It's the story. A good story bypasses the rational parts of our brains, goes straight to the emotions and grabs us.

The subtext of the Iran story is about the surprise of realising that a people we previously thought of as hostile (and frankly a bit too Muslim for comfort) are as much against their crazy muppet of a ruler as we are and decidedly less Muslim than the scary hard-line ones (relaxed dress codes, keen to party). It's the underdogs fighting The Man and we especially identify with the underdogs, because they use Twitter and speak English on TV. It has resonance.

It shouldn't work that way, but it does. Compare to a certain recent internet phenomenon. Someone who we previously thought was ugly (and a bit too Scottish for most Western tastes), is as good a singer as any that the crazy muppet Simon Cowell could point to. It's the underdog fighting The Man and we especially identify with the underdog because she sings in a perfect English accent and embodies all of our fairytale ideas of how the world should ideally be.

We don't care about Honduras for the same reasons we don't care about Fabia Cerra (Who? Exactly!) - the story has no resonance, so we ignore it.

If they didn't give a damn, they wouldn't be blocking YouTube, Twitter, the BBC, etc.

Dupe.

Are you implying that for the 1 billion people living on less than $1 a day, scarcity is 'perceived'? Fix the economic system that increasingly concentrates resources in the hands of the few and that sort of thing might be possible.

Not always the case. The Roman Catholic church was outraged at the idea of the common people being able to access the bible for themselves and strongly resisted attempts to translate it. They even burned the bones of the guy who translated it into English and made further translation into a heretical act.

Not really. The Xenu-overlord thing is consistent with 50s sci-fi culture when LRH formulated the 'religion', just like the zombie-rises-after-death-to-save-us was consistent with the agrarian pagan religious myths that were common at the time of christ. It's only wacky if its unfamiliar.

What about the inquisition? Or witch hunts?

You have a point about most modern christians being very different, but in fact, Scientology follows the classic pattern of an early religion and given 400-500 years, may well end up looking a lot like middle America does today. Surely if we oppose one, we should oppose both.

This is true to a point, but ignores the fact that it makes it harder for a child to choose to drop the religion than if they had been presented with a free choice later in life.

As usual, Dawkins says it best:

References?

Viagra overdose?

Except that this google plugin does require the download and install of an exe file.

App store? What planet have you been on?

Yes. Bear in mind though, that they don't have the enormous overhead of profit on top of it. Also, the extra overhead of administration in the US healthcare system (employing all those people to check and try to invalidate every claim you make) has to be paid for too. Add to that the way that it's only profitable to provide a service for some people (healthy/live in cities) and not to others (unhealthy, live in countryside), so the service is not equally accessible for all.

Check this graph to see what I mean. Healthcare spend per capita in the US is way above any other industrialised nation and you still have 1/6 of your population uninsured.

Whether you like Michael Moore or not, you need to watch Sicko just to see the UK/French reaction to the idea that people should pay for their healthcare, ask someone for approval evey time they want to go to a doctor, or be refused treatment. Laughter. The US capitalist healthcare system is a failure in every way compared to the European model because some things don't suit a private enterprise approach. I think the internet fibre network pretty clearly falls into this category too.

I asked my Father once why people used to have big hedges, but they don't nowadays. He said that when he was a kid in the 50s, net curtains were not available as the technology for fine nylon mesh had only recently been invented and was very expensive. Everyone had a 6 foot hedge so that they could leave the curtains open for light and have privacy from the street. Once net curtains came along, the hedges came down. You're always free to grow a new one if it really bothers you :)

Reminds me of a website I heard about once, which apparently showed pictures of amateur porn with the people blacked out, just so the guy could slag off their interior design. I can well imagine that the thought of the plebs mocking the outside of their houses as well as the inside might tip these middle england Daily Mail secret swinger types over the edge.

Your neighbours' bedrooms are also at that height. Are they invading your privacy? Also, looking at streetview, the windows of my house can certainly not be seen through. The inside of rooms apear dark in the daytime (when all streetview pictures are taken), even with the lights on. Not quite the same as a creep with a zoom lens taking photos at night. Anyway, why do you think we have net curtains?