9 out of ten. Boy, that question number nine was a toughy!

Croce,
I hope that your prediction of 'we will not survive' is never realized. As Christopher Hitchins broadly pointed out: a religion that puts its emphasis on the afterlife [whatever the hell THAT is] is not particularly concerned with this life. Poverty, lack of education, lack of freedom of thought, and no opportunity to explore the grand abundance of life's variation, work together to prevent humans from achieving a true world of peace and equality. That possibly sounds naive, but what many people have right now is way too much of the above. On the other hand, the corrupt leaders of the many countries who like power and know that poverty and illiteracy really work to stay in power, why would they want to change??

To dennis2416 and others: I used Wal-Mart specifically due to their huge market share and the fact that they could establish food trends by their sheer size which might lean towards promoting a healthier food alternative.
Yes, you are right: the individual is ultimately responsible for his or her actions and choices. If that was the whole story, what a wonderfully simple world it would be! Back in the 30s, 40s and 50s nearly every popular magazine had page after page of cigarette ads with 'doctors' and movie stars proclaiming the virtues of their favorite smoke. The eventual prohibition of those ads along with health info on the packs put some balance into the mix. Yep..people are responsible for their own actions and they are also susceptible to propaganda, repeated and incessant jingos, advertisements and general hoopla. Perhaps you are not, but a helluva lot of people are.

The Wal-Mart Super store in my neck of the woods offers a huge selection of meat products, and also frozen fish from other parts of the world. The need to disclose the country of origin has been lobbied out , so it is your guess as to where it came from. Much foreign fish products are not recommended for eating because of questionable breeding methods. Your health is possible at risk in this.
The section of fresh fish offered at this Wal-Mart is limited to two or three packages of fish. That's it. On the other hand, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of packaged goodies ranging from cookies to stuff packed full of one or another form of SUGAR that you and never even heard of twenty years ago. Men and mostly women abound, waddling or using the store's electric carts to reach these shelves of fat producing crap products. You have seen what I'm talking about. To sum up: the largest store in the country offers very little in healthy food products , yet has an overwhelming array of sugar packed junk food. Why? That's where the money is!

I understand the attraction of religion for some people. It can be a social focus point and it can give a moments respite to the weary in a world of harsh realities. Beyond that, it has fueled hatred , self-loathing, self-righteous killing, poverty and an ordained class of leaders who live in the lap of luxury and see celibacy as natural. Then add to this the hocus-pocus of drinking the blood and eating the flesh of some guy who may or may not have ever existed. Superstition, bolstered by fantasized explanations, guilt and my favorite: original sin, just so you know that you are behind the eight ball at birth have provided the world with cruelty, torture, burning alive and all sorts of clever methods to extract confessions from those caught up in the ugly grip of the self-loathing elite. ISIS is just the latest in this long, twisted tale of embracing the make-believe. Please tell me how we are to survive as sentient human beings if we continue to embrace the mental bondage of religion.

170 trillion dollars spent per year on illegal drugs!!!!!!!! If the drug cartels were to organize, their combined assets could take over the world in other ways as well. Scary thought.

From the comfort and I might add remoteness of today's car with all too many internal distractions, the car driver is burdened with what to text, what to listen to, where to go and how...gee! and they're supposed to pay attention to the road and cars and those pesky motorcycles?? We who ride, and I have been riding for fifty-five years and have over two hundred thousands miles under my belt [which really isn't a lot, considering the time] are trained to think of themselves as being 'invisible'. This tactic does help, but the inattentive driver can always fool you. Add to this the current statistic that motorcycle riding is 27 times more dangerous that driving a 'cage' [ a car to you who don't know the lingo]. So why ride? It is the next best thing to flying.

I was in heavy traffic last week, bumper to bumper, stop and go. The SUV behind me screeched to a halt when I once more stopped. I guess I'm lucky that the driver finally paid attention. On the other hand, what was the idiot thinking? Or not thinking? By the way, I was on my 1977 BMW R100/7 on the way to a Maine camping weekend.

Stout designed the Tri-motor. He also went on to design and build a radical car that preempted today's SUV by fifty years. The car was called the Scarab and one can be seen at Owl's Head Auto museum in Maine.

I have never understood the allure of a cruise ship. Why would one want to 'get away from it all' with six thousand other vacationers?

My old computer using Windows 7 had the hard drive die a short time ago. I found that it was cheaper to buy a new PC with Windows 10 than fix the old one. Since then, my trusty printer acted up suspiciously and I was told that my best action would be to replace it That ran into some big money. Then Word 2010 started acting up and hours on the phone with a trusted tech was in vain. So I had to buy Windows 2016.
Here is my candid suggestion to that arrogant, imperial toad Billy Bob Gates: go f*ck yourself.

If you find the cigarette industry to be invasive, look up what Pepsi and Coca Cola are doing in third world countries. Sugary soft drinks for kids with no dental hygiene tradition. Rotting teeth in three and four year olds. Kinda makes you proud, don't it?

It is fun to watch the conversation devolve to slander by those who find their misconceived 'facts' challenged. Factcheck.org will shed a lot of needed light on this discussion. But there is always the risk of finding out that your cherished ideas are opinions unsupported by fact. Scary thought!

Once they have escaped, they congregate and well you know the phrase :' the plane couldn't take off because it was socked in'

When I read the replies here and note their incredible diversity and polarization, I am uncomfortably reminded that in extreme cases, some will k**l to preserve their ignorance. Go to factcheck.org and look at the facts. Facts, as most of you know are those bits of information that happen to have past the test of veracity and are generally accepted as being TRUE.