I disagree. Anyone who actually reasons about their religion will shuck it in a heartbeat. There's not the slightest evidence to support one religion's claims vs. another's, so the only rational choice is to set your standard for evidence low and believe all of them, or set it high and reject all of them. And since they are mutually contradictory, reason requires you to throw one of those options out.

Religion is a culturally transmitted phenomenon, almost like language. It's no accident that if you know when and where a randomly selected person lives or lived you can predict both their language and religion with fairly high accuracy. Reason indicates that religion all about tradition, not about some objective reality.

That's kind of how I feel about it. I don't believe in anything supernatural, period. But I don't need to join a club, go to meetings, fanboy some heros, and all that jazz. It starts to be a cult, even if not a religious cult.

Of course, rational argument isn't going to lever anyone out of religious beliefs, so maybe this kind of jazz is what is needed to break religion's stranglehold on public policy.

I suppose I'm just not the club-joining type.

You don't think the smoking carcass would own all of the patents and make it impossible for a bunch of new startups to get into the industry?

Patents are assets. Assets are auctioned off in bankruptcy. The owner of a patent benefits from licensing the patent for fees, not from sitting on a patent and preventing anyone from using it.

-jcr

Certainly far more useful than chemistry

Nope. Basic understanding of chemistry can keep people from mixing ammonia and bleach to clean the tub.

-jcr

Speaking as one who had the misfortune of having to try to help kids with no interest at all in computing, back when I was in high school myself, this is a fucking idiotic idea. Coding isn't for everyone.

-jcr

Good point, I never thought about the inheritance tax angle.

Sure, but I don't think this particular invention is going to help -- the moment a burnout becomes easy for anyone to do, it will cease being useful as a way to impress anyone.

In fact, this may poison the dickhead well, as now whenever someone does a burnout they will be under suspicion of being the dickhead equivalent of a script kiddie.

However, the main problem with these flights of fancy is the extra energy expenditure involved. It is perhaps the least energy efficient method of transport you could possibly come up with.

What the heck are you talking about? Flying tiny little R/C quadrocopters around is highly energy efficient, when you compare it to the amount of fuel you need to propel a 10,000 pound UPS van on city streets.

Assuming the Amazon warehouse is within a short distance of the customer's location, the quadrocopter has an enormous cost an energy advantage. 1) It's electrically powered, so it doesn't suffer Carnot inefficiencies like diesel trucks. 2) It travels directly between the two locations, regardless of any obstructions in the way, traffic, poor street layouts, etc. With UPS, you have to ship the package first to the UPS warehouse where it has to be sorted, then load it onto another truck for delivery. If the UPS warehouse isn't too close, that's a lot of extra distance to travel, all using diesel fuel with big, heavy trucks. 3) It uses no labor, as it's entirely automated. The UPS delivery requires human labor for pickup, sorting (perhaps multiple times), and finally delivery to your doorstep. Human labor is expensive. Amazon's idea is really great; the only Achilles' heel is that it entirely depends on the distance between the warehouse and the customer. These drones will only have so much range, and can't group together packages to build economy-of-scale savings, so the farther that distance, the less viable this delivery method becomes. But for metro areas, it makes pretty good sense.

Most of eBay's operation (and their desired method) is the seller goes to the local UPS store and ships it himself.

Exactly. Also, a lot of their operation involves the USPS, especially for smaller items. This is why Ebay's Paypal unit makes it easy for sellers to ship with USPS (and also UPS) by integrating that into Paypal, so you can buy USPS postage and print out a mailing label right from your Paypal account.

FTFY. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine the country of origin for anything you by from eBay.

On searches there's a checkbox to select North America or US-only. Of course this won't stop a shady vendor from claiming to ship from the US, and shipping from China instead, but the capability is there to screen the shipping location.

I don't think so. The Wright Brothers didn't compete against bike shops with their airplane (people wanting to buy a bicycle aren't going to be talking into buying an airplane instead). They created a whole new market, separate from the bicycle shop market. If anything, the bike shop competitors were better off with the Wright Brothers spending their time and money on airplanes instead of concentrating on selling bikes. It worked out well for the Wrights of course, but it didn't detract from their competitors in any way. And bike shops are still around; the bike market was only hampered by the rising automobile industry, not by airplanes.

for an example my mom worked with a nice gay couple at the hospital. After nearly 30 years of being together one was killed by a drunk driver but because the state recognized common law for male/female but NOT gays the survivor had ZERO rights and the parents of the dead partner, who just FYI had disowned him more than 40 years before and refused to even allowed him to be buried in the family cemetery, were able to come in like vultures and sell everything that he owned.

This is horrible, I'll agree, but wouldn't this situation have been easily averted by simply having a will in place? I understand that for many younger people they might not have one as they don't think they're going to die in an accident anytime soon, but a couple that's been together for 30 years (making them probably over 50) really should have thought of that, I'd think. You don't need legalized gay marriage to write a will giving everything to your partner if you die. I'm not saying gay marriage shouldn't be legal (I believe in equality for all; I also believe in legalized plural marriages between consenting adults), but this doesn't seem to be a very good example to me.

To fully understand the concept of religion its important to understand why and how this concept came about.

All systems of belief have flaws, for all any belief system is, is a constrained interpretation of the all that is. Why this is, is because abstract language used to communicate shared perspectives cannot express the all..... that is. - T.Rue

There is the why and how we came to create and use abstraction and out of this also came effort to create philosophies inline with the subconscious state of living (as many animals still do today) as the conscious mind cannot handle the massive amount of information the subconscious has access to. We use belief filters (and philosophies) to reduce what all we allow into our consciousness (me for me, you for you)

Interesting reads! Can you put the pieces together?

http://www.bizcharts.com/stoa_del_sol/conscious/conscious3.html
Perspective of Mind: Julian Jaynes

http://leftinthedark.org.uk/sites/default/files/Left%20in%20the%20Dark%20free%20edition.pdf
LEFT IN THE DARK

http://esgs.free.fr/uk/art/sands.htm
Science & Sanity (extreme left brain?)

http://umclidet.com/pdf/Frank.R..Wallace.-.Neocheating.pdf
Wallace - Neocheating. (the how to abuse mans left hemisphere?)

http://abstractionphysics.net/pmwiki/index.php
Abstraction Physics (The Mechanics)

http://iamb.net/IJMB/journal/IJMB_Vol_3_1.pdf
NEUROSCIENCE REVEALS THE WHOLE-BRAIN STATE.....(ARTICLE PAGE 73)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp%3Bv=9l6VPpDublg
No More Secrets

There is a reason why the number and size of protest around the world are happening. The common factor is people in the general population are getting fed up with the distortions of the few ruling over them.

I think it would be wise to allow so called Satanist to have their monument and specifically next to the ten commandments as simply a matter of contrast of the biased constraints. Might also go for something from each of the religions that people might get a good look at "in part".

But the point remains, no one is FORCED to believe in the statue. I disagree with the intent that you feel it is somehow forcing you to believe

Would you feel the same way if it were core principles of Scientology? Would that not represent a de facto endorsement of the tenents of Scientology?

the 10 commandments have been on state capitols for as long as this country has been around, its nothing new

And this bit of hypocrisy is long overdue for abolition.

one does not have to believe in god to respect others.

Quite correct. And believing in god does not absolve you from respecting others either. Using public funds and public property to promote your religion is unequivocally disresepectful to citizens who think differently.

in other words, you do NOT have the right to not be offended anymore than someone of a different faith/non faith

A hindu, buddhist, or pagan would be just as troubled by state sponsored proselytization.

The new pope is just better at PR. Let me know when his bishops start enforcing progressive policies in their dioceses.

Sin or fallacy? I've never met anyone who believes that believing in a deity is a sin. I've met plenty, myself included, who believe that believing in a deity requires at least one fallacy.