Years ago I remember when Sony Electronics was the largest seller of CD burners. Sony Music realized they could be used to (gasp!) copy music CDs and proceeded to sue all manufacturers of CD burners. We were presented with the absurdity of Sony suing Sony

Blowing up a plane from the inside is far more difficult and less effective than just setting off a bomb in the security queue. Terrorism isn't rocket science, even dumb as dirt religious fanatics can carry it off successfully.

I work in the physical security field (access control, cameras, alarms, etc.), and carry a multi-tool with a two inch knife blade and screwdrivers in my bag, which I almost always forget to remove before I get to the airport. In five years they've never been noticed. Not once. Know what they've taken repeatedly? My two ounce bottle of Cholula hot sauce. They've told me, "It could be used as a weapon, you could put it in someone's eyes."

Go take your dog for a walk. If you can't think of half a dozen non-suicide attacks on targets within ten kilometers of your house by the time you get home you have no imagination.

**MORE** compromises? Are you serious? One of the reasons the US is in such bad shape now is because the Democrats have compromised every step of the way for 30 frelling years. People say there's no difference between the parties because every time the rightwingnuts propose some new atrocity they compromise yet again, and we end up taking another giant leap to the right. The Dems aren't as infested with batshit loonies like Bachmann, but even the party's official platform is quite a bit to the right of what surveys show the general public wants out of Congress. And you want them to compromise ever FURTHER to the right?

No, you don't recall correctly. Humans create at least 100 times as much CO2 as volcanos.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

Published reviews of the scientific literature by Moerner and Etiope (2002) and Kerrick (2001) report a minimum-maximum range of emission of 65 to 319 million tonnes of CO2 per year. . . .The burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide,

And you and I pay more for everything because of his piddly cash-back check.

I've received thousands of dollars in rewards

You're welcome. You realize that cash comes out of the pockets of every customer, don't you? They're not giving this away out of the goodness of their corporate heart, it comes in the form of higher fees charged to the store. Not only are you paying higher prices to subsidize your rewards, you're paying higher prices to pay the credit card executives, their marketers, and all the infrastructure that wouldn't be necessary otherwise. You're getting your "rewards", but you're also paying for everyone else's rewards and a shitload of other overhead at the same time. Congratualtions for making all of our lives just a little more expensive.

Personally I pay cash whenever possible, and I patronize stores that give a discount for cash. I also try to patronize businesses that are family-owned whenever possible, and pay cash (or check) there because the CC companies screw them over royally.

I was starting to feel a bit lonely, like I was the only guy left using cash. Personally I find it impossible to budget while using credit cards. I can take $X out of the cash machine every week, spend it on groceries, gas, booze, whatever, and when my wallet is empty I know exactly how much I've spent. If I'm using a card for everything I really have no clue unless I were to keep all the receipts and total them up. This is much the same reason that I pay all my bills by check, because at the end of the month I know exactly how much has come out of my bank account and when. If Comcast screws up and charges me $500 (which they did once) I know it before that money disappears out of my account and things start bouncing.

Are you trying to say that the gigatons of CO2 that we dump into the atmosphere every year has no effect on the ambient temperature? If so, why would you believe such an absurd thing? Any high school physics class can do the simple experiment where Gas Sample 1 retains X-amount of infrared radiation, and Gas Sample 2 retains Y-amount. When Gas Sample 2 has a higher concentration of CO2, methane or nitrous oxide it always retains more heat. Always. So why would you believe that the atmosphere would act differently?

Of course you'd have to account for crustal rebound when the weight of a mile or more of ice is removed. IIRC, over the course of something like 5,000 years the North American continent rose hundreds of meters after the Ice Age glaciers retreated.

being 100% eliminated en masse by Natural Selection

Duh. Every species since the origin of life has either gone extinct, or will go extinct. Or are you under the impression that your 'worldview' will somehow survive the extinction of humans?

I don't think you should say "all" of them believed believed they were promoting a perfect society. Stalin, possibly the worst of all, made only the faintest of gestures towards anything like that. His was a naked quest for power and survival, not for the Soviet Union but for himself.

Other than that, I agree completely. There have always been people claiming that the world would be perfect if there just weren't any Hutus/Gypsies/Tamils/Jews/Shiia/Templars/Cherokees/Whoever in it. Religion is simply one of the easiest reasons for mass murder, since 'god is on their side' so normal inhibitions against murder are more easily overcome.

require particular consideration of one's own context and social context.

And that's just the thing. For you sections A, C and F from book M are the most valid and important, for the aforementioned end-timers sections L, F and W from book Z are the most important. For the woman across the ocean who is putting on a suicide vest section P from book N is the only important consideration. For the group in the mountains contemplating committing genocide, their justification is found in sections F, Q and W from book M.

Once one starts relying on 'revealed truths' to create one's value set anything can be justified.

Did some research years ago on the Mayan calendar, and one thing that struck me was the LACK of endings. Everything involved the meshings of cycles within cycles, the emphasis on the beginning and end of something is much more a European construct. (made-up example) If the day Seven Hawk of one calendar happened to coincide with the day Seven Fish of another calendar or Seven Hawk were to coincide with Three Hawk it would have far more significance than the end of one of the cycles.

Two links have been inserted higher in the thread since you posted.

Seriously, attacks on innocents are prohibited in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, but when has that prohibition ever stopped anyone? The ability of theists to extract reasons for whatever nastiness they may want to commit has shown no limits so far. In the case of the Torah/Bible/Koran it's such a convoluted mess of contradictions that pretty much anything that is prohibited in one section is mandatory in another. Just pick and choose the parts you want.

Don't want to kill witches? Just ignore that order. Want to eat shellfish or pork? Just ignore that part. Want to be monogamous? There's a section promoting that. Want to be polygamous? There are sections promoting that. Pretty much the only thing consistently prohibited by all parts of all three versions of the text is that women must not be treated as equals of men.

The full quote, which Tesla said when informed by a reporter that Marconi had managed to transmit a wireless message across the Atlantic, was "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." IIRC, he then informed the reporter that if he had received the funding he had requested to build a receiving station in France he would have done the same thing five years earlier.