill levels are quite small. Even an average F1 driver is astonishingly talented and the gap between middle of the pack and the front in driving skill is easily overwhelmed by technology.

I suspect they've put a tad more thought into it than that. The reasons may or may not be good ones but they didn't just do it for grins and giggles.

Again, WHY? I get that people like it, I just cannot comprehend why. I've been to plenty of auto races and have to bring earplugs when I do. The sound does NOT enhance the experience for me and engine noises are not beautiful, not matter what Jeremy Clarkston claims. For the same reason I fail to understand the appeal of Harley Davidson motorcycles that are pointlessly loud and obnoxious. If there is no actual useful primary purpose to the noise (like music), then it is nothing but pollution.

There are numerous purposes to racing and sporting events. Entertainment and money not the least among them. Sports (auto and otherwise) are hugely popular and are big business. They are substantial parts of our economy and of people's lives. The purpose is to be entertained and for some to make a living doing it.

Attacking pointless noise is "inane"? We're going to disagree on that. I'm well aware that many people like it but lots of people like all sorts of things that probably should go away. People like big hits in football but the side effect is concussions and permanent brain damage. People (inexplicably) like noisy cars but it's needlessly obnoxious and polluting.

Ask any fan of their local NFL team what the outcome of the game has to do with the enjoyment of said game. The answer will be the same. If the outcome is a foregone conclusion and nobody cares who actually wins then what is the point of a contest?

If no one cares who wins then nobody will bother coming to watch and there will be no race and certainly no business surrounding the race. Racing is a competitive sport and whether you comprehend it or not, people cheering for their favorite team/player(s) matters for the economics of the whole thing to work.

So you truly have no comprehension of what makes sports popular do you? It's PRECISELY the fact that people think of these teams as "their team". It's why they say "we" when referring to their team even if they do not actually work for the team. People WANT to be a part of a team, even if they are just fans. Professional sports ignore this at their peril.

No you really wouldn't. Trust me. Then it becomes a contest based on the size of the wallet. F1 is boring for precisely this reason. There are a small handful of teams at the top with huge budgets that have a prayer of winning and the rest are basically competing to try to get on one of those teams. Furthermore you run into some very serious safety problems. The goal is to race and win and maybe do some good engineering along the way, not to design the most elaborate way to earn a Darwin Award.

Drive a Formula One car on anything other than an exquisitely paved road and let me know how that works out for you. Fancy a wager on how a F1 car would do against a Rally car on an unpaved road? Let's see a F1 car race a 24 hour race. How about a drag race? Peak of technology? Only for a subset of auto racing conditions.

Then you have clearly not been to a Formula One race. With NASCAR you are quite correct.

But that is just the spectators. If you want to actually race at anything more than your local junker car level, auto racing is hugely expensive. There is an old joke that the best way to make a small fortune in auto racing is to start with a large one.