Yes, most of the services are not available here either - and I'm less than a mile from Philly, so it isn't about being out in the boondocks.

Ooops. I'm not a contractor - that was meant to say "ASK a contractor...".

It's better at extortion than at unbiased advice.

As a contractor for the Angie's List literature that they send professionals. It is really slimy.

I suspect that evolution is involved. Those who have power in society are making the decisions and thus NEED the larger brains. Those whose grandfathers were ditch diggers and under 99% of the societies ever designed would be ditch diggers themselves, didn't need big brains and in fact were better able to survive without them.

Have you seen our tax code? When I took Federal Income Taxation in law school, I had to get a copy of the tax code, and it was about six inches thick. (I don't remember, or care, if or how much it was annotated.) That's a mighty long list of exceptions to consumption tax.

But consumption taxes will never take on, because the tax code is really about control. If I grant tax favors for certain preferred behaviors, I can exercise a phenomenal amount of control over what you do. If I'm a power-grubbing statist anywhere on the purple spectrum, that's much better than merely influencing what you buy.

Texas doesn't tax groceries. Your receipt from HEB will show which items are taxed and which aren't.

"one psychiatrist" is not a valid citation. Point me to a name, a study, and some literature to explain why this discovery hasn't taken the medical world by storm, I'm always happy to expand my knowledge.

Therein lies the great racing divide: vehicles that are essentially identical and thus, in theory, the driver is the difference versus real manufacturer's vehicles so the driver / car combination becomes more important. NASCAR, for example, uses the former model and thus a good driver combined with effective cheating is the route to success. Endurance racing tends to the latter along with having various classes so cars of equal capability race against each other.

In the pilot's case it may not have been the fear of unemployment as much as concern that he would never be able to fly again. Even if he kept his job he would never set goot in a cockpit again and for a pilot that is a significant loss. Failing a physical means not hetting to something you love that transcends being a job and ghus the temptation to hide something if it meant not flying would be great.

No, but my point was that my comments were based on a real professional's opionion, not the usual /. legal advice. While I realize many people could not afford a lawyer there are avenues for free legal aid available as well.

If this guy was suffering from depression, no background checks or security measures would have filtered him out. Depression is a civilisation disease, caused by the fucked-up society we have created around ourselves, the non-stop pressure, the endless competition, the constant message that you're not good enough that everyone is sending to everyone else. The artificial fear for survival that our governments create to drive wages down and create the economic pressure that corporations than exploit to get people to work under conditions that our parents would've scoffed at.

The solution is not in more pressure, the solution is in making a society that is made for human beings, not for robots, stock markets, the goddess of economic growth or any of the other crazy things that we're sacrificing millions of lives to.

It's subtle what's been "ditched" in later case law. And it's not what you're assuming.

I have to wonder why. That's the environment that fosters the maximum in human diversity, where everyone is the most free to find and do what is their own thing.

So you like an existence of more uniformity and degree of being controlled. I don't. I think even HOA's are frickin' nazis. As if the squeezing every last dollar of resale value is The One True Goal that everyone should have. Fuck that, I bought a home as a place to live, not something to flip, I want to customize it. If someone wants to paint their place Pepto Bismol pink, they ought to be able to.

My problem is I'm a city boy (or rather a suburbs boy) so I wouldn't be content to go live in some remote place just to be let be. That's why I wish the U.S. was split up geographically, for the two political sides.

Because never in the history of the world has any such capability been abused.

And then do what about it? Collectively praying that FSM picks up the plane with his tentacles?

Technology is not a panacea. Add one thing to make flying more safe (locked cockpit doors), create another problem without which a catastrophy could have been prevented (locked cockpit door).

Something I learnt in my first leadership position: When someone has an idea, ask them about the downsides and potential issues. If they can't think of any, they haven't thought it through enough.

Follow the money. Who is asking for video cameras?

The last thing you would have seen would have been a smug face and a victory sign. Maybe not in this crash, but in the next. That, my friend, is headlines material. That's a breaking story right there. That picture is worth a hundred times its weight in gold, even if you print it on the most heavy paper you can find.