I choose the former. Most people are much, much too stupid to be trusted with guns.
So your choice is to allow the government a monopoly? Just curious, does YOUR government ever make really stupid decisions? Mine does. And every other one I've done any research on does as well...
Do inform me when you find a book accurately detailing how to create a nuclear bomb. The FBI would also be interested.
"Dire Dawn" by Hildegarde Hernandez?;-p
More seriously, a basic fission bomb isn't really all that hard to build. We did it with 1940's tech. Any halfway competent nuclear engineering student should know enough to do the design up...
The difficulty isn't the design, it's the fissionables. Which you can't buy at the local drug store, contrary to popular rumour. Making Pu-239 requires a major engineering project. Hell, building the reactor to make the Pu-239 is something for billionaires, much less building the reprocessing facility to extract the Pu-239 (without poisoning it with other isotopes that suck up neutrons without producing excess energy)....
Yep, 100% change overnight or it doesn't matter...
Nah...but 10% might mean something. And 4000 people employed there??? For less than 2GW peak? Seems more like a public works project than a serious attempt to go Green....
You're basically going TRIPLE the amount of people in such a system with UBI, And even with a modest monthly payment, you're going to explode the budget from what it already is.
Current Federal "entitlements" amount to ~$2.8T per annum.
Add another $500G per annum for State-level programs.
Ditch the bureaucrats required to administer those various programs, and split the $3.3T evenly to every citizen....
Looks like $10K per person per year. Not enough for one person to live very well alone. But not impossible for a family of four ($40k per annum)...
And that's without ANY new taxes, and no more deficit than we currently have.
how the corporations crying about "free market" want to take the most important feature - an INFORMED decision - away from the customers by hiding GMO content in products.
Of course, it's not really an "informed decision" when all the info you have is "GMO". That's sort of like saying "we're building a new electric plant". Lot of difference between solar, hydro, coal, oil, gas, nuclear....
Of course, the reusable part of Falcon 9 doesn't get to orbit either, so I fail to see a distinction on that basis.
Thing that makes this new spaceplane a potentially significant factor is turn-around time. They're aiming for 24 hour turnover. If the majority of satellites can fit in their lift-capacity of 2250kg, then they have a chance of grabbing a good chunk of the launch market. If most satellites are more than 2250 kg, they're not going to be terribly significant except for emergency lofting of (small) sats....
Automation/AI isn't going to change things, it hasn't in the past it won't in the future.
Oh?
150 years ago, most everyone worked on a farm. If they were reasonably lucky, the farm produced enough to keep them eating.
Now, maybe 5% of the people work on farm-related jobs. Largely due to things like combine harvesters, tractors, things like that.
Once upon a time, traveling across the ocean was a multi-week affair, and you had a reasonable chance of surviving the experience. Not guaranteed, but reasonable (consider the number of people who left Spain with Columbus on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Then consider the number of those people who got back to Spain).
Now, you can do the round trip (Spain to New World and back) in a weekend, with essentially no chance of dying. Or you can take a sailing ship. Which will still be faster than Columbus' trip, but will require a small fraction of the crew, with negligible chance of death....
So, yes, automation IS going to change things. As it has in the past, and will continue into the indefinite future....
If there was some freak incident that knocked out every computer on the planet and prevented us from building more, there would be widespread chaos, yes -- but our civilization would recover from that and manage to thrive again regardless.
Oh, really?
For a start, every piece of farm machinery would stop working. Going to get hungry by and by.
And then there's the fact that pretty much every piece of machinery in every factory would stop working. So we're not building any new equipment for a while.
Trains, ditto. Ships. Automobiles. Nothing works, and nothing can be repaired into workable condition. You can't even call someone to tell them you have a problem, since the phone system is gone forever...
And, yes, you'd lose electricity till you rebuilt the entire system. With 1940's technology....
Our civilization might survive. After most of humanity died off, and we rebuilt back to pre-1940 tech....
They could split off the New York part of TWC into it's own company as hinted in the summary.
So, what's the legal basis for that action? Seriously, revoking their charter to operate in NY is certainly within their power, but I can't see any way they can order the company to divest itself that way, if Charter-TWC don't want to do it.
Note, of course, that the Federal government has that power. Which in no way implies that the NY government has that power....
The moon is relatively boring next to mars and has much less commercial interest to attract sponsors.
Water means rocket fuel. And Luna is a much shallower gravity well to get that rocket fuel out of. Admittedly, you're only going to be processing water into LH2 and LOX two weeks a month. But even with that limitation, it's way the hell better than lifting that much rocket fuel out of the gravity well we're all sitting at the bottom of now.
Note, by the by, that even without water on Luna, making LOX there represents the overwhelming majority of any rocket fuel needed for deeper space missions...
Which means that a base there would really help for sending people to Mars.
Once upon a time killing your livestock was only for special occasions or when there was no other food left.
Umm, no.
As an example, cows and bulls are born in about equal numbers. But you only need one bull for all your cows. So the extra bulls get slaughtered every year.
Hell, the "one bull" gets slaughtered every few years since inbreeding is a bad thing. Once all the cows are his daughters, he's history.
Are armed pilots actually useful in a hijacking (assuming that hijackers get past a locked cockpit door)?
Guessing that that depends on the hijacker.
There may ("may" being the key word) be a deterrent effect if you decide not to hijack a plane because dying in a grand gesture may be desirable, but being shot down like a dog by the pilot not so much....
Do remember that once upon a time (less than a century ago), paper money wasn't considered "cash". Paper money was "banknotes", and the only real "cash" was gold and silver coins.
Yeah, I'm sure that everyone will be really happy to haul one hundred pounds (45 kg) of gold to the dealer to buy a car. Or five hundred pounds (225 kg) of gold to buy a house....
The only way you're going to get back to even your limited understanding of cash is if you stop using banks (no credit cards, no checks, no savings) and keep big piles of banknotes (yes, the Federal Reserve is a bank, technically) in your house. That'll go over real well right up till the time someone breaks in and steals your big pile of banknotes, and you suddenly have no way to buy food till payday....
Agreed to by all countries, and enforced by all countries. Can't be any other way. Any country violates the agreement, they get jumped on by everyone else.
So, you're in favour of starting WW3 if, say, China lays claim to the Sea of Tranquility by establishing a permanent base there?
So, how do you convince a drug company to spend the (sometimes) billions to develop a new drug if they're never going to sell enough of it to recover the billions?
I suppose you can have the government do all drug development/testing. But that just means raising taxes to pay for the development of new drugs.
Which means the drugs will STILL cost as much as the old way, but you won't see the costs on your doctor bill, you'll see them hidden on your tax bill....
The judge is supposed to put aside their opinion, and rule based on the law, which requires proof beyond doubt for a guilty verdict.
Two things.
First, "reasonable doubt". The "reasonable" is important.
Second, he's in jail for Contempt of Court. It's pretty clear that he was guilty of that. He should have taken the Fifth instead. But "I forgot" is so clearly telling the Judge "yuck fou" that Contempt of Court was a slam-dunk.
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So your choice is to allow the government a monopoly? Just curious, does YOUR government ever make really stupid decisions? Mine does. And every other one I've done any research on does as well...
"Dire Dawn" by Hildegarde Hernandez? ;-p
More seriously, a basic fission bomb isn't really all that hard to build. We did it with 1940's tech. Any halfway competent nuclear engineering student should know enough to do the design up...
The difficulty isn't the design, it's the fissionables. Which you can't buy at the local drug store, contrary to popular rumour. Making Pu-239 requires a major engineering project. Hell, building the reactor to make the Pu-239 is something for billionaires, much less building the reprocessing facility to extract the Pu-239 (without poisoning it with other isotopes that suck up neutrons without producing excess energy)....
Nah...but 10% might mean something. And 4000 people employed there??? For less than 2GW peak? Seems more like a public works project than a serious attempt to go Green....
So. they're going to get 1.8GW of the ~25GW they produce in total? For 12 hours per day, or less, of course.
That seems to translate to maybe 4% of their electricity production.
Color me unimpressed....
Current Federal "entitlements" amount to ~$2.8T per annum.
Add another $500G per annum for State-level programs.
Ditch the bureaucrats required to administer those various programs, and split the $3.3T evenly to every citizen....
Looks like $10K per person per year. Not enough for one person to live very well alone. But not impossible for a family of four ($40k per annum)...
And that's without ANY new taxes, and no more deficit than we currently have.
Of course, it's not really an "informed decision" when all the info you have is "GMO". That's sort of like saying "we're building a new electric plant". Lot of difference between solar, hydro, coal, oil, gas, nuclear....
Nope. Saw that.
Of course, the reusable part of Falcon 9 doesn't get to orbit either, so I fail to see a distinction on that basis.
Thing that makes this new spaceplane a potentially significant factor is turn-around time. They're aiming for 24 hour turnover. If the majority of satellites can fit in their lift-capacity of 2250kg, then they have a chance of grabbing a good chunk of the launch market. If most satellites are more than 2250 kg, they're not going to be terribly significant except for emergency lofting of (small) sats....
Hmmm...5000 pounds to orbit (2250kg) for this new spaceplane.
Falcon 9 Block 5...50,000 punds to orbit (22500kg).
It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to get a Block 5 Falcon 9 ready for relaunch.
And how often 2250kg to LEO is useful as opposed to 22500kg to LEO....
Oh?
150 years ago, most everyone worked on a farm. If they were reasonably lucky, the farm produced enough to keep them eating.
Now, maybe 5% of the people work on farm-related jobs. Largely due to things like combine harvesters, tractors, things like that.
Once upon a time, traveling across the ocean was a multi-week affair, and you had a reasonable chance of surviving the experience. Not guaranteed, but reasonable (consider the number of people who left Spain with Columbus on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Then consider the number of those people who got back to Spain).
Now, you can do the round trip (Spain to New World and back) in a weekend, with essentially no chance of dying. Or you can take a sailing ship. Which will still be faster than Columbus' trip, but will require a small fraction of the crew, with negligible chance of death....
So, yes, automation IS going to change things. As it has in the past, and will continue into the indefinite future....
Oh, really?
For a start, every piece of farm machinery would stop working. Going to get hungry by and by.
And then there's the fact that pretty much every piece of machinery in every factory would stop working. So we're not building any new equipment for a while.
Trains, ditto. Ships. Automobiles. Nothing works, and nothing can be repaired into workable condition. You can't even call someone to tell them you have a problem, since the phone system is gone forever...
And, yes, you'd lose electricity till you rebuilt the entire system. With 1940's technology....
Our civilization might survive. After most of humanity died off, and we rebuilt back to pre-1940 tech....
So, what's the legal basis for that action? Seriously, revoking their charter to operate in NY is certainly within their power, but I can't see any way they can order the company to divest itself that way, if Charter-TWC don't want to do it.
Note, of course, that the Federal government has that power. Which in no way implies that the NY government has that power....
For the purists among us, that rather predated the Lee-Enfield. More properly, it was just the Enfield back then. Or the Lee-Metford....
And here I thought it was the art of saying "good doggie!" while reaching for a club....
Water means rocket fuel. And Luna is a much shallower gravity well to get that rocket fuel out of. Admittedly, you're only going to be processing water into LH2 and LOX two weeks a month. But even with that limitation, it's way the hell better than lifting that much rocket fuel out of the gravity well we're all sitting at the bottom of now.
Note, by the by, that even without water on Luna, making LOX there represents the overwhelming majority of any rocket fuel needed for deeper space missions...
Which means that a base there would really help for sending people to Mars.
Umm, no.
As an example, cows and bulls are born in about equal numbers. But you only need one bull for all your cows. So the extra bulls get slaughtered every year.
Hell, the "one bull" gets slaughtered every few years since inbreeding is a bad thing. Once all the cows are his daughters, he's history.
None of them?
From TFS: "cord-cutters in the U.S. -- consumers who have ever cancelled traditional pay-TV service and do not resubscribe".
Which doesn't seem to include people like you, who have never had "traditional pay-TV service".
Note that I DO fit the definition from TFS. But I'm not a NEW cord-cutter, since I did my cord cutting a couple-three decades back....
Guessing that that depends on the hijacker.
There may ("may" being the key word) be a deterrent effect if you decide not to hijack a plane because dying in a grand gesture may be desirable, but being shot down like a dog by the pilot not so much....
Agree completely. You saved me the trouble of saying the same thing more rudely....
So, we should go back to gold coins?
Do remember that once upon a time (less than a century ago), paper money wasn't considered "cash". Paper money was "banknotes", and the only real "cash" was gold and silver coins.
Yeah, I'm sure that everyone will be really happy to haul one hundred pounds (45 kg) of gold to the dealer to buy a car. Or five hundred pounds (225 kg) of gold to buy a house....
The only way you're going to get back to even your limited understanding of cash is if you stop using banks (no credit cards, no checks, no savings) and keep big piles of banknotes (yes, the Federal Reserve is a bank, technically) in your house. That'll go over real well right up till the time someone breaks in and steals your big pile of banknotes, and you suddenly have no way to buy food till payday....
Which, no doubt, explains why it became illegal to import slaves in 1808...
What's that? You didn't know that that stopped that early? Why am I not surprised...
So, you're in favour of starting WW3 if, say, China lays claim to the Sea of Tranquility by establishing a permanent base there?
Bit of an overreaction, I am thinking....
Yes, it's boring. Or was. Now it's just bored....
If this is the same incident I read about at the time, it actually made pi == 9....
And the counterpoint...
So, how do you convince a drug company to spend the (sometimes) billions to develop a new drug if they're never going to sell enough of it to recover the billions?
I suppose you can have the government do all drug development/testing. But that just means raising taxes to pay for the development of new drugs.
Which means the drugs will STILL cost as much as the old way, but you won't see the costs on your doctor bill, you'll see them hidden on your tax bill....
Two things.
First, "reasonable doubt". The "reasonable" is important.
Second, he's in jail for Contempt of Court. It's pretty clear that he was guilty of that. He should have taken the Fifth instead. But "I forgot" is so clearly telling the Judge "yuck fou" that Contempt of Court was a slam-dunk.