My boys might have a vested interest in not distracting me, but this doesn't mean that they realize during the heat of the moment that their fighting and screaming in the back seat of the car is distracting me. Should kids be banned from cars? What about babies? They might need a diaper change right in the middle of a long drive where there is nowhere to pull over. Nothing like the smell of a ripe diaper coming from the back seat to distract you. Except, perhaps, the tell-tale sound of an diaper explosion that may or may not have been contained by the diaper. Should babies be banned from cars?

What I really want to know is this: How is the phone going to be able to tell whether I'm the driver or a passenger?

That was my first question also. I don't really have a problem with a phone that prevents me from actively using it while I'm driving mainly because I won't be actively using it while driving. (Exceptions: Already programmed Google Maps navigation where I'm listening to the robo-voice telling me to turn right in 500 feet or taking a short phone call using a bluetooth headset.)

However, if I want to update my Twitter feed or play a game and I'm sitting in the passenger seat, why shouldn't I? If my phone "helpfully" says "you are driving now, you can't use me", then I'll say a) where's the Turn Off This Feature setting or b) I want a new phone without this feature!

Your write.

*waits to hear the sound of an exploding head*

they cut & paste from the Web

So that's why huge amounts of Wikipedia have gone missing!

If gods of our ancestors were so all powerful, why do they seem to have a messaging problem?

Can create vast amounts of items but has trouble communicating his views to others? God is a Geek!!!

Just be glad that he's not very good at messaging. Then God would be from Marketing. The Lord of All Creation coming from Marketing? Not that would be scary!

One of my favorite explanations actually comes from science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in the short story "How It Happened." Let's assume for a second that God really did tell Moses and Aaron what to write in the Bible, He would obviously need to give an allegorical account of what happened in the past and not a literal one. No human could write out a literal blow-by-blow history of the Universe and no human could ever read such an accounting. (Of course, my personal belief is that the Bible is a moral tale and not a historical tale. You are supposed to read it and think "people should act this way", not read it and think "women were really created by a rib surgically removed from the first man.")

It may be turtles all down, but it's corporations all up!

I believe the "only marry one person" command came after Jacob married his two wives and slept with their servants. Loophole!

Of course, some Orthodox Jewish folks I know claim that Abraham kept Kosher even before the laws of keeping Kosher were given because he was just that holy. By that logic, wouldn't Jacob know the "rules of marriage" before they were given?

This exactly. I've been playing a lot of smartphone apps recently. I have no trouble paying something for a game. If they want to release a "lite" version with limited levels, I'm fine with that. It lets you get a feel for the game play and see if you want to spend the cash for the full version. I don't even have a problem with additional level packs costing more money. What I have a problem with are games where you either 1) Need to buy items with the "premium currency" (only obtainable by paying cash) to advance in the game or 2) Need to pay to keep an "energy meter" up. In the latter case, if you limit how much I play your game, you are just making it more likely that I'll play another game, not pay you money.

As an example of a game-gone-wrong, I'd submit Where's My Water. The first game was pretty good. There was a lite version, a paid version, and additional level packs you could buy. Then Where's My Water 2 came out. At first, they had an energy meter, but they got rid of that when people complained. My big issue? Keys. You can only obtain keys by 1) buying them or 2) bugging people on social media. If you don't do that, you can't proceed along the map. If you buy the keys, you will just get stuck at the next gate that requires more keys. So you aren't even buying "the full version", you are buying "the next level or two." The end result? I don't even have that app on my phone anymore.

I don't begrudge game developers from making money, but it's a fine line between encouraging payments and annoying people too much.

Jacob even married two sisters. In his defense, he was "tricked" into marrying the older sister when he wanted to marry the younger one, but then they got into a competition over who would give Jacob more kids and had Jacob sleep with their handmaidens so he could impregnate them and their kids would count towards the appropriate sisters' totals.

If someone did that today, they'd be tried for bigamy ASAP and "I was tricked into the first marriage" or "We just wanted more kids" wouldn't be any defense at all. You need to be very careful when chastising any historical figure (be they from religious texts or from history) based on modern day social rules/laws.

My son has autism and we never gave him any homeopathic treatments..... Wait a second, don't homeopathic treatments get more potent the less of them that there is? So taking none would have an infinite effect! That must be it. Quick, everyone! Take some homeopathic treatments before we overdose on homeopathic treatments.

If they are selling something as a remedy to an ailment, they MUST get FDA approval. They can't simply say "well we don't have the budget so we won't do that."

Airborne got in trouble for that. They sold their product as a cure for the common cold, but didn't have FDA approval. They are still selling it, but they need to be careful to not state that it cures or treats anything. They now claim it is a "nutritional supplement."

Of course not. The only power source capable of generating 1.21 jigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning!

Perhaps people oppose Monsanto because of this tactic:

1) Claim a patent on seeds Monsanto makes.
2) Get some farmers to buy the seeds.
2 a) Lock the farmers in by stipulating that they can't take any seeds the plant produces and plant them again next year... like people have done for thousands of years!
3) Find a nearby farmer who isn't buying Monsanto and claim they they've planted Monsanto.
4) Find one instance of their plants growing on that farmer's land. (Ignore that seeds travel by air/animals and spread... like seeds have done for millions of years!)
5) Tie up the farmer in court until they either agree to buy Monsanto or they go bankrupt.
6) Repeat 2a - 5.

To expand on Group #1 a bit, we press it into a pill because this lets us extract the medicinal agent and give it at a constant dose. Suppose we found an herb tomorrow that cured cancer. Chewing this herb seemed to make tumors go into remission in many cases. Alternative medicine folks would be happy with that and would sell the herb.

Scientists go further, though. They'd study the herb, figure out just how it is curing the cancer. They would isolate the compound within the herb that does the curing and would figure out how much of a dose was needed. There would be tests to make sure that the cure didn't come with some horrible downside. ("We've cured your cancer but now you are poisoned and have only a week to live.") They'd figure out what the side effects would be. Finally, they'd make a pill with the exact dosage. Chewing the hypothetical herb might cure your cancer or give you too high or too low of a dosage. Taking the pill would give you the exact dosage every time. Finally, since the scientists would know how the herb's chemical worked, they could look for/create similar chemicals with fewer side effects or that better targeted some kinds of cancer.