Might as well stop fooling ourselves that we're a nation of laws. The actions of the US government are indistinguishable from those of an unlimited monarchy; they take what they want. Soon the burden of writing, re-writing, and re-interpreting little laws to justify it will be onerous, and they'll stop.

Then we won't have to (and indeed won't be allowed to) waste time talking about it.

This. PLEASE! I've been saying it for years.

But it's the system we HAVE. It's not called the corrections industry for nothing; one of the largest businesses in the country is catching people and punishing them. There's a reason we have the largest per-capita incarceration rate in the world. If there were no crime... the cops, lawyers, prison guards, surveillance equipment company employees, would all be out of work. For heavens sake, if you're a patriot and love your country, support it by breaking the law today!

Largely in that "eugenics" is a word associated with a Very Bad Politician and therefore cannot be said in polite company. All it really means is "The practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population." A noble goal, to be sure. Like many things, however, eugenics can be practiced the innocuous way or the horrifying way.

For obvious reasons, you want to do your culling before fertilization occurs. In Heinlein's story, they examined the otherwise-wasted polar body thrown off during the development of the cell. The genetic content of the final cell can be inferred from that. Not sure how well that would work out, real-world; but the story was written in 1942, and the idea hasn't been discredited yet (that I could find).

Positive side: Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon"
Negative side: Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"

If we don't do the first, we get the second. There's a reasonable argument that natural selection isn't working anymore, and in fact may have been reversed. At one point, poor eyesight or ADD meant the sabre-tooth edited you out of the gene pool. So, we'll have to add the chlorine ourselves. I'm not sure we should be editing genes directly, but selecting the best gametes from the available pool (for a given set of parents) à la Heinlein almost HAS to be done at some point.

Agreed. While I've never easten octopus, I have previously enjoyed squid, something I may re-consider. Arbitrary, perhaps - but they're personal standards.

One just has to be careful of the acronym used for the computers name, and assiduously avoid omnipresent red-glowing video eyes. Then you'll be fine.

When they land, they'll be a demonstrated fact. Religious faith deals with the invisible and unprovable; it's not involved in observable ET's. The alien's beliefs? We'll ask them. Only problem is, if they ry to convert us.

Hmm, I was service manager at an Apple authorized computer store. Fixed hundreds of white plastic MacBooks. I would think that, given a long enough timespan, you could get to 30% failure on those three items, collectively. But certainly not within warranty, and generally not due to manufacturing defects.

I never saw any yellowing that wasn't caused by abuse. And I mean cigarette burns, being left on top of a radiator, etc. Cracks on the keyboard bezel, sure. That WAS a design flaw. Cosmetic only, BTW - didn't affect function. Apple fixed them all, in or out of warranty.

Hard drives fail. Apple doesn't make them. Look up the manufacturers specs for G's of impact in operation, and compare that to the way MacBooks are used. Mostly by students... We had one guy who was using his laptop on the seat of a moving, off-road truck. Apple replaced that hard drive, four times that I know of, in and out of warranty - at no charge. Eventually he got a free upgrade to an Air, with SSD. Solved.

Battery failure. Well, batteries are expendable items. I would say 95% of the batteries replaced were over their rated lifetime cycles; usually WAY over. The few that weren't, were also replaced free, in or out of warranty.

...by having lots of people with guns on hand. They can do whatever they want, ESPECIALLY if the programs are covert.

Back in the mid-40's, John W Campbell wrote a series of science fiction stories featuring "lux metal" which was basically matter composed of photons instead of electrons, protons, and neutrons. It had, shall we say, "interesting" properties. Wasn't easy to manufacture, either.

You can't physically cram people any tighter, and fights are breaking out. Good. When they discover they're losing more on bad PR and flight diversions than they're gaining, they'll put back the inch or two - for a while. Now that they've reached bottom, the floor will just bounce from now on; the came couple of inches continually added and subtracted subtracted every 2-3 years, forever.

As far as blaming people for not buying an upgrade, has anyone saying this actually looked at prices? Last couple of times I flew, I looked into it; a little more room doesn't cost you 10% or 20%, it's more like double or triple the ticket price. Actually habitable travel accommodations are only for the wealthy.

Japan has just now announced they're resuming whaling for "scientific research" in defiance of a UN ban. They're after minke whales, and a smaller number of fin and humpback whales, not blues... but the timing is odd. Maybe they think Sea Shepherd will be confused, and think they don't have to show up?

We still don't have any facts, other than public officials covering their posteriors. We "know" he wrote a letter someone didn't like. Only that. You go to psych lockup for writing one letter these days?

"McLaw's letter was of primary concern to healthcare officials, Maciarello says. It, combined with complaints of alleged harassment and an alleged possible crime from various jurisdictions led to his suspension. Maciarello cautions that these allegations are still being investigated; authorities, he says, "proceeded with great restraint."

Alleged possible crime? As in, we don't know if it happened, and we're not sure it was a crime?