Considering the fucking lawyers will get most of that settlement, kindly STFU. Settlement amounts are offset for the legal teams. Any moron knows that.
If their lawyers were to take 100% of the cash, or even if it all got incinerated in a firestorm near a water faucet, that family would still have gotten some revenge on a stupid drilling company that still deserves to have a few million dollars carved out of its ass.
Aruba Petroleum has about 15 employees and reports earnings of $50 million of revenue per year. This settlement sets them back by just three weeks of fracking. Someone needs to be waterboarded in fracking fluid.
I agree that extending a prison sentence seems a little barbaric. But what about looking at this from a pure cost-saving viewpoint? Instead of sentencing a prisoner to 10 years (or whatever is normal for their offense) and keeping them in prison that long, use the drug and keep them in prison for only one year but make them feel like 10 years have passed. Huge cost savings to the public, right there.
So heaven is available to anyone whether or not they follow your God's law?
That's completely correct, sir. The heavens can no longer discriminate against people who have preexisting sins. See heaven.gov to see whether you qualify for a plan that has a maximum deductible of 5000 years in purgatory before you are 100% guaranteed entrance into heaven.
In Heaven you will sit around passing a bong back and forth with God until the end of time, with occasional teeth cleanings. Gold and Platinum plans are available that include options for 72 virgins, or for your own planet to rule over, or for the next in a series of afterlives as an elephant, then as a tapeworm, then as Ted Nugent, then as a cricket, and on and on until you achieve Enlightenment with an endless supply of meth and the memory of your life as Ted Nugent to serve as a guide.
Say, for instance, that I preach that your particular God sucks donkey balls, would he/she hold that against me?
If you like your particular religion, you can keep it. (Of course that's assuming that people wouldn't tolerate a religion where their God sucks donkey balls anyway- which it turns out, is false.)
We all know a human would, but what about a God?
Well that's the whole point- we obviously can't rely on God to fix the situation on his own behalf. He has his own interests, and would obviously like to discriminate against atheists and heretics, and keep them from entering heaven. After all hey arrive confused and with awkward questions for Him- especially assholes like Stephen Hawking who will instantly start quizzing Him about quantum gravity. He sees it as a waste of His endless time. That's why we needed to make it a law, with a mandate on God to allow all individuals into heaven. Even guys with more money than God now have to face the fact that this is working. So folks, just remember to check out heaven.gov or go to Hell.
it is completely outrageous...the people who make the laws about a thing not knowing the essential function of how a thing works...that's the definition of legislative incompetence!
This isn't limited to the high-tech stuff we all love and know. Witness the asinine bans on e-cigarettes being instituted around the country. They seem to be based on the idea that "it looks like smoking analog cigarettes, so it must be just as bad for you and everyone else." Or, "some e-cigarettes have candy flavors, therefore they are being marketed to children" which completely ignores the fact that some adults like those flavors, too. No e-cigarette bans are based on science, or evidence.
I worked for Apple in the early 90's, when they were opening their first sites in Austin. Our group was eventually moved there (and I'm still there, in a suburb) from Campbell, CA. Anyway, at the time there was a lot of internal marketing around "why you would want to move to Austin."
With perfect timing, the local San Jose newspaper ran a political cartoon captioned "There Are Problems Everywhere" or something like that. It had a drawing of the entire United States, with descriptions of the local problems. California was titled with "Earthquakes" and a little arrow. Florida had "Hurricanes."
The state of Texas was decorated with the word "Texans" right in the center, with little arrows pointing all around.
This is still very true today. I wish I had saved that cartoon.
New technology typically goes through a phase where it is really expensive when it is first released, and then it gets less expensive, right? The Jigsaw Man is set in that initial timeframe. Breakthroughs in the medical science gave doctors the ability to transplant every organ except the brain and spinal column, but the cost was still very high and only a few could really afford it.
Niven does explore the next phase, where the cost comes down (or the technology is replaced by something less expensive), in his novel A Gift From Earth. I think the novel was written before the story, in fact.
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss