Most of us are concerned about both injustices. We've become a bit desensitized to people being beheaded for criticizing the king of Siam. Someone being jailed for /not/ criticizing him is a new development which can both bring up dormant disgust at the previous crimes and fresh disgust at the new crimes.

Well, of course the ones who actually go on the rampage are the ones who didn't cool off. If you think about going on a rampage, but then come to your senses you don't make the news.

I like the line: "A friend in need is a friend indeed, a friend with weed is better." Possibly due to my (lack of) age.

I remember playing SimCity in high school geography class. I guess you have to move with the times and play a more modern game to learn about the more modern world.

It'll be nice to have an established poker site taking Bitcoins. Not that I want to disparage the current bitcoin poker sites (I like seals with clubs) but they just don't have the polish and finish to which I've become accustomed.

Actually I take that back, as I just realised it was in the summary...

+1 This is what I came here to say.

You have hit the nail on the head, but I'll elaborate for those people playing along at home.

The price of oil is mainly dependent on the cost to get the last gallon out of the ground. If 90% of the worlds oil can be dug up for $20 a barrel, but that last 10% costs $140/bbl then everyone pays $140/bbl. If you can expand your $20/bbl oil to the whole world's supply then you can lower the price, and the guys sitting on the $140/bbl oil won't be able to make any money. With the consumption rate of oil going up, there is the possibility of the current oil sources not being sufficient, so we'd need to go find some more oil, which would probably be more expensive.

The price of oil may not come down, but without the oil from frakking it would have gone through the roof in fairly short order.

I thought it was fairly well understood why there was such a bad outbreak this year: the flu season hit earlier than usual so a lot of people haven't had the shot yet.

a) Ilsaloving never mentioned his own health. Us humans generally get upset when bad things happen to other people.

b) He's upset because what I said is basically common knowledge for most people and the recent outbreaks are just the logical result of not enough people getting vaccinated.

Yes. New cars are quite expensive purchases and are usually done by people with relatively high disposable incomes. There exist people like your adoptive mother who (I assume) don't see the need to carry a computer with them every where they go. For the most part they probably don't care about the toys on a new car either and are more interested in the reliability aspect.

The statistics speak for themselves, most people with enough disposable income (and quite a few who can't really afford it) have smart phones.

Bear in mind that we are talking about new cars.

But it was the anti-vaxxers who reduced the number of people by enough that the transmission rates have gone up. I am vaccinated, but I know that it is not 100% effective. If it's 90% effective and I'm the only person who has it I still have a 10% risk. If everyone around me has also had it my risk drops to 1%. These statistics matter when you start talking about outbreaks and pandemics.

Thank you for your wonderfully informative and thought out response. How in any way is it not true that reducing the numbers of guns in society will reduce the total number of nutcases who end up in possession of a gun. Are you trying to tell me that basic statistics do not hold?