Charles, we are no longer an agrarian economy. Damn few have to get up to milk the cows. The internet runs 24/7 and the economy runs with the internet. The roads can no longer accommodate a rush hour such as you conceive necessary. The rest of your arguments are valid. Math and science scores are slipping. Facebook is not a training ground for commercial computer expertise. Remote interactions do not train people for face to face interpersonal skills.

Every tribal society had herbalist who were expert in abortions. A few practiced ritual murder of children, such as recorded in the Old Testament. Cruelty and evil are very old.

Fine arguments. You are testing compassion as a legitimate motive for murder. How about self defense? If Anna managed to kill her assailant as he was strangling her, would that be murder? Did she have to die first to prove that her life was really threatened, or was her belief in the threat sufficient? If her sister in New York was similarly strangled but lived to tell about it, did that mean that Anna should have desisted in killing her assailant? Sophistry does not make good argument for or against abortion. The arguments for and against abortion are a matter of conscience. Why else does those arguments correlate so closely with religious preference?

It happened to me in San Diego. A business I built up over years was wiped out by an EPA order for remediation of a buried fuel tank that was on the property for 60 years before I got it. We volunteered to perform effective and prompt remediation. The several agencies involved, including the commanding officer of the US Coast Guard, refused our offer and insisted the remediation be done by a contractor hired by the Superfund. The contracted remediation was spectacularly unsuccessful.. Our business was terminated and the grounds are now being held for hotel.

Hacktivists by definition detest and oppose authority of any kind. The only kind they have experienced, I bet, is capitalist authority.. Let them experience the overwhelming, omnipresent Communist authority in China, North Korea or the Islamic totalitarianism of Iran or Syria and they will have a new story to tell.

"Where would it stop?" That's the party line, but it doesn't actually prove out. Spain, Denmark, Portugal decriminalized marijuana and other drugs. Drug crimes fell off a cliff. Drug use did not budge. It looks like you are addicted to political dogma. There is no cure and it ought to be illegal.

The force revealing secrets - Anonymous- and the force that needs its secrets kept - Los Zetas - are natural enemies. A fair and reasonable ecology requires both to keep the rest of us off the dinner plate. Don't mess with ecology.

The EPA banned tetraethyl lead in gasoline, and now we have either MTBE or ethanol as oxidizers. One is poisonous and the other is bad for your engine and lowers your mileage. California decided to have its own mixture laws and several states copied them. There is no Fed standard, nor should there be. If you don't like what you get, be careful of who you vote for at the state level.

The big question is the existence of free will in this universe. Will power may, or may not, be an illusion. If it does exist, do you think proponents of government power will want you to use it. let alone you train you in it's use? What you refer to as science is actually technology in the marketplace. You might want to read some physics articles on free will and the quantum universe.

Gasoline distributors and retailers raise prices IN ANTICIPATION of increasing prices at the wholesale level. They deliberately are fast on the increase and slow on the drop. Wholesale prices for crude are determined by trades in futures, which exceed the underlying physical commodity in value by 16 times. The paper leads, the physical trades follow. This paper market is highly speculative and (I believe) not efficient because paper contract hardy ever result in delivery of physical product. The volatility is far greater than the actual response time of production and delivery. A smaller component of price is the conversion value of the US dollar to Ruble, Dinar and Euro. A shrinking dollar makes oil look more expensive.