No alcohol? what kind of geek are you where that is a problem? All you need is a small yeast culture and a sugar source.

The real problem is a combination of economics and hierarchy of needs. First since we are almost all well fed( judging from the obesity epidemic? whatever the hell that means not like it as harmless as h1n1) we can consider more pressing matters than how to get food and stay secure. combine that with the fact that it coasts so much to raise a child their value goes up. In un industrialized nations essentially what is lost when someone dies is the coast to feed them. add a good education and the large contribution they could have made in non manual labor fields and the losses quickly mount. So we have fewer children and invest more in each of them and ourselves until we are so afraid of danger that it nearly cripples us.

Good they are finally catching onto this security threat. http://xkcd.com/651/

Why would you say it is a prison? I go by "what goes around generally comes back around" as my moral compass and realize that every other moral code in history has changed because it supported racism, slavery, genocide and etc. While yes some of it supported "good deed" how do you define "good" and if it is all relative then it is nothing personal against me.

"I don't know how you live with yourself." I don't know about the other guy but breathing works fine for me. Human rights is an excuse for the U.S. to force its will on other countries and point out that they are better than them. Freedom of religion, speech and such are all agreements and inventions of the human mind made by the writers of our law to gain our support and nothing more, there is no more a right to free speech than there is an Apollo to raise the sun every morning.

I have an Italian friend who said that the pizza from pappa johns pizza was very close to Italian pizza. I have lost a lot of respect for Italian pizza since then even if they invented it. Although I have never left the continent the best pizza I ever had was a goat cheese pizza.

that was likely a low tech scanner. Just because it says it scans for fingerprints doesn't mean it really does and just like in any other field you get what you pay for. I work on biometrics projects at my school and one of the labs I used to work in had a hand geometry scanner, made a dozen or so measurements of the length and such of fingers one of the older and less secure methods, it required an id number because while unlike fingerprint hand geometry is good for a one to any search. meaning that it will only confirm an id because mostly the accuracy is so low compared to what it would need to determine different people without combining other security vectors. Just keep in mind not all scanners are created equal and not all modalities, different biometric paths such as fingerprint iris and many others, are equal and they can be easily combined to increase security in a similar way multiple passwords adds security and it needs to be tailored to the application just like any other security approach. and just like all other methods of security it is a cat and mouse game.

People will use violence to get their way good or bad. Assuming people never have bad intentions it is because they are not always correct. If you are going to say that just because we have gone 8 years without anyone getting shot as your measurement of success ... Bush did do some other things to suppress dissent but I would say that is because government is there to mostly keep order and what is "right" is a secondary concern. We are hardly an old country and have many years before we approach the length of a few other nations most of which were much more suppressive, wonder if that is coincidence, so just because we say we are the guiding light of this world means nothing we have just been able to convince the rest of the world for the time being. Eventually people will be tired of participating in government at such a low level and we will resort to more centralized power structures. And finally that VP shooting incident is nothing nefarious it is the same kind of accident that has taken countless hunter's life so don't treat it like it is a joke.

"At least here in the U.S. they don't gun you down in the street, as they did in Iran after the election." Where were you in the 60's and 70's? Write off Kent State as a one off mistake but then what about the civil rights movement? Hurts when you fall off that high horse doesn't it?

"regime change can be beneficial and effective" how well did that regime change go for them last time?

OK, I spoke too soon before I read the document. The document appears to contain approximations for the cost of supplying the requested information which they are required to be reimbursed for according to the document itself.

You are allowed to charge to comply with a search warrant?

And I just finished all the thanksgiving leftovers.

What all this obsession about who actually won the Iranian presidential vote masks is IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO IS PRESIDENT OF IRAN. Sorry for the all caps but that really needs emphasis. The Supreme Leader holds all control over foreign policy decisions, security and so forth even nuclear power/weapons. I mean come on you can't even run for President of Iran with out approval of the Supreme Leader. Ahmadinejad only has control over domestic policy and even then as long as the Supreme Leader approves. He is there as a bargaining chip, if he attracts too much heat internationally or domestically he will be thrown under the Revolutionary bus so that the Ayatolla can find someone else to implement his policies.