So then, isn't the idea that your gun is inert unless YOU are holding it a good idea?
Not if I'm not home and my wife needs to use it. See, this is all missing the point, that the oft-quoted statistic of "a gun in the house is [X] times more likely to be used to shoot a member of the family than an intruder" disregards the fact that strangers hardly ever want to kill each other. The unavoidable issue is that the people you are close enough to to want to protect by having the gun in the house are, by the same token, the people that you are most likely to have a drunken screaming match that ends up with one of you at the wrong end of the family firearm.
In 2005, someone who earned 50K of regular income (W2) is taxed just under 7K. They are in the 25% margin and pay an effective 17%
I did indeed forget the base deduction; But I show $52K (taxable) as paying almost $9700, which is over 18.5%.
Most localities don't tax income, so you are more likely just facing a state income tax of 3-6%
Not just talking about taxes specifically labelled "income tax". There are an assortment of general sales taxes and service taxes that tend to push it up a lot closer to 10% than you'd think.
Really, I was just pulling out general numbers to demonstrate to the punk kid that the fed tax line on his pay stub isn't the end of it and that it's possible to end up paying close to 50%. In reality, the average is around 34%.
Statistically, the gun most likely to shoot you is the one you own/carry, so there is some value in some sort of authentication mechanism in a firearm.
Statistics can be described as a way to tell lies with facts. While it is, in fact, true that you are more likely to be shot with your own gun than with someone else's, this isn't because people confront intruders and then get the gun wrestled away from them. The unfortunate truth behind that stat is that you are most likely to get shot by a family member, someone who knows where the gun is and how to undo any locks, wards, or codes. The main problem with the misuse of the "shot by your own gun" statistic is the intentional selection of the misleading verb "shot". The most common use of a firearm in the home is still that of home protection. An intruder facing an armed homeowner is likely to decide to find someplace better to be, and the homeowner, not having any specific positive or negative pre-existing relationship with the intruder, is unlikely to want to kill him if he's exercising good judgement and leaving. Everyone knows it's "uncool" to shoot a man in the back.
But family members, that's a different story. If a domestic altercation has escalated to the point where one of the participants has become unhinged enough by rage to retrieve a firearm, there's a fairly good chance that someone's gonna end up with a bullet hole in 'em. In short, only family is likely to be angry enough at you to want to shoot you.
then why is there a speed limit in the USA ? It would be much nicer and to the point to be able to go 150 MPH on the endless straight highways separating the two coasts rather than on the 20 km separating two sprawling cities of Germany...
Safety is the usual explanation, but that's not the real reason. Higher speeds are more deadly in an accident, to be sure, but the proper way to approach as speed limit is from the angle of preventing accidents rather than merely mitigating their effects. The interstates were designed around the "85th percent rule", which states that a speed limit should be set such that 85% of the vehicles will be travelling at or below the posted limit. Decades of traffic analysis have shown that, in the absence of artificial limits, the 85% point is the center of the cluster of the vast majority of driver's speeds. Lower speed limits actually increase the danger by creating a greater speed differential between those who drive the road's obvious reasonable speed and those who, for whatever reason, blindly obey the limit. The worst thing to come out of the gas crisis was the stupid duble-nickel speed limit and the absolutely idiotic conclusion of "55 saves lives". THis was a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. The late 60's and early 70's saw tremendous improvements in automobile safety, not least of which was mandatory front disc brakes. If you've ever driven a car with 4 wheel drum brakes, it becomes very clear how this mandate alone prevented many accidents. By 1973 when the 55 limit was enacted, older, less safe cars were reaching their replacement point, being "handed down" for use as "around town" vehicles. The vast majority of high speed highway miles were being driven in newer, safer cars. Naturally, the accident rate dropped. The final nails in the coffin for the science-ignorant "55 is save" crowd were the easing of the Naitional Maximum Speed Limit in 87 for interstates and the complete repeal of the NMSL in 95. Dire warnings of increased accident rates turned out to be not just wrong, but VERY wrong. Accident rates by some measures actually went down.
In reality, speed limits have little to do with safety, even if those setting the limits don't know it. The German autobahn has accident rates similar to those of the US interstate highway system and speed enforcement there is nearly nil. The truth is, speed limits exist as revenue generators or social policy tools, disguised as safety regulations.
At this point I'd like to see the next big infrastructure investment be in a European-style intercity, high-speed train network to give people an alternative to highways. It wouldn't work across the great expanses of the West, but it would work just fine from Chicago eastward and along the West Coast. Imagine getting from Boston to Washington in 3 1/2 hours without the hassle of airport transportation, TSA bullshit, etc., etc. and simultaneously reducing airport congestion. Sounds worthwhile to me.
There's already frequent train service between Boston and DC. Currently, it takes about 6.5 hours. So you're saying we should have faster trains? The stops on that route are already only like 15 minutes apart, so in order for a "bullet train" to make any significant difference it'll have to skip over the "small towns" like New Haven CT, Newark NJ, and Philadelphia PA. Are there really enough people going from Boston to DC to support a 4 hour train over a 7 hour one?
half your earnings? what the hell? i make about 50k a year (i'm only 23, so give me some time). with that said, my taxes aren't anywhere even remotely in the vicinity of 50%. they're not even 33%. i think you have some extraordinarily serious issues if you're giving 50% of your income to federal, state, and local governments (combined). like a pretty hefty case of bullshit followed by some pretty intense cockmongering idiocy.
Geez, look beyond your pay-stub, junior.
If your income is in the $50K range you're already paying around 20% of it to Uncle Sugar in income tax alone. Now add 6.2% for Social Security. Then add 5.8% for the Social Security that is your "employer's matching contribution", as your employer already files it under the common heading of "cost of employing you". Add 2.9% for Medicare. State and local taxes nationally average a hair above 10%. We're nearly up to 45% already and I haven't even gotten into the various communications taxes, vehicle registration fees, and assorted other "non tax" levies. 50% is not at all that unreasonable an estimate.
"Work in a factory, it's got about the same level of responsibility"
Remember that statement the next time you stop at a streetlight in your car, and it actually stops. Or when you want something to eat. Or a thousand other examples.
Without those 'factory workers' your 'adult' life would be pretty dismal.
Hmmm...I don't think that really invalidates his point. Indeed, stuff that comes from factories is good and necessary, but as a former factory worker myself, I can tell you there are plenty of folks working the line who're the equivalent of 6 year olds.
Also, this particular analyst concludes that Blu-ray and HD-DVD will "not be a repeat of VHS vs. Beta" and that a stalemate is the likely outcome."
Wow, such insight. Given that the reason we had to "choose sides" before was that VHS and Beta were analog systems and were physically incompatible, I don't understand why anyone with half a brain would compare it with this. It seems downright obvious that what we're probably going to end up with is combination HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players. Evidence DVD[-RAM|-R|+R] drives. The only argument left is whose obnoxious DRM is going to ruin the party.
We called up T-mobile twice and claim the possibility of phone cloning. Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something.
The problem is that you're trying to supply a conclusive diagnosis to the T-mobile rep when you actually ahve no freakin' idea why those charges are appearing. Quit trying to offer them an explanation up front. That sounds like a con. Just give them the symptoms-- i.e. calls/charges on the bill that aren't yours-- and let them figure out what's happening.
There's no "right to not be offended", but everyone has a right to feel safe.
Except that they don't, any more than they have the right to be unoffended. I know people who don't feel safe if they see a negro drive by in an automobile in their lilly white neighborhood (though "mexicans" are apparently OK, so long as they have a lawn mower in their truck). I know people who feel perfectly safe standing in front of a liquor store at 1AM amongst the crackheads and whores on West Blvd. Basically, feeling safe isn't a "right", it's a subjective state of mind. I contend that until someone actually does something illegal that the police shouldn't be nosing around. "Think of the children", people will surely say, but there's nothing special about other peoples' children that justifies extra police nosiness.
What protects you is that the car acts as a faraday cage
Minor correction. A Faraday cage is an enclosure that prevents the intrusion of electromagnetic radiation (i.e. radio waves) in a certain frequency band. What protects you from lightning is the skin effect. The lightning travels along the outside surface of the metal frame, leaving you unscathed within. A Faraday cage uses Gauss's Law (skin effect) to block EM radiation, but not all metal objects with hollow centers are Faraday cages.
theft of service is a legitimate legal term. And this is easily construed as theft of service.
It's fairly difficult to prove theft of service when you are not charging anyone else for said service. They really should have simply charged him with trespass. His reason for trespassing (partaking of the free wifi) is immaterial.
Because it's not given away freely. Its a service provided by the Coffee shop to its paying customers. Complementary only applies to patrons.
"Complementary" is still free. Interior lighting is "complementary" and intended for patrons, but there isn't squat they can do if I'm sitting on the bus bench on the sidewalk reading Crime and Punishment by the light coming out their windows. If they don't want their light used, they need to block the windows. If they don't want their free wifi used by anyone but patrons, they need to put some sort of access control in. Even a simple "gateway" page that pops up in your browser the first time and says "intended for patrons only" would be better. You can't just stick a Linksys router on the counter and then get all huffy and call the cops when people using it aren't abiding by your unwritten, unspoken, "intentions". This is the 21st century. Bandwidth is cheap enough that you can find open wifi nodes all over the place. The presumption that an open node that communicates no TOS and just hands out IP addresses via DHCP is, in fact, open is not an unreasonable presumption. It's essentially equivalent to installing a drinking fountain at the sidewalk and getting angry because passers-by are drinking from it.
And, is there something about a vampire's fangs that prevents them from drinking out of a cup without dribbling/spilling large quantities of their "drink"?
Well, you see, the script said "KAGAN quaffs the foul red liquid from his cup", and Uwe Boll, not having his english-german dictionary handy, made a wild guess and figured that quaffing is like drinking, only you spill more.
Just how many countries in the world are there where a politician could make a career and a run for President talking about "pointy-headed intellectuals", where "egghead" is a term of contempt
Russia. During the russian revolution, in addition to shooting czarists and priests, they liked to shoot intellectuals-- the intelligent, educated folks who thought maybe shooting people and "collecting" their stuff wasn't the best way to build a worker's paradise. In fact, up until the late 40's when the race for the atomic bomb came about, "intellectualism" was considered a bad thing. To this day, the term "intellectual" has a strong element of derision in Russia. Or how about good ol' Mao? Very big anti-intellectual. He even opined that people didn't need to learn to read, as knowing too much would only confuse them. Militant islamists desiring to turn democracies into islamic caliphates are generally pretty anti-intellectual.
Deriding education is standard dictator behavior.
So yeah, nothing new there. Move along. Move along.
the BOFH works in the same type of corporation as Dilbert, but he manages...
Please. BOFH is also laughably fictional, like a child's fantasies of "taking over the school". BOFH stories are clearly little more than wishful thinking, the vengeful daydreams of yet another oppressed IT worm. Dilbert, unfortunately, tends to reflect reality. The sheer number of "it's just like that at my company" emails Scott Adams gets illustrate that fact all too well.
By reviewing what facts you know and deciding for yourself. The ruling of a jury is for the legal system. Free thinking human beings shouldn't supplant their own judgment for that of the legal system's.
That's just peachy, but please now tell us how you apply such a rubbery definition in order to determine if "alleged" belong before "sex offender". If the writer of the wikipedia has looked over the evidence and is sure he's guilty, should "alleged" be omitted? Or should "alleged" be mandatory until a majority of some subset of the world population has read the facts and agrees? If so, what subset? Wikipedia readers? Internet users? English speaking left handed Maori only?
Point is, this is a fucking idiotic argument. If people are going to get their panties in a bunch over the largely unrelated issue of the fallibility of the justice system, then I suggest the following: eschew "alleged" and call them either A) "suspected sex offender" if not convicted, and B) "convicted sex offender" if convicted. That way the actual issue can be discussed without this stupid trolling from the "they execute the innocent somtimes!" crowd.
The British invented the angled flight deck layout on modern carriers.
I once figured out a way to jury rig a chain lift in a stairwell shaft to get a 500lb electrical transformer to the roof rather than dragging it up the stairs, but that certainly doesn't make me an expert in electronic power management systems. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe they can build these carriers and that they'll perform well. I just don't see how the brits being the first to figure out the best way to arrange the deck chairs does anything to demonstrate their technological ingenuity.
The more money we have to pay and the more lives we have to put at stake in order to go to war, the less likely it is that we actually do go to war.
Actually, I think if anything the opposite is true. The fewer lives we put on the line, the less tolerant of casualties we become. Do you really think people are less up in arms over the 2000 dead military personnel in Iraq than they were over 300,000 dead in WW2? Tolerance for war seems to be more closely related to The government's ability to get the civilian population "behind the war effort". Stopping Nazis and dirty sneak attacking Japs wasn't too hard a sell. Stepping into a civil war in Vietnam to "stop communism", or knocking over a butthead dictator in Iraq to save face for your dad? Not so easy.
I'm not a tree hugger, but with limited resources in terms of fossil fuel, it would be a good thing if we could accept a few more hours in the plane with less fuel burned per person carried.
It's worth noting that the scramjet in TFA runs on hydrogen, which isn't a fossil fuel. Granted most hydrogen today is cracked from natural gas, and that which they cracked from water uses electricity mostly generated by burning coal, but it doesn't have to be that way. A pool of water, a fission of uranium, and POW... fossil fuel free.
Nuclear energy, OTOH, has enough energy to power the US and Britain through 100 years at our current pace
Minor nitpick, but it's actually in your favor. Current known uranium supply is enough to last us a thousand years. If we use breeder reactors to reprocess spent fuel, that goes up to 100,000.
Yeah, but I just hit return after
If x = 43
VS.NET completed the Then/Else for me.
Work smarter, not harder.
Verbosity isn't just about how much you have to type. It also affects code readability. a simple '}' marking the end of a functional block is much easier to register visually than "end if". It was bad enough in pascal, with the "begin" and "end" crap.
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Not if I'm not home and my wife needs to use it. See, this is all missing the point, that the oft-quoted statistic of "a gun in the house is [X] times more likely to be used to shoot a member of the family than an intruder" disregards the fact that strangers hardly ever want to kill each other. The unavoidable issue is that the people you are close enough to to want to protect by having the gun in the house are, by the same token, the people that you are most likely to have a drunken screaming match that ends up with one of you at the wrong end of the family firearm.
In 2005, someone who earned 50K of regular income (W2) is taxed just under 7K. They are in the 25% margin and pay an effective 17%
I did indeed forget the base deduction; But I show $52K (taxable) as paying almost $9700, which is over 18.5%.
Most localities don't tax income, so you are more likely just facing a state income tax of 3-6%
Not just talking about taxes specifically labelled "income tax". There are an assortment of general sales taxes and service taxes that tend to push it up a lot closer to 10% than you'd think.
Really, I was just pulling out general numbers to demonstrate to the punk kid that the fed tax line on his pay stub isn't the end of it and that it's possible to end up paying close to 50%. In reality, the average is around 34%.
Statistics can be described as a way to tell lies with facts. While it is, in fact, true that you are more likely to be shot with your own gun than with someone else's, this isn't because people confront intruders and then get the gun wrestled away from them. The unfortunate truth behind that stat is that you are most likely to get shot by a family member, someone who knows where the gun is and how to undo any locks, wards, or codes. The main problem with the misuse of the "shot by your own gun" statistic is the intentional selection of the misleading verb "shot". The most common use of a firearm in the home is still that of home protection. An intruder facing an armed homeowner is likely to decide to find someplace better to be, and the homeowner, not having any specific positive or negative pre-existing relationship with the intruder, is unlikely to want to kill him if he's exercising good judgement and leaving. Everyone knows it's "uncool" to shoot a man in the back.
But family members, that's a different story. If a domestic altercation has escalated to the point where one of the participants has become unhinged enough by rage to retrieve a firearm, there's a fairly good chance that someone's gonna end up with a bullet hole in 'em. In short, only family is likely to be angry enough at you to want to shoot you.
then why is there a speed limit in the USA ? It would be much nicer and to the point to be able to go 150 MPH on the endless straight highways separating the two coasts rather than on the 20 km separating two sprawling cities of Germany...
Safety is the usual explanation, but that's not the real reason. Higher speeds are more deadly in an accident, to be sure, but the proper way to approach as speed limit is from the angle of preventing accidents rather than merely mitigating their effects. The interstates were designed around the "85th percent rule", which states that a speed limit should be set such that 85% of the vehicles will be travelling at or below the posted limit. Decades of traffic analysis have shown that, in the absence of artificial limits, the 85% point is the center of the cluster of the vast majority of driver's speeds. Lower speed limits actually increase the danger by creating a greater speed differential between those who drive the road's obvious reasonable speed and those who, for whatever reason, blindly obey the limit. The worst thing to come out of the gas crisis was the stupid duble-nickel speed limit and the absolutely idiotic conclusion of "55 saves lives". THis was a classic case of mistaking correlation for causation. The late 60's and early 70's saw tremendous improvements in automobile safety, not least of which was mandatory front disc brakes. If you've ever driven a car with 4 wheel drum brakes, it becomes very clear how this mandate alone prevented many accidents. By 1973 when the 55 limit was enacted, older, less safe cars were reaching their replacement point, being "handed down" for use as "around town" vehicles. The vast majority of high speed highway miles were being driven in newer, safer cars. Naturally, the accident rate dropped. The final nails in the coffin for the science-ignorant "55 is save" crowd were the easing of the Naitional Maximum Speed Limit in 87 for interstates and the complete repeal of the NMSL in 95. Dire warnings of increased accident rates turned out to be not just wrong, but VERY wrong. Accident rates by some measures actually went down.
In reality, speed limits have little to do with safety, even if those setting the limits don't know it. The German autobahn has accident rates similar to those of the US interstate highway system and speed enforcement there is nearly nil. The truth is, speed limits exist as revenue generators or social policy tools, disguised as safety regulations.
There's already frequent train service between Boston and DC. Currently, it takes about 6.5 hours. So you're saying we should have faster trains? The stops on that route are already only like 15 minutes apart, so in order for a "bullet train" to make any significant difference it'll have to skip over the "small towns" like New Haven CT, Newark NJ, and Philadelphia PA. Are there really enough people going from Boston to DC to support a 4 hour train over a 7 hour one?
Geez, look beyond your pay-stub, junior.
If your income is in the $50K range you're already paying around 20% of it to Uncle Sugar in income tax alone. Now add 6.2% for Social Security. Then add 5.8% for the Social Security that is your "employer's matching contribution", as your employer already files it under the common heading of "cost of employing you". Add 2.9% for Medicare. State and local taxes nationally average a hair above 10%. We're nearly up to 45% already and I haven't even gotten into the various communications taxes, vehicle registration fees, and assorted other "non tax" levies. 50% is not at all that unreasonable an estimate.
Remember that statement the next time you stop at a streetlight in your car, and it actually stops. Or when you want something to eat. Or a thousand other examples. Without those 'factory workers' your 'adult' life would be pretty dismal.
Hmmm...I don't think that really invalidates his point. Indeed, stuff that comes from factories is good and necessary, but as a former factory worker myself, I can tell you there are plenty of folks working the line who're the equivalent of 6 year olds.
Wow, such insight. Given that the reason we had to "choose sides" before was that VHS and Beta were analog systems and were physically incompatible, I don't understand why anyone with half a brain would compare it with this. It seems downright obvious that what we're probably going to end up with is combination HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players. Evidence DVD[-RAM|-R|+R] drives. The only argument left is whose obnoxious DRM is going to ruin the party.
We called up T-mobile twice and claim the possibility of phone cloning. Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something.
The problem is that you're trying to supply a conclusive diagnosis to the T-mobile rep when you actually ahve no freakin' idea why those charges are appearing. Quit trying to offer them an explanation up front. That sounds like a con. Just give them the symptoms-- i.e. calls/charges on the bill that aren't yours-- and let them figure out what's happening.
Except that they don't, any more than they have the right to be unoffended. I know people who don't feel safe if they see a negro drive by in an automobile in their lilly white neighborhood (though "mexicans" are apparently OK, so long as they have a lawn mower in their truck). I know people who feel perfectly safe standing in front of a liquor store at 1AM amongst the crackheads and whores on West Blvd. Basically, feeling safe isn't a "right", it's a subjective state of mind. I contend that until someone actually does something illegal that the police shouldn't be nosing around. "Think of the children", people will surely say, but there's nothing special about other peoples' children that justifies extra police nosiness.
Minor correction. A Faraday cage is an enclosure that prevents the intrusion of electromagnetic radiation (i.e. radio waves) in a certain frequency band. What protects you from lightning is the skin effect. The lightning travels along the outside surface of the metal frame, leaving you unscathed within. A Faraday cage uses Gauss's Law (skin effect) to block EM radiation, but not all metal objects with hollow centers are Faraday cages.
It's fairly difficult to prove theft of service when you are not charging anyone else for said service. They really should have simply charged him with trespass. His reason for trespassing (partaking of the free wifi) is immaterial.
"Complementary" is still free. Interior lighting is "complementary" and intended for patrons, but there isn't squat they can do if I'm sitting on the bus bench on the sidewalk reading Crime and Punishment by the light coming out their windows. If they don't want their light used, they need to block the windows. If they don't want their free wifi used by anyone but patrons, they need to put some sort of access control in. Even a simple "gateway" page that pops up in your browser the first time and says "intended for patrons only" would be better. You can't just stick a Linksys router on the counter and then get all huffy and call the cops when people using it aren't abiding by your unwritten, unspoken, "intentions". This is the 21st century. Bandwidth is cheap enough that you can find open wifi nodes all over the place. The presumption that an open node that communicates no TOS and just hands out IP addresses via DHCP is, in fact, open is not an unreasonable presumption. It's essentially equivalent to installing a drinking fountain at the sidewalk and getting angry because passers-by are drinking from it.
Well, you see, the script said "KAGAN quaffs the foul red liquid from his cup", and Uwe Boll, not having his english-german dictionary handy, made a wild guess and figured that quaffing is like drinking, only you spill more.
Russia. During the russian revolution, in addition to shooting czarists and priests, they liked to shoot intellectuals-- the intelligent, educated folks who thought maybe shooting people and "collecting" their stuff wasn't the best way to build a worker's paradise. In fact, up until the late 40's when the race for the atomic bomb came about, "intellectualism" was considered a bad thing. To this day, the term "intellectual" has a strong element of derision in Russia. Or how about good ol' Mao? Very big anti-intellectual. He even opined that people didn't need to learn to read, as knowing too much would only confuse them. Militant islamists desiring to turn democracies into islamic caliphates are generally pretty anti-intellectual.
Deriding education is standard dictator behavior.
So yeah, nothing new there. Move along. Move along.
Two words for you: Nuremberg trials.
Three words for you: consult a dictionary. "Plausible" != "guaranteed".
Please. BOFH is also laughably fictional, like a child's fantasies of "taking over the school". BOFH stories are clearly little more than wishful thinking, the vengeful daydreams of yet another oppressed IT worm. Dilbert, unfortunately, tends to reflect reality. The sheer number of "it's just like that at my company" emails Scott Adams gets illustrate that fact all too well.
That's just peachy, but please now tell us how you apply such a rubbery definition in order to determine if "alleged" belong before "sex offender". If the writer of the wikipedia has looked over the evidence and is sure he's guilty, should "alleged" be omitted? Or should "alleged" be mandatory until a majority of some subset of the world population has read the facts and agrees? If so, what subset? Wikipedia readers? Internet users? English speaking left handed Maori only?
Point is, this is a fucking idiotic argument. If people are going to get their panties in a bunch over the largely unrelated issue of the fallibility of the justice system, then I suggest the following: eschew "alleged" and call them either A) "suspected sex offender" if not convicted, and B) "convicted sex offender" if convicted. That way the actual issue can be discussed without this stupid trolling from the "they execute the innocent somtimes!" crowd.
then went looking for someone who actually knew how to start a fire, with two appropriately different sized sticks.
Surely the second part of his unfinished sentence was: "...and bang them together while shouting 'someone give me matches!'"
This says more about your inability to find a decent PC repair shop than it does about PC vs Apple in general.
I once figured out a way to jury rig a chain lift in a stairwell shaft to get a 500lb electrical transformer to the roof rather than dragging it up the stairs, but that certainly doesn't make me an expert in electronic power management systems. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe they can build these carriers and that they'll perform well. I just don't see how the brits being the first to figure out the best way to arrange the deck chairs does anything to demonstrate their technological ingenuity.
Actually, I think if anything the opposite is true. The fewer lives we put on the line, the less tolerant of casualties we become. Do you really think people are less up in arms over the 2000 dead military personnel in Iraq than they were over 300,000 dead in WW2? Tolerance for war seems to be more closely related to The government's ability to get the civilian population "behind the war effort". Stopping Nazis and dirty sneak attacking Japs wasn't too hard a sell. Stepping into a civil war in Vietnam to "stop communism", or knocking over a butthead dictator in Iraq to save face for your dad? Not so easy.
It's worth noting that the scramjet in TFA runs on hydrogen, which isn't a fossil fuel. Granted most hydrogen today is cracked from natural gas, and that which they cracked from water uses electricity mostly generated by burning coal, but it doesn't have to be that way. A pool of water, a fission of uranium, and POW... fossil fuel free.
Minor nitpick, but it's actually in your favor. Current known uranium supply is enough to last us a thousand years. If we use breeder reactors to reprocess spent fuel, that goes up to 100,000.
Verbosity isn't just about how much you have to type. It also affects code readability. a simple '}' marking the end of a functional block is much easier to register visually than "end if". It was bad enough in pascal, with the "begin" and "end" crap.