But you didn't eat it

Well...

To quote a commenter above:

reality is there will be collateral damage in fighting terrorists sometimes

if you travel to the middle east, don't be surprise if terrorists grab you and hold/torture/behead you

This shouldn't have been let out of the firehose. WTF is nerdy about this?

You're joking. Liquid mercury? Come on, show of hands: Who among us has not at some point in our lives broken open a thermometer in order to play with the mercury inside? That's a nerd rite of passage.

Hell, I'm old enough to remember when they made little maze puzzles with a blob of mercury inside that you'd try to get from one corner to the other. Those were the days before parents raised kids like veal. We had pocket knives, for chrissake. Can you imagine millennial parents giving their precious offspring pocket knives? I had my own .22 rifle by the time I was 10. All the liquid mercury I handled in my life, it's no wonder I'm half an imbecile.

It's a marginal cost. Reducing the number of people can reach a regime where there is a positive value to people once again.

What's strange about any of that?

The carved shells? They were from a Mossberg 500 Tactical Persuader pump action shotgun.

Fuck your aliens.

I know, right? It wasn't aliens that built the pyramids, or anything supernatural. It's stupid to think that.

Everybody knows it was Anunnaki, our ancestors, the Shining Ones, who gave this technology to humans over 250,000 years ago.

Yeah, but "living in a large aluminum ball in his parents' basement" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Whenever I hear of a story like this, I am reminded of the scene in Martin Scorsese's great movie, Raging Bull, in which Jake LaMotta, played by Robert DiNiro, speaks of an upcoming opponent to an associate:

"I'll put yous both in the ring and give yous both a fuckin' beatin', then yous can both fuck each other!"

Haven't we lost enough to the stupidity of our intellectual property laws? Could it be time to revisit whether or not they're actually doing what they were meant to do?
 

It is we who choose to make human life valuable or not. And there are easy to conceive global collapse scenarios such as a global famine where human life has negative value - each additional mouth to feed takes food from everyone else and causes more suffering.

My view on this is that the economic mechanisms of trade and private ownership of capital have done far more to make human life valuable than any system of ethics. One can say the same of technology progress, particularly in agriculture, transportation, and labor saving devices.

You went way off the rails here. NSA has already done a lot to undermine corrupt and non-corrupt US corporations and nothing has been done about it. They still get their usual captive revenue stream (which let us note, will flow no matter how unhappy the business world gets about it). Just because large corporations are more useful to the US intelligence community than you are doesn't mean that they're in charge. It just means that the large corporation has some opportunity for profit as long as they continue to play ball. The tail, corporations aren't wagging this dog.

Do you really believe that curbing the power of businesses is going to result in the NSA spying less or hinder the other power grabs that the US federal government routinely engages in?

One of the huge things routinely missed in this topic is that business versus government is the huge informal division of power in democracies throughout the world. Making businesses absolutely subservient to government is another step towards tyranny. Sure, I don't think it's a good idea to let businesses rule our societies. But neither do I think it's a good idea to cripple them so much that they can't help us resist tyranny from the government side.

I can't help but think that you are an unwitting shill for a statist ideology which seeks to knock out the obstacles to rule.

God (Via his assistant) unleashes all manner of misery and suffering upon Job, killing his family, ruining him financially and inflicting him with horrible diseases entirely to show that Job, as a loyal Jew, will remain obedient and loyal no matter what circumstances throw at him - and sure enough, at the end, God restores his health and wealth. Though not the dead family.

Not only that, but he did it basically on a dare.

God: "Job will do anything for me, no matter what"
Satan: "no way"
God: "yes way"
Satan: "prove it or GTFO"
God: "watch this..."

Now, do you have statistics to back up your implication, that in real life police are more often wrong than right?

No, but the consequences of real life police being wrong are pretty fucking serious. And they're wrong a lot more often than people care to admit.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or...

Actually, Genesis would be a good start.

That's for sure. THAT sumbitch told Abraham to kill his kid and then at the last second went, "PSYCH!"

Some of of can tell the difference between fiction and reality.

And one would hope that law enforcement officers are near the top of the list of people who can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

So, if popular culture approves of and encourages it, can't blame the cops too much for doing it despite it being merely illegal...

Popular culture also approves and encourages Justin Bieber, but don't nobody want to see cops imitating that mess.