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In the US we love big machines. The Queen Mary, the Spruce Goose, the continuous asphalt pavers, the Liebherr T 282 B giant dump truck (although Liebherr is a Swiss company), the Boeing 747-400 and Lockheed L-1011 wide-body passenger jets, the massive Abrams tank, the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, the 280mm towed howitzer M65 "Atomic Annie", and such are examples.

See how I slipped a Swiss-built monster in there? Well, the US and Japan aren't the only ones. Germany has a 31 million pound excavator. The largest plane is made in Russia by Antonov. South Korea builds some of the biggest cargo ships.

So while, yes, giant robots are a big thing in Japanese art the urge to build huge machines is all over the industrialized world. The US and Germany have never been afraid of large engineering feats. The US has a whole industry of using remotely piloted craft for actual combat.

I don't think Japan needs to focus so much pride on this one little competition as a cultural identity issue. It's not like a US firm is going to enter a contest designing and building a robot with the intent of a face-saving loss or an honorable tie.

Well given the stupid shit that comes out of our elected officials mouths it may very well have been "a senior State Department official". I mean Hillary couldn't seem to figure out how to work a fax machine so spouting some bullshit computer jargon seems well within the expected abilities of a senior State Department official.

Assange was publicly exposed as a jerk long ago. These aren't even the really choice stories.

WikiLeaks rival plans Monday launch after internal split, founders say

Another former WikiLeaks staffer said he had brought up his discontent with Assange, but that the WikiLeaks founder had not wanted to listen.

"Eventually this ended with me arguing with Julian about basically his dictatorial behavior, which ended in Julian saying to me that if I had a problem with him I could just 'piss off,' I quote," Herbert Snorreson said.

Lifting the Lid on WikiLeaks: An Inside Look at Difficult Negotiations with Julian Assange

For some time now, Julian Assange has been sparring with New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller. ...

Keller describes the stormy relationship with WikiLeaks founder Assange, comparing the Australian to a character straight out of a Stieg Larsson thriller, "a man who could figure either as a hero or villain." Keller claims that the journalists who worked with Assange saw him as a "source," a man who "clearly had his own agenda," and was not a "partner or collaborator."

Keller goes on to describe Assange as being "elusive, manipulative and volatile." He also writes that Assange's relationship with the New York Times became "openly hostile," and, in the end, the Australian wanted to exclude the newspaper from publishing any further WikiLeaks documents in the future.

The treachery of Julian Assange
Are Wikileaks Activists Finally Realizing Their Founder Is a Megalomaniac?
The Sexual Demigod: Wikileaks Founder Worshipped By Christian Women

Why would you assume that they're succumbing to US Pressure?

This is fucking France, which spent most of the Cold War technically out of NATO, and didn't come back until it was safe in '09. They actively supported Rwanda's genocidal government because they thought the English-speaking rebels were lying about the genocide, to the point of sending troops to try to protect the fleeing government troops. Their response to PRISM was to condemn it as 'espionage' the very fucking day their biggest paper announced they'd been doing the same damn thing to their citizens for years.

They support Assange and Snowden in public, solely because idiots like you will mistakenly assume this means they actually support Assange and Snowden. In private they will do their best to get those guys fucked over, because if those guys are fucked over they can't do interesting things like tell Le Monde about the DGSE. Which is why, despite their PR as privacy advocates, neither guy has actually asked for Asylum. It's not a surprise they were one of the countries that got Morales' plane stopped, and that of the four involved they were the only one that had clout with the other three (Portugal, Spain and Italy were all in the midst of EU-recovery programs at the time, and guess whose the most important economy in the Euro not named Germany?).

So they have a long history of fucking privacy activists over, and then letting the US take the blame.

She's in good company. Don't believe that the parties are different.

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

http://www.nature.com/news/why...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/18/...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/a...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://www.mysterypollster.com...

http://www.examiner.com/articl...

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/general...

http://www.outsidethebeltway.c...

http://nautil.us/blog/why-were...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

http://articles.economictimes....

First few links from the search engine typing in "why are election polls often wrong"...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-pol...

http://time.com/3558932/pollin...

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/...

http://www.kansas.com/news/loc...

Shut up. Just close your stupid mouth. Sit down. And don't speak again until addressed. You're an idiot. It has been officially noticed.

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

http://www.nature.com/news/why...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/18/...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/a...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://www.mysterypollster.com...

http://www.examiner.com/articl...

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/general...

http://www.outsidethebeltway.c...

http://nautil.us/blog/why-were...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

http://articles.economictimes....

First few links from the search engine typing in "why are election polls often wrong"...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-pol...

http://time.com/3558932/pollin...

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/...

http://www.kansas.com/news/loc...

Shut up. Just close your stupid mouth. Sit down. And don't speak again until addressed. You're an idiot. It has been officially noticed.

Iran has enough centrifuges to make a nuclear bomb but not enough centrifuges to make nuclear fuel. Iran has also been caught making uranium purer than required for energy purposes.

... yada-yada-yada .... Why do they [gangs -mi] form? That's pretty simple. When you're pushed out of the economy [...]

So, you've gotten past denying the higher likelihood of Blacks belonging to a gang, and are now listing excuses for it? Nice.

So, is it still "stereotype", if it is true? Is it "racist" to point out, that African Americans have darker skin?

All blacks are violent criminals in the minds of police.

You keep saying these things, but remain unable to explain, why these very same racist police do not treat Asians just as badly as they (supposedly) do Blacks. Anecdotes about Korean kids studying Math don't count. Koreans are but a fraction of Asians in America — there are vastly more Chinese, for example. There are great many Vietnamese. Then there are Indians and Pakistani, who — being brown and with funny accents — would've made a perfect target for racism.

And maybe they are a target — I do not know. But I do know, they don't burn pharmacies for some reason...

Police have a long history of treating people of different races and national origins differently.

Citations? Single anecdotes don't count — statistics, please... Cite me a study or two.

You'll find that we'll see a dramatic change in black and latino stereotypes

I asked this question up above already, but you — "cowards on race" — have all dodged it. Why is it, that even the most vile stereotypes of Jews — who were certainly mistreated in Europe for centuries — do not contain anything even remotely like smashing police cars or robbing storekeepers?

Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given.

Good lord, what a crock of shit.

They can attend public school.

Rundown, overcrowded, with severely stripped-down course offerings.

They can use the resources of public libraries.

Sure, if they want to take a long bus ride to a nicer part of the city where the libraries have not been closed.

They can better themselves and create futures for themselves, if they are smart enough to do so.

Smart enough, and persistent, and probably very lucky too. Sure, they can do that, but the point is why do we continue to accept that society makes it vastly more difficult? Shouldn't we strive to remove barriers, rather than add them? Shouldn't we provide at least basic, decent opportunities to people who are not "smart enough"???

They even get preferential treatment when it comes to college admission and many jobs.

Ah yes, that old complaint. Boo-fucking-hoo. (I think there's actually an argument to be made that the current system can be counter-productive here, and maybe it's time to start winding it down.)

When a black youth or adult decides to voluntarily get involved with a gang, ends up voluntarily committing crimes and finds himself in prison as a result, it's only his/her fault and his/her fault alone.

Yes, because clearly, at least in your little make-believe world, they had all sorts of great opportunities to get good-paying respectable jobs. Why heck, instead of joining the gangs they should have spent time at the local rec center--oops closed--or after-school programs--oops shut down--or gotten a part-time after-school job--oops no businesses hiring in their neighborhoods, except of course drug dealers.

The same thing happens to whites, Hispanics, Asians and Aboriginal Americans who engage in criminal behavior.

This is simply not true. White kids do not wind up with felony records for riding bicycles through a neighbor's back yard. White people can get away with so much more than black people that it's ridiculous.

It's not an "ongoing program to destroy their lives". It's a sensible system put in place to punish those who go out of their way to engage in overtly harmful behavior, not just once, not just twice, but often multiple times.

There is nothing remotely "sensible" about some of the so-called "crimes" and their punishments.

So put an end to your whiny nonsense about black youth being held back. They have many opportunities to create great futures for themselves. If they refuse to do so, then it is their faults and their faults alone.

That's a huge load of bullshit. (Of course, some of what I'm talking about here also applies to poor whites.)

I say this as somebody who is 3/4th black and 1/4th Hispanic, as well!

Well, good for you. You're a sheltered, entitled, judgmental, unempathetic black person telling all poor black people in this country "I got mine, you could have too, you lazy loser"! Congratulations, asshole!

The first company which can make a 10000$ electric car (and that is road-legal in all countries) will dominate the market.

The GEM car guys will be happy to know that their market domination is imminent :^)

"This wasn't a 5-4 split, it was 6-3."

"In the 5-4 ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority with the four liberal justices. Each of the four conservative justices wrote their own dissent"

I guess CNN is wrong.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/...

Or Fox.

"But in a 5-4 ruling, the court held that the 14th Amendment requires states to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples and to recognize such marriages performed in other states. "

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

"We have these splits because..."

That's never happened before. Please, elucidate. Partisan? I read the dissenting opinions, and the joinings. Have you? Have you thought about what you read?

Let me google it for you: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/... This photo in particular: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnne...

You don't think there's any gay nerds?

The conservative media take on the Supreme Court is that it has become "technocratic."

Meaning it has become aligned with the dominant forces of the 21st Century economy. Hollywood in entertainment, Silicon Valley in tech, Amazon in retailing, and so on.

Conservatives need such an explanation for why the wheels have fallen off their little red wagon.

After a momentous week, same-sex couples can now marry in all 50 states, the Confederate flag's historic hold on the political institutions of the Deep South is fraying by the hour and Obamacare, after defying another attempt to dismantle it, is now reaffirmed as the law of the land.

The week that changed the nation

That should be pretty soon. Millennials already outnumber boomers. http://money.cnn.com/interacti...

It's about damn time.

Time? No, it is long overdue. Now it is time for incest.

There is no argument for making acceptance of gay marriage mandatory, that would not also apply to making sex between and marriage of parent and (adult) child or between siblings legal. "Troll" my foot — do try to come up with one...

This is hardly news — and some legal professionals have said so. And the fight for Full Marriage Equality is already ongoing. All over.

Oh, and before you say "Think of the (malformed) children of such unions!" — sorry, that's not enough. First of all, they don't have to have children with each other — like gay couples, they can adopt. Second, most of the existing laws banning incest make no difference between actual close blood-relatives "in laws" — it is equally illegal for a step-father to marry his adopted daughter (Woody Allen got away with it, because he never formally adopted his wife's child).

And third, the courts have ruled for years (here is a "1948 decision for example!), that any concerns for the health of the offspring are not sufficient grounds for denying the right to marry.

Within a generation the term "motherfucker" will become a disparaging sign of bigoted microaggression — which is, of course, much worse than the actual bona-fide aggression it manifests in our parochial times.

Furthermore, France doesn't share a border with Russia, so a repeat of this kind of incident would be almost certain:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07...

We've seen the Rebel flag suddenly become a horrible symbol of oppression, and hate and vilified all of a sudden and yanked even from online stores and private individual sales on ebay.

The Confederacy flag always was a horrible symbol of oppression. People just got a little reminder of just what it actually stands for. I guess some of them don't like the real face of the Confederacy so much.

Because those stores have decided not to carry it.

It's because they went from selling any flag, to selling any flag except this one, based on its particular symbolism. That is called a "ban". Especially on Amazon, where 3rd parties who may have been willing to sell the merchandise are no longer able to do so.

Your friendly neighborhood gun shop or convenience store or KKK supply house can still carry Confederate battle flag for all your racist flag needs, because they have not been banned.

Look at the mask slip. For pointing out his falsehood, he now calls me a racist with racist needs.

I bet you're lily-white, too.

You might want to look up the word "ban".

Ban: 1. to prohibit, forbid, or bar; interdict.

Or just read the news:

"Walmart, Amazon, eBay and Sears all announced bans on the sale of Confederate flag merchandise, amid an intensifying national debate over the use of the controversial flag."

You best contact Walmart, Amazon, eBay, and Sears to tell them that their bans do not exist.

And while you are at it, move the Egyptian pyramids to a museum and away from prominence. For they too are monuments of a long dead slave-owning country.

But don't worry, if you don't, ISIS will blast them when they get to Egypt.

I don't have examples, I don't work in the loan business. I have mainstream media articles:

http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/0...

https://news.google.com/newspa...

http://articles.philly.com/201...

The reasons stated include increased student debt as one of the issues, and short credit histories. However, these are people who would have got loans before either the big garbage loan bubble or the crash, from my read of the article. In general, they are not BAD credit risks, just not completely pristine.

You remember when they were extremely pissed off about PRISM, one of the NSA's phone-data collection programs? And how within a day it came out they were worse?

This was at least better then that time when their response to the Rwandan genocide was to prevent anything useful; from happening at the UN until everyone was already dead, and then sending in their troops to protect the murderers from rebels in a "safe zone". See the rebels were mostly English-speakers who'd grown up in Uganda, whereas the government were French-speakers who'd gone to the same schools as the French Elite, so clearly the best interests of the French state were served by supporting the government.

I am really not surprised the French State is shocked and saddened by other state's surveillance on it, and thinks the only possible solution is to authorize it's surveillance of everyone else. It's kinda an MO. The only thing I can say in their defense is the American government would probably be just as bad. Altho we'd do it with less style.

Good plan for the Baby Boomers and older Gen-Xers.

The rest of us have slight problem because we're below replacement rate on kids, have been for decades, with the exception of '06 and '07. Mexicans bailed us out in terms of population growth in the past few decades, but that isn't happening anymore, partly because their birth rate is way down.

I'm from the rust belt. My hometown of Detroit's in a region that's had a slowly declining population for decades, and pretty much the only way to make money in housing is a) be a slum-lord, b) buy in a gentrifying neighborhood downtown before everyone notices, or c) buy when an exurb is first developed for $200k and then sell four years later for $500k to somebody with three kids about to enter the excellent elementary school. I'm in Cleveland now, and real estate prices are not going up. My stepmom insists on buying, because she has incredibly strong nesting instincts, and she's broken even on both houses, in one case after putting a quarter million into the house.

For you up in Alaska things will probably stay fine. You've got a small population base, a large potential market of outdoorsey-types, and much improving weather due to global warming. But in the lower 48, tho, the economy has changed. There are fewer people, they prefer newer housing stock; so demand for the house you bought 40 years ago is down. Supply of houses people want that are not like your house is up because the Great Recession tanked construction costs. The debt load on the people you;d be selling to (generally college-educated adults, because most people who buy homes are college-educated adults) is way up so their ability to make mortgage payments is way down, etc.

Maybe not old as in really old, but at least since 2012/2013/2014.

Even artists know about it.

2012
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"Researchers have moved one step closer to facial reconstruction with DNA by discovering the genes that help control the width of the human face. A recent study of almost 10,000 individuals revealed five genes associated with different facial shapes – known as PRDM16, PAX3, TP63, C5orf50, and COL17A1. Manfred Kayser and his team of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of people’s heads to map facial landmarks and estimate facial distances."

2013
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09... "We leave genetic traces of ourselves wherever we go -- in a strand of hair left on the subway or in saliva on the side of a glass at a cafe. So you may want to think twice the next time you spit out your gum or drop a cigarette butt in public. New York artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg might pick it up, extract the DNA and create a 3-D face that could look like you. Her project, "Stranger Visions," fashions portrait sculptures from bits of genetic material collected in public places."

2014
http://www.forbes.com/sites/al...
"Sometime in the future, technicians will go over the scene of the crime. They’ll uncover some DNA evidence and take it to the lab. And when the cops need to get a picture of the suspect, they won’t have to ask eyewitnesses to give descriptions to a sketch artist – they’ll just ask the technicians to get a mugshot from the DNA. That, at least, is the potential of new research being published today in PLOS Genetics. In that paper, a team of scientists describe how they were able to produce crude 3D models of faces extrapolated from a person’s DNA."

http://www.kuleuven.be/english...
"Scientists are getting closer to constructing a likeness of a person's face using nothing but a DNA sample. Postdoctoral researcher Peter Claes and his colleagues describe the technique in a recent publication in PLOS Genetics. Their work opens a horizon of potential future applications in forensics, anthropology and medicine."

Now its 2015.

A story on CNN merely says he is feared dead, apparently because it is not known for certain that he was on the plane. (He owns it.)

The Hollywood Reporter cites Horner's assistant Sylvia Patrycja, as confirmation of his death.

Obviously this doesn't look good, but let's not say we're sure until we actually are sure.

The prosecutors have changed from one that wasn't interested in pursuing investigation (a man)

Wait, Eva Finne, the prosecutor who cancelled the first investigation, is now "a man"? Come on, when you make things up, try just a little bit harder. Quote a newspaper in Swedish or something. Borkborkbork. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WO...

The charges were dropped initially because they were baseless. Then some mysterious magic happened, the current prosecutor took the case and reissued the warrants.

There were no male prosecutors involved in the decision to cancel the first investigation, just unbiased prosecutors.

Now, I wonder what gave the Swedish government the required bias?

One of the reasons I use Gmail is I can forward my ISP mail to the Gmail account and if need be Google allows me to respond to an email using my ISP account (once you validate the account by replying to an email sent to it by Gmail).. So I get a great spam filter, lots of storage, and access from anywhere if I so choose. I don't see them going anywhere, as the are handling email for enterprise customers as well as 500 million users. They may shut down some day, but I expect email itself to evolve long before that happens...

Actually Samoan Airlines have charged by weight

Here's one I found with 2 secs of Googling:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/16/news/companies/zicam_sense_of_smell/index.htm?section=money_latest

See this amazing interview of the "journalist" who admits he has no idea about the veracity of the article. The reporter personifies deer in the headlights. Wonder why the Times hung him out to dry?

You're a troll or a moron. Look at this interview with Tom Harper, the author of that hit piece: http://edition.cnn.com/videos/...

All he says, repeatedly (besides "ummm"), is that he has no idea if the facts are true and he just wrote what people in the government told him to write. He's a stenographer, not a reporter.

Meh. I had a government background check for my current IT job. The investigator and I spent four hours for a two-hour interview discussing every contracting job that I ever had in the last seven years. The security wonks find it strange that a person might actually have more than one employer at a time. We never discussed my Internet activities. I'm sure the Chinese will find my case file interesting.

But anyone who read the Sunday Times article needs to see this: http://edition.cnn.com/videos/...

The parent is the only one here that offered an observation that has emperical evidence - and he got modded funny.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/...

Swift was mentioned on CNN here

It was also mentioned on BBC here...

I've seen mentions of it all over, on a lot of non-tech web-sites. That has been kind of amazing.

Coding is starting to matter more, especially as black hats affect more and more people - so people are starting to care about it more generally, even if they don't really understand details yet.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"Every year around 75 attacks are reported worldwide."

According to http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/02/...

"More than 60,000 people have been killed from 2006 to 2012" related to drug smuggling from Mexico to the US.

So should we have drones looking for sharks? Or drug smugglers (including those who smuggle guns on the return trip)? Is this a fight to come up with the dumbest use for drones outside a Mike Myers movie?

Except for the fact you're lying through your teeth and the entire point IS explicitly to produce the 2:1-4:1 advantage that women are privileged with in STEM fields.

They wont say because if they do they will all have mysterious 'accidents'....just like happened to Putin's enemies in the past.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

He graduated from a KGB school, if anything he probably still works for them. Also, Russia isn't the only country that has these "accidents".

They wont say because if they do they will all have mysterious 'accidents'....just like happened to Putin's enemies in the past. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/... http://www.theglobeandmail.com... http://www.businessinsider.com...

Boeing has an equally unimpressive architecture track record... http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/... So you shouldn't fly much...

Yeah there were some really scummy people trying to get rich off Silk Road.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/30/...

Cars aren't a contagious disease that grows exponentially.
You might think there's a big difference between 20,000 deaths and 200,000 deaths, but with exponential phenomenon you have to take logarithms, it's the difference between 4.3 and 5.3; the models were only off by 20%.

And if you look at it from a really high altitude it is practically the same number.
Or on a scale that only counts complete, round, millions - where 20 thousand and 200 thousand are exactly ZERO.

Just because point and percentage SEEM smaller when you decide to only count orders of magnitude, that does NOT mean that the resulting error isn't HUGE.
Had the same model been used to predict whether a certain building code will produce earthquake-proof buildings, rating them a Richter 7-7.9 instead of 6-6.9 - it would be a pretty fucking CATASTROPHIC error when that 7.0000001 earthquake comes along.

AND on top of that it was NOT a difference between 20k and 200k but a difference between 20,712 and 1,400,000.
Only about 70 times greater number. No biggie. What's an order or two of magnitude when spreading panic, right?
Also, it is CASES - not deaths. Than number is even lower, about half of that - 11158

And that's why cars.
Number of deaths by cars is a real, constant and present - ergo it is BORING. Not sensational enough.
But some strange African disease... Oh my!
Better lock up your doors, tape over the windows and don't leave your home unless you want to die horribly!
Like in a burning metal can, bleeding from hundreds of small wounds but conscious enough to smell gasoline all over you while those flames keep lapping towards you...
And your back is broken so you can't even kill yourself while you wait to first start cooking then burning to death...

even if you live in the West, if you weren't scared rigid by the Ebola outbreak, you didn't understand what just happened

No.
It means you're not prone to panic resulting from conjunction fallacy, applied to a strange, foreign, wild, African, deadly disease, running rampant as locals reject treatment, release diseased people out of quarantine and spread the disease everywhere...

BTW... Did you know that there are 250,000 - 500,000 deaths from that harmless disease called the flu?
That's just silly... who dies from flu... I had flu... nobody dies from flu.
Avian flu on the other hand... Now that's dangerous.

Number of avian flu deaths?
One 73 year old Chinese woman with an arm's length list of diseases to her name.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12...
BTW, average life expectancy in China - 75.
77 for women.

Ebola likes hot, humid climate and presence of monkeys and bats so the virus can keep on "simmering" all year long.
And it really loves open casket funerals where everyone touches and kisses the dead person.
It also loves rural areas with little or no medical resources or staff available.

It DOESN'T LIKE quarantine in colder, drier climates, stricter funeral rules and readily available cheap disinfectants... well... cheap in a developed Western country with adequate sanitation and medical facilities and staff.

As a bonus, people get sick quick and start dying really soon. And with no simmering bats and monkeys around... it dies out.

Hint: Despite every king and his uncle prancing around Africa during the colonial age, spreading diseases and generally doing stupid things like biting native women - no epidemic of Ebola ever made it to Europe.
Unlike flu.

A struggling NBA team more worthy of his philanthropy?

They're just preoccupied with stealing our stuff. "Ex-TSA agent: We steal from travelers all the time...A TSA agent convicted of stealing more than $800,000 worth of goods from travelers said this type of theft is “commonplace” among airport security. Almost 400 TSA officers have been fired for stealing from passengers since 2003." http://rt.com/usa/tsa-stealing... http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/... Solution? Protect Yourself: "100% foolproof solution to stop TSA from stealing your valuables out of your carry-on bag" "They're lazy pathetic thieves..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

#3 - You rely upon Apple maintaining and respecting your privacy

Tim Cook didn't address Apple's real privacy problem

So, are they going to pay the guy for his time?

That, and if you're found to have been wrongfully convicted, the prosecutors/plaintiffs should be put on trial as an automatic action. Might make the system a bit fairer.

The oil industry periodically requires wars to secure its supplies, and a lot of its profits accrue to countries with interests inimical to those of the U.S. To give you an idea, Operation Desert Storm cost $104 billion in nominal 2014 dollars. From a strictly cost/benefit perspective, the U.S. is underfunding these companies.

Actually it's a lot smaller. Only 28 gauge if I remember correctly.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITI...

In fact, China just explicitly asked for space cooperation:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/...