Social Security is not social welfare, we paid into it to get money out of it. We also paid into FISA, but can get more out than we paid in, it is insurance, and so is a type of social welfare.

I am fairly sure that the Sun is fusing elements, which is increasing order, not losing order.

"That do not currently appear to have a cause" is not the same as "Do not have a cause".

We are already at the point where more knowledge does us no good. For quite a while, all we learn is new ways to kill others, and degenerate.

A projectile uses 1 dimension + time. A line is a single dimension. Yes, effects which slow it down (air resistance, electro-magnetic fields) operate in two other dimensions outside of the line, but the line cannot "see" them. See Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward.
Yes, the line bends, but it cannot "see" that.

See: Ladle Rat Rotten Hut
Is your daddy named Slip Mahoney?

The feds have always had a plan. It's crawl into a bunker and let everyone else die. It's called stick head in sand and hold their breath. It's called name-call the bearer of bad news. It's called BS their way out of the discussion. It's called lie like a big dog. It's called oo oo a new way to scam money to our friends. You actually believe people who paid 43 million dollars for a gas station in Afghanistan? So what's new?

What, no pizza? You heathen!

HEY! reasonably intelligent and well-informed discussions are a clear violation of slashdot.

His eyes are bleeding? Oh, god, he has Ebola.! Someone call the TSA! DHS! HHS! CDC! FBI!

RTFA does not use the word cause, but it does say "magnetic fields were large enough to be important in the accretion process". Wrong. The chondrules cooled in a strong magnetic field, but that does not mean that they were formed in space. There are just too many assumptions made, and leaps of faith, in the article to believe the scientists involved had impartiality. Bias showing in the cooling state of scientific hypothesizing. What it shows is that the chondrules cooled in a strong magnetic field. End of story. It does show that the chondrules had an interesting life, something the scientists were energized about, since maybe the scientists did not have an interesting life themselves.

Murder rates go up and down. Like the climate. London, Europe, Asia all got "fixed" by the plague. Later the "Spanish" flu again reduced the world population density. Now we have screamed past 7 billion, and I figure we are going to get another plague or something to adjust the population densities again. (Notice the "Spanish" flu was a result of the war shipping soldiers all over)
In the mean time, all of North Africa is popping off. And then there is the Crimea / Ukraine. I am expecting another world war.
Honduras and Jamaica are not racist, they are the edge of the drug wars, with dealers and high crime rates. Because drugs come from down south a lot, where they are grown (cocaine, pot).
Drugs come from Afghanistan and the surrounding area (opium), and the jihadists in that area are big time into the drug trade.
Yes, I am saying that a great deal of violence is tied to drugs. This is true in the US as well as everywhere else.
London had a high murder rate, and a high population density of poor people (slums).
I personally recently was driving around a huge Central American city (Guadalajara, 8 mill), and poor people in the slums were walking around the streets with hammers looking for cars driving thru to rob (hammers are far cheaper than guns, legal, and easier to get). Scary.
England has for a very long time ad a much higher crime rate, and many say that it is because gun laws mean people cannot protect themselves (only criminals have guns). Now that terrorists use big knives, it is getting crazy.
Poor people have far more crime in their areas, at least partially because law enforcement does not want to go into dangerous areas, and partially because law enforcement does not give a shit about poor people. Maybe also there is some racial prejudice in law enforcement. For sure there are a lot of poor people without jobs looking to make a buck.
But in the US, the vast majority of criminals are drunks and druggies (at least according to the criminals). Messed up people.
I am very familiar with the poor, We were dirt poor when I was a kid. We lived in someone's one-car garage.
I am very familiar with druggies and alcoholics - I have 29 years clean and sober.
I am very familiar with cops gone bad - I was in witness protection against killer cops.
I am just not that familiar with racism - I am a white male.

Hey. You actually did a good job on that. But the murder rate in the US is not the murder rate in the world. War is rising. Racial, religious, and genocidal rates are up? in the world. Putin is bringing back Stalin. Kim is crazy in Korea. The whole muslim jihad is out of control.
So while abolishing leaded gas and increasing gun ownership may have decreased US murder rates, the world is going to hell in a hand basket.
And the murder rate in the US is not the local murder rate. While suburban / etc murder rates are down, big city murder rates are up in the US. You know, where the high density populations are? Washington, DC, Chicago, New Orleans, LA, Detroit, etc.
And the news is keeping some of the murder rate stuff secret. The major drug gangs are increasing their violence. And they are moving northward from the border, making many cities far more dangerous.
By the way, life sucks.

Unfortunately, you are very mistaken. There are real murderers on Facebook, craigslist, ...
So real death threats are out there on the internet.
The last time I got threatened (phone call), I knew the people doing the threatening had killed three times already.
(By the way, they got away with it, they were cops)
Just Google Facebook 6 murder and read on for the latest on that.

If you put rats in a closed space with unlimited food, they will eat and procreate until the space is overflowing, and then go crazy because of the overcrowding and kill each other.
Just try and convince me humans have not already crossed the same threshold.

The ability to "handle" slashdot "discussions" is not exactly a good criteria for anything or anyone.
Now if we had discussions and reasonable conversations on slashdot, that would be a whole different ballgame.