Don't get me wrong, it's a major pain to memorize thousands of characters. But in the language the system is native to (Chinese), it's not as bad as all that. Chinese characters do encode a lot of phonetic information -- it's just suggestive rather than definitive. On the other hand, they encode a *lot* more information about meaning/sense (and even etymology in some cases) than words written in a purely phonetic system.

In Japanese, well, it was probably a misguided decision to import that particular foreign writing system, but you go to literacy with the tools you have, not the tools you wish you had. Unless you're Korea, and then you independently invent the world's most brilliantly designed alphabet... and *still* use some Chinese characters anyway.

It would be... if it were actually true.
Kanji aren't some mystical thing that can never be written or recognized by hand. The official list of what kids are required to learn in high school just left out some characters because they were supposed to be "too hard". (Protip: they aren't. It's not some extraordinary superhuman feat to remember how to draw twenty little lines.) The electronics mean they can stop whining about it a bit.

...I believe you may mean "calligraphy" here, as map-making doesn't seem at all relevant to the rest of your comment.

This is factually untrue. The more pro-Federal government, liberal/"blue" states tend to pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal funds; anti-government, "red" states receive more federal money than they pay in taxes. See e.g. here; I'm not immediately finding more recent figures, however.

The fact that it's a government.
See the "Paradox of Thrift" and here generally.

I don't agree with all the bailouts that have been done lately, but there are two points here. First, these bailouts are necessary because the markets were insufficiently regulated. They got out of control, and as a result burned not only the bad people, but the good ones too. The bailing-out of Wall Street was (at some level) necessary, even if it was horrifically poorly structured, because otherwise the further spread of the collapse would have crushed your business, just like everyone else's. Google "counterparty risk" sometime.

We can't run a government based exactly on the Constitution for the same reason we can't build all computers off the model of a 1965 IBM mainframe spec -- government, as a technology, has evolved way beyond where it was 250 years ago. And mostly for the better (though manifestly not for the perfect).

Constitutionally? Not really, or at least not until about fifty years ago.

Somebody hasn't looked at a map lately.
State sizes and borders are primarily determined by historical artifact. They are in no sense of self-governable size. Even some Eastern states, like New York, have population disparities that make them almost ungovernable.

Moreover, modern governments' main function is to ensure the steady and effective progress of the economy. (That's a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one). Without individual currencies, states could not accomplish this goal effectively (see Greece), but you couldn't have a much more minarchist central government while still avoiding disastrous panics, such as were commonplace before the New Deal and the regulatory regime put in place at that time. (Our recent troubles are largely due to the fact that the government is too small in its regulatory actions). But, if states actually had their own currencies, the Union would probably cease to function; even the Founders knew that (though they were writing the Constitution at the very dawn of the birth of modern economics).

You've still got a bunch of bits on a DVD. The fact they aren't good for much shouldn't mean you don't own them.

Yeah, you probably also wouldn't have imagined you'd spend solid months of your life clicking buttons as though it were a job from the oppressed workers in Metropolis, either...

Also, let's not lose sight of a key issue here:
If it looks like you're doing twice the speed limit, odds are pretty good you were speeding. Speaking as someone with a general mistrust of authority and who has been investigated for a serious crime under false pretences, I am perfectly content for police to enforce just laws against people who violate them.

My guess is it falls under the category of "attempting not to get disbarred for offering advice in a jurisdiction where he is not licensed to practice" or some such.

Also, remember, if he's *your* attorney from the Internet, and you lose your case, it hurts his win-loss record, and then he might not make the All-Star Litigation this year.

I think at the point they were brazenly calling their principals pedophiles, they've kind of lost the race for the "bravery and honesty" part of things...

I'm confused. Are you endorsing this?

In a democratic system, the people in whom trust is placed, ultimately, are intended to be the citizens. Not the cops, not the congresscritters, not the president, not the corporations, but the collective will of the population, who should be informed of the effectiveness of the people carrying out its will, and exercise recall power over them.

Or in other words, we should trust the cops because we've got our eyes on them. I don't subscribe to this faith-based government...

Regarding importing oil from Titan:
While we are set to run out of oil here pretty fast, it would be a really colossally [pun averted] bad idea to bring a huge source of hydrocarbons here and burn it. We're liable enough to kill ourselves off burning our own hydrocarbons, let alone a whole new space-rock of them.

Nah. If they did that, they'd have to admit that such things constitute psychological torture.