U.S. Workers Trail Rest Of Developed Countries In Vacation Time: Report

Benefits like paid vacation, health insurance and other benefits are derived from business needs for an effective workforce, obtained by providing a competitive pay and benefits package. Therer has always been a "tradeoff betweem government and nonprofits and their benefits programs being part of their package, and private employers, who measure such things by their ability to make enterprise more effective, competitive, and profitable. Given the fact that charitable, religious and other nonprofit "industries" now equal 16%+ of GNP (over 20% with imputed wages paid to volunteer staff), and with the constant upwards pressure on entitlement programs from progressive solicalist governments, we are continuing the slide towards a much more solialistic form of society. Not good. Social benefits, like morality, may indeed be "legislated" but the practice only hurts our ability to provide overall. Robbing Peter to pay Paul may be a time-worn tradition, but it somehow keeps resurfacing.
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'Jesus Discovery': Jerusalem Archaeology Reveals Birth Of Christianity

Since I am not a religious person, itmes like this mean little to me, EXCEPT as a person interested in history, including the history of religions. This discovery and others, like the Dead scrolls, offer insight into the development and evolution of religious history. Religion with all it's cultures, myths, traditions and exhortations, has killed more people than all the wars since the beginning of recorded history. Not much to place your "faith" in, is it?
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People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests

Agree with both your premises.

It is the constant increase in those whose existence depends on entitlement programs, and whole social systems designed to get people into them, from unwarranted disability program certification, to CHIP, to SNAP, and literally nhundreds of ther programs. Solutions in a well-ordered society for those who fall on inadvertent circumstance. But, not for those who are inculcated by pastors, priests, political and community leaders and aberrant cultural brainwashing to accept that reliance on others and taking resources from "the man" without any or little effort to contribute or become self-sufficient, are OK. As long as we provide sub rosa approval through subterfuge and fail to incent better/changed behavior, we will continue to face ever-growing demands on decreasing resources. A one generation maintenance of status quo, including a "hold" on new births to poor and/or unmarried poor, would provide more resources to effect change and improve standards for those who require assistance, and lead to rapid realization of a better future.
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People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests

The pressures of advancing species survival knowledge accumulation through "experimentation' on evolution are the primary force in advancing intellect/I.Q. By making it easier for weaker individuals to survive, government provides the path for intellectual dumbing down, since species competition for food, shelter and propagation are minimized by the government supplying needs that would have to be "earned" otherwise. At the same time, the total population of those with higher-level I.Q.'s is growing. In a knowledge-based society, the CQ (Curiosity Quotient) drives the I.Q., and survival instincts are transmuted into a form of knowledge acquisition, with those most successful in this arena making the most progress in succeeding.

Education, with all it's travails, may be, must be, the answer, but will not achieve success for most without recognition that "class distinction" will always be a part of the societal ecology, and refusing to plan for differences in ability, and workplace needs, while depending on government to constantly add increasing resources to support and even encourage population "production" is the wrong answer.
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Asteroid Killed Off Dinosaurs? New Study Suggests Comet Instead Caused Extinction Event

I am. I wrote "We Need Zero Sum Pollution Now" a few years ago, exactly for this reason. And Pollution, of air, water and FOOD does indeed threaten. But, man's "expansion," while certainly threatening to some species (That darn old snail darter, or the desert insect so highly valued) are just flash points for environmentalists, not real substance in the discussion. The problem is, who makes the judgement call? Once someone, anyone, can say with real or imagined certainty "that species has no value, or whatever hasppens, happens, since nature does the same thing hundreds, even thouands of times a week," does that make man a more threatening possiblity than Nature? Riddle me that!

However, rather than treating each and every extinction possibility as a catastrophic event, I would hope that reasonable people could reach common ground; ground rules would help! Maybe each and every event is the "slippery slope" environmentalists fear...maybe not.
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Asteroid Killed Off Dinosaurs? New Study Suggests Comet Instead Caused Extinction Event

In Maryland and elsewhere, environmentalists fight tooth and nail to prevent wind farms and high power electric grid towers, claiming they kill millions of birds (no mention of higher numbers of insects as well).

Yet people from the same groups want wind power as "greener" than fossil fuels. AND, competing groups within the environmental community have similar conflicts when discussing preserving the snail darter while fighting a hydro project, a very clean power project. The point is that I can agree on controling pollution (See "We need Zero Sum Pollution Now") through transparent regulation and licensing, while disagreeing with environmental radicals who oppose any development or improvement in the name of preserving environmental purity and opportunity, when Nature laughs at their hubris by destroying hundreds of species every week.
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Asteroid Killed Off Dinosaurs? New Study Suggests Comet Instead Caused Extinction Event

I think it's worthwhile to consider that many millions of species have gon extinct as Naturte continues the process of experimentation through evolution. It is in this contect that one also condisers that probably 100 or more species of insect, and mammal, less of fishes, go extint each and every day. A new species starts with the evolved offspring of a pairing of some species and adoption thereby of mutated genes, reflected in the design of the offspring. If few or none of the offspring survive to propagate and multiply...extinction. This could happen many, many times each day and year, and we would never know. I think environmentalists sometimes confuse the necessary mission of protecting the environment with interfering with the evolutionary process.
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