Some of them are even begging for a movie adaptation. At least something on "Good Omens" is finally moving forward, even if it's Terry Jones on TV instead of Terry Gilliam on the big screen.
*** Mild Spoiler Ahead ***
The latest pet idea I had, after seeing Harry Potter get a successful 8-movie run, was Alistair Reynold's "Pushing Ice". The novel could be well done in 3 separate movies. (names are not titles, just plot segments) Part 1 - In the solar system Part 2 - In transit Part 3 - At the Nexus Finally, since the book doesn't end conclusively, they could always give it the "Spaceballs 2" treatment - "The Search For More Money" and do at least Part 4.
The first major chunks of that Obama deficit were: 1 - The bailouts, started under GWB 2 - Putting both wars on the books, said wars being started under GWB.
The only "shoe shopping" Obama has done was the economic stimulus package, not all of which has been spent anyway, and was a trifle compared to #1 and #2. Obama-care, last I heard from the Congressional Budget Office, was going to save money.
Because darn it, they're RIGHT! And if they're RIGHT, then the Democrats must be WRONG!
Humor aside for a moment, there is a kernel of truth in the hyperbole above... Today's (not excluding other eras, just not addressing them) Republican party is very much rooted in authoritarianism. A key part of authoritarianism is that the legitimate leader is Right, and authority flows down from there. That explains 2 things, among others... 1 - It's why there are so many attacks against Obama's legitimacy - the birther movement, etc. 2 - It's also why Obama can tout ideas that originated with Republicans, and suddenly they're Wrong! In other words, if authority flows down from the legitimate leader, nothing the illegitimate leader does can possibly be right.
This is part of why in TV interviews, etc, Republicans sound so certain of their facts and convictions, regardless of the correctness of those facts. By that same token, Democrats are rooted in uncertain processes, consensus, discovery, and such. Therefore in public debate, you have a Republican who KNOWS he's right vs a Democrat who believes he's right. It's human nature to respond positively to that certainty.
Therefore, the Republicans have been very successful at blaming Democrats for the country's problems, regardless of any facts. It's all the more interesting when the Republicans could hold the Presidency, Senate, and House, and STILL blame the Democrats for the country's problems - and get away with it.
Actually, a sizable number of the Democrats DID take a deficit hawk stand during the Bush-Cheney years, beyond the "usual Blue-dogs," though I don't remember how many. I believe that that deficit hawk stand by a sizable number of Democrats might have been responsible for Dick Cheney's "deficits are irrelevant" remark.
Is it worse that the Democratic caucus never takes a deficit hawk stand, or that the Republicans take one when it suites them, and actually are worse at deficit spending when that suites them. This latter fact can be readily found - for all of the Democratic spendthrift reputation, the Republicans are historically worse for the deficit/debt.
If the spending problems were a general problem, and generally flagged, I'd have less problem. But it's not. The Republicans tend to show up as deficit hawks during every Democratic administration, but during Republican administrations such things go completely silent. Vice President Dick Cheney is on record as saying something to the tune that the deficit is irrelevant. During the GWB years the deficit spiked, due to tax cuts, 2 wars run "off the books", and the unfunded Medicare prescription drug coverage program.
For the moment, I'm not commenting about deficit budgeting itself, or about any of the things done during the Bush/Cheney years. I'm simply commenting about the change-of-tune. This pattern of deficit-hawk behavior goes back before those 2 administrations, as well.
That's simply an artifact of mis-measuring your gazintas and gozoutas. You're calling that >100% by only measuring the electrical energy, and neglecting the thermal energy being sucked out of the ground. It's another example of the "externalized cost" problem. For instance, coal is cheap only when you ignore the various pollutants it emits, greenhouse gas contributions, long-term health effects on workers, potential destruction of usable land, (particularly for strip mining) etc. Since our society doesn't properly measure these costs, coal is "cheap."
OK, it's been long enough and nobody else has bitten...
My name's not Shirley.
Besides, you attach the 2 big fans the the back of your barrel, point their heads directly backwards, and release the helmets. The reaction from the helmets shooting backwards and the suits venting in the same direction will provide a good boost of thrust to get you started. Subsequent outgassing of the fans themselves will provide some residual thrust, too. Of course the neck opening of a spacesuit isn't a very good nozzle, but you have to work with what you've got, and if all you've got a fans...
I disagree. Neither party is very palatable, but I'll have to fall back on what someone else said... The Republicans are Evil and the Democrats are Stupid - as a first approximation. As the next layer down, the Republicans are Stupid, because they believe in the special interests they're selling their votes to, in spite of the terrible short-sightedness - and the Democrats are Evil because they're selling their votes to special interests, too.
Every time manned spaceflight comes up on/. there's a contingent of people claiming robots can do all of that even better. Personally I like the concept of manned spaceflight, even if I also like that the robots have done.
But your suggested mission for the shuttle could clearly be done better by robots. Yeah, the shuttle can alter its own orbit, but there's no reason a robot craft couldn't do that, too. Plus the shuttle has the 2nd biggest radar (or visible light) cross-section in LEO, only behind the ISS. It's not going anywhere in secret. (The radar cross-section statement is my supposition, but I strongly doubt it's wrong.)
"Technology without science is magic" My quote, though I don't know if it's original. It is somewhat a re-phrasing of Clarke's Third Law, "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from matic." My assertion is that "sufficiently advanced" brakes the links that science forged to get there, and that even today's technology is magic to someone who has eschewed science.
I find that hard to believe - that they would take such a cynical view - that should lead to accessory-to-murder charges if true. I can believe that some were told not to follow, but I'm sure there is some incredibly stupid (as opposed to incredibly evil) explanation.
The BATF sending is only a recent thing - an attempt at a sting that went bad. There really is a general gun problem outside of BATF's screwup..
The general problem there is that the entire War On Drugs is ill-conceived, expensive, ineffective, and dangerously destabilizing to our neighbors to the South. About the only thing it's got going for it is that if "feels right", both morally and as a general approach. Unfortunately in the real world it just hasn't worked that way. Placing exclusive effort on choking the supply line for drugs simply increases prices. That causes more crimes-of-finance at home, and provides an incredible revenue chain to the suppliers in other countries. It would be fascinating to hear how drug-related revenue in Mexico compares to the official GDP.
It's broken, and I'm not suggesting that the solution is to legalize everything. What's most bothersome is that the entire War On Drugs is unquestioned - nobody seems to really notice how much bad it's doing south of us, that it's not working here, and nobody is even proposing solutions on how to fix it - except to do more of the same.
Do you keep your receipts and do use tax carefully?
I don't, not because I'm trying to dodge it, but because it's too much hassle. They have an income-based formula, and I pay that. If internet purchases had sales tax, that use tax would presumably go away - or at the very least I'd keep more careful track of receipts to make it go away.
By the way, my reading of use tax indicates that it's only paid if no sales tax was paid on the product. You paid CA tax on your CA hotdog, so it wouldn't be due in Vermont, at least. Complain to your state government if there's double-dipping. Mine doesn't do it.
I won't deny a single thing you've said - I agree with pretty much all of it. I disagree with the currently popular remedies.
Many, many moons ago I had an epiphany, during the days of Bush I - whom I thought did a pretty good job in office. It was at that time that Resolution Trust was being set up as part of the Savings and Loan bailout. There was a co-worker, more conservative than I, who was griping about all the money being given to the poor, and at the time I was inclined to agree with him. Then as I watched more of the Resolution Trust process, I realized that the whole Savings and Loan problem was about rich people bilking poor people, and many/most of them somehow dodging any blame or need for restitution. Instead, THEY got the money, and my money went to backfilling the victims. In essence, it was a "wealth transfer" from taxpayers like me to crooked bankers.
At that point I realized that very likely, more of my tax dollars go to people making more than me than go to people making less than me. More of my wealth transferred UP than DOWN. When we talk about the budget problems, first off most of the focus is on the discretionary budget, which is a pittance. I'll give what's-his-name credit for looking properly at Medicare, though I disagree with his diagnosis and solution. I'm also unhappy that only peace-niks are looking at the defense budget.
In brief, I believe we have a market failure. Today when people say "socialism" it's as if it's an inherently bad word. I'm not in favor of it either, or rather I'm in favor of some hybrid system. But here's the point... The essence of Free Market Capitalism is that it allows a broader spectrum of ideas and resources to be mobilized for solving societies' problems. This broad spectrum should enable more efficient and economical solutions, so that it's cheaper for the customers AND allows the producers to enjoy a profit, both at the same time.
IMHO that's what's broken. Many of our industries are so consolidated that they're no longer Free Market Capitalism - they're essentially central planning, just in a few corporate boardrooms instead of government buildings. The upshot of this is that we have the most expensive health care in the world, with mediocre results. Our economy is doing less efficiently at health care than that "evil central planning." - though it is VERY profitable. We also spend more on defense than anyone in the world by a large margin, and I'll agree that we get a lot for it, but it would be really interesting to understand the cost effectiveness, and also how much if it is really a hidden corporate subsidy, both by contract and by "making a safe place to do business." (or read, export American jobs to cheaper places - paid for by my tax dollars)
Social Security is a different issue. Besides being outside the ordinary budget, I'm generally in favor of raising the age. What I really wish is that there were some way to tell when we were going to die. I have a reasonable expectation to live to 90+, so I'd prefer to keep working - I'm not ready to start coasting to the grave, and I know that golf and fishing can only go so far. But there are also those with a family expectation much shorter, and for them at my age they'd be closer to the grave than me. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. Or another way of putting it, the necessary decisions are way above my pay grade - I just wish someone were seriously addressing the issue in a complex - not simplistic, way.
Finally, since 2000 my financial boat hasn't been taking on water, but it has been settling lower in the water. But I don't blame taxes for that. I blame "my executives" who continue to enjoy faster-than-the-economy compensation increases at least partly by making sure my pay raises are slower than the economy, and compounding the problem by shipping US jobs overseas. In the past decade they've cashed in - but I guess letting the 3rd lowest top-margin tax rate in history increase from the 3rd lowest in US history to the 4th lowest in US history is too onerous.
I believe that our society has a heavy dependence on hidden subsidies, and one of the biggest is cheap transportation, and perhaps I should instead call that undervalued transportation. Big box stores exist because cheap transportation makes their economy of scale practical. The brick-and-mortar store is the descendant of the old days when transportation was more expensive, forcing local vs remote manufacturing decisions to be made differently.
The key word in all of that was "undervalued transportation," because our society has so many subsidies in place for transportation that it's not funny. Road use taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes on tires, highway tools, etc. True, these are taxes, and sound like taxes on transportation instead of subsidies. But generally the money they raise goes back into subsidizing the transportation infrastructure. Then there's also the part of the general funds that go onto road, highway and bridge construction, etc. The clincher is that while trucks do pay much higher taxes than transportation vehicles, compared to the amount of wear and tear (4th power of axle weight, I've heard) they do to the infrastructure, they're not paying anywhere near their fair share. In other words, all of the cars on the road are subsidizing the trucks. Then add to that the amount of DOD funding that is present largely to keep the oil flowing from the Middle East, South America, etc. Pardon me, "stabilizing the regions" - but if there weren't oil there, we might not bother so hard to stabilize them, and they might not have as many stability threats, either.
If the cost of transportation could be more strongly and fairly factored in, I suspect traditional stores would look much better with respect to big box stores or internet. I also suspect there's be a lot more local manufacturing.
Sidestepping for a moment the entire issue of the ethics of taxation, etc...
Early on, I supported the idea of keeping internet purchases tax-free, as an incentive to let things grow. In a similar vein, I support the idea of making goods manufactured in outer space tax-free. But the "need for incentive" time is long past. In fact, if anything the brick-and-mortar stores are now in serious trouble and the sales tax increases their disadvantage. I won't sit here and say that a sales tax on internet purchases the right, ethical, and Ayn Rand approved way of doing this, but it's the mechanism we've got.
It was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a justice of the US Supreme Court, who once stated that "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civil society."
In recent years, in a rather brutish way we've begun tugging at the threads that weave our civil society together. Is everything optimal? Certainly not. Is there waste? Certainly. I won't argue with either of those points. I argue with the rather careless tugging at the threads, and the inattention to what it's doing to the fabric of society, the seeming attitude that, "Keeping MY money is the most important thing." Once things start falling apart - and they are falling apart - we don't know where they will stop. It's easy to say, "All we need are the basics!" but beyond not everyone agreeing on what those basics are, we may not understand the underlying web of dependence on even those things we agree are basic. OK, we need firetrucks, but without roads and fire hydrants what good are they?
Sometimes I think the US is the only nation actively aspiring and working to achieve thrid-world status.
Oops, that's not a micron, it's only one one-thousandth. Still it's a whole lot more area in near-contact than a hard drive, and I might still worry about a heatsink crash. It might be safer to at least put a wire cage around this whole thing, so that at the very least some cable or wire doesn't come loose and brush against it.
re #1 - 50 years ago there was nobody to do those daily operations. Today there is. Really, part of the question is whether SpaceX and the like should be launching from NASA facilities, or their own, or rentals, etc. 3rd path - take part of KSC, call it a Space Industry Park, and semi-privatize it. Whether the government presence is NASA, the FAA, or some sort of transition team is a detail. Back NASA out of day-to-day LEO access, but keep some facilities for it to do the things it should be doing.
re #2 - Oh, you mean that NASA funding legislation specifically forbidding them from doing anything at all with the TransHAB, or other (ATK-inspired, from Utah) legislation stopping transfer of money to SpaceX is a BAD idea? Who knew?
re #3 - I wonder what the shuttle would have looked like if DOD hadn't driven the design as hard as they did. (and then backed out of using it, after the damage was long done)
DOD influence on the Shuttle design kind of reminds me of US Navy influence on the commercial nuclear power generation market.
It strikes me that some 50+ years later NASA should be beyond LEO vehicles. If at this point NASA were to develop any sort of LEO capability, it should be a rapid-response rescue vehicle to go to the aid of commercial spacecraft - kind of like the Coast Guard.
Other than that, I'd like to see NASA starting on true space flight - vehicles assembled in orbit that are never meant to get any closer to the Earth. (I was starting to thing that the rescue vehicle mentioned should be space-only until I remembered that reaching any arbitrary orbit is technically easier to do from the ground.)
How about advanced propulsion, like VASMIR and niftier stuff like that fusion thing that used lasers and a boron target? How about a cycler to get to the Moon or Mars in comfort? (and better radiation shielding)
Every now and then I'd like to see someone fold - loudly and publicly. Imagine getting sued like this and say, "Sorry, we can't fight it, we can't afford to license it." Then lay out 10,000 workers and be very loud about the exact reasons, including the subtleties of patent trolls, etc.
Destroy a few jobs in this economy and that would get their attention.
OTOH I wouldn't wish that on any of those 10,000 workers. (I know there probably aren't that many involved in Android, and anything less probably wouldn't get any attention.)
Trolls can be almost impossible to fight. The company I work for was successfully trolled, and in this case the patent application used one of our engineer's practically exact words in the teachings. The stuff had been revealed at a conference. The working engineers went home, got to work, and produced real stuff, while the trolls went home and filed patents.
The lawyers looked at it and decided it was cheaper to sign than to fight.
One of the best ways to troll is to misuse a reference. References you can get tucked into your patent application can't be used against you, so the more powerful the stuff you can tuck, the better you've done at castrating any challenges.
I remember hearing this, realizing that "Farmer in the Sky" wasn't even physically possible, not just politically, economically, socially, and technologically, and being disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of them are even begging for a movie adaptation. At least something on "Good Omens" is finally moving forward, even if it's Terry Jones on TV instead of Terry Gilliam on the big screen.
*** Mild Spoiler Ahead ***
The latest pet idea I had, after seeing Harry Potter get a successful 8-movie run, was Alistair Reynold's "Pushing Ice". The novel could be well done in 3 separate movies. (names are not titles, just plot segments)
Part 1 - In the solar system
Part 2 - In transit
Part 3 - At the Nexus
Finally, since the book doesn't end conclusively, they could always give it the "Spaceballs 2" treatment - "The Search For More Money" and do at least Part 4.
The first major chunks of that Obama deficit were:
1 - The bailouts, started under GWB
2 - Putting both wars on the books, said wars being started under GWB.
The only "shoe shopping" Obama has done was the economic stimulus package, not all of which has been spent anyway, and was a trifle compared to #1 and #2. Obama-care, last I heard from the Congressional Budget Office, was going to save money.
Because darn it, they're RIGHT! And if they're RIGHT, then the Democrats must be WRONG!
Humor aside for a moment, there is a kernel of truth in the hyperbole above... Today's (not excluding other eras, just not addressing them) Republican party is very much rooted in authoritarianism. A key part of authoritarianism is that the legitimate leader is Right, and authority flows down from there. That explains 2 things, among others...
1 - It's why there are so many attacks against Obama's legitimacy - the birther movement, etc.
2 - It's also why Obama can tout ideas that originated with Republicans, and suddenly they're Wrong!
In other words, if authority flows down from the legitimate leader, nothing the illegitimate leader does can possibly be right.
This is part of why in TV interviews, etc, Republicans sound so certain of their facts and convictions, regardless of the correctness of those facts. By that same token, Democrats are rooted in uncertain processes, consensus, discovery, and such. Therefore in public debate, you have a Republican who KNOWS he's right vs a Democrat who believes he's right. It's human nature to respond positively to that certainty.
Therefore, the Republicans have been very successful at blaming Democrats for the country's problems, regardless of any facts. It's all the more interesting when the Republicans could hold the Presidency, Senate, and House, and STILL blame the Democrats for the country's problems - and get away with it.
Actually, a sizable number of the Democrats DID take a deficit hawk stand during the Bush-Cheney years, beyond the "usual Blue-dogs," though I don't remember how many. I believe that that deficit hawk stand by a sizable number of Democrats might have been responsible for Dick Cheney's "deficits are irrelevant" remark.
Is it worse that the Democratic caucus never takes a deficit hawk stand, or that the Republicans take one when it suites them, and actually are worse at deficit spending when that suites them. This latter fact can be readily found - for all of the Democratic spendthrift reputation, the Republicans are historically worse for the deficit/debt.
If the spending problems were a general problem, and generally flagged, I'd have less problem. But it's not. The Republicans tend to show up as deficit hawks during every Democratic administration, but during Republican administrations such things go completely silent. Vice President Dick Cheney is on record as saying something to the tune that the deficit is irrelevant. During the GWB years the deficit spiked, due to tax cuts, 2 wars run "off the books", and the unfunded Medicare prescription drug coverage program.
For the moment, I'm not commenting about deficit budgeting itself, or about any of the things done during the Bush/Cheney years. I'm simply commenting about the change-of-tune. This pattern of deficit-hawk behavior goes back before those 2 administrations, as well.
That's simply an artifact of mis-measuring your gazintas and gozoutas. You're calling that >100% by only measuring the electrical energy, and neglecting the thermal energy being sucked out of the ground. It's another example of the "externalized cost" problem. For instance, coal is cheap only when you ignore the various pollutants it emits, greenhouse gas contributions, long-term health effects on workers, potential destruction of usable land, (particularly for strip mining) etc. Since our society doesn't properly measure these costs, coal is "cheap."
> they are going to be dumped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean on their next flight
What's this about, I haven't heard?
OK, it's been long enough and nobody else has bitten...
My name's not Shirley.
Besides, you attach the 2 big fans the the back of your barrel, point their heads directly backwards, and release the helmets. The reaction from the helmets shooting backwards and the suits venting in the same direction will provide a good boost of thrust to get you started. Subsequent outgassing of the fans themselves will provide some residual thrust, too. Of course the neck opening of a spacesuit isn't a very good nozzle, but you have to work with what you've got, and if all you've got a fans...
I disagree. Neither party is very palatable, but I'll have to fall back on what someone else said... The Republicans are Evil and the Democrats are Stupid - as a first approximation. As the next layer down, the Republicans are Stupid, because they believe in the special interests they're selling their votes to, in spite of the terrible short-sightedness - and the Democrats are Evil because they're selling their votes to special interests, too.
Too bad their cunning plan failed because they had no immunity to our pathogens - as documented by the Wells Brothers. (Herbert George and Orson)
Every time manned spaceflight comes up on /. there's a contingent of people claiming robots can do all of that even better. Personally I like the concept of manned spaceflight, even if I also like that the robots have done.
But your suggested mission for the shuttle could clearly be done better by robots. Yeah, the shuttle can alter its own orbit, but there's no reason a robot craft couldn't do that, too. Plus the shuttle has the 2nd biggest radar (or visible light) cross-section in LEO, only behind the ISS. It's not going anywhere in secret. (The radar cross-section statement is my supposition, but I strongly doubt it's wrong.)
"Technology without science is magic" My quote, though I don't know if it's original. It is somewhat a re-phrasing of Clarke's Third Law, "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from matic." My assertion is that "sufficiently advanced" brakes the links that science forged to get there, and that even today's technology is magic to someone who has eschewed science.
I find that hard to believe - that they would take such a cynical view - that should lead to accessory-to-murder charges if true. I can believe that some were told not to follow, but I'm sure there is some incredibly stupid (as opposed to incredibly evil) explanation.
The BATF sending is only a recent thing - an attempt at a sting that went bad. There really is a general gun problem outside of BATF's screwup..
The general problem there is that the entire War On Drugs is ill-conceived, expensive, ineffective, and dangerously destabilizing to our neighbors to the South. About the only thing it's got going for it is that if "feels right", both morally and as a general approach. Unfortunately in the real world it just hasn't worked that way. Placing exclusive effort on choking the supply line for drugs simply increases prices. That causes more crimes-of-finance at home, and provides an incredible revenue chain to the suppliers in other countries. It would be fascinating to hear how drug-related revenue in Mexico compares to the official GDP.
It's broken, and I'm not suggesting that the solution is to legalize everything. What's most bothersome is that the entire War On Drugs is unquestioned - nobody seems to really notice how much bad it's doing south of us, that it's not working here, and nobody is even proposing solutions on how to fix it - except to do more of the same.
Do you keep your receipts and do use tax carefully?
I don't, not because I'm trying to dodge it, but because it's too much hassle. They have an income-based formula, and I pay that. If internet purchases had sales tax, that use tax would presumably go away - or at the very least I'd keep more careful track of receipts to make it go away.
By the way, my reading of use tax indicates that it's only paid if no sales tax was paid on the product. You paid CA tax on your CA hotdog, so it wouldn't be due in Vermont, at least. Complain to your state government if there's double-dipping. Mine doesn't do it.
I won't deny a single thing you've said - I agree with pretty much all of it. I disagree with the currently popular remedies.
Many, many moons ago I had an epiphany, during the days of Bush I - whom I thought did a pretty good job in office. It was at that time that Resolution Trust was being set up as part of the Savings and Loan bailout. There was a co-worker, more conservative than I, who was griping about all the money being given to the poor, and at the time I was inclined to agree with him. Then as I watched more of the Resolution Trust process, I realized that the whole Savings and Loan problem was about rich people bilking poor people, and many/most of them somehow dodging any blame or need for restitution. Instead, THEY got the money, and my money went to backfilling the victims. In essence, it was a "wealth transfer" from taxpayers like me to crooked bankers.
At that point I realized that very likely, more of my tax dollars go to people making more than me than go to people making less than me. More of my wealth transferred UP than DOWN. When we talk about the budget problems, first off most of the focus is on the discretionary budget, which is a pittance. I'll give what's-his-name credit for looking properly at Medicare, though I disagree with his diagnosis and solution. I'm also unhappy that only peace-niks are looking at the defense budget.
In brief, I believe we have a market failure. Today when people say "socialism" it's as if it's an inherently bad word. I'm not in favor of it either, or rather I'm in favor of some hybrid system. But here's the point... The essence of Free Market Capitalism is that it allows a broader spectrum of ideas and resources to be mobilized for solving societies' problems. This broad spectrum should enable more efficient and economical solutions, so that it's cheaper for the customers AND allows the producers to enjoy a profit, both at the same time.
IMHO that's what's broken. Many of our industries are so consolidated that they're no longer Free Market Capitalism - they're essentially central planning, just in a few corporate boardrooms instead of government buildings. The upshot of this is that we have the most expensive health care in the world, with mediocre results. Our economy is doing less efficiently at health care than that "evil central planning." - though it is VERY profitable. We also spend more on defense than anyone in the world by a large margin, and I'll agree that we get a lot for it, but it would be really interesting to understand the cost effectiveness, and also how much if it is really a hidden corporate subsidy, both by contract and by "making a safe place to do business." (or read, export American jobs to cheaper places - paid for by my tax dollars)
Social Security is a different issue. Besides being outside the ordinary budget, I'm generally in favor of raising the age. What I really wish is that there were some way to tell when we were going to die. I have a reasonable expectation to live to 90+, so I'd prefer to keep working - I'm not ready to start coasting to the grave, and I know that golf and fishing can only go so far. But there are also those with a family expectation much shorter, and for them at my age they'd be closer to the grave than me. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. Or another way of putting it, the necessary decisions are way above my pay grade - I just wish someone were seriously addressing the issue in a complex - not simplistic, way.
Finally, since 2000 my financial boat hasn't been taking on water, but it has been settling lower in the water. But I don't blame taxes for that. I blame "my executives" who continue to enjoy faster-than-the-economy compensation increases at least partly by making sure my pay raises are slower than the economy, and compounding the problem by shipping US jobs overseas. In the past decade they've cashed in - but I guess letting the 3rd lowest top-margin tax rate in history increase from the 3rd lowest in US history to the 4th lowest in US history is too onerous.
Enough for now...
If that were all there were to it, I might agree.
I believe that our society has a heavy dependence on hidden subsidies, and one of the biggest is cheap transportation, and perhaps I should instead call that undervalued transportation. Big box stores exist because cheap transportation makes their economy of scale practical. The brick-and-mortar store is the descendant of the old days when transportation was more expensive, forcing local vs remote manufacturing decisions to be made differently.
The key word in all of that was "undervalued transportation," because our society has so many subsidies in place for transportation that it's not funny. Road use taxes, gasoline taxes, excise taxes on tires, highway tools, etc. True, these are taxes, and sound like taxes on transportation instead of subsidies. But generally the money they raise goes back into subsidizing the transportation infrastructure. Then there's also the part of the general funds that go onto road, highway and bridge construction, etc. The clincher is that while trucks do pay much higher taxes than transportation vehicles, compared to the amount of wear and tear (4th power of axle weight, I've heard) they do to the infrastructure, they're not paying anywhere near their fair share. In other words, all of the cars on the road are subsidizing the trucks. Then add to that the amount of DOD funding that is present largely to keep the oil flowing from the Middle East, South America, etc. Pardon me, "stabilizing the regions" - but if there weren't oil there, we might not bother so hard to stabilize them, and they might not have as many stability threats, either.
If the cost of transportation could be more strongly and fairly factored in, I suspect traditional stores would look much better with respect to big box stores or internet. I also suspect there's be a lot more local manufacturing.
Sidestepping for a moment the entire issue of the ethics of taxation, etc...
Early on, I supported the idea of keeping internet purchases tax-free, as an incentive to let things grow. In a similar vein, I support the idea of making goods manufactured in outer space tax-free. But the "need for incentive" time is long past. In fact, if anything the brick-and-mortar stores are now in serious trouble and the sales tax increases their disadvantage. I won't sit here and say that a sales tax on internet purchases the right, ethical, and Ayn Rand approved way of doing this, but it's the mechanism we've got.
It was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a justice of the US Supreme Court, who once stated that "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civil society."
In recent years, in a rather brutish way we've begun tugging at the threads that weave our civil society together. Is everything optimal? Certainly not. Is there waste? Certainly. I won't argue with either of those points. I argue with the rather careless tugging at the threads, and the inattention to what it's doing to the fabric of society, the seeming attitude that, "Keeping MY money is the most important thing." Once things start falling apart - and they are falling apart - we don't know where they will stop. It's easy to say, "All we need are the basics!" but beyond not everyone agreeing on what those basics are, we may not understand the underlying web of dependence on even those things we agree are basic. OK, we need firetrucks, but without roads and fire hydrants what good are they?
Sometimes I think the US is the only nation actively aspiring and working to achieve thrid-world status.
Oops, that's not a micron, it's only one one-thousandth. Still it's a whole lot more area in near-contact than a hard drive, and I might still worry about a heatsink crash. It might be safer to at least put a wire cage around this whole thing, so that at the very least some cable or wire doesn't come loose and brush against it.
A 1 micron air gap... Now not only can the heads on our harddrives crash, our heatsinks can crash, too.
re #1 - 50 years ago there was nobody to do those daily operations. Today there is. Really, part of the question is whether SpaceX and the like should be launching from NASA facilities, or their own, or rentals, etc. 3rd path - take part of KSC, call it a Space Industry Park, and semi-privatize it. Whether the government presence is NASA, the FAA, or some sort of transition team is a detail. Back NASA out of day-to-day LEO access, but keep some facilities for it to do the things it should be doing.
re #2 - Oh, you mean that NASA funding legislation specifically forbidding them from doing anything at all with the TransHAB, or other (ATK-inspired, from Utah) legislation stopping transfer of money to SpaceX is a BAD idea? Who knew?
re #3 - I wonder what the shuttle would have looked like if DOD hadn't driven the design as hard as they did. (and then backed out of using it, after the damage was long done)
DOD influence on the Shuttle design kind of reminds me of US Navy influence on the commercial nuclear power generation market.
+1 on this.
It strikes me that some 50+ years later NASA should be beyond LEO vehicles. If at this point NASA were to develop any sort of LEO capability, it should be a rapid-response rescue vehicle to go to the aid of commercial spacecraft - kind of like the Coast Guard.
Other than that, I'd like to see NASA starting on true space flight - vehicles assembled in orbit that are never meant to get any closer to the Earth. (I was starting to thing that the rescue vehicle mentioned should be space-only until I remembered that reaching any arbitrary orbit is technically easier to do from the ground.)
How about advanced propulsion, like VASMIR and niftier stuff like that fusion thing that used lasers and a boron target?
How about a cycler to get to the Moon or Mars in comfort? (and better radiation shielding)
Every now and then I'd like to see someone fold - loudly and publicly. Imagine getting sued like this and say, "Sorry, we can't fight it, we can't afford to license it." Then lay out 10,000 workers and be very loud about the exact reasons, including the subtleties of patent trolls, etc.
Destroy a few jobs in this economy and that would get their attention.
OTOH I wouldn't wish that on any of those 10,000 workers. (I know there probably aren't that many involved in Android, and anything less probably wouldn't get any attention.)
Trolls can be almost impossible to fight. The company I work for was successfully trolled, and in this case the patent application used one of our engineer's practically exact words in the teachings. The stuff had been revealed at a conference. The working engineers went home, got to work, and produced real stuff, while the trolls went home and filed patents.
The lawyers looked at it and decided it was cheaper to sign than to fight.
One of the best ways to troll is to misuse a reference. References you can get tucked into your patent application can't be used against you, so the more powerful the stuff you can tuck, the better you've done at castrating any challenges.
I remember hearing this, realizing that "Farmer in the Sky" wasn't even physically possible, not just politically, economically, socially, and technologically, and being disappointed.