Bonam

I don't agree. In my experience, most individual people are fairly rational, but get them together in groups and you get nothing but stupidity.

Nope, no one here thinks that. So then the thread is based on a false premise.

And yet many western individuals as well as some western governments do pay ransoms. The whole debate of what it really means to "fund a terrorist organization" or to have the right to do that is a bigger one. What of all our trade with and aid to Saudi Arabia, which is one of the main actors responsible for spreading the most fundamentalist versions of Islam which are at the root of a lot of terrorism? I agree with the idea of "unleashing hell" on terrorists that kidnap Westerners, but the reality is that Western governments are already doing (or not doing) all that it is politically viable for them to do, and one extra kidnapping will not significantly alter this political reality.

I think the official stance of governments to not negotiate with terrorists is correct. On the other hand, if private individuals want to try to raise funds to ransom their loved ones, that is their own right.

The majority of "cites" that people post on these forums are links to some biased opinion article. Those are hardly "fact". The majority of the time when someone asks for a cite on this forum, it's not because they are genuinely curious to see supporting evidence, but because they don't like what the other person is saying and are hoping to stop or derail the discussion by asking the other person to do more work than they are willing to put into some random thread on an irrelevant forum. And on the occasions when someone does post a cite which contains any kind of factual information, it is almost always immediately dismissed by the person who asked for it anyway. Frankly, I'd rather read the opinions that people write up specifically as part of a thread here than opinions of other people that they link to.

What is this distinction between owners and workers? I work. I spend some of the money I make and save the rest. I invest some of that saved money into shares of companies, of which I am now a part-owner. So I am both a worker and an owner, as is most of the rest of the population. People that work minimum wage jobs and live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to become owners as well as workers are gonna be living on the financial precipice whether the national worker's share of income is 65% or 75%, so "swinging things back in the other direction" isn't gonna fix their situation. The only thing that could improve their situation is a growing economy which causes labor demand to outstrip labor supply, even for low-skilled labor. That's what economic and fiscal policies should be aimed at... optimizing economic growth. The question should be how to do that not how best to redistribute the products of a stagnant economy. And the best answers there are investing in infrastructure, education, scientific research, and innovation... fields of investment that are drastically underfunded by governments of every stripe as they instead pander to whatever ideology they happen to subscribe to. The left wants to redistribute, the right wants to cut taxes unsustainably, and those of us who just want to see pragmatic policy that results in the best economic conditions are left scratching our heads.

This from the person that always dismisses anyone that presents a hypothetical scenario or an analogy? Nice. But no, the judges can simply rule that the person in your made up scenario is not guilty, since there is no criminal intent. Next try?

No, that would only be a bonus in their eyes, cause "whitey has it coming".

Never. The whole point is to assign everyone into neat little categories so you can play divisive identity politics with them.

Just what we need, religious fundamentalist strong AI. I'm sure there's a science fiction book about that out there somewhere.

This is all well and good except that it fails to consider demographic changes as a result of immigration and practices such as sex-selective abortions. If you bring in enough people which perform sex-selective abortions, you will end up with a population which consists of too many males and too few females. This kind of population imbalance results in significant social problems as men realize that their prospects for ever finding a mate are slim, often resulting in human trafficking, criminality, etc. But you're right, restricting laws regarding abortion is not the answer. Instead, we should be looking at why we are bringing over people who carry out these kinds of "cultural practices" to begin with. Can we really not find anyone better to bring in?

Why? Urinating and defecating are natural biological functions that every human, male or female or whatever else, must perform countless times throughout their lives. The vast majority of people of either gender aren't interested in watching others perform these functions, and even if they are, what exactly is going to happen to you if a woman or transgender person saw you peeing? Men see other men peeing all the time since urinals in public washrooms are typically within easy visibility of each other. Why is it different if a woman sees you peeing?

The US has 4 national cell service providers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint). Their relationship looks a lot more like competition than collusion. Sprint competes on low prices, Verizon competes on having the most coverage, T-Mobile competes on all the extras that you get, etc. They're constantly trying to steal customers from each other however they can. I don't think this competition would turn necessarily to collusion if you had 3 instead of 4. And large Canadian markets can and do definitely support 3 providers. As for the idea of government owned cell towers... hah! We'd still be on 2G. The government's role is to properly regulate the industry and to prevent monopolies and collusion, not to take it over.

All of those things can be removed through democratic means, it just takes a little more work. The constitution/charter can be modified, they are not unalterable. Additionally, the charter can be re-interpreted to mean whatever the heck the supreme court wants it to mean, and this interpretation tends to shift over time to reflect changing social norms. If an overwhelming majority of Canadians come to believe that freedom of speech should no longer be protected, the charter or the interpretation thereof will over time come to reflect that.

So where's the "stakeholder consultation" on immigration? Or how about a survey on whether the government should run a budget deficit? Or any other topic of public importance? The reality is, "stakeholder consultations" would be a great idea if they happened on all topics. That would be democratic. Of course, they aren't happening on all topics. It's just happening on this one, and it is likely being used as a political tool.

It's really not hard to do the math. Gas: Typical car is 30 MPG, which is like 8 miles per liter. A liter costs what, $1.00 in Canada right now? So 8 miles per dollar, or 12.5 cents / mile, or 7.8 cents per km. Electric: A Tesla gets 320 miles on 85 kWh battery. That's 4 miles per kWh. A kWh in ontario costs what, $0.13 or so? So 4 miles costs $0.13. Or 3.25 cents / mile, or 2 cents per km. So 4x cheaper in Ontario to run the electric car.

Lost them? What freedoms has Russia ever had? The Russian people went from being serfs, to being subjects of a tyrannical communist regime, to now being subjects of a semi-tyrannical non-communist regime. At least they have somewhat more economic opportunity now than they used to.

You can charge it quickly at a supercharger, or you can charge it at home. Self-charging? That'd be a nice trick. No, they need to be charged. At superchargers, it's free. At home, it's whatever your electricity cost is. Last estimates I saw suggest that given average electricity and gas costs in the US, the electricity cost per distance driven is about 1/4-1/2 the cost of gasoline. Really? You need to ask if Teslas go fast? Lol. And yes... I wouldn't want to be on an express way when my car runs out of fuel, either.

People pre-order all kinds of products months and even years out all the time. Many people may have perfectly functional vehicles now but anticipate themselves upgrading in a few years. Tesla history so far has shown that they are often late with delivering what they promise, but that the things they deliver, when they finally deliver them, very much live up to or exceed the expectations. Why may people want a Tesla in particular? They have a lot of cool features other cars don't have, and they are also a status symbol in certain circles.

Anything that crosses the line into hate speech or harassment should be prosecuted as such, regardless of where on campus it happens. In classes and other official settings, any discussions should pertain to the topic at hand and should be kept under control by the professor/TA in charge. Outside of official settings, any speech that does not fit the definitions of hate speech and harassment should be allowed to the same extent that it would be allowed anywhere else that's not a university campus.

You have to remember that straight white males are the source and cause of all evil and misfortune that has ever been or ever will be in the world, and then it makes sense.

Read a bit further in the article. The real reason for this is that she was speaking against the BDS movement. All of the standard SJW complaints about "safe spaces" and whatnot are tools to suppress speech they disagree with. She said something they didn't like, so they try to shut her down any way possible.

Nope.

If you disagree with the rules you should probably take that up with the site owners regarding their policies rather than accusing a particular member of getting someone else banned. How is it someone else's fault if a member breaks the rules and is banned for it?

If you look at the production capacity they are talking about for batteries it is far far higher than what anyone else is doing. From what I read it's supposed to be about equal to all current worldwide Li ion battery production in the world, all combined in one place. This suggests additional benefits from economies of scale. Also, one could easily have made the same argument about how could an upstart like Spacex make launch vehicles any cheaper than a big established player like the ULA. And yet they did. The cost savings and enhanced ability to innovate quickly in a relatively small, focused, agile company compared to a gigantic bureaucracy with decades of legacy costs is not insignificant.