Some people smoke. Yes, it's unhealthy. People do unhealthy things, it's part of free will. Get used to it. It's not an ethical or moral issue.

Employers should not have any role in what someone does outside of work, and we need a law-or better yet a constitutional amendment- to that effect. It's unfortunate government, both parties leans the opposite way. As for the argument of "Smoking is bad for society-when you get cancer, other people have to pay for it", also bullshit. Unless you want to regulate every aspect of someones life, in order to minimize health care expense(ACLU's pizza animation-google it- sums the implications of this nicely), you have to accept that as a whole, in a civilized society, we pay for each others choices. If someone judges that smoking increases the quality of their life enough to outweigh the health risks, let them be.

If you're so damn concerned about second hand smoke, why don't you do something useful and demand better mass transit so you can quit breathing car exhaust. Or, if you smell smoke and you don't like it, leave.

The vast majority of people are not sociopathic mass murderers, and do not aspire to be such. Therefore, chances are most people who shine lights at airplanes are unaware it's dangerous. So, require lasers to come with a full package inserts explaining the danger caused to aircraft, put a video showing the effects on websites, and maybe rent some TV ads. Make sure everyone knows what lasers do. It would also help if more people realized that airplanes do not 'fly themselves'.

If everyone knows the extreme dangers of lasering airplanes, then society can in good conscience criminally prosecute people for it.

First of all, to get this out of the way-Monsanto is obviously quite amoral, and their business practices are largely indefensible. However, it's worth discussing the actual issues at hand here.

The legal issues are basically:
1. Is it infringement when contaminated seeds are planted unintentionally and they contain patented genetic engineering. I would say no, because my understanding is that the tort of infringement must be willful.(IANAL)
2.Does the right of first sale allow seeds to be reproduced to create more seeds for the use of the same former. A complex issue, I would guess probably not, legally.

The more commonly discussed issue though, is the ethics of GM food. I personally believe, very strongly, that genetically engineered food is good and desirable, since mankind has yet to grasp the whole 'birth control' concept, and likely never will. GM food also has a massive capacity for good, making food more nutritious and easier to grow.

Politically, I'm very far left, but I (unpopularly) believe that technology is often it's own solution. I'm as anti-Monsanto as everyone, but their business practices does not make their product evil, anymore than Microsoft's antitrust issues made the PC unethical. They are distinct issues.

If someone needs surgery on a trans-atlantic flight, they divert to the nearest airport near a hospital, which would usually be under one hour and rarely more than three. Most surgical conditions can wait 1-3 hours.

You can't wait 1-3 months though, as you would if a spacecraft needed to turn around

Personally, I hate these self-righteous assholes who get married too young, buy a house too big, have too many children, then bitch that they don't have money and their life sucks. Your life should suck; you're a dumbass.

Agree or disagree, modding this as troll is so inexplicable, it spurred me to metamod.

I just read the link to the blog, where he claims a public available geolocation site was used, that is obviously false since anyone who has ever tried plugging their IP into one of these knows it can only give you a very broad location, city-level.

This story makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and I see basically two possibilities:

1.The events described, as a whole, actually happened, but the technical issues described(finding the IP and hacking the facebook page) were misinterpreted by the author.
2. The entire thing is false.

I don't know which one it is, personally I think the latter as it sounds implausible and reads like a work of fiction.

The claim of the "IT genius friend" finding the house from the IP obviously makes no sense for two reasons:

1.Twitter and Facebook do not reveal their user's IPs, nor do most email services. Depending on the blog host, it's possible he could have found the IP there, but obviously there would be no way to be sure it was the same as the stalker(troll is the wrong word) on FB and Twitter.
2.Converting the IP to a physical address obviously is not possible without cooperation from the ISP. The author claims that his friend was able to deduce not one, not two, but THREE physical addresses from the IP addresses, including his friend's house. I don't see an ISP doing that without police or court involvement first, as giving a customer's physical location out opens them up to significant liability.

The overall story appears false as it is practically written to appeal to those who fear young people using computers. "His son was glued to the computer...couldn't watch TV without tweeting" "engrossed in conspiracy sites". This reads like a work of fiction pushing an agenda, an anti-youth, anti-internet hit piece.

When I started writing this post, I honestly wasn't sure which of the two possibilities was true, whether the author misconstrued the events or whether the whole thing was a hoax. Having re-read the article a few times now, I'm sure this is false and a hoax, and I hope it is exposed.

If it's a one time use machine, I wouldn't use it at all. If it's multi-use, I'd check out various parts of the future and find a new home.