The shuttles were some real workhorses in their prime. Going back to rockets with single use capsules is not the answer. No they weren't, and yes it is. The shuttles are piss-poor satellite delivery systems. They only go into low earth orbit. What we need is a cheap expendable unmanned cargo launch system, and a small passenger shuttle. Combining the two was sheer idiocy. The two tasks have very little crossover.
Challenger had to get off the ground as soon as possible. Columbia's loss was in part due to "we don't have time to check that" attitudes from those who could have looked for damage while the orbiter was still in orbit (i.e. photography from other spacecraft) and the assumption that there was no real problem. Challenger, yeah. Columbia? Not so much. Even if they did take the time to get satellite pics of the damage, there was nothing to be done. There was no feasible plan for rescuing the crew. Not enough fuel to fly to the ISS, not enough supplies for them to wait for Atlantis to be prepped for launch, and no means of resupplying them. NASA put all their eggs in one basket, and then broke the basket. Once that foam hit and they reached orbit, they were screwed. The shuttle is simply overly complex and delicate.
Porn will eventually broaden to include anything "unpopular," the future definition of obscenity. The current favored word is "offensive". "Unpopular" implies that democracy or majority decision is involved. "Offensive" allows one person to have something banned.
Naturally, the logical counter is that no one has the right to demand they never be offended, but reason never enters into this stuff.
A little too libertarian for my tastes. If you believe that, I'll point you to the c. 1900 ad for Bayer heroin ("Cures the aches that ail you!") in my abnormal psych book. I'm sorry, are you seriously suggesting that depictions of procreation are as bad as selling heroin as a cure for minor aches and pains?
I help to run web filtering at a small primary school, and while I realise a TLD like this won't shift all the crud into an easily-blocked area of the net, it's a good start. Of course, the downside is that nanny-state governments can then instruct ISPs to block the TLD, thus protecting their good citizens. Protecting primary school kids is one thing, but 'protecting' adults is a whole different ball game. Are you daft? It's not even a start at all, good or otherwise, and you yourself illustrate the primary reasons why in this very post:
1. the same amount of crud will remain in.com.org and.net, no matter how many new TLDs they create
2..xxx will be added to most filters within hours of its creation, so nothing short of a draconian censorship of non-.xxx domains will make it a place where porn sites will WANT to be
I guess I just argued for both sides of the equation. I think I'm getting fence splinters. Both sides? I saw no sensible reason for. All I saw was a couple good arguments against and a fanciful wish that the internet was a magical fairyland where your job blocking porn sites was as simple as blocking.xxx
I suspect he was being facetious, indicating that no special viewers or codecs or what-have-you needs to be loaded to show a simple thrusting-penis picture, as we've had animated GIFs for nearly 2 decades and all modern browsers support it.
Take your $100 bill and try and buy gas, at the local convenience store.
They won't take it, and you can't make them. Call the police and they'll ask you to pay in another way. If you owe them $100, they have to take it. If they refuse, then let THEM call a cop when you don't pay, or take you to small claims court, and try to explain to a judge why they can only accept certain denominations. They generally refuse under the "can't make change" excuse (when really it's counterfeiting they're wary of). You can't force someone to make change for a bill when he doesn't have change, so the excuse is legit. Whether it's actually true is largely irrelevant.
Claims demand proof. Yes. ALL claims demand proof, even your claim that a relationship is false DEMANDS proof, to any reasonable person. The onus or burden is on anyone who makes a claim to prove that claim to their interlocutor, positive OR negative. Your statements about being asked to prove the negative are the same irrational, book-banging routine, which I've seen thousands of times -- it's the rallying cry for the irrational members of the scientific community. If you need positive proof to form your own opinion about the veracity of a claim, fine. However, if you want to overstep that boundary and in addition, not only request positive proof, but claim now that it's false -- well, then, now YOU need to do some explaining. I don't need to explain anything you nutcase. I didn't originate any assertions. Claims demand proof, and that starts with the first person to make an assertion! Let me explain how this works so that you can understand:
1. Person A opens mouth and makes unsupported Claim X
2. Person B hears unsupported Claim X and demands proof
Person B is not required to prove anything because Person B did not make any claims! This is simple logic! Person A cannot turn around simply say "prove it's not true", because Claim X is his assertion!
And simply shrugging your shoulder's and saying "I won't defend my opinion that it's, in fact, false -- rather I'll demand that you show me it's true." smacks of a immature bratty-ness, a cowardice in the face of your own disability to prove your own claims, Are you insane? It's basic scientific procedure to demand proof when someone makes an unsubstantiated claim. What's childish is the claimant turning around and saying "no, you prove it's not true!"
that it's no wonder you came onto the board, condescending guns ablaze, letting your endocrine system fire off at will. Sorry? Following established scientific protocol is a sign of glandular emotionality? It seems to me that you are the one throwing a hissy fit because I refuse to abandon basic scientific principles.
Placing the burden on others is a psychological justification for not having to do your own thinking -- how easy for you. You can just shut them off with the same over-used phrase and derivative comments. It's annoying as hell, and illogical. What's annoying as hell is someone repeatedly demanding we all throw away the basic tenets of logical reasoning and accept the burden of disproving someone else's unfounded assertion.
Drop your own claims, and just tell others that you, personally, need proof before you will opine that something is true -- problem solved! Again, I made no initial claim. The burden of proving an assertion falls upon the initial claimant. I'm not making up an arbitrary rule here. This is established procedure for logical argument.
Going overboard and making your own factual claims about falsities may work with those who don't know better, but for those of us who do...you look like a damned fool. I look like a fool for demanding proof of an unfounded claim? I even acquiesced to your demand for some proof of the negative! Let's look at what's been presented by each of us: You: An opinion piece by someone who thinks like you, and a vague reference to an unnamed and unreleased future study you assure us will vindicate your position. Me: A rebuttal of said opinion piece detailing it's scientific shortcomings, plus a link to actual published studies on nih.gov(that's a hyperlink there; you can click on it!) detailing the very negative proof you demand!
Instead of concentrating on my demand for proof, why don't you go ahead and rebut the PubMed studies I linked to above?
My opinion is based upon other peoples (scientists) as yet unfinished scientific studies. Secondly "100+" years means nothing,
Show me the proof. This is really very simple. In 100+ years of strong magnetic fields, no one has yet shown proof of serious ill effects from magnetism. You believe in "unfinished scientific studies", which you haven't shown to us or even named. Claims demand proof.
things that are thought as safe often get proven to be dangerous, remember Marie Curie's glowing potato shed?
The cancer causing effects of radiation were noticed as early as 1902, a mere 4 years after the Curies began their experiments. What was not known was how much radiation was harmful, and how radioactive various things were.
Secondly, You quote three very valid types of employment who do work in close vacinity to magnetic fields. However, exposure assesments based on job title are a very crude method of assessing exposure due to the possibility of exposure misclassification. Also I used to string large electricity pylons I am still alive, I hope we both agree this prooves nothing.
WTF are you talking about? Are you saying that finding no particular increased incidence of illness in a group of people most of which work around high powered magnetic fields is not a meaningful observation? Why is selection based on job title (when job title obviously indicates exposure) not valid? What selection criteria should we be using? Star Trek nerds vs general population? Bearded ladies at sideshows vs general population?
"Studies so far [nih.gov] have shown that there is little negative reaction by organic systems to magnetic fields."
Sorry, but this realy means nothing to me. Please supply document addresses, rather than just a URL so I can "understand" what documents you are on about.
You're kidding, right? You know how hyperlinking works, don't you? Go back and look at my post. Notice how "studies so far" is underlined? That means you can click on it and, in this case, it leads to the actual reports. Here, allow me to give you the full address, itself hyperlinked to the report as well: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7033311&dopt=Citation
My response would be - "Theory, Hypothesis or Proof based?", I would find this out before patronising them.
Ummm....what? Those are not three different categories, those are three terms used when describing the scientific method as a whole. Theories are the overall idea, detailed by one or more hypotheses, supported by proof.
Then I am both. Moreso because I shall not stop being both whilst being in acceptance of this "fact".
"Claims must be supported by proof."
Do you believe this realy, when peoples lifes are in danger?
Until you can provide even a couple credible examples of people who have been harmed by magnetic fields, the danger is imaginary. I believe it's no more a danger than tomatoes, rock n' roll, and women's bare arms are a danger to morality--- and yet all those things were at one time seen as a threat. Seriousness of the charge has no bearing on the validity of the assertion. I believe your favorite shirt causes blindness to 78% of those who look upon it. Are you really going to continue wearing that shirt when it so clearly poses a danger to over 3/4 the population? You fiend!
Many medical cures are in opperation without proof.
Proof of what? That they cure? Aren't the cured people proof? Or if they don't cure, then what? The presence of useless medical procedures shows that magnetism causes cancer?
Your opinion, as stated, gives the impression of there being no evidence whatsoever, due to the fact that "you" have not "heard" of any harmfull medical effects due to magnetic fields, and total ignorance (and scepticism) of any potential mechanism at all, which is far from a balanced reflection of the actual evidence at this time in the scientific community. OK, how about this: Over the last 100+ years of exposure to magnetic fields, the closest anyone has come to finding a statistical link between low-grade magnetic fields and any health problems is the now-famous study showing a correlation between leukemia and living under power lines--- but the notion of a causal link between the two is spurious at best. Studies of MRI technician, aluminum foundry workers, and electrical linesmen have shown no health effects that can be linked to their exposure to magnetic fields, and they are exposed to fields many times greater than you'd ever see from an inductively coupling charging system. Studies so far have shown that there is little negative reaction by organic systems to magnetic fields.
The problem here is that you are asking for proof of a negative. You see, in science, when someone asserts the condition X may have effect Y out of the blue like that, the only proper response is "I have seen no evidence of this, so unless you can show evidence of a link, I must assume it to be false". Claiming "just because it's not proven doesn't mean it's not true" is foolish and childlike. Claims must be supported by proof. The burden is not on the rest of the world to disprove. Science is built on facts, not speculations. Logical thinking--- it works!
It still amazes me how many people there are out there that apparently need this explained to them.
We have an unofficial draft right now. It's called stop-loss. No, it's not an "unofficial draft". That's just political windbaggery that marks its spewer as either ignorant or a liar. The truth is as follows: First off, every person in the service signed a contract with the following line:
"In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless my enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States."
This is the "stop loss" clause. Of course, it might interest you to know that only a few critical job classifications are covered by "stop loss". The way most service members are being held over on active duty has fuck all to do with "stop loss". Morons continue to call all extensions of active duty "stop loss" because they don't bother to do any research. Most service members are actually being held on active duty by a much more mundane thing: contractual obligation.
You see, when you enlist, you are signing up for eight years. Sure, the recruiter said 3 or 4 years of "active duty", but the part the weasel recruiters don't mention is that the 3 or 4 years is only the minimum. They reserve the right to keep you around ducking bullets and crapping in a hole for eight years. When you sign up, you're betting that Uncle Sugar won't have a pressing need for your services at the end. Right now, he does. Tough shit, man. It was in the contract. I know all about this kind of shit. I enlisted for four years originally, and currently have a total of 6 years active duty service time. In my case my reserve unit was called up (twice) rather than me being held over, but it's all the same crap sandwich, really. I'm in my last year of obligation, so it looks like I might be able to keep it at that...
For those interested in how it really works, here is a good overview that will dispell a lot of the ignorance spewed by dumbass journalists and politicians.
I don't even understand 21. In theory, the reason we have an age limit of 21 for booze is because the brain is still developing up until age 21, so alcohol might stunt that growth. No, the theory was nothing of the sort. The theory was that 18-21 year olds were not mature enough to handle the responsibilities of drinking (particularly where they intersect with driving), and that by making it illegal, 18-21 year olds would no longer drink--- an absurd leap of (il)logic, if you ask me. In truth, the push to pass the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 came from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, largely at the goading of insurance companies who were finding that they weren't making as obscene a profit off the 18-21 segment as they'd like due to alcohol related accidents.
So the worst thing that could happen is that you could illuminate some schmucks' face
Er, what if the schmuck is a pilot? For the obviously attention impaired, I repeat the GP poster's statement:
(according to TFA) the laser intensity is not high enough to cause eye damage.
Perhaps the part you don't understand is that aircraft are not like cars. The sky is largely empty and free of dangerous obstructions. Airplanes fly in generally straight lines, usually far above the ground. With the exception of takeoff and landing, a momentary dazzling of the pilot by a bright light is mostly a non-issue. If you close your eyes, or even let go of the wheel, the plane continues to fly. It's even less of an issue when you consider that there are usually TWO pilots in commercial aircraft. Even less of an issue still when you consider that a laser designed to blind a far infrared sensor poses little risk of dazzling anything BUT an IR seeking missile because humans don't fucking see in infrared.
Has anyone else around here ever though that Feminism is like Post-tramatic Stress Syndrome, except for a society not a person, bought on by having all the providers ripped away around the time of the second world war?
That's not it. Women did just fine during WW2. They even took jobs normally done by men, and did them quite well. If anything. "feminism" is more of a reaction to the post-WW2 return to "normalcy", which had many women saying "hey, we did just fine in Man-jobs, why do we have to stay home and cook dinner?"
And does this hold only for verbal languages? What about music? If you can't say "which way to the bathroom" in it, it's not a language.
Music is something else entirely.
I am the Son of a Diplomat. This means that every 4 to 5 years, we went to a different country as a family. We _ALL_ managed to learn the foreign language in ~12 months (this means that we could function normally in school, understood the local television and had no problems reading newspapers). After 24 months, one can master the language to the point where literature-studies are not harder in any language.Of course, it helps to really live _IN_ the country among locals, not in some kind of gated community where everybody speaks your language. And we never got satelite-TV, so all TV-chanels were in the local language.End effect is that my whole family is multi-lingual. Even my parents, who where significantly older than 5 when they learned these other languages. Do you really think learning the language in 12-24 months is fast? I learned Russian well enough to read and discuss Crime and Punishment after 8 months at the Defense Language Institute when I was in the Army, and all we had was classroom instruction and textbooks. Achieving basic fluency after 12 months of immersion is only average for an adult, and downright pedestrian compared to how fast a child under 5 can pick it up.
Vietnam wasn't lost in the jungles of southeast asia, it was lost right here in America. We weren't defeated by the VC or the NVA, but by the communists in our own back yard. Actually, it was lost the day we joined up on the side of the French colonial puppet government in the south, rather than the popular revolution led by our former ally in WW2, Ho Chi Minh. The problem there was that the French were threatening to pull out of NATO if we didn't support their presence in Vietnam in the 50's, and that we failed to understand that Ho Chi Minh was essentially a nationalist first and only a communist of convenience. The US was urging the French to grant Vietnam independence after WW2, but they strongly believed the "domino theory" of communism and managed to convince Eisenhower. It was all over after that.
In the last dunno how many years (circa 100+), the USA has never won a war it started. To be assured of victory, they'd have to have a civil war. I understand the point you're trying to make, but it's largely incorrect. Grenada and Panama, we won those. Given the stated objective (i.e. throw the Iraqi army out of Kuwait), we won the First Gulf War too. and Vietnam, we didn't actually start it, we just joined up with the losing side of a civil war.
The information Google gives out is available to everyone. Why don't the soldiers use it to plan their defense? They have a big advantage in that Google maps isn't updated that often, they could look at the images and plan how to booby trap the weak spots We can't use booby traps--- or as we military folks call them, mines. Are you seriously suggesting we set mines in all the alleyways surrounding our military installations? Yeah, that'd work fine, because it's not like any regular folks might be trying to live and work in the city.
Please note, that I used the word metaphore. In this, the clock is similar to a work of art, it has meaning. It might be metaphor, but since it's scientists setting the time on a clock without any mathematical basis, it also counts as hyperbole, FUD, and propaganda. They are using the trappings of science to make hay out of their personal political beliefs.
I believe the common use of the term refers to the ability to end all life, everywhere (with the exception of cockroaches and certain bacteria). Even granting that, it's still hyperbole. This planet is very, very large in comparison to a nuclear explosion. Further, life is a very tenacious thing. It appears next to volcanic vents on the bottom of the ocean, for bog's sake. The "blow up the planet" notion is, by all definitions, simply an expression of human hubris.
No need to carpet bomb with conventional nukes. Cobalt nukes use cobalt instead of U235 as a tamper, subsequently they are much less powerful devices. All the conventional nukes weren't enough to cover the earth with fallout. Cobalt bombs less so. Szilárd was likewise engaging in hyperbole when he said cobalt bombs could destroy all life on earth. Even granting the impossibility of covering the surface of the earth with cobalt 60, there are plenty of forms of life which are largely unperturbed by the amount of radiation you'd see.
No holes barred The phrase is "no holds barred". It's an old "professional wrestling" term used in promotional materials. Your version sounds downright pornographic.
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Naturally, the logical counter is that no one has the right to demand they never be offended, but reason never enters into this stuff.
I'm sorry, are you seriously suggesting that depictions of procreation are as bad as selling heroin as a cure for minor aches and pains?
Are you daft? It's not even a start at all, good or otherwise, and you yourself illustrate the primary reasons why in this very post:
1. the same amount of crud will remain in
2.
I guess I just argued for both sides of the equation. I think I'm getting fence splinters. Both sides? I saw no sensible reason for. All I saw was a couple good arguments against and a fanciful wish that the internet was a magical fairyland where your job blocking porn sites was as simple as blocking
I suspect he was being facetious, indicating that no special viewers or codecs or what-have-you needs to be loaded to show a simple thrusting-penis picture, as we've had animated GIFs for nearly 2 decades and all modern browsers support it.
.mil .gov and .edu are the only ones restricted now. The rest are basically a free-for-all.
They won't take it, and you can't make them. Call the police and they'll ask you to pay in another way. If you owe them $100, they have to take it. If they refuse, then let THEM call a cop when you don't pay, or take you to small claims court, and try to explain to a judge why they can only accept certain denominations. They generally refuse under the "can't make change" excuse (when really it's counterfeiting they're wary of). You can't force someone to make change for a bill when he doesn't have change, so the excuse is legit. Whether it's actually true is largely irrelevant.
1. Person A opens mouth and makes unsupported Claim X
2. Person B hears unsupported Claim X and demands proof
Person B is not required to prove anything because Person B did not make any claims! This is simple logic! Person A cannot turn around simply say "prove it's not true", because Claim X is his assertion! And simply shrugging your shoulder's and saying "I won't defend my opinion that it's, in fact, false -- rather I'll demand that you show me it's true." smacks of a immature bratty-ness, a cowardice in the face of your own disability to prove your own claims, Are you insane? It's basic scientific procedure to demand proof when someone makes an unsubstantiated claim. What's childish is the claimant turning around and saying "no, you prove it's not true!"
that it's no wonder you came onto the board, condescending guns ablaze, letting your endocrine system fire off at will. Sorry? Following established scientific protocol is a sign of glandular emotionality? It seems to me that you are the one throwing a hissy fit because I refuse to abandon basic scientific principles.
Placing the burden on others is a psychological justification for not having to do your own thinking -- how easy for you. You can just shut them off with the same over-used phrase and derivative comments. It's annoying as hell, and illogical. What's annoying as hell is someone repeatedly demanding we all throw away the basic tenets of logical reasoning and accept the burden of disproving someone else's unfounded assertion.
Drop your own claims, and just tell others that you, personally, need proof before you will opine that something is true -- problem solved! Again, I made no initial claim. The burden of proving an assertion falls upon the initial claimant. I'm not making up an arbitrary rule here. This is established procedure for logical argument. Going overboard and making your own factual claims about falsities may work with those who don't know better, but for those of us who do...you look like a damned fool. I look like a fool for demanding proof of an unfounded claim? I even acquiesced to your demand for some proof of the negative! Let's look at what's been presented by each of us:
You: An opinion piece by someone who thinks like you, and a vague reference to an unnamed and unreleased future study you assure us will vindicate your position.
Me: A rebuttal of said opinion piece detailing it's scientific shortcomings, plus a link to actual published studies on nih.gov(that's a hyperlink there; you can click on it!) detailing the very negative proof you demand!
Instead of concentrating on my demand for proof, why don't you go ahead and rebut the PubMed studies I linked to above?
Who is the real fool here?
My opinion is based upon other peoples (scientists) as yet unfinished scientific studies. Secondly "100+" years means nothing,
Show me the proof. This is really very simple. In 100+ years of strong magnetic fields, no one has yet shown proof of serious ill effects from magnetism. You believe in "unfinished scientific studies", which you haven't shown to us or even named. Claims demand proof.
things that are thought as safe often get proven to be dangerous, remember Marie Curie's glowing potato shed?
The cancer causing effects of radiation were noticed as early as 1902, a mere 4 years after the Curies began their experiments. What was not known was how much radiation was harmful, and how radioactive various things were.
Secondly, You quote three very valid types of employment who do work in close vacinity to magnetic fields. However, exposure assesments based on job title are a very crude method of assessing exposure due to the possibility of exposure misclassification. Also I used to string large electricity pylons I am still alive, I hope we both agree this prooves nothing.
WTF are you talking about? Are you saying that finding no particular increased incidence of illness in a group of people most of which work around high powered magnetic fields is not a meaningful observation? Why is selection based on job title (when job title obviously indicates exposure) not valid? What selection criteria should we be using? Star Trek nerds vs general population? Bearded ladies at sideshows vs general population?
"Studies so far [nih.gov] have shown that there is little negative reaction by organic systems to magnetic fields."
Sorry, but this realy means nothing to me. Please supply document addresses, rather than just a URL so I can "understand" what documents you are on about.
You're kidding, right? You know how hyperlinking works, don't you? Go back and look at my post. Notice how "studies so far" is underlined? That means you can click on it and, in this case, it leads to the actual reports. Here, allow me to give you the full address, itself hyperlinked to the report as well:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7033311&dopt=Citation
My response would be - "Theory, Hypothesis or Proof based?", I would find this out before patronising them.
Ummm....what? Those are not three different categories, those are three terms used when describing the scientific method as a whole. Theories are the overall idea, detailed by one or more hypotheses, supported by proof.
Then I am both. Moreso because I shall not stop being both whilst being in acceptance of this "fact".
"Claims must be supported by proof."
Do you believe this realy, when peoples lifes are in danger?
Until you can provide even a couple credible examples of people who have been harmed by magnetic fields, the danger is imaginary. I believe it's no more a danger than tomatoes, rock n' roll, and women's bare arms are a danger to morality--- and yet all those things were at one time seen as a threat. Seriousness of the charge has no bearing on the validity of the assertion. I believe your favorite shirt causes blindness to 78% of those who look upon it. Are you really going to continue wearing that shirt when it so clearly poses a danger to over 3/4 the population? You fiend!
Many medical cures are in opperation without proof.
Proof of what? That they cure? Aren't the cured people proof? Or if they don't cure, then what? The presence of useless medical procedures shows that magnetism causes cancer?
The problem here is that you are asking for proof of a negative. You see, in science, when someone asserts the condition X may have effect Y out of the blue like that, the only proper response is "I have seen no evidence of this, so unless you can show evidence of a link, I must assume it to be false". Claiming "just because it's not proven doesn't mean it's not true" is foolish and childlike. Claims must be supported by proof. The burden is not on the rest of the world to disprove. Science is built on facts, not speculations. Logical thinking--- it works!
It still amazes me how many people there are out there that apparently need this explained to them.
posting to undo an errant "overrated" mod when I meant to hit "funny". Stupid java mod system.
"In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless my enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States."
This is the "stop loss" clause. Of course, it might interest you to know that only a few critical job classifications are covered by "stop loss". The way most service members are being held over on active duty has fuck all to do with "stop loss". Morons continue to call all extensions of active duty "stop loss" because they don't bother to do any research. Most service members are actually being held on active duty by a much more mundane thing: contractual obligation.
You see, when you enlist, you are signing up for eight years. Sure, the recruiter said 3 or 4 years of "active duty", but the part the weasel recruiters don't mention is that the 3 or 4 years is only the minimum. They reserve the right to keep you around ducking bullets and crapping in a hole for eight years. When you sign up, you're betting that Uncle Sugar won't have a pressing need for your services at the end. Right now, he does. Tough shit, man. It was in the contract. I know all about this kind of shit. I enlisted for four years originally, and currently have a total of 6 years active duty service time. In my case my reserve unit was called up (twice) rather than me being held over, but it's all the same crap sandwich, really. I'm in my last year of obligation, so it looks like I might be able to keep it at that...
For those interested in how it really works, here is a good overview that will dispell a lot of the ignorance spewed by dumbass journalists and politicians.
(according to TFA) the laser intensity is not high enough to cause eye damage.
Perhaps the part you don't understand is that aircraft are not like cars. The sky is largely empty and free of dangerous obstructions. Airplanes fly in generally straight lines, usually far above the ground. With the exception of takeoff and landing, a momentary dazzling of the pilot by a bright light is mostly a non-issue. If you close your eyes, or even let go of the wheel, the plane continues to fly. It's even less of an issue when you consider that there are usually TWO pilots in commercial aircraft. Even less of an issue still when you consider that a laser designed to blind a far infrared sensor poses little risk of dazzling anything BUT an IR seeking missile because humans don't fucking see in infrared.
That's not it. Women did just fine during WW2. They even took jobs normally done by men, and did them quite well. If anything. "feminism" is more of a reaction to the post-WW2 return to "normalcy", which had many women saying "hey, we did just fine in Man-jobs, why do we have to stay home and cook dinner?"
Music is something else entirely.
No need to carpet bomb with conventional nukes.
Cobalt nukes use cobalt instead of U235 as a tamper, subsequently they are much less powerful devices. All the conventional nukes weren't enough to cover the earth with fallout. Cobalt bombs less so. Szilárd was likewise engaging in hyperbole when he said cobalt bombs could destroy all life on earth. Even granting the impossibility of covering the surface of the earth with cobalt 60, there are plenty of forms of life which are largely unperturbed by the amount of radiation you'd see.