Although I am pretty sure this goes against a Geneva convention

The relevant international treaty would be the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, but that only covers weapons that cause permanent blindness.

we have a generation afraid to take risks

I always see people praising risk takers. And the same people who praise risk-takers treat failure like leprosy.

But the thing about risks is that they involve a high probability of failure due to circumstances beyond the control of the risk-taker. If they don't have that high probability of failure, they aren't really risks, are they?

So, if you take a risk and you are lucky enough to succeed, you are held up as a fine example of the kind of person that everyone should be. If you take a risk and succumb to the probability that you will fail, then its "fuck off, moocher, you're on your own".

Alternative albuterol inhalers cost almost three times as much as the $20 epinephrine inhalers sold by online retailers."

The worst part is that epinephrine you can get any time you want (like, say, in the middle of an asthma attack), but albuterol requires a prescription, which means schlepping to a doctor with all the associated costs and inconveniences.

Albuterol works a lot better, sure, but sometimes - when you need an inhaler and you need it NOW - its nice to know the good old Primatine Mist is available over the counter at the nearest drugstore.

Ah, yes. You don't have room for interesting stories without a minority protagonist.

If you are interested in having minorities spend their money on your comic books, a minority protagonist is probably more interesting to that audience than yet another white dude.

like impose a moratorium on new expenditures until the economic crisis is over?

Great idea! Slow down economic activity until economic activity speeds up!

Exactly, why the censorship?

Because the kid is going to have to learn to evade on-line security systems one day. Best that he start that at home, with an early lesson on sneaking around Dad's proxy server.

Kidspeak is good for language learning. My kid is working on the French, but there are a bunch to choose from: http://www.transparent.com/personal/kidspeak.html

It seems to me that this will result in a large number of extra miles driven by people who would have otherwise changed their driving plans on the fly if they had a working cell phone. People will instead drive someplace, find out plans have changed and that they need to drive someplace else, and then drive there. Those extra miles driven are going to be cause for much extra traffic, traffic accidents, and traffic fatalities.

No it doesn't. The media reflects what sells. Any correlation with social values is purely coincidental.

But isn't "what sells" a reflection of our social values? Not the social values we claim to have, but those we actually have? The stuff wouldn't sell if we didn't value it socially.

I know of a solar system that has 8 planets. Used to have 9.

Geothermal has a minor issue with causing earthquakes.

and until I switched to Michelin tires, was getting 50-54 mpg

Same with me on my 2003 Civic Hybrid. I got new tires and my gas mileage plummeted.

Which begs the question, why aren't the gas-saving tires much more available than they are, on both hybrids and non-hybrids?

No monthly cost to our group. Once its bought, the ongoing operations cost comes out of someone else's budget.

We pay a one time $40 per gigabyte as the capital cost of acquiring the storage. There is no monthly cost. I think $40 is still way too much.

and no disadvantages.

The disadvantage is in the opportunity cost. You could have spent the time you dedicated to memorizing words to becoming better at math or, I don't know, figuring out how to get laid.