It's sortof like clearcutting yellowstone national park (or some other place of natural treasure) for a large pork-barrel project which can be done anyplace else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The fight is not just on sacred land grounds, but on the environmental impact assessments. Just because politicians want to ram a project through and bandy about the term "science", does not mean we should support it. It seems like this area is a treasure of biodiversity and preserving it benefits furthering of human knowledge possibly more than the telescope.

I'm curious why no alternative sites are considered. I suspect this is not because of advantages of the site, but because some organizationall well-placed scientists (not from hawaii) want to have their funding organizations send them to Hawaii regularly.

If you are comparing the plight of "slave-ownership-is-a-right" supporting white southern secessionists to the plight of indigenous people of Hawaii (and why not the Americas), then I'd recommend a prescription of Howard Zinn. Reading is not a crime.

Could Microsoft's "popup dialogue" windows and being forced to reboot in the middle of work be a factor?

I am pretty sure it will blow Windows 10 out of the water and you won't have to do work to install all the extras (assuming you like free software). If someone gives me a MacBook, I'm happy to run this experiment ;-)

I've heard of a Windows OS that can block 90% of usefulness of hardware ;-)

Non-muslim religious extremists who kill abortion doctors (and/or gay people) are non-hypothetical. They are not a "pot-smoking delusion" but a sad reality. The original point is that there are a minority of crazies in every religion who will take to violence when something occurs that they consider offensive. This should not be used to broadly categorize all who share their religious/social/racial group.

For instance, if I wanted to cite a verse about gambling and alcohol, I could say please see Chapter 2, verse 19 or (quran 2:19) on gambling and alcohol:
http://quran.com/2/219

Of course many Muslim traditions interpret the text differently (I think sufis believe inner experience is more important), but what your crossdressing, necrophilia fantasies warrant proper source citing.

Why is this modded informative? Do you have a citation for any of this? what version of the Kuran are you reading the crazy-person-version?
http://quran.com/

Get a little more meta and we are talking about violent extremism, which is not limited to a particular religious or social group.

There were death threats and violence though:
http://www.newcriterion.com/po...

I bet two guys holding hands could provoke violence in certain parts of Texas :(

The problem isn't one religion or another. Search for "abortion doctor murder" or Matthew Shepherd and you will find evidence plenty of violent stupid Christians. Southern Poverty Law Center has some great information on domestic terrorist groups. And I don't it's safe to presume atheists are necessarily better. Religious people do an awful lot of selfless and amazing work (I'm not saying atheists don't, but your most selfless religious person is definitely more helpful that your typical atheist).

Personally, I think the "enemy" is stupidity and, unfortunately, I'm often fairly guilty of being an idiot too, but at least I try not to be an idiot, and I don't shoot anyone because because of my stupidity.

Maybe, but I can see it happening:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/arielk...

You are right, but I think to a point.

50 years ago you didn't need a cellphone or a personal computer. Life would be very difficult without a PC today and likewise for a cellphone. If you are old like me you will remember the ubiquitous payphone, and you will also remember paper-and-phone-driven processes that no longer exist because things are handled more efficiently using computers-and-Internet.

But it's true that very few *need* Cable TV, Netflix, or the latest smartphone.