Here's another thought. Why don't you actually read and take the time to mentally process a post before you reply to it. I didn't say I was intrinsically against porn. Just that it, like any entertainment, shouldn't be confused with reality.

How's that working for you so far.

Maybe men that don't interact well with women are the result of NOT spending any time learning about women. If they did then they would learn that porn is usually geared towards what men want sexual interaction to look like, NOT what women want it to look like.

Interacting with real people requires social skills that get harder to acquire as we get older because the unconditional love of mom/dad/grandma/.. may not be there to lessen the blow of rejection or realizing we need to change in some area. It is easier to distract ourselves with entertainment (video games, porn, movies, etc.) than to risk having a negative relationship experience. If there is no one we trust to instruct us in the proper way to behave then we will just assume that the rest of the world is the problem. This could lead to some very bad behavior.

I believe there is a downward trend in the ability of men and women to interact in a healthy way. Women may not have issues with video games and porn but they can easily become very self-centered, vain, gossipy, and lacking in social skills. I just think that the cause, which has always been, is poor parenting.

Companies go on and on about the beauty of the "free market system" until it doesn't work for them. The U.S. government rushes in to help companies stay competitive but doesn't do much to help our workforce stay competitive. Helping U.S. companies does not help U.S. workers like it once did. Most companies depend on labor outside the U.S. to some extent. Why can't they put a tax on outsourced labor to make U.S. wage rates competitive?

I've never seen a U.S. congress that cared less about it's people than this one. The message from out government is if you can't figure out how to make a livable wage in this recession then just disappear so we don't have to deal with you. The real "kick in the head" is that if I didn't have to support our bloated local, state and federal government, deal with reams of regulations, and spend large amounts of money on insurance to protect me from a litigious society then I could be competitive with the rest of the world.

The reason that unions are dying off is because of outsourcing. The union has no power if the company can just move the manufacturing to another country with a totalitarian government that won't allow unions. It should scare you that we can NEVER compete against any country with a low standard of living, little infrastructure to support, little or no environmental regulations and few labor laws.

If you think that innovation or green jobs are going to save this economy then you probably believe in the Easter bunny and Santa Claus.

After watching the movie, Total Recall, I realized that Mars is the perfect place for a corporation to setup. You have complete control over your employees including the oxygen they breath. Any problem with an employee can be resolved with an airlock malfunction. It's a sociopathic CEO's dream come true.

They want parent involvement until it steps on the toes of some overpaid PhD who thinks there is some clever way to make math easier to learn so all the test scores will go up. When a parent actually pays attention to what's going on and realizes there's a problem, the school system closes ranks to protect the idiot.

The solution, if you can do it, is homeschooling.

There is plenty of water, just not a lot of fresh water. If you have energy you can turn salt water into fresh water. It just means that water is going to be very expensive and so food will have to be grown using less water. There are hydroponic and aquaponic systems already that use as little as 10% of what is used for dirt farming.

The real issue is still energy.

This might be true if an iPhone was a necessity of life. I know people are going to hunt me down and do horrible things to me for saying this but people can live without an iPhone (or substitute whatever smartphone is hot at the moment). If the obscene profit of the wireless carriers upset you then figure out a way to live without it. I pay $20/month for voice/text on a dumb phone and am completely content. Being a "techno-lemming" is like being a heroin addict. You pay whatever the dealer is asking because you HAVE to have it.

It is easy to point the blame at someone else for why the economy is tanking but the reality is that the problem is us. Greed and egocentrism at every level of society made this financial mess possible.

The problem with your counter-example is that there is little motivation for someone to automate their jobs in those cases because they get probably get paid by the hour. If they free up time by automating part of their job then their boss will just find more work for them. Doing boring, repetitive work appeals to some people. It's the company that is interested in being more efficient and they need to hire someone to make it happen.

"Mass ejection" propulsion is so last century. Where are the darn warp drives? I say: "Go FTL or go home."

If Slashdot is any indication, then a government filled with engineers would be really snarky!

I don't believe that any particular group of people will ultimately be better or worse than any other at running government. I would like to point out that the technology, that members of Slashdot have helped develop, will allow governments to micromanage a large population in a way that was previously impossible. The ability to use computers to track and profile people has allowed the government to lockdown society in ways that make the powers of a police state truly terrifying.

I would agree with you except for one thing. Automated production, at the moment, is only viable for mass production and if jobs disappear because of automation then automation becomes less and less viable because the consumer market for its product gets smaller and smaller. If the trend continues where wealth gets concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people then the whole manufacturing paradigm gets turned on its head. We'll be back to building pyramids for the pharaohs where millions of people will be employed building custom projects for the rich. With virtually no middle-class anywhere there will be few options for many people except to take whatever "slave wage" job comes around. All sorts of possibilities open up when you have a large pool of cheap labor and no one who can stop you.