FFS it is just a kids show: intended for 9 year old boys. Get over it!

I respond very negatively to advertising. It irritates and offends me so much that I am prepared to pay more for a similar product that I have not seen advertised.

Agreed, but notice how the long Aldi conveyor ends abruptlyat the cash register after which is a very short counter that can hold only a couple of items. There the fast swiping check out chick expects you to quickly load your own bags (or buy new bags) to stop items piling up on your side and falling off the edge. There is no bag loading service. This means that you cannot watch the prices going through the till because you are too busy trying to keep up, and they will snap nastily at you if you fail. There is always a long queue on each register at my Aldi. If one ever it becomes short, the operator closes that lane to make the other queues longer. You cannot time your visits better, because even during slack periods of the week there will be a long queue on the only register operating. A quick purchase of one item is never possible.
If the queues are all too long I will dump my pile anywhere and walk out: in the hope that the manager will realize that this policy is costing sales and re-stacking time.
Aldi charges a fee for providing a cart, even though some are usually available for free outside in the car park. And, it charges a percentage fee for using your credit card. Traditions from Germany, I guess.

Forget price matching. There is no point in getting the same price. If you find it cheaper somewhere else just buy it there.

Yep, that is the phony "discount store" model that undercut and killed the old "department store" model. Now that too is failing because it is being undercut by on-line shopping. I can no longer suspend my disbelief at the hyped-up discount store sales promotions. Pull the other one: it has bells on. Tell it to the Marines: they are thick enough to believe you.
Most "Loss leaders" are items that would not sell when formerly pitched above market price, or they are items that are even cheaper from Asian on-line stores.The sooner that fake discount model is gone the better. I only use Walmart to physically inspect the products that I am considering purchasing on-line. I expect to get things about 30% cheaper, including shipping, providing that I can avoid the big retail on line stores like Amazon. Give me the Chinese copies every time -- more reliable as well as cheaper.
I don't care about the jobs that will be lost when the likes of Walmart are gone. The bulk of the wages that should be going to their workers are being stolen by the obscenely rich Walton family. Something better will replace those jobs when the fake discount stores are killed off. Both Waltons and the Government have to learn that we will not stand for this kind of exploitation any longer.

Most businesses rely on people using credit cards. If they had to use cash instead, their costs would rise and sales would decrease. Airlines for example, are totally dependent on their customers credit cards because they now have no other method for taking payments. And yet they charge consumers a big fee for using them. It should be the other way around because the cards cost the owner plenty. Pay me for maintaining and using my credit card, or go back to cash, bank transfers, cashier's checks and personal checks.

We do not have Walmart in Australia -- probably Government does not allow businesses to treat their employees like that. I am fine with this. I hope that they never come here. Its the same for employers that force the people who work for them to rely on tipping. We don't want them either.

That is what the tail is for - wind vane effect keeps the nose into the apparent wind.

"But there is a duck billed platypus. Can you explain that?"
It is due to New Zealand pronunciation of I as a U. i.e "fush and chups"
So "duck" means "dick"

The academic public policy take on this is as follows:
Diversity of opinion can be in several forms:
* a diversity of available (biased) channels, even though some of them give no time to opposing opinions
* a diversity of programs over time within a channel
* a diversity of opinions within a program.
For a FTA channel using the radio spectrum, the broadcasting license gives the right to use a scarce public good (one of the very limited number of interference free VHF or UHF channels available in the service area) giving access (and ability to influence) all citizens. In that case it is reasonable for the channel to be required to reflect the diversity of political, religious, and scientific opinion within the country.

There are so many channels available on cable and satellite that there is no requirement for any one of them to be required to reflect diversity of opinion.

There is no requirement to reflect diversity in any particular program - with the possible exception of programs that are produced with public money.
IMHO science does not have to reflect religious views because they are not about science.
similarly, religion does not have to have a scientific basis because it is not about science.

The two belief sets do not overlap. R union S = 0 , T=True , R= False

On an earlier point, TV networks are usually not paid to present a program. If they do, it is because they believe that it will be of sufficient interest to enable advertisements to be sold to a target audience through it. The networks are not in the least interested in the truth contained therein. They are not in the business of relaying truth. For God's sake! - they are in the advertising industry.

I think it was probably Somali pirates. Airliners are inevitable part of their business development plan. I am not kidding. It explains why there have been no claims by terrorists. They probably unintentionally lost it in the ocean because flying, navigating, and landing an airliner is a tad more difficult than taking a ship home in familiar waters. Look for it in the Bay of Bengal en-route to Somalia.

This kind of hijacking would be a logical move up-market for those Somali pirates who steal ships in the Bay of Bengal. Those bastards would not claim credit for it until they had a deal to negotiate. They probably crashed it in the sea because they found an airliner somewhat more difficult to handle than a ship.

Prayer is a form of communication, but with what is it communicating, and how. I suggest that the conscious mind is communicating with the subconscious through the medium of the brain. That is a much lesser leap of faith than to believe that there is a long range communications system, involving no infrastructure or terminals, that can communicate between the living and the dead or with supernatural beings. When the devout receive vocal answers to their prayers it is really only their relaxed more- rational mind giving them a sensible answer to their feverish questions. But then I am a radio engineer: called Occams.

NORAD relies on secondary radar for tracking intruders into US air space.

Jail time costs us money. This is a stupid waste of our money. The courts should be smarter than that. Make her pay compensation to the state for maintaining an arrest order for her all that time.