It wasn't always like that here in the US. When I was young, I walked to school by myself, rode my bike for miles around the surrounding town and area, and had a lot of time to myself as I was raised by a single mother. The current trend of "helicopter parenting" didn't really exist back in the 70s and 80s as far as I can remember, and people certainly didn't get into legal trouble when their kids ran around outside unsupervised like they do now. The things you complain about seem to me to be recent changes, within the last 20 years. I had piano practice and soccer practice, and had to get driven to them because they were much too far to walk to and our public transit sucked back then just like it does now, but not "play dates" and zero unsupervised time. It was basically like you describe for current-day Norway.
I have no idea where we went off the rails in this country with regard to child-raising.
I completely disagree. The east coast states are a complete mess, because the state borders don't reflect population groups or metro areas at all. NYC's metro area spans 4 states, Philly's spans 3, and DC's spans 3, and Boston's spans 3 or 4 depending on if you count Providence. All the borders are completely historical, and should just be redrawn entirely, so that these metro areas have their own states, and local cultures are kept together. Upstate New Yorkers have long wanted to be freed from NYC, and western PA has nothing in common with Philly. The Delmarva peninsula is insane, split between 3 different states for no good reason, with the southern 2 states' holdings being almost completely rural except for Ocean City; that whole peninsula should just be given to Delaware.
All 50 of the states should really have their borders redrawn, except for Alaska and Hawaii.
No, if we redraw all the state borders, it should actually benefit the ruralites on average. The problem is, right now, the ruralites are lumped in with urbanites they don't agree with, and redrawing the borders would fix this. I'll give some examples:
1) New York. "Upstaters" are always complaining about NYC's influence on their politics and laws. With sensibly redrawn borders, NYC would be in its own state, combined with northern NJ, much of CT, etc. People in the rest of the state north of White Plains or so would now be in their own state. So they'd be able to make their own laws without any influence from people in NYC and its suburbs.
2) Chicago. People in southern Illinois have long complained about Chicago's influence on their laws. A redrawing of borders would probably group Chicago together with Gary IN, maybe Milwaukee, and southern IL would be a separate state (maybe combined with Cincinnati or other cities near there).
3) DC. What do the ruralites in far-west Maryland have in common with people in Baltimore or DC? Redrawing state borders would probably group that region in with WV or southwest PA, which they'd probably prefer. Also, people in southern and southwest Virginia complain about the people in NoVA. A redrawing of boundaries would surely group NoVA in with DC (and probably Baltimore), separating it from the rural parts of VA. So instead, the main urbanites the rural Virginians would have controlling their politics would be in Richmond, Roanoke, maybe Bristol, Charlottesville, and maybe the Hampton-Roads area (if that doesn't get combined with eastern NC instead). These are all cities that are much more reflective of rural Virginians' values than the DC area, and they'd probably be happier with the governance they'd get without NoVA voters.
You're exactly right, and that's why I've been advocating redrawing the state boundaries for years now. There was a project decades ago called "The 38 States" (google it) where a college class came up with a new map of the US with more optimized state borders, with the goal of having more equal populations in each state, not having metro areas cross state borders, and grouping like regional cultures together, and also reducing the total number of states to reduce overhead.
I think a big project to redraw all the borders would be painful, but would create big gains before too long. I don't know that they need to be redrawn every couple of decades though; perhaps a few little tweaks here and there would be called for though. But the borders we have a completely at odds with where they should be for administrative efficiency.
Why couldn't CRISPR or some more-advanced technique not yet discovered be used to insert the relevant genes into your cells? (Obviously, IANAG (geneticist))
Bottled water tastes better than tap water; that's why people buy it. Tap water tastes terrible in most localities. A cheaper alternative is RO water which you can buy from dispensers and fill 3 or 5-gallon bottles with cheaply.
Formula One doesn't require consumers to spend anything directly; all the money appears to be in the advertising. Also, F1 is only the epitome of racing in Europe. In the US, most people don't even know what it is, and NASCAR is the epitome of racing. And there too, most of the money comes from advertising.
I think you need a better example of something that's so entirely unnecessary and horrifically overpriced yet so many consumers have been brainwashed into purchasing. I honestly can't think of anything, not even Apple products (ducks). I mean, there's plenty of examples of stupid, overpriced, trendy products (like Beats headphones, Nike Air shoes, various other fashion trends), but none of them come close to comparing in terms of longevity and market penetration. Most fashion trends only affect younger people anyway (esp. teenagers), and only last for a few years at most, and they aren't so massively overpriced or involve an international cartel and horrible environmental and human rights practices. The scope and scale of the diamond scam is simply unprecedented I think.
Or, you could simply stop chasing after shallow, selfish women who demand these things. Trust me, you'll be a lot happier if you avoid them and look instead for a woman you can respect (because personally, I can't respect a woman who has this mentality). Marrying someone you don't respect is not a recipe for long-term happiness.
If you just want cheap service, you can already get that with a full-fledged smartphone with data. I pay less than $20/month with Ting, and I'm sure you can get similar deals with other MVNOs. You can't constantly stream YouTube videos all month long for that price though; you get that kind of bill by not using your phone that much, and doing a lot of your talking over WiFi using VoIP apps.
And you can get "burner" flip-phones for next to nothing anyway which will do exactly what you want here. If people really wanted stripped-down phones that much, those flip-phones would be extremely popular, but they're just not. There's no "revolution" to be had here.
A way of using nuclear power to directly generate electricity, without going through a thermal cycle first. Similar to how photovoltaics work: instead of capturing heat from sunlight and going through a Carnot cycle engine to generate electricity, PV directly converts photons to electricity. Something like this with nuclear power would be revolutionary I think.
That last part isn't regeneration, it's scarring. If it were regeneration, the skin would grow back just like new. The reason we scar instead of regenerating is to reduce the chance of infection; regenerating, as many simpler animals do when injured, takes longer and leaves the wound open to infection. We opted for scarring to avoid this. As for evidence of a cut afterwards, if you look at the skin under a microscope, layer by layer, you'll probably see the evidence, though it probably depends on the severity of the injury. Anything that goes through all the layers of skin leaves a scar, to my knowledge.
As for growing new skin to replace old, the new skin we grow isn't a perfect replacement. If it were, older people wouldn't have wrinkles. We have a limited healing capacity, but it's not regeneration. Regeneration would have us growing tissues that are identical to those we had when we were young, with no evidence of scarring at all.
The Virginia side of DC was held back by stupid laws preventing any kind of development while it was part of DC; this led to it being ceded back to VA.
The main problem with DC is that it is not a city-state at all; it's a federal district that isn't part of any state, and is administered by Congress (that branch of government that can't seem to get anything done). The people there have no representation in Congress, an inherently undemocratic situation, and are only allowed to elect their Mayor, which still has very limited power due to Congressional administration.
The answer here is simple: it needs to be turned into a city-state. And not just the puny amount of land that is present-day DC; the entire northern Virginia area, Baltimore, and the area between DC and Baltimore needs to be part of the same state. Metro areas should not cross state borders; it's an administrative nightmare. This whole metro area should just be made into a single state. Maryland therefore should be eliminated: the eastern shore part should be given to Delaware, and the westernmost part should be given to WV. The eastern part up to the Chesapeake Bay (including Annapolis) is probably better off staying part of the new DC-state for simplicity, even though it's pretty rural in places, as there's no easy access from the Eastern Shore side, and there's a lot of military stuff in that area too which fits with the capital district. Finally, the whole thing needs a new name: "District of Columbia" doesn't fit a whole state, and "Columbia" is a horrible name anyway since it comes from Christopher Columbus, a brutal murderer who never even set foot on North America. I propose "Chesapeake" or "Potomac".
That's really not necessary. "Immortal" people aren't going to live forever; something is eventually going to kill them, like a speeding bus, or a skydiving accident, etc.
Also, it's been proven over and over that when people have more education and resources, they breed a lot less, which is why all the developed nations are looking at zero or negative population growth if you ignore immigration. Make people biologically immortal and they'll end up not having many kids at all, on average.
I think you're worried about something that isn't going to be a problem.
Perhaps it could be turned on and off as needed: lose a finger in an accident, and take a drug to turn regeneration on. Grow your finger back in a week, and then take another drug (or stop taking the first drug) to go back to normal.
Bullshit. Notepad is a pathetic excuse for a text editor. It can't even handle different line endings. Wordpad isn't much better.
And yes, someone who tries to leech off of society providing something that can be easily obtained for free (such as air) is just that: a leech. Obviously, you DO want to ban such things, or else you wouldn't advocate leeching. You're a pathetic excuse for a person, advocating for people to be forced to purchase breathable air.
I wonder if part of the deal was house-arrest for the surgeon. Lots of (usually lesser) crimes these days are being punished with house arrest to save money because prisons are so expensive (and also do absolutely nothing to rehabilitate people, in fact quite the opposite). Forcing the surgeon to have house arrest (which includes being able to go to work, but not much else), and still go to work to pay for a big-ass settlement, is still punishment.
That's the same thing. There is no OS I'm aware of that has separate versions for "laptops" and "desktops"; a laptop IS a "desktop" these days, as opposed to a "mobile device" running a mobile OS (Android/iOS).
>That's not a negative, especially for anyone who makes their living selling software.
So you think free things should be banned so that leaches who want to make money selling things can do so? How idiotic.
If I'd like to make a living selling air for breathing, is it wrong for people to breathe the air that's freely available? I guess so, in your world.
>And there's nothing special about Linux that saves it from that; if it became popular, commercial software would be written for it as well, and you'd have the same problem.
Here you completely miss the point. I'm not talking about special niche software, just basic stuff. I can't even edit a fucking text file in Windows without installing some special third-party software, because Windows doesn't come with a usable text editor. Luckily there's free stuff available on the web for some things like that, but it's a big PITA to go find some website, find a download link, and install the program. On Linux, this kind of basic software is part of a standard install, and at the very worst, all I have to do is something like "sudo apt-get install vim".