I kind of equate it to buying a $50 t-shirt with some designer name printed across the front. Basically you're a walking billboard.

I fully agree with your statement. However, the funny thing is that many people prefer to have a designer name printed across the front (and gladly over-pay for the privilege)!

It's like branding christians as violent extremists because of what has happened in northern Ireland.

Aside from Ireland, Christians ARE violent extremists. (I suspect that is why they are so critical of Muslims.)

Let's see:
- Spanish Inquisition (ahem!)
- Holy Wars (WTF!)
- Forced modern-day conversion during 'chairity' work.
- Forced religious conversion by the sword (Constantine)
- Repression of women, even in religious services (Catholics)
- Intertanglement with political government. I have heard many Christian priests dictate to their congregation that particular political propositions be supported or rejected...
- Belief that their organizational leader is completely infallible. [Hence the above must have been sanctioned by God]

I generally support religious freedom. But if we decide to get rid of it, I hope all of Christianity and Islam are banned together.

As an aside, people think Scientologists are crazy, but are Christians any better? Look critically at the stories from the Bible. Look critically at what is believed to happen during consecreation (during mass)... Hey, if everyone believes it then everyone else must be insane!

As for me, i was raised Christian and executed in Christian schools...

Survey after survey has shown that people would much rather take a train (where they can get on easily, walk around during travel, not get slapped suddenly into their seats for an impromptu ride on the biggest roller coaster on the planet, drink a beer or eat a sandwich for a reasonable price, not have to wait in long lines for a restroom, and "land" within a short cab ride of their actual destination) than suffer through the growing indignities of air travel. Even adding in proper security screening, it's still no contest.

I recently visited Paris and Tokyo. To my surprise, both had extremely convenient trains. In paris, the Taxis stand is about 100m from the actual tracks -- no security, no lines, etc... Just walk up from the road, onto the train, and sit in your seat.

Why isn't air travel this easy? Can a 200km/h train stop that much faster than a plan can land? After my train experiences, air travel seems more like a convoluted torture scheme than a service.

Even in Tokyo, it was still convenient -- no security, no long lines, no overbooking.

However, on one of my international flights, they canceled my outgoing flight (not-weather-related) and overbooked the return *international flight* back to the US. [They only flew about once per day, so this was a substantial delay to passengers]. I had to spend almost double just to get on another flight for the same day [I was flying for work]

I would think that in any other industry, the willful selling of items which do not exist (or be delivered/fulfilled) would be a civil (and possibly criminal) offense, why the hell do airlines get away with this? (It would only make sense to me if people did not buy tickets ahead of time or frequently missed their flight. So instead of fixing their system, they over-sell to make up for the seats they failed to fill [by running on-time] in the first place? WTF!)

Near where I live, it is easier to drive >200 miles (at 60mph) to a neighboring big city instead of taking a *direct flight* there. [something is seriously wrong with this picture!]. Not counting the time traveling to/from the airport, just the air-travel related part would be slower (security, boarding, unboarding, baggage claim, etc)

I find that other countries seem to understand that learning math, science, engineering, are important. Being able to produce/create something is the way to sustain one's self.

One cannot expect to make their income by feeding off of others (US lawyers) or exploiting others (US healthcare).

If I'm not mistaken, in the mid 1980s, only 10%-20% of our oil consumption came from the Middle East (or maybe anywhere outside the US).

As a large percentage of our oil consumption goes toward transportation, we probably could have been completely independent of foreign oil if we wanted to within a very short time.

But sadly, the automotive industry (and general public) weren't very motivated to make more fuel efficient cars. [I don't see the replacement of station-wagons with SUVs to be much of an improvement. ]

The benefit of this system is, of course, that oil companies aren't exposed to devastating liability; instead, the liability is spread across he entire oil industry. This is also the problem: no individual oil company has an adequate economic incentive to avoid risky behavior

Sounds just like the banks...

So, sinking one loaded oil tanker dumped about as much oil into the ocean as this is expected to dump per month.

148 oil tankers were sunk during WW2. There was no ecological collapse as a result.

I have to ask you, how many millimeters of oil in your drinking water is acceptable for you to drink?

How many millimeters of crude oil would you like in your fried salt-water fish?

How many millimeters are required to affect cancer rates?

In the same way that a wall is more secure than a door. It has less features to start with.

And taken to its final conclusion:

A completely open space is more secure than a wall. It doesn't provide barrier behind which an intruder can hide.

It took 3.5 billion years for life on earth to go from self replicating molecules to us, which is about 25% of the total age of the entire universe

Aside from general human evolution, even recent human technological development is a mere moment in time...

I think about 200 years ago, radio communication pretty much didn't exist. [While spark-gap transmitters were an amazing achievement, I suspect alien cultures would assume such transmissions to be electrical storms or noise].

Due to their simplicity, it seems to me that our basic AM and FM radio transmissions (from the past ~50-75 years) would be recognizable...

Today, would an alien civilization be able to detect and decode spread-spectrum signals? [I think not!] What about our encrypted wireless networks, cell phones, etc? Basic DMT/OFDM transmissions might be recognizable as being artificial (they are easy to see in the frequency domain), but I doubt they could be decoded.

Assuming human civilization doesn't destroy itself, how complex are things going to be in 200 years from now?

Also, our electrical technology is based on the materials and minerals we use to make electrical components (PCB boards, oscillators, etc)... Alien civilizations would very likely have a much different composition of minerals/etc on their planet... Even if they developed electrical technology, they might operate in entirely different frequency ranges (e.g. very low frequencies or very high frequencies). Their atmosphere might also enhance/inhibit radio propagation.

And even they are are similar to us, they may have similar arguments as the above and just give up...

Hey, don't assume that all North Americans get it! (We're not all that weird)

This is clearly a Canadian form of "humour"...

Frankly, I simply cannot trust ANYONE anymore. Understand that I have seen infections start after people visited CNN.com, Foxnews.com, MSNBC.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, Amazon, and MANY MANY MANY other major news/social/other sites that serve banner ads from 3rd party vendors. (or from a poorly secured internal ad server)

I bet the people in question visited FoxNews.com first... It probably gave them a virus that made it appear as if the other websites (especially MSNBC.com) were serving viruses.

Block FoxNews.com in your DNS server and your worries will be done.

Your life expectancy is then the 11th best in the world.

Disclaimer: I'm from the USA. (I am one of the rare few who find it difficult to call myself 'American'. Aren't the Cherokee, Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, and even Cubans all "Americans"?)

Quite frankly, I'm amazed our life expectancy is so long... People here would be better off eating their own crap than the stuff that passes for 'food' here. The restaurant and fast food industry is completely out of control. Deep fried meats are not supposed to be staples! Try finding a breakfast food whose (small) serving size doesn't include at least 10g-20g of sugar!

Somehow, with little exercise and extremely sugary/fatty food, people manage to live decently long lives.

I have no love for insurance companies, but I can't say everything is their fault. Some how doctors have it in their mind that they should be making $x million per year (individually)... Tell me, why should a doctor spending 15-20 minutes putting a few stitches in a one inch incision cost 'USD $1000'? If there are so few doctors that their time is that valuable, we should be trying to get more, not auction off their time to the 'highest bidder'.

People no longer pay protection money to gangsters... We have hospitals, doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies for that.

When I was in high school in the 1990s, most of the students had TI-85 / TI-89 / TI-92 graphing calculators.

They used the calculators for not only doing two-digit arithmetic (that they couldn't do in their head), but also for taking derivatives, solving quadratic equations, etc...

They would also use the calculator's abilities for storing physics notes (basically cheating) or had simple programs that did physics problems for them...

Anyone with a plain scientific calculator was at a bit of a disadvantage...

We did have a computer lab, but it was filled with mostly 386s (SX,not DX), and a few 486s (which were ancient even then!)... We used the lab for only learning programming (compiling a 'hello world' PASCAL program in DOS took several seconds). For grading, we printed out our programs on an old dot-matrix printer that printed about 1 page per minute...

Needless to say, learning PASCAL programming was an non-required elective...

I was born and raised Catholic. Went to Catholic schools. The parent poster brings up some interesting points.

While many people may agree Scientology is a cult, I suggest we all look inward:

People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations;
Early Christian followers were threatened, beaten, etc.

Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader;
Jesus is said to have unconditional love for all people.

They get a new identity based on the group;
Followers of Jesus are no longer Jews, Pagans, etc... They are known as Christians.

They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.
The 4 gospels were all pretty much copied from the same source (and long after Jesus died). Each one has a different audience, but the content is largely the same. In this sense, followers have restricted access to information. The Catholic church also regulates which scriptures form the Bible (and which do not). Not all writings of the Dead Sea scrolls made it into the Bible. Throughout time, religion have been used as a means to divide people. In the past, those who have questioned the religious leadership have been excommunicated, or worse...

Even today, try being a Catholic and marrying a non-Catholic in a Church. It is not allowed! The meaning of "Catholic" (as welcoming) only applies to their Cathechism school!

(People may argue that the Catholic Church is no longer a cult, even if there is strong evidence for it being a cult at one time. So I ask you, did the religion change or did society change around it? If you think it is now no longer a cult, does that make you feel better?)

From everything I've read about and seen of Scientolgists and Scientology, they do all of those things.
From everything I have read and know about Catholicism, they do and/or have done all those things.

Contrast that to say...Judaism or Islam, theres a big difference.
Indeed, the other religions spell their name differently.

he won't be bringing the heat til he's out on the mound, he's just trying to make sure he shoulder is fucking healed

From someone whose handle is "sexconker", I have to wonder on which mound you have injured your shoulder...