The problem goes even deeper than that: Large parts of the conservative right-wing religious voting-block has fundamental problems with *reality* as opposed to fiction.

Reality demonstrates clearly that their recommended policies (restrict access to information, abstinence-only, shame, restrictions on access to contraceptives...) do not work, and infact result in more teenage-pregnancies, and more abortions - the precise opposite of the result they claim to want.

Meanwhile free condoms, open and honest sex-ed, the pill for any female over 13 who wants it, and a culture where teenage sexuality is (by most anyway) an *accepted* part of growing up, demonstrably works.

The latter is important: If teenagers need to *fear* the reactions of their parents if they notice contraceptives - how likely are they to have condoms available ?

My (then) boyfriend started sleeping over when I was 15. My parents reaction to the start of our sexual relationship can be summarized as "I guess it's not needed to put out an extra mattress for when X sleeps over anymore huh ? Would you like me to arrange for a pill-prescription for you, or have you taken care of it?"

Moral Panic is just that: panic.

No. No.

Glad to clear that up for you.

This thing is *also* not capable of hitting anything with reasonable precision, thus even if the answer to the previous two where "yes" it'd still not hit a barn without being lanuched inside it.

With cheap and guilt-free access to contraception that happens seldom, where anti-choicers don't run amok, there's also the option of abortion for the rare cases where birth-control fails. In contrast "purity balls" and bullshit like that don't work. USA is the outlier among first-world nations:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_tee_pre_sha-health-teenage-pregnancy-share

In USA, 22% of all 20-year-old females have given birth. The equivalent rate for Japan and Sweden are 2% and 3%. (and atleast for Sweden, most of -those- are conservative religious folks - drop that nonsense and the risk drops to sub-1% which is, if not ignorable, then atleast not a major reason for population-growth.

"purpose" ? Whose purpose ? Surely you're not implying that nature as such has a purpose ?

Sure they are ! If the projects are talked about at all, they miss deadlines more commonly than not.

When was the Dreamliner *supposed* to have it's first flight ? When where the first 20 supposed to be delivered ? When should the F35 be operational ? How many planes should be delivered by 2015. What should each plane cost ?

Projects take longer, cost more, and deliver less than hoped for. This happens regularly, indeed it's much more common than the opposite of a project that's completed before deadline, with more than promised features, under budget.

Anyone who's ever renovated a kitchen knows this. It's not news.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. No production isn't generally linear: it is generally *sub*linear.

Making 1000 of something, generally costs LESS than 4 times the price of 250 of the thing, not *more* than 4 times.

It's true that making 10000 in an efficient will likely take longer than making 250 - because the more efficient production requires a longer and more complicated setup-phase, but there's no problem putting this in the kickstarter-description: "The first batch will be 250 items, if we get more backers, then we'll make additional batches as required ..... "

You don't need to detect individual waves. The thing is, electrical hum is supposed to be spot-on 50hz or 60hz (depending on your location), but in reality it drifts around slightly with 50Hz or 60Hz being the *average* frequency. You might have several seconds of 50.01 hz followed by a minute of 49.998 hz and so on.

In other words, if you plot frequency versus time you don't get a straight line at 50 hz, but a line that rise and fall over time while staying on the average very near the goal-frequency.

People worry about the spectacular but unlikely rather than the common but nonremarkable. They worry about events that kill many people at once, in one location, especially if it involves explosions or words like "bioweapon" "chemical" or "radiation". (they aren't aware that water is a chemical or that light is "radiation")

Sitting on your coach. Eating too much sugar. Getting too little exercice. Smoking. These things are dangerous.

Terrorists, on the other hand, are essentially noise - unless you're living in something close to a war-zone, but even in Afghanistan or places like that, terrorism likely isn't among the top cauces of death.

True. I live in a country where the rights of corporations and the rights of average people are somewhat more balanced than in USA. Ofcourse the population of USA doesn't want any of that, they call it "socialism" and turn away in disgust.

The way I see it, they've made their bed and now gets to sleep in it.

You don't get overtime in Norway either if you're in a independent position, but this is interpreted strictly. Basically, if someone could complain to you if you worked too *few* hours in some month, then they also get the priviledge of paying you overtime whenever you work to *many* hours in some month.

That's not true. When I'm on call I: have to be sober, have to get the phone, have to be within 20 minutes of work, have to show up promptly if something happens, have to have childcare taken care of so that I'm not tied down. None of that is now true 24x7.

It's true that my boss may call me. If he does, time spent is rounded up, an hour is added and it's overtime at 150%, in other words, a 5-minute telephone-conversation with me costs him 3 hours pay. At that rate, he doesn't call unless it genuinely IS important, and at that rate, I don't mind.

So what's the catch ?

For long calls you want a good-quality headset. These exist for both Skype, for mobile phones, and for traditional desk-phones, so this is really no argument at all in favor of any of them.

Why ? Because sometimes it's cheaper. Because employees like smartphones and it might thus help employee-retention. Because it increases flexibility since you can be reached even if not at your desk.

Where's the "screwing over" ? I've got a company-paid mobile phone, and up until now ain't seen it.

I still have the envelope, containing the 50 pages of source-code that I proofread. (it was spread over a few dozen volunteers)

True !

Fun Fact

encryption*SOFTWARE* was classified as munitions and restricted, meanwhile free speech laws meant that printed words could very seldom be stopped.

I was part of exporting PGP from USA legally, by way of printing the (zipped, uuencoded + checksums) source-code, mailing it physically to norway, scanning it, OCRing it and manually proofreading all lines where the checksum failed.

It's seldom worth it to hedge against 1:2 odds. Hedging is fundamentally a sort of insurance, and since there's costs involved you only want to insure against risks you can't afford to carry yourself.

If there's a 1:10000 chance that you $1M house will be completely destroyed in a year, the expected loss is $100/year. Yet it's still worth it to purchase $300 insurance - because few can afford to shoulder the potential $1M loss.

If, on the other hand, there's a 75% chance that Obama will win, and you believe it's 80% likely this will cost your company $1M, hedging against it doesn't help you much. The expected loss is 0.75 * 0.8 * 1M = 0.6M

A split-in-the-middle hedge could thus at best convert your 60% chance of 1M loss into a 100% chance of 600K loss, in practice it'd do somewhat worse than that since hedging is never free. That's probably not going to be worth it.