Nice find there, thanks.

The real question is not whether you or I, or the next guy thinks killing Osama will accomplish anything. It is whether the general public will think so.

The US culture has, for the past few decades, evolved to expect the "Good Guys Always Win" ending. It has been hammered into our heads by practically every movie, TV series, and book targeted for the mainstream audience. You and I may know perfectly well that the world is a complex inter-related network of challenging problems, but for the average Joe there is only a bad guy that needs to be defeated, and a world/girl that needs to be saved. Such a view may be depressing for those of us that can see through the illusion, but that does not change the fact that a huge section of the US society thinks this way.

Killing Osama simply plays right into this mentality; Yet again the US is the stereotypical "Good Guy" that killed the "Big Evil Villain." There was then a big party with a ton of booze and women, and now the credits are rolling, and everyone is getting up to leave the theater. This is a huge milestone not in terms of world events, but in the minds of millions of people in the US that wanted nothing more than to go to Afghanistan and kick one guy in the face.

So again, you can analyze the hell out of the problems of the world. You can create model after model and scenario after scenario for what will happen in all the various organizations. You can point out that the terrorists are still terrorists. However, you can not ignore how all of these things will sail straight over the heads of a good 95% of the population. Given that unfortunately these are the people that decide the elections, I will say that damn right this changed something.

You mean you don't always put your name and SIN as your wireless SSID? Man, I've been doing it wrong all this time.

I think the question you should be asking is not "what is science" but "what is faith?" You seem to be assigning a slew of negative connotations to the word, just because it is used by religions to justify their belief structure; a structure you clearly do not like. Clearly you would prefer to interpret it in the most negative fashion, instead of stepping back to consider the argument being made from a neutral point of view.

Faith is defined as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something." Whether science delivers or not is not the matter being discussed. In fact, it is because science delivers that we are so ready to place our trust in it. Because you have faith in the scientific method, and the results it generates, you go online and argue that science is so much better than religion, and for that very same reason you are voted +5 Insightful.

The argument being made is that many if not most of the people that profess to understand something because of science do not actually understand what they are claiming, they just understand that someone they trust says it is so. Yes, the reason they trust that person is because he or she is a scientist and has likely understood the matter in question. Still, that does not change the fact that most people simply do trust science just because.

Yes, you could open up the books, read everything about anything, conduct countless experiments to verify the current understanding, but there is simply not enough time for anyone to do all this for every subject ever. Because of this, science too comes down to simple trust. You trust that someone that makes a claim has really tested it fully, and that other specialists will verify that claim. You trust that the scope of our understanding of the matter in question is sufficient to answer the questions being asked. You trust that the scientific method is enough to overcome the challenges of human nature, and provide a single concise answer. You trust that science is demonstrable, repeatable, and self-correcting, because it has show itself to be all of those things.

Honestly, if that's not a "complete trust or confidence in someone or something," then I really have no clue what is.

My grandmother uses Skype. She has not yet figured out that an email address will not work if you misspell it. After repeated lessons. That's about as complete a noob as you can find. What more, she is most certainly not a unique example in this respect.

Skype is one of the most popular mainstream online communication systems out there. The fact that they are doing something like this means the problem is probably serious enough that they had no other option.

Some black guys are also presidents of the US, however that seems to not be the norm for that genetic and social group. Sure, you can find examples of really smart people that are able to communicate, but I assure you those are the exception and not the norm.

What more, those people probably have invested a significant amount of time using the full extent of their intellect to figure out how to explain the material in question. I mean if you are a genius, this should not be that much of a challenge. That said, the GP's point still remains, if you are significantly smarter than the average, and do not take the time to carefully consider how to explain a concept you may completely lose your audience simply because you consider amazingly complex concepts to be absolutely trivial.

Oh the other hand, because you find things so trivial if you DO put in the extra time, your explanations will be all that much more concise and clear.

There is a common myth that it is either breadth or depth of knowledge, and that your brain could not hope to do both. I find the opposite is true. As long as you take the time to actually learn a topic in depth the breadth that the Internet gives you only helps you excel in your chosen field by applying knowledge from other fields. The only negative claim I do give weight to is the difficulty focusing; while too much knowledge is not a bad thing, the rate at which it comes needs special efforts to ensure you are not sacrificing your ability to focus when you need to. This is why I suggest meditation if you spend your entire life online.

I feel that I disagree with you. I, and most people I know, stopped downloading everything except the songs we might listen to once and forget the instant you could just buy MP3s in a web store. We stopped downloading all but the most questionable games the instant you could log into Steam and install on as many computers as you need to. Why do you feel movies would be different?

I imagine these new designs will be an entirely different beast from the Concorde. For one, new advances in material sciences are likely to allow such planes to fly much higher than the Concorde could, eliminating many of the common complaints. Second, advances in engine technology will make operating such flights significantly cheaper per person, to the point where the time saving would be worth the gas premium.

Now imagine Russia under the rule of the people that actually won the revolution, had Stalin not weaseled his way into leadership. That would have been a very different affair, especially considering how much experience those people would have had.