Which amounts to the same thing. The market is more crowded with taxi drivers, the competition being fierce, eventually, some taxi drivers will be force out of work if they cannot keep up.
I totally understand the strategy and absolutely don't rule out the fact that it may have saved more life than it brutally took. But it doesn't change the fact that one nation can make the decision to murder thousand of civilians in hope that it'll save (allies mostly) lives.
We're talking about a country which dropped two nuclear warheads on civilian areas. It's a shame and a delusion to even think that the US even once were a symbol of "moral leadership" with "consideration for human life".
Edit: I know this sounds like a cliché and a simplistic point of view, but I think it's quite interesting to look at the US history with this in mind.
What I don't understand is why the OP is even trying to teach stuff in which his sister is obviously not interested. He is seeking a solution to the wrong problem. "How do you get someone interested in math so he can develop the will to learn it ?" is the problem he should solve before trying to teach her anything. If he fails getting her attention on mathematics, then he's lost the game and she'll have to wait until she gets interested, or just do something else (which is fine, by the way).
What I think is most depressing on another note, is that even though she clearly isn't learning maths, she'll probably stay in the average of her class, and with this attitude eventually even get a university degree in domains where comprehension of maths is the cornerstone.
I'm a software engineering student at what you'd call a "valued" university. It is unarguably essential to understand basic university maths, and yet so many of my friends would just give their faith into "applying formulas" with little to no idea on what's going on in fairly easy topics like introductory linear algebra, and they'll even sometime get As because the teacher gave up when he asked for a little reasoning on the midterm (failing half the class) and gives a silly final.
I think the issue is more that we force people into doing what they don't want to do.
Her sister doesn't have to understand maths at her age, she can wait until she feels the need to (and she will for these simple maths problems, but later).
It's my personal belief that humans need to sleep as long as their body wants too. I'm the "No alarm clock" type of guy, and when I'm very tired from a long week of short sleeps and exhaustive work, I sleep a lot more the first night of the Weekend, and the day after compensate and sleep less, with no planning whatsoever of my sleeping time.
So I usually sleep 8 hours before waking up, and I feel great, I don't know why.
What I do know, is that if I set up an alarm to wake me up before that time, say 90 minutes earlier, I would feel bad for a good part of the morning.
I'm quite sure a lot of people (the average people) are experiencing the same natural time span of sleep. Hence the "myth" that 8 hours are good for you.
On a side note, my father sleeps a lot less than I do, and most people do, and I can honestly say that he's more tired than the average person in his surroundings. Now that might be linked to stress, but I'm quite convinced that a lack of sleep induces stress, so...
Did your dying friend really had to see an iPad? I mean, in her last moments, who cares about a bigger iPhone? I'm not trolling, I'm myself a tech enthusiast, and I'm not quite sure I'd expect from a friend to come tell me goodbye and show me his "latest toy he's been working on lately".
I think the point of the OP is not that glue is not an essential part of a product. It is that when you start making things exclusively out of glue, then the all "glue and thought" ultimately worthless.
You forget one thing: The eagles aren't freaking vehicules, they are living beings with proud minds etc... The kind of "beyond elves" who are just as cool as they're willing to carry you out of trouble, and not into trouble, much like a friend who'd carry you home on his back after you've demonstrate your abilities to decorate a friends house with your own puke. I doubt they would just accept going into a suicidal mission for the sake of it.