The issue with soda is more phycological than just free choice vs nanny state.

Our brains are constantly bombarded with advertising convincing us that we want sweetened, colored and fizzy liquids. More than any other form of consumption, beverage purchases are impulsive. Constant prodding drives these impulses. Starbucks needs to have 3 stores on every other block and in each supermarket to capture the consumers impulse before it passes.

The secret is the best and only beverage to satisfy our thirst is water and it's free. Most of these flavored beverages are actually diuretics, which only make you more thirsty causing you to buy and drink more. Now the same advertising geniuses have even convinced everyone that you should pay even more than the flavored liquids for plain tap water filtered and rebottled.

The fact is the beverage industry exists on peoples false perceptions that drinks you pay money for are better than H20. Stop for a minute and look around at how much of our consumer world revolves around transporting, stocking, advertising these useless beverages who's consumption is driven by our subliminal planted cravings. Then think about how much waste and litter is generated by packaging these liquids.

I think an even better solution would be to ban the disposable big cups. If people want a big soda, let them bring their own reusable mug or get refills on the small cups. Also anywhere that sells soda should also provide free water (and not as the lever option on one of the fountain spouts that never works right and always gets synthetic lemonade in your water).

In civil structural engineering analysis the required precision is normally around 3 significant digits, or less than 1%. The factors of safety required for different conditions vary from 30% to over 200% are far higher than this precision. Loads are often estimated with only 2 or 3 significant digits.

Where higher precision is most required in structural engineering is on geometry and fabrication tolerances. Construction tolerances for a beam length may be limited to 1/8th of an inch regardless of the beam length. Errors in calculating assembly lengths and geometry fit up, can lead to costly construction repairs and delays. I still think most of this precision fits within the standards of Excel for most cases.

Before the introduction of the largest public works project in history, the socialist, state run interstate system, private railroads streetcar and bus systems provided transportation to all americans and made profits.

These companies were so profitable and powerful that the government and politicians feared the rail industry and the wealthy owners like Stanford and Vanderbilt.

The irony is that even the private railways were given huge state subsidies in land grants. One of the conditions for free land was that the railways would be required to provide passenger service over theses right of ways. One of the worst aspects of the creation of Amtrak is that the railways were absolved of the passenger requirement for the measly cost of some outdated rail equipment that they provided to help Amtrak start.

Possesion of stolen property is a crime regardless of whether you have prior knowledge or not.

No matter the means of how you took possesion of stolen property, you have no rights to the property and it can be confiscated without reimbursement.

Normally the loss of the property is the punishment for those who didn't know it was stolen.

So i presume that you support providing the elderly, young, blind or disabled people their "right" to drive? I doubt it.
Why do all countries have drivers licenses if it is a right? Do any other rights require licenses?
Is revoking someones drivers license a violation of human rights?

This is ludicrous.

If anything, the government massive subsidies to the car infrastructure (at the expense of non driving alternatives) is a violation of peoples rights to mobility as it mandates that you must be able to purchase a car (insurance...) and physically able to drive it to meet your right to mobility.

Again, there is no right to drive.

While you may have a right to travel, there is no right to drive and there never will be.
Driving is a privilege with the highest of responsibility, requiring you to never harm peoples lives or property.

Police have the right to pull any driver over for dangerous driving. Any reasonable distractions can be considered dangerous by the police and they should have full discretion on defining the risk posed by a distracted driver.
So the point of these new laws, is more to clarify and inform drivers that common behaviors are distractions that are considered illegal while driving.

If you need to be distracted, use a phone, text, or use any device other than the driving controls of your car, Do not drive.
Otherwise you will be making a premeditated decision to risk the lives of all the pedestrians and other drivers around you i.e. Murder not manslaughter.

Driving is the leading cause of accidental death by massive margins.

Maybe there isn't a law banning juggling while driving, but it will get you pulled over just the same.

Democracies require effective school systems that teach critical thinking and rhetoric to survive.

In the US, there is a major political party that is waging war on the concepts of critical thinking and the scientific method, while proclaiming we should all have faith (the absence of questioning) and follow our gut instincts.

Without critical thinking, we get our current political situation where those most dependent on social programs for sustenance, form the largest constituency of the tea party that wants to cut all their benefits and raise their taxes through a flat tax, while cutting the taxes of those most able to pay.

While I like the convenience, ease of distribution and reduction of clutter provided by digital publications, I don't think they are worth the current cost with the extremely limited DRM.

With a real book or magazine, for almost the same price as an electronic publication, i can legally share with my family and friends and even donate to a library or sell to a used bookstore when done.

None of these are allowed on the curent restricted electronic publishing systems. Instead, content distributers have cut out the manufacturing and distribution, and pocketed all the past costs as new profit, while selling a product with substantially less use.

Frankly, the costs and restrictions placed on library lending of electronic media are excessive and we risk loosing the value that free information shared in libraries has provided to our cultural growth. When restricted e-publications become substantially cheaper than real books and are provided with the ability to transfer ownership, or provide limited lending, then I may consider them.

For now, there are plenty of excellent classic books in the public domain that are available to read for free. Unfortunately, the publishing industry and governments of the world are waging war on the public domain.

The only true theft and piracy of intelectual property is that committed when works are prevented from entering the public domain. All money earned through extended IP terms is theft and involves the transfer and reductions of physical wealth from the public. As much as the industry proclaims otherwise there is no transfer of wealth when consuming freely copied media since the intrinsic value of an additional copy is zero.

Limited terms to intelectual property rights are an essential part of the growth and development of technology, the arts and our society. We must stand up to the publishing industry and its attempts to make intelectual property rights practically indefinite through continued extensions.

The US is in deep trouble if it can't withstand $5/gal gas.

The rise of US power is closely tied to our natural wealth of oil. The UK based its global power on steam and coal, the US superseded the UK to global dominance on its oil wealth.

-The US was the first and is the largest oil power in history.
-In total oil extracted combined with known reserves, the US contained more oil than any other nation.
-We are still the third largest oil producing country in the world.
-We consume about 50% of the world oil with only 5% of its population.
-The US hit peak oil in the early 70's, prompting the oil crisis and dependance on foreign oil. We no longer were finding new reserves of oil faster than we extracted them.

As the first country to hit peak oil, the US should have initiated policies to reduce our oil dependance, but as we see today we are still addicted.
Our private and government development since the 70's has largely ignored the impact higher gas prices.

The hypocrisy in the oil price arguments are astounding.
-People believe they have a right to cheap oil, a limited resource.
-It is considered impossible for the US to implement a 50mpg standard even though this is common everywhere else.
-Our country has dismantled large privately operated mass transit systems in cities and towns that existed before 1950, while subsidizing free roads, parking and suburban sprawl.
-We fight fuel saving alternatives such as High Speed Rail and mass transit.
-The highway trust fund is going bankrupt. It is unable to keep up with the demands sprawling development puts on new capitol construction, and has never covered maintenance.
-The cheap fuel and car economy has encouraged suburban and rural growth that would not be possible without cheap fuel. Real estate values in these areas will plummet as fuel prices increase.
-User costs such as parking meters, odometer taxes and vehicle licence fees are fought as excessive taxes while governments at all levels need to divert general funds to build and maintain a car infrastructure.
-Federal gas taxes are fixed per gallon and not as a percentage of cost and are lower than most sales taxes. At 18 cents per gallon the fuel tax is 4.5%, lower than sales tax in many places.
-More efficient Diesel fuel is taxed higher at 24 cents.

Of all the speculation about oil, one thing is certain.

The price will continue to go up.
If we don't choose where and how to live without considering this fact, we will suffer the results.

Our government has gone out of its way to subsidize our car lifestyle with the largest public works projects in US history. Its time to ween americans off these subsidies and allow them to bear the full cost of car use and ownership.

The markets will quickly correct the lack of mass transit and sprawling development that has occurred as a result of these subsidies.

The privacy notion isn't much of a stretch when you consider that the only way a government could prosecute an abortion is by demanding a doctor or hospital to break Physician-patient confidentiality.

Regardless of your view on abortion,

The Roe vs Wade ruling forming the basis of US abortion law today determined that abortion is a privacy issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade
"the Court ruled that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion"

The TSA was created to comfort passengers after 9/11 by providing a highly visible change to the airport security measures through inconveniencing all passengers as much as possible.

In reality, even without the TSA, the nature of in flight security changed forever on 9/11. Now everyone understands that the risk of hijacked planes is far greater than just the lives of those held hostage on the plane. By showing the larger threat hijacked planes pose as weapons, the hijackers on 9/11 effectively ended hijacking as a means to terrorize the greater population since most will accept that hijacked planes must be shot down before the plane can be used to pose a larger threat. Passengers and crews now know that their only hope for survival in a hijack attempt is to take down the hijackers themselves and regain control of the plane.

Security is still required to keep weapons and bombs off of flights, but even the security before 9/11 was sufficient to deter the hijackers from bringing guns or other large weapons. As prisoners have shown, sharp weapons can be made from virtually anything solid, but these weapons would be less effective in a hijack today since the passengers and crew would be willing to be cut to overpower hijackers.

The only minimal additional security provided since 9/11 is in limiting compounds that could be used to make explosives with the intent of destroying a plane rather than hijacking. This is battle of diminishing returns, where ever growing intrusions into personal privacy and intrusions provide ever smaller degrees of increased security and protection.

I have no problem with scanned luggage and carryons, but requiring everyone to remove shoes and clothes is purely an attempt to make each passenger feel and intimately experience the security.

These are psychological steps that accomplish virtually nothing to improve our security, but only raise the perception of safety.