He's not wrong, he's entirely correct. Someone wrongly accused has indeed been incorrectly accused. You're conflating "wrongly" with "wronged".

BTW, I'm American and think calling a car's trunk a "boot" is ridiculous. A trunk was, before autos, a box holding things and was often installed on wagons and carriages.

OTOH, I think it's stupid of us to use a four syllable word for "lift".

Shear [sic] ignorance

Oh, the irony! If only we could shear ignorance. Let me shear a little of yours -- it's sheer ignorance.

Digital tuning and volume control is cheaper than analog

Nonsense, a single stacked potentiometer is a buck or less, retail. Same with a tunable capacitor. The digital controls are really more expensive.

A single touch panel replaces a bunch of separate controls.

A dollar or two per switch, as opposed to... how much does a touchscreen display cost? They can't be cheap, considering what you pay for a tablet.

They don't have to change back even when it is unsafe because all of the manufacturers do the same thing

They didn't all start doing it at once. That stuff was originally only in the most expensive cars.

Less freedom to feed the homeless

Uh, can you expound?

less freedom from warrant-less surveillance...

These things are both abominations and illegal. The problem isn't government, but who has the power to place people within that government. The real Presidents are Koch and Soros and their ilk. The problem with big government is that the corporates are even bigger and more powerful.

Sorry, but fuck you, I will not surrender my natural rights and freedoms peacefully for your comfort & convenience.

Neither will I, and will continue to speak out against abuses. No matter how weak and small the government becomes, the easier it is for the CORPORATIONS to remove your rights. Look at Railroad workers in the 19th century and miners in the early 20th century before government started cracking down on corporations.

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul"

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

I was born one mornin', it was drizzlin' rain
Fightin' and trouble are my middle name
I was raised in the canebrake by an ol' mama lion
Cain't no-a high-toned woman make me walk the line

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

If you see me comin', better step aside
A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one don't a-get you
Then the left one will

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

Those people were SLAVES. Is that what you really want?

Yes, I noticed that, too. The parable of the talents, unlike most of Christ's teachings, isn't about compassion, love, charity, forgiveness, paying one's taxes, or generosity. As you said, It's about fear of authority and industriousness.

But Jesus wasn't just a liberal, he was a radical. If you're a Sunday School teacher you should know that. The men who tortured Jesus to death were conservatives.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.
Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?
Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon.
And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.
And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

And you know how angry he was at the temple moneychangers.

Jesus was a liberal, and after his death and resurrection his followers were communists.

BTW, what denomination?

It's certainly been useful to Zuckerberg. How many billions has he made from Facebook?

I was going to post something similar. Examples: cotton shoelaces gave way to nylon because nylon is more durable, but nylon laces wouldn't stay tied. Later they did actually have a change for the better with a nylon/cotton combination.

Then there was replacing car radio knobs with buttons, making it so you had to take your eyes off the road to adjust the volume. Dangerous, at least they brought knobs back.

But now they have something worse than buttons -- touch screens. Are auto manufacturers that blase about their customers dying? Or are designers simply stupid?

Improvements are good. Change for the sake of change is stupid (MS is particularly bad about this). If you can't make it better, leave it alone.

The crack (in the battery) was smoking Teslas.

is to

science as a virgin is to a hooker.

(I assume you were looking for a punch line and didn't misspell "too". How could anyone misspell a three letter word?)

I'm guessing you're either young and childless or, like me, got lucky. Both of my kids turned out fine, but I know guys with sons, where one son is hard working, literate, successful and another who is a lazy, uninterested, aliterate alcoholic drug abuser.

I also know some people my kids' ages who had terrible parents but turned into good, productive members of society.

How to be rich is in the public domain, the link is to free ebook versions. If you're going to buy a book, buy mine -- I'm still alive and can use the money a lot more than the dead Mr. Ghetty! If you're poor or "thrifty" you can read mine for free, too.

Guys, before you post links to Amazon or B&N see if you can link the text itself. If the author's been dead for a hundred years, his work will be on the net. Surprisingly, some newer work is, as well. I've even found Asimov short stories online.

For instance, he advocated cooperating with labor unions (when have you ever heard a billionaire do that?).

Not since the 1980s when the head of a major, then non-union airline said "any company that gets a union deserves it," meaning that if you treat and pay your workers fairly, they won't form a union. Unions are for asshole bosses. If your workforce unionizes, you're probably a heartless sociopath.

I've always hated plastic bags, without worrying about environmental concerns. First, they're too damned small. With paper bags, a full grocery cart took four bags. Now it's fifteen or twenty little bags. Paper bags would stand up by themselves, plastic won't.

Bigger plastic bags, if you can actually get them, are good for lining the bathroom trash can but nothing else.

Bring back paper! It biodegrades quickly, suffres none of the disadvantages of plastic, doesn't harm wildlife... there is just too much plastic these days. How about we go back to cardboard boxes instead of the damned plastic packaging they have that you need a chainsaw and a jaws of life to get open, that won't biodegrade and takes up a lot more room in your trash can?

Honestly, is plastic that much cheaper than paper? I can see no other advantage to plastic.