Massachusetts is not one of those States. There was a case a few years back of several 16 and 17 year old boys having group sex with a 15 year old girl. They all faced statutory rape charges. The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16, which is lower than many states.

Ugh. This view is, alas, very common, but grossly inaccurate. While it's true that philosophy is not usually axiomatic, neither is statistics, nor most of science. That doesn't mean it's not useful and you can't do interesting things with it.

Most of what we now know about the world came out of philosophy. As the ideas got more worked out they branched out and became their own disciplines. Mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, logic, even computer science, started out as things that philosophers studied. This is not surprising, since philosophy is, at it's core, just thinking rationally about things we don't understand in the world.

That isn't too say that all philosophy is worthwhile, a lot of it is useless mumbo jumbo. That is the difference of course between bad philosophy and good philosophy. If your ideas are not clear, or your conclusions do not follow from your premises that's as equally damning in philosophical work as in any scientific discipline.

It's not just unfair practices that gives local competitors an advantage, it's quite often simply understanding China better. When multi-national chains go into China, they always start in Beijing or Shanghai, try to establish a following there, then slowly branch out into the provinces. When a Chinese chain gets going, they always start in the provinces and only after they're successful there do they move into the wealthy cities. Guess which strategy does better.

This is a key thing for email clients to detect. Something claiming to be from a bank with links to a website should be highlighted with some big flashing warning, "ALERT! THIS IS LIKELY A SCAM!" Not all users, even some relatively bright people, will be able to figure this out on their own and software should be designed to accommodate those people as well.

compared to pretty much any state legislature site. I can find what I want quickly and easily, once I know the name of the bill, (which I can get from Google, etc.) The Massachusetts legislature's site makes me want put my head in blender.