An excellent book which provides many reasons (and how-to's!) for human space exploration is "Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization" by Robert Zubrin (of "A Case for Mars" fame).
He actually spends a little bit of time showing why the Solar Satellites you mention in 3) won't be feasible for quite some time.
That being said, it is an inspirational read which I highly recommend.
It is astonishing to me that many of the left-wingers who hold it morally wrong to eat animals or use animals for research, find nothing wrong with creating human embryos for the sole purpose of research. It almost seems that left-wingers hold animals in higher regard than humans.
On the other hand, many "right-wingers" are opposed to taking human life through abortion (or for stem cell research), but are more than happy to take human life through the death penalty...
I think you're underestimating DVDs. I don't know exactly what model of B&O TV you were watching, but I'm willing to bet that the problem wasn't the DVD. Many stores do not correctly adjust the video settings of TV's, which can very easily exaggerate any flaws in a DVD movie. I have a 55" HDTV which displays next to NO compression artifacts on any reasonably high quality DVD transfer.
You would think that stores would get their video settings correct, but frequently the sales people don't know how to do it-- the contrast is too high, the colors too intense, the brightness too high, etc. Granted the bright lights of stores aren't the best TV watching environments...
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He actually spends a little bit of time showing why the Solar Satellites you mention in 3) won't be feasible for quite some time.
That being said, it is an inspirational read which I highly recommend.
It is astonishing to me that many of the left-wingers who hold it morally wrong to eat animals or use animals for research, find nothing wrong with creating human embryos for the sole purpose of research. It almost seems that left-wingers hold animals in higher regard than humans. On the other hand, many "right-wingers" are opposed to taking human life through abortion (or for stem cell research), but are more than happy to take human life through the death penalty...
You would think that stores would get their video settings correct, but frequently the sales people don't know how to do it-- the contrast is too high, the colors too intense, the brightness too high, etc. Granted the bright lights of stores aren't the best TV watching environments...