Portraying Israel as the villain works because Israel *is* the villain, or to put it more accurately; the zionists are the villains. This is a lopsided conflict. Israel is a racist state. It was founded as a european colony in an arab part of the world. Even the "founding fathers" of zionism knew that ethnic cleansing was necessary to create a jewish state in a non-jewish part of the world (jews were less than 10% of the population in the area in the mid 1800s, and exactly 0% of them were ashkenazim). And yes, the arabs have done all sorts of stupid things as well.

Simple question: Where are the borders of Israel? Do they include the WB? If not, why is Israel building all those colonies (plus infrastructure) there? If yes, why aren't the arabs in the WB allowed to vote in israeli elections? After all, we keep hearing that Israel is the "only democracy in the region." When will Israel start acting the part?

Science is about studying reality.

Religion is about making shit up (or blindly following the shit other people have made up).

Yes, many (most?) scientists believe in some or other religion, but what do they do when their faith collides with science? If they ignore their results in favor of their faith, they are no longer doing science. If they decide that the facts trump some part of their faith (evolution, shape of the earth, etc), then their faith has been slightly diminished and the scientist has taken a step towards atheism.

Religion is what you get in the absence of science. They are polar opposites. They do not mix.

Mao and Stalin, probably. Hitler, definitely not. The Holocaust wasn't something that suddenly happened. Christians have persecuted jews ever since Constantine, and the Holocaust was just a climax. Hitler didn't even write the recipe for the Holocaust; some guy named "Martin Luther" did that. There would still have been a Holocaust if Hitler hadn't been a christian, but the jews would have been left out of it. This "Hitler was an atheist" meme is WWII propaganda. Hitler had a lot of support in the US in the 1930s (cuz he was seen a good christian leader who knew how to deal with the jews), and the US government needed to turn the population against him. What better way to do that than claim that he was an atheist?

Present day christians claim to love Jews, but they don't, really. What they love is the idea that Israel is key to bringing certain biblical prophecies to fruition -- and we know what happens to the Jews after that.

People who support the war on terror and the way the prisoners at Guantanamo have been treated *do* deserve this kind of privacy invasion, and more.

Yup. I've got all the weapons in TF2, and I haven't payed for a single one. Everything is found or crafted.

Now can somebody please tell me what to do with those $&#% crates? No, I'm not buying any keys. What I want to do is throw them at tiny cowards. ;)

I hated it. I don't remember the hype at all, but I *do* remember sitting in the theatre, writhing in pain at the terrible script. The scene where the girl brags about what a great guy Costner's character is was pure agony, and then the film somehow managed to get even worse.. ;p Independence Day at least had the saving grace of being funny bad, but Waterworld was just plain bad. IMO, of course.

I prefer the mouse and keyboard for first-person shooters (PS2-controller... ugh), but the tablet (Wacom etc) is far better for point-and-click type games, such as Diablo, Myth, and Plants vs Zombies. It's much faster than the mouse for that kind of game and it's far better for your wrist and hand. Still need the keyboard, of course.

I was going to make a snarky comment about how most games have really lame stories, but then I remembered that that also goes for most movies.

I haven't even used floppies in the last 15 years. I never understood the complaints about the floppy-less iMac. To me it was like complaining about new cars not having hand-cranks. What did I use instead of floppies? Email.

As others have already noted, movies *do* have free demos; they're known as "trailers." However, I never buy games unless I've played the demo first, and only if the demo runs well on my HW and it leaves me wanting more. No demo for me, no buy game from you. Sturgeon's Law applies to game just like anything else, and I'm not going to *pay* to find out whether a specific game is for me or not. The gaming bigwigs want to charge for demos? Fine. I'm sure the smaller developers will stay with the free demos, and I'll play their games instead. That's where the original stuff is anyway (yes, Sturgeon's Law still applies).

Don't worry about natural selection; it's still killing us. While it's true that we're no longer being eaten by giant bears and saber-tooth tigers, we have a bunch of new things that can kill us, like traffic, drug addiction, and modern warfare. Also, the old killers like disease and famine never went away. Modern society probably puts different selective pressures on us, but we still have to adapt to our surroundings.

They have needs too, you know...

... the teabagger movement? I'm not sure whether they count as "terrorists" (whatever that means these days), but afaik they are talking about the US needing a new revolution. "Take our country back" etc. Sounds like subversion to me.

... a fundamental part of science? It might not be apparent when science classes are nothing but a series of dusty chalkboards though. IMO kids should be taught to tell the difference between science and not-science.