If the Passenger Pigeon has been extinct for this long, it's safe to say that ecosystems have adjusted to their demise. Let's not see what the consequences of re-introducing them are.

AFAIK there wasn't any dramatic changes when the PP went extinct, so whatever function they had, some other species took over - in engineering terms, the ecosystem switched to using Backup Pigeon System. If so, then re-introducing Passenger Pigeon is analogous to getting primary system back online, which is a good thing both because it re-introduces a layer of redundancy, as well as allows the ecosystem to return to the balance its species have evolved into (and haven't have time to evolve out of), thus giving much-needed stress reduction on a system already facing enough challenges.

And since that person is apparently now dead, how can they just somehow arbitrarily decide that charges should be dropped?

Because dead men tell no tales. Which rises a question of what incentive does any officer have to ensure that the merely wounded survive? Delay calling help a little and there won't be any confusion over conflicting testimonies.

Ultimately he is the only one who can determine if the environment is safe for him to operate that computer and drive. He failed. It cost a life. He needs to pay a price for that.

Alternatively, we could decide that the blame resides partially - probably mostly - on the police department and current social climate as a whole. After all, the latter has all but declared police to be above law or even the very concept of accountability, while the former certainly took advantage of it. People planted into a poisonous cultural atmosphere cannot help but internalize and treat it as a baseline for what's "normal", and can individually only decide whether they're better or worse than that. And assigning all the blame on that individual lets the system that spawned them off the hook, thus ensuring the same thing will happen again, and again, and again.

we're generally more willing to believe a tragedy was accidental and not the result of systemic problems between the police and a particular community when it was accidental and not the result of systemic problems between the police and a particular community.

The problem is, this death was a result of systemic problems between the police and society at large, specifically the police thinking - correctly, it appears - that they're above the law.

This also goes to show why you should not tolerate such problems even when you are currently not affected: eventually they'll grow to the point where even you aren't safe.

Given the evidence, it's difficult to believe that ideological atheism won't lead to irrationality and bloodshed just as quickly and easily as any religion.

That's because every religion is an ideology and every ideology a religion.

It's pretty fucked up when the US may actually side and assist Iran in stomping out ISIS. It truly is an act of choosing the lesser evil???

I guess there's always a Greater Satan.

Religion isn't always right... they don't teach facts, they teach opinions.

This is unlikely to have much to do with either, and more with Ayatollah wishing to stay "Grand": a gatekeeper of Heaven who dictates to ignorant masses in the name of God. That doesn't really work if the masses aren't ignorant, and even more so if they get used to debating.

In other words, power corrupts. It should really be regarded like super-heroin: no matter your initial purposes for getting it, you will be addicted and unwilling to put it down, until keeping it and getting more is all that really matters to you anymore. Which explains why the world is so dysfunctional: every society is led by junkies.

Stop spelling it "BitCoin", it's "Bitcoin", as in common grammar rules where you don't put a cApITal in the middle of a word.

That so, TeknoHog?

After marijuana I can put the pain aside; it's still there, but I become able to ignore it by making an effort.

Tha'ts a mild psychedelic effect. It lets you see your mind as a set of subsystems rather than a whole. Actual hallucinogens like LSD have similar but far stronger effect, which is why they're potentially very useful in treating things like addictions - but of course that's impossible thanks to the War on Drugs, ironically enough.

It's also almost certainly the real reason for WoD: an outbreak of self-awareness could shatter the chains of delusion which keep people in their place beneath the booths of the Powers That Be. What would happen to our society and it's "elite" if people stopped fighting each other to become millionaires and instead banded together to ensure a decent standard of living for all?

I don't see a positive future for the US. Either the middle class will continue to get fucked until everybody is at the poverty level (except the uber-wealthy) or there will be a civil war.

Relax, the way things are going we seem headed for World War III long before that.

Alcohol, being the most dangerous of those ready intoxicants, has the property of having a somewhat tested method of measuring whether your system is effected.

Not really. While acute alcohol intoxication is easy to test, the lingering effects are not. Hangover persists even after all ethanol has been burned up, as do the effects of lack of (restful) sleep, not to mention possible withdrawal effects. And of course depression and outright illness which result from heavy use don't exactly make you a safer driver, nor does lowered constitution due to being too hungover to practice, etc.

Of all people, experts of the disease take precautions to avoid catching it themselves, when they do, its not a good sign.

Maybe. Then again, where I work it's the new guys who follow safety guidelines religiously, while those who have been there for a while can't be bothered because, after all, nothing's happened this far so it must be safe.

Experts are humans, and humans are notoriously bad at keeping their guard up with familiar things.

Drugs like this are what meddle in the affairs of intelligent parasites trying to shape and control populations.

Virii are not the least bit intelligent by any reasonable definition. And Ebola doesn't seem to be causing any evolutionary pressure except for a resistance to itself.

However, it seems this epidemic has exposed the lingering traces of Social Darwinism exemplified by your post, as well as - once again - demonstrated how they could be a fatal weakness if allowed to remain operative.

The region mechanic was a completely game-able loophole. It needed quite a bit of work, TBH.

The region mechanic was always an attempt to limit the size of the simulation. The individual citizes in SC4 are too small, presumably because the machines of the day couldn't handle bigger ones. So a real improvement would be redoing the game as a 64-bit only version and discarding the region system.

That said however, the fact this one captured laptop revealed the dark intentions of just "one" radical speaks volume of how truely fucked humanity is. This ideology is hell bent on destroying modern civilization and leaving a culture of hell-on-Earth in its place.

If modern civilization falls, it won't fall to plague-infested terrorists, but to people like you who believe any bullshit story you're told. Or do you honestly think "enemies of ISIS gave me a document that totally says ISIS is up to no good" is even remotely credible evidence?

But no doubt, they want you, me, and every non-Muslim converted or dead.

I see. And how do you reconcile with this assertion with the alleged intent to use as weapons bacteria which are quite infamous for being unable to know or care about their victim's piety? Because state-building and doomsday plots are somewhat contradictory goals.