Can you imagine a society that officially renounced belief in God? I can, because the USSR and Mao's China essentially did just that... and promptly started to promulgate fear, hatred, ignorance and death at a rate that has yet to be matched by any society in history. Germany, under national socialism, also devoted a great deal of effort towards science and essentially squelched the church and ended up with similar results.

I personally agree with the idea that evolution should be taught and not creationism but I'm not about to denounce religion without contemplating the alternatives.

Actually, I would disagree with the notion that evolution is a basis for the economy. The overall economic impact of the teaching of the theory of evolution is probably pretty limited. Yes, it matters to those with careers in biology, but those people would probably be taught about the theory of evolution (in much greater detail) during college.

Like most "social issues" such as gay marriage, abortion, the NSA PRISIM program, assault weapons laws, etc. the way students are taught about evolution may make an effective political wedge issue, but its actual effect on people's lives is generally small.

Regardless of their opinion of evolution, I imagine most Texans simply vote their party and the vast majority probably couldn't tell you who their school board member is or what he believes. A sizable chunk wouldn't even know what they themselves think about evolution. Many simply have never stopped to think about it because they're busy with other aspects of life.

This is also true of any other state. Almost any state will have drawbacks. I'm just as uncomfortable with some left wing state dominating the textbook market. If California were the market leader for instance, I can imagine we'd go from the creationist in Texas being a voice to the eco-cult of California insisting that GMO's cause cancer / environmental collapse / human mutations. Rather than dealing with the global warming deniers in Texas, we'd be dealing with the Chicken Little "the sky is falling" types which, if we're being honest, aren't really any more productive.

California is much more of a "local control" state than Texas is. Texas gives the Texas Board of Education a huge amount of power in deciding which textbooks are purchased while California largely lets individual school boards (and in some cases, individual schools) make those decisions. Thus the entire State of Texas pretty much ends up buying the same books making Texas the most influential market in the country for textbooks.

Science is more of a process than a belief. When we use the term "science" we are referring to the use of the scientific method to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Science itself prescribes no ethics, no meanings to life, no philosophies and, being the study of the natural world, has nothing to say regarding the existence of supernatural beings. If you look at scientific scholars you will find a diverse array of religious beliefs, philosophic beliefs and life practices. Science is not a belief system.

Except that God isn't "tossing" people into the lake of fire. Christian theology seems to suggest that people who willingly reject God are going to hell by their own hands.

The Koch brothers inherited a family owned business and, rather than going public, decided to keep it family owned. Just because their business is larger than others doesn't make it unique. Plenty of business owners inherited their family's firm.

Yes, Bush inherited political clout. Names like Bush, Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt, etc. have long carried power in the states dating clear back to John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams (John Adams even alluded to believing that the USA might benefit from inherited titles of nobility)

Some families produce politicians. Some families produce musicians. Some families produce football and baseball players. Some families produce businessmen. You can inherit talent and you can inherit a family name just as well as you can inherit wealth or good genetics. This isn't news to anyone.

Your current monarch has done an outstanding job of remaining impartial and generally avoiding meddling in day-to-day political affairs. Under your system, a good monarch should. Charles however, does not inspire confidence that this will continue once he has the crown.

For those of use curious enough to watch, there was coverage of your last election here in the States and, for all intensive purposes, your last national election did end up being a knife edge. No party (or traditional coalition) ended up in the majority which is how you ended up with your Tory/Liberal coalition government, quite the political odd couple. The last time you ended up with a "hung parliament" was, if I remember right, back in the 70's which basically just resulted in a horrible mess and then another round of elections. This time, it was something your politicians kind of suspected might happen when the Conservatives started to lose steam near the end of the campaign so coalition talks were mostly in the works before the results were announced.

I suppose the big thing the monarch could do is force an election in the event Parliament simply refused to call one. My understanding is the "term" of a parliament isn't 100% codified but elections are traditionally held at least every 5-ish years (though sooner if the majority thinks it will gain seats and the WWII parliament didn't call an election for almost a decade due to the war). I suppose the queen could deny ascent to anything blatantly corrupt like a law meddling with the Boundaries Commission (oh how I wish we had one of those in the States) or some law denying the opposition party TV time or something. Much like your government's upper chamber, she's not much of a check, but with so few checks and balances, there needs to be some sort of check on power.

We in the states pay for a lot of pomp and circumstances that are, from a pragmatic perspective, generally unnecessary. In this age of teleconferencing, there isn't much reason for our Presidents, Veeps, SoS's, members of Congress, etc. to be traveling around the globe. There isn't much of a need for the constant cross-country tours most of our politicians go on too. We don't really need a massive inauguration ceremony nor long fancy swearing in ceremonies for members of Congress.

Hell, we don't really need a full-time Congress. Our second most populous state, Texas, has a legislature that meets for a single 140 day session every 2 years (and Texans generally joke that they'd rather it just meet for 2 days every 140 years). A good chunk of our states have part-time legislatures so Congress probably would do fine on those terms too. Heck they'd probably cause fewer problems and it would be nice having our Congress run by people who didn't list "politician" as their primary career.

Government comes with needless formalities. It comes with being ruled by people who like to be popular unfortunately.

First off, wealth has always been uneven in society. If you happen to live in a modern 1st world country you had probably best refrain from moaning about uneven amounts of wealth since chances are you're probably better off than 90% of the planet.

Second off, wealth isn't "distributed" in any real sense. Wealth is created through investment.

Third off, a typical American or European at poverty level generally has a more comfortable life than a king would have a couple hundred years ago. Air conditioning, communication, healthcare, pick your metric. You're generally better off as a poor person now than as a monarch 200 years ago. Heck even the 19th century titans of industry don't have it as good as I do. I have access to eye surgery, air conditioning, a nationwide highway system, affordable international air travel, a robust vaccination regiment, the Internet, a microwave oven, TV, antibiotics, cell phones, etc. John D. Rockefeller may have been worth $350 billion in today's money, but he had none of these things.

Wal-Mart hardly creates serfdom. A serf is someone who is legally "free" but has a de facto obligation to a de facto master. I'm free to shop at any retailer. I'm free to work wherever I want. I do not always shop at Wal-Mart and I've never worked for them. This isn't just the case for me, this is the case for the extreme majority of the country.

Except that the value of the dollar has been relatively stable and changes in value have been relatively mild with an inflation rate of a little over 1.1%. The dollar's exchange rate with other relatively stable reserve foreign currencies like the Euro, Yen, Pound and Franc hasn't generally been subject to wild fluctuations. Compare the dollar to bitcoin who's exchange rate has fluctuated wildly in the last year. Furthermore, rise in demand for bitcoin has caused a tendency for it to drift towards deflation

Actually, I don't know of any local businesses in my town that accept bitcoin. I have yet to encounter one who won't accept good ol American greenbacks.

The bitcoin has a niche market that it can fill but don't mistake it for a replacement to the dollar. If you want to send money to a group helping dissadents in China or Jews in Iran, bitcoin may be the best solution. If you live in Venezuela where they suffer from 40% rates of inflation, bitcoin might be preferable. The USA's banking system and the US Dollar are among the soundest and stablest in the world. No, bitcoin won't replace the dollar any time soon.

Microsoft's purchase of Nokia might be bad news for... Blackberry! Yes, Blackberry's current niche is with enterprise is basically that they own the hardware, the software and they have server software for the back end. Really tight Exchange and Active Directory integration on mobile devices would be something a few companies would love to have. Most companies already have Microsoft's Windows Server deployed with Active Directory and a good chunk of them already have Exchange. Tack on integration with other Microsoft technologies like Sharepoint, Remote Desktop, WSUS, SCCM and full-featured versions of good 'ol Office and Microsoft might be in a great position to command a strong niche market for enterprises.

Windows 8 based phones and tablets may never be popular with consumers, but Microsoft doesn't necessarily need to have them be their customers. Enterprises are already using Windows Server to manage their computers so some might naturally veer towards using mobile devices that can be managed in the same way.

If Snowden had never released those documents, be honest, nobody in the general public would have noticed PRISM. The reason nobody would've noticed is the NSA isn't hauling people off to prison. The people in China are well aware of their government's censorship and of the police state. In China, websites actually are blocked. In China, people publishing material that is critical of the government are actually thrown in jail for it.