No, we have a democracy and we can change the rules of society. We can completely shut down the federal government and if you want to have single payer in your state, go ahead and have it, just don't foist it off on everyone else's so you can feel good about for yourself for wrecking the lives of those people that are managing their health risks in ways that makes more sense to them.

First off, let's establish that these 20% don't want the coverage. Otherwise, there would not be a law that forces them to buy it. So, why don't you rephrase your tragedy as "not everyone is paying for what I want.", which is more accurate.

In the sense that, if your country was so voluntarily willing to pitch in for health care, then you wouldn't need taxes to make it compulsory, would you? Just saying. As it is, there is at least a credible minority of people in Canada who are essentially slaves - they are working for something they don't want, and, you don't speak for them....

Let's cut to the chase and admit that the ACA is a moral argument. If there was a benefit to me, somehow, I'd have a check in the mailbox. There isn't one. The only reason that we put up with this federal slavery is to make a few people feel good about themselves, that, we're all pitching in for their causes because the people doing the most preaching don't really want to pay for their causes themselves.

The rest of us are just slaves to their dreams. No matter how good they are, they are still tyrants, and that must never be forgotten, and no man that preaches, should ever be trusted. Always remember that to make someone else's life better, government ruined yours.

The US Health Care System would be fine for the middle class if states didn't screw it up with all these mandates for stupid stuff like birth control.

Facebook's down! Oh my gosh, I'm jumping off a bridge.

Let's just get that out on the table. There's no such thing as a social contract in the United States and nor should their be. I would rather have an aircraft carrier battle group and the F-35 than someone else, but the preferred answer is to have that money back in my pocket. I earned it. It's mine. Like, yeah, I do have some social obligation but its only to people who are likewise productive or were productive. The permanent underclass of Federal Pets, is, in fact, just Federal Pets, and they should have about as much rights as Fido the family dog has.

The world is not a perfect place. The West does need spies and it does need an infrastructure to support them and gather intelligence.

However, we should remember who we actually need to be spying on. Nation states, failed states, and yes terrorist training camps and what not.

What we should not be engaging in is dragnet surveillance where everyone is entered in to some giant database. This is a really bad idea for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the databases are not really likely to be that useful. Prism didn't stop the Boston Marathon bombers. You might have every text, every phone call, every e-mail but if you can't spot the connections it doesn't help you.

Second, the massive database is a security risk in its own right. The NSA might think the Snowden leak is bad but it's child's play compared to what would happen if somebody leaks that database! You can bet your bottom dollar a shit-storm a 100% times the size would ensue. It might even threaten the agency's continued existence.

Third, the database could be hacked by a foreign governments. This in itself is a giant risk that dwarfs the one outlined in the second paragraph. China getting access to wiretaps on US businesses? Does no-one in the security community see what a giant hole they're making in the West's security?

This leads nicely to my fourth and final point. I do get the impression from the Snowden leaks that the competency of these organisations is being called in to question. It's clear they don't know what Snowden took; they don't know what he knows and what he doesn't. This is why he's catching them at so many lies. They make one statement, he leaks another document that shows them they're full of shit.

This final point is perhaps the most damning. They've built a giant system they can't audit! If they don't know what he took when he's just a fairly junior contractor, we have to assume other nation states have thoroughly penetrated the system and already stolen Western secrets!

They're clearly not competent enough to run such a system and it should be shut down on grounds of national security.

The downside of that approach is probably more damaging to innovation than not. Basically, the problem is thus. You want smart people to work at designs, but a smart person will figure out that all of that criticism is a pain in the rear and not even bother with it. With a world full of opportunity everywhere, there's no need to prop up for further old stuff when you have to go through mazes of judges to do so. It's just not worth it, and that's why Office and other things really haven't changed.

On the Internet, people often moan about how Western countries "don't make anything any more." The idea being that our service economy is built on a house of cards and the only true economic generator is the making and selling of stuff.

My view is that manufacturing is a bad choice of focus for our economies. The direction of travel is clear: it is very clearly a race to an ever descending race to the bottom which will end with completely automated factories. This race started with the industrial revolution and it will accelerate during our life times. The jobs are slowly but surely being eliminated and it might even have happened sooner if China hadn't been able to provide so much cheap labour. Those jobs are simply not safe in the long term.

But even the Chinese are not safe. Eventually, they'll all be replaced by machines and when they are, it won't matter where those machines are located. The machines will re-locate closer to the consumers to shorten supply lines.

The message is stark: any job that is repetitive risks being replaced by a robot.

Perhaps the most interesting of these is automated driving. It promises to completely transform our world. It will transform logistics in much the same way as containerisation did to shipping. It will transform everything but just think of the number of jobs that will be eliminated!

Then there are threats like 3D printers which threaten to completely remake the world as we know it.

The only sensible way to weather the next 100 years is through developing products and service that can not be automated. These are things like law, software development, media etc. etc.

Producing stuff is quickly becoming unprofitable. Service economies are our only hope.

They knew about the dangers of radioactive contamination, and radiation in general. They just didn't care. That's the real story.

"Hearing the sonic boom of the B-52s'" Those are subsonic jets. No sonic boom. But loud though.

The thing is, this new operating system will evolve like just about every other "we'll make it smaller and simpler" systems. If they are the next big thing, then sooner or later they'll go down the path of adding everything into their system that they ripped the other guys for having, then act like they invented it.

Additionally, there are many passages in the Bible which indicate that anyone who heard the true voice or looked directly upon the face of God would perish because they could not withstand the awesome power. That's just the sort of indicator the faithful could logically use to support a metaphorical interpretation of scripture.

Yet there are other passages, such as Jesus appearing to hundreds of people, or God appearing to Abraham or Moses where this is not the case. To be honest with you, I always find this line of argument odd.

If God can't contact us because it was destroy our feeble minds, then how did his messiahs, prophets come to know about him? How did Paul receive his vision from the creator of the universe and not have his mind thoroughly destroyed. What about Noah or Moses? How did their minds take the strain?

It's another one of these absurd adhoc retreats from the fact there is basically no evidence of God talking to anyone, ever. If God really did exist and he cared about what we did, then we'd be able to discover what we wanted. Humans of all stripes, in all times, in all places would agree on what the message was. I'd be as discoverable as the value of PI, or the laws of Physics or Chemistry.

Yet, once again, this is not what we observe. What we observe is precisely what we'd expect if he didn't exist: complete and utter confusion.

Additionally, if the truth were apparent, then there would be no benefit to be had from the iterative and ongoing process of interpreting scripture or the fractious nature of the church, in any of its various schismatic forms.

I'm not sure how this confusion benefits anyone. It's like the old joke about standards from Tanenbaum; the nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.

Likewise, the great thing about the "Words" of God is that there are so many different, mutually contradictory, "words" to choose from.

Why on earth would a God who cared about us allow this confusion to persist?

The idea that the Creation stories in Genesis are meant to literally describe how God created is another matter entirely, and it is the blind insistence upon this presupposition that results in so much hot air being expelled on both sides of the issue.

In practically every thread you get someone who tries to reconcile evolution with theism. They say, well, "God created the system of evolution. Tada!" or "God guides evolution. Tada!"

The truth is that when evolution is properly understood it is a complete replacement for the theistic creator hypothesis. It actually goes even further than this and give us yet more evidence that God doesn't not exist.

The problem with evolution is that it's not the kind of system a God that cared and loved us would design.

Does survival of the fittest seem righteous to you? Why should the most well adapted survive? Surely a better system would be one where people with kindness, co-operation and charity thrive and the selfish, brutish and dishonest perish? Yet we do not live in this world.

Theism as a whole has the problem that it makes a really bold claim: "God exists and he loves us." and then it has to retreat almost immediately behind a series of adhoc justifications for why the observed universe doesn't match what we'd expect if that claim were true.

If God really existed the universe would be hugely different to the one we currently live in. If God really existed science would have found him by now.

That's because that's what Christ said. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Mk 16:16

This is yet another problem with the theism. The complete and utter confusion about what God wants. You're sat in this thread quoting the Bible as if it were the word of God, yet there are literally thousands of independent strands of Christianity alone. I don't even mention that even there were 2 billion Christians, 71% of the words population think your view is a heresy. You would even be called a heretic by members of your own superstition.

Again, would this confusion about religion be expected if there was a God who loved us? Absolutely not.

It is a popular--and recent--misconception that faith and reasoning are incompatible. Many, if not most, of the great minds of the ages were believers in God or in other forms of religion. The idea that religious people are necessarily irrational fools is simply a lie; there are plenty of both religious and atheistic people who are irrational fools.

The people in previous times didn't have the weight of evidence we do today. Faith and reason are incompatible. Faith is based on truth by revelation; that is, that some people a long time ago had the "word" revealed to them and every one else is left in the dark. The only hope we have is to just trust them. Reason works by studying, debating and seeking out evidence. Anybody can critique that evidence, review it and discuss it.

These are diametrically opposed view of the universe and completely incompatible.